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Heavenly Father, we thank you for a beautiful day to gather as your people to hear from your holy scriptures and pray, Holy Spirit, that you prepare us now to hear from you, to meditate on the end times, that the end is coming, the end of our life, or the end will come when, Christ, you return. And as true as your death, your burial, your resurrection was, so your Second Coming is as true, that day is already set. But as we meditate upon these things, Lord, let us focus on what you focus on, is that we endure to the end, and when we do that by living every single day ready to meet you as if you were to return today, or live as if your return isn't coming for another 1,000 years, or 10,000 years, for that matter.

And help us see that it's the same way of living. To live faithfully today is to live in such a way that we long to leave a legacy of faithfulness. We long to do everything we can to proclaim the gospel, and live in a manner worthy of it, so that many of your elect come into the kingdom through our service. So Lord, use us and use this church to spark revival in our city, in our state, in our nation, in our world. And Lord, continue to empower us as we proclaim the Word. Continue to empower us by the power of the Spirit to speak your words unflinchingly, knowing that it is your Word, it's the gospel, it's the power of God unto salvation. There's nothing that we can do or manufacture, nor do we want to. We want to do your work your way, and see your elect drawn into the kingdom. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come: The Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. And the secret that we've seen is that Jesus Christ is Lord. And that is the secret to every single most important question in life. The title of the sermon today is Endure to the End. This past Monday was Marathon Monday, beautiful day for it. And usually, my family and I, we go watch the marathon. We live right down the street from Beacon. They block off Beacon, you can't cross it. And we usually do that, it's fun. But we've been in the city for almost 15 years, so I asked my daughters this Monday, "Do you want to go watch the marathon? It's kind of a big deal." And one of my daughters responded by saying, quote, "There's nothing fun about watching people run, Dad." And I was like, "Fair point, fair point." So, I got out of that thanks to her.

But millions do watch. Millions from all over the world watch the marathon. Why? Because endurance is impressive. You're willingly subjecting your body to that much physical pain for how long? How many miles? And there's much to learn for us from that. The Lord Jesus Christ calls His followers to develop endurance for the long haul. He calls us to live a life of faithfulness for all of life and every aspect of life, to keep going, especially when we hit that pain barrier, to fight through the pain. And in a section where the Lord Jesus Christ talks about the signs of the end times, what does He emphasize? Not the precise date, no. What does He emphasize? He emphasizes endurance. "But the one who endures to the end will be saved."

So, however you interpret the end times biblical passages, the most correct interpretation is the one that increases your spiritual endurance, not depletes it. Whatever your interpretation of the details, this is the forest that you must not miss. You must live your life in such a way that you're ready just in case Jesus returns today, because He might, and simultaneously, you live your life with the intention of leaving a Christ-honoring legacy for centuries to come, because Christ might not return for another 1,000 years, or another 10,000 years, for that matter. And the whole time, we have to keep praying, "Our Father, who art in heaven, may your name be holy in my life. May your kingdom come in my life. May your will be done in my life, on earth as it is in heaven."

Today, we're in Mark 13:1-23, would you look at the text with me? "And as He came out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!' And Jesus said to him, 'Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.' And as He sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately, 'Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?' And Jesus began to say to them, 'See that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name saying, "I am He!" And they will lead many astray. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains.'"

"'But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver brother over to death, and father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.'"

"'But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom He chose, He shortened the days.'"

"'And then if anyone says to you, "Look, here is the Christ!" Or, "Look, there He is!" Do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be on guard; I have told you all these things beforehand.'" This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative Word, may He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

First, a word about interpreting prophetic passages. How should we read the holy scriptures in particular that are foretelling the future? Here, Jesus is describing widely separated events. On the one hand, He's describing the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD; on the other hand, He's talking about the end of the world. But He's painting them in such a way that they appear close to each other. Interpreters have invoked the idea of, quote, "prophetic perspective", that prophecy resembles a landscape painting, which marks, distinctly, there's houses and paths and bridges in the foreground, but in the background, in a narrow space, there's distant valleys and mountains, and they look like they're much closer together than they really are, they're very far apart. So, there's a two-dimensional aspect to biblical prophecy. Here, God's immediate judgment on His people is what's emphasized, and it's imperceptibly dovetailed into His universal judgment on all humanity at the Last Day.

So, this opening section deals with the destruction of the temple, and by doing so, it gives us a little apocalypse, or a prototype of the apocalypse, and it comes cyclically. So, if we learn how the cycles come, we can see the cycles in the past, and then we can see how those cycles are manifesting in the present. And this text is designed to warn disciples against four spiritual dangers to avoid if we are to endure to the end. And I'm going to give you the four points in a positive framing, and I'll explain what the negative warnings are with each point. So, four points to frame our time. First, endure to the end by worshiping God, in spirit and truth. Second, endure to the end by discerning through deception. Third, endure to the end by not getting distracted by turmoil. And finally, endure to the end by expecting severe persecution. And Jesus says, "I'm warning you ahead of time to be forewarned, and each case is to be forearmed." This is how we take heed, this is how we remain on guard.

First of all, endure to the end by worshiping God, in spirit and truth. Having entered Jerusalem and accepted the acclaim, the people that, "Hosanna, Hosanna, save us, Jesus is the Son of David, He is the Son of God." He has verbally battled the scribes in the Sanhedrin, the elders. He's denounced them for their hypocrisy, and He did that after cleansing the temple. And then at the end of chapter 12, Jesus points to a widow and says, "Look at her generosity, look at her piety. We have much to learn from her." And now He continues talking about denunciations of the temple.

Jesus here, in the beginning of the text, He leaves the temple. And this is very symbolic, and is to be understood as an act of judgment. Jesus has said everything that He had to say, the leadership has not repented, He is leaving, and as He's leaving, He's taking the presence of God with Him. In Ezekiel 10, we see that the glory of God abandons the first temple before it's destroyed. And for the prophet, the departure of God's glory, and the consequent destruction of the temple, are punishments for, quote, "The abominations that the house of Israel practiced there." This is Ezekiel 8:6. "And He said to me, 'Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations.'"

So, in that context, we come to Mark 13:1. "As He came out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!'" And the first danger in not enduring is the danger of too much reliance on the outward symbols of religion. Though they are venerable and loved by many, we must not lose sight that God is the point, not the temple. And the disciples are caught up with the beauty of the house of God, as it was called, the house that was supposed to proclaim the beauty of God, the beauty of His law, the beauty of His grace. However, instead of serving as a reflection to the one who should get our greatest praise, the temple had begun to overshadow God in the hearts of the people.

The temple was finished, restored by King Herod, and was considered one of the architectural wonders of the Roman world, even though it was unfinished at the date of its destruction, 70 AD. And Herod did a great job, mostly because he had borrowed Roman engineers, and nothing could match the temple for splendor or its apparent permanence. Josephus, a historian of the time, he says, "The exterior of the building wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye." He also said that the temple looked like a snow-capped mountain rising up in the midst of Jerusalem. The stones were beautiful, they had dressed margins, whose play of light and shade contributed to the beauty and dramatic appearance of massive walls. Some of the stones weighed up to 50 pounds. One was found that... Tons, excuse me, 50 tons, one was 300 tons.

So, the reaction of the amazed disciples at the magnificent temple is natural, and they probably assumed that Jesus was going to second it, and say, "Yeah, that's my house." He doesn't do that. And we are wowed by beautiful religious buildings. My parents just came back from Rome, and then I went to visit them, and my dad, all he wanted do is show me pictures of buildings. And I was like, "Dad, you know what I'm preaching on today, this week." And then my mom, she showed me what I wanted to see: pictures of food, very delicious.

And what Jesus here, all of a sudden, He shifts gears. "Oh yeah, you think they're beautiful?" And all of a sudden, He turns the conversation to chilling prophecy of the temple's destruction. This is verse 2. "And Jesus said to him, 'Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" The complete demolition of the Second Temple, down to its very foundations, happened in the year 70 AD, four decades after the crucifixion of Christ. And the destruction was so final and so vast that it became proverbial in rabbinic circles that the destruction was even greater than the destruction of the Second Temple by the Babylonians. Jesus' cursing of the fig tree in chapter 11 was the symbolism that preceded the destruction of the temple and the conversations over that.

And Jesus came in to the temple after the welcoming crowds brought Him in, and the first thing He did was cleanse the temple. He made a whip, He cleanses the temple of their illicit commercial activity. They were using the temple for commercial gain, which defiled the sanctuary, and Jesus ended up calling it a "den of robbers". The prophecy of the temple destruction in the present context is probably meant to be understood as judgment upon the Sanhedrin, the Levites. That's who the scribes were, they were Levites, they were the religious working class. Instead of pointing people to the Lord, they used the people for their own gains, and this is why Jesus removed the presence of God. But as for Jews, the disciples even to think about the destruction of the temple was unthinkable. This was the shrine, this was the center of the divine presence. So, if the temple is going to be destroyed, what is that saying about Judaism? It's saying that the end has come, a new era has begun.

Mark 13:3. "And He sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately." This sitting is symbolic, in the same way that Jesus exiting the temple is symbolic. In the previous text, Jesus said that He is the Lord that is seated at the right hand of God the Father. He's seated in judgment. Here, Jesus, in the same way, is seated in judgment as He's looking at the temple, the doomed structure. "On the Mount of Olives opposite the temple" is a phrase that recalls Zechariah 14:4, prophetic passage about judgment of Jerusalem.

Zechariah 14:4. "On that day His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with Him."

The problem with this temple was the temple was built as the worship center of the people of God, and the worship center became the center of worship. Unfortunately, God was no longer at the center, the temple was. And the people running the temple decided to play God. Therefore, we are to beware of falling in love with the outworkings of faith, to the point where those things overshadow our love for God. If we are to endure to the end, we must worship God in spirit and truth. Yes, we are to love the church, the gathering of the saints, but not more than Jesus. And I've learned that people who get the most out of church are those who come to church not for church, but come to church for God, to worship Him in spirit and truth.

Jesus, in His conversation with the woman at the well in John 4, she says in verse 20, "'Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.' Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.' The woman said to Him, 'I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things.' Jesus said to her, 'I who speak to you am He.'"

Point two is endure to the end by discerning through deception. The disciples say in verse 4, "Jesus, tell us!" "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?" We want to know when, and we want to know what should we be looking for? And instead of giving them what they're asking for, Jesus gives them what they actually need. He says in verse 5, and this is His answer, "See that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, 'I am He!' And they will lead many astray." He said, "You want a sign? A sign is there are people that will try to pull you away from the Lord, and your job isn't to focus on the sign, it isn't to focus on the time, it's to focus on not being led astray."

The deceivers are probably self-proclaimed Christians who actually claim to be Jesus Christ. Many of them will say, "I am He." And behind them, obviously, is the great deceiver, that's Satan himself. Revelation 12:7-9. "Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him."

And this is how Satan wages war against God, with the spirit of delusion, a spirit of deception. And he particularly focuses on the elect. His job is to pull the elect away, astray, because if they're no longer faithful, they won't be fruitful, and that's what he's trying to do. And this is the reign of delusion. And Jesus emphasized delusion twice in our text, He actually ends the text with another warning against the delusion, verse 21. "And then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here's the Christ!' Or, 'look, there He is!' Do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.'"

And this is fascinating, because this should be an easy test. If someone shows up and says, "I'm Jesus Christ!" They're like, "I see right through that. I saw that one coming." But people will believe it, because of the signs and wonders. So, this is what Jesus is saying, be careful when people come to you with signs and wonders. Sometimes the signs and wonders are from the Lord, and sometimes they are not. Focus on where the signs are pointing. Are they pointing you to Christ? Are they pointing you to glorifying God evermore? Or are they pointing you to leave the Lord?

Deuteronomy warned about this, Deuteronomy 13:1-3, "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them.' You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." So, the false prophets, then, are demonic imitators, just like when Moses went into Egypt. He did the miracles, and there were impersonators that did similar miracles.

Jesus's saying do not put your trust in that power, supernatural power, unless you know where it's from. Because some false Christs and some false prophets come, and they actually speak the lies of the devil. John 8:44, "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and a father of lies." So, be careful with signs and wonders, that's the point here.

We saw the signs and wonders in the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit, this is how the Lord attested to the power of the apostles, through signs. In 1 Corinthians 12, there's a list of spiritual gifts and signs and miracles, signs and wonders is there, but those signs and wonders are ambivalent. They're only signs of the far greater working by God in Christ, which we must accept by faith or not at all. In Revelation, the false prophets work demonic signs, by which he deceives the people, Revelation 13.

We see more of this in 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12. "And when the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who do not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

And what is Satan trying to do? He is trying to lead astray, if possible, the elect. And we know to succeed in deceiving the elect would be a contradiction in terms. If you are elect, you won't be deceived. But if you are deceived, that shows that you are non-elect. And think about that strategy, why is Satan trying to do that to the elect? He's trying to keep the elect from coming into the kingdom. Once the set number of God's chosen enter the kingdom, that's when Christ is coming. "The gospel must be proclaimed to all nations." So, he's trying to pull the elect away from preaching the gospel to more elect, and that's how he's trying to gain some more time.

But 1 John 2:26 says, "I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about everything, and that is true and is no lie, just as He has taught you, abide in Him." And the way we keep abiding in Christ is by remaining guard, to know that Satan is trying to delude you, he's trying to pull you away. So, Mark 13:23, "Be on guard, I have told you all these things beforehand." And He's saying, "Look out, because even your status as God's chosen doesn't remove you from the realm of demonic opposition." 1 Corinthians 10:12. "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." And at the same time, however, we are to be encouraged that we are God's chosen, and you may rest assured that He will ultimately deliver us from this realm.

Third is endure to the end by not getting distracted by turmoil. Verses 7 and 8 warn that many Christians will not finish well, and won't endure until the end, because of distraction of world turmoil. Verse 7. "And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet." And verse 8, "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains." He's saying don't focus on the birth pains. You got to see past, you got to see through the birth pains, and focus on what's coming, and that's the birth of a child.

And I've seen this all throughout church history, I've seen this in the modern era. There is turmoil in the world, there are wars in the world, there's rumors of wars of the world, and all of those things should bring us to a position where we should be on guard, we should be ready. But don't let those things distract you from the main point, from our mission, is to proclaim the gospel to all the nations, because that's our job, and we leave all this other stuff up to the Lord.

So He says, be careful. There were earthquakes that preceded the destruction of the temple in the year 70 AD. In the '60s, for example, there was an earthquake so powerful in Asia Minor, in 61 AD, that 12 cities were leveled in a single night. And Dio Cassius records an earthquake at the flight of Nero, shortly before his death at 68. These things did happen in other times of the world, and they're continuing to happen. And Jesus here says, "Don't focus on the birth pains. When a woman goes into labor, one can be sure that a baby will shortly be born." He says, "Focus on that. Focus on what will be born from the birth pains." And by saying this is just the beginning of the new birth of creation, Jesus is saying, "Don't get caught up in the birth pains, it's just the beginning. Focus on getting through the birth pains to the new birth."

And before that comes, there will be persecution, and this is point four: endure to the end by expecting severe persecution. And the warning here is that of being tripped up, because you weren't expecting the persecution to be as severe as it will be. And verses 14 through 20, Jesus gives a test case of the apocalyptic prototype, as it applies to the fall of temple. But verse 9 He says, "But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them." He says, "Be on your guard, you'll look to yourselves, you will be delivered," is the phrase that He uses. That's the same phrase that's used in Isaiah 52-53, talking about the suffering servant will be delivered to ignominious death. And Jesus used that same word for Himself.

And what He's saying is, explicitly, He's saying that you will be persecuted "for my sake, and because it's for my name's sake, don't expect the persecution to be much different than it was for me." In the same way Jesus endured to the end, He calls His followers to endure. Like His followers, He will be betrayed by a brother. Arrested, turned over to council, beaten, stood before the ruler of judgment, exposed to the contempt of masses, and killed. And in the end, however, He, like them, will be saved. Some of you "will be beaten in synagogues" and some of you "will stand before governors and kings".

The apostle Paul, he did both. Before he became Paul, he was Saul, and God used Saul to persecute the church. He was doing the persecuting, and God actually sent the persecution. Perhaps the church was not doing its job. Jesus, before He ascended to heaven, He says, "The day of Pentecost is coming, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And then once you get the Spirit, go proclaim the gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth." And they're like, "Okay, Jesus. Great." The first day of Pentecost, 3,000 people get saved, and then continues growing to thousands. And then you don't see any of those thousands mobilize and preaching the gospel anywhere but Jerusalem. They wanted to remain in Jerusalem, and it was the persecution that the Lord allowed that dispersed the church to then do what it was supposed to do.

And then God saves Paul on the road to Damascus. He goes from being Saul to Paul, and then he was the one being persecuted. For Jesus' name, he stood before governors, he stood before kings. He preached to Felix, to Festus, to Agrippa, and some say perhaps even to Caesar himself. Jesus says, "For my sake, you will bear witness before them." The wrath of man was descending upon the church, but the Lord used the Christians' enemies, who wanted to eradicate the Christian movement, that persecution was just fuel on the flame of the preaching of the gospel to the ends of the earth. And that's what Jesus says explicitly in verse 10. "And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations." And the wording "to all nations" doesn't convey the full meaning, He's saying to all non-Jewish peoples. That this is our job, we proclaim the gospel to absolutely everybody, and the gospel must be proclaimed to all nations before the end.

Verse 11. "And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit." So, verse 11 implies what I've already said, that the proclamation of the gospel is a result of persecution, not the cause. They didn't proclaim the gospel and that's why they got persecuted, because they're growing too fast. No, they were persecuted because they were hated for Jesus' name. And as they're getting persecuted, they were emboldened to become even more courageous to proclaim the gospel. And if you've ever experienced any form of persecution, you know this reality; where you're feeling discomfort, there is a cost, and then you have to sit down and say, "Is it worth it?" And then you go back to the faith and say, "Do I really believe this? Is it true? Is this true? Is all of this true? If all of it's true, then it's worth whatever cost the Lord calls me to pay."

And speaking of persecution, I don't want to wish persecution upon anyone, but I do know when persecution comes, the church sobers up, and we get a lot more serious about our job, which is to proclaim the gospel. And Matthew 24 says this even more clearly, verse 9, "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."

Jesus says, "Don't be anxious when you are arrested and dragged unexpectedly before authorities. Don't worry about writing a sermon." Introduction, three points, conclusion. He says that the Lord will give you all of that. But this is not an excuse, the context here is clear. The promise is specifically for those who are dragged unexpectedly to courts. Don't worry about the preparation time. But if you have time, you know you got to speak, you know you have time to prepare and pray, that's a completely different situation.

Mark 13:12. "And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved." So, not only will Christians experience persecution from outsiders, kings, rulers, synagogue authorities, Sanhedrin members, but they will also be betrayed by members of their own families. Here, family hatred including that between brothers and parents, etc. It's a sign of the disintegration that comes in the last times. The disintegration of the family is the crescendo of horror.

The fact that there is brother betraying brother, we see that in scripture. We see that Cain and Abel, we see that with Joseph and his brothers. But a father betraying a son or a daughter is much more unnatural. And worst of all is the prospect of a child betraying their parents and having them put to death. This sort of rebellion not only violates the fifth commandment, but reverses Deuteronomy 21, where the mutinous son is to be executed for his presumption. And then the word for brothers also probably relates to fellow Christians. And we do know that in the early church, apostate Christians, wolves in sheep clothing, did betray brothers and sisters, and many were persecuted and put to death.

Jesus says, "But the one endures to the end will be saved." What does "saved" mean? It must mean something more than just being rescued from physical death, because Jesus already promised that many will die for the faith. No, the salvation that's promised here is so much deeper, so much more important than just the salvation of the body. It's the salvation of soul and body.

Revelation 2:10, "Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." Be faithful to the end, then you get the crown of life. Is it my being faithful to the end that gets me the crown of life? Is that's what's happening? No. It's the fact that God saved you, and that God will sustain you. He will persevere you to the end. He will make you stand. Romans 14:4, "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

So, Jesus is saying that disciple must hold fast to the end in order to be saved. But as Paul says, the true Christians will, in fact, hold fast, because God will hold them fast. It seems like a paradox, but it's a paradox that we hold reverently. It's solution, like that of similar theological paradoxes, isn't to be found in some mathematical equation, because we're not dealing with infinity. No, it's to be dealt with theology and truth, because we're dealing with eternity and God. And God used all of this wrath of man to build up the church. As Tertullian said, "The blood of Christians is the seed of the church." And church history testifies that ancient martyrs, they did testify to the Lord, even in the midst of suffering, and gave God glory, and that's partially how the church grew. And this is how the apostle Paul, in the Book of Acts, this is how his ministry went. He preaches, he's persecuted, he goes to another place. He preaches, he's persecuted. He stands before officials, he preaches the Word.

In verse 14, Jesus identifies a mysterious abomination of desolation that signals a new stage of the apocalyptic cycle is beginning. So, there's birth pains, but then He says, "Watch out for the second stage, and it comes with an abomination of desolation." That's verse 14. "When you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be, let the reader understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." And the phrase "abomination of desolation", it's used first in Daniel 9:11-12. And it speaks of a king, a foreign king, going into the temple and establishing an idol. So, someone, something is standing in the place of holiness. And because of this thing, it's so sacrilegious, it's desecrating the holy place, so God's presence leaves and the people of God leave.

But the word for "standing" here makes it seem like this is a person. The word for standing, the participle for standing is masculine in gender, despite its referent, abomination, being neuter. So, it suggests that the desolating abomination is a person rather than an event. Someone is standing defiantly in the holy place, and that person is so evil that he makes the holy place desolate of the presence of God because it's an abomination in the eyes of God. And to understand what He's saying here, we have to remember the context. The context says Jesus just left the temple. And by leaving the temple, Jesus is removing the presence of God from the temple. Why? Because by rejecting Jesus, the temple cast out the presence of God, and yet defiantly continued standing.

The Sanhedrin destroys the Son of God, and then for four decades, continues standing as if they didn't do anything. As if they didn't reject the Messiah. Well, they did reject the Messiah, and because they rejected the Messiah, God rejected that system, the system of Judaism, emphatically, through the destruction of the temple. And that's what Ezekiel was talking about, Ezekiel 8:6. "And He said to me, 'Son of man, do you see what they're doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations.'"

So, practically, what this means to us is be careful. We are to be aware. We are to be aware that in a place of holiness, a place that represents God, there it was the temple, here we have to be aware of the church. And you look at all the churches, you look at all the denominations, the same cycle. They let in this delusion, and they let in this false teaching. And all of a sudden, instead of worshiping Jesus, there's an abomination of desolation that anyone with the Holy Spirit, you walk in and you say, "I can't be a part of this." So, the prototype remains.

In Jesus' warning here about taking flight to the mountains, not turning back, leaving in haste, it reminds us, it's an echo of Lot. Abraham's nephew, Lot, and his family were warned to flee to the hills because judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah had come, and Jesus' injunction not to turn around recalls the way in which Lot's wife did turn around, with disastrous consequences.

Luke 17:28, "'Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all, so will it be on the day when the Son of man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will keep it. I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken, the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken, the other left.' And they said to Him, 'Where, Lord?' And He said to them, 'Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.'"

Jesus here is comparing Jerusalem to what cities? He's comparing Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah. And this inversion has Biblical precedent. Isaiah did the same thing, when he compared the rulers of the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah in Isaiah 1. Revelation does the same thing, Revelation 11:8, "And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified." Jerusalem is equated with Sodom and Gomorrah, that's how sinful they had become, because they had rejected God.

Mark 13:15-16, "Let the one who was in the housetop not go down, nor enter his house to take anything out, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak." And Jesus here is describing an emergency evacuation, such as becomes necessary when an army is advancing swiftly, which happened in June 68 AD. Roman legions were entering Jerusalem and most of Jericho, and the population, in anticipation, left. Verse 17, "And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days." Verse 18, "Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of creation that God created until now, and never will be."

And that phrase, this "tribulation that has never been from the beginning", that's an idiom, same one that's used when, through Moses, God sends curses upon Egypt. That same phrase is used in Exodus 11. "There will be a loud cry throughout the whole land of Egypt, such as has never been and never will be." Revelation 16:18 uses the same language. "And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake."

And then verse 20, Jesus says, "And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom He chose, He shortened the days." He's saying that if the Lord had not restrained judgment, all of humanity would perish. There would be no elect. But the Lord is going to restrain judgment, and that's what salvation is. Instead of giving us what we deserve for all of eternity, instead of sending us on the path that we are set on, the Lord saves us. He pulls us back, regenerates. "No, you're not Satan, Satan's your mind." And if God had not decided to restrain, no one would be saved. If God didn't save anyone, no one would be saved.

Isaiah 1:9-10 is similar to verse 20 of Mark 13. "If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah. Hear the Word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah." And the specter of Sodom's destruction then continues to haunt our passage.

But there is hope. God has left a seed, He's preserved a remnant. And for the sake of the remnant, He will spare humanity from total destruction. And the phrase "for chosen ones are the elect" is the same phrase that St. Paul uses in Romans 9-11, and Colossians, 2 Timothy. "The chosen ones are those that the Lord before the foundation of the world chose to save." And he used the word for "save" here, and it's the same word that's used in the Daniel context in Daniel 12, to talk about the Book of Life. Who's saved? It's those whose names are written in the Book of Life.

Daniel 12:1-3, "At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever."

In verse 19 of Mark 13, "For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of creation that God created until now, and never will be." The affirmation that God created everything seems superfluous. Why does He even include that in a text about God's judgment falling down upon the earth? It's to say that God has not given up on His creation. The creation that God chose to bring into existence through His words, the same creation that will be tempted through tribulation, He will soon recreate. Indeed, He has already begun to do so. He shortened the days, and the curtailment of tribulation is fixed in the divine mind. God knows when the end is, He knows the exact day, and it's as sure for Him as anything else He's said.

So, how do you develop endurance? You don't develop endurance by thinking just about getting to the end. If your only goal in running the Boston Marathon is, "I just got to get to the end." You're going to be one of those people falling apart on Beacon Street. It's not just about getting to the end, it's not about just running to the end, it's about running through the end. It's about powerfully running through the finish line. So the question isn't, "Will I make it to the end?" The question is, "Will I endure through the end?"

Is your name written in the Book of Life? How do you ensure that it is? Repent of your sins, and turn to Jesus Christ, who died on a cross outside the city that rejected Him, a city that was too proud to repent, and therefore it was destroyed, and the Spirit of God left the temple. Repent of sinning against this holy God, a God of judgment. And as real as the wrath was that God poured out on Jerusalem in the year 70, and as real as the wrath of God was when it was poured out on His beloved Son in the year 33 or so AD, four decades prior, it will be poured out on you for eternity, if you reject the forgiveness that Christ offers you today. And once you receive God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and repentance of sin, you are saved. And once saved, always persevering, because the one who endures to the end will be saved, in Jesus' name, amen. Let us pray.

Lord God, we thank you for even the gift, the chance of being saved. We thank you for paying for our salvation on the cross. And I pray if anyone here is not sure about where they stand before you, I pray, give them the gift of repentance, regeneration, reconciliation with you. And Lord, for us as believers, I pray, give us the gift of the Spirit to endure, to think about running through the end, no matter what the pain is, to not focus on the pain, but to focus on the faithfulness, the faithfulness of following you. Today, doing everything we can to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ today, and to live in manner worthy of it. And Lord, continue to use us as a church to bring revival in this city. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you that you, the God of love, the living and loving God, sent your son Jesus Christ to live the life that we were supposed to live, he did it in our stead, and to die the death that we deserve to die for our law breaking. Jesus, we thank you that through your resurrection on that third day, on that first Sunday, the first resurrection day, you triumph over Satan's sin and death. The greatest enemies, our greatest enemies were placed as a foothold under your feet. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the life and the resurrection. You promise that whoever believes in you, though he die, will pass into eternal life. We thank you for the promise of the resurrection, that in the resurrection we will rise with glorified bodies, transformed bodies. We pray, Lord, that you continue to establish us by the power of the Holy Spirit in your will in obedience of faith.

We thank you for the Holy Scriptures, Lord, and as we meditate on how Christ read the Scriptures, how he revered the Scriptures, how he submitted to them, I pray that you make us some people who love the holy Word of God and make us some people that long to be truly devout, sincere in our faith, knowing that your opinion of us is the one that matters most. Lord, make us the people that hate hypocrisy, hate hypocrisy within ourselves, that distance between what we show to the world and what we are inside and make us the people of integrity, integrated within loving you with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of our mind and strength. Lord bless our time, the Holy Word. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom, Kingdom Come. The title of sermon today is Love God and Hate Lies. You've seen the yard sign, "Hate has no home here." Well, then God has no home there because God hates, and that sign hates God. God hates because God is love. Because he is love, there are things that he hates. In Proverbs 6:16-19 it says, "There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are in abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."

Our God is a God of perfect holiness; therefore, he must hate evil to remain in perfect holiness. And our God is a God of infinite love; therefore, he must hate that which destroys the object of his love lest he isn't loving. To love is to hate. To love God is to hate Satan. To love good is to hate evil. Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech I hate." Or Romans 12:9, "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." So to love truth, we must hate lies.

Psalm 119:163 says, "I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law." To love God's word is to hate any perversion of it, any adulteration of it, and to love the Gospel is to hate any false gospel. Galatians 1:8-9, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." Strong words.

A false gospel dishonors the person and the work of Christ, and Christ is the supreme object of God's love, the supreme display of his infinite goodness, and the one who accomplishes God's ultimate purpose to display his glory. In false gospels, they lead people away from Christ and the gospel by which they may be saved and enjoy forgiveness of sin, new life, and eternal happiness with God. God's love for people leads him to a place where he does hate that which leads them astray, which destroys them. And that's sin. God hates sin. In addition to its ugliness and opposition to the beauty of his holiness, sin ruins people. Therefore, loving God who loves people, he hates that which ruins them. True love hates that which hurts the object of God's love. To love sincerity is to hate hypocrisy. That's what we see in our text today, that Jesus hates hypocrisy. To conform to the image of Jesus Christ is to love what he loves and hate what he hates. Jesus loves God's Word; therefore, we are to love God's Word. Jesus loves the bride, the church; therefore, we are to love the church as Jesus did.

Today we're in Mark 12:35-44. Would you look at the text with me? "And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, 'How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?' David himself and the Holy Spirit declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?"' And the great throng heard him gladly. And in his teaching he said, 'Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.'

And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins which make a penny. He called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.'" This is the reading of God's holy and errant and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, love the Scriptures like Jesus; second, hate hypocrisy like Jesus; and third, love sacrificial devotion like Jesus. First, love the Scriptures like Jesus. Having vanquished his opponents in a series of verbal duels against the synagogue, the Sanhedrin, the scribes of the Sanhedrin, we see this in Chapter 11, Chapter 12, he silenced the crowd. He silenced the religious establishment, the religious leaders. We know that through entering Jerusalem to the adulation of the crowds who cried out "Hosanna!" Then by entering the temple courtyard and driving out the merchants and the money changers, Jesus is throwing down the gauntlet. "Sanhedrin religious leaders, what are you going to do with the one who claims that he is the son of David, with the one who claims that the Messiah is here?"

Through his actions, Jesus is messing with the support and the cash flow of the Sanhedrin. So they confront him publicly, and privately they plot to kill him. Jesus overturns their tables, and now he turns the tables against them. After a day of them questioning him, now he questions them with the question of the day. And the question is, "Is Jesus Lord? If Jesus is Lord, Sanhedrin, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to submit to Christ as Lord?" This is Verse 35, "As Jesus taught in the temple, he said, 'How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of God?'" In the Greek where it says, "He taught in the temple," it says, "He answered," meaning, he's answering their silence. He has silenced them. They should have then humbled themselves and said, "Lord, we humble ourselves underneath your authority and the teaching of Scripture," But that's not what they do. So he now answers their proud silence by asking them a question.

Jesus had already entered Jerusalem in triumph. He has been hailed as the vanguard of David's restored dominion. This is the Messiah. He's here. The people have accepted him. Now Jesus is asking, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?" He used the word Christ, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for messiah, the one who is anointed to be king. Jesus had accepted the Messianic praises. He is the son of David. But by asking this question and by starting this conversation, what Jesus is getting at is, is the messiah only the son of David? Because if the messiah is only the son of David, then the messiah is only king of Israel. That's what they thought. That's what Israel thought that the messiah is going to be. Because David was the greatest king Israel ever had, the messiah is David's son; therefore, the messiah is going to be a king just like David, a king of only Israel.

This is where they wrongly assumed that God was the God of only Israel, that God was the God of only their people, only their nation. So Jesus here is expanding the definition of the messiah by asking, "How can the messiah be only David's son?" What the people could not see is that while Jesus came as Israel's Messiah, he didn't come to save Israel from Rome. He didn't come to save them from the occupying forces. He didn't come to restore Israel to their former glory. He came to save them. He came to save them from their sins, but not just them, also people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Their expectations were not too high for the Messiah. They were too low. The scribes of Jesus' day interpreted the messianic prophecies to mean that Israel's messiah would be a biological descendant of David and a great king to return Israel to its greatness.

This makes all the more surprising what happens next. Jesus goes on the offensive, not against pagans, but against Jewish scribes who teach that the messiah is simply the son of David. So Jesus in Verse 36 says, "David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet."'" Here King Jesus quotes Psalm 1:10, which was authored by David, but Jesus doesn't say, "David himself declared." He says, "David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared." Here Jesus is revealing how he viewed Scripture, how he viewed the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, as we call it, that the Holy Spirit is the one that penned the Scriptures through David, through the authors.

Here we see the Holy Trinity. The Spirit is writing through King David, and then it says the Lord, that first Lord in the Hebrew is Yahweh, that's God the Father, and the second Lord is Adonai, which is Lord, which is Jesus Christ. So God the Father says to God the Son, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." We have the Holy Trinity right there in that text.

But how does this inform your understanding of Holy Scripture? Do you view Holy Scripture as Jesus did that it was written by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. 2 Peter 1:16 says, "For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born to him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased,' we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns in the morning, star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

I find J.C. Ryle's comments here extremely relevant. He says the following, "Let us learn in the first place from these verses how much there is about Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures. Our Lord desires to expose the ignorance of the Jewish teachers about the true nature of the Messiah." He does it by referring to a passage in the Book of Psalms and showing that the scribes did not rightly understand it. In so doing, he shows us that one subject about which David was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write was Christ. We know from our Lord's own words in another place that the Old Testament Scriptures testify of Christ, John 5:39, "They were intended to teach men about Christ by types and figures and prophecy until he himself should appear on Earth."

We should always keep this in mind in reading the Old Testament, but never so much as in reading the Psalms. Christ is undoubtedly to be found in every part of the law in the prophets, but nowhere is he so much to be found as in the Book of Psalms. His experience and sufferings as first coming into the world, his future glory and his final triumph as second coming are the chief subjects of many a passage in that wonderful part of God's word. It is a true saying that we should look for Christ quite as much as David in reading the Psalms.

Let us beware of undervaluing or despising the Old Testament. In its place and proportion, the Old Testament is just as valuable as the New. There are probably many rich passages in that part of the Bible which have never yet been fully explored. There are deep things about Jesus in it, which many walk over like hidden gold mines and know not the treasures beneath their feet. Let us reverence all the Bible. All is given by inspiration and all is profitable. One part throws light upon another, and no part can ever be neglected without loss and damage to our souls. A boastful contempt for the Old Testament Scriptures has often proved the first step towards infidelity.

So as Jesus quotes Psalm 110, one thing to note is that the New Testament quotes Psalm 110 more than any other text from the Old Testament. 33 times it quotes Psalm 110. I'll read the whole passage of Psalm 110:1, "The Lord says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.' The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' The Lord is at your right hand; he shall shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he shall shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way; and therefore he will lift up his head." So the same Lord that is referred to in Verse 1 is also referred to in Verse 4. There we read, "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."

So we see here that not only is the Lord on the throne, not only is the Lord the King, but he's also the priest. He's not a priest according to the order of Levi. He's a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. So whoever this Messiah is, yes, he's the son of David, but he's so much greater. His dignity is so much more profound because he is eternal. He's an eternal priest, an eternal king. "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." The messiah was thought to be a biological ancestor of David. Yet, David here is saying, "No, the Messiah is greater than I am, much more exalted than I am." Possesses a far greater dignity than David's own. In fact, David calls the Messiah, "My Lord," and Jesus' question is here, "How is the son of David called Lord by David?"

That's the question of Verse 37. "David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son? And the great throng heard him gladly." The logic seems to be that no father calls a child or calls a son Lord. Therefore, if David calls the Messiah Lord, is it appropriate to call the Messiah just the son of David? How can the Messiah fulfill these prophecies about an eternal Messiah if he is simply David's son? This is what Jesus here is questioning. He's not denying his physical descent from King David. No. Jesus is from the tribe of Judah. He is the Lion of Judah.

What he's saying is, "I need to expand your definition of the messiah." He's not just the son of David. He's not just the messiah for Israel. He's also the Son of God. That's why David calls his son Lord. By asking this provocative question, Jesus is letting the people know he's the Lord. He's the Lord that David referred to. Yes, he's the son of David. He's also the Son of God. If he is David's Lord, then his messianic mission cannot be limited simply to restoring the nation of Israel to its former greatness.

Jesus' kingdom is not of this world; therefore, his kingdom is for the whole world. Jesus isn't just king of the Jews. He's not just king of Israel. He's not just king of Christians. He is king over everything. The question is, are we going to submit to him here and now and say, "Lord Jesus, I'm yours. I want to serve you. I love you. What would you have me do?" or do we wait until all of the enemies of Jesus Christ will be placed under his feet, including those who reject the gospel in this life?

The irony is that David's Lord and descendant is standing in the very same temple which was designed to point Israel to Jesus Christ, and they don't recognize him. Although the people were amazed at his words, they definitely didn't fully understand what Jesus is saying. If they had, in a few days they would not have cried out, "Crucify him!" They heard him greatly. They received him gladly. Romans 1:3-4 makes this clear that Jesus is both the son of David and the Son of God. "...concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of in by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord."

In the next passage, Jesus will impugn the characters of the scribes in the Sanhedrin, accusing them bluntly of oppressing and of their hypocrisy. Meaning, they mouth the words, "Yes, Lord. Yes, you're Yahweh. Yes, you're Adonai," but deep inside they had no love for the Lord, and therefore, they were hypocrites. Jesus shows us how much he hates hypocrisy. In point two: hate hypocrisy like Jesus. Psalm 97:10, "O you who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked." One of the greatest forms of evil is hypocrisy because hypocrisy is evil masquerading as good. It's lies masquerading as truth. It's wolves in sheep clothing. How odious is the sin of hypocrisy in the sight of Jesus, so he says in Verse 38, "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts."

This is the irony of ironies that those who claim to love God the most, who claim to love the law of God the most, who view themselves as the guardian and defenders of the faith didn't know God. They didn't want the blessings of God as much as they wanted the trappings that came with religious service. They claimed to be zealots for God, but they devoted themselves entirely to presenting themselves as righteous, presenting themselves as holy. These men may strive to please God in some sense, but they love the perks of holiness. They love walking around in their flowing robes, receiving the greetings of the people, taking the seats of honor, talking as if they know the Lord when they don't.

Then Jesus exposes that they're actually using this front, this façade, this posturing as a means to evil gain. When Jesus says, "Beware of the scribes," he's not just saying, "Okay, beware of those religious people out there." He's saying, "Beware of the same hypocrisy in their heart, beware of that same hypocrisy in your own." Hypocrisy is so dangerous because it's lies that people begin to believe themselves. It's self-delusion. If you think you're right with God, if you think you're righteous, if you think you're a good person, you start to begin believing that, and you want to be around people who think you're righteous. This is exactly what these people were doing. In an honor-conscious, Greco-Roman society, these distinctions about the robes and the seats and the positions of honor and the greetings, there were important signs of status. What Jesus is saying that that's what was most important to them than the delight of God the Father.

Then Mark 12:40, "... who devour widows' houses and for pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." They were devourers of the good of the poor saying they did so on the grounds of justice, but in reality they were destroying those on the fringes. Here Jesus rips off the scribes' mask of respectability to reveal the brutal, even demonic reality underneath. We see this in the words, "They love to be at feasts," where there was civilized dining, and then when no one's looking, they're devouring the houses of the widows. The same word for devour was used only one other time in Mark, in Mark 4:4 where Satan comes like the bird to eat the Word of God, the seed of the Word of God. These very pillars of society, men distinguished as such by dress and universal acclaim, they're revealed to be demonic abusers of the helpless, and then they use prayer as a means of veiling their assaults.

To add insult to injury, in the book of Deuteronomy, the Levites were included along with the widows, the orphan, and the resident aliens as people who require societal support. So the Levites, they didn't own land, and because they didn't have land ownership, they relied on the people and the gifts of the people for their sustenance. But instead of relating to the widow and the orphan and the resident alien, they betrayed a sacred trust. They violated it and defrauded them. This is particularly heinous in the eyes of the Lord because God loves the widow, and he loves the orphan, and he loves the resident alien.

The widow's house was often the sum total of her inheritance. That's all she had. What these scribes did was they would go to the widow and they'd say, "Well, have you paid your tithes to the temple? Oh, we see you have not." Then through their legalese, they would take the house away from the widow, and they would say, "We're giving it to the Lord." How does the Lord view this? He said they're going to receive great condemnation. They're going to receive God's justice. If you do not repent of your sin, justice will come down upon you for this law-breaking, for this heinous crime. The Old Testament often threatens with judgment those who oppress widows, orphans, and other helpless persons.

The Lord hates defrauding. He hates robbing. If you've ever been robbed, if you've ever been defrauded, you know that feeling of violation. I was actually surprised by this. A neighbor ran up to me a little while back. He said, "Have you seen my daughter's bicycle?" They had parked it in the back of the condominium association, and then someone came and just took the bicycle. This is a very established, even-keeled gentleman. I will never forget the look of disgust as if he was violated. It's just a bicycle. Well, people defraud all the time, that we live in an evil world. The Lord sees and the Lord will bring justice. We as believers, we are to be thankful to the Lord for that, that the Lord hates evil and he will judge it. The question we got to ask, is there evil in my life, in my heart that the Lord hates, that the Lord wants to condemn? If so, I need to repent.

That's how you battle hypocrisy. You battle hypocrisy by saying, "Lord, yes, I present myself as a follower of Christ, but when I get on my knees, I know my sin, I know my evil and you know it as well. Lord, forgive me. Lord give me grace and help me put this evil to death." These were people that used evil as... They used the excuse that good will come or we'll take the houses. We're going to build up the temple. Saint Paul writes in Romans 3:8, "Why not do evil that good may come? As some people slanderously charged us with saying, 'Their condemnation is just.'"

Isaiah 10 makes this practice of the scribes as they oppress the widows clear. Isaiah 10:1, "Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help and where will you leave your wealth? Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still."

The oppressors are said to defraud their victims with evil writs or iniquitous decrees or documents, documents that would come from a scribe. They would seize the property because they said, "Look, according to our documents, you haven't paid the tithes, so we're taking it." Jesus Christ, he hates this hypocrisy, he hates this injustice, he hates this evil, and above all else, he hates the fact that these people presented themselves as righteous and they're using their pseudo-righteousness as a cover for evil.

The Lord reserved his strongest language, his strongest and heaviest denunciations against hypocrisy. Yes, it's bad enough to be led away and captive to open sin and to serve diverse lusts and pleasures, but it's even worse to pretend like you're having a living faith, but in reality, you serve the world. So we as believers, we have to be aware, "Beware," Jesus says, "of falling into this abominable sin, beware of ever putting on a cloak of hypocrisy." Let us be real, honest, thorough, and sincere in our following of Christ. We can trick people for a little while, but we will never trick God. God is not mocked. He's the discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart and his all-seeing eye pierces through the varnish, the tinsel which cover the unsound heart.

Having predicted judgment of the scribes who devour widows' houses, Jesus now turns his gaze to an impoverished widow. He's sitting there watching as she gives, and he commends her for her generosity. The two passages are meant to be taken together. They're an illustration of the age-old motif of the two ways. There's two ways. You can either pretend to be a follower of the Lord but deep down inside it's just corruption and sin, or the path is offered to be like this widow where she is serving the Lord. No one sees, she thinks. It's all hidden, and her poverty is matched by her generosity. So we are to be careful to, yes, believe the right things but also live our lives in a way that our lives adorn the doctrine of Christ.

This brings us to the third point: love sacrificial devotion like Jesus, Verse 41, "He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums." It says he sat down, and the sitting could be significant, especially after Jesus just claimed to be the Lord sitting at the right hand of Yahweh, and he sits opposite the treasury. Most exegesis say this treasury is part of the Woman's Court that had 13 brass receptacles shaped like trumpets. You would come up to the brass receptacle that's shaped like a trumpet, and you'll put your coins in. There was no paper currency at the time. So when people threw the coins in, the more coins, the bigger the coins, the heavier the coins, the more noise they made.

When this poor widow brings her money, there's not much noise. Verse 42, "A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny." This is the least valuable of the Roman coins, the smallest coin in circulation. She's giving all she has, but it's not much. Jesus is there. He's watching and he's sitting. Verse 43, "He called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.'" All those contributing, Jesus is using that phrase collectively, that this one widow gave more, according to Jesus, than everyone else combined.

Why? Because of Verse 44, "They all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." All she had to live on, that phrase is even her whole living. The word bios is used. It literally means life. She's given all she has. She's given her life, everything she had for her life. The crucial thing we learned is not the quantity that gives, but the scarcity from which one gives, what's subsequently left over. It's more commendable to give out of poverty than out of abundance, according to the Lord.

I do want to point out that the Lord notices. The most sacrifices that we make for the Lord, no one sees, but the Lord does see, and the Lord does notice, and the Lord does keep track. The depth of the widow's sacrifice is emphasized by the repetition at the end. "She gives everything she has." When the rich young ruler came to Jesus Christ and said, "How can I obtain eternal life? How can I inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "Go sell all that you have, all that you have." Here she gives all that she has.

One thing to point out is, on the one hand, Jesus excoriates the Sanhedrin and the temple and the institution in this corruption. On the other hand, he points to this precious soul within the institution that doesn't know about all of the corruption. She's giving out of her love for the Lord. We see this example all throughout the Scriptures. In the Book of Luke, we see Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, all who go to the temple to pray as expressions of their piety. But then also in the Book of Acts, we see Stephen get up and preach a sermon in which he excoriates the temple and predicts its destruction by God.

So it is possible to recognize the corruption of an institution, the venality of its officers, at the same time to admire the piety of the simple souls who devote themselves to an innocent faith. Jesus' point is that what sinful men and women regard as piety like the scribes did, well, Jesus doesn't really care about that. The scribes had their robes and they had their seats and they had their greetings. They thought they gave a lot to the Lord. But the Lord is saying he cares more about the precious state of the heart of this woman. When the kingdom of God comes in power, God reverses everything sinful. Yet, religious people think about what God expects.

This week I celebrated my birthday. Someone asked me, "What'd you do?" I said, "I did my favorite thing. I did nothing." That's my favorite thing. I went for a walk. Then we had Raising Cane's with my girls in the evening. It was a very nice. Raising Cane's shout out with the secret sauce. Then my daughters gave me a little gifts, little note cards. My youngest daughter gives me this card that she drew. It's beautiful. "Dad, you're the best dad ever," thank you, thank you, and a big picture, beautiful, we're holding hands.

Then I open it up. There's a dollar bill inside. I was like, "No way!" I was like, "A dollar bill?" I'm looking at it, I was like, "It's a dollar bill. Baby, do you know inflation? Come on. It's not worth anything. You can't buy a thing." Maybe that's why she gave it to me. "Dad, I know inflation." No, she's in the first grade. She doesn't know about that. It's all she had. This is like her greatest treasure. "I'm six. What can I get my dad? I'm going to make him a card, and I'm going to give him my net worth. Here you go, a dollar." I'm never going to spend that dollar. I've got it on my mantle. I'm never going to spend it. It's so precious to me.

That's what the Lord is saying. God looks at the heart. God notices not how much, but from how much. God does not look at the size of the gift but the dimensions of the sacrifice behind it. God looks at the heart of the giver. The depth of the widow's sacrifice is emphasized by the repetition at the end. "She gives everything she has, even her whole living all of her life." The widow is a fitting conclusion to the Lord's public ministry and is called to discipleship. Jesus said, "This is what it means to follow me. You take up your cross, deny yourself daily, and follow me." Here she is, a true disciple because she's lost her life for his sake, as Jesus says all true disciples will do.

He, like her, will also give everything he has for the temple, but not the second temple, but the third temple. With his sacrifice on the cross, he's redeeming for himself a new people. Through those people, he creates a temple of the Spirit of God and a sanctuary not made by hands. This combination of self-sacrifice and eschatological construction will confound human ways of knowing. Jesus raises this contrast not to encourage us to give all that we have away, but rather to make the point that true piety, true faithfulness, true following of the Lord will often go unnoticed. True devotion will often go unnoticed because it's unassuming, because it's private.

True piety is not a matter of mere external conformity to the law. Rather, true piety results from that faith to trust God to provide no matter what because he is a good God. But as Jesus insists, true righteousness isn't a matter of just outward demonstration. It's all about the heart. Then ultimately, we don't... Even with this widow, even this widow needed a righteousness that is not her own. She needed someone to die for her sins, to ransom her from the condemnation that we deserve. That's exactly what Jesus will do on the cross.

So who is the Lord? Well, he is David's son, and he is also David's Lord. In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ here is saying that he is the Lord that demands that we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. In the previous text, the scribe says, "What's the greatest commandment?" and Jesus says, "Here O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." In our text, Jesus says, "I'm the Lord. Yahweh says to me, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'"

So what Jesus here is saying is that he is the ultimate object of worship. The fact that Jesus of Nazareth was and is Almighty God is the single fact that unlocks the secret of your existence and the secret of the existence of every human being. It is the single reason why we as Christians have every right, not just right, every duty, obligation, we have every right and duty to say that every human being must become a Christian, every human being must become a follower of Christ. It's for this reason that Jesus, the first century man, has no rivals. He has no successors. His life is unique and it is final.

If you make the crucial discovery that Jesus is God, you can't avoid the conclusion that all of the other religions are not true. That Islam, which regards Jesus just as a prophet, but not even the ultimate prophet, that Islam and, for that matter, Judaism or Buddhism or any other human religion or philosophy is wrong at the very key point. They may be right about many things, but they're wrong about the most essential point. It is the fact that Jesus Christ is God that makes the Christian faith true and all the other religions and philosophies false at the bottom.

In this text, we have two mysteries for the price of one. We have the plurality of the persons within the unity of the Godhead. We have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we have the union of the Godhead and the manhood in the person of Jesus. He is the son of David; therefore, he is fully man. He is the Son of God; therefore, he is God himself. But mysterious as all this may be, the logic is clear and the logic is irresistible. If Jesus is God and died for the sins of the elect and obviously that and only that is the way of salvation, Jesus is the only way that we can be reconciled with God.

For someone who has embraced Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the fact that he is both God and man makes him unquestionably deserving of our absolute and unquestioning loyalty. There's only two ways. Either you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind in this age, either you love Jesus Christ; or you are his enemy and you will be placed under his feet for all eternity. If you're not sure, today we urge you, we plead with you, turn to Jesus Christ in your heart of hearts in prayer and say, "Lord Jesus, forgive me for my sins. You are Lord. I am not. I have sinned. And Lord Jesus, forgive me. Give me grace and make me a person that is fully devoted to you no matter the sacrifice."

1 Corinthians 12:3, "Therefore, I want you to understand that no one's speaking in the spirit of God ever says 'Jesus is accursed!' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit." Then the concluding words of 1 Corinthians 16:22, "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen."

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this text and we thank you that you are a God who loves us; therefore, you hate sin. On the cross, Lord, we see both your love for us in that you sent your Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin. We also see your hatred of sin as you pour out your wrath on your Son as he bore our sins, the penalty for our sins. Lord Jesus, we pray that you continue to make us the people that love you, love your word, love the truth, and hate lies. Make us the people who long to be sincere in our walk with you. Make us the people who hate hypocrisy, beginning with the hypocrisy that's so close to our hearts. The Holy Spirit, continue to build us up as your church, the church of Jesus Christ. Continue to draw the elect and continue to use us powerfully as a witness here in the city. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for the privilege and the blessing it is to gather. As Your people, we don't take this for granted. What a blessing it is to gather and experience Your presence and give You Your due glory. We worship You, Father, and we thank You that the only way that we were allowed back into the Father's house, into the Father's presence was because of the sacrifice of the Son.

And Jesus, we thank You that You came and You lived a perfect life obedient to the Father, to the very last drop on the cross. And we thank You that You did that to provide a way, to provide a gateway into the Father's house. And we thank You that when we repent of sin, You do forgive us of our rebellion, of our hostility toward You, and we do acknowledge that that's real. In many ways, often we live as if You don't exist or as if You're not God over certain parts of our life where we just block that section out and live in indifference toward You and Your will. So we ask for forgiveness for that.

We pray from the holy Scriptures today that You teach us, that You, Holy Spirit, minister to us in a way that only You can. And I pray, do point out those places of rebellion in our hearts and in our lives and give us the grace to submit ourselves holistically to You. Lord, bless our time with the holy Scriptures, and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark, and the title of the sermon today is The Insanity of Killing God.

A few years back, I remember reading about a famous child actor who upon growing up claimed that he had divorced his parents. He claimed to have divorced himself from his parents. He said the words and perhaps he even filed some of the official legal documents, but of course he could not divorce himself from the reality of the origin of life.

As we meditate on Holy Week, the most important week in all of human history, we're given a front row to what happened to God when He became one of us. A few years ago, there was a famous song and there's a line that went, "What if God were one of us?" Well, He was and we killed him. And just imagine the insanity of doing this to really think that you can get rid of God. And you might not live in just complete outright vocal rebellion toward God, but you might live as if God is dead to you. Meaning the idea of God is so distant from your life, He might as well be dead to you. And aren't you doing the same thing as the Jews and the Romans? Aren't you attempting to kill God?

But you can't kill God. He's eternal, of course. Jesus, when they tried to keep Him down, they couldn't. He came back from the dead. And that shouldn't be surprising knowing who Christ was. We should have all seen that one coming. What is surprising is that anybody would want to kill God. Why would you try to liquidate the one who gave you life? You literally bear His image. His image is printed upon you. You're His. You belong to Him.

Why do we have this hostility in our hearts? Because we don't want to give up authority to govern our lives as we please. The stubborn grip on the throne of our lives leads to our self-destruction. Because you can't kill God, you can't get rid of the stubborn fact that God is, He always will be. And it would be wise of us to make peace with God while we still have a chance, while we're still alive, to accept His fatherly authority, to accept His love, to accept his provision and His protection, and to give Him His due, which is obedience of faith from the heart, to glorify Him, honor and worship Him.

And if you meditate upon it, it is absolutely insane to rebel against God because you won't win. He always wins. He's God. And rebelling against God will always lead to self-destruction, but still there's a desire to rebel. Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's greatest writers who knew all about self-destruction intimately, he coined the phenomenon of willful self-destruction as, quote, perverseness.

In one of his works, the Imp of the Perverse, Poe contends that just knowing something is wrong is the one unconquerable force that makes us do it. We all have an overwhelming tendency to do wrong for wrong's sake. We're all tempted by the forbidden fruit. And often, it's not the fruit itself that irresistibly draws us but the fact that it's forbidden. Don't do this is sometimes the only reason why we're tempted to do it. The forbidden is a powerful magnet pulling on our sinful hearts because deep inside, if we're honest, we absolutely despise someone telling us what to do, even if it is God, especially if it is God. And in our text today, Jesus reveals this innate suicidal enmity toward God and He graciously offers to save us, and He does it by allowing his own destruction, His own self-destruction, so to speak, to save us from our self-destruction. And thereby, He provides the means to replace, to plant that enmity toward God with love and obedience. Today, we're in Mark 12:1-17. Would you look at the text with me?

"And He began to speak to them in parables. 'A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." But those tenants said to one another, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours." And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.' What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Have you not read this Scripture? "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."' And they were seeking to arrest Him but feared the people for they perceived that He had told the parable against them. So they left Him and went away. And they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap Him in his talk. And they came and said to Him, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not?' But knowing their hypocrisy, He said to them, 'Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.' And they brought one and He said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said to Him, 'Caesar's.' Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. First, our three points to frame over our time. First, suicidal enmity toward the Father. Second, suicidal enmity toward the messengers. And third, suicidal enmity toward the Son.

First, suicidal enmity toward the Father. After Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Passover week, Holy Week, and He entered by receiving the worship from the people, they cried out, "Hosanna, God save us." He received their acclamations and did not reject them. And by doing so, He's throwing down the gauntlet. The time has come for Him to do a face-off with the spiritual authorities of the day. And after deflecting the religious leader's hostile challenge to His authority in the previous text, Jesus tells a parable here, and it's a powerful parable. And a lot of people think parables are just stories. They're not. Parables are used as verbal weapons. And here, Jesus Christ is leveling a wrecking ball of a parable. And what are they weapons against? Against the people, not the people themselves, but the ideas that they are promulgating, the ideas that they represent.

And what are the ideas that Jesus is wrecking here with His words? They're ideas of authority. He's demolishing their man-made authority structures which put them higher than God. And this, friends, of course is very highly relevant because this is every single person's problem. We put human authority above God's authority, and no one is higher than God and no one is higher in authority than God the Father. Read Matthew 23 this week as you prepare for Good Friday. Matthew 23 is the sermon that got Jesus crucified. He was murdered because of His words. That's how powerful of a wrecking ball they were. Jesus' sermon, Matthew 23, destroys all of the authority structures of Israel of that day. And in Matthew 23:8-9, Jesus says this, "But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth for you have one Father who is in heaven."

Now, anyone listening at that time was incredibly offended by these words. In one sentence, Jesus dismantles the Jewish system of authority showing them no, a rabbi is not higher than God himself. God's word and not human tradition is preeminent in authority. And then He says don't call anyone father in one fell swoop. He is dismantling the system of authority in the Catholic Church that has a man at the very top of the system of authority. Jesus says don't call anyone father. And I've always found it confusing that Catholics call priests father but don't let them ever become a father. That's all confusing and Jesus knocks all that down.How did Jesus teach us to pray to the Father? Our Father. Jesus didn't pray to Jesus. Jesus prayed to the Father. And this is important that when you do pray, pray to God the Father because it reminds us who's in charge. It reminds us who has ultimate authority over us. He created us, He cultivates us, He protects us, and He owns us.

Mark 12:1, "Jesus began to speak to them in parables. 'A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country.'" We're not told how the man got the capital that was needed to buy the land and buy the equipment, the infrastructure, et cetera. Most likely this is a man that had to work for years, maybe a decade plus, to accumulate the capital, and he takes on risk and he works really hard and he does this in order to reap a harvest from his work.

And the main purpose of verse 1 isn't just to elaborate details of the allegory, et cetera. The details here are to show that this is all done in love. This is a man who worked hard with the land, with his hands, with what the Lord has given him to create something beautiful. And what's the fence for? The fence is to protect what this man has lovingly created. He of course here represents God the Father. Later on in the text, we know that he sends a son. Therefore, he is a father. The man represents God the Father, and the Father is a creator, he's a cultivator, and he's a protector. The fence was there to protect from external threats, but it turned out that the threats were internal.

And this is a good reminder of every father's job. If you've been given the blessing of being a father, your job is to create, to cultivate, and to protect. Protect the child from threats, external and internal. We are to teach our children about sin within and we are to protect. We are teach them about the sinful flesh that is hostile toward God, and we are to teach them that there are consequences for sin. Yes, God does give grace, He does forgive, but we want to prevent you from the consequences of sin. And we are to teach them about grace and teach them how to flee sin and pursue righteousness because living righteously delights God the Father's heart. And when God is delighted, He delights to bless.

The imagery and the details used in this text are taken from Isaiah 5 where the vineyard stands for Israel and the man for God. An ancient Jewish and Christian texts interpret the tower and the wine vat in Isaiah 5 as the temple and its altar and defense may stand for the walls of Jerusalem. Would you look at Isaiah 5:1-7 with me? "Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked forward it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, oh, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked forward to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you what I will do in my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed for righteousness, but behold, an outcry."

So God is saying He's entrusted His people, the people of Israel, with His law, with His prophets, with His temple, with His priests and with land. And the expectation was that they would bear fruit for the Lord. The religious leaders were expected to govern Israel by God's Word, and the people were to be self-governed by God's Word. That didn't happen. So this man that planted this vineyard built the walls around it. He leases it out to tenants. They draft a lease with clear expectations, a clear payment for the rent, for leasing the land, and then the man went into another country.

The application for all of us, the broader application is very clear. What this parable is telling us is that we are not our own. That we are not owners. That we do not own our lives. No, our time is leased to us. Our health is leased to us. Our bodies are leased to us from God the Father. You are a tenant, not an owner. And verse 2, "When the season came, he," the father, "sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard." So at the proper time, at time of harvest, he goes. And his graciousness, his generosity is evident in the text in that he doesn't demand most of the crop. He doesn't even demand half of the crop. No, he just wants some, some of the fruit of the vineyard. In biblical narrative, fruit is often a term to designate a life that's lived in obedience to God, a life in which people use the talents, the opportunities, the gifts that God has given us, our very lives for the Lord. And then the Lord loves to bless the fruitful life with more fruit.

And here, what we see, one of the things that we notice here is there is a clear relationship between the tenants and the owner. It's a hierarchical relationship. It's a vertical relationship. A lot of people when they think about Christianity and they say, "No, Christianity is not a religion. It's a relationship." And I say, "Yes, it is a relationship. We are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself." And to love the Lord, and that's the summary of the commandments, we keep His commandments. That's what Jesus said. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And so we are not to forget that our relationship with the Lord is not horizontal and He is in charge, He is God, He is in authority. The relationship is offered to us by the grace of Jesus Christ. And the only way you enter into relationship with God the Father is on your knees, in humble repentance, forever defying His authority.

And do the tenants pay their rent? No, of course not. Verse 3, "And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed." What are the tenants doing here? They start acting like owners. Why should we pay you? We did all the work." And they forget that they were gifted, so to speak, that all this work that was done prior. In a sense, they disown the owner. It's almost as if the owner doesn't exist. And this is happening nowadays with squatter's rights, et cetera. That's exactly what they do. The tenants decide that they're the owners and they're exercising so-called squatter's rights.

How does this appear in our lives, in our world? Well, it's when people start looking at reality and think, "I'm going to decide how reality is. I get to decide what truth is. I'm going to live my truth. I am in authority of the definition. These are the values that I've chosen for myself, the reality that I've created. It's my body, therefore my sexuality, therefore my moral code. I decide. I'm a master of my own fate, the captain of my own soul." And here, what Jesus is doing is exposing the sinfulness in our rebellious hearts, this desire to claim ownership. But to claim ownership of yourself, to live as if you are your own, you're usurping the owner.

And why do they act like this? Why do we act like this? Because we are born in a flesh that is hostile to God. Romans 8:7, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot." So the hostility has to do with the law. When we see God's law, we see God's demands upon us and we're hostile that God, You would demand these things. The owner just wanted a portion. He wanted some of the fruit of the harvest.

And how does that apply to us? Well, the Lord wants all of us. He wants our whole life. But you know that you are living in ordered worship to the Lord. You are living underneath the authority of the Lord when you do govern yourself by the Ten Commandments. And you realize that the commandments are the way of life. This is the path of freedom.

And one of them, the first commandments says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That's the very first one. The fourth commandment says, "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath day holy." And there God makes a very specific, very clear demand. "One-seventh of your time, one day a week is mine." And by the way, this is how you grow. This is one of the greatest means of grace where you just commit and say, "Lord, I'm going to give you Sunday. Lord, I'm going to go to church on Sunday. Lord, I'm going to devote myself to the scriptures in prayer on Sunday." The Lord also tells us in the commandment, "Thou shall not steal." And God Himself, in Malachi 2, points to the commandment and he says, "You're stealing from me by not bringing the tithes to me." And there, we get very specific that God does want 10% of our earned income that we give to Him, give to His kingdom, or give to His church.

Well, once you start getting very precise that this is what the commands demand of us, well, this is where people begin to experience the hostility within our hearts. For most of us, unbelief in God or lack of belief, it's not a head issue. It's not that there's not enough evidence. No, it's a will issue. Do we want to do the will of God? And there's hostility there. Intellectual skepticism for Christianity is often nothing more than a flimsy veneer covering deep-seated hostility.

Aldous Huxley, the philosopher who coined the term agnostic and author of Brave New World, he said this, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. For myself has, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality of Christianity because it interfered with our sexual freedom. There was one admirably, simple method of justifying ourselves, agnosticism." Thomas Nagel in The Last Word writes, "I want atheism to be true. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that."

These tenants know that they are tenants and they hate it. They want to work for their own profit. They want to be the owners. And in many ways, we would rather like them live with this illusion of independence or self-sufficiency. But the day of reckoning is coming and the owner was sending messengers to try to get the tenants to come to their senses. And this is point 2, a suicidal enmity toward the messengers.

In verse 4 of Mark 12 says, "Again, he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully." Sometimes when I preach a sermon, someone comes up to me and say, "Pastor, that was a great sermon, good sermon." And I always say the same thing. I say, "Praise be to God. And also, I'm just the messenger. Just the messenger. I'm like the mail man. I'm like UPS guy. I like that I'm bringing you packages." I like the UPS guy because he can park anywhere he wants, sidewalks, et cetera. But I say that tongue-in-cheek because I'm always thinking about this parable. "Oh, you like that? Keep coming back." We're going to continue preaching the text. And there will be messages in which you realize that, "I don't like that message. It doesn't make me feel good. It offends my sensibilities." So when you hear a sermon like that, for me, I'm just a messenger. I'm just the UPS guy. Don't kill me.

If you try, there's many a lesson here, if you are called to proclaim the Word of God and to do it very publicly, do it out front, if you are called as a man of God to proclaim the Word of God, become a pastor, I just want you to know you will get opposition and the opposition is going to be hostile. And as the world becomes more and more in hostility toward the Lord, just know there will be a cost for bringing the clear message. They struck him in the head. They wounded this gentleman. And here, this series of messengers are echoes of the prophets that the Lord sent to his people and they suffered ill-treatment from their fellow Israelites. And Jesus also taught in the Sermon of the Mount. He said, "Blessed are you when others persecute you and revile you for my name's sake. Great is your reward in heaven."

Mark 12:5, "And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed." The immediate application is that God sent prophets to the religious leaders to tell them, "Hey, stop acting like owners. Tend God's vineyard with God's Word for His prophet." And you see the incredible grace of this owner. He could have just called the authorities on these people. They could have been thrown out. No, he sends a messenger. He sends another messenger. He sends another messenger. Just incredible patience on this man's part.

And this is what God had been doing all throughout salvific history of holy Scripture. He promised, "I will not leave myself without a witness." So He kept sending them. Jeremiah sent to the people, was beaten on multiple occasions, thrown into a pit, and finally stoned to death. Elijah, Amos, both of them were banished and forced to hide in caves. Ezekiel was murdered after a sermon. Habakkuk was stoned. Zechariah got chased into the temple and stoned near the altar. Uriah who prophesied around the same time as Jeremiah, he tried to escape into exile but the king tracked him down, brought him back to Israel, and ran him through with a sword. The prophet Micah was punched in the face by false prophets. Isaiah was put into a log and cut in half. And that's not even to mention what happened to the apostles.

The religious people of the day, as they're hearing the sermon, they thought they looked at their past and the past of Israel's relation to the prophets and they thought it was something that they had grown past, that they were too righteous, that they were too morally upright to do something like this. And the irony, of course, was that they're about to do something much worse than their fathers had done in that they're going to kill the Son of God.

There's an important lesson here for us. When you hear about the sins of people before us or sins of people today, it's so easy to look on people with disdain as if we've somehow progressed past sin. We have not. We do all each. We have a fallen heart. So when we see someone who sins, we shouldn't say, "What's wrong with them?" We should say, "What's wrong with the human heart? What's wrong with my heart? There go I, but for the grace of God." And it is grace that God sends messengers into our lives, and what do they tell us? They remind us that there is a God who is over us. He's the owner, we're the tenants. And if we've been living as owners, we are to repent because a day of reckoning, a day of judgment is coming.

There will be times, dear Christian, that you won't like the message, the message of Scripture. You won't like when a brother or sister, they bring the message to you. And by the way, this is why it's so important to be part of a church, be plugged into a church, be part of a community group where you're walking with brothers and sisters, where you've covenanted together. So that when there does come a moment where you need someone to call you out, your brother and sister are there and they say, "You've given me permission to do this by joining the church. I need to bring this message to you." At those moments, do not reject the messenger. At those moments, receive the message humbly and bring it to the Lord and say, "Lord, is there truth to this?"

If you don't like the message, don't just leave. It is tempting in those moments when someone calls out your sin to just bounce, to go find a church who don't really talk about sin, where they tickle your ears, where they give you a palatable message, where you just feel good about yourself all the time. No, no. You need a church that calls you out. You need a church to remind you of how much of a wicked sinner you are so that the cross of Jesus Christ is so much more meaningful. Lord Jesus, You save me from the sin. We need this reminder that we are not the owners and that God is a God who makes demands of us. There's many a church today that preaches a message about a God that demands nothing, a God that does nothing, one whom we can control with a modest investment of time and money. In those churches, those people aren't really seeking the true God of the universe.

Romans 3:10 says, "None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God." Now, CS Lewis in his work called he Miracles, he has this tremendous low quote. "An impersonal God, well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth, and goodness inside our own heads better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap, best of all. But God himself alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband, that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hushed suddenly. Was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion, man's search for God, suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found him? We never meant it to come to that. Worse still, supposing he had found us?"

God sends us messengers. Sometimes it's through preachers or pastors. Sometimes it's through brothers and sisters. Sometimes it's through providential life circumstances that they shatter the illusion that you're in control. Sometimes it's just looking in the mirror and you're like, "Oh, what happened?" We're aging. That's what happened. The fragility of life where you get that phone call where a beloved has cancer, a beloved is in the hospital, all of a sudden your worldview just shatters. And those are all gracious reminders that we are living on borrowed time. Sometimes it's unfulfilled longings where you work for years, you work for a goal to become something, to become a person, to achieve something, and then you get it and then all you feel is emptiness inside because you realize, "I worked so hard for so long for something that doesn't satisfy."

Lewis writes elsewhere. "If I find myself desires which nothing in this world will satisfy, the only explanation is that I was created for another world." God shows His grace toward us in this story in repeated ways. He sends messengers, messengers to remind them, "Hey, you want to be in a right relationship with the owner. It's for your good. You're going to flourish." And also, this is a good owner. He gives him a vineyard. I don't know if anyone's ever done a vineyard tour in California, Napa Valley. I've never done it. I've driven by. I've looked over covetously. No, I've repented. But this is majestic. This is the reason why lots of these great movies, the end with a vineyard, it's almost like heaven. It smells nice. There's grapes. There's wine, and praise be to God.

But this shows the graciousness of the owner. What a great God we have. He's not just a lawgiver. He could have just created a prison, thrown them inside and said, "You're going to do what I say." That's not what he does. In love, He says, "Okay, here's everything that I have created, I've cultivated, I've protected. I'm entrusting it to you. Keep growing it. And all I ask for is a portion in return." If God were merely a lawgiver, I could in a sense understand people against Him. But He's not just a lawgiver. He's the giver of every good and perfect gift, including His law. He is the source and fount of every blessing and yet people spurn Him.

The tenants don't listen to the messengers so the owner sends his son, and this is point 3, suicidal enmity toward the Son. Verse 6, "He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." The phrase "beloved son" echoes a story of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac. God came to him and said, "Take your son, your only son, your long-awaited son, your beloved son, and sacrifice him." Finally, He sent him to them last of all eschaton in the Greek. It's a technical term for the end of days. "Perhaps they'll respect my son." In verse 7, "But those tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.'" "This is the heir, come."

And readers, if you're reading this for the first time, you would imagine that okay, tenants, they finally come to their senses when they recognize the son as the father's surrogate. And perhaps if they sat down and reason things out, they would say, "Come on, let's get out of here. What are we doing? The judgment of the owner is coming down upon us." But instead of adopting the prudent course of respecting the son, they adopt the insane one of murdering him. And it's absolutely insane because there is no court that would've accepted the fact that their owners, especially if the owner was killed or the owner's son was killed. And this is a very well resourced father. What do they think is going to happen if they kill the father's beloved son? Here, we see suicidal enmity has blinded them to the insanity of this plan.

And what are they longing for? For freedom from the owner. And this is what a lot of people want today. They want freedom from God, not recognizing that there is no freedom from God. We are designed to find our true freedom and right relationship with God and right relationship with his laws. True freedom isn't found when we usurp all control or all rules. It's found when we find the God who created us. We're created in His image. He knows how we're wired and He knows how we are to operate, to flourish. And we do that according to His law. The world says there is no truth. You make your own truth. And Jesus responds and He says, "No, I am the truth. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."

And what's the truth? The truth is that you are a sinner. I'm a sinner. We've transgressed God's law. But Jesus is a savior and He loves you. His love frees you to love Him back. And if we love Him, we keep His commandments. And here again, we see just how incomprehensible the mercy of this owner is and how incomprehensible the mercy of God is. After they kill messenger after messenger after messenger, He sends His beloved Son. "Come, let us kill him." That phrase is an echo of the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. And since the tenant's words are identical with those of Joseph's evil brothers, we see a connection.

The tenants of course act irrationally. And that's what God charges Israel with in doing in Isaiah 1:2-3. Chapter 1:2-3, "Hear, oh heavens, and give ear, oh earth, for the Lord has spoken. 'Children have I reared and brought up but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey it's master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand.'" What do they do with the son? Verse 8, "And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard." The language here is reminiscent of the cross that Jesus Christ was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem. The greatest evidence for our deep-seated hostility to God is the one time in the history of the world when God made himself physically vulnerable, people arrested Him, beat Him, tortured, crucified, and murdered Him.

John 15:23-25 says, the words of Christ, "Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father, but the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled. 'They hated me without cause.'" It's like the Lord of the sheep, the great Shepherd, Jesus Christ. It says if He summons a few sheep from the flock and sends them back to the flock and say, "Teach the sheep how to live, teach the sheep my ways." And what do the sheep do? The sheep take them and begin to kill them. And then the shepherd becomes the sheep and the sheep slaughter him.

Well, it turned out these weren't sheep at all. They're wolves in sheep's clothing. And what do you do with wolves who destroy sheep? You destroy them. And that's Mark 12:9, "What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others." The owner of the vineyard and the greatest courtyards is the Lord, the Lord of the vineyard. It's the same word that's used for God in the Old Testament, Yahweh. There will be a time when Yahweh comes back. There will be a time where the Lord of the vineyard is going to come and He's going to judge. He'll come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Who are the tenants in the immediate context? The Jewish leaders recognize that Jesus is talking about them. They view themselves as the tenants. They realize exactly what he's saying and they want to kill him. That's the insanity of it. He's calling the shots. He's telling the parable, "Do not do this. Do not kill the son." And they plan to kill the son. And if you follow this parable closely, you realize the removal of the tenants from the vineyard and transferring it to others. Jesus here is talking about deposing the Jewish leadership from spiritual authority over the people of God and then transferring that spiritual leadership to the church where Jesus Christ is the head of His body, the church. She is His bride. He is the head. And all throughout the Book of Acts, we see them wielding that authority.

And you see that through the history of Jerusalem when it was destroyed in the Jewish war in years 66 through 73 as the church grew by the power of the Spirit. Therefore, the banished tenants represent Israel and the favored others, the early church which was the fusion of Jews and Gentiles who represent true Israel. Israel has lost its status as the people of God as symbolized by the catastrophic defeat in the Jewish war and has been replaced by the church. In Mark 12:10, Jesus continues, "Have you not read this Scripture? 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and this was the Lord's doing and it was marvelous in our eyes.'"

Jesus here quotes Psalm 1:18, one of the five Psalms of the Hallel sung throughout Passover week. And when he entered in Jerusalem and everyone cried out, "Hosanna in the highest," they were quoting from the Psalm as well. So Jesus here quotes Psalm 1:18 and He says, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." He's talking about Himself. "I will be rejected but I am actually a foundational stone, the cornerstone for the church, for the people of God." And that cornerstone imagery, it's very clear. That's the most important stone in the foundation. But here in this text, in particular in Isaiah 28, it talks about Jesus as the foundational stone. But here for cornerstone, the Greek word for head is used. It's the head stone. And some commentators have argued that this is the elevated cornerstone or the key stone in the arch of the temple. And evidence for this is there was a head of the corner crowning the temple of God.

So in one sense, Jesus Christ is our foundation, but he's also the crown of our lives. He's a crown of the church. He is the head of our lives. He was rejected, but his rejection led to our acceptance. Therefore, it's marvelous in our eyes. The father, when he sent the son, He said, "They will respect my son." And in a sense you read that and you're like, "That seems highly naive. Messenger after messenger was killed. Why do you think they're going to respect your son?" In a sense, yeah, they didn't respect him. But in a sense this is also prophetic. There will come a time when everybody will respect the name of Jesus Christ. Either we accept His name, either we accept His authority and lordship over our lives now in humility, we come humbly, or we will be humbled when He returns for the second judgment. When the son shows up, he's killed out of enmity. But the wisdom and the beauty of the glory of the gospel is the very killing that comes from their enmity is the very way in which God slays that enmity.

Verse 12, "When they were seeking to arrest Him but fear the people for they perceived that He had told the parable against them, so they left Him and went away." They still fear the crowd because the crowd is still with Jesus so they need to hatch a plan where they take the crowd support away from Jesus. And that's what the next part of the text is about in verse 13. "And they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk." The Herodians are mentioned here because Herod was a proxy of Caesar. So he would collect the taxes from the Jewish people and the taxes then funneled through his coffers would go to Caesar. Obviously, he made a killing off of it.

So the Herodians, they wanted the people to pay the taxes, hot button issue. And they know it's a trick because Jesus, if you say, "No, don't pay your taxes," now we can appeal to Caesar and he's going to kill you. If you say, "Go and pay your taxes," now the people will say, "Oh Jesus said you were the king. Why are we supporting Rome?" So that's the trap.

Mark 12:14, "They came and said to Him, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? And should we pay them or should we not?'" They start by saying, "You are true," which is hypocritical because he is true. They're unwittingly witnessing to the truth. But a few lines earlier, the chief scribes sent a question. They said through their proxies, they said, "By whose authority are you doing the things you're doing?" And here, all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, we know you are true. We know whose authority." Obviously they're being hypocritical.

"You are true." That means there's no sin, there's no lies, there's no prevarication. "You do not care about anyone's opinion," meaning you fear God over people. So when people's opinions contradict the will of God or the teaching of God, you don't care. "And you are not swayed by appearances," meaning you don't judge by appearances. You don't show partiality. And in that, in this, he's reflecting God Himself for Samuel 16:7. "But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance on the height of his stature because I've rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'" And the trap here is they're saying, "Lord, if you don't care about anyone's opinions, you definitely don't care about the emperor's opinions."

And the Messiah according to Isaiah 11:3 would imitate God in making impartial judgments. Isaiah 11:3, "And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear." And Jesus, we know that You truly teach the way of God. That's what Jesus came to do, teach the way of God. And then the question, is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? And then here are the taxes, the poll tax that Caesar demanded off of every person. How does Jesus respond? Verse 15. "But knowing their hypocrisy, their pretense, He said to them, 'Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.'"

Denarius was a Roman currency. You pay Roman taxes with Roman currency. Denarius represented a day's wage. And if you take the coin, on the front, it was inscription. There was Tiberius with a laurel crowned head. And then the inscription around his head said "Tiberius Caesar, son of the deified Augustus, himself Augustus". And on the reverse side it would say Pontifex Maximus, which is high priest. On the one side it says he is Dei. They were deifying Caesar, and he's also our high priest. Blasphemous. And this is why the Jews had a problem with these coins is blasphemous.

And Jesus said, "Bring me one." In verse 16, "They brought one and he said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said to him, 'Caesar's.' Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him." I remember when I read this for the first time as a kid. I fell in love with Jesus because I was like, "Ah, Jesus is the best trash talker. He's better than anybody. He puts it."

But the deeper you study the Scripture, you realize just the profound depth of the wisdom of God. They start the conversation with a battle for authority and He ends the conversation with a battle of authority. Who wins? God Himself. What is Jesus saying here? He's saying, "Whose image is on that coin? Caesar's. Okay, give unto Caesar's what is Caesar's." And then he says, "Whose image is on you? Whose image is on you? Whose image and likeness is on you? Give unto God's yourself what is God's genius." The coin which bears the image of Caesar, we give to Caesar. We however, as men and women who bear the image of God, we owe ourselves to God. We will give Caesar's unto Caesar but we will not render unto Caesar what is God's even if Caesar demands it. No, we won't.

So this is a reminder for us friends to give what is God's to God. Give your whole life as a living sacrifice to the Lord. Bring your Sabbath to the Lord. Give your tithes to the Lord. Use your talents for the Lord's kingdom. And we do this because we long to, not just because we're obligated to. Know that duty has become a choice. John Newton in Amazing Grace writes, "Our pleasure and our duty, the opposite before. Since we have seen His beauty, are joined, depart no more." Our pleasure and our duty, it is our pleasure to do our duty for the Lord. Newton's friend William Cowper wrote, "To see the law by Christ fulfilled and to hear His pardoning voice changes a slave into a child and duty into choice."

And what's the only thing that can heal our hearts of our enmity and hostility toward God? It's recognizing and accepting the love of God for us. Corinthians 5:18 says, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

If you're here today and you're not sure where you stand before God, if you were to die today and you're not sure where you would go, today, you have a decision to make. If you do not repent of your sins, if you do not place your faith in Christ, if you do not accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and His grace, if you died today, you are going to be separated from God for all eternity and His wrath will be upon you in a place called hell. But thankfully, you're not dead yet. Thankfully, we still have a chance to repent. And thanks be to the work of Christ, we can be forgiven. If you don't admit you're an enemy, you'll stay one and you'll be crushed when Christ returns to judge. If you admit you're an enemy, you'll no longer be one Lord, I have been an enemy. I have been in rebellion. Lord, forgive me. I accept your amnesty. Lord, welcome me into your kingdom.

Matthew 21:44, "And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him." Either allow your hard heart to be shattered by His love and then He heals it or remain at war with God, which is suicidal and you will be crushed. We come humbly to the Lord or we will be humbled in the judgment. Either you say to God, "God, Thy will be done. I'm not my own," or God will one day say to you, "Thy will be done. You are your own. Go."

I'm going to close by praying the Lord's prayer as Jesus taught us to pray. And you're welcome to pray in your heart with me. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Father, we thank You for sending your Son, and Lord Jesus, we thank You that You went to the cross with eyes wide open. You knew the cost and it was a terrible cost, but You did that in order to atone for our sins. And we thank You, Holy Spirit, that You're with us today. And I pray, if there's anyone who is still stuck in their rebellious ways, I pray, Lord, melt their hearts. I pray give them spiritual resurrection of their souls in this Holy Week. I pray that this week will be holy in their lives, that they will be drawn into Your kingdom and into Your church. And Lord, bless us this week as we meditate upon your final week before the crucifixion. And Lord, give us opportunities to share the great gospel with our friends, neighbors, or anyone else who would listen. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Tyler Burns:

Thank you. Thank you, Pastor.

Wow, thank you. I've never had so many nice things said about me before. I don't know how to respond to that, but thank you. Thank you. As Pastor Andy mentioned, my name is Tyler. It's the first time that I'm up here without a job title at Mosaic to introduce myself with, so I guess I will just introduce myself as I'm a church planter in Salem, Massachusetts. And whenever I get to preach the word, it is always my honor and my privilege to be able to deliver God's word for all of us today.

And before we get started, I have a confession. Even though I am 25% Irish, and even though my son's name is Killian and it's as Irish as it can be, I don't like St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Paddy's day by the way. I don't like St. Patrick's day, but I do like and I love the man, St. Patrick. And the reason why I don't like the day is because it kind of goes against who the man was. Many of us know who St. Patrick is as the patron saint of Ireland, which is true. But what many people don't know about St. Patrick is that how he was brought to Ireland was that he was actually kidnapped and brought into slavery and forced to be a shepherd there in slavery and was while in slavery that he found his faith in God and decided, "I am going to pursue preaching the gospel in this nation that does not know Jesus." And that took him hostage and captive. And he ultimately succeeded in his goal of bringing about cultural change in a society that kidnapped him and brought him into slavery.

It's the kind of change that at the time would've seemed completely inconceivable beyond even a thought. How could a man love this nation so much that he would seek to bring about that kind of change? And that's the story we're going to be looking at today. We're going to be seeing a story in the Gospel of Mark of inconceivable change, change that no one could even think would ever happen. And so we are continuing in the book of Mark in chapter 11 through this series that we've entitled Kingdom Come. And we call it that because it's all about Jesus coming to establish His kingdom here on earth and calling us to be partners with Him in the establishment of his kingdom.

We have a lot of texts to get through so we're going to jump in, we're going to go through and we're going to break it down section by section. We'll read a section, we will discuss it and then we'll continue going through. But before I begin, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good and you are powerful. You have authority over all of creation and over all things. So Lord, we ask that you bring about change, you bring about change in our lives to be more and more like you. We ask that you bring about change in our city and in our world and in our culture to become a city and a place that loves you, that is known and characterized by our faith and trust in you. Use this time, use your word to teach us, to encourage us and to convict us where we need to be convicted, to go forth and walk in your authority as we usher in your kingdom here on earth. In Jesus' name, amen.

So we'll be spending our time looking at three ideas in our section. We'll be in Mark chapter 11 verses 12 through 33. And the three ideas we're going to be looking at is first, deeply rooted in rebellion, now deeply rooted in faith, to walk in authority. So the first idea we're going to look at is deeply rooted in rebellion. This is Mark chapter 11, starting in verse 12 it says this, "On the following day when they came from Bethany, he, Jesus, was hungry. And seeing in the distance of fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And the disciples heard it."

We'll stop there for a second. If you're like me, you're like, "What are you doing, Jesus?" This is not what we think of when we think of Jesus, right? We don't think of him cursing a tree and saying, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And if you're like me, you're like, "Well, it says he was hungry." So he was probably just a little hangry. He probably was this word that my wife is not allowed to call me, cranky, when you haven't eaten in a little while. Is Jesus hangry? Is he cranky? Well, what's going on? The context is that he's coming from Bethany. Where is Bethany? It's just outside the city of Jerusalem. And Jesus was staying there for the high holidays.

Last week, Pastor Jan preached on the verses in this chapter that came before that, it was the triumphal entry. It was Jesus riding in on a donkey. Palm leaves, people saying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." And he gets into Jerusalem, and it took so long for him to get there that it was night by the time he gets there. So he goes back out to Bethany and he says, "I'm going to go in early now." So he leaves early, likely before breakfast, before time to eat. And so he's traveling and walking to Jerusalem and he comes across a tree with leaves and he goes and sees if there's any fruit. It says there's none because it's not the season for figs.

One of the things that they don't teach you in seminary is that you have to understand how plants work. This is an unqualified area, but that is extremely necessary for pastors because what happens with fig trees is that they start by budding these little fruits, but they're really tiny, they're hard, but they are edible and they're actually a delicacy because they're so much smaller than a fig that you have to be lavish to be willing to eat them and not be patient to wait for larger fruit where you could get more. And how fig trees grow is that they first bud these small, tiny, hard fruits. Then the leaves come in at the same time that the full fruits come in.

Well, there's leaves, but it says it's not time for figs. What's happening? This tree stood out to Jesus because it was likely the only tree with leaves on it. It was a fig tree masquerading as one with fruit. It was sending all signals to anyone who knew anything about fig trees. "There are fruit on this tree." Fruit for fig trees gathered August through October. This is the week of Passover, so it's roughly March, April. It's extremely early. There shouldn't be leaves, there shouldn't be figs. But the tree itself is saying, "I have leaves, therefore I have fruit." So Jesus has every right to expect that there is fruit on this tree. So he goes to this tree looking for fruit and he sees there is none and he curses it.

Well, what we will quickly find out is that this fig tree, it's not actually the fig tree, it's a symbol for Jerusalem. It's a symbol for the people of God. Historically throughout scripture and the Jewish culture, fig trees were a symbol of the people of Israel. But one of the things that I love about the book of Mark is that the structure makes it completely clear. When you think of the fig tree, think of Jerusalem, think of the people of God.

Again, the beginning of this chapter, Mark 1 through 11, Jesus is going into Jerusalem.

Then we have our text of the fig tree. The next text we're about to see is Jesus in Jerusalem. Then the next text after that is Jesus with the fig tree again. And then after that, it's back with Jesus in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, fig tree. Jerusalem, fig tree. Jerusalem. When you think of the fig tree, think of God's people and Jerusalem.

So what is the issue that is going on with Jerusalem that Jesus is showing through this example of the fig tree? We see it in Mark 11, verse 15. It says this, "And they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons and would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, 'Is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?' But you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and scribes heard it and they were seeking a way to destroy him for they feared Him because all the crowd was astonished at His teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city."

So what is the issue we see here in Jerusalem? I would summarize it as they are deeply rooted in rebellion. As the fig tree was masquerading as one with fruit showing off its leaves saying, "Look, there's fruit here," and there was none, Jerusalem was doing the same. The people of God were doing the same. There were thousands of people in the city there to worship, there to sacrifice offerings to the Lord. For Passover. They ushered Jesus in on a donkey saying "Praise him." In verses 9 and 10, it says, "And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David. Hosanna in the highest!'." It seemed like they were worshiping Jesus. They masqueraded as having fruit. But upon closer expectation, there was no fruit at all. This house that was made to be a house of prayer, Jesus calls a den of robbers, it's a house of extortion.

What is going on here? It talks about the money changes. Jesus overthrowing the tables of the money changers. Well, according to Jewish law, the people of Israel had to pay a tax to the temple. And so at the high holidays, they would collect this tax because it was the time for people to come from all over the world. And so they were like, "Now's a great time to collect the tax from people." But what is unclear in the text, but it was culturally clear, was that the money changers were like the exchange rate people. You travel abroad, you go to another nation, you need to exchange money to be able to pay the fees. And foreign coins were not accepted in the temple, so they would do an exchange, say, "Hey, you give me however much of your money that equals this much of ours" and you'll pay your tax.

But the money changers were the ones who were responsible for establishing that exchange rate. Well, what does that mean? It means that they had all the power to extort people, said, "Oh sure, it's really 10 of this coin for one of ours. Well, we'll say it's a hundred and we'll make 10 times the money and we'll keep the profit for ourselves." It's in conjunction with those who sold pigeons, it says. Well, what is that? Pigeons were the offering of the poor. And so they're extorting specifically the poor as well. What they would do is they'd say, "Oh, the pigeon you brought, that's not clean enough. We have a pigeon for you that is clean enough. Here, we'll buy your pigeon and you can buy one of ours for 10 times the cost." And then they would turn around and sell that same pigeon to the next person in line and make a profit off of this.

So Jesus prevents them from carrying anything in because they are making the House of God a marketplace of extortion. They were rebelling against the authority of Jesus, but they were rebelling against even the very nature of the temple itself, which is why Jesus calls him out saying, "This is supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations. All the nations are coming here now to worship, and you're using it for your own game. You're using it for selfish ambition."

Even more than that, this was just the norm. This is not something that people were concerned about or worried about in any manner. See, what is the historical context of this is that this is the second building of the temple. This building of the temple was built about 50 years before these events of Jesus by a man named Herod the Great. What Herod the Great Biblically is most famous for is seeking to kill Jesus when the wise men are coming looking for him. That's Herod the Great.

And historically, Historian Flavius Josephus has written the history of the Jewish people in Rome and he says that Herod built the temple for making his name great. He put his name on the building of the temple so that when the people from all over the world came to worship God at the temple, it was not just God's temple, it was Herod the Great's temple for God. He was great at marketing for building up his own name. But what it shows is again, they were rebelling against the authority of God and seeking their own benefit.

And this way the money changers are working by charging more and exchanging rate, that's built after and modeled after the Roman tax collectors. The Roman tax collectors would do the same. They would say, "Oh, we need to bring in this much money for taxes. We'll charge you a little bit more and we could keep the profits for ourselves." And the people of Israel had been under Roman rule for about 90 years at this point. So what's happening is the people of God, the leaders of the temple said, "These Romans got it pretty good. They're successful. They're the ones with power. They're the ones with money. Maybe we should model this place of worship after them."

And so the entire time that this temple has been built, the only temple that the people of God had known in their lifetime, this was how it functioned, this rebellion, this sin was so deeply rooted within their culture, they never knew anything but this level of extortion. It was just normal. It was expected. It was not an issue.

Well, the question then comes how can change come when there is that level of rebellion against God? When it is so deeply rooted, how can there be change? Well, change is hard. I want to point out that this is actually even more crazy because this is the second time Jesus cleansed the temple. Jesus, many people know, the first... Does anyone know the first miracle that Jesus did the first thing he did to start his ministry? Shout it out. Water into wine. Everyone's favorite. Jesus threw a great party. He turned water into wine, kept the party going.

The second thing Jesus did in his ministry, he cleansed the temple. What Jesus was setting his ministry on is he's like, "I'm going to celebrate things that are good and I'm going to change the way we worship God back to how it's supposed to be." And so the second thing that Jesus does in his ministry is cleansing the temple. And three years later, in the last week of his life before his crucifixion, he cleanses the temple again. And in the middle, there's this really important parable about a fig tree. It's interesting.

In Luke 13 verses 6 through 9 it says this, "And he, Jesus, told this parable. 'A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?' And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig it, dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down'."

See, Jesus went into the temple at the beginning and saw no fruit and cleansed it and said, "I want to establish. I'm teaching and preaching the way we are to worship God. It's not about money, it's not about wealth. It's not about individual prosperity. It's about submission to the authority of God and praying and worshiping Him." Three years later, patiently waiting for change, teaching, proclaiming the gospel, doing miracles. And while he's doing miracles, the people welcome him. "Great. Jesus, yes, come. Come into Jerusalem." When they think he's going to be a messiah that overthrows Rome, "Welcome. Come on Jesus. Come on into Jerusalem." And then when he reiterates, "No, the issue is worship. How are you worshiping God?" And he cleanses the temple again, the people are like, "Whoa, wait, wait, Jesus. This isn't what we thought you were going to do" because it was so deeply rooted in them, they didn't even realize they needed change.

And so how does change come when we are deeply rooted in rebellion? It comes through faith. Maybe you're here today, maybe you're not a Christian and you're saying, "I am here to tell you that if you're not a Christian, you have been in rebellion from God. You have been rejecting the authority of God over your life." And I'm also here to tell you that you can change. Change can happen through faith in Jesus Christ. And I call and I urge you to change because the faith and trust in Jesus Christ is the only thing that allows us to have a life that is fruitful, a life that is meaningful, a life that is valuable, and because it brings greater honor and worship to him.

And so we are called to change from that deep-seated rebellion into a deep-rooted faith. And this is verse 20 of our text. Verse 20 says this, "As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, 'Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered.' And Jesus answered him, 'Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses'."

So they go back out to Bethany, they're headed back into Jerusalem and they see the tree and Peter's like, "Look, Jesus, you cursed it. I thought just there probably wouldn't be fruit anymore, but it's actually withering away to the roots" What is showing is that Jesus has the power to bring about complete change, not just change to the exterior, change to the facade, but change to the deepest of the roots of the tree, deepest to the roots of the problem. And Jesus' response is, "|How did that change happen? Have faith in God."

In other parallel gospels, texts telling the same story as this, it talks about having the faith the size of a mustard seed, the smallest seed, the smallest amount of faith. This is not a statement about the magnitude of our faith. It's a statement about the genuineness of our faith. Jesus does encourage us to grow in faith. We are encouraged to grow in faith, but this is not him saying become more faithful. This is him saying, "Purify that faith. Make it a true faith, one that is not filled with doubt but of true belief." So much so that you could say to this mountain, "Be cast into the sea" and it will.

Now, this section contains two of the most taken out of context verses in scripture, the casting of the mountain into the sea. And the, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe you have received it and it will be yours." These two verses are so often taken out of context. The second one, I didn't realize this, but I have a Bible software that I do my studying and note-taking on. There was a dotted line under that verse. I was like, "I've never seen that before. What is that?" And it tells you how many people that have this software highlight that verse. I've never noticed it before, but that was one of the most highlighted verses in all of scripture by people using the software. It just shows how prominent of a verse it is, but also how much it is taken out of context. Because when Jesus says, say to this mountain, he's not making a statement that we are called to make mountains change so we can move landscapes.

If you path the trajectory of their journey from Bethany to Jerusalem, the only mountain within view is the mount of Jerusalem itself. So when Jesus says, "You could say to this mountain, be cast into the sea," he's not talking about physical earthly changes. He's saying, "You can say to this deep-rooted systemic rebellion against the worship of God and you could say, cast it into the sea and it will be done." Move the rebellion, the rejection, the lack of worship of God and cast it out and it will be done if you believe that it will be done. And don't doubt.

And verse 25 is not a clause that's required, but it's a clarification about how we are to pray when it says, "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." This idea is saying that it's when you're in the right frame of heart, the right posture of hear., it's not that, "Okay, I forgive people so therefore I can ask for what I want and I get what I want." No, it's not about asking for what we want, telling God to move what we want. No. It's about having a frame of heart that is focused on forgiveness, that is focused on forgiveness of others, grace and mercy towards others, and being forgiven yourself, seeking for forgiveness for your own sins, having the humility to recognize our own faults and saying, "God, I'm trying to align my will with yours, align my will with yours. Help me know what you desire and that's what I'm going to ask for." And no matter how crazy that seems, God is able to do it.

So I have to ask, where are you in rebellion to Jesus? Again, I already said, if you're not a Christian, you are in rebellion. If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are in rebellion to Him. And I urge you to come to Him. Have faith in Him. Ask him to move that mountain of rebellion in your life and trust in him because He willingly, lovingly and joyfully went to the cross for you, to die to pay that penalty of sins for you, to forgive you of your rebellion. Maybe you're a Christian here that is still in rebellion. You have a stronghold, a sin that has been permeating within you, that is in rebellion to God. Are you willing to go to Jesus? Ask Him to move that mountain of rebellion, forgive you and heal you of your sins.

Sometimes there's sin in our lives that you might be saying, "Tyler, you don't know how long this has been there. You don't know how long I have been under the oppression of the sin. And every time temptation comes, I try, but I fail." Do you go to Jesus and ask him and believe without a doubt that He has power over that sin, has power to save you from that you are not bound to that sin anymore? Roman 6:12 says this, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as an instrument for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace."

Don't let sin reign in your mortal body, Christian. Don't let sin exist there. So I know none of us are perfect. There's always grace, there's always forgiveness. Sure. But we are called to live like Christ who was perfect. We are given authority over sin because it has no dominion. We can refuse temptation. Do you actually believe that when temptation comes, you can say to it, "No, you have no authority over me. You have no power here"? And it's not a sheepish fear of when is temptation going to come next, but it's a confident boldness saying, "Jesus has defeated you, sin. Jesus has already paid my penalty for you." I can say no. I can refuse to sin and live a life of holy worship and submission to God.

Wherever that sin is in your life, I urge you say to it, "move." Say to it, "Mountain, be gone, because Jesus has paid the penalty for you on the cross. You have no authority over me. And it says, "And then live in it. Believe it will be done for you." Live in that assurance that Jesus has forgiven you and Jesus has paid the penalty and freed you from that sin. It has no power over you anymore.

But why this text is my favorite in Mark... One of my favorites in Mark. I love the book of Mark. Mark's my favorite book of the New Testament. But why I love this text so much in particular, it's because Jesus isn't just talking about individuals. Jesus is addressing societal rebellion as well. Yes, society is made up of individuals. And in order to change a society, individuals must change. Sure. But Jesus is primarily talking about a change that affects an entire culture saying Jerusalem, this establishment, this city where rebellion is so deep-rooted, you don't even think to ask questions. That can be changed.

So I ask you, church, do you believe the systematic rebellion of Boston, of Brookline can change? I believe without a doubt that God seeks and desires and will establish his kingdom here in Brookline, here in Boston. And that is not a lofty hope of one day in the future most likely after Jesus's second coming. No. It's a reality that I believe is possible now.

I know Pastor Jan, I know Pastor Andy feel that calling, feel that assurance, but I'm asking church, do you believe that? Is that even a goal within your mind? I know it seems hard. We look at the world around us and it is broken. It is fallen. It's hard to imagine a city that loves Jesus, is characterized by faith in Jesus Christ, but that should be one of our goals. That should be our aim. Why? Because Jesus came to establish his kingdom and has called us to be deeply rooted in that faith in Him and to live in that faith.

But part of why I'm up here today is because I also believe that God is going to change the nature of Salem. Now, Pastor Andy mentioned briefly about Salem and I want to dig into it just very quickly. Salem is known first and foremost for witchcraft. Not for cute little pointed hats, Halloween witches, but for actual practice of casting spells and curses and witchcraft. The international headquarters for witches is in Salem. I didn't realize this. Pastor Jan mentioned that he met missionaries or heard of missionaries from Brazil who said the witches in Brazil are sent to Salem, Massachusetts for training and then they go back to Brazil to do their evil work.

The other thing Salem is known for is for the international headquarters of the temple of Satan. Oh, boy. Fun place, yeah. It's where they have brought in the worship of not just witchcraft but of Satan himself and said, "This is what we are establishing our identity on." They have built their tourism, they have built their finances like the Pharisees, selfishly, on wrongful worship, on worship of witchcraft and of Satan. It's a place that is known for old church buildings with no one in them.

But I am here to tell you, I know God's going to change that. And that's the call he has put on my heart and on my life and that's why I'm here today. And I can tell you it's not because of me, it's because of Him. And it's a work that he is already doing in the city independent of me.

There's a church, a First Baptist Church of Salem. Pray for them. Pray for Pastor Stephen and his wife Sarah. They're doing faithful work there. They're having three baptisms this Thursday. Praise God for that. The church is growing from three years ago, from 20 people to now about 50 people by conversion. Not by Christians coming and moving from other areas, but by people hearing the gospel and being saved and their lives being changed. And it's people that never thought it was possible. It's people that have been practicing witchcraft their whole life and then said, "I just knew it wasn't good. I needed a way out." And they come to church for the first time in their lives and they commit their lives to Christ. It's people that have been in jail their entire lives coming to Him. It's people that have never walked in a church and said, "I need something different. I'm going in" and God changes them.

It's on my heart to also mention pray for a woman named Lauren. She's practicing witchcraft for 20 years. She reached out to Pastor Stephen and said, "Pray for me. I need to get out. I don't know how. I'm trying." She's been trying for a month to come to church, but there are spiritual barriers preventing her from coming. And as they've been meeting and praying for her, they're tearing down those barriers one by one. And now family's coming in and saying, "You don't need church. You need therapy." Therapy is good. There's a purpose and a place for therapy. Nothing against therapy. If you need it, praise God, it's a tool to use. But the answer is God. The answer that she needs is Jesus to save her from her sin. And so pray for Lauren. Pray that God will bring her to saving faith in Him.

This coming Thursday, the same day as the baptism, we're tearing down a satanic altar in someone's home. Not like a cute little toy, like something that they actually offer sacrifice. This is the culture of Salem. The school mascots are witches. The school logos are witches. No one can imagine a city without witchcraft and Satan in it. But I can.

Something I didn't mention about First Baptist Church, they were the first church to send missionaries from the United States. They were the first church to establish in 1804 that sent missionaries abroad. I can see a city back with that. I can see a city established built on faith, trusting in God, submitting to his authority, being characterized by a love and trust of Jesus Christ. And it's not because of anything in me, it's because I'm called to walk in the authority of Jesus Christ. And that's the last idea here.

We are called to walk in authority of Jesus. And this is in verse 27 it says, "And they came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and elders came to him and they said to him, 'By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?' Jesus said to them, 'I will ask you one question, answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.' And they discussed it with one another saying, 'If we say from heaven,' he will say, 'Why then did you not believe him? But shall we say from man?' They were afraid of the people for they all held that John really was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, 'We do not know.' And Jesus said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things'."

See, it was so clear that the Pharisees knew. Their first response was, "Are we supposed to say from heaven? He's going to challenge our authority. Our reputation will be at stake if we say that Jesus and John's authority was of God and was of heaven. But we can't say it was from man either because we know that's wrong and we're fearful of people." See, they were seeking their own authority.

Don't walk in your own authority. Don't walk in your own power or your own might. Walk in the authority of Jesus who went back to Jerusalem when it said that they were seeking a way to destroy Him. Jesus knew walking back to Jerusalem very well would mean his death, even his death on a cross. He knew it. But he also knew the authority he was walking in, and he was not afraid to do it. And he did it willingly and joyfully.

I have two more verses I just want to share with us in Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6 Let me see if I... I didn't mark it. Let me see if I could find it. There it is. Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6, prophecy about the building of the temple. So very relevant to our text here today. It says, "Then he said to me, 'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. 'Who are you, oh great mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone among shouts of 'Grace! Grace to it!'."

They're seeking to build the temple. They're wondering how is it going to be possible? And God says to them, "It's not by power. It's not by might. It's by my spirit that this will be done." And when we say to walk in authority, I'm not saying to walk in power. I'm not saying to walk in might. I'm saying to walk by the spirit of the living God, knowing that wherever you go, wherever you walk, if you are a faithful Christian, you are bringing the spirit of God with you with his authority, with his power that can bring about real lasting change.

And lastly, the last thing I would like to read is Matthew 28:18 through 20, the great commission. Many of us know this. It says, "And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age'."

Jesus has all authority over everything. And what does he do without authority? He tells us to go. He tells us to go in his authority to bring the gospel to all nations, baptize, make disciples and teaching them to observe His commandments, to show what true worship of the one living God really is.

I urge you, church, today, be rooted in faith. Know that change is possible and walk in the authority of Jesus Christ bringing His spirit with you wherever you go. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we love you. We know you and we trust you. Lord, give us faith to know that you will change us. You will remove sin from our lives and sanctify us, make us more like you. But help us to also know and believe that you are bringing your kingdom here, you are establishing your ways on earth. Give us faith and help our unbelief Lord. Help us to walk in authority, have eyes to see your will and know what you are calling us to do, how we can each be a part of your kingdom, whether in Brookline, whether in Salem, whether in any other part of the world. Give us clear directives, give us clear calling to walk in your might and establish your kingdom here. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Father, we thank you that you with the great God of the universe, created us in your image and you gave us desires, the ultimate of which is only satisfied with your presence. And Lord, we do take time now to confess that we have loved things, creature, creation more than we have loved you, and that misordered desire is the root cause of sin, of our fallenness, of our depravity. And we pray, Lord Jesus, that you focus our attention on the cross today, the work of Christ. And Christ, through the gospel, I pray that you turn our hearts to you, deepen our affection for you. Before calling us to allegiance to you, you give us new hearts and you deepen our affection for you. And we pray that you deepen our affection and love for you. We pray by the power of the spirit that you minister to us from your holy scriptures.

Help us understand the scriptures, help our souls be satiated of the scriptures, and help us live in a manner worthy of the gospel. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come. And the idea is that Jesus has come, the king of the universe, to inaugurate his kingdom, to establish it. And he says that we are to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So we are to pray, Lord. We want more of your will in our life. And as we pray and as we seek his will, he establishes his kingdom in our lives. The title of the servant today is What Do You Want? Your life story is a history of your competing desires. Each one of us is a creature of desires.

We want, we long, we dream, we desire, and we act on those desires for good or ill. And then we must live with the consequences of those desires. And there are, of course, different orders of desire, all competing for our attention, our resources, our energy. And which one wins out? Well, the greatest desire, of course, wins out. And so we are to rank our desires. And how should we do that? By the value of the objects of those desires. The longer I'm a believer, the longer I am a pastor, I'm more convinced that the battle for faith is the battle for desire. We've all heard the imperative fight the good fight of faith. Well, how do we do that? How does one battle in the arena of faith? Well, you battle for desire. You strive to desire the greatest and the most noble object of desire.

And that, of course, is the Lord, is God. He alone is glorious enough to satisfy your greatest desire. His very presence is greater in value than anything in all of creation, which makes sense because he's the creator. He created you, and he created you with desire, a desire that cannot be satisfied with anything in creation. It's a desire that he alone can satisfy. And you might know this theoretically, but do you know this experientially? And the only way to really understand this experientially is to come to the realization of just how, really, how little you want God. When you're absolutely honest with yourself and you look at your life, you look at the scriptures, and you say, "Lord, why is it that I don't love you with all my heart, soul, strength? And my why is it that that's not natural?" What's impeding this desire for the Lord? It's sin. Sin suffocates your desire for God.

And then what's the antidote for sin? It's repentance. Lord, I repent that I've desired creation more than creator. I repent that I've acted on desires that have transgressed your will. Lord, I want to desire you. I want to desire your presence. Lord, I pray that you give me a grace to do that. Lord, thy will be done. May your desire be done in my life. I desire what you desire. And that's what our text is about today, where Mark chapter 10 verses 32 through 52, would you look at the text with me? And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the 12 again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, "See, we are going to Jerusalem. And the son of man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, and spit on him, and flog him, and kill him. And after three days he will rise."

And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What do you want me to do for you?" And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory." Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I'm baptized?" And they said to him, "We are able." And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink." And with the baptism with which I'm baptized, you will be baptized. But to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared." And when the 10 heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John.

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them, and they're great ones, exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples in a great crowd, Bartimaeus the blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.

And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, son of David have mercy on me." And many rebuked him telling him to be silent, but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me." And Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." And they called the blind man saying to him, "Take heart. Get up. He's calling you." And throwing off his cloak, he's spraying up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" And the blind man said to him, "Rabbi, let me recover my sight." And Jesus said to him, "Go your way. Your faith has made you well." And immediately, he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, Jesus set his face like Flint upon suffering. Second, James and John set their sights on glory. And third, Bartimaeus set his sight upon Jesus. First, Jesus set his face like Flint upon suffering. And I get that phrase from Isaiah. And Isaiah promises that the king will come, the Messiah will come, the son of David will come, and he's going to come like a suffering servant. And it speaks of his steeled resolve to fulfill his mission and obey the father's will until the very last drop. Isaiah 50, verse 7, "But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore, I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame." Flint is a very hard dark rock and it's used figuratively to express hardness. And here, this phrase is used to describe Jesus' unwavering determination to persevere in the face of his excruciating mission given to him by the Father.

In the beginning of our text it says they were on the road, verse 32a, "Going up to Jerusalem, Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid." Jesus going up to Jerusalem to fulfill his ministry. And the phrase to go up to Jerusalem, it's not just a phrase of geography, no. Jesus is here depicted as fulfilling his destiny. He's set his face like flint. He's walking ahead of his disciples in a crowd. And the disciples were afraid, it says. They were amazed, and most likely because they remembered Jesus' two previous prophecies about his suffering and death. They foresaw the consequences of an irrevocable decision to go to Jerusalem and face the inevitable hostility. Pain is on the horizon.

Verse 32b, "And taking the 12, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, 'See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the son of man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. After three days, he will rise.'" Notice that Jesus says we. We are going to Jerusalem. He's including the disciples and the prospect of the terrible days ahead. Following Jesus means having a share in his suffering in life, and here in particular with the disciples. Jesus foretells at least four details here about his death. First, he predicts that he will be delivered. Delivered how? Well, he will be betrayed, and he will be betrayed by one of his disciples, the treasure, Judas. And this probably includes the fact that Jesus will be deserted by the other disciples. Jesus also tells the 12 that he will end up at the mercy of the Sanhedrin, which in part may explain the solemn nature of the procession to Jerusalem.

Second, Jesus makes it clear in this prophecy that he will be sentenced to death, that they will kill him. And this is the plan of the Sanhedrin was to charge Jesus with the capital offense. But it wasn't just the religious Jews, it was also the Gentiles. He'll be handed over to the Gentiles, including the Romans. And this is new information hasn't been mentioned in the previous prophecies. And this, of course, is tough for the disciples to accept the Romans. Jesus, you could calm a storm. Jesus, you could bring people back from the dead. Why can't you protect yourself from the Roman oppressors? And fourth, Jesus tells them that after he will be put to death, he will be raised on the third day. The bad news has so overshadowed the mood that this doesn't even register the fact that he will be raised. The resurrection is the ultimate and determined of reality, but they can't grasp how significant it is, and it seems to be dwarfed by the massiveness of the suffering that precedes it.

Jesus knew all too well what he was walking into, the excruciating pain and suffering that would be ahead, and even the fact of the resurrection wasn't enough for the disciples to really understand what's happening. How does Jesus feel in this moment? Well, he doesn't reveal here in the text, but he's struggling. There's weight in every single step. He knows exactly what he's doing. The garden of Gethsemane scene in Matthew 26 reveals what was happening on the inside. Matthew 26, "Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.' And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. He said to him, 'My soul is very sorrowful even to death. Remain here and watch with me.' And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed saying, 'My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass for me, nevertheless not as I will, but as you will.'.

And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, 'So could you not watch with me one hour? Watch him pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing and the flesh is weak.'. Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, 'My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.' And again, he came and found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, 'Sleep and take your rest later on. See the hours at hand. And the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.'"

What did Jesus want? What did the Son of God want? What did Jesus desire? Did Jesus desire betrayal? Did he desire being condemned to death? Did he desire to be mocked and spat at? Did Jesus desire to be flogged? Did he desire to be scorched, crucified? Did he desire to drink this cup of God's wrath down to the dregs? No, he did not. It was not his will. In Gethsemane, he's wrestling with the father's will. "Lord, I know this is my mission, I know this is my destiny, but if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me." It was not the father's will for the cup to pass. It was the father's will for the son to die. And why was it the father's will? Well, it was the only way to save us from our sins. It was the only way to save us from desiring our will more than the father's will. The son puts down his will and takes up the father's to save us from desiring our own will more than the fathers.

This brings us to point two. After his solemn conversation, James and John set their sights on glory in verse 35. And James and John, the sons of Zebedee came up to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." Now, contextually, this is hard to understand what's going on because it's like, weren't you guys listening? He just told us he's going to be crucified. And then all of a sudden, you come up and you start asking for positions of power. And the gall, the audacity is kind of striking. They attempt to manipulate Jesus. "Jesus, please give us whatever we..." It's like a little kid coming up to my mom and dad. "Just say yes. Just promise to say yes, whatever I ask." And then Matthew 20, it's even more ironical. They send their mom. It's not even them asking.

They're like, "Mom, you're really nice. Jesus likes you. Can you go ask for thrones, please?" It's ridiculous because it's like they don't understand what the kingdom is all about. They don't understand that the king has come to serve, and he's come to serve by suffering. And when he calls us to follow him, he does call us to follow the path of the cross. And what scripture here is doing is showing is that after every single one of the predictions of his suffering and of his resurrection, there's an idea of glory. And the disciples have caught onto that idea, and they want to capitalize upon it. In here, you do see that they are themselves battling for faith, and Jesus is helping them battle in their faith in the Lord, but it's a faith that needs to be clarified with spiritual vision. In verse 36, he said to them, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Jesus wisely doesn't say yes. He says, "Ask. What do you want?" And this is a tremendous question. Imagine if Jesus came up to you and he said, "Ask whatever you want." It's like when God comes to Solomon in a dream, and he's like, "Ask whatever you want and you'll receive it from me." And Solomon asked for a heart of wisdom and a heart of understanding so he can discern what is right and wrong. So what do these gentlemen ask for in verse 37? They said to him, "Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left and your glory." Now, on the face of it, this isn't a bad request. They love Christ, clearly, and they want to be as close to him as possible. They do believe that he's the king of kings. They have seen his glory in the mountain of transfiguration was Peter, James and John, and they got a taste of that glory, the glory that satisfied their souls, and they want to be as close to Jesus as possible in the resurrection, they say in your glory.

And then in the text, they have heard that Jesus says in the kingdom of God, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. And they have heard that Jesus said that there are those who are greater in the kingdom of God, and then there are those who are least in the kingdom of God. So they understand that there's a hierarchy, and they understand that there's a reward system. And Jesus did say clearly, there are thrones. In Matthew 19:27, the parallel passage. "Then Peter said in reply, 'See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?' Jesus said to them, 'Truly, I say to you in the new world when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also stay on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundred fold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.'"

So they heard about the thrones, and they decided, you know what? Jesus did say ask and you shall receive, and they waited until Peter was out of the conversation. They understood with Peter, they're the big three, but there's only two thrones, Peter. Sorry. The brotherly relationship takes precedence. And they come to the Lord and they say, "We want the thrones." And this is talking about prominence. It is talking about the presence of the Lord, but it is talking about authority. A throne is a place of authority. From the throne, you exercise authority. And in their mind they say, "Jesus, we followed you so we should get some kind of authority to represent our sacrifice." And verse 38, Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you were asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with which I'm baptized?"

So what's the connection here between thrones and suffering? Jesus here by talking about the cup, the cup that I have to drink, what's he talking about? He's talking about the poison chalice of the Lord's wrath. In the Old Testament, there are occasions where the Lord says, "The cup of my wrath is full. Now, it's time to meet out justice." It's a cup of suffering. It's a cup of disgrace. And what's the connection between authority and suffering? Well, they want authority, and they think that the way to get authority and position of authority is to claim it. Jesus, we're going to ask for it, or they think this is where we jostle for it. I have to go around the other disciples to get this, or you demand it. And Jesus says, "No, no, no, authority in the kingdom of God is completely different than authority in the world." So he talks about the cup of bitter suffering. In the book of Isaiah, the book of Jeremiah, the cup of God's holy wrath and condemnation is mentioned.

Often, it's God's indignation at our sin in the cup that Jesus will drink, and he will drink it to the bitter end. And he'll take our place and he'll become our substitute in the sin bearer. And as he takes our sin upon himself on the cross, God the father's holy righteous reflex is poured down upon his son and we see a separation between the father and the son upon the cross. The eternal son is separated from the eternal father. In Gethsemane, he's praying three times. How does he address God? "My father, my father, my father." And then we see Christ on the cross, and he doesn't say my father, he says, "My God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

It's as though the consciousness of his native sonship has been obliterated from him, and all that he was conscious of now was his frail condition as a servant of the Lord. So he tells James and John, "Can you take that cup? Can you take the cup which is your own sin and your own guilt? Can you bear that cup? No, of course not. You can't even bear it for yourself. Can you bear that cup for hundreds of people? How about thousands? How about millions of people?" And Jesus bore that sin, that collective sin and shame and guilt upon the cross as he stood before a holy God. He says, "Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I'm baptized." And baptism in the Old Testament is a picture of undergoing the wrath of God. It's often seen in terms of getting caught in a storm.

And we've seen that acceptance by Jesus of John's baptism may have been the symbolic acceptance of his judgment, but what Jesus here is referring to is to the negative side of baptism, the sign of the curse of the covenant. For a covenant to be made, there was the blessing of the covenant, and there was the curse of the covenant, and Jesus' baptism was baptism into death, is talking about the fact that he will die. And for him to offer baptism to us, baptism as a symbol of the fact that we have died with Christ been raised with him, it's a sign that our sins have been washed away, for that to happen, Jesus had to die. He had to drink the cup. He had to be baptized and to death. In verse 39, "They said to him, 'We are able.' And Jesus said to them, 'The cup that I drink, you will drink. And with the baptism with which I'm baptized, you will be baptized. But to sit in my right hand or my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.'"

We are able. The two men were not named Sons of Thunder for nothing. And they did suffer. James lost his life in Jerusalem later on after the resurrection. He won't make it past the 12th chapter of the book of Acts. Roman soldiers will come to him, church history tells us. And if he died according to tradition, three soldiers come to him. Two would hold up his hands, and the other would thrust a sword into his abdomen and pierce his solar plexus. James died first, and then John, after losing his brother, continued to serve the Lord. He did suffer himself, was whipped by the Sanhedrin and the acts of the apostles.

And then ultimately, he was banished to the island of Patmos dying somewhere around AD 95. It will cost them something to follow the Lord, just like it costs each of us. And Jesus does say that the Father does prepare the thrones. There are thrones, there is authority, there is a hierarchy. But the way to work your way up isn't just to claim it or just to ask. No, it's service. Mark 10:41, The 10 heard it, and they began to be indignant at James and John." I think Peter was probably the most mad, like we're the big three. We're supposed to be together. We were on the mountain. And the fact that they're angry shows that they themselves didn't really understand. It reveals that the 10 are very much concerned with their status, as were James and John. So Jesus has to do a little more spiritual eye surgery. Verse 42. "And Jesus called them to him and said to them, 'You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles Lord over them, and they're great ones, exercise authority over them.'"

Those who are considered, he says, 'so-called rulers, they think authority is given, it's demanded, it's claimed. And then it's exercise. It's top down. But in Mark 10:43 he says, "But it shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all." So there clearly is a hierarchy. There's a way to progress in the hierarchy. There's a way to grow in authority and power, but the path isn't seeking personal gain. No, it's service. It's service to the king in God's economy of redemption, those who wish to be great must renounce all claims of greatness.

They must seek to serve others, not claim authority and seek control. He's saying if anyone wants to be great, you're going to be a servant. But if you even want to be greater than that, if you want to be first, you got to be everyone's slave. And really, what he's getting at is, you guys asked for the wrong thing. You guys want the thrones. I promise the thrones. You want proximity to me. If you want that, then you need to come and say, "Lord Jesus, how can we serve you? Lord Jesus, give us opportunities to serve. Wherever we are, we want to bring glory to your name." And he says... Look at the example of Christ verse 45, "For even the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." He's the son of man. He's the one with all authority. And what does he do with his authority?

He uses his authority in service. He's the servant king. Therefore, service doesn't nullify authority. Authority assumes just a greater level of service with more implications. The more people that you serve, the more authority the Lord and trusts to do what? To serve more. And the fact that Jesus calls each of us to serve doesn't mean that we all serve with the same authority. He says the son of man came. He doesn't say the son of man was born. He says the son of man came, and the emphasis on the fact that it was his choice. He chose to come. He chose the life, he chose the death, and he came to serve. This is his kingly service. Jesus the Son came as the servant of the father, serving the father's will and serving the elect and to give his life. This is a phrase that's used to describe a soldier giving their life for fellow soldiers or for those that they protect.

So Jesus came to serve. How? By giving his life. Why? That's the only way to provide ransom. And the word for ransom here is to release. It's used for sums being paid to secure the freedom of prisoners of war or return of captives or slaves. One of the most famous erroneous interpretations regarding the death of Jesus Christ is some look at this ransom language and they think, well, Jesus is paying ransom to Satan in order to get souls, and it's erroneous because God owes Satan absolutely nothing. No, the language of ransom is illusioned to the Old Testament where ransom, the price was paid to free slaves. And this has to do with our spiritual economy in the sense that in order for us to be freed, someone needs to atone for our sins. A guilt offering needs to be brought. And that's what Jesus is. Jesus is the great Passover lamb, lamb of God that had no blemish, and he alone can represent us on the cross.

And he pays the price, he pays the ransom for whom? And he says, as a ransom for many, a ransom for many. The Bible says that He died for many. Jesus died for many, not all. The Bible says he died for his elect because our God is a God who accomplishes his purposes. He is nonfrustratable, He does not try and fail in any of his atoning work. He accomplished precisely what he intends to accomplish. One theologian writes, "For whom it, the ransom, for whom it is intended, to them, it is applied. For whom it is intended, for them, it is applied, but not to all is it applied, therefore not to all is it intended. And you say, well, how do I know I'm elect? How do I know that Jesus died on the cross for me, that he paid the ransom for me. If you believe that Jesus Christ died for you, then Jesus Christ died for you.

If you believe in him, Christ died for you, that's the easiest way to confirm your election. And there is no other way. This is the way scripture presents it, that Christ died for you. You know Christ died for you because you believe that he died for you. And we do have a responsibility to believe. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes, whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Christ gave himself for believers. That's it. If you are a believer, you're one of the elect. And this puts us right in the place where we ought to be, that we do have a responsibility to believe.

And if you're here today and you hear my voice and you feel desires in your heart, desires for God, desires for salvation, desire for election, desire to know the truth, well, I'm here to tell you that those desires are not natural. Those desires are from the Lord. It's a sign that the Holy Spirit already working in your life. And if you've recognized that you're lost, if you're recognized that you're a sinner, if you recognize the guilt and the shame, well, trust in Jesus Christ today, believe in Christ today and know that he has died for you. And when you come and when you receive his grace and you receive him as your savior, well, that settles the question. Point three is Bartimaeus set his sight upon Jesus in verse 46, and they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus was sitting by the roadside.

Jericho is important biblically. If you remember, this was the first city that Israel, as they entered the promised land, this is the first city that they captured. And then from this city, they took conquest of the rest of Canaan. And who was their leader at the time? It was Joshua. Joshua was the leader of the people of God. Joshua was the one that brings the freed captives into the promised land. Joshua's name in Hebrew is Yeshua, which is the same name as Jesus Christ. Jesus is Yeshua. Jesus is the new Joshua. Likewise, he begins his climactic invasion evasion of Jerusalem, so to speak. Jesus Christ, the son of God, the son of man, the Son of David marches through Jericho like the new Joshua on his way to free people from sin. And on the margin of this battle, as he's going down the road, sits a blind man who has lived in the realm of darkness.

But now he is heard a rumor of a liberator, a liberator that's come to free him. And he thinks, who might this be? This might be the son of David. This might be the Messiah. And Isaiah 35, it's promised that when the Messiah comes, he's going to open the eyes of the blinds. So Bartimaeus realizes he has an opportunity. He has one weapon, one weapon, and he's been honing this weapon. It's his voice. And he realizes, "You know what? I can't see him. I hear there's a commotion, and I am going to make the biggest scene ever. I'm going to scream at the top of my lungs, and no one's going to stop me." And that's what he does. Verse 47, when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, son of David have mercy on me."

He isn't claiming his rights. He isn't claiming his status. He isn't claiming any privileges. He doesn't have any. He doesn't come to Jesus and say, "Jesus, you owe me something. You're the son of David, meaning you've been sent by God. Why have you allowed me to suffer as much as I've been suffering? Why this life that you've given me?" He doesn't come with a list of complaints. He doesn't bring him a list of how hard life is, how unfair things have been. No, he just recognizes, I need mercy, and he can give it to me. Verse 48, "And many rebuked him telling him to be silent, but he cried out all the more, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.'" He sees this one shot, and he'll do absolutely anything and everything to prevent his chance for delivering slipping away. The blind man's unwavering persistence is exemplary.

How does he confirm his election? He cries out to the Lord. He knows that his cause is hopeless apart from the Lord. One commentator says what Bartimaeus lacks in eyesight, he makes up for in insight. He understands Jesus is the Son of David, the promised one, the Messiah figure who will come to deliver his people. In Mark 10:49, "Jesus stopped and said, 'Call him." And they called the blind man, saying to him, 'Take heart. Get up. He's calling you.' And throwing off his cloak, he's sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, 'What do you want me to do for you?" And the blind man said to him, 'Rabbi, let me recover my sight.'" I find it fascinating that Jesus asked him, "What do you want?" It's like it's obvious. Jesus, I want to see. I want what they have. Lord, isn't this clear?

Why does Jesus ask him the question? I think it's partially because he wants Bartimaeus to articulate it, say it, because it takes faith to say something as crazy as this out loud. Lord, this is what I'm praying for. I pray that you heal me. I pray that you give me eyesight. And to speak to articulate is to express the faith. And Jesus said to him, verse 52, "Go your way. Your faith has made you well.' And immediately, he recovered his sight and followed him on the way." He says, "Your faith, your faith in me is what made all the difference and made you well." It's the Greek "σοζο". It means not just healing, it means salvation. You have been saved. It's the same phrase that Jesus uses when he heals the woman with the issue of blood. He says, Your faith has healed you or saved you.

And the Lord Jesus Christ here gave the gentleman a physical eyesight, but he also gave him spiritual eyesight. He enlightened him. And the placement of this miracle right after Jesus' teaching section of the disciples is important. The disciples, they know about Christ. They've walked with him for three years, but they still haven't seen clearly. They still haven't comprehended the truth. Their eyesight spiritually needs to be healed. And healing of spiritual blindness happens when your eyes are open and you see things as they are. When you see God as he is, you desire him as you ought to desire. You desire to do his will because doing so delights him and clears your vision to see him purely what made the difference in Bartimaeus life? It was faith in Christ. Faith is the beginning, the middle, and the end of salvation and the Christian life. It's the beginning because it is by faith that we receive forgiveness of our sins and peace with God.

Faith is the middle of our walk with the Lord, because as Paul says, we live by faith, and in the son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. And faith is the end of everything we do, as Hebrews 10:35 says. "Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls." The Christian walk begins with faith, continues with faith, ends with faith. One saved always persevering.

As one writer said, faith is the hand of the soul by which we take hold of Christ. It is the mouth of the soul by which we feed on Christ and are nourished by him. It is the foot of the soul, which as we read, the righteous runs to the Lord and find safety. And faith is the eye of the soul by which we look to him and live. Faith is what makes you a disciple of Christ and what keeps you a disciple of Christ, and what sustains you as a disciple of Christ to the end. Faith is the knowledge that certain things are true. The man knows things about himself. He knows things about Jesus, but he doesn't know much. But he does know the most important things. What does he know? Well, first, he knows that he's blind. He knows that others have something that he does not have, and he wants that eyesight.

And I think the reason the majority of people do not come to Christ, hold on to Christ, ask for forgiveness from Christ is because they don't see themselves as they really are. Th ey don't see themselves as disabled, blind, needing to be healed. In the book of Revelation, Jesus is speaking to the church in Laodecia, a group of people who consider themselves believers. And he says to them, "You think you are rich, but you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked." They weren't physically blind, but they were spiritually blind. And here, Bartimaeus, he knows exactly his situation. "Lord, I need healing." And he also knows something about Jesus. He calls Jesus rabbi. In the original, it's the emphasis on these Lord, that you are in a position of authority over me. Lord, you have power to heal me. I've heard it. Lord, I know that you are the son of David. You're the Messiah. Lord, I want you to be my messiah. And I want you to notice that Jesus does put the emphasis on the personal pronouns. Your faith has made you well.

Your faith has saved you. And Martin Luther commenting on this text, he says, "But who is this me?" Your faith has saved you. "Who is this me?" Martin Luther writes, "It is even I, Martin Luther, a wretched and a condemned sinner. This word me is full of saving faith. He who will utter or write this little word, me shall be a good advocate and a disputer against all the accusations of the law and of his own conscience, for Christ delivered up for me. Neither sheep nor ox, nor gold, nor silver, but himself, and that entirely in holy for me. Yes, even for me who am such a rich and miserable sinner, say me with all your might and print this pronoun me indelibly in your heart." There's a difference between saying the Lord is a shepherd and saying, the Lord is my shepherd. There's a difference between saying Father God and saying, you're my Father, heavenly Father, you're my father. It's an extraordinary statement of personal commitment that Bartimaeus makes to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus heals him, gives him what he wants, and says, "Go your way."

And Bartimaeus, at this point, it's expected, he's, okay. Thank you. I'm going to go home. God bless you. And he follows Jesus. He follows Jesus on Jesus' way. What's he doing? He's committing his life to Jesus Christ. It's an extraordinary statement of personal commitment when he calls Jesus, rabbi, my master. And what we see here is that Bartimaeus above all else, didn't just want physical vision. Above all else, he wanted Christ. He wanted to be with Christ. He wanted to follow Christ. And Bartimaeus, with his life, what is he doing? "Jesus, you gave me eyesight." And twice in this text and our text, Jesus asked, "What do you want me to do for you? What do you want me to do for you?" He says, James and John. He says it to Bartimaeus. And now Bartimaeus with his life, what does he do? He's saying, "Lord Jesus, what do you want me to do for you? Lord Jesus? How can I serve you?" Freely pardoned, he gives himself to Christ's service. But at so mighty of Christ as the blood of Christ, he devotes himself, heartily and thoroughly to the one who redeemed him.

And this isn't what grace does. When you get a glimpse of grace, a taste of grace, you want to say to Lord Jesus, "Lord Jesus, what would you have me do?" And this is the love of Christ. The love of Christ is what changes your desires to want to obey Christ. Second Corinthians 5:14, "For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised."Bartimaeus, the first days of his life where he sees are days where he follows Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. The very next text is Jesus Christ going to Jerusalem and the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday. And Bartimaeus went with him. So with his eyes, he's beginning to see for the first time. What does he see? What is he an eyewitness too? He's an eyewitness. To the last week of Christ's earthly ministry. As he was mocked, spat at, scorched crucified, he got to witness that with his eyes.

But above all else, he received the salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ offered him. At this time, we're going to transition to celebrating holy communion. And holy communion is for whom? Holy communion is for repentant believers in Jesus Christ. So if you're not a Christian or you're not sure if you're a Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Or if you are living in unrepentant sin as a follower of Christ, we ask that you refrain. Instead, take time to repent. But if you do repent as a believer in Christ, you're welcome to partake. If you have not received the elements and you would like to participate, please raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring you the elements. And as they're dispersed, I'm going to pray over Holy communion.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the incredible text today that reminds us of the battle within the heart of the Son of God. We thank you, Jesus, that you saw exactly what you were going into and you set your face like Flint. And even, Lord, when you wrestled with the father's will in the garden of Gethsemane, ultimately, you said, "It's not my will, but yours be done." Lord Jesus, today we are reminded of your sufferings. We remember your suffering in our behalf. This is the price that you paid to ransom us from our sins and to atone for our forgiveness. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you offer us salvation by grace through faith. It's free to us because you paid for it with your suffering. And Lord, we take some time now to repent of sin, repent of transgression, repent of pride, repent of lackluster desire for you. And we pray that as we partake in communion, that you use this as means of grace to stoke our hearts to love you ever more. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Speaker 1:

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Pastor Andy:

Today, we are, if you have not been with us, we are continuing in our service in our series Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and The Secrets of God's Kingdom. Today, I'm giving Pastor Jan a preaching break, and just want to just take up this text with you right now. We are in Mark 10:17-31, the gospel of Mark 10:17-31. Follow along in your bibles or on the screen as I read. This is the Word of our Lord.

"And as He was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before Him and asked Him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' and Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother,' and he said to Him, 'Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth,' and Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven and come follow Me.'

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God," and the disciples were amazed at His words, but Jesus said to them again, 'Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.' And they were exceedingly astonished and said to Him, 'Then who can be saved?'

Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him, 'See, we have left everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first.'" This is the word of our Lord.

Let me pray before I start my sermon. Heavenly Father, we praise You for creating this day. God, You are the creator of all of the heavens and the earth. You pulled from abundance of authority and power and made all that we see. You have made us in Your image and Your creation is glorious, but, Lord, we as people, this creation is tainted by sin, Lord, for we can see Your majesty in all of creation, but we do not turn and worship You, Lord.

Further, You show us Your goodness and offering the gospel to us. You sent your Son to communicate Your glory and Your love to us, yet we do not receive it. Lord, we choose just idols, things to worship, things that we think will satisfy us, broken cisterns that never satisfy at the cost of honoring You and putting You in the proper position as lead in our life. Holy Spirit, show us all now just what is gripping our heart, what is trying to pull us away from You, and Lord, just give us the strength and power to follow You, to choose the better portion in Jesus. I pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

To start, I want to direct our attention to the famous verses in this text. I feel like most verses could be, you could say about that, but verses Mark 10:23-25, "And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,' and the disciples were amazed at His words, but Jesus said to them again, 'Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.'"

It's hard to not get distracted by the talk of a camel going through the eye of a needle, but these words here contain a talk of the biggest theme of the New Testament. Here in the Lord's famous comments on the case of the rich young ruler who had just turned his back against him and had gone away from him grieved and sorrowful, in these verses, we concentrate, actually, not on the camel going through the eye of the needle or on wealth and possessions primarily, but we are forced to draw our attention to the theme that's really at the heart of all of the New Testament in Mark, the theme of the kingdom of God, the theme of Christ's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven put in other parts of scripture.

Our series is called Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom. All of the message we've been going through, whether we've blatantly discussed this theme and described the kingdom or just talked about specific teachings and aspects in it, they're all about this theme. For Jesus, He Himself told us entry into this kingdom is the most important thing we should seek in this life.

Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek you first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you." Jesus said these verses in the midst of a larger comment in Matthew 6:25-34. "Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink nor about your body, what you'll put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious saying, 'What shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?' for the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

You see, to Jesus, to us here at Mosaic, the world is in trouble. Men and women are in trouble. The impacts of sin, corruption, folly, and death reign at large despite of all mankind's wisest innovations. We have all that we need and more. In our passage, we talk about in ancient, rich, young ruler. Realistically, all of us probably live better than the ancient rich young ruler, yet we are still unhappy and we're looking for a relief. We're seeking solutions and we're troubled and we're worried and constantly anxious about will we be satisfied in this life.

To sum our solution to this constant fight with dissatisfaction and worry, it's a matter of diet, it's a matter of clothing, it's a matter of having the right relationship, it's a matter of technology easing things for us, it's a matter of obtaining more knowledge, it's a matter of going to space to tap its resources, and so on, but what the Lord says, this shall not be. It's all wrong. He's the creator. We're not to live in a state of worry and anxiety or fear of what we'll have today or tomorrow.

Jesus says, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will be added unto you." Jesus came specifically to tell us that nothing is more important than entering the kingdom, and that entry into the kingdom is possible.

In Mark 1:15, perhaps the theme sentence of the whole book, Jesus says, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." It's the repentance of faith turning from rebellious sin, turning from idolatry and things that we think will satisfy us apart from God and believing that Jesus will. That's how we can be saved, but as we have seen through Jesus' message and His engagement throughout Mark, the men and women of His own times of His own age and generation, they struggled over this. You would've thought that with such a messenger, that with such miracles that He paired with His message to show His authority, to show that they could trust Him, that everybody would've listened and believed, and that they've gone just running, running into the kingdom of God saying, "Lord, how can I serve You?" but they didn't.

They stumbled in Jesus. They questioned, they argued, and the same is today. We are blessed people who get to look back at history and say this happened. There's a reason why history is marked by this Man's coming, the God Man's coming, and we can trust Him. He is on the throne today, especially after He's gone to the cross risen and ascended into heaven.

So the lesson behind of what I'm saying so far is that mankind, by nature, we struggle to trust God. As a result of sin, altogether our approach to life is entirely wrong in all its ideas and all of its thinking and the way that we pursue satisfaction, the way that we pursue peace, the way we engage the creation that God wanted us to enjoy and cultivate in communion with Him, and it's because this problem happened in Jesus' time, and today, we have to focus our attention on the matter. Jesus is talking about how can one enter the kingdom of God. That's the question He is answering in Mark. He's talking again about entry in one of the last passages while He's on His path to Jerusalem going to the cross. This is of utmost important to Jesus.

What we've been talking about throughout Mark is the kingdom of God, a common element that comes out is that it's always surprising. Jesus, one of the things about the kingdom of God is that you can't really describe it in terms that, one, a fallen believer who because of his sin doesn't have ears to hear, can't really understand it. You have to be in the kingdom to really start understanding what Jesus is talking about. He has to describe, but no single word can describe the joy of salvation. No single word can describe the process and experience of sanctification in a believer's life, the growth and maturity and holiness in the faith.

So Jesus has to keep coming up with parables and stories to get us to understand entry into the kingdom and life in the kingdom. Today, our text tells us a tragic story. This is a story about the greatest of natural non-believing men. We have a good man, the rich young ruler, the best of his time, the best of Boston just engaging with Jesus Christ. The result, the start is amazing, the ending of the narrative, ultra depressing. We see that this kingdom of God, it's upside down, it's inside out. It just destroys, bursts our expectations.

So this first point, it's surprising, it's shocking. I'm going to break up this topic today talking about when you come to Jesus, when you seek entry into the kingdom of God, get ready to be shocked, searched, and blessed or grieved. When you come to Jesus, when you seek entry into the kingdom of God, get ready to be shocked, searched, and blessed or grieved. I intentionally have very simple language here in the outline because the people who really want very complex outlines and creative outlines and a lot of alliteration, the lofty thinkers, they're the ones who need to be humbled and be brought. You can't see because you're looking for those lofty things in everything the church does. So we're going to make it challenge your senses and humble you as we go through this. You need to be shocked by Jesus, searched and blessed, and you will be blessed or grieved after that happens. So let me go on.

When you come to Jesus Christ, get ready to be shocked. By shocked I mean you're going to be surprised. Many of your expectations when you truly come to Jesus and have an encounter with Him, with His word, your expectations of who God is, who Christ is, how you enter the kingdom, how you grow in the kingdom and how you're rewarded for life in the kingdom are going to burst, and you're going to be shocked in the sense that oftentimes what you learn about entry and life in the kingdom, it's going to go against your natural sensitivities and preferences. It's going to insult you and get you angry at times.

I emphasize this point because this text, there's a whole lot of shock within it. In specific verses, we have very clearly the Lord just broadly, He's using shocking language just through that intro verse, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go enter the kingdom of God." That's a sign. He's trying to get us ready to really be surprised, but specific verses beyond that, verse 23, "And Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, 'How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,' and the disciples were amazed at His words." These guys who have been walking on missions trips with Him, sitting at His feet, living with Him at the end of His ministry before He gets to Jerusalem, they're shocked by His words and teachings here.

Furthermore in verse 26, Jesus repeats Himself, "How difficult it will be for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and they were exceedingly astonished and said to Him, "Then who can be saved?" They were exceedingly astonished. They're floored. Further, they asked the question, "Then who can be saved?" This isn't a question. This is an exclamation of Jesus, "This guy is better than me. If He can't get in, how can we get in?" This is offensive. This is absurd. So specifically, these verses mention it, the last verse though, and this verse 31 could be a whole sermon on its own, "But many who are first will be last and the last first."

This is Jesus trying to just stir our sensitivity, stir our senses to say, "Things are going to be different. I've established this kingdom through My life, through My faithfulness, through My death, through My resurrection. That's where I'm going and be prepared. It's a call that those who are lowly and humble and deny themselves in this life in My way will be exalted by Me in eternity." This is just to think like this. Those who are last will be first and first last. It's completely contradictory how man thinks, how traditional religion thinks. Only the strong survive. God helps those who help themselves.

In the Jewish system, Jewish thought was if you climb a ladder, your goal as a Jew of that day was if you were blessed to get more formal education and training, you became a synagogue ruler, you became a scribe or Pharisee, you made it. So Jesus prepares us with specific shock in these verses, but just broadly, the whole story of the rich young ruler, it's really to shock us, to startle us and get us concerned about our candidacy for entry in the kingdom of God.

The tragedy, what the Lord is trying to teach us is a shocking lesson that goodness is not enough to enter the kingdom of God. Goodness, riches, wealth, these things that the world says are indicators of righteousness are at that time they're not good enough. So what do we do? How do you get in? Yes, for us it's easy for believers and non-believers to say bad people shouldn't get in. Those who blatantly rebel, they commit murder, they do heinous, perverted crimes, very clearly, if God's real, if He's good, very clearly they're not getting in. Christian, non-Christian, it's easy to get unity on that.

This text, it brings out that not badness, not that badness is wrong, but even goodness is not enough. We can exclude ourselves from badness, but when we hear that goodness is not enough, it's offensive because we're good people. We generally do more good than bad. We try to give more than we receive. When we mess up, we try to correct ourselves, we recycle, we buy local, we try to help our neighbor, we go to church, we give to nonprofits, but the tragedy of the rich young ruler confronts this thinking, for we're to read this passage and see that this guy at the start of the passage, he's presented to be better than us, but he's not good enough to enter.

So look at him, look at how well he starts. Verse 17, "And as he was setting out on his journey, a man came up and knelt before Him and asked Him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'" This is just an astounding engagement. First of all, the text says a man. There's two parallel passages that tell the same story, Luke 18, Matthew 19, and he's just called a man here. Later on in the text it says he had great wealth, but we find out he's young in one of the other parallel passages. He's labeled as a ruler in one of the others. So he's wealthy, he's young.

In that day, youth as in our day, youth, who doesn't want a nice charismatic young man saying, "Lord, what must I do to serve you?" How happy are we when we see young people taking an initiative in the community, taking initiative in the church slash synagogue, which is our exact situation now? How often are we excited to see young people, let alone wealthy? This guy would've been the perfect man to run a $5 million campaign to get a church building. This guy was perfect just with these broad descriptions, but looking at the text, look at how he comes to the Lord.

All of Mark, we've been dealing with situations where even Jesus, His own disciples are not recognizing Him as Lord. They are essentially questioning His authority or not willing to trust in Him over and over again. It's really only the Gentiles, the people outside of the promises of God who are approaching Jesus with humility and trust and a heart to receive His kingdom and follow Him, but look at His approach. The man, he comes running up to Jesus as Jesus is leaving after a speaking and service engagement. If this man really was a ruler in his day, he was breaking custom here.

First of all, it's really hot there, but no, rich man, wealthy man, man of honor did not run. When the visiting teacher came in that society, the leaders of the synagogue weren't going down just running straight to Him. That would've brought some shame and maybe people would've questioned their authority and integrity.

Furthermore, it says he ran up and knelt before Him. He gets on his knees. That's just incredible. That is over the top and, again, not something that a man of honor does. Then what's even more notable is that this is a man who sees his need. He's willing to face potential public shame from his esteemed position because he says, "It's Jesus, this teacher, I've been hearing about this." The guy just thought, "He's talking about something that I don't have, eternal life." How many people do you share the gospel with, bring to church and they're like, "Yeah, I don't think I have that," but then they just never come back? They're content to just sit not knowing how to address that need, at least this guy's doing something.

Furthermore, he's showing Jesus respect through the running, through the bowing. He's saying, "I see you're a good teacher. I see you've got something." He eagerly wants to hear what Jesus has to say. Then his question, it's not perfect, and I'll get to that later, but he asks a question. He's interested in eternal life. So this guy, he's a very good, exceptional, young man who cares about spiritual matters, and he is approaching Jesus with great eagerness, great zeal to find out the truth.

I just want to say, as Christians, we pray for opportunities to share the gospel. We know God's love. We want everyone in our lives to have it if you really know it, and you're praying, "Lord, give me opportunities to share the gospel." How many of you, how thrilled would you be if someone at the lunch table at work said to you, "Andy, I know you're Christian. What must I do to inherit eternal life?" That'd be amazing. We dream for these opportunities. Most of the time we feel like a nag in the sharing and proclamation in public or in relationship.

I was flying a couple weeks ago. I like to sit with my Bible open on the airplanes like, "Maybe this person will ask me a question. Lord, Lord, just prepare me and just humble this person. Let them see that I might have an answer for them." I was literally thinking like that reading my Bible on the plane, but it didn't happen, unfortunately, but we pray for these situations.

So this guy's approach, it's good. There's something honorable and respectable about him, and you could not imagine anything more from a natural man, a non-believer. This is your friend who works at the biotech company in Boston saying, "There's something in your life that I don't have. What do I do to get it?" So Jesus, He's exposed this need. The man tries to find out how to address this thing that he's lacking and to get it. This is as good as a start as anybody could have.

To the disciples of his day, they would've thought that this guy would've walked right into the kingdom of God. That's why they're so amazed that the story ends differently. So can you imagine a better start, but that is not the story. This is not the way the engagement goes. He doesn't walk right into the kingdom. Verse 22 says, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions."

We're just forced to ask the question, "Why? What's the matter with this young man? What's the matter with his approach? Why did he go away? Why did he not enter the kingdom? Why is he left grieving and despondent, grieving in heart? What's the trouble?" The one phrase answer is this man went away because of his profound misunderstanding of the kingdom of God. That's why the Lord makes the comment in verse 23, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." He says it again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."

It's impossible for a righteous man seemingly perfect on the outside by his own works, by his own volition to enter the kingdom of God, but with God all things are possible. So this grace, we can only be saved by grace. So that's part of goodness does not matter, it's God's grace, but to focus on the shock, Jesus, He shocks with specific verses in this and Jesus shocks broadly with this tragedy.

When people draw nears to Jesus, He shocks them. If you really have an encounter with Jesus, if you dig into scripture, if you hear a truly biblical, faithful sermon, if you come to Jesus with a heart and say, "Show me. I want to know who You are. I want to know what Your call on my life is," it's going to be a drastic engagement. There's only one of two directions. If you feel like you've never really been shocked by Jesus, you probably have not gotten close to Him. You're not really understanding the heart of His message. You're not really understanding the impossibility of entering His kingdom and the call to follow Him.

So Jesus, He shocks those who draw near to him and He contends that their views of Him need to change, as well as their views of the kingdom need to be shaken up. So a lot of people, they talk about Jesus only as if He was a good man of history. Just like the man in our story, He's a good man. He was a great teacher, a great voice for the poor, great among the philosophers, a great social revolutionary. This is how I used to talk about Jesus when I was insecure to identify as a Christian at my liberal arts college. Perhaps they say He was a prophet among the great prophets, Buddha, Confucius. They say He was one of the greatest the world has ever seen. They think when you talk about Jesus in these ways but don't call Him the Lord, the Savior of man who came to die on the cross to bear the wrath for their sin and rise that they might have resurrection life and joyful, abundant life in eternity.

When they say these comparisons, it's really an insult. They're really showing that they don't know who He really is. Jesus is not just any good teacher. He's the Son of God and Son of Man, the living God, the omnipotent God taken on flesh. He can't be categorized in the same genre as fallen man. We need to view Him this way because that's how He viewed Himself. So He's shown us that here a little bit in this text, but He wants us to confront our views of the kingdom of God.

A lot of people come to Christianity think that it's just an add-on to what they're already doing in life. This is exactly what the rich young ruler was guilty of. He says, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do?" This is a man who wants to be doing something. He wants to keep doing what he's already doing, but maybe add a little bit more by his own effort to attain eternal life. We can see right away his approach. He seems flawless, but in his words, there's this pride saying, "I want to be a part of my own salvation. I want to be a part of my entry." He isn't coming as a child. He's not helpless and needy and humble. He is presenting himself as someone who's capable. He's successful in business. He's got good financial capital, not just cash, he's got capital. That's what possessions means later on in the text. He's socially respected in the community. He's got religious success. He wants Jesus to give him what is lacking and maintain the status quo of his life, and that's just not how the kingdom of God works.

Jesus says to him, "You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you have treasure in heaven. Come follow me." He's saying, "I'm here to uphold, just overturn your whole life. I'm here to cause upheaval," and it's not really on the outside first, it's on the inside first. Now, I'll elaborate more on that later, but Christianity, it's not an add-on. Jesus said, Mark 2:21-22, "No one sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old and a worst tear is made, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins, but new wine is fresh for wineskins."

Jesus is the fresh wine. If you put Him into an old wineskin, it's going to burst. When you enter the kingdom of God, it's not just like any other habit or study that you take up casually or leisurely or see, "What more could it bring to my life?" He wants to make you entirely new. He is not content to play second fiddle to anything in your life. This is really important because a lot of people, I know people in my life who have engaged Christianity for decades and they're just approaching it as if it's just any old study of history. It's just like any other philosophy, "Let me see what more it can add to my repertoire."

No. Jesus says, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me." When you enter into the kingdom by this great gift of faith, you should expect your life to some change, some transformation. The rich young ruler knew that what Jesus called him to was so much more than he wanted to do. He thought, "It's just a little bit of sprinkle, a little bit of Jesus into my life and I'll just keep going with everything else."

So Jesus, this is all under the point of when you come to Jesus, expect to be shocked. This is when you come to Jesus, expect to be shocked and, really, as you continue in life, expect to be shocked. He's going to keep pushing you toward greater levels of holiness, greater levels of maturity. A lot of people, they don't understand how far, how serious He is about holiness. When you're saved, praise God, you've probably left something, probably a sin that gripped the surface of your life and heart, but He just keeps digging and digging deeper and deeper. A lot of people are shocked how the Lord through marriage puts two people with complimentary parts together, and as iron sharpens iron, they see the endless, endless way that the Lord is just calling them to greater holiness by one day at a time not lashing out at their spouse.

When you're a member of a church and you're called to in sickness and in health, stay faithful, continue to gather with one another, continue to love one another as Jesus has loved you and you find out these people are sinners, these leaders are flawed, the Lord is not just calling them to repent and trying to train everybody, He's calling you to greater levels of holiness in the way that you engage the tensions.

It's shocking at how far the Lord digs into our identity to get us to grow in the faith, but when you're coming to the faith, when the Lord is shocking you when you're in the faith, how do you respond to that? This text, I think the response is you let Jesus search you. When you come to Jesus, get ready to be searched. By search I mean that Jesus probes your entire being and He looks for defilement, He looks for impurities on the surface of your life and at the heart, and He has perfect vision and He's going to reveal what He sees.

If you look at the text, three times in the text it said that Jesus looked at someone. Verse 21, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." Verse 23, "Jesus looked around at His disciples and said ..." Again in verse 27, "Jesus looked at them and said ..." Three times there's this idea of Jesus looking, and I don't think that this is there as an accident. This is one of the unique elements of this presentation, of this story that is not in the other two gospel presentations of it.

What we have here in this text is that Jesus, when He's looking at the young man, when He's looking at his disciples, it's a sense of He's giving a holy gaze. It's the Almighty God looking right at us and right through us. In Revelation 1, Jesus is depicted in radiant glory. We just think of a refining fire and having eyes of blazing fire. The apostle John said, the one who had the vision, the Holy Spirit gave the vision to for the Book of Revelation, he says, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead." You're just exposed when Jesus looks at your life and you realize you can't stand before Him in His holiness.

In the next two chapters of Revelation after chapter one, Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus, He looks at seven churches and it seems as if He looks right through them. He understands what's happening. He calls them out for their sin, for their grievances for Him, and it seems like He's speaking into the minds and hearts of the individuals of the body. We think of Jesus telling Nathaniel when He's gathering His disciples, "Nathaniel, I saw you under the tree," and Nathaniel's shaken. The Lord has a special vision. In today's account, we see Jesus as looking, searching the rich young ruler, perceiving what his genuine spiritual sickness was, probing the core of his corruption, and it's amazing.

I think his vision, it's just incisive. Within a few lines in an instant, Jesus just shatters this man's identity, reveals his greatest heart issues. So He sees this first and the man approaches Him. He finds one little mistake in his presentation when he says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do?" Jesus takes that clue, which suggests that this man thinks he deserves entry into the kingdom based on his own righteousness that he's billed out by his works, by his observance of God's law, and He immediately questions the man's understanding for why he thinks he's a good candidate about the law.

He says, "You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother," and he said to Him, "Teacher, all these I've kept for my youth." The man's answer affirms Jesus' suspicion that he thinks he can enter the kingdom upon his own merit, but you see, Jesus' wisdom, His genius in these verses were in the list of commandments that He mentioned, he's only acknowledging the second table of the law that is summarized by love your neighbor as yourself. He's not bringing up any of the first four commandments that talk about love of God.

So this man thinks that he's one who should garner entry based on his good status in the community, based on his upholding of the commandments. Jesus, He sees that and He looks at him. He loves him, "There's almost something like something really likable about you. It's cute how you're presenting yourself to me, but you are so unobservant of yourself," and He looks at him and He asks him about one of the heart commandments, "What's the first commandment? You shall have no other god before Me." Jesus, He asks him this, He doesn't ask him this, He just puts His finger on the dot of where his idolatry when he says ... "And Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven. Come follow me.'"

He's pressing right on the center of the target, that thing that the man is holding onto that is preventing him from full submission to Christ's lordship, repentance and faith before him. This is what Jesus does. Further, the man says, it says, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." So Jesus, like a surgeon, incisively reveals that this man who's perfect on the outside, he's an idolator. He does not love God first and foremost above everything in his life. He does not think that he was made to worship God and be satisfied by life of communion with Him, and so much so, his grasp on his money, his wealth, and perhaps all the things that it brought was so great that God is standing there right before him inviting him to follow Him, to care for Him, promising him riches in heaven and he wouldn't let go of it.

So God, He just searches this man, Christ searches this man super quickly and nothing. This is what he does with all of us. Regardless of whatever good appearances or law-abiding appearances that we can conjure up, Christ can see what our heart truly longs for, and if it's not Him, He's going to expose it. In the case of the rich young ruler, it was his grip on his money. Jesus, He's not revealing that money is an inherently bad thing. There are great saints of history who have had money in scripture. We have Job, we have Joseph of Arimathea, the man who donated his tomb upon Christ's crucifixion. We think of Zacchaeus, who in his repentance used his wealth for God's glory, but money is not evil, but the text shows us that money is something so powerful that it can blind us to its control over us.

It's money, there's something specific in Christ bringing this out in this passage. There's a special authority that it can have to us. This man clearly had no self-awareness, but everybody is tempted to clinging to something in this life for satisfaction that is not Jesus. Jesus wants to reveal that to us and root it out.

I remember hearing about a story where there were monkey hunters in a jungle somewhere, and the monkeys were so ... What they did was, the hunters, they basically just had to put nuts in a jar and essentially fasten the container to where they put it. The monkeys were so greedy about getting the nuts. Their desire was so set on the nuts that when the hunters would arrive, they just kept their hand and stood there even though it led to their capture, their demise. We are just like the monkeys. People today, we hear the gospel go out, we hear it, we feel its call. We see the peel of a life with Christ, the joy of salvation, but we're unwilling to come when Christ calls us because we won't let go of our grasp around that thing that our heart is in love with. We tend to make, and it's not just rebellious sin, it's often good things that we put in the place of God.

So what is it for you? What are you holding onto? If Christ came and He just looked at you, He didn't have to play around with the man with talk of goodness, He says, "You want to talk goodness? God is good. Let's not confuse categories here. Let's not talk about goodness. Your sense of goodness, you don't see it, but it's decided by your culture, your preferences. You want to talk about the law? Okay. I'm going to use the law to try to show your own blindness. That clearly doesn't work. Then we'll look at you and put it, bring you right to your idol." Christ, He could just look at us and call it out.

So if He was here today, what would be that thing that you were thinking, that thing, that relationship, that experience, that lifestyle that you think could satisfy you more than Him? He's going to search us and probe us and try to get us to relinquish our grip on such things.

Notice the text says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him," when he brought out the man's idolatrous relationship with his wealth, with his possessions. The text says this is loving, this act by Jesus is loving. It's tough love. This is Jesus with the holy gaze trying to help someone come out of their blindness, come out of the slavery to that thing that is dominating their life, that thing that they structure all of their life around to keeping, to retaining, that thing that's preventing them from worshiping Him, and He's trying to free them to come receive forgiveness for their sin, enjoy a life of freedom, a life entrusting Christ to provide for you one day at a time, and it's what is He calling you to let go of.

I think we all have those things. Is it a relationship? Is it wealth and the control of your life that it could bring? Is it having a child? Is it your children? What is it? How do we ask? We ask, "Jesus Lord, search me and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there'll be any grievous way in me." If anyone has walked closely to me, you know that was my verse of 2023. The Christian, you get frightened by this searching at the start of faith because you see what Jesus is going to call you to leave to come and follow Him, but actually, you see the goodness of it and you grow in your profession. You grow in this prayer, "Lord, search me because if there's anything in me that is going to separate, tempt me to leave You, stop following You, if there's anything in me that's going to get in the way of this relationship that I have with You, just root it out, and please be gentle, but if You have to be painful and I'm that blind, just do it."

We should grow to appreciate this searching. The Christian should grow, but the thing that happens when you feel the Lord, He's shocking you, He's searching you, it's offensive because our flesh, until Jesus returns, is going to fight and resist. It's going to want to look back and be tempted to cling to those idols. So when we come to Jesus, you should get ready to be blessed or grieved. This is when Jesus is shocking you, He's searching you, you've got two directions to go.

We see in this text, these two results. With verse 22, we see the grief in the reaction of the ruler, "Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions." The word for grief used here, it's the word used in the gospels to describe the same grief that Jesus felt on the cross when the Father with whom He dwelt in perfect communion, loving, eternal communion, turns His face away, does not respond to His cries of, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me on the cross?" That same word for grief that talks about just a grief that we cannot fathom, that is the same word used to describe the grief that this rich young ruler felt when he's walking away from Jesus, when Jesus is pressing on that idol.

The irony is, this is after he's walking away, he feels this grief. Jesus is actually letting him have what he wants, yet he's walking away despondent, in despair. He's clinging with a vice grip to that idol. It's tearing him apart, yet he's still holding onto it. We don't know. The text says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." The only way Jesus can actually look at a sinner and idolator and love him is by grace. A lot of people say, "This guy definitely was not saved." The prayer is, hopefully, he saw the folly of his ways, and what did he have to do? He had to repent, go to Jesus, confess his sin of idolatry, of thinking that his wealth could satisfy him more than Jesus, and by confessing his sin, he could have been saved. That's the same with all of us if we catch ourselves in such idolatry.

Then when we do that, whether it's in the initial first time that the Lord is searching us or later on perhaps, hopefully in the way that the ruler did, we can experience God's blessing. We see God's blessing, Mark 10:26-31, "And they were exceedingly astonished," the disciples, "and said to Him after the rich young ruler goes away, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him, 'See, we have left everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first.'"

For the person who has been searched by Jesus, who repents of their grip on the idols of their heart and follows Him and trusts His position in this life and eternity with Him, these are the most encouraging words. This is not prosperity gospel. These are Jesus' words. We read them at face value. As you engage the shock of just the difficulty of leaving stuff to enter into the kingdom as Jesus instructs you, when you engage Jesus' probing, when you relinquish your grip on these things that keep you away from following Him, He promises to reward you. These verses give us assurance that He sees your sacrifice. He sees your effort to leave, to say goodbye to the old man and live in a resurrected new way when you follow Him.

Further, He says, He's not just going to honor in eternity, He's going to honor it in this life. What we're called by Christians upon the moment that we're saved is to follow Him, to trust Him that He will satisfy. We were made for worship for Him. That's what Adam and Eve, they're made to worship and dwell in the garden in perfect communion with the Lord, but they sinned against Him thinking that Satan said, "There's fruit of this world. Taste it. He's withholding something from you," but when we come to Christ and say, "No, God, I see You are enough," He promises to satisfy.

Anyone who receives Jesus' call to follow Him and allows Him to stay in the position of Lord of their life and follows Him one day at a time, they know that actually a lot of these earthly things don't matter. The joy of salvation, the joy of peace, the peace that comes when you know that you're right before God, the Father through Jesus Christ, the perfect mediator, the knowledge that God loves you despite having full knowledge of your sin because of Jesus, you know that the joy of salvation is better. These extra benefits, these are just words and promises to give us hope to persevere until the end, but we can ask Him expectantly that He will offer them.

There is an element, Mark says with persecutions. So it's not going to be perfect. Our hearts can be tempted towards sin. The creation is still crying out for Jesus' return. We're still in a fallen world, and these persecutions, they're means to test us, to grow us, and we're called to endure through them.

I have had the pleasure in the past few weeks of having a rich young ruler of Boston of our congregation approach me and say, "Pastor Andy, I've had this relationship with you for five years, and just want to be honest with you. These whole five years I've checked in with you occasionally once a year, every year, year and a half, and what the Lord has shown me in the past couple months is I've been in grievous sin, just finding my satisfaction and building my kingdom, building my resume, grasping, having a vice grip on relationships that did not honor Him, and I see that that is sin. I see that I was committing idolatry, thinking these things could satisfy me more than God."

What did he ask me? He set an appointment with me and he said, "How can I serve?" He knew that the work was finished in his life. He asked me, "How can I serve?" Then he told me he also went online. He heard about Mosaic's campaign for the building fund, and he said, "The Lord blessed me while I was in this period of sin and I just really want to serve Him with my life. I sold the stock that I had." I don't know what a lot meant to him. I don't know the specific amount, but he sold stock that he acquired over this period and he gave it toward the kingdom of God. So praise God, I got to see the Lord move.

It's a miracle anytime the Lord does this in a person's life, but we need to trust that Jesus Christ, He is on His throne because He has lived, He has died, He has resurrected, He has ascended, He is in charge still, and He does save people. He gives people conviction by the Holy Spirit to repent of their idolatry, repent of their sin, repent of their self-dependence before Him and convinces them to repent and follow Him.

So what was the rich young ruler called to? He was called to faith. It's confusing when you think Jesus has this perfect evangelistic opportunity and he's like, "Why didn't he just tell him to repent and believe?" Well, have faith in Christ. Well, Jesus, He's wiser than us. He knew the hard work that He needed to do on this guy, but we're basically called to be saved and trust Him and trust Him with our salvation and trust Him with provision to help us persevere to the end.

When God saved Israel, He said, "People forget the preamble of the 10 Commandments." It's, "I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." When we fully believe that God and Christ has met our deepest need, our guilt, our shame, our sin, our idolatry before Him, our hopelessness, our condemnation, that we are just walking towards apart from Him. When we see that God has met our deepest need through sending Christ to be the propitiation for our sins on the cross, we can trust Him with everything else.

Israel was called to trust God after they're delivered from slavery. We are called to trust God when we realized He delivered us from the slavery to our sin. So we seek first His kingdom and all things will be added to us. Let me pray and close there.

Heavenly Father, we praise You that You sent Your Son Jesus Christ for we know by Your word and by our personal experience of salvation and His provision as we've walked forward in faith, we know that He is the real rich, young ruler. Lord, we thank You for giving us the perspective to look upon this instance in history, the story, this tragedy, to learn more about how we may enter, to learn that we, by our own efforts, cannot enter, but through Christ, through His efforts, through faith in them we can, but Lord, please embolden our faith, grow our faith, grow our trust that You, as You have saved us, You will always provide for us. You see our effort today to honor You. We ask that You would bless us, preserve us, provide the comfort and strength and care we need to continue to honor You. Lord, we just ask, we pray, sustain us until we receive our reward in heaven. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

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One quick announcement. We are in the middle of a building campaign and we're trying to raise $5 million for space that the Lord has sent to us. We've signed a purchase and sale agreement on half of it, and we're trying to raise funds for the rest. So I say that because we need prayer. The church of God, if we ask you to pray for the Lord to send us a miracle, it's a miracle that we got here. We're praying for the second iteration of the miracle is like the blind man. If you remember, he got the first touch from Jesus and Jesus says, "Do you see?" And he says, "I see people walking like trees." And he needed a second miracle.

So that's what we need. Our first miracle is the space is located, we know where it is. Down Kent Street, you take a left on Longwood, three towers, it's right there. So pray. And then also if the Lord brings anyone to mind, perhaps a rich uncle or something like that, and then connect us with them. With that said, would you please pray with us for the preaching of God's Holy word.

Heavenly Father, we come to your word with fear and trepidation, knowing that you are holy and your commandments are holy. And we recognize that we are sinful, we are commandment breakers, we are covenant breakers, unfaithful. Lord, but we thank you for Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior who out of his great love for you and out of his great love for us went to a cross to shed blood for the covenant. The covenant that welcomes us in for whoever would repent of sin, of transgression, everyone can be forgiven, purified, sanctified, and filled with the spirit to live lives of obedience. Lord, as we consider the topics before us in the text on marriage and divorce and children, someone of the most intimate spheres of life, Lord, we ask that you send us the Holy Spirit that you minister to us, to our hearts. If there's hardness of heart, remove it. If there's brokenness, mend it and heal it. If there's a lack of zeal for your word, I pray, Lord, fire up our hearts and bless us in the Holy Word in our time together, amen.

We are continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come. And the idea is that Jesus has come, the king has inaugurated His kingdom, but then He teaches us to pray. Our Father who in heaven hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So the more God's will is done in our lives, the more of His kingdom we usher into the world. The title of the sermon today is Covenantal Love. I will never leave you nor forsake you. These are some of the most powerful words that you can hear and they're some of the most powerful words that you can speak. These are words of eternal love, a love that will never end.

And who's the only one who can make that promise and we can completely trust Him to keep it always? Well, that's God of course, because God alone is eternal. God alone is perfectly faithful. And this love, this faithful love is a costly love. And that's why the conversation about marriage happens right after Jesus informed his disciples that there's a cost to following him. There's a cost to loving like Jesus loved. There's a cost to faithful love and that's denying self daily, dying to self daily, taking up the cross daily. The way of Christ is the way of love and that's how most of people in the world view Christ and God. God is love and we all know that. It's love for God and love for neighbor. But if you look at the way of Christ, how Christ lived, the way of Christ is the way of the cross, the way of self-sacrifice and service.

Therefore, the way to love and the way of love is self-sacrifice. All of me for all of you. And that's what covenantal love is. You say, "I love you so much that I will die to self to serve you." And how was the greatest covenant ratified? The greatest promise of love? Well, with the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us, "Drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." What was Jesus saying on the cross? On the cross, He opened up his arms and He said, "I love you this much and I love you so much that I am willing to bleed for you." That's what covenantal love costs. And receiving God's covenantal love, well, it's transformative. It changes your very essence. It melts your heart, it melts the hardness and his love fills your heart with a supernatural love to love the way He loved you with blood, sweat, and tears.

And when you realize that He loved you with that kind of love and promises to love you like that for all of eternity, despite your sin, despite your unfaithfulness, despite your idolatry, despite your adultery, it stretches your heart expanding it and then your heart's filled with his love, ready to fill the hearts of the closest people in your life, your closest neighbors, your family, your wife, your husband, your children. Today we're in Mark 10:1-16, would you look at the text with me? And He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. Again as was His custom he taught them.

And Pharisees came up and in order to test Him asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them. "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away." Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart He wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

And in the house the disciples asked Him again about this matter and He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." And they were bringing children to him that He might touch them and the disciples rebuked them. And when Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands on them.

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, and fallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First marriage is being joined together by God. Second, adultery is breaching of the marital covenant. And third, God loves humanity, therefore Jesus loves children. First of all, marriage is being joined together by God. Before Jesus Christ embarks on His journey to Jerusalem, embarks on the way of the cross, the Via Dolorosa, He tells us and the disciples how to follow Him in some of the most important areas of life. The next part of the chapter is about money and wealth and how do we interact with how Jesus wants us to be faithful with finances? And later He'll talk about a relationship to work and faithfulness there.

But here He says, "I'm going to teach you how to follow me in the relationship between a husband and a wife and the relationship between parents and children." Jesus wants to follow Him needs to impact every single area of life, specifically the most important areas of our lives. He's Lord of all. And today Jesus concentrates His teaching of what it means to be a disciple in the most fundamental areas of life, one's marriage, one's children. In verse one of chapter 10, it says, "He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. And again as was His custom, He taught them." So Jesus has finished the private discourse with the 12 disciples and what it means to follow Him. And probably that took place in Peter's house in Capernaum.

Now Jesus is leaving everything familiar and He's beginning His fateful journey toward Jerusalem. And one of the fascinating things is Jesus here in His final journey toward Jerusalem, passes directly through the same area where John the Baptist conducted his work in preparing the way for the one who is to come after him. So the crowds gather and the Pharisees seeing another opportunity to test Jesus Christ. And the phrase here for test Jesus, shows that the inquiry is hostile. They're seeking to trap Him, therefore they ask a question about divorce. They come to Him in verse two and they say, "Pharisees came up in order to test Him and asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'" They try to trip Jesus up with a loaded question designed to expose Jesus Christ as a lawbreaker. They had heard Jesus teaching on family, on marriage, on children.

And Jesus has been emphasizing the fact that it's one man, one woman, one covenant, one lifetime, and there wasn't any talk about divorce. And they believe virtually everyone in the first century, Palestine, was in agreement that you could get a divorce. Husbands could be granted divorces for trivial things if the wife didn't please them, since the law of Moses allowed for divorce. If Jesus here says, "Moses allowed for it, but I go against Moses," then Jesus can be charged with being a lawbreaker. So that's the trick behind what they're doing. And Matthew 9:3, it's more explicit, the parallel passage, "The Pharisees came up to Him and they tested Him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?'" So they saw that Moses allowed for divorce and we'll get into that text in just a little bit, but then they reinterpreted in their schools of thought as for any cause.

And the question is about marriage. So we're not dealing with a ceremonial ordinance, but with the moral law. And Jesus already warned not to think that He had come to destroy the law or nullify it. He has come to teach it and fulfill it. Verse three, "He answered them, 'What did Moses command you?'" They ask a question, Jesus answers with a counter question. And some early Christian commentators interpret this question as Jesus way of playing Moses commandments off against God's. Moses commanded this, but God did not. And that's clearly an unsustainable path exegesis, because in Mark 7, Jesus clearly identifies the 10 commandments as God's law. He's going to do the same with the conversation about the rich young ruler. And Jesus affirmed the binding character of the 10 commandments, the decalogue, as the central part of the mosaic teaching. If you remember, He revealed himself on the Mount of Transfiguration.

He went up there with Peter, James, and John and He met with Elijah and Moses. And one of the reasons why He met with Moses was because the law was given by Moses. Therefore, Jesus is affirming the law that was given by Moses. And Elijah was given the job to then go tell the people of Israel that they need to repent and turn back to the 10 commandments. Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch concluding the Genesis narrative that Jesus will quote. So verse four, "They said, 'Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.'" And some exegesis have found a key to the passage in the contrast between Jesus' question, which asked about what Moses commanded and the Pharisees that reply, which only talks about what he allowed, as if in Jesus' opinion God permits divorce as a concession, but He never commanded it.

And again, this exegesis is unsustainable and the Pharisees here are merely using common terminology of what may or may not be done. And this question in reference to divorce comes from Deuteronomy 24. If you know about Jesus and the way He quotes scripture, go back and see how often He quotes the book of Deuteronomy. When He meets with Satan, when Satan comes to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, when He's fasting for 40 days, three times Jesus' response to Satan and all three times they're verses from Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 24:1, "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some indecency in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord and you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance."

So Deuteronomy 24 is a classic example of the Torah's casuistic or case law. The case law that interpreted the 10 commandments and occasions that would arise in real life. Here in this text there's no denunciation of the divorce. In fact, it's not the divorce that's being denunciation by taking a divorce wife back after she has subsequently married and divorced another man. In verse one it says, "If he finds some kind of indecency in her," another translation says, "Nakedness." Leviticus 18 uses this phrase 18 to 20 times. It has to do with illicit sexual activity. So when Deuteronomy 4:4 says that the woman has been defiled by her second marriage, it's because there was still the option of reconciliation before she actually had sexual relations with her second husband.

On the one hand, the divorce of the wife was legitimate though not mandatory. On the other hand, her second marriage is categorized as defilement, which in this case must of necessity refer to adultery. And the second marriage is simultaneously categorized as both permissible and adultery at the same time. And you say how? Well the explanation is that the second marriage permanently and irrevocably severs the first one flesh marital union with her first husband, there can be no more reconciliation.

It is in this sense an aspect of the second marriage constitutes adultery. And though this constitutes adultery and though the woman is set to be defiled, her defilement is in regard to her first husband. It's not defilement in regard to the second husband. It says he is to write her a certificate of divorce and send her away to make it official. So they quote Moses, Moses permitted, Moses allowed. In verse five it says, "Because of your hardness of heart," Jesus says, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment." In the parallel passage in Matthew 19:8, "He said to them, 'Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.'" And some people look at this text and they say, "Well, because God foresaw hardness of heart or sinfulness, He wrote into the law a concession to sin."

And this of course cannot be the right interpretation, because God never writes into the law concession to sin, though He does write into the law consequences of sin. So the divorce writing in Deuteronomy 24 is not a concession to sin, but it's consequences of sin. If adultery is to happen in a marriage, there are consequences that can be taken. Consequence number one for adultery in marriage was execution. But the husband sometimes, because of grace toward his wife, didn't pursue the execution. Like Joseph, if you remember Joseph, when his wife Mary was found to be with child, Joseph didn't hear from the Holy Spirit yet, he didn't hear from the angel yet, and he quietly wanted to divorce her and then the Lord stopped that. So divorce sometimes was a lesser consequence that was pursued instead of execution.

So what then does Jesus mean, "From the beginning it was not." What does he mean, "Because of your hardness of heart?" Well, quite simply that from the beginning when there was no sin, there was no provision for divorce, but man fell into sin and subsequently hardhearted men and women commit adultery. Divorce comes in on the heels of sin, because it is necessary to punish sin, which is what divorce is. It's a punishment or a sanction for sin. So divorce legislation is authorized or permitted in order to deal with this hard heartedness. Divorce is not presented as an inherent or absolute right, but as a remedy for sin and a right only ensuing upon sin.

Verse six, "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." He goes to the very beginning. So in a sense, in the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden was ruled under God's will perfectly. And in a sense Jesus Christ comes in order to save us from our sins and He points to the 10 commandments, this is how we are to govern ourselves if we are to live a life that creates a semblance, a taste, a foretaste of heaven on earth. So He goes from the beginning, He goes to the very beginning and He says, "God made them male and female." The first service I almost passed out. I know what was happening. 15 years I've been doing this long enough and I know there are topics where you are just over the target. You put yourself over the target and in the spiritual realm there is war. And whoever was in the first service, you know exactly what was happening. My wife almost called 911. She said, "I had my phone ready," because I know where we're standing.

We're standing in the demonic epicenter of ideologies, demonic ideologies that seek to pervert the design of God from the very beginning. We stand, this synagogue celebrated the fact that they had one of the first same sex marriages ever officiated in this country right here, right here in a place where the 10 commandments are right there. So people standing right with the 10 commandments, the law of God over them as they make a mockery of it. I also understand this moment in time that we're in. We are in a synagogue with the 10 commandments in back of me and the latest iteration of the pride flag outside, that's not our flag. And what is that flag? The new iteration is confusion on gender. Alistair Begg recently, he was a faithful expository for years, but he was asked recently, "Hey, my grandchild is having a same sex wedding, can I go to the wedding?" And his response was, "Not only should you go, but you should bring a present. In effect with your presence you're celebrating or you're partaking in the ceremony of the covenant that's being made."

And I was blown away by that, because those are conversations that we were having a decade ago here. The conversations we're having now aren't about that. The conversations we're having now with people here, real people, we're asking can my child be friends with a trans child? Our kids go to school with parents that dress boys in girls clothing. That's where we are in this moment in time. So even to get up and say, "No, there's two genders, male and female, He created them. And He designed sexuality for the flourishing of humanity." Why is this topic so important to God? Because this is the topic that explains how we got here. We're talking about the act of creation itself.

And what does Satan want to do above all else? He wants to murky the waters of the design of God so people say, "Is there a designer? Look at us." So Jesus goes and He says, "From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female." And the emphasis here is on the complimentary sexual equipment of the first couple designed for each other whose result in sexual union is part of an indelible marital bond created by God. The presupposition of this argument seems to be that sexual union creates a permanent ontological fusion of the individuals involved. That on a spiritual level something is happening that you can't even explain, a unifying experience. When one body enters or is entered by another, a transaction of eternal significance has taken place. One that in its merging of opposites and resolutions of contradictions. And in a culture in which sex is often trivialized and used merely as just fun, private gratification, we have to heed the words of Christ.

Verse seven, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they have no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Jesus doesn't use the word marriage here. He uses it later in the private discussion with the disciples, but clearly that's the subject at hand. And what is marriage? Marriage is a man and a woman becoming one in recognition that God has joined them together for life, therefore they vow not to separate. I remember as a young pastor freshly ordained out of seminary, I was really excited to move to Boston, plant a church 15 years ago. And I remember being asked to do my first wedding and people always say, "Pastor Jan, will you marry us?" And I always say, "No, I'm already married. Thank you."

And what they mean is, "Will you officiate our ceremony?" And I remember sitting down and saying, "I just spent three years in seminary, which is like law school and not once was there not even one class on how to lead a wedding ceremony." I had to write some pastors, "What do you do?" And they're like, "Well, I cobbled this together from some other pastors. And you go back into history." And so you put in some kind of formula that looks like it works. You greet everybody, the bride comes down the aisle and you say, "Who gives this bride to marry this groom?" And the father says, "Her mother and I do." And then you get up and you say, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God, in the face of this matrimony," you do that whole spiel.

And we got that from the book of Common Prayer from England. I don't know why we use that. Then you read a little homily. And I realized that with a lot of weddings, you ask people, "How's the wedding?" And if they say it was good, it's only for two reasons. They're like, "Yeah, the wedding was great. Number one, the bride looked great. And then number two, the food. Oh, the food, the food was..." And what I tell people in the ceremony, I was like, "That's all good and well, that's not the most important part of the ceremony. The most important part of the ceremony is that this couple, this man, this woman are making a covenant, speaking with their eyes, with their mouth, sorry." And in the same way that Jesus Christ says, "You need to confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that He rose from the dead."

The speaking in some sense makes it a reality. And where do we get that idea, is because God spoke and His word has creative effect. So when the groom and the bride, they say I do, they make the vows. What are they doing? They're not just confessing past love and they're not professing current love, they're promising future love. That's the covenant. That's the most important part. But regarding engagements and wedding ceremonies, there's very little detail in the Bible. There are no prescriptive commands in the Bible whatsoever concerning ceremonial procedures, rituals, civil and ecclesiastical requirements, public oaths. And you say why? Why is the Bible silent on this issue? Oaths and vows and rituals and ceremonies are numerous in the Bible, but marriage oaths and ceremonies are conspicuous by their absence. Well, why?

Because what is Jesus saying marriage is? He's saying the man shall leave his father and mother, leaving a household. I'm going to start my own family. And then you hold fast to your wife and two shall become one. So in a sense, sexual union is marriage properly defined. Betrothal or spousal is actually an agreement or covenant pertaining to the marriage, not marriage itself. Such agreements, however, are presented in the Bible in covenantal terms. So the sexual union to becoming one is the consummation of the covenant made with God and one another, what God has joined together. You're recognizing we are under the eyes of God. God before the foundation of the world has predestined us to come together. We're recognizing, we're making a covenant to God and we're making a covenant with one another before the eyes of God. The reason why we hold marriage ceremony in the church is for the church to come alongside of the couple and hold them accountable to the covenant made.

Because why make the covenant? Because you are anticipating moments where you will be tempted to break the covenant, that's why you make it. And you need the church to come alongside you and say, "We were there, we were witnesses, we heard the vows. You are one and you are one for life." In Genesis 1:26-28, we find God creating man and woman and blessing them with the words, be fruitful and multiply. And this was in essence the betrothal of Adam and Eve by their father. And there was no question here of any ceremony or ritual to solemnized or authorize their union, only the authoritative command of God that you have been joined together. Moreover, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament explicitly interprets the phrase one flesh as sexual relations. And while many have rightly pointed out that the phrase is not restricted to sexual relations, but includes the whole personal relationship of man and wife, it's a very great error not to see that this is its core meaning and central focus.

Look at 1 Corinthians 6:16, "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.'" So Paul uses Genesis 2:24 to argue for the permanence of the union created by sexual intercourse even with prostitutes. So meaning the commencement of sexual relations begins a marriage, because sex is a covenant making ceremony and covenant making and covenant renewal. And we live in a day and age where people just want to make the covenant, just act out the covenant and then never... I mean, not for the beginning. Think about what are we agreeing to? One regarding the building that we are purchasing, there's going to be a building plug in every sermon from now on until we raise $5 million or move into the building, and/or.

I get the purchase and sale agreement from our lawyer and Adobe DocuSign, very tremendous. I get on my phone, I was actually at the gym getting into my truck right after working out and I was like, "Oh sweet, I get to sign a contract." I open it up, not reading a thing, not a thing. I mean, I kind of knew what was... The small letters I was not reading. And then it says, "Okay, there was a blue arrow, initial here, click and then you write the JV. And then sign here, I did the thing. And then you just go through a whole document and that part was so fun, it's so gratifying, so incredible. I'm just signing stuff. What am I signing? What am I signing? What am I agreeing to? There's a cost, obviously. I signed a contract. There's terms, there's an agreement, I know exactly the cost involved in this... And that's a contract. A contract is so much less important than a covenant. A covenant is before the watchful eyes of God.

So when people are just going around doing it, what are you doing? What are you promising to the other person? And there is something happening on a spiritual level that you can't even make sense of. So if you are going to consummate the covenant, you just got to be really, really clear on what it is. So therefore sex is sacred and should be not treated as profane. And if we have not made a covenant with God that He has joined us together, then we must not join together.

And in biblical scripture this is how they viewed marriage. If you think about Jacob and Leah, the story of Jacob and Leah. He married Rachel, worked a long time for her and then goes to sleep. And then there's that fateful verse and he wakes up in the morning and it wasn't Rachel, it was Leah. And does he go to Laban and say, "No, we didn't have a ceremony, therefore we're not married. You tricked me." No, he realized what happened. We're married, I'm married to her. And this is how scripture presents a marriage. A marriage is a covenant. Virtually every reference in the Bible to covenant shows them to be a weighty matter and that the evidence is overwhelming.

In Genesis 2:24, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast his wife and they shall become one flesh." So this verse imputes a legal covenantal significance to their coming together physically. And this is actually how scripture talks about God's relationship with His people. Ezekiel 16:8, for example, God says, "When I pass by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered into covenant with you, declares the Lord God and you became mine." So man shall leave his father and mother, he's leaving one family to start his own. And then with the wife, they're joined together and he says, "What therefore God joined together, let no man separate."

For the idea that God brings man and wife together, it's an idea. The phrase here is yoke me. That God in a sense yokes mates together, puts a yoke on them and says, "You together now are going in this direction." And it displays the idea of mates predestined for each other from the beginning of the world. Someone recently asked me, "Do you believe that God predestined people to get married?" I say, "Yeah, of course, of course." If God predestined people to salvation before the foundation of the world, then he certainly predestines how they are created and by whom and through what means.

When I met my wife, I met her in Philadelphia at church and I tell everyone was love at first sight. And that's the romantic way to look at it. The theological way is I knew she's the one that I was predestined to marry before the foundation of the world. How did I know? I knew. And so that's part of choosing a mate. You pray and you say, "God, whom have you predestined for me?" And what God has joined together we are not to separate. And so Christ is refuting divorce on demand. He's also refuting making covenants on demand without thinking about it.

Point two, and this brings us to adultery. Adultery is breaching of the marital covenant. In the house, the disciples ask for clarification in verse 10, in the house of the disciples asked him again about this matter, meaning they were puzzled like the teaching of Jesus was so radical, it's almost like they've never heard it before. It's like how did you not hear this clear teaching of scripture? Because the teaching was presented by Pharisees who wanted the loophole of divorce on demand. So the teachings of scripture, which are normative, this is how things should be, weren't normal. They weren't normal at that time. And this was the pattern in all of Israel. When people would move away from the law, they moved away from what's normative. And then what was normal was just sin and consequences of a debased mind.

So verse 11, "And he said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.'" And what word best describes the violation of the marital bond than adultery? And that's why Jesus uses the word for adultery to explain the breaking of that covenant. And Matthew 5, Jesus gives us more comments on this. Verse 31, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Note what Jesus asserts, that such a man causes his wife to commit adultery. If he divorces her for non-biblical grounds for anything other than adultery, he causes her to commit adultery.

Now note first what Jesus simply presupposes. He presupposes that the woman in question will remarry. Else there would be no adultery to speak of. And secondly, Jesus clearly places the guilt of the adultery upon the man who divorces his wife without valid grounds. And though the woman and her new husband commit the act, the guilt of the adultery, the violation of the one flesh bond is imputed to the divorcing husband. He, the divorcing husband, is declared to be the cause of adultery. And the wife who remarries in such a situation and the man who marries her are not imputed with the guilt of adultery. And the law of God always distinguishes between a perpetrator of sin and a victim of sin. A wife who is unjustly divorced by an unrepentant husband is a victim and would be permanently victimized and consigned to a life of singleness if she were required to remain unmarried. So Jesus clearly imputes to the divorcing husband as the causative agent of the adultery guilt thereof.

In Matthew 19:9, in the parallel passage it says, "And I say to, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." And the word for sexual immorality in the Greek is pornea. And what's happening here is this exception, this clause, sexual immorality, is the parallel to the indecency language in Deuteronomy 24. That for adultery, if a married woman commits adultery, that act of adultery, that word is used to describe the severing of the one covenant with her first husband.

Adultery is the transgression of the seventh commandment and it is punishable by death. But sometimes divorce was the chosen path. If you remember like with Joseph, and this is how God speaks of his relationship with even Israel. That Israel deserved execution, capital punishment. God should have wiped them off the face of the earth, but God had mercy on them. So instead of execution for their spiritual adultery, idolatry, he gave Israel a certificate of divorce in Isaiah 50, "Thus says the Lord, 'Where is your mother's certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold for your iniquities, you were sold and for your transgression your mother was sent away.'" And the conquest and exile of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria is allegorically characterized by God as a bill of divorcement. For what? For adultery.

In Jeremiah 3:8 he makes that explicit, "She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she went and played the whore." So divorce in God's law is not just permitted, but sometimes it is a manifestation of God's holiness and wrath against sin. And since divorce is a manifestation of God's holiness and God calls his people to be holy for I am holy, it follows by good and necessary consequence from this that God's example of divorcing his wife for the cause of adultery was normative and the lawful basis and redress on a human level. And that was His grace. It was His grace. They deserved execution, He didn't give them that. Execution was not the only lawful means of dealing with adultery.

So adultery is a breach of the marriage covenant and divorce is confirmation of that breach. It was allowed for God by God not as a concession but as a consequence for sin. Verse 12, "And she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." In Exodus it says that the failure to provide for the wife on the part of the man constitutes a breach of the one flesh covenant as well and by implication that includes extreme offenses such as physical abuse. But groundless divorce itself constitutes adultery, because adultery is the breaking of the covenant.

"Pastor Jan, we are seeking a divorce. What do you think?" I had this conversation recently. I said, "Why? What are the biblical grounds?" "Well, I think God wants us to be happy and we'll be happier apart from each other." God's primary will is not your happiness. It's not my happiness. God's primary will for you is your obedience and your obedience of faith. And with that obedience, God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to be obedient and fills your heart with joy. Now the fact that we made the covenant husband and wife, made the covenant, your covenant together that no matter the season, no matter what happened, we're going to stay together, because it's God's will. This is God's will. We confirmed it's God's will and we made that vow.

And then point three is, God loves humanity, therefore Jesus loves children. So marriage and heterosexual sex are inextricably linked with the divine gift of children. And indeed in Genesis 1:28, God's first blessing on humanity after he created the male and female is be fruitful and multiply. And it's no accident that our passage in which Jesus traces the institution of marriage back to the beginning of creation is immediately followed by His blessing of children. So having proclaimed the permanence of marriage, Jesus now turns to the related theme of children on natural progression.

And this is partially why God has designed marriage the way He has and sex the way He has so that there's never any question on who's the father. One of the greatest epidemics in our culture and in the world in general is the epidemic of fatherlessness. Where children growing up not knowing who their father is or not having a father in the house. The reason why God designed it is so that children would not be brought up that way with so much pain. And Mark 10:13, "And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, 'Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God, like a child shall not enter it.'"

The main Old Testament background to the saying of entering the dominion of God is the image of the Israelites as they were poised on the brink of entering the Promised Land, but they didn't believe God. And then God tells them, "Your children who today do not know right from wrong, they shall enter there." And Jesus makes it an emphasis that the only way to enter the kingdom of God is to receive it. And in scripture, people frequently enter into action that was prepared for them by another. Others have labored and you have entered into their kingdom. So when He says enter the dominion of God, he's saying enter into the work of God. He's prepared the kingdom. And little children are the model of how people enter the kingdom.

That God bestows the kingdom upon the low, upon the helpless, upon those who can do nothing to gain entrance. And entrance into the kingdom of God is not something which can be earned or gained, because of the basis of human merit. As one commentator aptly put it, to receive the kingdom is to allow oneself to be given it. We see Jesus revealing his heart. And that's the heart of a father, because he knows God the Father, he knows God the Father's heart. He welcomes the children, He takes them in His arms, He blesses them, He hugs them, and He loves them. In Malachi 2:13-16, all these themes are summarized by the following and the Lord God says, "And this second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand."

"But you say, 'Why does he not?' Because the Lord was witnessed between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless. Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did He not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. 'For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her,' says the Lord God of Israel, 'covers his garment with violence,' says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless." The Lord Jesus Christ knew what his teaching was doing as He was explicating the commandments of God. He knows exactly what was happening. That the straight edge of the sword of God's commandments was piercing the hearts of the listeners.

And that's exactly what regeneration is. Regeneration is when you hear the word of God, when you hear the law of God and you feel in your heart how much you have transgressed the holy, pure law of God. It's like the commandment goes down into your heart, pierces it, and that's exactly what it's supposed to do. The more precise, the sharper the edge of the sword, the more clean the incision. And then what does God do? He gives us a heart transplant. He takes the hard heart of stone and He removes it and replaces it with a heart that's tender toward God, tender toward the people He calls us to love.

Ezekiel 11:19, "And I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them and they shall be my people and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God." So today, however you're feeling about this message or the subject matter, if you are feeling condemnation or shame or guilt, or if you are feeling the stirring of the Holy Spirit, calling you to repentance, calling you to ever greater levels of holiness, just know that's the Lord working in you.

Here I want to read 1 Corinthians 6, and as Paul deals with this subject matter, I want to put the emphasis on the fact that he's speaking to Christians. He's speaking to people who were saved out of this worldly idea of what it means to be a man, a woman, sexuality, et cetera. And he says, "Such were some of you," were. Such were some of you.

So 1 Corinthians 6:9, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other."

"The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your are bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we're part of the church, the bride of Christ. That's why the new building is a ballroom. And I like that idea, because we're the bride of Christ and Jesus is going to... We're going to dance with Jesus following His lead. He's going to lead us. How did Jesus choose His bride? Did He choose His bride for her beauty? Did He choose us because of our purity and holiness? Did He choose us because we were lovely? Did He choose us for our godliness? No. God chose His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And we, the bride of Christ, we've all been unfaithful to the Lord.

Therefore, in the covenant we make with Christ, it's now we who spill the blood of virginity, it's He who spills the blood to redeem us. And Jesus Christ loved the church, not because she was lovely, but because He is loving and He gave himself up for her to save her and to make her lovely. He forgives us and redeems us and makes a covenant with us. And then what does He do? He begins to sanctify the church.

And in Ephesians 5 says that He does so by cleansing the church, cleansing His bride by the washing of water with the word. I love that picture. That's how I view my job. I view my job as I am here to wash you with the water of the word. And some texts feel like I've got a power washer. Have you ever seen those videos on power washing? They're very satisfying. I can watch those things for a long time. Power washing videos, all the mildew coming off the house. And I used to do that as a kid. I used to paint with my dad, he's got a painting business, and my job was the power washing, because it takes a lot of work. And I remember as a 13-year-old kid, I'm on the 40-foot ladder at the very top trying to hold the power wash. But it's so strong that it's blowing you off.

That's what we need sometimes. That there's sin, that there's cobwebs, that there's mildew of sin in us. And the Lord has given us His word and He cleanses us by the washing of water with the word. Why? So that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

So today, if you have felt the sharp edge of the commandment of God coming down upon you, because of commandment number seven or whatever commandment, and we've broken commandment seven, because we broke commandment number one. What's commandment number one? Thou shall have no other gods before me. If we have other gods before God, either ourselves or someone else, well of course we're going to shirk the other commandments. So if you felt the commandments of God coming down on you, revealing sin, revealing that we're all transgressors today, look to the cross of Christ.

Look and see the covenantal love of Christ as His blood is pouring down in order to redeem us and save us. And as you repent of your sin, receive the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe that you have been forgiven, purified, sanctified, as pure as snow. And then receive this promise from the Lord Jesus Christ that He is speaking to you. And this promise will satisfy your soul with a love that you will never experience from another human being. Receive this promise. I will never leave you nor forsake you. He proved it on the cross. That's true. He's faithful. Then He calls us to follow him.

Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for this word and we thank you for this time together. We thank you Holy Spirit, that you are with us and you are ministering to us. Lord, if our hearts are broken, mend them. If our hearts are hardened, soften them. If our hearts have grown tepid toward you and toward your word today, Lord, set our hearts on fire so that we will be people of God seeking holiness in absolutely every area of life, including the most intimate ones. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

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One quick announcement, an update on the life of the church. The Lord has led us, as a church, to take a step of faith to purchase, to acquire, a worship space, a 24/7 location that we can use to build the glory of God. In the history of Mosaic, 12 and a half years, we have never had our own location. We only rent this space just on Sundays. So the Lord has... Miracle of miracles that we're even in this position. Praise be to God. If you know anything about real estate in Austin, the property is right down the street on Kent Street. If you take a right here and a left on Longwood, you'll see three towers on a hill, and within the hill there's the entrance to the lobby and then there's a left wing and a right wing. We signed the purchase and sale agreement on the left wing, and as a step of faith, we are praying for the Lord to send resources for the right wing as well.

We are closing in September. We have seven months to raise $5 million and it's a lot of money, but we learned from the Gospel of Mark that even crumbs from the King's table are more than enough. So Lord, we need some crumbs. So we're asking you to pray, pray with faith, pray boldly, audaciously on a daily basis for the Lord to send the funds. From now on until the funds come in, if anyone asks, "Pastor Jan, what's your prayer request?" This is it. This is the only one to the glory of God. So pray for the Lord to send the funds. Second, pray how the Lord might use you in raising the funds or giving and then pray as well. If you know any connections for the Lord to bring to mind, maybe a great uncle who wants to invest in the kingdom of God. Our church, a home, church, foundations, etc, please connect us with them.

And we do believe the Lord will provide. I'll share one story. My wife and her family immigrated here over 20 years ago from Ukraine. The parents had six children. They come here and they worked hard and they said, "The Lord is leading us to buy a house." It was a town home and they were missing $5,000 to close on the deal. And they prayed, "Lord, send us $5,000. Lord send us $5,000." And then Tanya's mom went for a walk on the street, comes up to garbage containers, and next to it is something wrapped in newspaper. And she kicks it and it's hard and she opens it up little by little, layer by layer and it's a nugget of gold. Yeah, true story. And then they go to the place where you can sell nuggets of gold, and the guy said "$5,000." And then they end up purchasing the house and Tanya's sister still lives there. Praise be to God.

So I am praying that the Lord sends you nuggets. I am praying that in your fishing endeavors, so to speak, you catch one fish, you open it up and there's a gold coin inside. That's how I'm praying. So it's a very exciting season of the church, a lot of faith. We need a lot of prayer, a lot of hard work. So we are going to pray and believe for the Lord to raise the funding and for the next season of the church's life. With that said, would you at least pray with me over this need and for the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful that you have saved us. What a great gift. This is the greatest gift, that you give yourself to us on account of your son Jesus Christ. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that because of your great love for us, you lay down your life. And we thank you that you didn't stay on the cross, you didn't stay dead, that you rose on the third day vanquishing Satan, sin, and death. And we thank you that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit. And when you call us to yourself, you call us to life of service to the kingdom. And Lord, we as a church, we long to continue serving you.

And we thank you for providing every step of the way these 12 and a half years. And we thank you for leading us to this juncture. And we do pray, Lord, that you provide the necessary resources to acquire both the spaces, the left and the right wing from which we pray the truth of your Holy word will be proclaimed to the nations. And I pray, Lord, that you do send us people that understand the importance of a church like Mosaic being rooted and grounded and planted in a place like Boston. Lord, we do believe that Boston is of incredible importance to your kingdom work.

This is a city of ideas and many of the ideas are evil. So we are countering those demonic ideas with the truth of your word. Boston is pound for pound, the most influential city in the world. We are at the intersection of the nations and we pray, Lord, continue to establish your kingdom here, continue build up this church. And we pray, Lord, that you provide the resources. We thank you in advance for how you're going to do that. And we pray that you anoint those spaces even now with your Holy Spirit. We pray that thousands and tens of thousands hear your word there, are converted follow Jesus. We pray lives are transformed, pray families are formed. We pray children are born and raised in the faith, and we pray all this for the glory of your holy name and use us in the process. And we thank you in advance. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

We're continue our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. Today, the sermon is entitled God or Hell. And over the years I've found that truth is always simple. And the most honest people speak with the greatest clarity. There's no obfuscation, there's no word salads, there's nothing to hide. And when God speaks, it's true, and you know it's true because of how clear it is. God speaks and Satan obfuscates. Satan questions. Satan undermines the truth. God speaks and Satan complicates, and he does it with lies. And the worst lies are half-truths. Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ did not speak in half-truths. He spoke the truth, the full truth. He told people that there are only two options. There's only two ways. There's only two paths. There's only two destinies, God or Hell. You either choose God and spend eternity in His glory or you choose hell and spend eternity in His wrath.

And we're so fortunate to be alive today here and now and still have a chance to choose. We're so blessed to even be offered the choice. Many don't make the choice or don't think about the choice because we don't understand the gravity, the importance of the choice that eternity is at stake. Many people today plan their vacation destinations with more detail than they think about their eternal destination. We all deserve God's wrath. He created us, He designed us. He gave us laws by which to glorify Him and enjoy His glory here on earth. And that's what Eden was. It was heaven on earth. He designed life to be lived like heaven on earth. And that's what the kingdom of God is. You begin to experience the glory of God here by living for His glory, by glorifying Him with your obedience of faith. But we all rebelled, every single one of us. We all rejected His law, we transgressed it. We became outlaws. We became sinners.

And in rejecting God's law, we rejected God Himself. Well, what is the absence of God's glory? It's hell. By rejecting God, we choose hell here on earth and we start living that out. And what does that create? More hell on earth. Therefore, Jesus came to rescue us from hell and to destine us for heaven here on earth. Eternal life begins here and now. He came to rescue you from the hell inside your soul, to plant the seeds of the kingdom in your soul, to give you a taste of heaven. And this radically changes the course of your life. Now you're not your own. You exist to glorify God, to live for His name, to serve Him, love Him, fear and praise Him. And this kind of life of obeying God, submitting to Him, it's a life that demands sacrifice. Why? Because when you really start fighting hell on earth, when you really start fighting the sin within mortifying it, well what happens?

You're bound to feel the flames of hell. You're bound to get burned. So what do we do? We keep fighting. We fight the lies of the enemy with the truth by knowing the truth, loving it, living it and speaking it. And that's what Jesus is talking about today. We're in Mark 9:30-50. Would you look at the text with me? "They went on from there and passed through Galilee and He did not want anyone to know, for He was teaching His disciples saying to them, 'The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him. And when he is killed after three days he will rise.' But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, 'What were you discussing on the way?'

But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And He sat down and called the 12 and He said to them, 'If anyone would be put first, he must be last of all and servant of all.' And he took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.' John said to him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water or drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.' For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another."

This is the reading of God's holy and errant, fallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First life through death. Second, greatness through service. Third, power through loyalty. And fourth, God or hell.

First, life through death. In the first half of chapter nine, King Jesus takes his big three disciples, Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain. And there He transfigured himself. He revealed His divine glory and they bask in it. They were satisfied with it, mesmerized by the glorious king. So much so that Peter said, "No, no, no." Excuse me, I get excited about the glory of God. He said, "We're not going down. We're not going down the mountain. We're not descending. This is too good. We're staying here forever."

And no, they had to leave. Descend, they must, down from the glorious mountaintop experience after they have tasted heaven on earth. Why do they have to go down? Well, why did Jesus come down? Jesus Christ came down from heaven to earth and he does it to save people from hell, from eternal damnation. The kingdom of God must be established. And to do this, the King must first take on Satan's sin and death. After vanquishing the stubborn demon that his disciples were unable to conquer, Jesus continues to instruct his disciples. Chapter 8, chapter 9, and chapter 10 are about discipleship. This is what it means to follow Jesus Christ. And Jesus spends significant time with them before embarking on His mission. In verse 30, it says, "They went on from there and passed through Galilee and He did not want anyone to know."

The phrases like this, we see often where Jesus is sovereign over the truth. He's sovereign in regulating the truth. He reveals the truth to whomever He chooses. Who gets how much revelation? Well, who decides this? Does the seeker himself decide? No, because scripture clearly teaches that no one searches after God not on their own. So if you are searching for God, if you're asking questions about God, if you're interested in God, in the divine and eternity in Holy Scripture, well friend, let me tell you, that's already a sign of the Holy Spirit working on you and working in your heart.

Look at Romans 3:9, "What then, are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin. As it is written, no one is righteous. No not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There's no fear of God before their eyes."

Well, the disciples were just like this. The disciples were chosen by Jesus. Jesus chooses to reveal to His disciples the truth and the truths of God's kingdom. How does one become a disciple of Jesus Christ? Well, Jesus is the one that approached them and Jesus is the one that told them, "Follow me.: And then he communicates to them in John 15:16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you."

Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ? Are you a follower of Christ? Well, if you are, praise be to God. It's because He chose you. Salvation is bestowed on you. It's never earned. He appointed you and for what? For work, for service, for sacrifice. Bearing fruit comes through, bearing a cross and bearing it daily. And He promises to resource you. He says, "Ask whatever you will in my name to become more fruitful." But this usually includes a heavier cross and a steeper more narrow path to climb. My third daughter turned nine recently and I told her, I said, "Nine is, I think that's the perfect age. It's just what are your worries in life? You're in third grade," and I didn't want to say it's all downhill from here because that's kind of a terrible thing to say to a nine-year-old. So I said the opposite. I said, "It's all uphill from here," and I don't think that's much better.

But that's kind of what Christianity is. If you want to level up, if you want to grow in faithfulness, if you want to grow in obedience, if you want to grow in fruitfulness, it's all uphill from here. But that's what we were chosen for. We were chosen for service, for sacrifice because we were chosen by the one who came to sacrifice Himself. He says, "The son of man is going to be delivered." That's the conversation turned over, handed over, betrayed. And part of the background to this prophecy lies in Isaiah 53. The same terminology is used in Isaiah 53 as in our text, the language of being turned over, handed over, betrayed. And Isaiah 53 was written centuries before Jesus Christ was even born. The Lord promised in Isaiah 53 that the Messiah would come as a suffering servant. Jews to this day reject the clear true reading of Isaiah 53.

But the ones who read Isaiah 53 with open hearts are converted to Christ immediately. And that's who the early church was. Jews who read Isaiah 53 and said, "We witnessed it happen. We watched it happen. He predicted that He was going to die. He predicted that He was going to be betrayed. He predicted that He's going to be crucified and He predicted that He would come back from the dead. We saw Christ crucified and He did that for us." That was the testimony of the earliest church and He did it to save us from hell on earth and from hell for all of eternity. And even more than that, He did it to save us from our sins. So now the chasm between us and God will be removed. So He offers himself to us for eternity. I'm going to read Isaiah 53, and as I read, just think about the fact centuries before Christ was born, this was written.

It's as if Isaiah is sitting at the foot of the cross watching it being done. "Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him, stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. And like a sheep that before its sheers is silent. So He opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away. And as for His generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man and his death, although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put Him to grief. When His soul makes an offering for guilt, He will see his offspring. He will prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

Out of the anguish of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied. By His knowledge, shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide Him a portion with the many and He shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out His soul to death. And was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressions."

Mark 9:31, "For he was teaching His disciples saying to them, ''The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill Him. And when He is killed, after three days He will rise.' But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask Him." Well, of course they didn't understand. Jesus had already proven that He's God. They have believed him that He's God. Well, you're God. You've come to take over everything. You've come to take the place back from Satan. You've come to destroy the kingdom of Satan. So Jesus, do it, die. What happens to our cause if you die? Why would you need to rise again? How's this for an idea? Let's not die. Let's use the powers that you have. We know you God, you changed the weather, we watched you. You've walked through hostile crowds before we know you've done it. What do you mean you're going to be delivered? As in you're going to give yourself over, you're going to let them take you.

And Jesus' answer of course is, "Yes. I didn't come just to save you from hell on earth. I didn't come just to save you from the hell of the Romans, or the hell of the Pharisees, or even the hell of your own sin-infected bodies. I've come to save your soul from eternal hell. And I've come to offer eternal life," which only comes through the death of the eternal son of God who chose to become son of man. So yes, life comes only through death and eternal life comes only through the death of the eternal one, Jesus Christ.

And since life comes through death, of course, point two, greatness comes through service. The disciples didn't get this yet. How could they? It's so counterintuitive. Greatness is through rank, and greatness is through degrees and greatness is through accomplishments, and greatness is through a position. What do you mean greatness is through service? It's counterintuitive. Well, it's counterintuitive because our intuition is clouded with sin and we need washing with the word. In verse 33, they came to Capernaum and when He was in the house He asked them, "What were you discussing?" Capernaum is the Galilean village from which Peter James and John came.

And whenever Jesus was in Capernaum, he would stay at Peter's house. Peter had a home there. He was married, he had a mother-in-law and perhaps he even had children. And perhaps that's the child that Jesus puts front and center. And Jesus in His outward ministry, He had encounters with over enemies, the scribes and the Pharisees. But now he's engaged with the enemy inside the hearts of his own disciples, the enemy that will rear its ugly head throughout church history. It's this desire to jostle for greatness. That's what they're doing. He asked them, "What were you arguing about?" And verse 34, "They kept silent for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest." As soon as Jesus asks the question, they realize just with the question, "Oh, we were way off. They don't even want to share. They don't want talk about what are... They're embarrassed.

They realize just a question from Jesus reveals how embarrassing this is to talk about who's the greatest. They argued with one... who's the greatest. This was after Jesus just talked about self-denial, the hard-hitting instruction of taking up your cross and following Him daily. And here they're having a senseless argument about their relative greatness, and they've confused greatness because they don't really understand what Jesus is coming to do. They don't understand that how humble you have to be. They saw a glimpse of His glory and then He veils that glory and then He descends, but they don't really understand the distance between the glory of heaven and the humiliation of the cross. And these two are interconnected. If you don't understand the vast difference between Jesus glory and His humiliation, you'll never understand how much He had to humble Himself in order to save us. And this was part of the process of transforming and saving humanity.

Why? Because Jesus did not just come to deal with the consequences of sin. He came to deal with the very root itself. And what is the root of all sin? It's pride. Pride is the fuel that fires all of hell. Pride is what made Satan Satan, where Satan goes out of his rank and says, "No God, I am greater than you are, therefore you serve me. You worship me. Therefore, the way..." And that inclination's in every single heart, that pride. The pride of, "No, I don't want to submit to God." The pride of, "Who is God to tell me what to do." The pride that starts the rebellion of us against God.

Look at Philippians 2:1-10 and see this distance, this humility as the way that Jesus saves us from our pride. Philippians 2:1, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father."

In verse 35, "He sat down and He called the 12." This is how Jesus often taught. He would sit down, but here perhaps He's exasperated and He wants to draw their attention, sits down. And He said to them, "If anyone would be first, He must be last of all and servant of all." Matthew 23:11, the parallel passage, "The greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." First, I want to point out what Jesus does not say. He does not say there is no greatness in the kingdom of God. Jesus' view of the kingdom of God is not just some egalitarian view where everyone is of the same greatness, of the same rank, of the same hierarchy. No, that's not what He's saying. He's assuming that there is a hierarchy, there is a path to greatness.

There is a path to greater usefulness and fruitfulness, but that path to greatness is counter to the path of greatness in the world. The path of greatness in the world is make your name great. The path of greatness in the kingdom of God is seek first the name of Jesus Christ to exalt him. And the way that you grow in greatness is service, humble service to the King, and to his servants, and to people. So we can rack up stats, so to speak in the kingdom of God, and we do it through service. And the greatest disciple is the greatest servant and the one who sacrifices the most is the greatest in the kingdom of God. That's the one that serves the most. The more you sacrifice, the more you serve, the more you are like your master who is great. Humility is the best policy. Jesus is teaching.

Self aggrandizement always leads to humiliation. But what is humility? The opposite of humility is pride. And the first encounter of pride we see is with Satan, where Satan is not content with his place. Humility is knowing your place. It's knowing your role. It's knowing what God has called you to do and what God has called you to be. As we serve the Lord, as we grow in the faith, there are promotions, so to speak, but it's all for Him. He's the one that does it. All the talents that He gives us, all the opportunities that He gives us, the health and strength, it's all from Him and it's all for Him and service to Him. We're called to be servants. And here it's the Greek word diakonos from which the English word deacon comes from. And in Greek literature, it just means someone who's not afraid of the menial work, such as a waiter at a table, humble service. We're here.

At Chick-fil-A, they say, "It's my pleasure." It's my pleasure to serve you. That should be the sentiment of every Christian. It's my pleasure to serve because that's my role. And that's really the heartbeat of humility. I know my role, I know my place, I know what God has called me to do. And sometimes things get hard and you start wondering if the sacrifice worth it. No one really notices or you don't get accolades in the world. But Luke 17 puts everything in its place. I love this passage. It's one of these passages very jarring as you read it for the first time. But as you walk in the faith, you realize this is exactly the posture of heart that the Lord calls us to.

Luke 17:7, "Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and recline at table?' Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink. And afterward you'll eat and drink.' Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you are commanded, say, 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty.'"

And that's really the posture of heart, that He's the master, He's the Lord. We're the servants. He saves us, he saves us for service. So of course we're going to do it. It is our duty. Mark 9:36, "Jesus took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in His arms, He said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.'" This word for child can refer anywhere from a newborn infant to an older child. Perhaps this is Peter's child. We know that Peter was married, he had a mother-in-law, and perhaps it was his son or daughter. And Jesus takes the child, embraces the child, hugs the child, and reveals that He loves the child. I love this image that Jesus loves children.

In chapter 10, Jesus loves children. Jesus, the God, man loves kids. He's hugging kids, blessing kids, praying for kids. Why does Jesus love children? Because God, Jesus loves humanity and He cares about the next generation. So we as believers, we are to be people marked by a love for children. John the Baptist who came in the spirit of Elijah, it says that He will come and one of His jobs is going to be turn the hearts of the fathers to their children. And yes, it assumes fathers who are already fathers, they love their children. We are to love our children. It also assumes those who are not yet fathers. And the Lord puts this fatherly desire in your heart and the world does not know of this.

It's kind of popular not to like kids. It's kind of popular to complain about kids, especially on planes. I remember when my kids were little, I'd carry my kid into the plane with one of my kids and just look around at the unhappy faces. Come on, we were all this at some point, can everyone relax? And so why does Jesus take a child? He takes a child and He says, "This right here, you want the epitome of how you grow in greatness in the kingdom of God is through service. Service to whom those who need it the most." Why a child? Because it's the most helpless stage of being a human. Children need to be served. Kids are wonderful, praise be to God. And they are also a lot of work, a lot of time, energy, money, resources, lost sleep, REM cycles that you will never get back.

And it's ministry. That's how you have to view children. It's ministry, it's service, it's service to the King in the name of Jesus Christ. And by serving kids in Jesus' name, you're not just serving the child, you're serving Jesus. So he says, "Receive children, receive them into your life. Serve them, and by serving them, you're serving the King." And he continues, "Whoever receives me receives not me, but Him who sent me." By receiving children in Jesus' name, you're receiving Jesus, you're receiving God the Father. And this is important because God, the Father loves children, especially... He loves His children, especially when they are children."

Point three is power through loyalty. A service of course takes energy and it takes power. And where do we draw that power? From the source of power, and that's Jesus Christ. And the more loyal you are to Him, the more loyal you are to His cause, the more useful you are to Him, the more power He gives you.

The disciples thought they were the only ones with access to the power of God because of their proximity to Jesus. So they're blown away by the fact that there's someone else casting out demons in Jesus' name, someone other than the 12. Verse 38, "John said to Him, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name. And we tried to stop him because he was following, and he was not following us.'" He said, "Someone's casting out demons in your name, by the power of Jesus." They're invoking the power of Jesus by using His name. The would-be exorcist, pronounces Jesus name in order to bring His spiritual force to bear on demons, and the disciples don't like this. "The people aren't following us, Jesus," and that's really the emphasis. They don't say, "They're not following you." They say, "They're not following us." And Jesus' response in verse 39, "Do not stop him. For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me."

Says, "Don't stop him. Don't forbid this person. He's casting out demons in the name of Jesus, so don't worry about him. He's doing my work. Is he a disciple in the same exact way that you are the 12? No. So help the person grow as a disciple, but don't stop the fight against evil. Don't stop those who cast out demons differently than you do. It's all in the name of Christ."

In Numbers 11, there's a similar passage where Moses chooses 70 elders and the Spirit descends upon them. And there's two gentlemen that weren't there during that ceremony. And then afterwards they get the Spirit too. And then the people come to Moses and says, "Stop them. They're not part of the 70." This Numbers 11:24. So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord and he gathered 70 men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tent.

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put down the 70 elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not continue doing it. Now, two men who remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the Spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent. And so they prophesied in the camp and a young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. And Joshua, the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth said, My Lord, Moses, stop them." But Moses said to him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit on them?"

And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. Here, Moses said, "I wish everyone had the Holy Spirit. I wish everyone prophesied. I wish everyone proclaimed the word of the Lord." And Jesus here is saying something similar effect like, why would you be against someone casting out demons? We're against demons. He says, "No one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me." These outsiders are not like the scribes or the Pharisees who blasphemed against the Holy Spirit by attributing Jesus exorcisms to Satan. No, these people are people that are on the side of Jesus because they're against demons. And it seems like exorcism is a make-or-break issue. It's almost as this exorcism and one's attitude toward the demonic is a defining characteristic if you're inside or outside the dominion of God. Are you for demons or are you against them?

Are you for demons or are you against them? Are you for Satan or are you against him? Are you for Christ or against Christ? Are you for hell on earth or are you against hell on earth? Well, if you're against hell on earth, you're against those who make hell on earth. And that's the demons. No, we're against hell, so we're for heaven. We're against demons, so we're for Christ.

Verse 40, "For the one who is not against us is for us." Are they against Jesus? No, of course not. They're doing the same work. They're battling the same demons, fighting the same Satan and doing it all in the name of Christ.

And fourth, God or Hell. And here Jesus turns to a conversation about reward and punishment in the afterlife. And what He reveals is God is keeping very close tabs on our service to Him. Every single little thing you do for Christ, for His glory will be rewarded with greater revelation of His glory starting this life and for eternity in heaven. Look at verse 41, "For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward."Even a cup of water. If you give someone a cup of water in the name of Jesus Christ saying Jesus is going to keep track of that. And what is that reward? The reward is more of God, more of His presence, more of His glory.

Revelation 22:12-13, "Behold, I'm coming soon bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done. I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, and the beginning and the end." And if the Lord keeps track of our work for Him so He knows how much to reward us as believers in Christ, well, the Lord also keeps track of the sin and iniquity of those who are not in Christ, as a way to mark how much condemnation they get in hell.

Revelation 11:15-18, "Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God saying, we give thanks to you Lord God, Almighty. Who is and who was for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name both small and great and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.'" God is going to reward his prophets, the servants, and saints in the same way he's going to reward so to speak, or bring the deserved condemnation on the destroyers, it says.

And here Jesus continues that thought of the destroyers of the faith. Verse 42, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea." If anyone causes one of these little ones to sin, if anyone causes or scandalizes their faith, causes them to stumble, Jesus says, it's better that they would die here and die of very graphic death with a massive stone tied to their neck and thrown into the sea. Why? Because death is going to keep them from continuing to heap up condemnation for themselves, for eternity. And specifically he says, "Whoever causes one of these little ones, who believe in me, to sin,: who's the little ones? Commentators here say most likely He's talking about believers in general because the same word for little ones is used later where Jesus talks about, "Little flock, fear not."

But Jesus had just been talking in context about a child. That the way to greatness is service, in particular service to the least of these, a little one. So if Jesus is talking about if anyone causes a Christian to sin, he is including Christians who are children. Anyone that destroys the faith of a child, destroys the innocent faith of a child, Jesus says that person is heaping up condemnation for themselves for all eternity in hell. And this is a very, very sobering verse. And if you look at what's happening in our culture where we're trying to remove any idea of innocence of children. Children are being tempted with sin in ways that centuries ago people wouldn't even comprehend. And this is happening left and right. And Jesus is saying, Be careful. Be careful that you're not heaping up condemnation for all of eternity causing believers in Christ to sin is a grave sin. And the penalty for this sin is unquenchable, hellfire, the conversation Jesus is about to embark upon.

So what are we to do? We're to take these sobering words about the reality of heaven and hell, but the reality of reward or condemnation that continues for eternity. And we are to sit down and say, "Where am I? Am I on the side of demons or I'm on the side of Jesus, I'm on the side of hell or on the side of heaven, where am I?" And there is no neutrality. If you're not with Christ, you're against Him. If you're not against Him, you're with Him. Mark 9:43, "And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell to the unquenchable fire." This is hyperbolic language.

He's not saying cut off your hand because if he meant physically, he would say both hands or both eyes or both feet. He's saying one. What he's saying is if there is a desire in your heart to sin, if there is a desire in your heart to do evil and to lead others into sin, at that, you need to stop and say, "Where is this desire leading me? Is this desire leading me to heaven or to hell? Is this desire from the kingdom of God or from the kingdom of Satan?" And you got to take radical action. You got to cut yourself off from anything that would even tempt you to sin. Make no provision for the flesh Scripture speaks. You're new creation in Christ, therefore put sin to death. You have died to sin, how can you continue living in it? So drastic action cut off your hand and he says, "Better for you to enter life crippled or maimed."

And the presupposition here is that those who enter heaven get a glorified body. And the glorified resurrected body is a body without any bodily defects. So even if the hand is cut off in this life, it's going to be restored in the next. And He talks about hell here. And it's the word Gehenna. It's the most common name for the place of eternal punishment. And the name comes from the Valley of Hinnom in the Old Testament. And the Valley of Hinnom was a depression running south-southwest of the old city of Jerusalem. And it was at this place, the Valley of Hinnom, where according to the Scriptures, the covenant people of God, Israel and engaged in idolatrous worship of the Canaanite God, Molech. And Molech demanded that the people sacrifice their children. So this is where Israel at the altar of Molech at this place called Valley of Hinnom, we get the word of Gehenna or hell from it.

They would sacrifice their children by fire. Therefore, when God sends kings like Josiah to bring reform, one of the things he did was destroy this place. 2 Kings 23:10, "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech." Or Jeremiah 7:30, "For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind." Or Jeremiah 32:35, "They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech. Though I did not command them, nor to enter my mind, that they should do this abomination to cause Judah to sin."

Because of these sacrifices of the children, the valley came to be viewed as the gate to the underworld. And hell is named after this place. Hell is named after the place where children were sacrificed. So what is Jesus saying? He's saying, "Do you want a glimpse of hell on earth? Well, think about child sacrifice. Think about abortion. He's just said that the way to create heaven on earth is to sacrifice self for the most helpless." Therefore, the way to create hell on earth is to sacrifice the most helpless for self. And the prophet Jeremiah denounces the sacrifice, but continues to associate the valley with death and judgment. And Jesus here says that it's an unquenchable fire in this place called hell.

Verse 45, "If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life than with two feet to be thrown into hell."

Verse 47, "If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell."

Verse 48, "Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The torment continues for eternity. The fire burns for eternity."

Verse 49, "For everyone will be salted with fire."And this is a language that's used for judgment. Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone came from heaven engulfing the cities in fire. And it says in Deuteronomy 29:23, "All its soil burned out by sulfur and salt." It's a sign of complete destruction because judgment had come and judgment is going to come for each of us.

Judgment day is going to come, and the question is, will we receive that judgment which we deserve, or has Christ already received it on our behalf on the cross?" Verse 50, "Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." And here the Lord changes the metaphors. There, He said the salt would be a sign of judgment, but here he's saying the salt is a sign of your redemption. Salt as an influence against the decay in our culture, the decay of the evil in the world. And he said, That's our job. We are to be salt and light. Salt is good, but make sure we haven't lost our saltiness. Make sure that we are separate from the world, that we are influencing the world more than the world is influencing us. He says, "Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.

And he closes this section with a comment about having salt in yourselves and being at peace. What's the connection? Well, in Acts 1:4, Jesus shares a meal with his disciples. And it was the same word that's used here. To share a meal with someone was to take salt together. If you go to a Russian village, they come out and they bring you bread, a loaf of bread, and they bring you salt. And what they're saying, "Come on in, welcome. There's peace." And what Jesus here is saying, "Make sure you continue to have fellowship with one another, love with one another, peace with one another." Why? Because when you battle the fires of hell and you do get burned, oftentimes you get so focused on the enemy that you start looking at everyone around you as an enemy. And He's saying, "Disciples, hold on. Make sure that doesn't happen. Have salt in yourselves, break bread together, have peace with one another."

We as a church want to do this more often. Therefore, the bagels are back. Praise be to God. Break bagels together. A church that breaks bagels together stays together. And so praise be to God for that. And last week we had our first community lunch that we're doing to coincide with Communion Sunday. And it was a great success, a lot of people with a lot of joy. So we pray that the Lord continues to bless us to have salt in ourselves and to be at peace with one another.

I'll close it with Matthew 11:16. And Matthew 11:16, the Lord said, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored? And it was no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. You know how Boston started, the city? John Winthrop and his group of believers in Jesus Christ gets off a ship in Boston, before it was Boston. And before he got off a ship, he preached a sermon on Matthew 5, and he said, "We are going to be a city set on a hill. We're going to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations. And that lasted for a little bit." And then they lost their saltiness.

And that's what we're here for. But that's what Mosaic is. We are to be a city set on a hill proclaiming the excellencies of our Lord and Savior. With that said, would you please pray with me to the Lord?

Lord Jesus, we thank you for this word and we thank you for the reminder that sacrifices, no matter what you call us to, they're worth it. In the same way that you sacrificed all in order to save us for the joy that was set before you, I pray for the joy that is before us, the joy of obedience, the joy of your delight, the joy of glorifying you. I pray that you give us strength to overcome any sacrifice. And Lord, we pray that you continue to establish your church, continue to build it up and continue to use us as you build your kingdom. We pray save many souls, disciple many, draw many to yourself in and through the work of this church in and then through every single faithful church in the area. We pray that you do send revival, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit save many. Save many from eternal hell and save them for eternal life. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a glorious God. And everything you created, you created to reflect your glory. And sometimes, Lord, when we look at the beauty of creation, a stunning sunrise or sunset, when we look into the ocean or when we look at the mountains, we're mesmerized by how beautiful it is. And all of that is just a mere reflection of your glory. You created us, male and female, in your image to image forth your glory. And Lord, we chose not to. In our rebellion recalcitrants, we chose to live for our own glory, our own name. And we do live in a city where many devote themselves to the pursuit of their own personal glory, be it through education or through athletics or through career in many other ways. And Lord, once we attain that personal glory, we know it's doesn't satisfy. There's only one glory that does. And then that's the glory of the Son of God.

We thank you Jesus that you revealed your glory, but you also veiled it in your incarnation. You took on flesh. The eternal son of God took on flesh to represent us on the cross to pay an eternal penalty that we deserve for falling short of the glory of God with our sin. And then Lord, because of your death, burial, and resurrection, you promise that whoever believes in you repent of sin, you wipe out that record of condemnation. You replace it with imputed righteousness. And then you call us to live in a manner worthy of the glory of the name you've given us, the name of Christ. We are Christians, we are followers of Christ.

And Lord Jesus, today I pray that you empower us to live whatever path you've called us to to bring the most glory to your name. Because we know that in the path of self-denial and living for your glory, that's when we begin to experience what our souls long for most, which is your glory. Bless our time, the holy scriptures, we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come. The gospel Mark, the secret of God's kingdom. Today, Jesus Christ reveals one of the greatest secrets, which is he is the glorious God. The title of the sermon is a Foretaste of Glory. Os Guinness once said, "We have too much to live with and too little to live for. Everything is permitted and nothing is important."

In many ways, life is difficult. And to get through the difficulties of life, you need a why. Why am I going through what I'm going through? Or why should I get up in the morning? What gets you up in the morning? What do you live for? What gives you energy to keep striving, keep working, keep grinding. In chapter 8 of the previous chapter, Jesus Christ said, "Whoever would follow me, take up your cross and follow me daily. Deny self that the way to life is self-denial, death of your own selfish ambitions." And the disciples have to decide, is it worth it? Deny self, is it worth it? "Why? Why should I deny myself?" Take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ? Why? "Follow me." Why Jesus? Take up the good fight. Fight the good fight of faith. Why? Repent of sin and mortify sin. Why?

Well, the answer is that you get more of God, you get more of God's presence, more of His power. You get more of Jesus Christ, you get more of God's glory the more you live to glorify Him. Jesus Christ said, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." In some sense, we have the ability to see God with the eyes of faith, the eyes of our soul, even today what gets in the way impurities of heart. The author of Hebrew says, "Strive for holiness without which no one will see God."

Today we are Mark chapter 9, verses 1-29. Would you look at the text with me? "And he said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.' And after six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them. And his clothes became radiant, intensely white as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them, Elijah and Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it's good that we are here. Let us make three tents and one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, for he did not know what to say for they were terrified.' A cloud overshadowed them and a voice came out of the cloud, 'This is my beloved son. Listen to Him.' And suddenly looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only."

"And as they were coming down the mountain, He charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the son of man had risen from the dead. So they kept a matter to themselves questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. And they asked him, 'Why did the scribes say that first Elijah must come?' And he said to them, 'Elijah does come first to restore all things and how is it written of the son of man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt. But I tell you that Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they pleased as it is written'."

"And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd when they saw Him were greatly amazed and ran up and greeted him. And he asked them, 'What are you arguing about with them?' And someone from the crowd answered him, 'Teacher, I brought my son to you for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able.' And he answered them, 'Oh, faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me'."

"They brought the boy to him and when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, 'How long has this been happening to him?' And he said, 'From childhood. It has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.' And Jesus said to him, 'If you can, all things are possible for one who believes.' Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe. Help my unbelief.' And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, 'You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again'."

"And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out and the boy was like a corpse so that most of them said, 'He is dead.' But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. And when he entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, 'Why could we not cast it out?' And he said to them, 'This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer'." This is the reading of God's holy narrative and fallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time, a foretaste of heaven. Second, Jesus suffered hell to give you heaven. And third, a foretaste of hell.

First is a foretaste of heaven. Why did I use the term foretaste? My wife was making a cake this week and it looked delicious. I was very tempted to come up, stick my finger right in and taste it, a foretaste of the glory of the cake. Here we have a foretaste of the glory of heaven. What's the greatest thing about heaven? It's not just that we get to enjoy existence for all of eternity. No, the greatest thing about heaven is God. It's the glory of God, proximity to God. And in Mark 9:1, Jesus promises prophesies to the disciples. Some of you are going to see that glory, the kingdom of God come in power. He says in verse 1, "Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."

So He, Jesus, is going to show Peter, James and John, the big three disciples, his inner circle. He's going to show them what the greatest thing about the kingdom of God is. It's the glory of Jesus Christ as He reveals His glory. In verse 2, "After six days, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves and He was transfigured before them."

After six days, time indications are rare in Mark. Mark usually, when he talks about time, says something like, "In those days" or "That day" or "Several days later," or his favorite word "immediately," that's his favorite word. But here he says six days. Very specific. Most likely it is symbolic. Six days. If you remember, God created the world in six days and he rested on the seventh day. The seventh day, the Sabbath day was set apart as a sanctuary in time, a day that was holy. And Jesus Christ chooses to reveal His glory to His closest disciples on the Sabbath day.

The symbolism is also seen if you read in Exodus 24 where Moses goes up on the mountain. For six days, he waited and then on the seventh day, that's when the Lord revealed himself to Moses and says He was transfigured before Him. He was transformed. Transformed from what? From his earthly body. Jesus is the glorious son of God, eternal. He took on flesh in his incarnation, which veiled his glory. That was part of the humbling experience. He humbled Himself by taking on flesh. And here he reveals who he truly is.

Verse 3, "And his clothes became radiant, intensely white as no one on earth could bleach them." His clothes even became radiant, a dazzling, extremely white. When Moses went up in the mountain and he came down, His face shone. He reflected the glory of God. Well, here this is different. Jesus is not reflecting glory. No, it's his own glory. It's emanating from within Him. It's to symbolize what? That this man is God. He is the son of man and He is the son of God. It was the only way. We have transgressed a holy law of an eternal God and the punishment for transgressing the eternal law of an eternal God is eternal punishment. It's eternal damnation in hell. Therefore, if anyone is going to save us, that person has to be holy and eternal and he has to be a person. Only Jesus Christ could do it.

Here, Jesus is reassuming his true form. This is who He's always been. It's who He always will be. This is his prehuman glory and it's His eternal glory. This is partially why Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." Not just light morally speaking, not just that He speaks the truth. He's literally the light of the world. He is Yahweh incarnate. Despite the fact that he was human, he had to be to represent us, He grew tired, He walked, He talked, He got sick. He knew some things, others he had to learn through study and observation. He laughed, He wept. He experienced pain and exasperation, melancholy. He bled and he died, but he was God.

He's the same God that Isaiah saw in Isaiah 6. Isaiah 6, it says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him, stood the seraphim. Each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. One called to another and said, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory'."

And who was this Lord that is sitting on a throne? And John 12:41, Jesus said that Isaiah was speaking of Him. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of Him. Therefore, as you meditate on the glory of God and you say, "Imagine the humility," I was thinking about Superman. The humility that Superman had and walking around looking like a normal guy and he had the glasses and everything, but he's superman. Anytime he can use his power. Jesus are like that to the end, that's times' infinity. Jesus Christ veiled his glory. In order to stoop down, He took on flesh in order to represent us.

John 1:14, "The Lord became flesh. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the Father full of grace and truth and dwelt among us." In the Greek gets tabernacle with us. He pitched his tent with us. It's as if he came down and hid His glory. But hear the disciples are given a fresh glimpse of the unsurpassable glory, of unimaginable majesty, of the dignity and transcendence and otherness of Jesus. When he walked with them on a daily basis, there was this hiddenness.

On the one hand, He's saying He's the son of God. On the other hand, they completely forget. They're oblivious sometimes. He teaches and then all of a sudden it says they're hardened in their heart. They don't understand. He teaches, they don't understand. And part of it was they're looking at a human being. And he's right with them. He looks just like them. And in a sense, familiarity does breed contempt, but Jesus here is showing them disciples. "It is worth it to die for me. It is worth it to sacrifice anything and everything for me. I'm here with you on your level, which does not mean we are equals. Let me show you how much other than you I am." And he reveals his glory to them.

And as He's transfigured, verse 4, there appear to them Elijah with Moses and they were talking with Jesus. Now at this point, Moses had been dead over 1,400 years. He died in a secluded place and he was buried by the very hand of God. Elijah had been gone for about 900 years. He didn't die. God took Him while he was still alive. And both Moses and Elijah are mentioned in Malachi 4, which is a prophecy about the one who would come to prepare the way for the Messiah. In Malachi 4:4, it says, "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest thy come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."

God promised that through the preparation, the preparing work of the one who will come in the spirit of Elijah and that's John the Baptist. We'll get to that in the second point. Why Moses and Elijah? Because both of them saw the glory of God on Mount Sinai. And also Moses himself prophesied that there will come a day when God will send a prophet, "Just like me," in Deuteronomy 18:15, "the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from among you, from your brothers. It is to Him you shall listen."

Moses was the great prophet because he was given the law of God, the decalogue, the 10 commandments, which is God's pattern. This is how humanity is to live. And Moses taught the people of Israel. This is how you glorify God in your life by living according to the commandments out of hearts of love toward God and neighbor. And then Elijah, what was his ministry? He went to very stubborn people of God, covenant people of God who were not living according to the commandments and he called them back to worshiping God, not Baal, back to following the commandments of God, not the desires of the heart.

And what did Jesus Christ come to do? Well, he didn't come to abolish the law. Matthew 5:17, "Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." And when he says fulfill them, that means live according to them. Jesus did not abrogate the law. He actually lived according to the law in order to represent us on the cross as he bore the wrath of God for our lawbreaking. And I wonder what they were talking about, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. I think they were talking about the death of Jesus Christ. We get that from Luke chapter 9, the parallel passage. "Behold two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep and when they became fully awake, they saw his glory. And the two men who stood with him."

Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus in his glorified state about his departure. What's the word departure mean? It means his death. He, the glorious son of God, is going to die. And Moses and Elijah, they were dumbfounded by this. "How is the son of the eternal son of God, how is he going to die? Why would he die?" And God's response is "Because Moses, you weren't capable of changing people's hearts to obey the commandments from within. You could tell them what to do. You could tell them demands of God. You couldn't change their hearts to do it out of hearts of love. And Elijah, you could yell at the people of God and try to muster their zeal for the holiness of God, but even that was temporary. And Elijah, you yourself, what did you do? You prophesied that there will be a new covenant. And in the new covenant God will remove hearts of stone, replace them with hearts of flesh and write his law on those new hearts."

That's what they were talking about Christ departure. And it's the word exodus, the same word exodus that's used about Moses is the word for departure here. Moses, in the same way that you led millions of people out of slavery, out of captivity, Jesus is going to lead the elect out of the captivity of the nets of Satan and sin. In verse 5, Peter said to Jesus... This is a very, very important moment. Peter's terrified and when he's terrified, he just did not speak. But he decides to speak as the representative and he says, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here." He doesn't know what to say. Verse 6 says that he was terrified. He had no idea. But he knows what he feels.

Someone said, most people aren't going to remember what you said, but they're going to remember how you made them feel. At this moment, he feels something he's never felt. He feels a satisfaction, a satiation of the soul. He realized this is the whole point. This is the whole purpose of life. It's to bask in the glory of God. And Jesus, why would we leave? I don't want to go back to that. Let's stay here. And he has an idea. "Let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah." Why the tents idea? Maybe he thought, "You know what? Moses likes tents. He lived in tents. The tabernacle was a tent. The people of God knew about the festival of booths to remember the fact that they lived in tents. I think he just wanted to stay up here." And I think his ploy was, because it was his idea with the tents, "James, you get to bunk with Moses. And John, you get to bunk with Elijah. You guys are same. And Jesus, come here. Come here. Jesus. I am going to bask in the glory of God."

He got a foretaste of heaven and he didn't want to leave. In verse 6, "For he did not know what to say for they were terrified." And verse 7, "And a cloud overshadowed them and a voice came out of that cloud, 'This is my beloved son. Listen to him'." So we've got the glory of Jesus Christ emanating from within him. And then we get a cloud which also is a representative of the glory of God. The cloud in the Old Testament was a sign of the presence of God, the Shekinah glory of God. That cloud is what led the people during the day and a pillar of fire during the night out of Egypt.

Imagine what this all looked like from the ground, the mountain capped with divine incandescent and it is overshadowing them a gesture of protection. And then you hear the voice of the Father, God the Father. He says, "This is my beloved son. Listen to him." And listen to Him in allusion to Deuteronomy 18 where Moses said, "Listen to the prophet." And this is how God speaks to us. God, very rarely does he speak audibly and most likely it's because he's already spoken the most important truths to us through his son Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 1 says, "Long ago, at many times in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by His son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs."

Do you want to hear from God? Well, God has spoken through His son. Go to the Son, ask the son to reveal himself to you, to reveal his glorious nature to you. King Herod, he heard about the work of Jesus and he said, "Who's that?" I think it might be Elijah come back from the dead after Herod executed him. The disciples, Jesus asked, "What do the people say that I am?" And he said, "Some think that you're a great prophet. Others think that you are Elijah." And here God the father's gives us the ultimate definition, the ultimate identity of Jesus. "This is my son, my beloved son. This is my chosen one."

The Father loves the son so much that the very first time he speaks in the presence of the glory of His son, the first thing he wants to say is how much he loves him. This is my beloved son. Listen to Him." Moses and Elijah, they were the king's servants, God's servants. "This is God's son." So obviously, He's the one worth living for. This is the greatest purpose that there is. He's worth denying yourself for. He's better than self. There's no one like Him, no one greater, no one equal, no one even close. And He's the only one who can satisfy your soul. We know we long for that satisfaction. We know you can't just live for self. Anyone that's done that for any period of time, you know it doesn't satisfy, living for yourself, living for your own appetites, living for your own desires. We all know we need a greater purpose than self. But the greatest purpose, the absolute greatest purpose is Jesus Christ. Everything points to Him.

And here the father overshadows them. And in response maybe to Peter's desire to stay up in the mountain and just forget about all the work below, the Father says, Listen to him." And what does Jesus say? He says, "It's time for us to go down the mountain." After he gives him a foretaste of the indescribable glory, they descend down to earth to deal with the hell below. And point 2 is that Jesus suffered hell to give you heaven. In verse 9, "As they were coming down the mountain, He charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the son of man had risen from the dead."

We're having a conversation community group about why Jesus just keeps telling them, "Don't tell anyone. Don't tell anyone." He does a miracle and he's like, "Don't tell anyone." I think it's more than just reverse psychology. In the beginning he told him don't tell anyone because he knew as soon as they proclaim the full truth, that both Rome and the Sanhedrin will attempt to kill Jesus and do it before the appointed time. But this is the last of the nine commands in the Gospel of Mark for silence. After this moment, after the transfiguration, it's as if Jesus is descending from the mountain and say, "Yes, now is the time, gloves are off, I'm going to fulfill the mission."

In verse 10, "So they kept the matter to themselves questioning what this rising from the dead might mean." Why do they have questions about Jesus rising from the dead? Well, because they didn't really understand why Jesus had to die. "Jesus, why would you have to? You're the Messiah. You're here to establish your physical kingdom. We want to be in your court of that kingdom. We want thrones next to you. What do you mean die? What do you mean rise from the dead? Let's not talk about rise from the dead because we don't want you to die." But Jesus knew that this was the only way for salvation to be procured because scripture teaches that the penalty for sin is death. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. We have all disobeyed. The penalty is death. So if someone is going to save us from the execution that we deserve, well that person has to die in our stead. And that's what Jesus had to do. The eternal son of God had to pay the eternal penalty on the cross on our behalf.

The disciples didn't want to ask about the resurrection because that wasn't even a category for them so they start asking about Elijah. And why Elijah? Because the two issues are related. If Jesus is to die and rise and the scriptures taught that Elijah must come, or one in the spirit of Elijah must come before the Messiah, their question is, "Well, if you're going to die, did Elijah already come?" And verse 11, "They asked him, 'Why did the scribes say that first Elijah must come?'." They expected the Elijah to come and to restore all things to fix everything. The same way that they thought that the Messiah was going to fix everything physically with the physical kingdom, they thought Elijah was going to prepare the way for the Messiah in the same way.

But Jesus points out in verse 12, "Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the son of man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?" He's saying Elijah will go before the Messiah, but you need to understand that the way of the Messiah, the ministry of the Messiah is a ministry of death. So if Elijah comes before the Messiah and the servant is not greater than the teacher, well, if the teacher dies, then the Elijah figure must die as well. So Jesus is working backwards and he's correcting their false understanding of the Messiah. The Messiah is eternal, but the Messiah must also die. And this has been prophesied. He must suffer at the hands of men. He must suffer being treated with contempt because God promised this.

In the scriptures, thousands of years before even the coming of Christ, one of the clearest prophetic passages about the Messiah suffering is Psalm 22. Psalm 22, in such an uncanny detailed way, talks about the crucifixion as if the psalmist is sitting at the foot of the cross eyewitness to everything that's happening and watching the suffering of the Messiah. And Jesus quotes the psalm on the cross, Psalm 22 verse 1, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?"

The Son does not address God the Father is Father. The Son on the cross feels such a chasm between him and the Father that he just cries out to him as God. "God, why have you forsaken me? For what purpose have you forsaken? You forsaken me because Jesus Christ took our sin upon himself." Being forsaken by God is to experience the wrath of God. So if you reject Jesus Christ, if you reject God and you say, "I just want to be neutral, I want to be neutral toward God, I don't want heaven, I don't want hell and I'll just cease to exist." That's not true. It's either heaven or it's hell. It's either God or itself. And self and pursuit of self, that's ultimately Satanic. And Jesus Christ there on the cross, what's he experiencing? He's experiencing cosmic alienation that the father has removed. The Father who loved his beloved son so much, he's removed his affection. He's removed the presence of his love and Christ suffering. That's the hell that he's experiencing on the cross.

Verse 16 of Psalm 22, "For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing they cast lots. They have pierced my hands and feet." Centuries before crucifixion was even invented as a method of torture and execution, Jesus Christ on the cross, that's what was happening. And this was prophesied centuries before. So obviously the son of man, the Son of God had to suffer to fulfill the prophecies and as the only means of our salvation.

Verse 13. "But I tell you that Elijah has come. And they did to him whatever they pleased as it is written of me." If the son of man is to be a suffering Messiah, then Elijah must be a suffering forerunner to prepare the way for the Lord. And this is what Jesus is saying. He's saying that John the Baptist is the Elijah figure who found his Jezebel in Herodes. And this is promised by the angel when the angel came to John the Baptist parents, Elizabeth and Zachariah, in Luke 1:14. "And you ill have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth for he'll be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink and he'll be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord a people prepared."

So Jesus says that, "Elijah has come, Elijah has suffered, Elijah has died, and now it's my turn to fulfill my ministry." And as they descend from the mountain, that's the conversation they're having. The scene turns from glory of the mountaintop and to the darkness of the shadow of death. The Vatican hangs Raphael's last painting, he was commissioned before his death, to paint the transfiguration and he actually didn't finish the painting. Some of his students did. But the top of the painting is the transfiguration. It's Jesus Christ in his glory, light emanating from him. And you've got Moses and you've got Elijah, you've got the disciples, the three of them blinded by the brilliance. And then below and everything changes drastically from light to darkness. And below you have the disciples trying to fight a demon that's possessed a little boy with his father by his side.

It's an overwhelming contrast. It's as if they've experienced heaven and now they have to return to hell on earth, but the only way to heaven is to overcome hell. And that's what Jesus came to do.

So this is point 3, a foretaste of hell. In verse 14, "When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd when they saw Him were greatly amazed and ran up to Him and greeted Him." They were amazed. We're not sure why. Perhaps it's because there was an after glow of the radiance as we saw with Moses, as he descends from Sinai. So they're all mesmerized by Him. In the verse 16, "He asked them, 'What are you arguing about with them to the disciples? What are you arguing with the crowds and the scribes?'." In verse 17, "And someone from the crowd answered Him, 'Teacher I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able'."

The father here provides a detailed description of what the demon was doing to the child. The demon was trying to destroy the child through mutanus, through indulgence, through foaming at the mouth, teeth, grinding rigidity. And the father has spent enough time with the son to know it's not just physical. This isn't just medical intervention that's needed in this case. In this case, we need something more and we need a greater power than the power of the demonic. He understood he was powerless against the demon. The child is powerless so we needed a power greater than the demon.

He brought the child to Jesus. He said, "I brought him to you." But Jesus wasn't here. Jesus was on the mountain. So he turned to the disciples and he says the disciples were not able. They didn't have the strength, they didn't have the power. And in verse 19, "Jesus turns to disciples, he answered them, 'Oh, faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me'." Why couldn't the rest of the disciples, the nine that were left, why couldn't they cast out this demon? And Jesus says lack of faith, faithless generation. And you say, "Lack of faith?" We've already seen the disciples casting out demons. The disciples went on a mission trip where they cast out demons. They came back to Jesus and they were pumped about it. And Jesus says, "Rejoice not that the demons listen to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

So they've done it before, but he says, "You faithless generation, the reason why you didn't have power over the demonic was disbelief. You weren't believing." And if you ever considered exorcisms or casting out demons, to even attempt to cast out a demon is an act of faith. You know you can't do it. It's an act of faith to do it. So as they tried, they were believing, but the faith was wrongheaded. It wasn't directed in the right object of faith. Well, where was their faith directed? It wasn't directed at Christ. Christ wasn't here. They felt his absence. All of a sudden, what are they relying on? Perhaps their past experience. "We've done this before." All of a sudden they're believing in themselves or they're believing in their calling or they're believing in their anointing. But they stop believing in Jesus Christ, the lack of faith.

And this echoes other times where Jesus calls them out, rebukes them for their lack of faith, meaning he expected more of them. But because of the absence of Christ physically, they lost faith. Verse 20, "They brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth." The demon recognizes who Jesus is immediately and musters his last attack. He's an entrenched demon, a self-confident demon. He's defeated the disciples and their attempts to oust him. He thinks he might be able to do it again before Christ. And he attacks the boy.

Verse 21. "And Jesus asked his father, 'How long has this been happening to him?' And he said, 'From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us'." Why is Jesus asking the question? He knows everything. He's asking the question to elicit information from the man for the crowd. So everyone else hears. Hears what? Hears the fact that a demon has possessed the boy from when the boy was a child. And here you got to pause and start meditating a little bit, that demons want to possess even children. Why? Because demons like Satan, their leader, they hate humans, they hate humanity. They hate anyone and everyone created in the image of God. They hate the glory of God and they hate anyone who might glorify God. And they want to destroy human beings as soon as possible. That's why he took over the boy.

And here, this needs to inform the way that we think of children, the way that we think of parenting. The parents, we need to pray over our children. Lord, protect them from the evil one, protect them from oppression, protect them from demonic possession. And we have to pray over and pray to Lord. Lord, fill my child with the power of the Spirit from youth just like John the Baptist, there is a real spiritual war happening behind the scenes for every single soul and Satan wants to get them as soon as possible.

And the Father cries out, "Have compassion on us. Help us. Have mercy on us if you can." And by saying if you can, he is questioning the ability of Jesus. He had believed in Jesus enough to bring his son to Jesus, but Jesus wasn't there and all he could see were the disciples. And the disciples, through their lack of faith, actually sow doubt in the man's heart about the ability of Jesus. Jesus catches onto that phrase in verse 23. Jesus said, "If you can?" And in the original text, we don't have punctuation. So in the Greek there's no periods and exclamation marks.

So here it could be a question mark, "If you can?" Or it could be a question mark with exclamation mark, "If you can?!" Or it could be just multiple exclamation marks like, "Bro, if you..." What's he doing? He's saying, "Look, I just said that this demon can't be cast out with a lack of faith. If this is going to happen, you have to believe. You have to believe that I can do this." And the Father gets it.

In the second part of verse 23, "All things are possible for one who believes." One who believes in what? The disciples had believed, but they weren't believing in Christ. All things are possible for the one who believes in Christ. This is the same thing Paul said in Philippians chapter 4, verse 13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." So the power isn't in your faith, the power is in Christ. And when you direct your faith at Christ as imperfect as that faith is, Christ releases his power. And the man gets it in verse 24, "Immediately, the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe. Help my unbelief. Lord, I believe'."

I believe when we started the church, we did T ads on the T. And this is back before we had any professionals at the church. I put the first campaign together. One of the ads was a pretty good one. It said a sign from God. I thought that was pretty good. Another one said, "Don't stop believing." It had a picture of piano. One said, "I believe. Help my own belief." And you know why? Because I think that is one of the greatest professions of faith. It's like, "Lord, yes, I believe, but I still wrestle with doubt. Lord, I am simultaneously a believer and a doubter. Lord, I understand that faith is a gift and I need more of that faith. I need more of the gift." He understands that he doesn't have enough. So Lord, can you please fill that gap?

It's the same sentiment in Martin Luther's great phrase, "Simul Justus et Peccator." Lord, I'm a simultaneously righteous and a sinner. I am simultaneously justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, but I'm still a sinner. I still struggle. Lord, I want to see more of you. I want more of your power released in my life and in the lives of the people around me. Lord, help my unbelief.

We are a mixture of sinner saints. We're sinner saints. We were driving yesterday. When I have all the girls in the suburban, it gets very chatty. And we were chatting about birth, they wanted to talk about. My second daughter is like, "Did you name me Elizabeth because I was born in St. Elizabeth's hospital?" I said, "If that were the case, we would've named you Saint Elizabeth to live up to that name." But Jesus does call us saints, although we're still sinners. He calls us to be more and more evermore sanctify.

And that's exactly what's happening in the father's heart. Logically, faith and unbelief, it's as if they're opposites. But in the Christian experience, they're simultaneous realities. Jesus told his disciples in Gethsemane, in Mark 14:38, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." The battle for faith is evident in the disciples, and it's a battle that continues in the father's heart, and it's a battle that continues in our hearts. But the father's unbelief is different than the scribe's unbelief. The father's unbelief is different than the Pharisees unbelief or the Herodians unbelief. His unbelief is not stubborn. His unbelief is humble. It's repentant. It's, "Lord, help me. Lord, I want to believe more, but I can't do it apart from you."

2 Corinthians 4:16 says, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

In Mark 9:25, "And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, 'You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.' And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out and the boy was like a corpse. So that most of them said, 'He is dead'."

In exorcisms, the reality of the cure is often demonstrated through a final act of violence by the departing demon. And here this was the end goal to begin with, he wanted to kill the child through self-harm. And then as he's leaving, because Jesus had commanded him, he tries to kill the child. But verse 27, "Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, 'Why could we not cast it out?' And he said to them, 'This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer'."

Most texts also add in fasting, "This kind cannot be driven out anything by prayer and fasting." But the oldest manuscripts do not have the word fasting in there. We do believe in the power of fasting. Fasting is abstaining from food for a period of time in order to do what? In order to pray. The power isn't in the fasting, the power is in the prayer. So either way, if you add fasting or not, the power is in the prayer. Fasting helps heighten prayer. And once you start feeling the hunger pangs, you start crying out to God in a more desperate way.

But Jesus here emphasizes that the demon is cast out by prayer. You were faithless. And how does that reveal itself? In the fact that you did not pray. And you stop here and you say, "How in the world did the disciples forget to pray? Jesus, why couldn't we cast out a demon?" You forgot to pray. You say, "Oh, we forgot to pray. We forgot the most important part." Oh my goodness. And you say, "Why? Why did that happen?" I'll tell you why. Whenever you have a situation like this, it's heightened spiritual battle. It's chaos, a lot of emotions, a lot of people, a lot of commotion and everyone's demanding, "Disciples help us. Disciples help us." And then the scribes are there and they're like, "Yeah, you're losers. You can't help us." And they can't do anything either.

And in moments like that, you try to fix the situation in your power and you start relying on your strength. You start relying on your past experience. You start relying on anointing and you forget the most important part of the equation, which is God. You forget to pray to the Lord.

So friends, this is the punchline of the story. The punchline of the story is, if you want to be used powerfully in the kingdom of God, do not forget to pray. We are to be people of prayer, patterned by prayer. When Jesus Christ and Moses and Elijah then, when they were talking about his departure, when they were talking about His death, they understood that apart from Jesus Christ, prayer doesn't mean anything. A lot of people who don't believe in Christ, they pray. And Jesus here is revealing that apart from His death, burial, and resurrection, we do not have access to God apart from the substitutionary atone of Christ. So apart from Christ's departure, we can't experience his glory.

One of the most interesting things that Jesus ever said in the Gospel of Matthew, the very last thing he says before he departs from earth, he says, "Lo, I'm with you to the end of the age. I'm with you. I am with you until the end of the age." And then he leaves. You say, "How does that make any sense?" The disciples lost faith because they couldn't see the physical Christ in their presence. When he comes down, all of a sudden the lights come on. But Jesus Christ had to depart first with his death, then burial, resurrection. Then through his ascension, he had to depart in order to send us the Holy Spirit. And now the very moment that you repent of sin and you trust in Jesus Christ and when you pray in Jesus' name, we have access to God because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

Peter was on that mountain of transfiguration and he saw the glory of Jesus Christ. And then when he is writing to the early church about that experience, watch where he puts the emphasis, "Do you want to experience more glory?" He puts the emphasis on the scriptures. That it's through the holy scriptures, the deeper we go in the scriptures, the more we know the scriptures, the more glory of God is revealed to us.

Look at 2 Peter 1:16, "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we meet known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty, for when he received honor and glory from God the father and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

The more we know the scriptures, love the scriptures, the more we love the word of God, the more we see the word of God, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, in the scriptures and the gospel.

At this time, we're going to transition to holy communion in which we remember the suffering of Christ on our behalf. For whom is holy communion? It is for repentant believers in Jesus Christ. It's for those who have turned from self-righteousness and turned from earning salvation, turned from sin turned to Christ. Recognizing our faith isn't perfect, but when it's directed in the perfect one, it's a salvific faith. So if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Or if you are living in unrepentant sin as one who carries the name of Christ, we ask that you refrain as well. Unless right now you repent and believe in Christ, receive grace and then you're welcome to partake.

If you haven't received the elements, please raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring the elements to you. And I also need some elements. I forgot my second service elements. I'll read 1 Corinthians 9:23-32 to prepare us.

"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread." Thank you. "And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then'."

"So eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly we would not be judged. And when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."

You pray with me over holy communion. Oh heavenly father, we thank you for the gift of your beloved son, Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you were willing to go to the cross, you were willing to endure the wrath of God, that you were willing to endure eternal hell to offer us heaven for eternity. And Lord, we repent of our sins now. We repent of our self-reliance. We repent of pride. We repent of seeking our glory above yours, falling short of your glory. And Lord, we receive your grace right now. We receive your mercy, your forgiveness, and your compassion. And Lord, by the power of the Spirit, bring to mind the suffering of Christ now as we remember his sufferings. And we pray this in the name of Christ, amen.

There are two lids, one on top. If you pull it back, it opens the cup and there's one below to open the bread. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body, broken for you, take, eat and do this in remembrance of me." He then proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This cup is a cup of the new covenant of my blood, which poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me."

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you were willing to endure the cross. Why? To glorify your beloved Father and for the joy that was set before you, the joy of bringing us into your kingdom, the joy of saving us, stubborn sinners, stubborn rebels. You saw the joy you would experience and bringing us into the household of God, regenerating us, removing hearts of stone, replacing them hearts that beat for you, hearts that long to glorify you by living lives of obedience and lives of faith.

Lord, continue to empower us by the Spirit, to do your work here on earth. And Lord, whatever demons there are around us, whatever demons and the people around us, whatever demons in this city, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ and we plead the blood of Jesus Christ, cast them out. And we pray, Lord, use us in the process. And we don't trust in ourselves or in our experience, or in our anointing, or in our calling. We trust only in the name of Jesus Christ, the name above all names, the name that is more powerful than any demons. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Heavenly father, we come to you with hearts of gratefulness thanksgiving and hearts of love. We thank you that you are a glorious God, a great God and a gracious God, and we thank you heavenly Father, that despite our spiritual blindness, the veils over our eyes, the lies of Satan over the eyes of our faith. Lord, you offer us vision, the vision that is gifted to us when we look to the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ, when we look to the cross, we see God, the Son of God and the Son of man bearing the full condemnation that we deserve for our sins, for our blindness, our willful ignorance.

And Lord, you offer us by grace through faith, sight of you, you promise us that those who are pure in heart will see God. And Lord, we today ask for the purity of heart. We repent of our sins, of our pride, of anything that gets in the way of seeing you. And Lord, if there are other veils over our hearts, over our minds, over our faith, I pray today, unwrap them, unravel them, and give us a clear sight of who you are, what you've called us to do. Lord, we thank you for the holy scriptures. We thank you that in the scriptures we meet Christ and in the scriptures we hear from Christ. And in the scriptures we learn that Christ calls us to a life of self-denial.

Lord, you'd call us to take up our crosses on a daily basis and follow you. That's what it means to be a believer. And I pray, Lord, if there's areas in our life where we deny you instead of self, I pray, you give us grace to switch that and deny self and follow you. And Lord, if there's anyone who is not yet a believer, who has not seen the truth of who you are and the truth that there is a chasm between every sinner and the holy God, and only Jesus Christ is powerful enough to bridge that chasm and he does so with his work on the cross.

I pray, Lord, if anyone is still blind to you, that you give them eyes to see today, regenerate their hearts, save them, draw them to yourself and give them the gift of eternal life. Save their soul and save their soul for eternity and make us the people that continue to care about the lost souls around us as we look at them with compassion. I pray, Lord Jesus, pour out the Holy Spirit and save many, send a great awakening and a great revival in this land and beyond. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible work, the Gospel of Mark and we've entitled the series Kingdom Come the Gospel of Mark in the Secret of God's Kingdom. And the idea comes from the fact that Jesus Christ has come.

He has inaugurated his kingdom with the gospel message. He says, repent and believe for the kingdom of God is here. And then, once we follow him, Jesus calls us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So Lord, already your kingdom is here, but we want your kingdom to expand in our lives, in our hearts with our faith, and the Lord does that. The title of sermon today is What's Blind But Now, I See and that's a lyric from the beloved hymn, Amazing Grace. Anytime anyone gets baptized at Mosaic, we sing this downstairs. "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see."

Blindness is one of the most precise metaphors to describe our spiritual condition apart from God's grace. In our natural, sinful, unconverted, unregenerated state, we're blind to the most important dimension of reality. And that's the spiritual realm. We're blind to the truth about the existence of God, the person of God, the will of God, and coming to the realization of the truth, the veracity, the reality of God, who he truly is. What happens is the Lord opens up the eyes of your heart, eyes that you had never even known to exist. The eyes of faith. CS Lewis once presented a paper at the Oxford Socratic Club entitled, Is Theology Poetry?

And in that paper he has this one line where he says, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." And when you see Christ for who he truly is, you begin to see reality as it truly is. With that said, would you look at our text today, Mark chapter eight verses 22 through 38, "And they came to Bethsaida and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him and he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, do you see anything? And he looked up and said, I see people but they look like trees walking. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly."

"And he sent him to his home saying, do not even enter the village. And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist and others say Elijah and others, one of the prophets. And he asked them, but who do you say that I am? Peter answered Him, you are the Christ. And he strictly charged him to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed. And after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him."

But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, get behind me Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it for what is the prophet of man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul for what can man give in return for his soul, for whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels?

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time today. First, a blind man healed progressively. Second, a blind disciple sanctified incrementally and finally, follow Christ with eyes wide open to the cost. First, a blind man healed progressively. The scene right before this text is one in which Jesus was continuing to teach his disciples and the scene in which they had a difficulty grasping the truths of who Christ is, of what it means that he is the Messiah. And in chapter eight verse 18, he says to them, "Having eyes do you not see?"

And immediately after that text, we get a symbolic healing of a blind man, but it's not instantaneous. He's healed after first passing through an intermediate state of indistinct vision. And there's a deliberate juxtaposition here that the Holy Spirit is giving us in showing us that the disciples don't really see yet because they are approaching the teaching of Jesus with their own manmade categories of teachings they had received from the scribes and the Pharisees. So not only does he have to dismantle their categories and then, fill them in order to give them sight, but he has to give them grace to actually do that. And the juxtaposition is deliberately reinforced by showing us that in the same way that Jesus needs to touch a blind man twice, he needs to touch his disciples over and over to give them clarity of sight.

And the theme before us is distortion of vision. Spiritually speaking, that's every single one of us, all of the time. That apart from God's grace, apart from the spiritual eye surgery that the Lord offers us from his word and through his spirit, we don't see as we ought to see things get in the way the world gets in the way, the flesh gets in the way, our own misguided ideas of what God is get in the way. And then also, there are layers of demonic lives that the Lord needs to unravel, not to mention our sin. Jesus Christ and the sermon in the mountain, what did he say? He said, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God," that there is a purity that is necessitated for us to see God with clarity.

Verse 22, we pick up the story. They, the disciples in Jesus came to Bethsaida and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him once again. We see this pattern that we've seen often in the Gospel of Mark, that it's friends who see their friend. Friends whose hearts are filled with compassion for a friend who's ailing and they do everything to bring that person to Jesus. And they beg Jesus, "Please heal our friend." They believe enough. They believe enough that Jesus in his power to bring their friend to Christ and then, they beg him to heal him. The faith of others here besides the inflicted man is involved. And this shows that the importance of intercessory prayer to God on behalf of others, on behalf of the physically and the spiritually blind.

In the same way that it's a miracle that Jesus heals the blind man, gives him sight. It's even a greater miracle that God gives spiritual sight to anybody. It's an incredible miracle that he saves anybody. He's almighty. He can save anyone. Yes, we must pray. We must pray for our friends, our neighbors, those people in our lives, in our spheres of influence that do not yet know the Lord, can we give them eyesight to see Christ for who he is, we cannot. We are helpless, but can we bring them to the Lord? Can we beg the Lord? Lord in my prayers, I'm interceding on behalf of my neighbors, of my community, of the people that I see every day rub shoulders with every day who are so far from you.

They have souls, eternal souls and their eternity hangs in the balance. Lord save them, and we see this pattern and that's incredible pattern for us. A lot of people like talking about the compassion of Jesus Christ that before he heals anyone, he does feel compassion for them. While the greatest level of compassion that you can feel for anybody is, have a compassion for their souls, for their eternity. Verse 23, "And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he had spit in his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, do you see anything? He takes the blind man by the hand and leads him out of the village. Why? He doesn't want to make a spectacle of this in a village, a small village. There are no secrets.

The Lord wants to deal with this man privately and the seclusion away from the crowd. In the same way, that Jesus here takes the man by the hand, God took Israel by the hand, led them out of Egypt to shows his care for the person. The word for eyes here in the Greek is the more poetic term, it's not just physical eyes, but it also has a spiritual dimension. And Jesus is in the business not just of healing physically, he wants to heal the person's soul. The saliva was to draw the man's attention to what Jesus is about to do. The laying on of hands has the same effect. Touch means something incredibly profound to a blind man. In verse 24, he looked up and he said, "I see people but they look like trees, walking." He says, "I see, but it's indistinct. I see, but something is off."

And here you pause and you say, despite Christ's touch, there's still an obstacle to the blind man's complete healing. His perception is still fractured. The healing isn't complete. The man is not blind anymore, but neither does he see with fully functional eyes. In contrast to all the other healings in the gospel, this is the only one that comes in a two-step process. It's not instantaneous. And the intermediate state of the man's vision after Jesus' first touch is symbolic. It is symbolic, what happens with the disciples? They see Jesus, but they don't really understand who he is. Not fully, not truly. There is an understanding of seeing but not seeing of already but not yet. There is an understanding that we are to grow in our vision and our spiritual insight.

And the Christian walk is compared to life to begin a walk with the Lord Jesus Christ to be regenerated. It's as if you were born again, Jesus uses that language and that metaphor. It's as if you were spiritually dead inside, blind did not see. And the moment you come to the Lord Jesus Christ, you repent of your sin. You believe in him, and you're born. You're born again. And then as a baby needs to grow as we too as believers need to grow in maturity and understanding and in health, First Corinthians 13, a famous passage, but verses nine through 12 here are particularly relevant.

St. Paul says, "For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, I reason like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face-to-face. Now I know in part and then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known, will we know God fully in this life? No, but we are to attempt to grow as much as we possibly can. Seek the Lord's illumination from the holy scriptures and from his Holy Spirit. Darkness has begun to give way to light, but there's still demonic resistance in this world.

There's still demonic lies that we have been fed that we need unveiled from our faith. Another contact with Christ is necessary and we are to be believers that say, Lord, I want to grow. I want to grow beyond where I am. I want to see you more clearly. I want to know you in a deeper way, in a fresher way. Lord, give me a fresh encounter. Give me a fresh touch, Lord, I see, but not the way I know I'm supposed to see. And when we come to the Lord with that posture of heart, he loves to answer that prayer of Lord, give me another touch from your hand. Mark 8:25, then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly. Jesus again lays his hands on the man's eyes and it says His sight was restored.

Perhaps this is explaining to us that he had seen at one time had sight at one time, he knew what trees looked like subsequently had lost his sight. We're not sure. Either way, he now sees everything, clearly. There's restoration of physical sight and then also a Lord willing spiritual health. The Lord loves to reveal secrets and mysteries that are profound, that beyond our understanding when we come to him in First Corinthians 13:2 for example. It says, "If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing." And a lot of us we love to put the emphasis on the love part.

Don't forget the love part. That's the most important. Yes, don't forget the love part, but here in this text it's showing us that there are mysteries and there is a knowledge that the Lord does reveal and he can reveal to those who continue to seek him and seek him humbly. Gradual growth and vision is a symbol for a progression and spiritual understanding. Verse 26, and Jesus sent him to his home saying, do not even enter the village. Jesus doesn't want to be known as just a miracle worker. He doesn't want to be known as just the person you go to, to have your physical needs met. He's not a divine pinata or a vending machine. He isn't Santa Claus upgraded.

No, he's here to save souls sin six souls and illuminate the eyes of the heart. And that brings us to 0.2, a blind disciple sanctified incrementally. Verse 27, "And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, who do people say that I am?" What he's getting at is what's the public opinion? Jesus has been ministering for quite some time. He's done miracles, he's taught many sermons. And Jesus is saying what's the consensus? In verse 28, they told him John the Baptist and others say Elijah and others, one of the prophets.

It's not surprising that Jesus would be identified as a great figure of the past, returned from the dead even, given the widespread ancient Jewish belief that saints were alive. All these roles of the prophets of John the Baptist of Elijah, they were roles of preparation, not fulfillment, not consummation. John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Jesus Christ and he did that by saying, repent, believe. The king is here, turn to the king. And now, the king has come and there is a fulfillment of the prophecies. Mark 8:29, "And he asked them, but who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, you are the Christ." Here in the Greek, there's an emphatic you but you.

You, who do you say that I am? This is the most important question that every single human being needs to answer while still alive. Who do you say that Jesus is? And Peter correctly says, "You're the Christ." That's the Greek translation of the Aramaic Messiah. You're the Messiah. You're the anointed expected king of Israel. You're the one who's going to come to teach us the righteous ways of God and established God's dominion. And in the Jewish theology, the scribes and the Pharisees had come up with a whole theology of what the Messiah would come to do. In Jewish theology of the time, the Messiah was expected to be entirely human, like King David was a great king and he loved the Lord.

He knew the Lord and he established the kingdom of Israel. They thought the son of David would be much greater than David, but he would just be a son of David. He would just be human. And for a human being to establish his kingdom, the human being has to be alive. A human being builds a kingdom through victory, through taking dominion. And here, Jesus Christ, "Yes, Peter, you're correct," but later he is going to continue to restore and heal Peter's wrongheaded spiritual vision and definition of the Messiah. There was no general expectation that the Messiah would suffer or die. What kind of king dies as he's establishing a kingdom? If the king dies, the kingdom dies.

If Jesus, you are the Messiah and you die, the movement is over. It's done. Peter gets the title, right, as we see, but he has no understanding of what the Messiah has come to do. And Peter, where did you get this understanding that Jesus is the Messiah. It was given to him through divine revelation. In Matthew 16, the parallel passage verse 16, "Simon Peter replied, You're the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

"I'll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you lose on earth shall be loose in heaven. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ." And that's how our paragraph ends in Mark 8:30. He strictly charged them to tell no one about him, strictly charged. Another translation says vehemently ordered. It's the same word for rebuke, used later in verse 33. He rebukes them. Don't tell anyone that I'm the Messiah, partially because Peter doesn't fully understand what that means. And by teaching people that Jesus is the Messiah would be the blind leading the blind, so to speak.

Mark 8:31, "And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed. And after three days rise again." This is the first three of the passion predictions in the Gospel of Mark, and Jesus here continues to teach. He has come to teach. And what is he doing by teaching? He's establishing his kingdom because his kingdom is a kingdom of truth. The way that he dismantles the kingdom of the evil one is by dismantling the lies, supplanting the lies, replacing them with truth. And what is he teaching? He's teaching Peter. He's teaching the crowds. What kind of Messiah he is?

He says, "The son of man must suffer." It's necessary. He used the word must. He must suffer. He must be rejected. He must be killed. He must rise again. What's the word must mean? It means there's no other way. This is the only possibility. This is the only potential path for human redemption. There is a divine compulsion. Why? Because this is the will of God. This is the will of God the Father. There's divine necessity. He begins to teach them because they needed to be taught because no human could come up with an idea like this, that God would come and die. How can God die? How can the Son of God die? That Jesus Christ, the incarnate Lord is to be beaten, scorched, mocked, tried, tested, forsake and crucified dead and would be buried.

And the necessity of Jesus' death is also ... it is a necessity because he is to fulfill the scriptures. The scriptures prophesied that the suffering servant will come, Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53. Clearly, it's about Jesus Christ. And then, Jesus uses the title Son of Man and part of the background for the son of man is Adam. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were cursed with various sufferings by God. So if God is going to redeem humanity, one who is like human, who is the son of man, the son of Adam, who needs to represent the people. He needs to be fully man and fully God and Daniel seven is a great prophecy that this ancient of days, son of man, son of God is coming and he's coming to redeem humanity.

He will be rejected by the elders, the Sanhedrin, the priestly court of Israel will scrutinize the claims of Jesus and then deliberately reject him. And he says, "After three days will rise again." The phrase after three days and on the third day, our equivalent phrases is because of how they measured time in that culture. Mark 8:32, "And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him." Now, Peter was the first apostle chosen by Jesus. Peter was in the inner group of the big three of the disciples. It was Peter, James and John. The sons of thunder that Jesus called him. And Peter perhaps, because he thought of that proximity, allowed him to speak into Jesus' life.

All of a sudden he feels bold enough to take Jesus' aside, and there is a sense of the fact that, in the language, that he's patronizing Jesus. And then, the word says that he began to rebuke Jesus and as soon as Jesus specifies the kind of Messiah he is, Peter, he can't fit that definition of the Messiah into his mind, and he begins to wonder, "You know what, Jesus, perhaps your mom was right, perhaps your siblings were right. Perhaps you are out of your mind. The Messiah to suffer, that doesn't make any sense." It seemed so nonsensical to Peter that it was almost demonic, what kind of paradoxical Messiah is this? He begins to rebuke Jesus Christ.

And the same word for rebuke is what Jesus used when he cast out demons, he rebuked them. It's almost as if Peter here is rebuking a demonic idea. "Jesus, what are you talking about? You're the Messiah. We're here. We follow you. You're supposed to be the king, you're going to establish the kingdom and we're going to have positions in your kingdom. And you're talking about death. What are you talking about?" As soon as Jesus begins to define what kind of Messiah he is, as soon as Jesus begins to specify the kind of Messiah he is, everything changes for Peter. And we live in a day and age where people are fine talking about God in general. They're fine talking about faith in general, fine talking about even Jesus in general.

As soon as you begin to specify, as soon as you begin to define terms, that's when people take up arms, and that's what's happening with Peter, a Messiah who will suffer, die and rise again. Peter has the gall to rebuke Jesus and to rebuke Jesus in the strongest of terms. He sees what God's will is. And he's like, "No, no, no, no. Lord, you're doing it wrong." I don't know if you've ever rebuked the Lord. We've all had that temptation where you ask for something and the Lord gives you something diametrically opposed to what you asked for. You're like, "Lord, you're not doing your job right, Lord. Let me help you do your job. Perhaps I'm better being God than you are."

That's what's going on here. He is correcting Jesus. He is rebuking Jesus and it doesn't go well. And Mark 8:33, "But turning and seeing his disciples, he Jesus rebuked Peter and said, get behind me Satan, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." Peter rebukes Jesus, Jesus rebukes Peter. Guess who won? Jesus wins. Don't rebuke Jesus, be careful of rebuking the Lord. Apparently, this idea that the Messiah would not suffer, it had taken root even in the other disciple's hearts, so Jesus turns to everyone and makes an example of Peter. Peter wasn't unique in his obtuseness. They had inherited this interpretation of the Messiah, inherited it from people.

It's not from the holy scriptures and the holy scriptures is clear. Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, clearly prophetic passages that show that the Messiah will suffer. And here what Jesus is doing is he's nullifying the lie and he's nullifying this lie with the truth. He's telling Peter, so to speak, "Peter, you have come to me with old wineskins of a definition of the Messiah." An old wine skin of the definition of God, of how God works, but if you are to have new wine, new wine means that this is completely new and the new wine needs to come in new wine skins. So it's truth that we want to accept from the Lord, but we can't just accept it into our lives without having the Lord completely change the receptacle of that truth.

He says, "Get behind me Satan." Harsh words, but I do want to pause here and show the grace in it that Jesus isn't rejecting Peter. "Peter, you're wrong. You're so wrong and you've actually ... you're trying to rebuke me with a lie of Satan," but he's not rejecting Peter. Peter remains a disciple of Jesus Christ and we see the grace of God there. How often have we been so misguided about the Lord, so misguided about understanding who he is and understanding what it means to follow him and he continues to give us grace. Later on chapter nine, actually Jesus takes Peter, James and John onto the Mount and he transfigure in front of them, reveals who he truly is and reveals that he has given Peter more grace.

By saying, "Get behind me, Satan." Jesus isn't saying get away from me. He's not banishing Peter forever with this rebuke. No, what he's saying is, get behind me. I am God. I am the Messiah. You are to follow me. Get behind me. Resume the path of following a path that you have momentarily forsaken. I'm the Lord and you are not. And this is a command to Peter. "Resume the path of discipleship rather than trying to lead Jesus Christ." When Jesus used the word Satan, he means, adversary, adversary of divine purpose. Peter here, at least temporarily is opposing the will of God and he needs to understand that he is on the side of Satan when he opposes God. Jesus reveals truth to Peter and as new truth is revealed, old lies must be rooted out.

And who does Peter look like here? Well, Peter is half percipient, half insensible condition is similar to the sufferer that we had just read about in the previous narrative. The person who was half seeing, half blinded. And Jesus reveals to Peter that he needs another touch from Christ. He needs more teaching, more revelation. He says to Peter, "You're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." This is where Peter was demonic and that Peter, you're offering me the same path that Satan offered me. And if you remember Jesus when he was fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and Satan comes to tempt him and Satan takes him to the top of the mountain, he says, "Look at all the cities, look at the kingdoms." I'll give everything to you if you fall down and worship me."

And what's Satan tempting him with? Jesus, you've come to get the crown. I'll give you the crown. Just don't go to the cross. He understood that if Jesus goes to the cross, he's going to ultimately defeat Satan's sin and death. He's like, "Jesus, let's not do that. You can have all the kingdoms, but let me reign through sin," and Jesus telling Peter, "Peter, you're on the side of Satan. You're tempting me with the same path." The holy scripture often talks about the blinding power of Satan over unbelievers. That apart from the grace of Jesus Christ, we're all blinded to the truth. St. Paul, when he shares his testimony to King Agrippa in Acts 26.

This is what the text says in Acts 26:12, "In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priest. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun that shone around me in those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It's hard for you to kick against the goads. And I said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the gentiles to whom I am sending you."

To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Saul, before he becomes Paul, he was so zealous for the Lord, but he was so blind in his zeal. He was on a path to Damascus to go and persecute Christians, to murder Christians, and he thought he was doing this in the name of the Lord. And then Jesus appears to him and says, "Why are you persecuting me?" And at that point, Saul could have been like, "I'm not persecuting you Jesus. I got nothing against you. I'm persecuting your followers." Jesus so closely connects himself with his followers, with his church. He says, "By persecuting the church, you're persecuting me."

And then Paul gets saved and God gives him a mission to do what? To proclaim the gospel and to help people begin to see God for who he is. Second Corinthians four, continues this theme, "And even if our gospel is veiled, it has veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord. With ourselves as your servants, for Jesus' sake, for God who said, let light shine out of the darkness has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

How does Satan blind people? He blinds them with lies. If you don't believe in God, you're believing a lie and all of a sudden you're closed off to even the possibility of who God is. If you don't believe in Christ, if you don't believe in what Christ has come to do, you're blinded to the reality of Christ. If you don't believe in the scriptures, you're blinded to the reality of the truth of God's word. And only divine grace permits us to escape this condition of satanic blindness. And demonic blindness is only countered with divine revelation. There's nothing capable of ending this alienation between us and God and the blindness of humanity to God's will except to look to Christ on the cross. As Messiah, Jesus is not only God's holy warrior, but he's also the teacher.

And this is why Jesus came to teach. His primary role in his ministry was to teach in order to combat the lies of the enemy so that when people come to know the truth, they begin to see God for who he is. Isaiah 11:2, "And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him and the spirit of wisdom and understanding and the spirit of counsel and might." When we grow closer to Christ, we grow closer to the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit longs to reveal wisdom and understanding and counsel and might. Modern Christians today, we've been cushioned by 2000 years of church teaching to the point where we understand the Messiah is supposed to suffer. That idea is unremarkable. To the Jewish people of that time, the idea of a Messiah was the idea of triumph, not of suffering, not of death.

And Peter agrees, "Jesus, you are the Messiah," but the question is, how does the Messiah triumph over his enemies? Well, at this point, Peter, we have to have a conversation. Who are your greatest enemies? Peter and Peter, in that frame of mind, before Jesus corrects him, he would say Caesar Augustus or he would say Pontius Pilate or King Herod, these are our greatest enemies, Lord Jesus. Let's build an army together. You are the king, clearly. You just fed 5,000 men. They're pretty happy about it. Just continue doing that and then, we can take over. We're going to take over Jerusalem and then from there, we're going to build your kingdom, because those are our greatest enemies. It's evil people out there. It's evil people in positions of power.

Jesus, that's who we need you to get rid of, put us in positions of power and all of a sudden, we're just going to take over. And Jesus will push back and say, "Peter, those aren't your greatest enemies." Before this Caesar, there was another Caesar and many more before that and there will be Caesars after. No, that's not your greatest enemy. It's not, people in politics. It's not your greatest enemy, your greatest enemies. And unless you know this, then you've already lost, but your greatest enemies are Satan, sin and death. Well, if Satan is your greatest enemy, how do you take Satan out? That's a really important question. Well, you take him out by taking his greatest hit.

You take Satan's greatest hit, and that's exactly what happened on the cross. Jesus Christ allowed Satan through his human pawns to crucify him. Satan, that's the greatest weapon. You have to kill me. He takes on Satan, but he wasn't just taking on Satan, he was also taking on sin. Well, Peter, if we take over this Caesar, what happens to sin? What happens to the sin in your own heart, Peter? A lot of people say if there's a good God and all powerful God, why does he allow evil to happen in the world? Well, if Jesus Christ could annihilate evil in one second, he can do that. How many of us would still be alive? We'd all be dead. So for Christ to counter evil, to dismantle evil, to take a sin head on, he had to pay the penalty for sin on the cross.

And that's why Jesus Christ on the cross, he quotes Psalm 22, which is one of the most profound texts in all of the scripture. He says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And you say, "How can the first person of the trinity forsake the second person of the trinity? How can the father turn his back on the Son just abandoned him on the cross and this hellacious suffering?" Well because the son had taken our sin upon himself. He who knew no sin became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. And then, Jesus Christ dies and through his death, what is he doing? He's giving death itself the death blow By God's grace. He didn't stay dead, he was raised.

So on the cross, Jesus takes Satan head on. Takes his fiercest attack, takes on the sin of the elect and its wages and takes on death itself with his death. And praise be to God, he wins. From Peter's limited perspective, all he was thinking about was, "Jesus, I got to preserve you. Jesus, I can't let you die because if I let you die from his limited perspective, everything dies. All my dreams die. All my aspirations die." And from God's perspective, that wasn't the way. God's thoughts are so much greater than our thoughts. Praise be to God. Isaiah 55:8, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways, my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways than my thoughts than your thoughts?"

Jesus fought Peter's believing of lies. This demonic delusion, and he does it with the truth. He does it by teaching the truth. And now, he challenges Peter and he challenges the other disciples because in their faulty understanding, if we're following an earthly political king, then what does that make us? We are your closest followers, Jesus. We're going to be in your cabinet. We're going to have thrones next to you, but if the Messiah is one who suffers. One who dies and dies a gory death on a cross. Well then what about us? If that's the kind of king that we're following, is he worth following? And Jesus proclaims here in the text, the gains and losses of following him, having prophesied his own suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus now proclaims a similar fate for his followers, and that's 0.3.

Follow Christ with eyes wide open to the cost. Mark 8:34, "And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." He calls the crowd, you've been following me. You see my miracles, you see the signs. Now, I'm calling you to become my disciples. I'm calling you to follow me, and if you are to follow me, you need to know what it's going to cost you. First of all, deny yourself. He says there's a sense of existential immediacy. Jesus is confronting the crowd. So you do you want to follow me? Well, you need to deny yourself. You need to turn from your selfish ways, deny yourself and follow me.

And just how far is this self-denial expected to go? Jesus brings in the word cross. He says, "Take up your cross," and we're so accustomed to the image and the idea of the cross. There's an aura of sanctity and beauty that surrounds the idea of the cross. And it's hard for us to understand how repugnant the idea of a cross was to the people of the time. The symbol of the hated Roman occupation, a form of death so cruel, so dehumanizing, so shameful that even the most debauched regimes in human history since have not employed crucifixion as a means of executing enemies. It was the preeminent means of Rome's terror apparatus and to liken the following of Christ, the bearing of cross was as powerful way as Jesus could explain, that If you follow me, here's the terms.

You must be willing to sacrifice anything and everything. You must be willing to endure anything and everything to be a follower of Jesus Christ. One of the cruel and shameful aspects of crucifixion was the criminal was forced to carry the cross or a part of the instrument to the place of crucifixion, most likely a horizontal cross beam you had to carry, which itself was called a cross, the same thing that Jesus had to carry after he was scorched, his back was torn up from the cat of nine tails, and then, he has to carry the beam across his back on the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. When his strength ended, Simon of Cyrene took over. And Jesus is saying, "Take up your cross and follow me in the same way." It's an exhortation to surrender life and saying, my life is not my own. "And Jesus is upfront about the cost, completely upfront. All of you, for all of me."

If you go to the restaurant and they're like, "Yeah, lobster, it's market price, like what's market price? I don't know. Just tell me market price, order of magnitude," or you go to a medical office and you're like, "How much is this procedure?" They're like, "I don't know. We'll bill you." Jesus doesn't do that. The cost is upfront completely. He's saying it's going to take your whole life. Your life is no longer your own, and the idea that you thought your life was your own was actually sinful, and that's how we got here in the first place. And what Jesus here is doing is he's just informing the disciples that I'm Yahweh who has given the 10 commandments, and this right here is just definition of the first commandment. The first commandment is thou shall have no other gods before me.

That means you'll not live for anyone more than you love God. It's a matter of reprioritizing. God, you are the greatest treasure of my life. I'm going to live for you completely. Everything in my life is secondary to that. You are God and you alone. He says, "Follow me." And the image of following Jesus is used twice here in the first clause if anyone wants to follow me. And what Jesus is saying is you either denounce self or you denounce Christ. You either denounce self or you denounce God. You can't live for God and yourself in a competing set of priorities. Verse 35, "And whoever would save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it."

It's counterintuitive, but it's true. He's saying that life, eternal life is found, true life, life to the full is found in treading the path of self death, of self-denial. Death is the way to life and the cross, the way of victory. It makes all the sense in the world. If you live for yourself and if you live for pleasure, for comfort, for self-preservation, and then you die. Well, what happens to your soul? Well, for eternity, you are experiencing condemnation. Your soul spends eternity apart from the presence of God. Why would you expect to spend eternity in the presence of God if you rejected his presence in this life? Obviously, if you live for self, you're going to experience ... you're going to lose your life.

If you lose your life now and say, "Lord, I don't want to live for myself. That's not going that well. Lord, I want to live for you. I want to follow you. I want eternal life. I want it to begin now." The moment you die, it's just a transition from experiencing eternal life here to eternal life in the presence of God. Counterintuitive as it is the truth of Jesus' words about finding life on the pathway to death has not lacked witness. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was in the Soviet gulags, as a political prisoner. And there in the gulags, he actually met the Lord. The Lord revealed himself to him. And he often wrote about this, of this experience of self death as a means of getting through whatever sacrifice he had to.

He writes this in the gulag. He says, "From the moment you go to prison, you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself, my life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I'm condemned to die, now or a little later. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me, those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me. And confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble. Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory."

In verse 36, Jesus continues for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?" And Jesus here is saying that all the wealth of all the world, if you could accumulate all of it, all of that would not be more valuable than one human soul. And each person is confronted with the dramatic choice between death and life, between the world and his or her soul. Is anything worth more than the soul? No. The soul is more precious than all. Psalm 49 verse seven, "Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life for the ransom of their life as costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit."

Verse 38, "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and with the holy angels." There is a tendency both outside and within the Christian community to gloss over the crucifixion, to downplay or take offense at Jesus' crucifixion. Isaiah 52 and 53 alludes repeatedly to the onlooker's shame. They see Christ's suffering. There's a humiliation in that ... we're following him. That's our God, and Jesus says, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation. Yes, some of his words are very difficult to receive, especially upon first hearing. Some of these words that define what sin is.

Our culture shirks at it. Bristles, there's a visceral reaction. What? No, we understand that the adulterous generation, those that want nothing to do with the Lord would bristle, but what about believers? What about those who take on the name of Christ, who profess themselves to be followers of Christ? And do people do this today or are people Christians, self profess Christians, are they ashamed of the Lord's words? All too often, way too often. I saw a video clip of a sermon that a pastor has given recently and the pastor got up and said, "I think you noticed we skipped a passage of First Corinthians. We read a little bit and then skipped a passage and then continued."

And the pastor said, "The reason why we skipped that passage is because, quote-unquote, yikes. That was the answer. We don't want to read the word of God out loud because yikes, because of how it makes us feel. What are you doing? You're being ashamed of the word of God. You're being ashamed of the words of Christ." And Jesus says, whoever is ashamed of me and my works, I will be ashamed of them. It's as if the son of man will be as second coming called as a witness to answer the question, are these people who profess to be yours, are they truly yours? And the answer, no, indeed, I am ashamed that they should take my name on their lips. In Matthew 7:21, the sermon in the mountain, Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."

"On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." Jesus says when he comes and he will come in the Second Coming, and he will come in the glory of his father and he will come with the angels. The first time he came to inaugurate his kingdom, to establish his kingdom and offer amnesty, offer forgiveness to anyone who would turn from sin and turn to him. The second time he's coming and he's not coming to offer amnesty, he's coming in judgment. For those who are found to be in Christ, that'll be a tremendous day of rejoicing, a day of glory.

For those who are found outside of Christ, that will be the worst day in all of eternity for any one of them, any one of you who are not in Christ. So today, friend, if you do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, if you're not sure that he knows you, if you're not sure that you are known by him, today in prayer, as we're singing, as we're praying, respond to the Lord in your heart of hearts and cry out, "Lord Jesus, I'm blind. Help me see. Lord Jesus, I'm lost. Find me. Save me." And he will. He promises to. I'll close with Daniel 7:13 through 14, "I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory in a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him."

"His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." The Lord Jesus Christ offers each one of us grace today. Another touch, another encounter, another touch of healing so that we can sing amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now, I see. Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for the holy scriptures. We thank you Jesus that you were so gracious as to reveal yourself to us. I pray, Lord, if there's anyone here who has not been regenerated, has not been justified, I pray, save them today and put them on the path of following you the path of sanctification.

And those of us who are believers, Lord I pray, clarify our sight. Give us a clear vision of who you are and a clear vision of what means to follow you. Lord, if there are areas in our life where we have not denied self, I pray, give us grace to deny self. If there are areas in our life where we have not taken up the cross that you have called us to take up, I pray, give us the grace to do that. And I pray, Lord, that as we follow you, that you give us a boldness, the courage to never be ashamed of your word, never be ashamed of you, but just be daily blown away by incredible mercy that you would choose us before the foundation of the world.

That you will write our names in the book of life that you would choose to save us and sanctify us by the power of the Holy Spirit, that you would choose to use us to establish your kingdom. And I pray that you do so, evermore here and beyond. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Father, we thank you for your holy word and we thank you that you are a holy God and we have transgressed your holy law. And it's because of our rebellion. It's because we do have, every single one of us, a problem with authority, a problem with your authority in particular when you call us to do things that go against our own will. And Lord, you didn't leave us in our sins and trespasses. You didn't leave us in our rebellious, recalcitrant, our stubborn stiff-neckedness. Instead, you sent your son Jesus Christ, who submitted perfectly to every single facet of the law, every single tenant of the law, every single law. And you submitted Jesus to the will of the Father like no one before you, like no one after you. And you did that in order to provide a way for us to be saved. And you went to the cross instead of experiencing the blessing that you deserved for your law keeping, you took the curse that we deserve for our lawbreaking.

And Lord, you were crucified, you died and you were buried. And we thank you that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you were resurrected. And now you call every single one of us to repentance in particular the areas of our life where we do want to seek our own will instead of yours. You call us to repent and not be stiff neck and I pray today, soften our hearts, soften our necks, soften our wills, and make us a people that long to obey you because your will is good and your will is perfect and your will is holy. You do not call us to anything that is short of your blessed will. Everything you call us to is for our good and it's ultimately for your glory. And when we glorify you the most, that's when we experience your presence the most and we experience the joy that you would have for us.

Lord bless our time, the holy scriptures today. Holy Spirit, we love you. If there's any places in our lives where we are grieving you or where we are in our obstinacy, turning from your leading, I pray today, Lord, make us filled with the Holy Spirit to keep in step with the Spirit. Doing nothing to grieve your spirit. Lord bless our time in the holy scriptures and give us grace and give us your presence. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. And the title of the sermon today is Beware Stiff Nakedness. A few years ago, my third daughter at Katharina, Ecat for short, she started a dog sitting business and she got this dog that was small yet incredibly strong to watch for a few days and she loves dogs and she loves dog sitting.

And dog sitting is the closest that she's going to get to having a dog, although she is hoping for a miracle and praying for one. So though it was Ecat's responsibility to watch this dog, I don't know what happened, but it wasn't her walking the dog, it was my second daughter, Elizabeth, went out to give the dog a walk and it was winter time, it was cold outside and 20 minutes goes by, she's not home in 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and we got to worrying and we went to look for her and we found her stuck on a street corner trying with all her might to drag this dog, to turn this dog in the direction of home to no veil. She tried talking to the dog, pleading with the dog, cajoling the dog, bribing the dog with snacks. And every time she would pull on the leash to turn her home, the dog stiffened its neck and dug in. And it took a strong word of command to get the dog to come, a stronger yank of the leash to get the dog to turn right.

And from the side, if you saw what was happening here like that looks like excessive force, but it wasn't excessive and force was the only thing that the dog could understand, it was actually loving force. What was the goal? The goal was to get the dog home where it's warm and toasty and by itself the dog wouldn't make it out on the streets. The dog was stiff-necked. And that's the same phrase that God uses to describe the behavior of unbelieving people, people who see God's work, see sign after sign and don't take God at his Word. People who intentionally reject God's Word to do their own will. There's a curious passage in Nehemiah where Nehemiah summarizes quick in a pithy way the history of the people of Israel. In Nehemiah 9:13, speaking of God, "You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your Holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses, your servant.

You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst. And you told them to go into possess the land that you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refuse to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you've performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and did not forsake them." You read this and you say it's unbelievable. These people saw miracle after miracle with a crescendo of parting the Red Sea and they walked through and the armies of the Egyptians, they were swallowed up by the water.

They saw miracle after miracle, they heard the voice of God, they saw the evidence of God's work. And then as soon as they realized that to be free from captivity means to be in submission to God and his word, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I prefer slavery. And they appointed a leader to bring them back. And you say, how could they ever do that? Well, friends, just look into your own heart, look at your own history, how often do we come to Christ, have our sins forgiven? And then the Lord says, "Repent, believe, and follow me." And we start following and realize, "Oh, this is so much harder than I'd ever anticipated. The sacrifice is so much greater than I'm willing to make." And you turn back to sin, the word of God presents hardheartedness as the root cause of stiff nakedness. Why?

Because in the scriptures, the heart isn't just the seed of emotions, it's the center of the will. So you end up doing exactly what you love most. And if you love yourself more than you love God, you place yourself in the position of God. And if you take God's rightful place on the throne of your life, the very life that God gave you, then there will never be evidence enough for the existence of God, for the veracity of his word, for his clear commandments. God is the ultimate authority. And to believe in God is to love His authority. To believe in God is to submit to His authority no matter how we feel about the commandment. Even when every fiber in your being bristles with rebellion, at those moments, we must cry out to the Lord. Lord, soften my heart, Lord relax my stiff neck.

And those sticking points are the places where if we receive God's will, the absolute greatest transformation happens in our lives. However, if the Lord reveals a point in our lives where our necks have stiffened up against His will where we remain recalcitrant, when he pulls on the leash, there is potential for the neck to break. Proverbs 29:1 says, "He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck will suddenly be broken beyond healing." And today we approach a text where Jesus deals with the hard hardness of the stiff nakedness of those who should have known better, the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the politicians, those who followed Herod and the Herodians. And then he turns His attention to the disciples and He says that rebellious spirit that you see in the Pharisees and the Herodians, watch out that that spirit does not grow in your hearts. So today in Mark 8:11-22, would you look at the text with me?

"The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking for him a sign from heaven to test Him. And He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?" "Truly I say to you, no sign will be given this generation" and He left them, gotten to the boat again and went to the other side. Now, they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them saying, watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus aware of this said to them, why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see and having ears?

Do you not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They said to Him "twelve." And the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to Him, "Seven". And He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" This is the reading of God's holy, inert and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points of the frame up our time, be not a stiff-necked sign seeker. Second, beware the leaven of stiff-neckedness. And three battle hardheartedness by remembering. First be not a stiff-necked sign seeker. After Jesus feeds the 4,000 Gentiles, Mark tells us that he gets in the boat and they went to the region of Dalmanutha on the western, more Jewish shore of the lake.

And that's where the Pharisees meet Him. And that's verse 11. The Pharisees came and began to argue with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven to test him. Now, if you haven't been with us, the Pharisees, just a quick recap, were the religious leaders. They're the gatekeepers of the Jewish faith. They're the self-proclaimed representatives of God. So when Jesus shows up and starts telling people the Pharisees, He starts telling them that he's the promised Messiah and actually he's the Son of God. While they've got concerns. He can't be God they reason. Why? Because they know God. God is on our side, they figured. We have God figured out. We're the professionals here, Jesus. Moreover, if Jesus is right, then they're wrong, but they can't be wrong, not this wrong, not this wrong about the most important question in the universe. Who is God and what does He demand of me?

And moreover, if Jesus is right, then they have to change their lives and they don't want to change their lives. They like their lives. They like their prestigious, lucrative positions. They like the honor that the people give them. They like the glory they receive and the praise from the people. Moreover, Jesus is preaching not just that they are to obey God more, he's preaching that they can't save themselves at all. He's preaching that apart from repentance, that they have no standing before God. He's preaching repentance, which means a change of life, but they don't want to change their life. And also Jesus, who are you to teach us about God? You didn't even go to rabbinical school and we don't even know who your father is. And they cast all kinds of insinuations upon Him. So they come to Jesus and they begin to argue with Him.

This is a phrase that's used with a nuance of hostility. They're saying, "Jesus, prove your authority. Prove that you are who you say you are. And prove it in exactly how we say it." Here's the marching orders, Jesus, obey them dutifully and then maybe we'll follow you. But here's the thing, God doesn't take commands from us. We can pray to God and we can bring our requests to God, but we can't command God. And by definition, God does not obey humans and the posture of their heart behind this phrase "Prove to me that you're God," well, it's a posture of authority over a subject. They're standing in authority over Jesus, Jesus we're telling you what to do if you want us to believe. He's God and which means He doesn't obey us, we obey him. And the very second he starts to obey us is the very second we usurp his throne, which He doesn't allow.

They came to test Him seeking from him a sign from heaven what Jesus had just been doing, sign after sign after sign. Perhaps they weren't privy or witness to the sign of feeding of the 4,000, but they had definitely heard about it. If you feed 5,000 men, if you give 5,000 men a free lunch, it doesn't even have to be that great, a free mediocre lunch, they're going to tell everybody about it. I got a free lunch. It was awesome. It was free. Partially our strategy behind feeding people. February 4th is our first monthly community lunch, make sure to come at 1:00 PM February 4th and bring your friends so they tell all their friends about it. No. And then also they saw some of the miracles. They saw the exorcism in chapter three. Jesus cast out a demon from a person and the Pharisees charged Jesus with doing this spiritual work by the power of Satan himself.

And Jesus calls them out and says, "No, no, no, you are on the side of Satan actually and you've blasphemed the Holy Spirit," and seeking a sign despite the existence of previous signs, despite the eyewitness accounts of different signs. What the Pharisees do is they demonstrate that they're spiritual heirs of the disobedient wilderness generation, the generation that was led out of captivity from Egypt and led into the wilderness and they did not believe God, and God turned from them. In the Old Testament, it's not always a mark of disobedience to request a sign from God. If you remember Gideon, he famously laid a fleece before the Lord to ascertain whether God was going to choose him as an instrument in military deliverance. Hezekiah asked for a sign and received it that he would be healed of his grave illness. Isaiah seven, God insists that Ahaz actually asked for a sign from heaven and God sends it.

In other places, signs seeking is presented negatively in particular with false prophets. God did warn that false prophets will come and they will try to verify their teaching with signs and miracles, but if they give signs and lead people into apostasy, those people aren't from God. Deuteronomy 13:1-5, "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or a wonder that he tells you comes to pass. And if He says, let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord, your God, is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep His commandments and obey His voice and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.

But that prophet or that dreamer of dream shall be put to death because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." And perhaps this was at the heart of the strategy of the Pharisees to accuse Jesus of being a false prophet. So that was their assumption that you're teaching something false, something against the scriptures, and here's the sign that you did. Therefore, Deuteronomy 13, we have reason to condemn you. They were seeking a sign to test Him. And this phrase to test is a phrase that's used often to describe Satan. Satan was a tester of the tempter in Matthew chapter four, where Jesus has been fasting for 40 days.

Satan comes to tempt Jesus Christ with signs. He said, take these stones and turn them into bread to prove that you are who you say you are. And then Jesus responds with a quotation of Deuteronomy chapter 6:16, which is a reference to the incident at Massa and marimba. We'll get to that. But Deuteronomy 6:16, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested Him at Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and His testimonies and His statutes, which He has commanded you." You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, he's the one that gives us tests. He's the one that puts us to the test. We don't return the favor. Sometimes people ask me, you want to go bungee jumping? You want to go jump out of a plane with a parachute?

And I say, I don't have enough faith. I don't have enough faith in that stuff. And my verse that every time that comes to mind, whenever that whole category of I don't want to put the Lord to the test, like, oh, this is a great opportunity. That's not what he's talking about, he's talking about don't test the veracity of God's word, especially if God's already proven it time and time and time again, don't test Him. And this wasn't a request, it was a test similar to the testing of God by the Israelites at Massah and Meribah in Exodus 17. So Exodus 16, God sends manna from heaven, an incredible miracle, people see that God is providing. And then chapter 17, they test Moses again, they want water. And their question is, does God love us? Is God even with us? And they're testing God.

And the same phrase that's used here in Mark where the Pharisees test God, peirazō, peirazein, that same saying, that same phrase is used in Exodus 17 in the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Exodus 17:1, "All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me?" "Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So Moses cried to the Lord, "What shall I do with these people?"

They're almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people taking with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand, the staff, with which you struck the Nile and go." "Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb and you shall strike the rock and the water shall come out of it and the people will drink." And Moses did so on the sight of the elders of Israel and he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Is the Lord among us or not? After miracle, after miracle, after miracle and they were just fed with manna the day before, but it's just a human need, thirst, they suffer just a little bit and all of a sudden they're questioning God.

They're grumbling against the Lord. And we see that all throughout the scriptures. This episode is brought to the forefront just to remind the people of Israel do not be like your forefathers. Psalm 95:7-11, "For He is our God and we are the people of his pastor and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness. When your father's put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said, "They are people who go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways." Therefore, I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest." The parallels are clear between what Jesus was doing here and Mark and what God was doing with the people of Israel.

Moses fed people with manna, in the same way Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then the 4,000, and then we have this text about not testing God and not being stiff-necked. Numbers 14, God swears that the wilderness generation that tested him will not enter Canaan. So in a sense you can diminish blessing from your own life by testing God. Through our own stiffness we actually keep ourselves from blessings that the Lord would have for us. The people resisted God and were stiff-necked against God and they missed out on the promised land. Numbers 14:21, "But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these 10 times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers and none of those who despise me shall see it."

And the Lord was keeping track 10 times, he says they were stiff-necked and didn't obey. And why? Because they weren't just testing Moses, they were testing God. To test God is to undermine his authority and to undermine his authority is to hate him. And in our text, the Pharisees weren't just testing a representative of God, they were testing God himself, God incarnate. Psalm 78:17, "Yet they sinned still more against Him, rebelling against the most high in the desert. They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God saying, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?" He struck the rock so that the water gushed out and streams overflowed. "Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?" What's Jesus' reaction to their testing? Verse 12, "And He sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?

Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." He sighed deeply in His spirit. If you remember when He healed a deaf man before He healed the deaf man, he looked up to heaven and he sighed deeply, partially because He is exasperated by the consequences of the fall, the repercussions of the fall, which includes sickness. And here He's exasperated at their unbelief, people that should have known better, people who have received God's Word and God here is exasperated with them. Scripture teaches us to not grieve the Holy Spirit, meaning when the Holy Spirit tells us what to do, it leads us in a certain direction and we say no, we're stiff-necked against the Holy Spirit. He does grieve. He is grieved by our disobedience and we are told not to quench the spirit or grieve the spirit but be filled with the spirit.

Similar reaction Jesus feels in the next chapter where a gentleman comes and he says to the disciples of Jesus, "Can you cast out a demon from my son?" And the disciples couldn't do it. Jesus comes down the mountain of transfiguration and He says this in Mark 9:19, "Oh faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" The stubborn refusal to believe lay at the root of the Pharisees attitude. To those in such a state of unbelief, even a sign, if it was given, it wouldn't convince because a lack of belief, the root cause of the lack of belief in God is not a lack of evidence, and it's not a difficulty of the intellect or the reason. No, it's a difficulty of the will. John 7:17 says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority."

And Jesus is saying, "Do you want proof that the words that I'm saying are true?" Well, do you want to do God's will? Because if I prove to you that God exists but you don't want to do God's will, it's actually more condemnation. I don't want to give you illumination that will lead to more condemnation if you want nothing to do with God's will. And certainty in the faith deepening of the faith, it is a gift of those who are obedient to the Lord. Is your will to do God's will, and that is the way to deepen your faith. The Pharisees were blind and as someone said, none are so blind as those who will not see. That's their attitude and such an attitude of sign seeking runs diametrically opposed to the biblical concept of the nature of faith. Jesus told Thomas when Thomas said, "Until I put my hands in the wounds of the resurrected Christ, I'm not going to believe."

And then he sees Christ and Christ showed him the wounds he didn't even have to touch. He believed and he said, "Blessed are you Thomas." But more blessed are those who have not seen. You've seen and you've believed, but more blessed are those who have not seen and believe. Why? Because if you see a miracle, if Jesus gave the Pharisees another miracle, another sign at this moment, it's not faith that leads them to believe in God. No, it's just a logical conclusion. Of course this is God. Of course I'm going to place my faith in God because I've seen the evidence. It's a logical conclusion and the Lord wants a deeper faith and he wants us to take a step of faith given the evidence that he's given us. And he says, "This generation, truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation."

And that's a phrase that's used before the flood in Genesis six where there's an evil and adulterous generation and same phrase that's used for Israel in the wilderness. And he says that you're not going to get a sign. Another translation says, God forbid that a sign should be given you. Perish the thought that I would do such a thing. There's an intense emotion. And what He's saying is, "No, I'm not doing it." God's not in the business of sending authenticating signs on demand. God isn't a pinata. God isn't a vending machine. God clearly tells us these are the terms on which you come to me, and you don't get to dictate the terms. Jesus has given them all the evidence they need to come to faith. The Pharisees are without excuse.,They can't plead ignorance, nor can they say that God hadn't given them enough information.

You're alive. Why are you alive? Where did you come from? Where did life come from? You live in a material world, where did all of this come from? It didn't come from nothing. Nothing can come from nothing. And then on top of that, the moral law is written on your heart. When you read the 10 Commandments, you're like, yes, life would be better if everyone lived like this. And no, I have not lived like this. So what's the penalty for transgressing on the holy law of God? The penalty is damnation. The penalty is to be rejected by God. Therefore, I need grace. And this is exactly what they were unwilling to ask for. And it's not as though these people are unintelligent, on the contrary, they were probably some of the smartest people in Israel at the time. They knew the prophetic passages about the Messiah and Jesus fulfilled them perfectly.

But they refused to believe. Why? Partially because Jesus called them out for their self-righteousness. You present yourself as righteous, but you are far from it and it's all facades of righteousness and it's all hypocrisy. And Jesus called them to repentance and they didn't want to be called to repentance. You're calling us sinners, Jesus, we're not sinners, we do all the right things, you're probably the sinner. A lot of us, today, we want miracles to believe in the Lord. And sometimes it is fine to ask for a miracle. It's fine to ask for a sign from the Lord. It really depends on what posture of heart that you ask the miracle with which you ask for the miracle. And then the point, are you looking for a miracle so that you can deepen your obedience and submission to the Lord? Or are you looking for an excuse to rebel against him?

We do have miracles. We experience miracles every time a person comes to faith, especially in a place like Boston, one of the greatest miracles, the fact that anyone would turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Regeneration incredible miracle. Another miracle is the holy scriptures, the word of God, the Bible, two million miracles, two million words, give or take order of magnitude. 66 books, 1,189 chapters written by 40 different authors over 1,500 years, three different languages used Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, every jaw, every tittle of it given by the inspiration of God that holy men of old Roe as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. It's incredible through the centuries that the Lord has preserved the holy scriptures. This is the miracle. It's right before us, right before us supervised by the Holy Spirit and it tells us everything we need, everything we need to know about God, who he is, about the person of God.

It tells us everything we need to know about how we can be reconciled with Him, saved from sin, saved from eternal damnation and tells us how we are to live in order to glorify God and honor him. Mark 8:13, "And he left them and got into the boat again and went to the other side." So in the beginning of the passage, Jesus crosses over from gentile land to Jewish land, exchanges a few sentences with the Pharisees. They're like, "We want to sign?" They're like, "I'm not giving you a sign." Gets in the boat and leaves. And here it is just a reminiscent of the departure of God and Deuteronomy where He turns his face away from rebellious people. Deuteronomy 32:20 and He said, "I will hide my face from them and I'll see what their end will be for they're a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness."

Point two is beware the leaven of stiff-neckedness. Here now Jesus turns from the Pharisees to His own disciples. In verse 14, now they had forgotten to bring bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat and he cautioned them saying, "Watch out. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." The word leaven, it's not synonymous with yeast. In ancient times, yeast was rare. Dough was rather made by leavening or mixing into a small amount of dough, a piece of the previous week's dough that had been leavened. It was kept back for that purpose. If you make yogurt at home, it's the same process. Kombucha, kombucha, really delicious, really good for you apparently. But it's like you make a batch but you save a little bit of that batch to make the next batch, that's what the leaven is.

And the power of the leaven is that it has power to permeate the whole dough. This is what Jesus is talking about. And in context of the Hebrew scriptures, during Passover, they had unleavened bread and they would cleanse their house from any leaven because the leaven was a sign of something that could permeate the whole thing. And here in this context that leaven is evil, it's stubbornness, it's stiff ness. And Jesus saying, "Disciples, be careful if even a little bit of this bitterness in your heart, even a little bit of the stiff-neckedness in your heart and any tiny aspect of your life because it has the power to take over. Unbelief because of non-submissive hearts is the unseen pervasive influence. 1st Corinthians 5:6 says, "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump?" Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are on leaven for Christ?

Our passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So he says, be careful of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians. In verse 16, they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. They just witnessed Jesus feed 5,000 men and then they witnessed Jesus feed 4,000. Jesus is clearly talking about spiritual matters, but they missed the point. To show us just how far they are from understanding who Christ is completely what his ultimate goal was in coming, which is to save us from the leaven of sin within, to give us new hearts that long to obey God. And in response to their misunderstanding, Jesus unleashes a series of questions. He ask eight questions, five critical questions that echo passages from the Old Testament, then two additional questions that recall the two miraculous feedings and then a final critical question.

But the point is watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. "Watch out, beware." It's a double warning meaning this is how important it is to heeded this warning. Beware that you do not get infected with the stubborn unbelief. The stiff-neckedness of the Pharisees and the Herodians. Both were stiff-necked but seemingly in opposite waves. If you look at the surface, if you just look at their appearance and their lives, it seemed like the Pharisees were the religious ones. The Herodians wanted nothing to do with religion. But Jesus calls both of them stiff-necked. The Pharisees played the religious game. They pretended to be followers of God, they pretended to do all the right things. They pretended to go through the motions, but they weren't following God's law, they were following human interpretations of God's law and they were following human traditions, thus proving that they didn't love God, nor did they want to submit to his authority.

They thought that they knew God, but when God showed up, they didn't even recognize Him. And here the word is particularly relevant for those who have been in the church for a while or perhaps you've grown up in the faith or perhaps you come from a Christian family where your parents believed or your grandparents believed. You know the lingo. You know what to say, when to say it, you know how to behave in church, how to behave around believers, but deep down inside your stiff-necked and you want nothing to do with God. And here the lesson is, don't stiffen your neck when the Lord corrects you or when he corrects your traditional thought patterns. Patterns that we inherit from the world, inherit from the school system, inherit from the university system. Where you learn one pattern or thinking and you come to the scripture and you're like, "Whoa" it rubs you the wrong way.

You're offended by it. And what do you do at those moments of offense? Do you stiffen your neck or do you say, "Lord, help me understand, Lord, give me eyes to see? Lord, help me receive your word." Don't say, I could never believe that. Don't say, I could never believe in a God that commands that. Herod, on the other hand, he didn't even pretend to be obedient to God. He was the king, who was God to tell him what to do? He did as he pleased. He was Allah unto himself. When John the Baptist confronted King Herod, king Herod loved the sermons. He's like, "Oh, great sermon John, Mr. Baptist, now you're imprisoned. I'll call you again when I want another sermon." And John shows up again and Herod's like, "Give me a different sermon." He's like, "Nope, I got one sermon for you, Herod, repent of your adultery, you shouldn't do this." And Herod wanted to listen to the sermons, but he wanted nothing to do with submitting to God.

John called him to repentance, which assumed a change of lifestyle, Herod wanted nothing to do with that. Both the Pharisees and the Herodians had the same leaven, a refusal to release power over their life and a stubborn refusal to believe and obey. So how do we fight the hardheartedness, the stiff-neckedness? This is 0.3, battle hardheartedness by remembering, remembering what? Remembering the work of God in your life. We are to document the work of God in our life. We are to remember, force ourselves to be reminded. Verse 17 and Jesus aware of this said to them, "Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?" Jesus is warning the disciples against being infected by the same evil impulse that the Herodians and the Pharisees were infected with.

But He gives them questions which assumes that there is hope for them to learn. He doesn't just rebuke them and say, "You are hardhearted." He asks them, "Are you hardhearted?" Because at that moment their hearts perhaps were hard, but they didn't think the hearts were hard. Just like it shows us the blinding effect of sin to its own reality in our lives, it is a blind spot. When you are in sin, until someone confronts you of that sin, usually you don't even realize. And He does assume that they're going to grow. He's given them evidence upon evidence and He continues to do so. But until now, if you just think about how much they've seen, they witnessed Jesus heal, they witnessed Jesus cast out demons. They witnessed Jesus comma storm. They witnessed Jesus confound the Pharisees as He ate with tax collectors and sinners. They heard about Jesus preach about the kingdom.

They even preached sermons themselves. They went on a mission trip. They preached the word of God. But here in the presence of Jesus Christ, it's almost like all of that has been wiped clean. This shows us that spiritual amnesia is real. It's almost like we have a physical memory what happens in our life and then we have a spiritual memory. What happens in our soul? What happens when the Holy Spirit moves us, the work of God and our lives? And it's almost as if sometimes the spiritual memory just turns off. It's wiped clean. Back in the day, I remember there was a movie called Men in Black with Will Smith and they're like the memory thing, the memory stick, it's like you just don't remember anything. It's like Satan has this stick and he comes to us and like I have been born again, I have experienced God.

I love the word of God. I go to church, and say, "Am I even a believer?" Does God even exist? That's what Jesus is getting at, that this is real and we are to remind ourselves of the realities of God's work in our life. Verse 18, "Having eyes, do you not see and having ears? Do you not hear and do you not remember?" Do you not remember? And he's calling them to remind themselves of the work of God in their lives. Jesus questions echo Moses words and to Israel and Deuteronomy 29:2. And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, you have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants and to all his land. The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs and those great wonders. But to this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.

And we see the same themes of the insensitive heart, the blind eyes and the deaf ears. Same references we see in Jeremiah 5:21. "Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but see not who have ears but hear not. "Do you not fear me," declares the Lord? Do you not tremble before me?" Ezekiel was told this in Ezekiel 12:2, "Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house who have eyes to see but see not and have ears to hear but hear not for they are a rebellious house." And do you not remember... At our community group a couple of weeks ago, someone said, we do whenever there's new people, we say name, where you're from. And then someone said, tell us the date you were baptized. And I was like, you know what? That's a great question. I should know exactly the date that I was baptized.

And for me it was October 29th, 1996. I was baptized at age 16 outside in a lake in Connecticut, in Ashford, Connecticut. I was raised in a Russian Baptist church. The lake was freezing. There was little bits of ice. And the pastor told me, well, it's better than hell. And then he baptized me. So that was my upbringing. But you should know, you should know when the Lord called you to himself. You should know when you were baptized, you should know about how God has answered prayer in your life. A prayer journal is very useful where whatever your prayers are, you write them down and then go back to the prayer journal three, six months, a year, and it's uncanny how God answers prayer sometimes precisely everything we asked for and precisely the same way. Sometimes he answered the prayer and it was absolutely the opposite of what you asked for.

But you're like, oh, given time has passed, this is exactly what I would have prayed for had I known everything that the Lord knows, and it's incredible. We are to remind ourselves, I can't help but think of the words of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy when the people of Israel are about to enter the promised land and they're standing on the planes of Moab and Moses is explaining, your life is going to change dramatically. You're no longer going to have the provision of the manna that the Lord was sending you on a daily basis, but you are entering into the promised land, the land of splendor that's flowing with milk and honey. And he says, when you do and when you get comfortable, make sure at those moments and particularly those moments that you remind yourself of where you came from and what it took to get you here.

Deuteronomy 8:11, "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God, by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them. And when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who led you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know. That he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

You shall remember the Lord your God for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may confirm his covenant, that He swore to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God." We are to remind ourselves of the great work of God in our life. And then when the people of Israel passed over the river, Jordan, Joshua who was the military leader, he sets up memorial stones in the river and on the bank of the river. Why? Because he says, when your children, the next generation, when they come to you and say, "Hey, what are those stones all about?"

And you are to remind them and say, those stones are to remind us of the mighty acts of God that we have witnessed his greatness. He's done it in our generation. He will do it in your generation if you keep submitting. And we love the song, come Thou Fount, I love that song. It's tremendous. Come Thou Fount of every blessing. And there's a line about Ebenezer and everyone always thinks about Ebenezer Scrooge. That's not in the Bible, but the Ebenezer stone is and it just means stone of help. And it's a story where Samuel is bringing sacrifice to the Lord and then the Philistines descend upon Israel and the people of Israel go to Samuel and say, pray for us. He continues to pray for them. And then when they're about to get defeated, wiped out, the Lord miraculously intervenes and saves them from disaster.

And they realized at the moment when they were outmanned, outgunned, outnumbered outmaneuvered. That's when the Lord showed up in the nick of time precisely the way they needed the help at the precise moment. And the stone of Ebenezer was to remind them, yes, God showed up before exactly as we had asked and he will show up again. Mark 8:19, Jesus continues. "When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" They said to Him "Twelve". "And the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" And they said "Seven." He did the feeding twice. One time there were 12 baskets, the second time there were seven. And just in case the disciples forgot that there was seven, he gives them the answer in the question. And the number seven we know is important because the number seven is number of completion.

The number 12 is important. The 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples and Jesus, impartially I think he did that so they would remember, I fed the 5,000, there were 12 baskets. I fed the 4,000, there were seven baskets. It's to say when you needed the Lord, He came through and He came through in a way that you couldn't even imagine with leftovers. And then verse 21, He said to them, "Do you not yet understand?" The phrase here not yet implies the disciples will eventually understand. One of the truths about holy scripture is we never know the way we ought to know. There's always room left for growth. In 1st Corinthians 8:2 it says, "If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know." The very second you believe I got it, I read the Bible, I know this story.

You don't know the way you ought to know. And I do this on a weekly basis, on a professional way, it'll make professional hours spent studying the word of God. The more I study, the more I read, my goodness, there's so much to know. And then I get blown away by how perfect scripture is. For example, here in this text, the seventh question, the last word of the seventh question is the number seven or God's just winking at us? Yeah, it is my book, I wrote it. So there's always room for growth. And Philippians 3:2 tells us, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let those of us who are mature think this way. And if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you, only let us hold true to what we have attained." He's saying the mature believer always understands that I have not known God the way I ought to. You're always pursuing God, you're always pursuing sanctification. You're always pursuing holiness. He's saying the immature person thinks that they've arrived and he says, but the Lord will reveal that also to you assuming they need revelation. The problem is the disciples have a hard heart because they don't realize the depth of the ministry of Jesus Christ. He isn't just a messiah who came just to fulfill prophecy and just to reinstate the glory of Israel and just to bring Gentiles to himself. No, he's come to save sinners. And the assumption there is sinners who can't save themselves.

Pharisees cannot save themselves no matter how much they posture themselves as being religious. Herodians, they can't save disciples. You can't save yourself. Jesus came to save us from sin, which assumes that we need saving in a way that we cannot save ourselves. Why did Jesus cast out demons? To prove to us that there's a greater power than us out there vow of Satan, the power of demons. And if we are not protected by the Holy Spirit, we are vulnerable and susceptible to the attacks and oppression and even possession. Why did Jesus heal certain illnesses in the public settings? To prove that in the same way that the blind man can't give himself sight, we can't give ourselves sight of God. We need Him to do a miracle in us. Why does Jesus challenge the Pharisees on their self-righteousness? To show them that their self-righteous isn't enough to entrust them to God.

It's not enough to bring them to heaven, they need to trust in Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ didn't just preach, repent and believe, he also mirrored, he showed us the example of what it means at the breaking point, the moment where you do not want to obey what to do, Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, he knows exactly the mission that God has given. God, the Father gave him the mission to go to the cross and bear the penalty for the sins of all the elect, all who were trust in Him. And Jesus at that breaking point, He told the disciples, go pray for Him because this is the breaking point. There's so much stress that Jesus was enduring that says that the capillaries in his face were bursting and the blood mixed with sweat. It's as if he was sweating blood. He understood the immense pressure of what it means, not just to bear the excruciating pain physically of the crucifixion, but to bear the condemnation from God the Father for all of our sins.

Jesus knew all of that. And He's on his knees and He says, father, if there's any other way, if there's any other way, let this cup pass for me. What's going on in his own heart? The same battle that goes on in our own hearts when we don't want to obey. He said, F, let this cup pass for me. And then what does he say? Not my will but yours be done. That's it. He didn't stiffen his neck and he went to the cross and he went to the cross to die, to be broken, for the blood to be shed, to provide a way for us to have grace, have access to grace. For all the times that we would not obey, for all the times that we said, Lord, not your will, my will be done. And that's the essence of sin. So, friend, today, if you are not a Christian, a follower of Christ, if you have not ever repented of your sin today, we're calling you today, accept the grace of Jesus Christ.

Today accept the mercy of Jesus Christ. And when Jesus tells you that you're a sinner, just know He's telling you because he loves you. He's saying, you are sinner. You're a sinner, you're my beloved sinner. I love you so much to tell you you're a sinner. So repent, believe, and obey. Don't harden your heart. When you hear that message, don't stiffen your neck. I'll close it with the words of Isaiah, the prophet in Isaiah 55. Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come by and eat. Come by wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; hear that your soul may live and I'll make with you an everlasting covenant,

My steadfast, sure love for David. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this incredible word, a word of rebuke, but it's a loving rebuke because you want the best for us. And Lord, make us the people that when we hear your word, when we study your commandments, when we study your law, that we are quick to soften our hearts, that we are quick to soften our necks and say, yes Lord, your will be done not mine. And Lord, whenever we have doubts about if your will is good, let us quell those doubts by looking to the cross of Jesus Christ. Well, of course His will is good. Look how much He loves us, that he was willing to suffer in our stead on the cross. Lord Jesus, continue to give us the power of the Holy Spirit to be people who walk in the manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Today, we are continuing in our series in the Gospel of Mark. It's called Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom. And I just want to say I get to preach about every five or six weeks. I'm here to give passing on a break, a week off from the pulpit this week. And I just pray that you have been blessed as I have been blessed, as we've gone through this book. I hope that that continues today. We thought we'd go through a little bit faster and maybe close to the end of Mark, but we're about halfway through. Given just the satisfaction, the refinement we're getting from it as individuals in a body, we're just happy to meditate on it again today.

Today we are in Mark 8, chapter 8 of Mark verses 1 through 10. Open, with me, if you have a Bible and if you don't, you can follow along on the screen. So Mark 8 verses 1 through 10. This is the word of our Lord. "In those days when again, a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat and if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. And his disciples answered him, how can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place? And he asked them, how many loaves do you have? They said seven."

"And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground and he took the seven loaves and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the people and they set them before the crowd and they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them and they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces, left over seven baskets full and there were about 4,000 people and he sent them away and immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha." Let's pray. This is a word of our Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you this day that we can come together as a people, as a multitude to learn about you, to hear from you, to hear the living word that we have in scripture.

We thank you Lord that you have not left us in darkness, but those of us who know we are saved in Jesus are those who live in the light. And we thank you for the guide that your word is to us. We pray today that as you have been faithful to do throughout the course of Mosaic's history, we pray, bless us with a great sense of your presence. Enliven our hearts to just hear the lessons that you have for us, the comfort we need, the conviction, we need, the growth, the holiness that we need. Lord, open our eyes and just give us receptive hearts. We pray, Lord, that we would be satisfied, that we do pray that the thoughts and anxieties about the previous week, about the week to come would just leave our minds.

And when you enable that Lord that you would fill us with gladness and joy in Jesus. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the primary phrase in our text today comes from verse two and it says, "And Jesus said to them, I have compassion on the crowd." Jesus has compassion on the crowd and this is the primary theme of the text. I'll talk about Jesus' compassion. And as I enter into this, I want to admit to you that when I opened up the text this week just preparing, in preparation early on to preach this Sunday, I read this text, I saw the topic of compassion and I really wanted to avoid it. To be honest, my heart coming back from the holidays, I had a great time, got to see my parents, a couple siblings, my in-laws.

I got to be in my hometown where I grew up, my wife's hometown. It was a great time, but in many ways it was ... I don't know if it's similar for you, but it was kind of a family missions trip and a catch-up time between me and the wife, me and the kids, and driving to Philly and DC, a lot of my week was spent on I-95 and Highway 15 in Connecticut and came back tired last Tuesday, getting back to work. And I've been a little bit on autopilot where my body has been going forward, but my soul just feeling a little dry and I saw this topic of compassion or really wanted to avoid it. I basically wrote three sermons as I was trying to justify Pastor Jan preached on this topic a little bit, thoroughly enough a few weeks ago when talking about the other feeding.

The Lord just corrected me. And how did I ... when I identified I was avoiding this, I did spend time in prayer to really just get softened and be receptive to what the Lord wanted me to engage and what wanted all of us to engage through this text this week. And I'll just prepare you, it might not be stimulating to the brain, but just as important as Christians is, we need our heart engaged and this text certainly does it as we cover the topic of compassion and to really ... if you're not really with me on compassion, you're feeling a little cold today, I want to warm your heart a little bit, attempt to very quickly, by reading First Corinthians 13, one to seven, this famous passage that we often hear at weddings on love.

For Jesus said, the sum of God's command is the love God and love our neighbor and talking about compassion, about practically meeting the needs of others, praying that God would use us to meet the spiritual needs of others in the process. Just want to pause and remind us, we can't do any of that without love in our hearts. And if we do so, what do we resemble? We resound noisy gongs, clanging symbols, people who talk a lot but hypocritically don't back that talk with action, with loving action. So let me just read First Corinthians 13:1-7 with the hopes that the Lord prepares you for the rest of the passage.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I'm nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So I just really want to say we need to love and why ... the sum of Christianity is that we love, we extend compassion to the loss, to the needy around us because Jesus Christ has been loving and compassionate.

And merciful and gracious to us in our needs and primarily in the way that he has met our need to engage our sin, the guilt and shame we carry before the Lord. He provides the means of peace with our father. And so we should go forward with love on our minds and engaging with people with compassionate love. So this morning engaging in the text as is obvious from the scripture I read, we're going to study the miraculous feeding of the 4,000. I think it's best to cover this text going through verse by verse. For those of you who like checkpoints in the sermon, I want to know three points. The compassion of Jesus will be my first section, the power of Jesus will be my second section and the satisfaction of Jesus will be my third.

So for those of you who are very attentive listeners to Mosaic sermons, thank you. We're glad you're here and following. You've been with us the past couple of months in Mark. You'll notice that today's text is not very different than the text on the feeding of the 5,000 that we covered on December 10th in Mark, when we studied Mark 30 through 44, Pastor Jan preached an incredible sermon. You should listen to it. As we open up this text, if it sounds really similar, you're not experiencing deja vu, we haven't gone backwards. We are just going forward in the text trying to be faithful to the scripture that the Holy Spirit is bringing our body to today.

Now, the stories are very similar between the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000, the accounts, both accounts mentioned the compassion of Jesus on the crowd. Both accounts take place in a wilderness. In both accounts, Jesus inquires about how many loaves the disciples have. In both accounts, the people are asked to sit down. In both accounts, Jesus prays over the food and miraculously creates massive amounts of food. In both accounts, there's a distribution process where Jesus has the disciples, involves them in bringing the bread to the people. In both accounts, the people are very satisfied. In both accounts, Jesus dismisses the crowd before leaving on a boat on the Sea Galilee to continue his ministry with his disciples.

Both accounts, there are only two chapters apart and because of these similarities, the text is often criticized by scholars and critics of scripture, those who criticize the deity, question the deity of Jesus Christ. They say that this repetition of these similar stories or many of them say this one story gives reason to believe that the book of Mark, it's just a messy work. The guy who wrote it, who edited it was really just trying to trick people into thinking that there were two separate accounts, two separate events in order to get his literary intentions through, to get the lessons that he wanted to get through forward.

And essentially, he concocted the stories, he wove them together to build this myth of the deity of the God man, Jesus. So we say, just want to leave that battle because at Mosaic we believe in the inerrancy and in the infallibility and the divine inspiration of the scriptures. We're not troubled by this. There certainly are many similarities between the passages, but many differences as well. In the first account, there are 5,000 people running around the lake with Jesus and spending a day with him. In the second account, it's 4,000 in the wilderness of the Decapolis for three days. In this account, we find people who have been with him ... Sorry, three days instead of one, after one day in the first feeding, Jesus feeds the multitude.

In the first account, there's five loaves and two fish. In this account, there's seven loaves and a few small fish, probably sardines. After the first feeding they picked up 12 small baskets of leftovers. In this account, they pick up seven large baskets. It's kind of frustrating because every time you read on this passage, every time you listen to a sermon, everybody has to spend like five minutes, as I just did, saying that there's a lot of debate here, but we rest in the authority of Scripture, the most important and conclusive evidence that these are two separate accounts as Mark shows us, comes from later in chapter 8 verses 19 and 20, when Jesus Christ himself says, "When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?"

They said to him, 12, and the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. So that's it. Case closed. Jesus himself refers to these events as two separate events. This is a separate feeding of a multitude of 4,000 taking place at a different time than the feeding of the 5,000 chronicled in Mark 6. So this account, it does teach some of the same lessons as the feeding of the 5,000, but there are unique details in this one and that's what we want to pull out because that is what differentiates some of the meaning between the two accounts. So I want to bring out these differences and the primary lessons that we see here in the text through these three main headings and first the compassion of Jesus.

So we begin here at 8:1, chapter eight verse one. It says, "In those days, and I say ..." okay, we're through that required part that I was frustrated that I had to go through, but so come back, listen to me now. We begin now at chapter 8:1, "In those days when again, a great crowd had gathered. In those days." So what mark means is that there was not a great passing of time since that last feeding. Remember Jesus ... these are the days where Jesus, he has traveled recently to Capernaum, to Tyre, to Sidon and now, he is south in the Decapolis. Jesus in those days, it's these days where he is in this Gentile region more prominently Gentile, less Jewish region and he's met by many who are bringing to him throughout his travels, the sick and the needy.

And he is healing a lot of them. He's teaching a lot of them. So Mark is saying, this is what is happening in the Decapolis. Many translations say a multitude has gathered. Verse nine tells us there are 4,000 people. The parallel account in Matthew mentions that ... of the same feeding, that it's 4,000 people not including women and children. So this easily could be a crowd of 10 to 12,000, 15,000, 20,000 would not be unreasonable estimates. A huge congregation has sought Jesus once again as has been the case over and over again to this point in Mark since Jesus started his ministry. So we have the 12 disciples. Jesus, a large crowd of people. And why did these crowds come? To be healed, to see miracles.

Most of all, we expect they came to hear him preach the word in three days with him. It's pretty clear that he would've been teaching them. It was said, why was Jesus ... what was the appeal? John 7:46 has a Gentile say. It was said of Jesus that no man ever spoke like him. People said that he preached in a way that they'd never heard before. People would hear him speak and they're there hanging on to every word that he said. And what would they do? A lot of them ... what we'd see in Mark is they'd hear him speak and if he got up and traveled they would follow him. We see here that he's probably preaching in a single area and just they are camped out for three days.

It's like a revival scene, and that is what seems to be taken here in the Decapolis. Verse two says, they've been with me now three days. In the Greek, the translation for these words, been with me, three words, it's actually one word. It can be translated more precisely that they've been strongly attached to me. They've been committed to me. The people hear Jesus preaching and they want to stay to him, as close to him as possible. They don't want to leave. They hear Jesus preach his message of the arrival of the kingdom of God and the mercy and grace and forgiveness and his call to repent and they'd never want to leave.

It's as if time has stopped and all their needs are being met. Their soul is experiencing satisfaction that it's never encountered before. And all earthly concerns don't matter for three days. Do you know this feeling? I don't know it for three days. I wish I did, but I remember when I first arrived in Mosaic in August of 2011, a year out of college, I grew up in a church ... before I come to Mosaic, I grew up and attended a church where the pastor had a strict rule for himself that he went 18 minutes with his sermons. And I was one of those people that was counting down those 18 minutes. When I arrived at Mosaic and I really think I was saved in those initial weeks where for the first time, I finally saw I'm a sinner, God is holy, I have no access, no right to go into his presence by my own means.

By my own actions, by my own record, but Jesus is perfect and I can have his record applied to me by faith. That's when I started hearing the word and when I heard it was if time stopped, a 45-minute to an hour long sermon, that was like nothing to me. Time felt like it flew by and when it was over I was sad. Do you know this? This is the experience really of every true believer is going to have a love and this kind of deep satisfaction in the word of God, and I would say I still feel it. I'm not saying I don't feel this right now. I love to come to church on Sunday. I want to get filled my soul during Christmas time.

I went home and ate all my favorite takeout foods, Philadelphia hoagies and soft pretzels and lots of local spots and I just had to come back and fast because that ... a few days of that satisfaction that really didn't satisfy, I wanted the Lord. And when I come to church each Sunday, I feel this spiritual exhaustion and need to get filled up. And I elaborate on this to tell you what it was like when I first encountered it. Do you know this? If not, ask the Lord to just give you this experience. Have the humility to say that, "Lord I don't know this and please give it to me." And Pastor Jan and I we're trying to recreate this timeless experience for you each week as we preach the word.

As you hear me speak so slowly, you're like, "I don't know if that's possible with you Andy," but I say, "Go home and list to me at two times speed. I've got the perfect voice for it. You won't miss a detail." My sermons are the same length and pages as Pastor Jan, he just speaks 1.5 times faster than me. Do you know this? Pray, Lord, I want to know and love your word and be satisfied like this. So, people, they were so astonished at the teaching of Christ, they feel such deep soul satisfaction that they seemingly ran out of food. Some of them probably had food. The existence of baskets there means, they probably ... some people probably brought some, but they probably ran out and there were probably others who went, "I'm just going to go hear you guys speak. I've got nothing."

They still stayed and had an unplanned three-day fast. And I also have these experiences. When I first arrived at Mosaic ... and I'm saying this, if you feel like you have experienced this, when I'm not experiencing this, I go to a new believer in Mosaic and I hear them tell me of their experience of just the newness of the kingdom of God spreading and there's this old rain in their heart as they serve the Lord. When I was saved, first saved, when I was born again, it was go, I want to go serve. I want to want more people to know this word and have this peace, this joy from the Lord. I'm going to go serve. I'm going to go help us set up. I'm going to go worship and drink in that sermon, I'm going to sit in the front so that I'm not distracted at all.

And well, naturally back seater, but then I'd spend my whole day just how do I help with tear down? How do I help with spending time with people? It's not to call attention to myself, it's to say again, "Can you get lost in this?" And I still have this experience, I still do it here basically in the building all day. It's now my job. So I do get paid for it. I still kind of get lost and I don't eat all day and then, I go home and I get in trouble with my wife because I'm starving and ask her where her food is. Do you know this wilderness, this satisfaction in the wilderness experience that these people in the Decapolis are experiencing when Christ is preaching to them for three days and we can believe it's the middle of summer.

These people, they're experiencing ... they know what Peter 2 to 3 says ... it's talking about, it says like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. They're living out the fulfillment of man shalt not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, Matthew 4:4. If you study world history, Christianity is not in existence because it was just propagated by people who maintained it over time. It's that, Christianity is the most popular religion in world history because believers have had this experience with the Lord through the engagement with him, through his word throughout history.

It's real, it's satisfying, and we should pray. We should pray that if we don't know this, Lord, give me this experience. Give me this love and satisfaction of you and we should pray. Lord, help us to live in a day where we get to see masses of people, revival, people confessing sin, repenting of it, turning and receiving grace from God at a mass level. Have you read church history? Do you read it? I read it for fun because it's hard, we do live in a pretty desolate place. So I go to scripture, I go to church history to read real life accounts of people who not only we read in scripture of this multitude, this revival among the masses when Christ walked the earth, but over and over again in our nation.

In almost every nation of the world, every region of the world, maybe not modern nation, you can learn about revivals where people are filled and satisfied by God's word and just give their lives to him. So we need to pray for this and God has not changed. He can still do it. His word, his power has not diminished since Jesus ascended into heaven. In fact, his spirit is now poured out on us in a uniquely powerful way and we can experience this today. One of my favorite stories is in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin, who would not identify as a Christian, when George Whitfield, a great faithful preacher of history, supposedly preached tens of thousands of sermons in his life just walking around Europe and Britain and the states.

Benjamin Franklin at one point scientifically measured the radius of the crowd of people that came to hear George Whitfield speak in a day where they didn't have microphones to hear him preach and just Franklin was no believer, but he said he could feel this cleansing effect on his soul and he measured that it was probably 30,000 people gathering in a Philadelphia square open space to hear the word preach. And so we should long to have these experiences with the multitudes and pray that they come. So the people forget their needs, but Jesus hasn't forgotten, and this is the compassion of Jesus. So in verse two he says, "I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat."

And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. Jesus knows people have come a long way. They're in the wilderness. There isn't a Chipotle nearby, there isn't a new H Mart in the area. There's no DoorDash carts that are willing to travel as far as they are into the wilderness. He knows that if he sends the people home through after this long experience in the wilderness without food, that the people could faint along the way. This is the compassionate Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the God of the universe, cares not just for the people's spiritual needs but for their physical needs as well.

God, Christ, he caress for body and soul. We see this Christ's true concern and he gives us permission to care for our body and soul. And when he instructs us how to play with the Lord's prayer, we address spiritual needs. Our Father who is in heaven hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done all earth as it is in heaven. Skip a section, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others, lead us not in temptation but deliver us from evil. These are our spiritual needs that we should pray for, but then, he gives us ... he acknowledges that we should pray for our practical concerns. Give us this day our daily bread. God, Christ, he caress about them. Philippians 4, 6 and 7 says, do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication, but thanks to him.

Let your requests be made known to God. God wants us to ask for our spiritual needs and for our physical needs. I think a lot of reformed Bible believing Christians really struggle to enter that practical area to admit when they need God to provide one of their needs, food, clothing, health, a safe place to live, we can ask for that and actually so much more and that's kind of another sermon when we ask for things in Jesus' name. Through Jesus' concern for the physical needs, we get a deeper sense of his compassion, and when he says in verse two, I have compassion on the crowd, the word for compassion in the Greek.

It's one that refers to feeling in his inner organs in the guts, this word, it's roots, talk about the guts. This feeling that arises in this guts out of sympathy, true empathy, true sincere concern for the condition of others. As he becomes aware of it. It's more than a feeling, but it's a feeling that makes him ... that moves him. It's not the kind of compassion that we show when we sign up for a 5K and pay $25 last minute on a Saturday morning just because that's what all of our friends are doing. It's not the kind of compassion that when we donate five or $10 for a friend for their Facebook birthday nonprofit drive, just because we're like, "Oh, well this person's finally into something good."

I want to support this. No, the Lord's passion is so much deeper. It's the kind of compassion that says, I'm not going to leave here until I find out a solution. Disciples, do you have any food? Okay, I can work with this. Let's get moving. People sit down. Jesus has this gut wrench in compassion and has the Lord given you this gut wrench and compassion for anyone, for any cause lately? What are you doing about it? We have to pause and really ask ourselves that there are many instances in scripture where Jesus is marked with compassion for the multitude. Matthew 9, 14, Mark 6 and 8 here. What's a note in Mark's gospel is that he uses this word compassion. This compassion for surprising groups of people.

And Mark Jesus who is Jewish is moved with compassion for people that an ordinary Jew would not have compassion for or any association with. He's moved for Gentiles, lepers, demon possessed, even his own disciples were not moved like Jesus. There are several instances where the disciples, they respond to someone who approaches Jesus, a needy person and quickly reacting by telling him to send them away. This is what they did last week when we studied the text with the Syrophoenician women, they essentially say, "Can't you just get rid of her, send her away?" In the feeding of the 5,000, what did they do at the end of the day? This is before the miracle, the feeding occurred. They say Jesus send them away to get food.

And they're probably thinking about themselves because they want some food. They're not really compassionate. Even in the amount, this account of the feeding of the 4,000, the disciples don't seem to care too much for the people. At least after one day at the last feeding with the Jewish crowd, they actually approached Jesus and said, "Hey, nobody has any food." This is after three days in the wilderness with this Gentile crowd. They don't point out the crowd's need for food. Who does that? It's Jesus. So, the comparison between the reactions to the poor, the needy and of the disciples in Christ, it helps us through this appreciation, Christ compassion so much more.

The disciples are very often attempting to send people away, seemingly showing cold self-focused hearts. Jesus is always open and concerned for the wellbeing of the people around him. As we reflect on this point, we really have to ask ourselves if we, the churc, as a body, as individuals, make the same mistakes as the disciples today, especially those of us, we are church. We really have dignity in the fact that we are rooted on the rock of Jesus Christ and his word. We're biblical. We are reformed. Part of this world, theological world, we say, we need to preach the word. The word is what matters. My church, yeah, preaches the word and we love that.

We love the correct framing of the doctrine, but we need to really back our commitment to the word with deed and this is something that churches throughout history have really struggled with. I grew up in the United Methodist Church as biggest denomination in the country still, though it's breaking apart and I do miss my experience in the Methodist church sometimes because they were so good at deed, just very loving people. The problem was a long time ago they really left scripture and left its authority and they're being torn apart because a lot of what they're teaching resembles just what modern isms of the world modern trends are teaching.

We as churches, we as individuals, we love the word, but we also love to commit good deeds that are inspired by our commitment to the word, out of thanksgiving for Christ's compassion and love and kindness to us. Just as a church passing on, I think Mark has really got our thoughts going. We've also had to think about the church budget for 2024, a lot in the past month, month and a half. And just a few things we're focusing on to try to correct ourselves a little bit, is we just want to pray over those in our body who are sick more. James 5:14 says, is anyone among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

If you're sick, we want to be faithful to this and we want to call for the Lord's help and just make sure people are not struggling out there without our knowledge. Furthermore, we have plans to offer meals. Pastor Jan mentioned for the first time last week, we're piloting lunches on the first week of every month and it's just open invite, if you can, RSVP ahead of time that get us ... help us estimate how much food we need to order, please do so, but this is a chance to just create a space where members, guests, people are starving for food, can come and sit and share a catered meal, provided by the giving of others and build the fellowship and really have greater opportunity to really get to know each other and get to understand each other's needs, where this is part of the heart, this heart of compassion.

Furthermore, Jesus, he talks to his disciples about ... He does this miracle around bread and fish twice. So furthermore, we are going to add another form of food in the near future. We're bringing back bagels for the first time before services in the lobby, for the first time since COVID. We are trying to create a warm, loving, compassionate space and feel to match just the commitment to scripture that we have, and just ... I say all of this, meditate on the compassion of Jesus to hopefully get you to meditate on whether or not you're showing compassion to Christ here, Christ with your life here at our church. John 13 says, "The world will know you by your love for one another."

Christ further instructs his disciples to serve one another by washing each other's feet and just that symbolic, it's where to go that far in your engagements in your personal life. Are you compassionate to others? Is there anyone that the Lord is asking you to serve? Any needs for any neighbors that the Lord is calling you to address? And I live in a building of ... here in Brookline of 30 something units and there's a lot of people three decades older than me and I know they've made me the president of the building to hand over maintenance and the board ... because I'm young. That's it. Hopefully, I've shown them a good neighbor.

Yeah., I learned these needs and a guy just got a hip replacement on Friday. I forgot to pray for him. I know of all these ways where I can just show Christ's kindness and compassionate and I try to turn a blind eye from them sometimes, but I'm trying to faithfully step into those situations. And so what is that for you? We've got to focus on the word. That's true. That's what Jesus did here with the 4,000. He preached the word for three days, but he knows that he can't send them away in the condition that they're in. He sees the need to administer to their bodies as well as their souls. And Jesus is trying to ... he's doing this if ... there's two main focuses of Mark. It's Mark, the author, he's trying to present Christology.

Who is Jesus the Messiah? What is this kingdom he's established and all throughout the book, but the second most important motive he has is to prepare his disciples throughout the book, for life without him. He wants his disciples to equally feel compassion in the way that he feels it and to equally act upon that feeling. He wants to grow their heart and love for others, especially those who are undeserving of them, who they think are undeserving of their compassion. And scripture gives us the example of the good Samaritan, the priest and Levi, those who have God's word in the parable, they walk by the person in need.

And then, who addresses the person in need. So the religious people, they walk right by the person in need. The Good Samaritan, the man outside the covenant promises of God. He's the one. The good Samaritan takes care of those needs. We as a church, we can't do that. There are so many opportunities to show love and compassion to people as Christ has done for us in meeting our deepest spiritual needs on the cross. So often, just meeting our daily needs abundantly in this life. Just some scriptures that really hammer this. Philippians 2, 3, 4. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also the interests of others."

Second Corinthians one, three to four, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of all mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Do you have a heart like Jesus? And yes, we want people to have compassion for the people in Africa, people in Asia, people in Eastern Europe, people in the Middle East, those areas where Christianity does not have a stronghold or the church does not have a large presence. More importantly, do you have compassion for the people right next to you?

Jesus commands love God, love your neighbor. Are you blessing people, looking to bless people as you have been blessed by God? It's oftentimes what do you offer, your presence that goes a long way to a lot of hurting people. What do you have to offer? Prayer. That's even before presence. There's prayer. So many of us say, I'm going to pray for you but don't. And then, from your resources, what do you have? And I want to say extending compassion is art. I'm a pastor and a lot of my job is engaging people who are volunteering to admit their needs. There's a lot of people who quietly have needs but don't tell us. And you need to have humility to share them with people in the CG and the pastors in your community group.

One of the things is we often ... when we try to extend compassion with people, sometimes we do it a little blindly. We do it without getting close to people. And that's really important. Sometimes we assume people have specific needs because we just see what their needs are on the surface, but because we're not getting close, we're not given the time, the attention that Jesus does to the multitude here, we really kind of go in and we try to act, we try to serve but we make things worse or we kind of offend the person. We need to really be willing to take time to hear people, to get to know their situation before we act.

And then when we make mistakes, it's a learned, extending compassion, serving others. It takes time to learn how to do it well. And you can be a pastor for years and really still make mistakes. Sometimes we have to confess our mistakes to people and we have to learn from them, repent of them. So one thing I do want to say about Mosaic is it's a very generous body. One of the things as a pastor with a bird's eye view of what's going on across our membership and community groups is I find out often several months after the fact that people in our church have financially met the material needs of others. They've given money to people, hundreds, thousands of dollars. They're seeking clothing, shelter, care, legal support. We have members often paying for legal counsel for when there are others who need it.

It is amazing. It is, just love Jesus simple. Our motto here at Mosaic being applied, what do we want happening as we preach the word, we want people to hear the word be changed from the inside out as the Holy Spirit just awakens people and softens their hearts. And we want people to organically see the needs of people and offer what they have, their loaves, few loaves and fish and try to meet them in faith. And our body is great in doing Matthew 6:3 to 4, "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you." I hear about a lot of stuff that community groups and members do weeks or months after the fact and we need to keep doing this.

I will say though, sometimes it's easy to just give money. We have to give people time and presence as we extend compassion. So let's keep this up. Last, to close out the thought, Galatians the section ... Galatians 6:9 to 10, "And let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith." Jesus says, I have compassion on the crowd. We need to similarly extend compassion. Now, I move on to my next point. So if you've drifted for me, come back with me and my first point is a lot longer than the next two. So the power of Jesus. Jesus is about to meet the needs of people with his infinite power.

And I want to just cover four points as we walk through this discussion of Jesus power. First, look at how Jesus brings out the human inadequacy of the disciples before he gives them the ... offers them the solution to the problem. In verse five, he asks, "How many loaves do you have?" He knows he's got, he knows the answer. He's asking because he's getting them to see their own inadequacy. He wants them to see how little they have to offer in this situation. Seven loaves, a few fish when they really spend time to see that fully, gather that, they see that they have nothing to offer to feed this multitude.

Jesus, when he calls his disciples to do his work, part of the process is first showing them how utterly inadequate they are in and of themselves to carry out his mission. He brings them to the end of themselves, to the end of their strength, the end of their capacities, the end of their material resources. And he gets them, primes them, primes their hearts to get to this position where they know that they cannot go forward unless he blesses them, unless he gives them power, unless he steps in and offers the solution. This is how God works when he calls people to do anything for his kingdom. And this is kind of paradoxical, the sermon series, Kingdom Come the Gospel of Mark and Secrets of the Kingdom.

We need to really understand this is one of the secrets. God functions in this way. The rest of the world tells you, promote your strengths, let them be made known. God says, I want you to work in weakness. The apostle Paul said of preaching the word, who is sufficient for these things. Preaching the word, doing the tasks of ministry. Christians are to work from the position of weakness. Paul knew this. Paul grew in this. Paul learned to really love this situation of I am brought to my limits, but I know that God is going to supply, he supplied grace to save me. He's going to supply grace I need to do this thing that he has called me to do.

And he says, "But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my powers made perfect and weakness. Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I'm content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for when I am weak, then I'm strong." And as a pastor, I know this is me. I do not bring anything to the table. Any part of my role, I am outside of my comfort zone. I really am not that gifted. I'm a good generalist, but I'm not that specifically gifted anywhere, but I'm learning to grow in this. This is us as pastors. This needs to be everybody in our church taking up calls and trusting that the Lord will supply our ability to carry out those missions that he's called us to.

Those things, those people, those needs for which we have much compassion. So God uses those who he brings to their absolute inadequacy who are aware of it. Next, as we discuss the power of Christ, I want to think about Christ's power and how it requires ... I think a good framing and it's our receptive compliance, not just compliance, but receptive compliance. This is really part of a message that we have ... part of the message today that is for anyone who wants to be a Christian, you're thinking, how do I become a Christian? You need to allow Jesus to be lured of your life. You need to receive his commands with compliance.

Verse six says, "And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground." I want to emphasize the reception of his commands and compliance. In the feeding of the 5,000, the disciples are instructed to sit the people down, so in the last feeding. In this feeding account, Jesus directs the crowd to sit down. To receive Jesus's saving food. In this process, he is active, they are passive. The people aren't to do anything to receive this food that will save them. They're there to look for him ... look him for and receive it from him. So people might be saying today, "Will the Lord receive me? Can I be saved? You don't know what I've done. You don't know what ... I can't stop myself from doing." The Lord says ... yes, he's offering you, come and receive his command to come and sit at his feet.

And let him offer you the food that saves. And so he says, look at the passage. He fed all these Gentile pagans, along with his prideful disciples, all these people who turned to him and all they had to do was receive the blessing of the saving bread that he offered in these conditions. They had to sit, wait and receive, not run up and claim they could help him in the process. The people relied completely on Jesus to supply the saving bread to them. And this connects to our salvation. There's nothing we can do. We simply look to Christ. He has finished the work that is necessary for salvation. We trust in him and rest upon his work on the cross.

Next in this section, on the power of Christ, I want to consider Christ continual ... the continual sufficiency of his power. He saved us with his power, but then there is a supply that is never ending, verse six and he took the loaves, the seven loaves and haven't given thanks. He broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. Jesus broke the bread and he gave, it was a continuous action. Jesus broke the bread, he gave it to the disciples, to a disciple, and he just kept giving. He gave one disciple a bread and another arrived. And then, he gave another disciple of bread and he gave, another arrived and he gave another disciple a bread and they went and served it, until all 15,000 or so people were fed and satisfied.

And it doesn't matter how many people were there, there could have been 5,000, 10,000, a million more people, and there would've been enough bread. There is sufficiency ... Christ always has a provision for us that is sufficient. This is his infinite, continual sufficiency of his power. And what does this do? It teaches us that Jesus is God. This text shows us that Jesus is the same one as he's making these fish anew and making these loaves anew. In that moment, he shows us that he's the same one that was there at the beginning of creation. He spoke creation into existence. He said, be fruitful and multiply. He made a grown woman out of the rib of a grown man.

This is the same God, Jesus here breaking loaves over and over and over in the Decapolis. The same God is alive and living today. And so this is a lesson that teaches that He is God, but it's also a lesson for the disciples as well. It's a lesson for us as well. They're going to live a life on ministry. They're called to be fruitful for the kingdom of God, to go and make disciples of all nations. And they're taking living water, living bread to people. Do they need to worry that Christ's supply of salvific power is ever going to run out? No. There's inexhaustible supply from Christ's power. So lastly, as we think about the power of Christ, think about the room that Jesus leaves for his disciples to be involved.

The human involvement in his great saving work, verse six says, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. So Jesus, he incorporates the disciples into the process of distributing the bread. He doesn't need them to do this. He could easily find a way to get the job done by himself in a much quicker manner, but in his grace, in his humility, he wants to give the disciples the opportunity to be a part of his work. The disciples weren't bringing anything to the table. They weren't bringing anything from themselves to the people. They're solely bringing what Jesus gave to them, what Jesus gave to them, to the people. That's all that we do as Christians.

We don't have to come up with a new message. We don't have to come up with a new way to save people. Every time that there's a shift in the isms of academia, every time that there's a major challenge in world history. We continue to stand on the word, to preach the word, to trust that it is the power of God and to salvation to the Jew first and also the Greek. We deliver that to people with faith that God will keep using the same method that he always has. Praise God. Praise God. We don't have to come up with a new message, new way to get the word out. I look at churches that have left the word and I feel bad for those pastors who are in churches that are not standing on the word.

And I'm actually kind of very impressed with anybody who can somehow come up with a new message to keep the interest of people week after week in such churches. I'm thankful to Mosaic. What decides what we say? The word, and that's what God uses to save people, to sustain his saints, to give them satisfaction and power for the work for him. And it's a blessing to administer the word, and that's not just for preachers, it's all of you. You're all ambassadors of a great king and you're called to go into the world and share the gospel with people, to deliver it with joy, to give a reason for the hope within you to tell people of your love for God and it's an honor. Do you feel honored to just extend such compassion to others, to see them in their deepest ... see their deepest speed.

To be aware of it, to know it, and to have what satisfies them? Every Christian will know, will admit it's not my physical needs. It was the darkness, the depravity, the depression. I was in my sin that needed to be addressed. And then, someone shared the gospel with me. So do you feel honored? And so we get to the Lord works, shares his power, dispels it through us as we are faithful in the delivery. Now, to my final point, we've talked about the compassion of Jesus, the power of Jesus. Now we'll talk about the satisfaction of Jesus. The bread that Jesus brings gives full satisfaction, verse eight, "And they ate and we're satisfied." You can draw this lesson out from both miracles. In John 6, which is a parallel passage of the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus goes to the wilderness area.

He feeds the people with bread. And this was to point, explains. To point people back to Moses. And Moses had done the same in the wilderness. Remember, God uses Moses to rescue people out of bondage from Egypt. And he parts the sea at the exodus for them to go into the wilderness. And God, during Moses ministry supplies manna, kind of a bread that reigns from heaven. And Mark has shown in these gospels ... the authors have shown that Jesus is the greater Moses who provides living bread. Even more, Jesus is himself the bread. He's the living bread that John talks about at the end of his account of the feeding of the 5,000.

John 6:51 says ... Jesus says, "I'm the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I'll give for the life of the world is my flesh." So Jesus provides physical sustenance for people. He provides also spiritual sustenance for his people. Does he provide it for the Jews? Yes. If they'll have it, does he provide it for the Gentiles? Yes. If they'll have it. And one of the great themes of the Old Testament scriptures is that there's going to be a time in history where there's a great feast of Jew and Gentile where the Lord brings the Messiah, brings sustenance, life, bread for the Gentiles. Isaiah 55:1 to 3, the Lord gives a great invitation to this meal.

"Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food." I think other translations are fat foods. "Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live and I will make you with you an everlasting covenant." So the rest of Isaiah 55 continues just inviting people to this feast banquet with Jews and Gentiles, Jews and people from the nations, gathering together. And Jesus at his first coming, he initiates this period and in heaven, in the new earth, we're going to be dining together, feasting together.

Jew and Gentile in the presence of God. Remember last week we talked about the Syrophoenician woman and she goes hard to get the Lord's blessing to receive healing for her daughter. And there's this engagement where she says it's not right to give the children's bread to the dogs. He says, I've come to bring food but to bring it to the Jews first, they're my children. She said, "I know who you are, but even the dogs eat the crumbs of the children when they fall to the ground." The woman knows that at Christ table there's space for both Jew and Gentile. This is shown ... and that both Jew and Gentile will be satisfied. This is shown in that Jesus feeds the 5,000 in a largely Jewish area. They eat and are satisfied. This is shown in this narrative in the Decapolis, a largely Gentile area.

The 4,000 eat his loaves and are satisfied. They're stuffed, is the proper translation. Engorged, because of the filling. On both occasions, the people either fill and in both occasions there are leftovers. In the instance of the leftovers, there are 12 baskets full of leftovers that they collect. 12, it's a number that represents fullness in the Jewish community. Think of the 12 tribes of Israel. It indicates that Jesus offers full satisfaction to the Jews who believe in him. And the instance of the leftovers with the Gentiles, there are seven baskets and it's a number of completeness. When before Moses brought the people ... before the people of Israel entered the promised land, there's a line in the scripture that talks about these seven nations.

These seven Gentile nations will be driven out of the promised land. So this number seven, it indicates fullness of the Gentiles, and this verse shows that seven basketfuls of fragments being left over, there's space for the Gentiles. All of them can be satisfied in God's kingdom at his table. Jew or Gentile, Mark teaches us that ... Jesus teaches us that he is enough. He can abundantly, he can generously satisfy any need that you can have in this barren, empty spiritual wilderness, only Jesus can provide satisfaction for one's body and soul. In verse four, the disciples ask, "Where will we ever find anyone who can satisfy these people in a desolate place like this?" And that's answered in verse eight when it tells us, because Jesus fed them, they ate and were satisfied. Satisfied in verse four and ate, they're the same word.

The disciples found their answer in Jesus. Jesus provides the loaves of fish he satisfies in this barren, empty place. In the Decapolis, Jesus is the only one who can provide satisfaction for the people. 2000 years later, Mark is saying, "In this barren, empty wilderness of the world, only Jesus can satisfy the needs of all the people." No one else can. No other religion can. No other form of spirituality, no money can, no chemical experience, food, foodie experience can satisfy like Jesus. You can have everything that the world has to offer, but it won't satisfy your soul. And when you have it, you'll even feel emptier, because when it doesn't deliver, you really feel the pain.

Jesus is the living bread. He can satisfy your soul and continue to satisfy your soul. If you continue to feed on him, your desire and capacity to feed on him will grow. Think of Mark four, Jesus teaches the disciples about the kingdom of God. And he says that when it takes root in good soil, it grows 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold. When someone is satisfied by the word of God, it takes root in their heart. Their desire for it grows, their understanding of it grows and it grows exponentially. And your desire and capacity to feed on it, grows. Jesus can feed your soul to the point that there are leftovers. This pastor is a seven, basketfuls of leftovers. An interesting note that separates the two feedings again is that these are big baskets, seven big baskets for the feeding of the 5,000.

There's 12 small hand baskets, lunch baskets, this large basket. It's the same size basket that the apostle, Paul was lowered down from a wall when he was fleeing a city in Acts 9. So the English word is the same in both accounts, but the word for basket is bigger. In the feedings of the 5,000, it's all to show Jesus provides super abundant provision for the Jews and super abundant provision for the Gentiles. All people can come to him and be satisfied. And I do want to say one note is that there's a special ... Jesus, Mark again, he has the first motive of showing us who Jesus is, as the Christ, as the Messiah in these verses. Those verses I mentioned from Mark 8:19 to 20, where Jesus asked, "Do you remember how many basketfuls of leftovers you had when I fed the 5,000? Yes. 12."

"Do you remember how many basketfuls you had when I fed the 4,000? Yes. Seven." Jesus says, "Do you not yet understand?" He wants the disciples to think about the leftovers. And this is a lesson for those of us who are living a life on mission, those who are disciples and stretching themselves in service in the wilderness to people who are hard to serve. People who we often find are undeserving of God's mercy and grace, but we can keep serving them because we also are. He says, "Look at the leftovers. There a sign that I am always going to take care of those people. I'm going to satisfy them abundantly when they're stretching themselves on mission for you."

So the Lord is always going to provide. And Jesus, this is why Isaiah extend the invitation to come to the Jews and Gentiles, we're all invited to come eat, delight our soul and fatness in Jesus the Messiah. That's everything we could need. So to close, I ask, do you have it? Do you have the living bread? Are you feeding on Jesus Christ, the bread sent down from heaven? If not, he is offering you himself this morning, and if you have fed on him before and you know you're saved in him, you have been satisfied in him, but you've gone off and eaten a lot of junk food of the world that's just intoxicated your mind and body.

He's invited you, come back, feet on me, rest in me. Let me serve you and satisfy you. And all you need to do is obey, receive me and obey. And Jesus he sees your life. He sees the journey ahead of you. He sees that it's a long journey and he sees the difficulties ahead and he says, you need bread, you need sustenance. You need food. You need something that will keep satisfying you. And you don't just need bread. You need broken bread. If you want the bread to be good, to actually give you the power to keep going, you need it to be broken. He breaks the loaves in the feedings. That's what Jesus was on the cross. His body was broken in a desolate place on the cross so that he could invite us into a life of abundant satisfaction and feasting in him and the eternal feasting in his presence.

Jesus, he bought our redemption. He earned our redemption. He purchased our pardon. He gives us peace, forgiveness, eternity in his presence. So that when we look to him by faith and feed upon him, it gives us life. It gives us strength. It gives us hope for the journey that we'll make for him the rest of our lives. Let's trust in him and extend compassion like him. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your compassion toward us. For we are like those in the crowd. We are those who are famished, those who have come or are at the end of our capacities, and we need your saving food. We need your bread. We need your loaves, and we need you physically to provide for us, but deep down, we need you to spiritually provide for us. Save us, satisfy us. Continue to give us your power as we walk this journey home to you.

Lord, we just acknowledge that we often turn and consume things that are not good for us. Taste the fruit of the world that Satan tempts us with. And Lord, we just come back to you just trusting that you will satisfy. And Lord, we just pray as we turn to you and you politely involve us in your work. Just take our loaves, take these few loaves, take our little fish and use them, multiply them so that we might have an impact on a multitude of people. Please use us to save many in the rest on the rest of our journey. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we come to You not on the basis of our righteousness. We come to You not on the basis of our uprightness or our morality. We come to You on the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Jesus, we thank You that You made a way for us to have a loving relationship with God the Father, a meaning to experience this Person, to experience His presence and to experience His power. And we thank You, Jesus, because of Your work on the cross, because of Your death, burial, resurrection, Your ascension and You sent us the Holy Spirit. You offer the Spirit of God to each person who humbly asks. I pray, Lord, today, that You do unleash Your great power in our lives, in our homes, in our households, in our families, in our church and in our city. We do believe in You that You are a great God and You long for people to come to know You. You long to adopt many into Your household, to make those who are not Your children, Your beloved children in whom You delight.

I pray, if anyone is far from You, far from the household of God today, give them the gift of repentance, give them the gift of faith and draw them to Yourself. And Lord, for the rest of us, I do pray that You embolden us to speak the gospel, give us opportunities to proclaim the gospel, unleash our tongues, to proclaim the gospel, the truth to the people around us. There's so many that don't know You and they haven't experienced Your presence and Your power and we believe on their behalf and we long to bring them to You, Lord. And I pray that You give us much grace in that. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. Bless everyone who's here today. What a great way to start off the brand new year. And Lord, I pray that You prepare our hearts for holy communion, which we'll celebrate later. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning and welcome to Mosaic on this communion Sunday. We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark. We've called it Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the secret of God's kingdom. And in the gospel, Jesus is revealing, He's unveiling, He is regulating revelation. And those that do believe in Him, they take Him at His word. They begin to see that He really is who He is and His power is unleashed in their life. The title of the sermon today's Great Faith Unleashes Great Power. And what we've seen so far in the Gospel of Mark is that God, who created everything, the great God overall, He takes on flesh. The Son of God is sent by God the Father. He's anointed by God the Holy Spirit to establish the kingdom of God here on earth where God's presence and His peace reigns.

And how does Jesus Christ, the Son of God, establish the kingdom of God? He does so with a message. And this is the good news, the gospel. It's the gospel that changes hearts because the kingdom of God is an inside out kingdom. God changes our hearts when we believe in the good news. He changes our desires. We begin to desire prayer. We begin to desire fellowship with God's people. We begin to desire to do the will of God, to live in submission to God out of love for Him and love for neighbor. And what was the gospel that Jesus preached? It was very short. His very first sermon is documented and it went like this.

He says, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Repent and believe the good news that the King of the Universe has come to save us, save us from Satan, sin and death by laying down His life on a cross." And we are to repent and believe in Him, believe that He is God, believe that He is the King of the Universe. Now, how many people believed this message? During Jesus' three year ministry, how many people believed this message and how many people were saved? I think, statistically speaking, it was a very small percentage. If you look at First Corinthians 15, it says that the resurrected Christ appear to 500 people. 500 people, what a small percentage of all the people that He ministered to.

And who believed? Well, those who were seemingly crazy enough to take Jesus at His word. He spoke, they believed, and all of a sudden, they were saved and God's power was unleashed in their life when they really believed that He was the Great I Am when they humbly believed. Those people experienced the power of God. His family, Jesus' family, we read, they thought He was out of His mind. The good folks back home and His hometown mocked Him as, "Oh, you're just a carpenter. You're just the Son of Mary." And the Pharisees we read that they joined forces with the Herodians to kill Jesus. Some thought Jesus was John the Baptist come back from the dead. Herod Antipas believed that. Some thought He was Elijah even when He fed the 5,000 miraculously. They understood that He was presenting Himself as the Messianic King, but they didn't realize what kind of king He was, the king of people's hearts.

The religious establishment said that Jesus was demon-possessed, a sorcerer, a false teacher. And even the disciples we read who saw His power over and over and over had said that they were hardened in their hearts and they had trouble believing. Amazingly, the only ones that truly recognize Jesus for who He is all of the time are the demons. The demons understood. But the few who took Jesus at His word, they experienced His power and they experienced His salvation. And today, we come to such a woman. We come to a woman who amazed Jesus Christ with her faith. To her, Jesus said, "Oh, woman, great is your faith." And her great faith released great power in her life. And great faith does release great power. Why? Because God honors bold faith because bold faith honors God.

So that brings us to Mark 7:24-37. Would you look at the text with me? "And from there, He arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet He could not be hidden. But immediately, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of Him and came and fell down at His feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth and she begged Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.' But she answered Him, 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.' And He said to her, 'For this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter.' And she went away and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Then He returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged Him to lay His hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, his tongue was released and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure saying, 'He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.'

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, great faith is humble chutzpah before God. Second, great faith is humble hunger for God. And third, great faith is humble bringing and begging. First, great faith is humble chutzpah before God. Chutzpah, it's from the Yiddish. It means nerve. It means courage. It means impudence. It means confidence in action. I like that word. And it definitely perfectly characterizes this woman's posture of heart. She comes boldly with confidence, yet it's humble confidence. So this is point one, the great faith is humble chutzpah before God.

We saw the progression from chapter 7 verses 1 through 23 to this one, which is very logical where Jesus said, He called all food clean, meaning He removed the barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles, the barrier of the dietary laws that separated Jews socially from Gentiles. And now Jesus is positioned perfectly to enter Gentile territory, something a Jewish rabbi would have never done because they consider the Gentiles unclean. And Jesus said, "It's not what comes from the outside that makes you unclean. It's that which comes from the inside that makes you unclean and Jesus can cleanse all.

So now He comes into Gentile territory. This is verse 24. From there, He arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon and He entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet He could not be hidden. The human, Jesus, God incarnate, He did grow tired at some points. He just had ministered to many people. He's exhausted and now He journeys into Gentile territory, tries to keep Himself hidden. He can't do it because His fame had already proceeded Him. Tyre had a long history of antagonism toward Israel. Josephus, the Jewish historian, he said, "The inhabitants of Tyre were notoriously our bitterest enemies." There was bad blood between these two groups of people, the Galileans and people from Tyre. So that's the context.

So this woman who is from the other people, she's from the other religions, she's from the other socioeconomic status, she's from the other-other everything, she comes to Jesus and she comes to Jesus boldly. Verse 25, "But immediately, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of Him and came and fell down at His feet." The unclean spirit is a demon that's made clear in verses 29 and 30. So here, we meet a mother, a desperate mother. She comes to Christ. She's heard of His explosive power and she throws herself at His feet in an attitude, a posture of heart, of self-abasement and supplication. She prostrates herself before Him, which shows the level of her distress, her pain.

The pain of her child had brought her to Jesus Christ. The pain of her child had brought her to her knees. And she's interceding for her child. A mother is praying for her child. And whenever I see texts like this, just a reminder that we are to intercede for our loved ones. We are to intercede in prayer for our children and for our siblings and for our families and for our neighbors, and for our city. We are to pray. And when we intercede, God hears those prayers, especially when they're prayed with this posture of heart. The mother prayed for her child because the child couldn't pray for herself and the mother persisted until her prayer was granted.

We see that this woman is very similar to the woman that was suffering 12 years from a hemorrhage in chapter 5. The likeness has seen that they were both ritually impure. They both needed miraculous power from the Lord. And despite her impurity, the Syrophoenician, like the woman with the hemorrhage, comes boldly hoping for healing from Christ. Verse 26, "Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.'"

The Matthew parallel calls her a Canaanite woman. The word for Gentile here, it's a word that means that she was Greek speaking or Hellenized. So she's a Greek-speaking pagan Gentile from Tyre and the woman hopes that Jesus is going to heal her. She asks, she begs, she pleads. And it seems like He says no. It seems like Jesus' response dashes her hopes in a very hard way. And what is Jesus doing here? Jesus is showing that He ... First of all, there was an order to the salvation process. There was an order to the revelation that, first of all, He came to the children of Israel. Romans 1:16 says, "For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, but it's for anyone who believes."

Or 1 Corinthians 1:22, "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." Why the Jews first? Because the Jews became the first rebellious children of God. He chose them as His people. They rebelled against Him. He sends His Son into this vineyard, so to speak, to then save them, save the elect from Israel. And Isaiah 1:2-3 explains or opens, reveals the Father's heart, "Hear, O heavens and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand."

The word first is used in our text proton. It's always used in order to explain that in the eschatological timeline of God's revelation, there is progress. The coming of Elijah was supposed to come before the Messiah. The binding of Satan needs to happen before despoiling of His house. Jesus' ministry to His fellow Jews was first, but He's in Gentile territory, meaning He's there to bring home the elect as well. Jesus expands His gospel ministry beyond Israel even when He was here. Only after these events have occurred in their divinely ordered sequence can the end come. As Mark says in chapter 4, "First a shoot, then an ear, then full grain in the year." There's a pattern here.

The word proton and the thought behind it are similar to those of Paul in Romans 1 and Romans 11. Jesus did come for the Jew first but also for the Gentile. And here, it seems very derogatory if you think about it. He's calling her a dog. He's like, "I'm going to feed the children first and then you don't feed the dogs before the children." And you read the commentaries and they're like, "Well, it's not that offensive. It's the diminutive. He's calling her a little dog." No, that's offensive. You call anyone a little dog in that ... In our context, we love dogs. Dogs are domesticated. I have a daughter that prays on just as persistently as a Syrophoenician woman for a dog and ... Long story.

But in our context, we love the dogs. People even consider themselves dog parents. Back then, they didn't domesticate dogs. Dogs were wild. Dogs lived outside of cities. Dogs were considered unclean and the New Testament continues this negative attitude. St. Paul says, "Beware of the dogs." In Philippians, Jesus says, "Don't throw what is holy to the dogs or the pigs." In Revelation 22:15, "The dog is an outsider to the community of God's grace." So using the terminology dog, he's calling her a dog, is an insult. That's what's happening. He's insulting her so to speak.

And the question really is, how is she going to respond? Is she going to say, "No, I reject your verdict. I reject your bad news. I don't want your good news because I reject your bad news about my current state"? She doesn't do any of that. She hears it and she desperately continues in her persistence. Despite Jesus' seeming cool indifference and silence, she got His no. And she's like, "Okay, great, but I still ask for Your yes." Matthew 15 in the parallel context, in Matthew 15:22, "And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.' But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and begged Him saying, 'Send her away, for she is crying out after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' But she came and knelt before Him saying, 'Lord, help me.' But He answered, 'It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.'"

You'd expect her to get angry. You'd expect her to call Jesus all of the isms and call him all of the ist names, but she doesn't get all huffy. She's not too proud to accept the verdict. She doesn't say, "How dare You? How dare You mock me? How dare You belittle me?" She could have said, "I didn't choose to be a Gentile. I didn't choose to be born here. I didn't choose to have a daughter that suffers. I'm not even asking for myself, Jesus. Do You know how much we've suffered together? We deserve something from You." She doesn't do any of that. She realizes that she cannot stand before Jesus, before Christ, before the Son of God, before God Himself on her rights, on her moral record.

Even on the basis of her own suffering, she understands that God owes her nothing. She understands who she is in relation to the God of the universe. She remains humble. Even when she hears really hard words from Jesus, she gets a really hard no, but she continues asking. She continues believing, humbly believing, humbly understanding that she has absolutely zero grounds upon which to claim His favor. She says, "Yes, I am a dog. In relation to God, I am a dog. I'm unfit for the Father's favor. I have transgressed commandments. I have lived as though God does not exist. I have broken the first commandment, it's because I've broken the first one, I've broken them all. The first commandment is, 'Thou shall have no other gods before me.' I haven't worshiped Yahweh. Yes, I am a dog. Yes, I'm outside, but, but I see Your house is big enough even for me, but I see that there's enough bread on Your table even for a dog like me." That's her posture of heart.

And when we present the gospel, we say, "Look, it starts with the bad news." The bad news is we have broken God's sovereign law. Whenever you break any law, there are to be consequences for the breaking of the law, especially when it comes to God. Whoever transgresses even one law deserves death. The word of God says, "Deserves eternal damnation." The word of God says, "That's the bad news. Apart from God, we are not children. Apart from God, we are sinners." "And yes, Lord, I am a sinner. I am a filthy, wretched dog. I am a dog. Can I be Your dog? I hear You're a good master." That's what she's saying. That's why I use the word for chutzpah, it's nerve, it's brass, it's confidence and actions gall. It's audacity.

And this brings us to point two, great faith is humble hunger for God. And you see this, you see what she's doing. She's not just asking for the miracle. She's relating to Jesus. She's conversing with Jesus. She wants more of God in her life. She's hungry for God. Verse 28, "But she answered Him, 'Yes Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.'" The Syrophoenician woman, she's like, "Yes, I am a dog," but all of a sudden, she's so smart, she switches everything. She puts the dog in the house. I don't know if you notice this. She's like, "I am a dog, but I'm a dog in Your house under Your table." That's what she's doing.

And this reminds us, this whole encounter with a Gentile woman, a Gentile woman's daughter, it reminds us of Elijah. Elijah the prophet was sent to the people of Israel, but the people of Israel didn't obey. They didn't believe in God. So then he goes to the Gentiles. And Jesus, when He started His ministry in His hometown, He goes to the synagogue and He reminded them of that story. He said, "Look, I've come here to the children of Israel, but the children of Israel refuse to believe. So I'm going to the Gentiles, just like Elijah was sent to the Gentiles," Luke 4:24, "And he said, 'Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over the land. And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath and the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elijah and none of them was cleansed, but only Namaan the Syrian.

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath and they rose up and drove Him out of the town and brought Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, so that they could throw Him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, He went away." And you say, "Why did they get so mad? Why do they get so angry?" They got so angry because He reminded them that God loves Gentiles as well. And it's not your birth, it's not your DNA, it's not your ethnicity that makes you right with God. It's your humility. It's your humble repentance where you say, "God, I don't deserve to be Your child. God, I don't deserve a relationship. God, I don't deserve cleansing in Your power, but I'm going to ask anyway."

After His rejection at Nazareth, Jesus gives a clear warning of the coming mission to the Gentiles that He's going to the Gentiles. And it is in light of this background that we must read the initial response to this woman. He went to the children of Israel who said, "We don't want You. Jesus, we don't need You. We're children of Israel by birth." And Jesus said, "No one's a child of God by birth. You can't be born into the Family of God physically, only spiritually. You need to be born again." And they didn't want to hear that. They didn't want to hear that they needed to repent, that they needed to follow God.

And yet this woman, she's told, "You're not a child of God. You're a dog," and she doesn't get huffy. She continues the conversation. She calls Him Lord, "Yes, Lord. Even the dogs on the table eat the children's crumbs." She says, "Yes, Lord, but there's plenty on that table even for me." She lays hold of Christ's word and bases her plea upon Him. The woman's response transforms the dog of Jesus metaphor into a domestic dog in the house. She, here in the stories, part of the household of faith. One translation says, "Since then, I am a dog. I'm not a stranger. I'm not outside." Another translation, she says, "Let me be a dog. I'll accept that I am, but even a dog has his day or her day. Yes, I'm a little dog, but can I still have some crumbs from the table? Yes, I'm a little dog, but I'm Your dog and You're my master."

She calls him, "Lord, I am a humble part of the household. I don't deserve to be here, but I'm just asking for a crumb. I'm just asking for a little bit of your grace." And Jesus hears that. Jesus hears her plea and her plea is actually based on a promise from the Old Testament, a promise that God gave to Abraham. When He blesses Abraham, He says, "I'm going to extend the blessings I'm giving you to the rest of the world." Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. All of the families. All of the families shall be blessed. All of the families, all of the people that come to God and say, "God, I don't have any rights to assert, that I'm coming to You with a right less assertiveness. I'm not coming to You on the basis of my goodness. I'm coming to You on the basis of Your goodness and Your generosity."

Thomas Cranmer, in The Book of Common Prayer, he says, "We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy." Jesus hears her and He likes her response. In verse 29, He said to her, "For this statement," another translation says, "Good answer. Good answer." I wish I was there to see the twinkle in His eye, "Good answer." "For this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter," and she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

In response to the woman's audacity, her impudent faith, She wrestles a blessing from Christ. And in this, she reminds us of someone else's scripture. She reminds us of Jacob. Jacob, when he wrestled with God, when he took hold of God, and most likely, that was a Christophany because it says that he wrestled with God and it said that he wrestled with a Man. It was a Man God, the God Man, Jesus Christ. This woman is much like Jacob in her persistence, her refusal to take no for an answer. She's content to get the no, "Yes, I am a dog," but she still keeps asking for the yes.

And Jacob did the same thing. Jacob in Genesis 32, he was a man in need. The next morning, he was going to meet his brother, Esau, his estranged brother, Esau, and he thought he was going to meet Esau with murderous intent, that Esau wanted to kill him. He feared for his own life, Jacob did. He feared for the lives of his wives and children. So he prays. He sends them ahead and he prays with God. And the Lord appears to him as a man and wrestled with him through the night. And of course, the Lord was play wrestling. He's not really wrestling with Jacob. Jacob thought He was wrestling. Jesus was playing.

This is Genesis 32:24, "Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. And when the man saw that He did not prevail against Jacob, He touched his hip socket and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as He wrestled with him. Then he said, 'Let me go for, the day has broken.' But Jacob said, 'I will not let You go unless You bless me.' And He said to him, 'What is your name?' He said, 'Jacob.' Then He said, 'Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.' Then Jacob asked Him, 'Please tell me Your name.' And He said, 'Why is it that you asked My name?' And there, He blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, 'For I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been delivered.'"

And you say, "Why did Jesus tell a woman no in the beginning? What is He doing? Did she change His mind from a silent indifference to helping her?" I don't think that's what's happening. When He says for this statement, He's not saying, "Because you have said this or because you have changed My mind," He's saying, "Because you've passed the test." He was testing her. He said, "No," to test her. "Is she going to persist? Is she going to continue asking?" It was a ploy designed to evoke even greater levels of faith on her part. Martin Luther commenting on this text, he said, "Christians need to persist in trusting God even when He seems to turn His back on them. We must learn to see the yes hidden in His no."

I think that's really powerful, especially if you meditate on or you apply it to your life. We must work to see His yes and His no. If He says no, now He has a better yes for us. So we keep asking, we keep asking, we keep asking, and obviously, in all the Lord's will. Matthew 15:28, "Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly." Her faith delighted Jesus Christ. My daughter, sometimes they come to me and they test me to see how strict I am regarding grades. And they're like, "Yeah, but if I get an A-, is that okay?" "Oh, yeah, that's fine."

"What if I get a B+?" "You're pushing it. You're pushing it." "What if I get a B ..." And my conversation is, "Look, I don't care about your GPA honestly. I can't tell you that I just did, but I really don't care. I don't care. I do. Do your best in your sports. Do your best. I care about your soul above all else. I care about your faith. I care that you grow in your relationship with the Lord. I care about you growing in wisdom." And Jesus is in the same way. He's delighted by this woman's faith. May your faith and may my faith delight the Lord in the same way. She took Christ at His word, and when He said, "You're dog," and then He blesses her like a child.

And this is really how God speaks of salvation, that when we repent of our sins and turn to Christ, we get regenerated, we get a new heart, but we also get a new identity. We become a child of God. God adopts us into His family. God says, "You are not My children, but I'm going to make you My children," and it's all because of His Son, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 11:6, "And without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him." He rewards those who seek Him. Do you seek Him with the same posture of heart persistently, "Lord, I want more of You. Lord, I want more of Your presence. Lord, I want more of Your power."

And that's why Jesus is called the Bread of Life, and we are to hunger, our souls are to hunger for Jesus as the Bread of Life. "Lord, I'm starving. I am famished for You." What do you do when you're hungry? You can't stop thinking about food. You're just salivating. You're thinking about that next meal that's coming and this is ... What is humility? It's recognizing, "Lord, apart from You, I'm starving. My soul is starving. Lord, I seek you." And the word of God says, "Whoever seeks God will be found. He will be found by them." Her faith is dramatically contrasted with the heartened unbelief of the Pharisees who were Jewish. They consider themselves children of God, but they weren't because they had no faith in Christ. And her faith even outshines the understanding of the disciples whose hearts were hardened at times. And God loves persistent pursuit of Him and He rewards this lavishly.

Matthew 11:12, "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force." What does that mean? He's talking about John the Baptist. John the Baptist, he sacrificed everything to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God, to proclaim that, "Jesus Christ is here. He's willing to save people." John the Baptist sacrificed everything for the kingdom of God to expand. The violent, he took it by force. It took effort. It took work on his part and the same way, if you pursue God, if you sacrifice to pursue God. And yes, this does take sacrifice like, "Rain, snow, whatever, I'm going to church." That's who you are. I commend all of you. You're here at first service. Praise be to God.

I had a phone call from a pastor and he's like, "Are you guys canceling church?" I was like, "This isn't public school. We don't believe in snow days. Forget that. We're going to church." Yeah, we'll get a little wet. That's fine. We do close church if the tea's not running. That's because of the temple situation. But what I'm saying is, yes, it does take effort. You want to experience more of God? It takes effort to wake up just to study the scriptures. It takes effort to pray. It takes effort to pursue the Lord. Like the paralytic friends, remember that the house is full, they couldn't get through to Christ. They climb into the roof. They break through 18 inches of sod and branches in the roof lowering the man and the man is healed and Jesus forgives him of his sins as well.

Jesus delights in persistent faith like that of this woman. Another example is Luke 18 and Luke 18, there's a woman who keeps returning to a judge, pleading her case over and over and over. And verse 4 of Luke 18 says, "For a while, he refused, but afterward, he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'" And this is a comparison, opposites of course, that God, He wants to give us mercy, He wants to give us justice, He wants to pour out His power in our life, but do we keep coming to him persistently, doggedly, voraciously, yet humbly like this woman does?

She depended on Christ's goodness, not her own, so she finally understood grace. She understood grace. "It's not because of anything in me, Lord. I plead Your mercy. I plead Your grace. And faith is such a picture. It's not this bloodless, flaccid, distracted, half-hearted acceptance of certain propositions or theorems of theology about God. No, you realize that God is a person and that God does bless those who pursue Him. Faith is driven. It's determined. It's an unyielding grip upon God Himself and that's why hunger is such a good metaphor. Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."

Matthew 5:3-6, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." And we continue the text, point three is great faith, humble bringing and begging. And verse 31, "Then He returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged Him to lay His hand on him." Who are these people that brought this man that needed healing to Jesus? We're not told. We just know that these people heard about Christ. They heard that Christ has power to help, so they bring their friend and they beg God on behalf. They beg Christ on behalf of their friend.

"Lord, just Your hand, one hand touch our friend. Heal him." Verse 33, "And taking him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue." Why does Jesus do this? I think the simplest explanation is probably the best one. He's speaking with this man, communicating with this man in the only language the man can understand. He puts His finger in his ears as though He's saying, "I'm going to do something to your hearing. I'm going to do something with your tongue, with your speech." Jesus is entering the man's world, the Great King of heaven, the Great Creator of heavens and the earth. The Sinless Lamb of God is coming down. He's identifying with this man and his condition and all of its wretchedness and all of its agony and angst. Jesus is coming right down to where the man is.

Verse 34, "Looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' which is an Aramaic, "that is, 'Be opened.'" He looks up to heaven, so he's invoking God's power. He sighs. Why does Jesus sigh? And this is a sign of His deep feeling, His compassion for the sufferer. If you remember when He comes to Lazarus' tomb, He knows He's about to resurrect Lazarus, but before He does, He reveals His emotion in John 11:33, "When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled. And He said, 'Where have you laid him?' And they said to Him, 'Lord, come and see,' and Jesus swept." So the Jews said, "See how He loved him."

The phrase for deeply moved or greatly troubled, that phrase is a word used in another context to describe a horse snorting. One translation says, "He gave way to such distress of spirit, has made His body tremble." One commentator says, "This great sigh came out of His wounded heart." So what's happening? Jesus is moved by Lazarus' condition. He's moved by this man's condition. It offends Him, "This is not the way the world was supposed to be. The world was created and it was perfect and we were supposed to live in perfect harmony, perfect shalom, but we rebelled against God and sin entered the world and the ravages of sin, the consequences of sin are felt by each one of us." And when Jesus dies, He knows, this isn't the way it's supposed to be and everyone knows this.

If you ask even an unbeliever, someone that doesn't believe in God, you ask them, "Is the world the way it ought to be? Are you the way you ought to be?" And everyone says, "No, because everyone knows deep down inside there's something wrong, something wrong with us, something wrong with the world." Where does that knowledge come from? The knowledge of a perfect reality and knowledge of a perfect world. It's written on our hearts. This is not how creation was meant to be in all of its beauty and all of its glory and now it's marred with sin.

This man was made to reflect the image of God, the glory of God, and here, he's a poor wretch of a man suffering and Jesus is moved by that. He sighs and he says, "Be opened," and this is called a divine passive. He says, "Be opened by whom? By God." That's what he's saying. He's invoking the power of God. In verse 35, "His ears were opened, his tongue was released and he spoke plainly." The ears were opened. That's another divine passive. His tongue was released by whom? By God. His tongue was unshackled, so to speak. The bond of his tongue was released.

Jesus is creating a new world. That's what bringing the kingdom of God into the world means, that He's recreating things from the inside out and it starts with the message of the good news and it transforms our hearts from the inside. And then everything in the world, little by little, becomes transformed. Verse 36, "And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure saying, "He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. He has done all things well."

And this echoes Genesis 1:31 where God creates, He sees everything He's made and he says, "It is good." They say, "He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak," and that's an illusion to Isaiah 35, talking about the Messianic kingdom, verse 5 of Isaiah 35, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped and shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert." Of course, Jesus' miracles weren't just miracles for miracle's sake. His miracles were always a sign, a sign of a deeper reality, a sign of who Jesus is, a sign of what Jesus has come to accomplish, which is to redeem people, to redeem the world, to save souls. And this motif of the opened ear is a symbol for revelation.

Same people hear the same message and someone's ears are opened and they believe and they know that this is the truest truth in the universe. This is the truth beyond any truth, underneath every single truth. And some people, they hear the same message and they walk away and they're like, "That was nice. That was a good message. What's for lunch?" The opening of the man's ear is meant to be understood as a symbol of the way in which a person is made receptive. So this is the miracle, the greater miracle. It is a great miracle that the woman's child is freed from the demon. It is a miracle that this man is healed of his deafness and his muteness, but the greater miracle is the miracle that these are pointing to and that's the miracle of the ears being opened and you hear the good news, "Oh, yes, I am a sinner. Oh yes, I have transgressed the law of God. Yes, I am guilty as charge. Yes, I accept that verdict, and yes, Jesus Christ is the only one who could save me."

The problem was that Jesus wasn't clear in His teaching. You say, "Why didn't more people get saved?" The problem wasn't that His message was confused or complicated. The problem was that these people's ears were not receptive to the message. That's why Jesus often said, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." He means that there was a kind of supernatural hearing or understanding that many people are incapable of. The unbeliever certainly hears the words physically spoken, certainly maybe even understands them to an extent. They're perfectly ordinary words. We have done wrong. A great deal of wrong. We do need forgiveness and God will forgive you for all of the sins that you have ever committed only if you believe in His Son who is sent into this world to die on a cross precisely to secure forgiveness for those who trust in Him. Those who are in Christ will go to heaven when they die and only those.

Nothing in those English sentences is difficult to understand, but the unbeliever does not understand them not in a way that saves them. Why? Because the unbeliever doesn't understand that they cannot come to God whenever they want. They can't come to God on their own timetable. It happens as a miracle. When you hear the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart, when you hear the Holy Spirit saying, "Repent of your sin. Come to Christ," at that moment, do not stop up your ears. At that moment, say, "Yes, Lord, I believe. Yes, Lord, I repent. Yes, Lord, save me."

Therefore, it's important for us, for those who have been given ears to hear to bring people to Christ. We're not the ones that can save. Just like the friends that brought the deaf person to Jesus, they brought Him, they begged Him, but it's Jesus that does the work, not them. Verse 32, "They brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged Him to lay His hand on him." And that's our job as believers. We are to bring people to Christ. We are to have gospel conversations with people. Any opportunity I have to speak about the Lord, I am going to use, I'm going to take. That's our job, but I can't transform a heart. I can't give ears to hear. Only the Lord can do that.

In the same way that this man's tongue was unshackled, in the same way that this man's ears were opened, that's what the Lord has done for believers. Some of you have had your ears opened. You understand the gospel, you love the gospel and you love sermons, you love church, but your tongue is still shackled when it comes to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. You've heard it, you understand it, but you can't really speak about it. And I'm telling you why, because you feel a little ashamed. There's just a shame like, "I don't want them to think I'm a believer Christian like those Christians."

I pray that the Lord unshackle our ... You know how Jesus tells these people, they saw the miracle and he's like, "Don't tell anyone," and then they go and they tell the whole world? And now I'm like, "Jesus, why do You do it? Is it like reverse psychology?" It's like in the great commission, Jesus went to us and said, "Do not go and make disciples of all the nations. Do not do that. We'd be making so many more disciples." Whatever it takes, this is our job. We are to unshackle. We are to speak. We are to bring people to church. We are to bring people to community. We have to bring people to read scripture together. We are to bring people to have conversations about the Lord. We are to pray for people.

If you have unbelievers in your life and they have needs, ask if you can pray for them. So easy. So easy. And pray to Lord and like, "Lord, can You please flex? Lord, reveal Yourself to these people." And in the same way that these friends, anonymous, they drag their friend to Christ, the friend gets the miracle. We are to do the same here. We're meant to see the Lord's power to heal the spiritually deaf and He can give the chief of sinners even, that was what Paul called himself, a hearing ear. He can save absolutely anybody. When Jesus pours forth His Spirit, nothing is impossible and we must never despair of others. We must never regard our own hearts as too bad to be changed.

You are not too much of a sinner for Jesus. Every single one of us can receive grace, can receive the crumbs from the Lord's table. All we need to do is ask. All we need to do is what this woman did. Matthew 15:2, she comes to Jesus, gets on her knees and what does she say? "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David." May that be the constant cry of our hearts, "Lord, have mercy on me." And if you pray that today, if you pray to Jesus Christ, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me," the word of God says that you are saved, that you have received eternal life. Now, follow the Lord Jesus Christ the rest of your days.

This woman asked for a crumb from the Lord's table and she received what she received. She received power of God in her life. For the power of God to be unleashed in our lives, for the crumbs to fall from the Lord's table, what did Jesus Christ have to do? The Bread of Life had to come into this world and that His body was broken. And that's what today we're celebrating in the holy communion, we are remembering the suffering of Christ. His body was broken, so that we could get the crumbs from the Lord's table to be saved. His blood was shed in order to cleanse us, to redeem us, to ransom us from our sins.

With that said, I'm going to transition to holy communion. For whom is holy communion? It is for repentant believers in Jesus Christ. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you've repented of your sin, you are welcome to partake, even if today for the first time you repented and believe in Christ. If you do not believe in Christ, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or if you are living in unrepentant sin, also please refrain. I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 11:23-32, and while I do that, if you would like to partake and you haven't received the elements, please raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring them to you.

1 Corinthians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same way also, He took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died, but if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."

Would you please pray with me over communion. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You, the Great God of the Universe did not leave us in our sins and trespasses and You sent Your Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank You that You live that perfect life. You obeyed the Father's will perfectly from the heart at all times, every second of Your incarnate life. And Lord, You were sacrificed. You sacrificed Yourself on the cross. You gave Your life in order to save us. We thank You that on the cross, You took our sin upon Yourself. You became our sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

Lord Jesus, we thank You that You offer us mercy. You offer mercy to whoever would plead Your name, the name of Jesus Christ. Lord, have mercy on us and You extend it graciously, willingly. And I thank You, Holy Spirit, that You are with us and I pray that You help us meditate now in the suffering of Christ to remember that His body was broken and His blood was shed in order for us to be healed from the inside out and given new hearts in order for us to be cleansed from shame and guilt. Lord, bless our time in the holy communion now. We repent of any sins, known sins and unknown sins, and we come to You with complete contrition of heart, asking for mercy and grace as we remember Your sufferings in our behalf. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

If this is your first time taking communion with us, there's two lids. If you open the top one that opens the cup and then the bottom one opens the bread. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, He took the bread, and after breaking it, He said, "This is My body broken for you. Take, eat and do this in remembrance of Me." He then proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of My blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink and do this in remembrance of Me."

Lord Jesus, as we meditate on Your sufferings and we think of what a great miracle that was, the Son of God, Son of Man dying on our behalf, we also thank about the great miracle of the resurrection, incredible that You rose from the dead verifying everything that You taught to be true. And Lord, we think of our own conversions, our own regeneration, our own salvation. What a miracle that is, that we were given faith, we were given ears to hear. And we pray that we don't take that for granted, Lord, and we pray that You, in the same way that You've saved us, in the same way that You made the great miracle of our salvation, I pray that You save many around us. Save them miraculously. We believe in a great God. We believe in your great power.

And with our faith, Lord, we believe, help our own belief, but we pray that you pour out Your Spirit upon our city and upon this region, upon New England. Pour out Your Spirit in a way that the world has never seen, that I pray save hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands and more. And Lord, as this woman pleaded with You, we plead, Lord. We plead for our neighbors. We plead the blood for our loved ones. We plead the blood of Jesus Christ for our city. Lord, we thank You in advance for the great revival that is coming and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Lord, as we end one year and begin another, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for preserving us to this moment, sustaining us by the power of your spirit. And we thank you Lord that you continue to reveal yourself to us. That's what we long for. More than anything else, is your presence. We long to know you. We long to know your will and Lord, as we open up the scriptures and as we look at a text where you emphasize the preeminence of God's law, I pray, make us a people that love your law, love your 10 commandments. Stare deeply, gaze deeply into your law, seeking how we can grow in faithfulness, how we can grow in obedience. And as we do, you will grow us in fruitfulness. Lord, to make our church a church that loves your word, reveres your word. Make Bostonians like the Bereans that eagerly accept your word and on a daily basis, examine to see if it's true.

If it's true that you are a God who reveals yourself, a God who guides us, and God who gave us the law to guard us from evil, show us what it means that you sent your son Jesus Christ because we disobeyed the law, we sinned against you. You sent your son to walk in the ways of faithfulness and then to offer himself as a sacrifice in our behalf in order to forgive us. And we thank you Lord that you offer that sacrifice. If anyone is not yet a believer today, Lord, show them where they've transgressed the commandments and show them that sin and the penalty for is eternal damnation and that Christ took all of that on the cross and whosoever believes, repents and turns from sin to Christ is granted forgiveness and eternal life. I pray save many even today and Lord bless our time in the holy scriptures and we pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.

We're continuing our servant series through the Gospel of Mark. We've called it Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the secret of God's kingdom. And the idea is that the kingdom has come and Jesus has come to establish the kingdom and we are to be a people that pray. Lord, may your kingdom continue to expand in our life and where we live. And as we end one year and begin another, it's helpful to take account of the year past. Remember lessons learned, consider changes to make and make resolutions that pesky word, pesky, pesky. We don't like that word resolutions, but I urge you, church, I challenge you, make this resolution. If you have never read the Bible cover to cover, resolve that this year you are going to change that. Cover to cover, four chapters a day. There's about 1200 chapters in the Bible, four chapters a day that's got you reading 300 or so days of the year.

You've got 65 days off to study the Psalter and the Proverbs and go deeper. But four chapters a day, it's about 20 minutes and that's a tremendous time to spend with the Lord. And I say that because it's not the resolutions that change us, it's the reformation that we make in our life. It's the restructuring of the routine. It's the spiritual disciplines that we welcome in. That's what really changes us. We need not just resolutions or short-term change, we need a reformation. We need to be reformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We're like clay in the potter's hands. He's shaping us, he's forming us, he's reforming us. And this reformation or transformation as Romans 12 puts it happens when our minds are renewed according to the word of God, when our minds are saturated with the word of God. It's the word of God when applied by the spirit of God that leads to true transformation and lasting reformation.

One of the great principles that came out of the reformation along with the five solos, if you're not familiar with them, here they are. Sola scriptura, that's scripture alone, Sola gratia, that's grace alone, Sola fide, that's faith alone, Solus Christus, that's Christ alone, and Soli Deo gloria to the glory of God alone.

Well, along with those five, there was also the principle of semper reformanda, which is always reforming. The title of my sermon today is always becoming reformed and the idea isn't that we are capitulating to the culture, that we're evolving in order to make the message more palatable. No, the message is that we study the holy scriptures and we long for the holy scriptures to reform us and reform how we live, reform how we worship the Lord. And the church should always be seeking to change in ways that make its testimonies more faithful to God's revelation.

The church is formed by the word of God and it's always being reformed by the word of God just as individuals are. And how does reformation happen in our lives and in the churches in our land? When we look into the word of God and to the law of God and say, "Lord, where have I been unfaithful to your word? Where have I added to your word or where have I subtracted from your word?" Deuteronomy 4:2 says, "You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you."

And you say, "Well, which word is he talking about here in Deuteronomy?" Don't add or take away from which word? Well, in the same chapter in verse nine through 14, he explains, "Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children."

"How on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, gather the people to me that I may let them hear my words so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth and that they may teach their children also. And so you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain where the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud and gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form. There was only a voice. And he declared to you his covenant which he commanded you to perform, that is the Ten Commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules that you might do them in the land that you were going over to possess."

Well, what word do we not to add or subtract from? It's the 10 commandments. And adding to the law of God is legalism and taking away from the law of God is antinomianism and Jesus didn't add to the law of God, but he did uphold the 10 laws to show us primarily that we have sinned against God, therefore we need Christ's sacrifice. And then once we've received Christ's sacrifice and his grace, we are then to out of gratitude, live according to the law that in primarily motivated by love for God and neighbor.

Today we're in Mark 7:1-23. As we continue our series, would you look at the text with me?

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed. For the Pharisees and all the Jews did not eat unless they washed their hands properly holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?" And he said to them, "Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me teaching his doctrines the commandments of men? You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition."

"For Moses said, honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die." But you say, "If a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would've gained from me is Corban, that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do."

And he called the people to him again and said to them, "Hear me all of you and understand, there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable and he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled?" Thus he declared all foods clean. And he said, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him for from within out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual morality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within and they defile a person."

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent and infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First traditions are not God's commandments. Second God's 10 commandments are God's commandments. And three, the law cuts and Jesus regenerates.

First, traditions are not God's commandments. In Mark 7:1 says, "The Pharisees gathered to him and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem." These are the representatives of the big establishment religion.

The scribes in the Pharisees did not approve of Jesus. Jesus did not have their stamp of approval as he's doing his ministry. They were furious with Jesus that he would eat with sinners and tax collectors. They became angrier when Jesus rejected their distinctions between clean and unclean. And the scribes and the Pharisees challenged Jesus' view of fasting as well as Jesus' view of the Sabbath observance. And Jesus showed no qualms whatsoever in defying these traditions, rejecting their oral traditions. In many ways, I was sharing the gospel recently with someone. They say, "You know what? Jesus sounds kind of like a rebel, kind of like a renegade." And I was like, "Yes, he's the revolutionary of deregulating religion. He's God, it's his law, it's his word. He's come." And he said, "That's all made up and that's all made up and that's all made up." And he's pointing people to the law of God because it's only the law of God that can show us our need for God's grace.

So yes, he confounded the canon lawyers and he sent them into fits of rage. How? By just teaching the plain word of God, God's law, what it says, what it doesn't say with absolute precision. For Jesus the oral traditions were not binding, they were not law, they were just decorum. Jesus rejects the authority of their tradition and therefore he openly contradicted what they taught and practiced. And so he made a lot of enemies and that's what ultimately got him crucified. And these men were sent from Jerusalem indicating that their representatives of the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish ruling body in Jerusalem. Like Herod Antipas, members of the Sanhedrin had heard about Jesus Christ. They perceived him to be someone that can mobilize people, therefore they perceive him to be a threat. And some of the religious leaders even accused Jesus Christ of doing his ministry because he was demon possessed.

They said, you cast out demons by the power of Satan. And as a result, Jesus places upon them the ultimate covenant curse that no forgiveness in this age or in the age to come was given to the blasphemers of the blessed Holy Spirit. So the Jewish leadership, the Pharisees, they've sworn to destroy Jesus, they've partnered with the Herodians and they gather to him, the verb used to gather to him here is the same one used in Psalm 2, which is a messianic prophetic Psalm about Christ that the anointed one will come and the rulers of the day will rise against him in opposition. And that's exactly what they're doing. In other Psalms, the same verb is used for the wicked conspiring against the righteous to take his life. For example, Psalm 31:13. "For I hear the whispering of many terror on every side as they scheme together against me as they plot to take my life," or Psalm 35:15.

"But at my stumbling, they rejoiced and gathered. They gathered together against me, wretches whom I did not know, tore at me without ceasing."

And the fact that the scribes who interrogate Jesus, they come down from Jerusalem marks that the opposition is coming from the center of power from Jerusalem where Jesus will be eventually executed. In verse two, "They saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is unwashed for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches."

The hand washing is not a biblical... You should wash your hands. That's not what we're talking.

We're talking about what makes you moral. That's what they're getting. What they're doing is immoral. They're sinning. That's the conversation. The hand washing that they're alluding to. It's not a biblical requirement for lay people. In the Old Testament, only the priests are required to wash their hands before offering a sacrifice. And the Pharisees however they thought, you know what, this is a good thing to do. We should have everybody do it. We're going to regulate this on absolutely everyone on the theory that every Jew should live as a priest and every Jewish home should become like the temple. The reasoning sounds very rational. And in this tradition, that's what the tradition forces forms the basis of their challenge. Though this was only a priestly requirement from the law of God, all the pious Jews at the time of Jesus had been doing this for about 200 years.

So Jesus shows up and he says, that's not in the Bible, that's not regulation for everybody. And their response is, "Jesus, we've always done it this way. Our parents have always done it this way, our grandparents and they've all done it this way.

By Jesus' day it had become firmly entrenched this tradition as a requirement for those that want it to be clean and people wash their hands in the morning before morning prayer. The benediction used by the priest of that time of consecration was now being recited by the people as part of the course of daily life. And many felt that even eating bread without a ceremonial washing rendered the bread unclean. And verse five, "The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?" And the word for walk here is standard metaphor for living a certain way.

Why don't your disciples live in the way that our elders taught us to live? In the tradition of the elders, not the law of Moses, but oral and written tradition received from antiquity and honored only because it was from antiquity. Honored as the word of God just because it's old for the Pharisees, the oral tradition was equally binding with the law of God and with the scriptures. And some of them even believed that tradition was more precious and more authoritative than holy scripture. And with this kind of tradition, the gospels record that Jesus always expressed angry impatience. On the surface, this looks like an argument brought about Jesus' disciples watching procedures, but in reality it's a debate about authority. Is oral tradition authoritative over God's people? And the answer is no. The problem was that with the Pharisees and what the Pharisees had to be doing is they'd been controlling people with their religious regulation.

They had been requiring demanding that people obey their oral traditions even though this tradition had no biblical support. Put it another way, the scribes and the Pharisees big religion, they were binding people's consciences to things that were not required of them by scripture. And as the scribes saw the matter, it was their sacred duty to teach the people and then enforce this manmade law upon the people. These legalistic religious lawyers force their rules and regulations on everyone and try to adjudicate.

Jesus answers on two levels. Those who criticize him first, he answers on their level by showing that their premise, their presupposition is unsubstantiated. And then after doing that, he demolishes their position from within by going deeper. Verse six, "And he said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me teaching us doctrines and commandments of men."

On the principle that the best defense is a good offense, Jesus goes on the offense against these guys and he responds to their hostility by not answering their question about hand washing but actually dismantling this false presupposition that their human traditions are on the same level as God's word in terms of binding moral authority calls them hypocrites. In the classical Greek, it was a word to designate actors, pretenders. And he's saying, you guys are hypocrites because you present a religious godly front, but it's a front based on your own regulations. You made up rules, you've been playing according to these rules. You look really wholly according to those rules, but that's not the game. You're playing the wrong game. And he accuses them of a hypocrisy because they're masking God's law with human made regulations. And the Pharisees certainly would not have agreed with Jesus here, with his charge that tradition represented a betrayal of the commandments of God.

No, they would've said, "No. Tradition is part of God's revelation to us." Yet God revealed himself to Moses, but he's also been revealing himself through us, through the pharisaical sect of Judaism. This feeling of connection with ancient revelation is what has given rabbinic Judaism the successor of Phariseeism, a great sense of continuity. But what they teach depends entirely on their authority, on people's authority, not on divine authority. And humans, as Jesus makes clear at the end of the text, we're sinners and everything we touch is singe tinged with sin. And even if we try with our greatest attempts of wisdom to add to the commandments of God, those additions are going to be tinged with sin. This clinging to human traditions makes them actually neglect the plain commandment of God, which is what led to their downfall. Not only does Jesus use one of Israel's most widely red prophets, Isaiah, he quotes Isaiah, they knew this was God's word, but in that context, Isaiah was prophesying to the people of God and he says, "You, the kingdom of Israel, you're in shambles because you have left the commandments of God." And what Jesus is doing by quoting that same text to these people, he's saying in the same way that Israel had fallen from glory because they had moved away from the commandments of God, you guys are doing the same thing.

And that's why Israel was in the state it was. They've replaced the law of God with laws of humans and that never leads to shalom or universal flourishing. Notice that Jesus does not even attempt to answer their trick question. He doesn't even want to talk about hand washing. These are manmade rules and traditions. They're not binding. Only the law of God is, and these rules and regulations, they may be signs of great zeal, but in actuality they demonstrate this sad fact that they don't know God. Their hearts are far from God because they're spending all of their time living according to their own interpretations of what God said. They're hypocrites because they pretend to love God, but they don't even do what he says. They prefer to do what they say about what he said. And to the people of Israel, the scribes and Pharisees look like holy and godly men, but they're not because they're not worshiping God in the way he said to worship him.

These men claim to defend the law of God by arguing, but their humanly contrived rules actually block the word of God. They distort the law of God and they rob the word of God of its power. According to Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees have so buried the true meaning and purpose of the law under countless layers of canon law and oral tradition. They've made the law null and void. Their traditions not only bury the law under rules of men that so much that people don't even know what God's law actually says.

So that brings us to point too. God's manmade traditions are not God's law, but God's 10 commandments are. Look at verse eight, what Jesus does. He says, "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." Well, what does Jesus mean by the commandment of God? Well, he explicitly tells us in verse 10 that he's referring to the 10 commandments because in verse 10 he says, "Case in point hears a command that you have nullified with your own tradition." And he goes to commandment number five. So by command he's referring to the 10 commandments. In verse 10, "For Moses said, honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father and mother must surely die."

For Moses said here, that's what Jesus says. There's a parallel account where Jesus is having a similar conversation in Matthew 15, four. And there it doesn't say Moses said. There, it just says, for God said. God said this. These are his words. God had written the 10 commandments with his finger. So making the contrast that the commandment of God and it makes the contrast even more direct between command of God and tradition. Matthew 15:4, "For God commanded honor your father and your mother and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. Their hearts had strayed from God and the people have fallen under the sway of human tradition that emptied the divine word of its force and blinded its possessors to God's true will."

And that's why in Mark 7:9, Jesus said to them and he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. They weren't in complete disobedience. Here Jesus adds the word fine as a touch of sarcasm because they had done this so beautifully. No one even noticed that they sidestep the word of God in order to establish their own tradition. But by supplanting and replacing the commandment, they're actually rejecting it.

In verse 10 of Mark 7, Moses said, "Honor your father and your mother, whoever reviles father or mother must surely die." That's from Exodus 20:12, "Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you." And that's repeated in Deuteronomy 5:16. This is the fifth commandment and it does include material support of parents as parents grow older.

That's the conversation here and that commandment honor your father and your mother. It was so important that the penalty for breaking that commandment was capital punishment. Exodus 21:17, "Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death." In Leviticus 20:9, "For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death, he has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him."

Just as being angry or refraining from performing a cure is equivalent to murder. So withholding support from parents is equivalent to cursing them. That's what Christ is saying, that dishonoring of parents is a capital offense according to the Torah. Yet the Pharisees facilitate it by their Corban practice. They're like, "Well, that's what the commandment said, honor your father and your mother." They're getting a little older and you should start thinking about how you're going to provide for them.

And they're elderly age. And then the Pharisees come in and they say, that's a lot of money and that's a lot of time and that's a lot of resources. We could actually increase the budget of our ministries, of our synagogues, of our temples by tweaking the commandment a little bit. And children, instead of actually supporting your parents when they're older, just give that money to the Lord so to speak. And that was their Corban stuff. Verse 11, "But you say, if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you want, whatever you would've gained from me is Corban that is given to God then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down in many such things you do."

Corban was a transliteration from the Hebrew and Aramaic of sacrifice, their offering. And what they're saying is, "Okay, this money I would've given to you mom and dad. I'm going to offer to the Lord therefore making it unavailable for any other use." The person declares that any material support he might have given his parents is pledged to God. Not that he necessarily intends to deliver it to God, but he just wants to remove it from the parents. If you think about it's just incredibly diabolical this rule that they invented. Yeah, they're going to fill their coffers, but you're also actually, you're doing the opposite what the commander said. Commander said, to honor your father and your mother and you're dishonoring them by pretending to honor the Lord. And Jesus here zeroes in on this specific example of Pharisaic tradition that empties the word of God of its force and it did it through a legal fiction maneuver just to avoid the law.

And so what begins as a trick question quickly turns into a lesson in biblical hermeneutics or the interpretation of scripture. Jesus here is saying the law is perfect. Any addition or subtraction to the 10 commandments is the incorrect interpretation. Jesus does not set aside the law, he doesn't question its authority or do anything to weaken its demands, but he's saying traditions added to the law of God, they're not morally binding. And for these traditions and the Pharisees, it was actually subversion of the Lord of the word of God, a betrayal of it. And what's fascinating is the word for tradition in the Greek has two meanings. It could be translated as tradition parados, but there's other places where the same exact word means betrayal. When John the Baptist was handed over, this word was used when Jesus was betrayed, this word was used. And when Christians were betrayed and suffering and death, this word parados was used.

So you can read this text and say you forsake the commandment of God and hold fast to the betrayal of human beings because by adding to the law, they have betrayed the word of God. You do a good job of annulling the commandment of God so that you may establish your betrayal, thus avoiding the word of God for the sake of your betrayal, parados by means of which you have betrayed. And the word for human here or person is anthropos. It's not the word for men that's used when Jesus feeds the 5,000. It's anthropos, person, human being. When humans add to the word, when they add to the law, they are subverting the commandments. Mark's point seems to be that human traditions, no matter how laudable in their original intention, they end up suffocating revelation because of the basic warp of the human heart of the anthropos.

There's evil inside every single one of us that corrupts everything that we touch including the word of God. So whenever you listen to anybody interpreting the word of God, you do have to be like the Bereans. Word of God I welcome you eagerly, but I'm going to examine everything the person says according to the scriptures. Christians are not and indeed cannot be bound by the rules of men. And while many of these rules are based in wisdom, they cannot be used to bind a Christian's conscience to things that God has not forbidden in his word or expressly or implied. When we say we believe in sola scripture, what are we saying? We're saying we are bound to obey the law of God and in our case, the moral law, the 10 commandments, and that we are not bound by any manmade rules or traditions. God's word is our ultimate authority, not human tradition, not the tradition of the church.

And this is why we are not Catholic. We understand that the Pope is not infallible. The Pope is actually very fallible and clearly he's adding to the word of God in a way that subverts the word of God. No, we reject that. We keep on reforming. Scripture speaks of the law of God as the perfect law, the law of liberty. And to put it rather simplistically, God gave us 10 commandments, not countless volumes of canon law. And these 10 commandments are for the most part, very simple. Even our children know the 10 Commandments and we do this in our home. You should try doing this in your home. We go through the 10 commandments and as we're doing our devotionals and we call each other out. We're Slavic, we're direct. We call it like, "Which commandments did you break today? I know, I know I live with you."

And you're like, "Yes, I have broken the commandments. Lord, forgive me. I need grace. Help me and no longer break them."

God binds us to obey his commandments, not to obey the rules of man. It's that simple. And this leads to the second evil that we see in our passage, just the evil of self-righteousness. These Pharisees had invented rules that they added to the commandments, which protects them from the commandments actually revealing their own sin. And then they walk around and they say, "I have the cleanest hands. I have the cleanest hands, I'm undefiled." And they judge everyone else according to these manmade rules. And that's why Jesus didn't spend time with them. They thought they weren't sick and Jesus would rather spend time with tax collectors, sinners who knew that they were sinners in need of a doctor.

The 10 Commandments are given to us to show us our need for Christ and then also show us after we've received Christ what it means to follow him. And these are, I think about 10 lanes on a track. You know there's 10 lanes. I know this because I ran track as a kid for a season and my daughter reminded me of this recently. We're going through a trophy case and she's like, "Oh, here's a trophy." And it was for 10th place in track and field. That's how I know there's 10 lanes. Back when they started giving out trophies for absolutely every single person. Terrible. That was the beginning of the end.

And it's like 10 lanes, 10 lanes. This is the straight and narrow. This is how we walk in the ways of righteousness. There's no other lanes and people try to add the lanes through ceremonial minutia and stuff. That's not the law.

Point three is the law cuts and Jesus regenerates. Mark 7:14, "And he called the people to him again and said to them, hear me all of you and understand there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him."

And this is the ultimate answer to the question of the Pharisees and the scribes when they said, "Well, why aren't your disciples washing their hands as they are?" The Pharisees thought and their system of theology, they thought that to eat with unwashed hands made you ritually impure because the contagion of impurity was outside of you. So if you ate something that was impure, all of a sudden you become impure. They thought that the evil was outside of them and they had to protect themselves from the evil coming in. And Jesus counters that false idea by saying that external things like unwashed hands have no power to transmit defilement. In Matthew 15:11, "It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth that this defiles a person." And this bold statement ran contrary to all of their rabbinic teaching.

To the rabbis and to the Pharisees for any defilement to occur, there must be a mother of defilement, an external source by physical contact with that source, you become unclean. That's why they stayed away from the Gentiles, your sinners. Your sin might be transmitted to me that's why they stayed away from anyone with leprosy. They thought this is how the sin or defilement comes upon, and that's why they stayed away from the sinners and tax collectors and they were shocked. "Jesus, how are you spending time with these people? You're going to get contaminated by their sin." And Jesus says, you're false because you're assuming an initially pure state. You're assuming that you are pristine and it's someone else's sin that makes you sin. And this is false. Jesus says, "The source of defilement is not external, but within." It's already existent. We're born with a sin nature, and every mom and dad in the room says, amen.

Our children prove the doctrine of total depravity. They're born as little individualistic sinners and we need God's grace and their hearts and our hearts and we need the transformation to come from within. To the Pharisees, lack of ceremonial purity, as in the case of the disciples was sin. And Jesus saying, that's not sin. Don't just throw that word around. They didn't break a commandment. That's not sin. They broke the decorum. Mark 7:17, "When he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable." They didn't understand what's happening so they asked for interpretation of verse 18. He said to them, "Then, are you also without understanding, do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled, thus he declared all foods clean."

Here Jesus shows us that he has authority over ritual purity to redefine ritual purity. And he declared all foods clean, meaning that he, by his word and by his authority and by his power, shows that the ceremonial law, which was given by God was to point to Jesus Christ and he has fulfilled the ceremonial law. Therefore, he can redefine ritual purity. Romans 14:17 says, "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual up building. Do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats."

So we see that Jesus in the same text does not abrogate the 10 Commandments. He actually upholds the 10 commandments, but he is abrogating the Old Testament food laws, the same laws that divided the Jews from the Gentiles and significant that this happens here because Jesus in the next section is going to begin his Gentile ministry. And we see that with the Syrophoenician woman. And then we see that with Jesus feeding 4,000 Gentiles, Gentile men.

Ephesians 2:11 says, "Therefore, remember that one time you gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one man in place of the two, so making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility."

So having declared all foods clean and thus having shown that there's no longer anything external to human beings that can defile them, Jesus identifies the real source of defilement. How does sin enter the world? How does sin enter our lives? It's the human heart. It's not what goes into people, what comes out of the human heart that is actually sin. Mark 7:20, "And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him for from within out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual morality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these things come from within and they defile a person." This catalog of human offenses truly paints a hellish picture. And Jesus says that that's all inside every single one of us.

And there's a series of seven offenses in the plural, which he's showing crimes against the law, against the 10 commandments, followed by a series of more sinister things that are the reason or the root causes of the evil action. He says, out of the heart of man, come evil, thoughts, evil as defined by the law. All the other evil flows out of this one. Evil thoughts, the battleground for the soul. It begins with the mind. It begins with thoughts.

In Genesis 8:21, "When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, and the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done."

The word of God teaches that we're born with the sin nature, that there's sin in this world because we're born as sinners and the sin comes from within our hearts. It begins with the word sexual sin, sexual morality or porneia, which originally meant fornication. The Pharisees didn't want to talk about that. They want to talk about washing hands. Let's not talk about anything deeper than that. And after the sexual sins, he talks about robbery and murder and adultery, all transgressions of the 10 commandments. Then he gives seven singular words that talk about internal disposition that then leads to external action. Mark 7:23, "All these evil things come from within and they defile a person." And that word person anthropos, I've already mentioned it's used over and over and over in our passage, five times in a short passage, anthropo. And he says, this is where the sin comes from within the heart of a person. And that's really why adding traditions to the law of God is so sinister because anything that we add is tinged with our own sin.

What the Pharisees could not see is that in their desire for piety and zeal, they were actually covering the law with their sin. These men looked like they were pious and godly individuals, but their hearts were far from God because their hearts were sinful. Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?"

And then who can change it? Who can do something about it? And this is the beauty of the gospel. God gives us the 10 commandments like the scalpel. The 10 commandments show us that our hearts are stoned toward God, their hearts are sinful, that their hearts are evil. And the 10 commands, they cut, they cut, they cut, they cut. And then we look to the cross of Jesus Christ and we realized that the Son of God, the perfect Lamb of God, spotless Lamb of God who would never sinned, not one commandment that Jesus ever break in his whole life, and then he offers his spotless record as a sacrifice in our stead on the cross in order to do what, in order to transform us.

Scripture talks about this as regeneration, to be born again, be born from within spiritual heart surgery. Jesus has this conversation with a Pharisee, a religious person named Nicodemus in John 3. And Nicodemus said, "Jesus, how do I go to heaven?" And Jesus answered him and said, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he's old? Can he enter a second time to his mother's womb and be born?' And Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

"Do not marvel at this that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes. So it is with everyone who was born of the Spirit."

"Lord, I need a new heart." That's what Nicodemus says, and he says, "How do I get it?" He said, "You got to be born again."

"How do I do that?"

And Jesus' answer, "The Spirit blows where it wishes." The Spirit is the one that converts therefore, church and therefore Christians, we can just proclaim the plain word of God to people and not be afraid, not be ashamed, not try to cover it in these layers to make it more palatable. What he's saying is Nicodemus is like, I want to go to heaven. And Jesus is like, well, hopefully the Holy Spirit converts you. That's his answer. But he tells him the truth.

And Nicodemus at that point then what does he do? He starts begging the Holy Spirit, convert me. Holy Spirit regenerate. Holy Spirit, I need this transformation reformation from the inside. And then later on we find out Nicodemus was converted and did become a child of God. So if you're not sure that you are a Christian, if you're not sure that you have a heart that loves God, how does your heart respond when you hear about the 10 Commandments, when you hear about the law of God, the true regenerated believer, Christian child of God, when you hear about the law of God, all you want to do is know more so that you can love God more by obeying the word. And if you hear about the law and you're like, 'I don't want the law, I want nothing to do with God's law," then most likely you still have a heart of stone.

Most likely you still are on your path to hell. And therefore we plead with you. I beg you, end the year right. End the year the way you should by repenting of your sins. Say, Lord Jesus, please forgive me for breaking the commandments. Lord Jesus, give me a brand new heart. Holy Spirit, fill me and God will. And that's the promise of God. Ezekiel 36:26, "And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and you shall be my people and I will be your God."

New heart that desires to do what? Desires to obey God's law, because of God's grace. The law is both the teacher of sin and the rule of gratitude. It is important to see that while Jesus completely rejects the rules of men with equal force, he reaffirms the authority of the law of God. The rules of men are not to be confused with the law of God no matter how much wisdom, how much piety or how much zeal these rules appear to have, it's the law of God, the 10 Commandments which are binding upon God's people. This is because the law of God reveals his will to us. Therefore, as Christians, we define sin in light of God's law, not in light of rules and ceremonies invented by the self-righteous who actually think that they keep these rules, they are righteous. While those who don't keep them as well or not. God has made his will perfectly clear. The rules of men only obscure what God has said.

Jesus calls out to us today. He says, repent of your sins and believe the good news. And the moment you do, his righteousness is counted to you. His recorders counted to you. Righteousness covers you. And Jesus loves repentance, sinners, but he has no patience for the self-righteous. So let's look at this text and let's be convicted that often we are like the Pharisees and let's repent of that self-righteousness and repent of our sin, continue to follow Christ. And honestly, may this be the year that we read the Bible. Everybody, everyone's going to read the Bible this year, and that's how revival is coming into the world. In Jesus' name, amen. Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your word and we thank you that the word of God, you became incarnate. And I pray, Lord Jesus, by the power of your blood and by the power of your Holy Spirit, make us the people that embody your word. Make us the people that love your word so much. Study your word so much that our hearts are absolutely transformed by your word. That our minds are renewed by the transformation that the word gives us. And Lord, make us a missionary force here in the city pointing people to the word of God, pointing people to the cross of Jesus Christ and pointing people to the fact that the church is God's plan to rebuild this world. Lord, we love you and pray this in Christ. Holy name.

Amen.

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Heavenly Father, we thank You that, in this Christmas season, we can meditate upon what it means that God is with us, that Jesus is Emmanuel. That Jesus, You, the great I am, Yahweh of the Hebrew scriptures, You came to be with us. We thank You, Lord Jesus, that You call us to be Your disciples, Your followers. And that doesn't mean that You call us to an easy life, often it means that You do call us to seasons of trials and testing and I pray, Lord, fill our hearts with joy when we encounter the trials, when we encounter the tests. As James tells us, count in all joy, my brothers and, when you meet trials of various kinds, knowing that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect so that you may be complete and perfect, lacking in nothing. Lord, You do test us in order to equip us, in order to empower us, in order to use us and You do it in order to deepen our revelation of You and deepen our faith in You.

And Lord, I pray from the holy scriptures today, encourage us, show us that, when Jesus Christ became man, when God took on flesh, You came into our struggles, You came into our trials in the same way that You came to the disciples walking on the water, You came into the boat and You saved them from the storm, You welcome that same salvation and You offer it to each one of us. I pray, if there's anyone here today who's not sure where they stand before the God of the universe, I pray that they meet Jesus Christ, I pray that You give them the gift of repentance so they do repent of their sins and leave them and I pray that You save them from their sin and give them power over sin to walk in ways of righteousness. Holy Spirit, we love You and we pray that You come and minister to us, encourage us, edify us and continue to work out Your will in our lives. We pray this, in Jesus Christ's name, amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come and the idea is that Jesus has come to inaugurate the Lord's kingdom. He said the kingdom of God is at hand, therefore, repent and believe and then He calls us, as His followers, to establish His kingdom and that starts with praying. And in the Lord's prayer, He teaches us to pray, Lord, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. The title of the sermon today is Take Heart, I am with You. A famous phrase in combat sports is there's levels to this and the idea can be applied to just about any sphere of life but it's made famous in combat sports because, whenever the winner at the end of the match, when he's interviewed, the microphone, post-victory, is put in front of his face or her face and they say, "How did you win?"

And usually, the answer is something like, "There's levels to this," meaning I reached a level that my opponent has not. And there's levels in striking, footwork, defense, strength, speed, conditioning but the level that must be reached if victory is to be tasted on a regular basis is can you remain calm in the face of adversity. As the great philosopher, Mike Tyson, famously put it, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And often, in following Jesus Christ, we get punched in the mouth and it's the punch that you don't see coming that knocks you out. Therefore, we, as followers of Christ, we should be ready, we should be ready for whatever the life throws at us.

Can you calm your nerves when the pressure is the highest? Well, same goes for faith. Can we keep trusting in the Lord, trusting in His sovereignty when it feels like we're in the middle of a storm rowing in place because the winds are so strong and our strength is so minuscule in comparison? And then can we remain sensitive to the Lord? Can we remain tender-hearted when frustration begins to creep in? Lord, this is not what I signed up for. Lord, this is not what I've been asking for. The text before us today seems so similar to the episode where Jesus was in the boat with the disciples, they're caught in the storm and Jesus was sleeping in the stern, His head on a cushion. And in that text, it's similar to our text, there is a storm and it almost seems like the text is redundant but, in this episode, Jesus is not physically in the boat with the disciples.

He isn't in the boat in our lives physically, He's not here physically but His physical presence isn't necessary for His sovereign rule to continue reigning because He is the great I am. That's His name, Jesus says, "I am," unchangeable, unflappable, immutable. He's as much with His disciples overseeing their struggles and suffering, superintending their pain from a distant mountain in our text as if He were in the boat with them. The context is the disciples had returned from a short-term missionary trip where they were preaching the word of the kingdom, they were exorcizing demons, they were healing many in the name of Christ and they were accepted by many, rejected by more. And then they come back and Jesus sees that they're absolutely exhausted and He says, "Let's go to a desolate place so that you can rest."

As they're going to their vacation destination, so to speak, 5,000 men find out that they're coming and then Jesus and the disciples end up teaching for another full day and then the crowds are hungry. The disciples say, "Jesus, send them away so they can get some food," and Jesus tells them, "You feed them." And then Jesus takes the five loaves and the two fish and multiplies them exponentially, feeds the thousands and the disciples spend hours more, they were already exhausted, hours more carrying food back and forth to the groups of 50s and a hundred. So, the disciples are bone tired and now Jesus, in our text, commands them to get into the boat and, unbeknownst to them, He's sending them into another storm, this time by themselves.

They spend hours in the storm rowing in the darkness against the thick of the stormy winds. And the question is how will they respond this time? Will they level up their faith? Will they take the lessons they've learned and apply them in the new test or will they remain hardened and frustrated by the pain that Jesus has allowed? In Mark 6:45 through 56, that's where we find ourselves. Would you please look at the text with me?

Immediately, He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd and, after He had taken leave of them, He went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea and He was alone on the land and He saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them and, about the fourth watch of the night, He came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them but, when they saw Him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out for they all saw Him and were terrified but immediately He spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid."

And He got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves but their hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore and, when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized Him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard He was. And wherever He came, in villages, cities or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored Him that they might touch even the fringe of His garment and, as many as touched, it were made.

Well, this is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, fallible, authoritative word, may He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, when life gets overwhelming, keep praying. Second, when life gets overwhelming, keep rowing. And third, when life gets overwhelming, keep believing. First, when life gets overwhelming, keep praying. Jesus had just ministered to thousands, preaching God's word to them and we see in this text that Jesus just needs to pause. You see this often in the Gospel of Mark where He serves, serves, serves, serves and then, all of a sudden, He's just out. He's like, "Okay, I'm going to a mountain. I need to pray." Jesus as God did not need to pray but Jesus the man certainly did.

And Jesus is the divine Son without beginning of life or end of days who was dwelt in the glory and the blessedness of the Trinity in perfect fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever but here, in our text, we see that Christ is human. He is a man and, as a man, Mark highlights for us Christ need to pray. As God, He doesn't need to pray but, as man, He could not neglect to pray so He sends His disciples off to give them a breather from the crowd, leaves the crowd with a last sermon, a benediction, if you will, and now Jesus needs to go and restore the ammunition, so to speak, the spiritual resources that He needs to continue. He understands that what He's doing is waging spiritual warfare and, in warfare, you need ammunition and where does Jesus get the resources, where do we get the resources, the power to and the strength? We get it from prayer.

And it seems that the disciples didn't want to leave, they saw Jesus perform this incredible miracle and perhaps they wanted to go and pray to the Lord with Jesus but the text tells us in verse 45 that Jesus makes them get into the boat. Immediately, He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. We're not sure why Jesus does this but He abruptly sends them out and He Himself goes to pray. The parallel passage in the Gospel of John gives us a hint as to why, abruptly, He goes to pray to the Father. Perhaps He is wrestling with the same temptation that Satan came to Him with in Matthew 4.

But in John 6, the parallel passage, it says, "When the people saw the sign that He had done, they said, 'This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world,' perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king. Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself." Jesus had just spent all day teaching them what His kingdom is like, that His kingdom is an inside-out kingdom, that He has come to save people from their sins, give them new hearts so they want to submit to God from the inside out, it's an inside out kingdom but that's not what they wanted. They didn't want this talk of repentance, of submission to God, of submission to His word and His law. No, they wanted an outside in kingdom, a king that would force people into submission, force the enemies of Israel into submission.

A change of heart? No, they wanted a change in politics. They didn't care about a new heart, all they cared about was that their stomachs were filled. And who wouldn't want a king who can provide an endless supply of food? Forget Herod, forget Pontius Pilate, forget Caesar, we have someone who can always feed us. Philippians 3:18, Saint Paul writes for many of whom I've often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly and they glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven and, from it, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to himself.

Jesus knew that these crowds were not followers, they were just fans. They were consumers and seekers, not subjects and servants. These are the same people who will turn on Jesus in just a couple of years when He fails to give them what they want. They demand a political king, they demand someone who can meet their physical needs. Spirituality, the kingdom of heaven, repenting, believing the word of God meant nothing to them and that's why, when they were given the choice, "Do you want Barabbas or do you want Jesus? Which one do you want free?" They said, "Give us Barabbas the thief. Jesus, crucify Him." Their sin, which is the root cause of all their suffering, blinded them to see what they needed most which is forgiveness from the Lord and a new heart.

The heavenly Father sent Jesus to conquer humanity's greatest enemy. Our greatest enemy is sin, not the Roman Empire, not big religious establishment. He came as Israel's messianic king but not just Israel's and we have all sinned and we are all under condemnation and we all desperately need the Lord to fill our souls with His presence. Also, becoming an earthly king the first time around must have been a temptation for Jesus. Jesus, in the human form, was tempted as we are. He was tempted with taking the crown without enduring the cross and that's what Satan tempted Jesus with in the desert when Christ was fasting in Matthew 4:8.

Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said to Him, "All these I will give You if You will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan. For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve." Jesus said, "I've come to make people worshipers of God, the Father seek those who worship Him in spirit and in truth." So, Jesus dismisses the crowds, dismisses the disciples and He goes to pray. He goes to spend time with the Heavenly Father, this is how He fought temptation, this is how He gained perspective, this is how He was reminded of his mission. That's verse 46. After He had taken leave of them, He went up on the mountain to pray.

The Lord taught us in the Sermon on the Mount how to pray. In Matthew 6:5, when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward but, when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to the Father who is in secret and Your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."

He says, "Your heavenly Father knows what you need even before you ask. And sometimes the Lord provides even before we ask, He loves to meet our needs." But what needs does Jesus have? He multiplied five loaves and two fishes and feed thousands, His need wasn't for bread, His need was for the presence of God the Father. He wanted proximity to the Father, He wanted a visitation with the Father, that's why He prays. And this is also how Jesus waged spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6 tells us that there is a spiritual war happening all around us, therefore, we are to stand firm in the Lord in the strength of his might. And in the text later it says praying at all times in the spirit, with all prayer and supplication to the end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

And that's what Jesus was doing, He's praying in the spirit and who's He praying for? He's praying for the saints, He's praying for the disciples. He went to the mountain, not just to rest, not just to sleep, but to wage spiritual war in prayer. He was interceding for the disciples as He currently is interceding for us. He is the one mediator, as 1 Timothy 2:5, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all which is the testimony given at the proper time. Satan wants to destroy every single human being, he wants to destroy every single soul and he even wanted to destroy the disciples. Scripture says that he wants to deceive even the elect, if he could.

Jesus, in one time, in Luke 22 says this to Peter, He says, "Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." This is Jesus praying for His disciples, He's praying for their faith so it does not fail as they are in a great storm. This kind of prayer is work, it's labor, it's struggle. You should pray so hard sometimes that you break a sweat and you're even surprised by it. At community group recently, we have community group at my place and, at the end, we break up, the sisters stay in the living room and the brothers go into the kitchen and I always say, "Men in the kitchen, where they belong," and everyone laughs and they belong eating the snacks.

And we were praying and there were just immediate needs and we felt the heaviness of the Holy Spirit and we're praying, we're praying and we're praying, we're done praying. And I look at the brother's foreheads, they're all drenched, I needed a change of shirt, I just sweat a lot. Sometimes, prayer is work, it's labor. We have to pray fervently, fiery prayers, zealous prayers. In Colossians 4:12, St. Paul says, "Epaphras, who was one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God." Do you emulate Christ with your prayer? Do you pray for the saints as He did? Do you pray for the conversion of the lost? Do you pray for revival? Have you ever spent hours in prayer? Have you continued all night in prayer even once?

And if you want more power to get through the storms of life when life gets overwhelming, pray. If you want more power to see the power of God in your life doing the impossible, pray. And if you want to be used mightily by God, pray even as our Lord did. So, Jesus up on the mountain praying for His disciples so, when life gets overwhelming, pray and, second, when life gets overwhelming, keep rowing. This is verse 47. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea and He was alone on the land and He saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them. So, Jesus is up on the mountain, I love this image, perhaps He sees by moonlight, He sees them struggling, He sees them striving but His eye is upon Him. And this is assuring that, even when we're going through trials of life, the Lord, His eye is upon us.

Psalm 32:8, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding which must be curbed with bit and brittle or it will not stay near you. It seems like, whenever Jesus leaves the disciples alone, they're in trouble but Jesus' eye is upon them, He's watching over them. They're experiencing the contrary wind, there's darkness, perhaps the boat is filling up as in the previous story and it says that they were making headway painfully, making tortuous progress. So, the wind is against them, the sails are down, you can't use the sails when the wind is against you. So, the oars are out, they're rowing, they're being tormented in their rowing as one translation says. They were not making any progress, rowing was a struggle.

Verse 48 says, "About the fourth watch of the night, He came to them walking on the sea, He meant to pass by them." So, if they left that dusk, I don't know, 7:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m. and now Jesus comes to them walking in the water in the fourth watch of the night, that's between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m. So, you're talking about they're rowing against the wind six to eight to nine hours and the storm wasn't just a sudden squall as in the previous text, this is a continuous headwind necessitating heavy back-breaking rowing. Have you ever rowed? Is there a rowing machine in your gym? Five minutes on that thing, you're like, "I'm done. I got my workout for the week."

I rowed for a season in college on the crew team and there's a reason why I did it for a season, it is awful, it was so bad. But the workouts were an hour on this erg, an hour, you're going at heavy pace and painful, painful. You're exhausted by the end and famished. And this is why I wonder, Jesus fed the 5,000 and how many baskets were left over? Twelve baskets. Remember that? One basket for each disciple. He's like, "Here you go, gentlemen. Here's some bread and carbs for the storm that I'm sending you into." And even in that, we see the Lord's incredible provision that He provided for them, provided energies for them, food for them as they're rowing. And this whole episode is a tremendous illustration of the life of a disciple, the life of following Jesus Christ. It really is a life of testing and then deliverance.

The Lord allows a test in your life, gets you to the point where you're out of energy and that's when you ask for the Lord's deliverance and that's when He shows up. And I do want to point out that the storm here isn't them deviating from God's plan, the Lord didn't send the storm as punishment for their disobedience, no, they did exactly what Jesus said. They end up in the boat because Jesus made them get in the boat and, at this point, they could have become frustrated. Jesus, why'd You allow this again? We would much rather be on the mountain with You praying and snacking on our bread and fish. But now, we're in this boat rowing nine hours into the wind. And what's the lesson here?

Well, if you're doing the Lord's work, if you're in the middle of the Lord's will and it feels like everyone and everything is against you, you just keep going, you keep rowing. He will supply you with strength even as He supplied the disciples with food. And then, at the darkest hour of the night, in their time, their moment of greatest need, in a totally unexpected way, Jesus comes to the rescue. In both of the storms at sea, it must have seemed to the disciples that Jesus doesn't care and that's what they said the first time, "Jesus, don't you care? We're perishing." And here, it seems like Jesus doesn't care, allowed us to go into the storm and He's up on the mountain but, in both occasions, the Lord strengthened them with deeper revelations of who He is.

There He showed that He is God over creation and here He's going to show that He is the God of the Old Testament, He is Yahweh. And the Lord often allows hardships in our life of all kinds, loneliness, persecution, afflictions of the body, disappointments and frustrations of life and then death itself. But how many of the Lord's choice saints would say, "Even when I'm battered in the storms of life, that's when the Lord was closest, that's when the Lord came to the rescue."? Here, Jesus meets them by walking on the sea, this shows His divinity but it's also reminiscent of Israel. Israel fled Egypt and they walked across the sea, the sea was parted. Jesus is using these themes from the Old Testament as He's creating a new Israel.

And Israel, if you remember, they didn't enter the promised land because of their bickering and complaining against God. God had them, for 40 years, walk around in circles in the wilderness because they didn't trust God, they didn't believe Him and they complained about the circumstances they found themselves in. And this is what's happening here, Jesus is testing the new Israel. Are you going to complain? Are you going to grumble or are you going to learn the lessons that would have you to learn to do all things without grumbling and complaining? It says He meant to pass by them, what does this mean? Well, perhaps it was to test their faith. Just as He was sleeping in the stern of the boat on the previous occasion, if they had sufficient faith, they would be content even without His presence with them. Smallness of faith is a failure to remember God's work in the past and apply that knowledge to present problems.

But I think this phrase to pass by is an allusion to the Old Testament and on two occasions where God revealed himself to Moses and God revealed himself to Elijah, the preeminent prophets of the Old Testament. It says, at both times, when they asked for theophany, asked for the glory of God, asked to see Him, it says He passed by them. Meaning He's like, "I want to give you a deeper revelation but, if I show you all of myself, you're going to die because of your sin." So, even these great, great preeminent prophets, they're only given a glimpse of the Lord and the glimpse of His glory because Christ had not yet come.

For example, in Exodus 33:17, and the Lord said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do for you have found favor in my sight and I know you by name." Moses said, "Please show me your glory," and He said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you My name, the Lord," and here the Lord is Yahweh, I am that I am, "And I will be gracious to whom I'll be gracious and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." But he said, "You cannot see My face for man shall not see me and live." And the Lord said, "Behold, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock and, while My glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and I'll cover you with My hand until I've passed by. And then I will take away My hand and you shall see My back but My face shall not be seen."

So, in this text where God says, "Here's My name, I am, I am Yahweh," that's what Yahweh means, I am that I am, "I'm going to reveal to you My name, I'm going to reveal to you My glory. But only just a glimpse, I have to pass by," because of the sin nature of each one of us even Moses. Same thing happened with Elijah, 1 Kings 19:9. And there he came to a cave and lodged in it and behold the word of the Lord came to him and He said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts for the people of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, thrown down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword and, I, even I only am left and they seek my life to take it away."

And He said, "Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord." And behold, the Lord passed by and the great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was a not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of a low whisper. When God reveals Himself in a whisper to Elijah as He passed by, the Lord passed by in order to reveal Himself on a deeper level but, before Christ had come, they weren't ready for the full revelation, the full effulgence of His glory.

And that's what's happening here and that's what Jesus is doing, He's revealing to His disciples, He's trying to take them to the next level of their faith, show them that He is the God of the Hebrew scriptures, He is Yahweh, He is the great I am. Point three is, when life gets overwhelming, keep believing. Verse 49, and when they saw Him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out for they all saw Him and were terrified. But immediately He spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid." The disciples, all they could see was the wind, the storm, all they could see was the oars, all they could feel was the exhaustion, they weren't expecting the Lord, therefore, they're shocked. They were perhaps crying out in their heart of hearts but they didn't ... How could you even imagine something like this, Jesus walking on the water?

And it says that they were terrified and who can blame them? They're exhausted, cold from the rain and the spray and then, all of a sudden, Jesus is here and He says, "Take heart," be encouraged, "It is I." And it is I in the Greek, it's ego eimi, it's I am. Not just I, it's I am. And He uses the same exact name as God of the Hebrew scriptures uses to define Himself. You see this all throughout the Hebrew scriptures, all throughout the Old Testament but in particular in Exodus 3:13 through 15 when God reveals Himself to Moses at the burning bush and Moses asks God for His name. Verse 13 of Exodus 3, then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they ask me what is his name, what shall I say to them?"

And God said to Moses, "I am who I am." And He said, "Say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent Me to you." God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, "The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is My name forever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations." Every Jew knew from memory these famous words in Exodus 3:14 that Yahweh spoke to Moses in the burning bush I am that I am. And these are the words that Jesus applied to Himself in John chapter 8 and His religious audience, the Pharisees, knew exactly what He was saying that's why, immediately after He says I am, they picked up stones to execute Him for blasphemy because, if He wasn't God, if He wasn't the great I am, then He deserved to be executed.

This is John 8:56. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day, he saw it and was glad. So, the Jews said to him, "You are not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was I am." So, they picked up stones to throw at Him but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. And these texts are all based on Exodus 3:14 in which God reveals His name is ego eimi, I am the one who is. It denotes that He is everlasting presence. There was never a moment that God was not, there will never be a moment that God will not be. Same thing with Christ, there was never a moment that Christ did not exist. Yes, he took on human form, yes, He was born but he preceded that with His existence.

In John 18 where Jesus is being arrested, betrayed by Judas, one of His disciples, in the garden of Gethsemane, there's a little detail that ... It's never included in any of the Jesus movies. It's a detail where Jesus says I am and, all of the soldiers, they fall. I love that because Jesus is saying I could kill all of you, I choose not to. This is a John 18. When Jesus had spoken these words, He went out with His disciples across the brook Kidron where there was a garden which He and His disciples entered. Now, Judas who betrayed Him also knew the place where Jesus often met there with His disciples. So, Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.

Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, "Whom do you seek?" They answered Him, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said to them, "I am He." Judas who betrayed Him was standing with them and Jesus said to them, "I am He," they drew back and fell to the ground. Jesus' self-identification here as I am He connects to the Hebrew scriptures. I am was also part of the 10 Commandments that He gave Moses and, all throughout the Hebrew scriptures, I am was the name of God that Jesus attributes to Himself. Deion Sanders, the formerly glorious, in human terms, football player, he started coaching college football in Colorado and his son was a quarterback and they won the first game and it was apparently a big deal and then that's where they lost their momentum.

Right after, he was being interviewed and they said, "Tell us about your son. Why is he so good?" And he said, Deion Sanders said, "He is him." And as soon as he said that, I'm like, "No, he's not." That only applies to Jesus. Jesus, He is Him because He is the great I am. And they're season tanked after that, God doesn't like blasphemy. So, Jesus is calling Himself the great I am, He's calling Himself that's who He is. In verse 51, He got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves but their hearts were hardened. And how is this the punchline? How is this the end of this text? You see the miraculous Jesus walking on the water saving His disciples and the text ends with a rebuke. Rebuke that's incomprehensible. It's incomprehensible that the disciples do not comprehend who Jesus is.

This is the most astonishing part of the text especially if you realize where we are in the Gospel of Mark and what they have witnessed. They have been privileged to see miracle upon miracle. Simon Peter's mother-in-law gets healed, a leper is cleansed, the paralytic is given the power to walk, a man with a withered hand is restored to wholeness, Jesus casts out a legion of demons, a woman with the flow of blood is healed in a moment and then Jesus raises Jairus' daughter from the dead. He calms the sea, he feeds the 5,000 and they still, it says, they did not get what was happening, their hearts were hardened. And here you got to pause and say where have we seen this phrase of hard hearts?

We saw that phrase in the Old Testament with Pharaoh, Pharaoh hardened his heart. We saw that phrase with the people of Israel. When things would get difficult, they hardened their hearts against the Lord. Even to the point where they said, "Lord, we want to go back to Egypt. We'd rather be in chains eating meat than here out in freedom eating manna." Meaning that, the times of suffering, that's when our faith is tested, will we remain tender-hearted recognizing that God has sovereignly orchestrated this trial in our life, it's going to test us, it's going to produce steadfastness that's going to lead to completion and perfection or are we going to say I'm not counting this as joy, this is not joy to me.

And here are the disciples, they saw the miracle of the loaves and the fish but their hearts were hardened even back then. Perhaps it's because they were exhausted, they wanted rest, Jesus promised them rest and then, all of a sudden, there's more ministry and it's like they're saying, "It's not worth the sacrifice, Lord." And here I just want to pause and say that, in this text, there is a warning for us, there's a warning for those who profess to be disciples of Jesus Christ and it's a warning that we ought not to pass over. It is possible to be a true believer in Jesus Christ, a disciple in reality, not just in profession, and still experience a hard heart for a season. Why do they experience the hard heart? Perhaps it was the frustration, perhaps the suffering, we're not told, but it's probably because they forgot what Jesus called them to, a life of faith.

He said, "Repent and believe." And those two commandments, we never grow past them. On a daily basis, we need to repent and believe. Maybe they were so focused on their obedience, so focused on their works for the Lord, so focused on their sacrifice for the Lord that they forgot to trust in the Lord, that they forgot that the one who commands them to do this is also the one who loves them so, if He commands them, it's always for their good. And what do we need in moments of hardheartedness? Well, we need a fresh encounter with Jesus Christ. We need Jesus to bring us back to tenderness of heart, receptivity to His word, we need further revelation. That's what He gives them, I am, this is who I am. The disciples had every privilege imaginable, they saw the son of God himself and still their hearts were hardened.

So, be careful, watch your own heart, see that your own heart does not get hardened toward the Lord, that's what the enemy wants. Along with the rebuke, we see a word of rescue, we see the marvelous grace of Jesus Christ in this story. He saw their hardheartedness and He meant to pass by and He should have passed by. They did not deserve Him getting in the boat and calming the storm, they did not deserve that at all. They were bickering, they were grumbling, they were hardened toward Him and still the Lord gets in the boat. They believed in Him but not enough to keep trusting Him and He got into the boat with them, it shows His incredible grace toward us. Sometimes we need a word of rebuke from the Lord and sometimes we need more grace to melt our hearts and grace is the great thawing agent of our hard cold hearts.

Is a sacrifice worth it, friends? Is the sacrifice of following Jesus Christ worth it? For the disciples, they had their questions, they had their doubts. Lord, is it worth it? It's too painful, it seems, to follow You. Yes, You seem to be God, yes, You teach but it seems like taking up my cross daily is a lot of work. And so, where do we get the power to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus Christ? We get it by looking to the cross on a daily basis. Jesus Christ endured the most excruciating physical and spiritual torment of any human being that has ever lived as He bore the penalty for our sins, He bore the wrath of God for us. By taking our sins upon Himself, He even became our sin and said He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

He experienced the full gamut of suffering on the cross and why was he willing to do it? Hebrews tells us, for the joy that was set before Him. He knew that the joy was coming, the joy of saving, the joy of sanctifying, the joy of redeeming Christians, saints, His church. And so, we look to the cross and we see Him enduring these trials, enduring that suffering for us and you say, "Jesus, was that worth it?" And He said, "Yes, it was worth it. That sacrifice was worth it," and whatever sacrifice He calls us to is definitely worth it. So, now, with softened hearts, Jesus is in the boat and the disciples are back to serving people. Did they get the rest that they were promised? They got a deeper rest, they got the rest of the presence of Jesus Christ. It's a rest that's promised to us when we trust in Him.

In Mark 6:53, when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized Him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard He was. And wherever He came, in villages, cities or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored Him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment and, as many as touched it, were made well. I don't know where you are in your faith journey but, if you're not sure where you stand before God today, we had a bomb threat, I found out. Whenever I see people moving around briskly around the room and then talking to each other, I'm like, "Oh, what's going on?"

The Brookline Police here with a big German shepherd and there's a bomb threat in synagogues nationwide and I was thinking, "You know what? Any moment, it could be our moment. Any moment." And by the way, this is a tremendous way to go because we go as a church together to heaven, no one's left behind and ... You got to be ready, you got to be ready and the way that you know that you are ready to meet your maker, to meet God is if you trust in Jesus Christ. And like these people, they believed, You have the power to heal me, I just need to reach out and touch.

Just reach out with faith in prayer to Jesus Christ and say, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me as a sinner. And Lord, I repent of my sin. Lord, it breaks my heart that I broke Your commandment and my commandment breaking broke your Son and, Jesus, you were willing to do that for me. So, of course, if You forgive me, when You forgive me, I'm going to follow You the rest of my days." And then the Lord saves you and all your sins are forgiven and you're indwelled with the power of the Holy Spirit and the Lord will encourage you no matter the tests that He throws at us.

I'll close at Hebrews 4:1-11 which promises this rest that is beyond works, beyond self-righteousness, beyond works, righteousness, a rest that God offers each one of us. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest as He has said, as I swore My wrath, they shall not enter My rest. Although His works were finished from the foundation of the world for He has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way and God rested on the seventh day from all His works and, again, in this passage He said, "They shall not enter My rest."

Since, therefore, it remains for some to enter it and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience. Again, He appoints a certain day, today, saying, through David so long afterward in the words already quoted, today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So, then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from His works as God did from His. Let us, therefore, strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. When life gets overwhelming, keep praying, keep rowing, keep believing and keep striving to enter that rest. Let us pray.

Lord God, we thank You for the rest that You offer us in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Jesus, we thank You that You did all of the heavy lifting, You did all of the work by living a perfect life on our behalf. And instead of us, You took our penalty for our law-breaking upon Yourself. And Lord Jesus, we thank You that You offer us rest, You offer us rest for our souls and, Lord, You offer us the presence of God. And Jesus, in the same way that You went and You sought the Father's face, Lord, we seek the Father's face. And Lord, we thank You that You provided a way even for Moses and even for Elijah to see the face of God and they saw the face of God in your face in the mountain of transfiguration, You revealed your glory to them.

And why is that text there? It's to show us, that apart from Jesus Christ, we can't experience the presence of God because of our sin. It's Jesus, the new Moses, the new Elijah, it's Jesus who came to save us from our sin, to save us from the very presence of it, from the penalty of it, from the power of it and, Jesus, You did that in order to offer us the presence of God. And Lord, I pray that You continue to empower us as a church to go out and proclaim the gospel. And we do pray for the lost all around us, we pray for those who are still in darkness, for those who still have not seen the light and I pray, Lord, use us powerfully to get that message across. Prepare hearts and give us opportunities to preach Your word, to proclaim Your gospel and we pray this, in Jesus' name, amen.

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

O Holy God, we thank you that you are our heavenly Father. Jesus, we thank you for teaching us to pray to God as our Heavenly Father to remind us every time we pray that you are God who loves to provide. We thank you Lord that you know our needs even before we bring them to you, and therefore we want to focus on thanking you for meeting our needs. Thank you for meeting our greatest need, and that was the sacrifice of your son Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus, we thank you that your body was broken and your blood was shed in order to provide healing for our souls and cleansing of our consciences. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you save us and along with saving us, you send us the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and on a daily basis, you sustain us and above all else, grace upon grace, you satisfy us. What a great God that you are.

Lord, we thank you that you offer your son Jesus Christ, the mighty Word of God, and you offer us the Holy Scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, to satiate our famish souls. Lord, we confess that we are often malnourished in our souls and we seek out satiety and things that never satisfy. We repent of that Lord, of our idolatry and our lack of trust in you. Lord, we come to you today relying wholly on you, relying wholly on your provision. We are completely dependent upon you. And today satisfy us from the Holy Scriptures and satisfy us with your holy presence. Holy Spirit, we welcome you into this place. Lord, if there's anyone in this place who doesn't even know what it means to be satisfied by you, I pray today, reveal that. I pray wet the appetites of their souls, the hunger of their soul. Lord, we ask for you to deepen it and take the taste buds anywhere that we have sought satiety apart from you and recalibrate them Lord, so that we hunger and thirst for you.

And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you, the bread of life was broken in order for us to be satisfied. Lord, if there's anyone who's not yet a believer, not yet a child of God, I pray, give them the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, the gift of your grace, and save them, welcome them into your flock, welcome them into your family. And Lord, as we look at the mission that you have given to us to go and make disciples of all nations, we understand our inadequacy. We cannot do this. So we take our inadequacy, we take our weakness, and we give it to you. And we ask, Lord, multiply our efforts as you multiplied the five loaves and the two fish and you fed thousands. I pray that you feed thousands through the efforts of this church, through the efforts of the members of this church, through our work.

And above all else, Lord, glorify your name, magnify your name, the name that is above all names, the name that we worship, the name of Jesus Christ. Lord, bless our time in the Holy Scriptures today. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark. We've entitled the series Kingdom Come. And the idea is that Jesus has come to establish the kingdom, inaugurate the kingdom. He says, "I am the king. I have brought the kingdom," but Jesus also teaches us to pray, our Father who art in heaven, howled be thy name. Thy kingdom come. The kingdom has come, but he says to pray for more of the kingdom to come into our lives. And the title of the sermon today is The King Satisfies. Have you ever noticed that God's Commandments are often impossible to fulfill, like the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself? Lord Jesus, have you met my neighbors? Or love your enemies? How am I to love my enemies? Or go and sin no more, or love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Many heretical theologians have built upon on this presupposition that if God commands something, we have the natural ability to fulfill that commandment. For example, Erasmus in the 16th century, he said, "If it is not in the power of every man to keep what is commanded, all the exhortations of scripture are of necessity useless." And Martin Luther responds to this in the bondage of the will. He says, "When you are finished with all your commands and exhortations, I'll write Romans 3:20 over the top of it. Through the law comes knowledge of sin. The commands are not given inappropriately or pointlessly, but in order that through them, the proud blind man may learn the plague of his impotence should he try to do as he is commanded." Yes, God does often command us to do that which is absolutely impossible in our own strength. And he does that to stop us dead in our tracks, to get us to fall to our knees and say, "Lord, send us a building." Are we going to rapper mic? Rapper mic it is.

The sermon is on personal inadequacy. I don't know if you've noticed. We are inadequate, :ord, send us grace. That's the point. He commands that which is impossible apart from Him. Lord, you're commanding the impossible. But with you, all things are possible, even keeping all your commands and your commandments. Matthew 5:48, "You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Will we attain perfection in this life? No, of course not. Should we strive to attain perfection? Yes, by His grace and for His glory. Today we are on Mark 6:30-44. Would you look at the text with me? "The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.' For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, 'This is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.' But he answered them, 'You give them something to eat.' And they said to him, 'Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?' And he said to them, 'How many loaves do you have? Go and see.' And when they had found out, they said, 'Five and two fish.' Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people.

And he divided the two fish among them all and they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish, and those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men." This is the reading of God's holy, inert, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, Serve the King, then Rest in Him. Second, The Compassionate King Shepherds by Teaching, and Seek First the Kingdom of God and be Satisfied. First, Serve the King, then Rest in Him. Verse 30, "The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught." Jesus is their rabbi. He said, "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men." And then he sends them out to the villages and towns of Israel to go and proclaim the gospel. The king has come, therefore repent of sin and turn to him and follow the king.

And along with preaching the message, he gave them authority over the demons so they exercised them and they healed many by anointing them with oil. This is the only text in the Gospel of Mark where the disciples are called apostles and apostle is from the Greek word apostloy, which means to be sent out, sent out as a representative. So they didn't just preach their own message, they preached his message and they embodied his presence along with his authority. Jesus has called them to do incredible work, spiritual work. And did everyone believe? Of course not. And there were probably many places where people flat out rejected them, rejected the gospel, however many did hear and many were intrigued and they wanted to hear more about Jesus and they wanted to hear from Jesus himself. Jesus' name had become renowned, not the name of the disciples. They were doing the work of Christ in the name of Christ.

So they're back and Jesus receives their report and he also recognizes that they are exhausted, they're bone tired, both physically and spiritually and Jesus, who is God in human form, he knew all too well about the importance of rest. He often took time away from his own busy ministry seasons to go and spend time in the Lord and the presence of God the Father. And he calls the disciples to do the same in verse 31. And he said to them, "'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.' For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat." They served, and then now Jesus wants them to be replenished in their stores. I once had a coach who said, "Athletes do not diet and exercise, athletes train and they eat." And I like that principle as it applies to the spiritual walk. The apostle Paul compares our spiritual walk, he said to boxing, fight the good fight, to running as endurance sport.

And then Jesus also says that we are soldiers. The apostle Paul says we're soldiers of the king. So we are called to strenuous service and then we're called to serious rest and replenishment. If you are going to grow as a believer, you can't just take and take and take and consume. You have to take what you have consumed, the energy, and then use that in order to serve the Lord. If we're going to grow as believers in faith and effectiveness for the kingdom, we have to take both seriously, exhausting service and invigorating rest. Some of you need to take the service part more seriously. Do you ever get to the point where you are spiritually exhausted? Do you do things for the Lord that drain your energy stores spiritually, emotionally, physically? You should, and some of you should take that rest part seriously. You are not a machine, though in Boston, many of us think we are. We're not. You're not a machine. You are not more spiritual than the disciples here. You do need rest and you need recovery time.

It's like when you're driving, if you have a gas powered vehicle, and the low gas light comes on, how quickly do you find a gas station to refuel? I like to take my chances. I drive by faith, not by sight. I've learned about 50 miles you get, about, but you're not a car and you're not a truck, you're a human being and you might not run out of gas, but you might hit a wall, you might crash and get to the point of burnout. And this is what Jesus, the gracious king sees. He wants his servants healthy and effective, thus he calls them to service and to commensurate rest. And we have to take both seriously. Mark 6:32, "And they went away in the boat to a desolate place." They've been overwhelmed by the crowds that Jesus has attracted, so he takes them on a private retreat to a desolate place, a desert location. Jesus wants them to care for their own souls, to care for themselves and out of the fullness with which he fills them, there's a care for others.

If we are to love our neighbor as our ourself, we need to love ourselves, care for ourselves, if we are to love our neighbor well. But it's not just the vacation, it's time away with the Lord. So if we are to find true rest, it's not just a time of leisure, it's a time of resting in the Lord in order to restore their spiritual strength. There's incredible wisdom here. Our Lord knows that if we are to serve at our best, we need to take care of ourselves as well. Why the desolate place? It almost seems like a contradiction in terms. Why would you take a vacation in a desert? Well, it's not just a vacation in a desert, it's time with the Lord and even in the wilderness, even in a desolate location, if we are alone with the Lord, have solitude with the Lord, our stores of energy can be restored. And also in the Old Testament, we read that God provides rest for His people in the wilderness.

We see this in Isaiah and we see this in Jeremiah. For example, Isaiah 63:14, "Like livestock that go down into the valley, the spirit of the Lord gave them rest. So you led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name." Or Jeremiah 31:2, "Thus says the Lord, 'The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, when Israel sought for rest.'" So they're on their way. And then Mark 6:33 it says, "Now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them." There are seasons in life when you are intentional about rest, you make plans to rest and you're on your way to rest and then ministry finds you. There are seasons in life where you can't get away from the ministry that God has called you to. For example, if you have a small child, you have the rhythm of rest in place and then you have a baby.

And then you can't tell the baby, "Today's my Sabbath. Okay? Feed yourself." You can't do that. That's not how that works. And in those seasons, this is the lesson that the Lord is writing indelibly on their hearts. In those seasons where ministry continues to follow you, you have to learn to rest in Christ even in the midst of unplanned ministry. Remember, Jesus promises us rest, but it's rest under a yoke. There are seasons when rest needs to be prolonged and your strength is waning and you need to rely on the supernatural energy of the Holy Spirit. I look at Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, "Come to me, all who labor in our heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

We don't know how long Jesus and his disciples spent in the hill country near Nazareth, but as soon as they start coming back into the area, the crowds all of a sudden find them. They run ahead of them. And this is important for our lesson where we find ourselves in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is going to entrust his disciples with more and more and more ministry, and they must learn to rely on God's power to do the work even when energy stores are long depleted. Point two is The Compassionate King Shepherds by Teaching. Verse 34, "When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things." Jesus had compassion on the crowds. The reaction of what the disciples had for the crowds is not mentioned.

Most likely they were not happy to see the crowds. They probably groaned in despair. Jesus, you promised us a respite, you promised us a retreat. And now, there's more work. And sometimes ministry is like that. Ministry finds you even when you try to take a break from ministry. I remember a few years ago, my wife Tanya and I, we took a vacation to not a desolate place, a resort, much better. And in the evening, there was a couple that sat next to us in the restaurant and all of a sudden we got to talk. And they're from Great Britain. I remember the gentleman was a mailman. He was a postman from Great Britain. And we got into the conversation like what do you do? And I was like, "Oh no, not that conversation." And then he's like, "What do you do?" I was like, "Oh, I'm a pastor."

And he's like, "Tell me more. Tell me more about this Jesus. I am intrigued. I want to hear the whole gospel right now." And he had all these questions and I remember I was irritated, and I remember because my wife called me out on it. She's like, "That's your job." I was like, "Not for this week it's not." But sometimes we don't get a vacation from being Christians. We don't get a vacation from Jesus and from the ministry he has for us. And we see Jesus, he has compassion on the crowd, tender mercy, sympathetic emotion. He sees the crowd as shepherdless sheep, defenseless, lost, unable to spiritually feed themselves. Around Christmas time, what do we celebrate? We celebrate the incredible miracle that God would so humble Himself to take on human flesh. And He does that in order to represent us on the cross, but He also does that in order to sympathize with us.

Hebrews 4:14. "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence drawn near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." The sheep without a shepherd, that's a proverbial metaphor in the Old Testament for people who are lacking spiritual leadership. For example, in Numbers 27, Moses knows that he's going to die soon and he prays to God, "God send these people a shepherd." And God sends them a military figure in Joshua, Numbers 27:15, "Moses spoke to the Lord saying, 'Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.'

So the Lord said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son of Nun, the man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him. Make him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation and you shall commission him in their sight. You shall invest him with some of your authority that all of the congregation of the people of Israel may obey.'" So God appoints Joshua and Joshua, in the Septuagint, in the Greek is “Ἰησοῦς”, and that's Jesus' name. Jesus. Jesus is the second Joshua with a greater Joshua who's come as a shepherd to gather the sheep and to empower them and send them out. Ezekiel 34, we get the same metaphor, "And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them, he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them, I am the Lord. I have spoken."

The shepherd of the sheep is technical language for Israel's Great King, the Great Messiah, and that's who Jesus is. And Jesus displays his compassion by doing what? Well, what he came to do. He said, this is for the purpose that I have come. The purpose for which I have come is to teach, is to teach these people God's Word. The sheep need a shepherd that guides them to feed on God's Word. He taught them at great length. He teaches them who God is. He teaches them their need for salvation, their need for truth. And once they come to know the truth, the truth will set you free and they'll be set captive from the nets of the evil one. John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

We all long for the good life, the abundant life, and the abundant life is found in following Jesus Christ. He is the good shepherd. How do we know he's the good shepherd? How's he proven that he's the good shepherd? Well, he's given his life. He laid down his life for the sheep. What kind of shepherd would do that? Well, only the best shepherd, the good shepherd. So he teaches them and he awakens in them a spiritual hunger. Therefore, they listen for hours on end. They've never heard sermons like this. They've never heard someone teach the Word of God with such authority. And what's he doing? He's feeding their souls. And this is what Jesus said in John 6:35, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." And this is how we are to think about our spiritual walk, that we have appetites, we have a hunger, and we are to feed that hunger.

And the more we feed that hunger on God's Word, on God's glory, on God's person, the more we are satisfied in Him. And this text follows last week's text in which King Herod was leading a debaucherous lifestyle. And in that text, there was a feast and there was much food and there was much wine and there was much sin. And what that showed us is the king who was supposed to be the shepherd of Israel, he was supposed to be that military figure teaching people the ways of God, he himself was feeding on the junk food of the world. And Jesus here comes to satisfy his people. That brings us to point three, Seek First the Kingdom of God and be Satisfied. Verse 35, "And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, 'This is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.'"

And what they're saying is, Jesus, the service is too long. The sermons, way too long, Jesus. Wrap it up. It's time. Jesus didn't have a timer like I do. Jesus, it's time. They see that Jesus is the compassionate teacher and they're like, "Okay, let's be compassionate. Jesus, send them home to eat. Send them away. They're hungry, Jesus." And obviously, the disciples themselves are starving. The beginning of the text says that they themselves didn't have time to eat. They're hungry or hangry, and they're saying, "Jesus, it's time to end this." And Jesus was ministering and he was ministering for hours on end. Most likely this was springtime in Palestine when the sun would set around 6:00 PM. And so we're guessing around 4:30, the people are getting hungry and the satisfaction of people's spiritual hunger still leaves them physically hungry. So verse 37, Jesus answers them, the disciples, "'You give them something to eat.' And they said to him, 'Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them?'" And you can hear the irritation in their voice.

They're like, "Jesus, this is absurd. 200 denari and one laborer's wages for one day was one denarii. So this is working 200 workdays. Are we really going to do that, Jesus?" And what they're showing is they're exhausted and they're overwhelmed with all the needs. They're overwhelmed with the immensity of the task before them. They feel inadequate and they're like, "Jesus, this is absurd. How in the world are we supposed to feed all of these people?" 2 Corinthians 2:16 says, "Who is sufficient for these things?" And that's kind of what they're saying. "Jesus, what are you talking about? We've run the numbers, we've calculated, and we don't have the money." And the calculations are correct except they have omitted the most important factor in the calculation. The incalculable factor, the Christ factor, and what Jesus is calling them to on the surface seems unreasonable.

Unreasonable in their own natural limitations and resources. Verse 38, "And he said to them, 'How many loaves do you have? Go and see.' And when they had found out, they said, 'Five and two fish.'" Jesus, what are we doing here? How many loaves? Not enough. Can we go home? That's kind of their sentiment. But they do. They obey the Lord even though they understand that they don't understand. And the disciples are concentrating on what they lack. And Jesus draws their attention to what they have. How many loaves? How many fish do we have? And the Lord uses what we have to accomplish what we cannot because he always adds grace. And here you're going to pause and say, "Why did Jesus use the five loaves and the two fish?" Scripture says that Jesus could have turned the stones into loaves. He could have said, "Okay, 5,000 men, everyone grab a stone. Okay, in Jesus' name, everyone's got a loaf."

He doesn't do that. He could have had manna come down from heaven as we saw he did with Israel. He could have brought down angels, which would've been a lot more impressive. Angels showing up out of nowhere and feeding everybody. He could have healed all the people of their hunger, "In Jesus' name. No one's hungry." Boom. He doesn't do any of that. And the method of the miracle is significant. They don't have what the people need, he does, and they can't give the people what they need, but Jesus can. And Jesus chooses to use the disciples in the miracle. The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle, other than the resurrection, that's reported in all four gospels. And it is to teach us that in life when we are overmatched, when the mission in front of us is so much bigger than the resources that we do have, we have the Lord.

We always have the Lord. Indeed, the Lord does call us to do more than we're capable of by ourselves. He asks too much, sometimes it feels like that, and we have too little. But this is how the faith works. Augustine said the following, "Lord, command what you will." He's saying, "Lord, tell me to do whatever you want to tell me to do, but give me what you command. Command me whatever you will, but give me what you command." And then again, he's not asking us to do anything by ourselves, by our own devices and our own strength. He's telling us what He will do with the little that we have if we continue trusting in Him. Bread and fish were staples of most Galileans. God uses this example over and over and over, the fish and the loaves. Why five loaves? Some commentaries say that they may be related to the law of Moses, the Pentateuch.

In Deuteronomy 8:3 for example, it says, "He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." God does sustain us through His physical gifts. But even those gifts are always a sign, they always point to something greater, is that we need satiety of our souls from the Word of God. So Mark 6:39, "He commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass." As I was meditating on this text, someone asked me, "How about the water?" We got the bread, we got the carbs, we got the fish, probably dried fish, salty fish. It makes you thirsty. You got the protein. Most likely there was a water source, that's why the little detail of the green grass, they're in a desolate place, but there is green grass, most likely naturally irrigated perhaps by springs nearby.

And God's people always find rest in God's presence, even in a desolate place. The Psalm 23 is a great example that the Lord causes His people, His weary people to recline in green pastures. So verse 40, "They sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties." So he has the disciples who kind of don't really believe that Jesus is going to do what he's going to do. He has the disciples direct these people to sit down in groups of 50, groups of a hundred. And perhaps the people who are asking, "Why are we sitting? What's about to happen?" And the disciples have to believe that something is going to happen if Jesus told them to do it. They are to obey. Why the groups of 50 and a hundred? Well, because God is a God of order, one who at the dawn of time brought order out of chaos and who loves order even in worship. One Corinthians 14:40, "But all things should be done decently and in order."

So the disciples here, they are risking looking foolish. "Jesus, you told us to do this. We guess you're going to do something." The risking embarrassment but no risk, no faith. And verse 41, "And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people, and he divided the two fish among them all." This is a good reminder that we are to bless the Lord as we bless meals, pray over meals. You should pray over meals. How about out in public, in restaurants? Should we pray over meals? Yes. I don't close my eyes though. It's always awkward because when the waiter all of a sudden is just there and they're like, "What are you doing?" And I pray like Jesus prayed. How did Jesus pray? He didn't close his eyes. He looked up to heaven. He's like, "Lord, bless you for this delicious meal that I'm about to make." So that's how I pray over meals in public, really loud, in Jesus' name, hallelujah, looking up to heaven. I think it's more emphatic.

And then if it's a really good meal, you just continue blessing the Lord the whole time and then conclude with extra blessing. So Jesus blesses the meal. And this is important because without the Lord's blessing, everything we do is a waste of time. Actually in John 15, the Lord says, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." Psalm 1:27, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." And to have God's blessing is to expect a result that is much more than we could do on our own. It's much more than just our talents, our labor. It's in proportion to God's abundance. We must expect God to work beyond all that we can achieve or conceive even. Without the Lord's blessings, there's only five loaves and two fish, woefully inadequate. With his blessing, with his blessing that multiplies, it's always more than enough.

And he divides the loaves, he divides the fish. And here the Word is that he broke it. He broke the loaves and he divided the fish. And in scripture, this is usually the pattern. When we ask for the Lord's blessing, just know that the greatest blessings come with brokenness, blessing and brokenness, they go together. You won't find God's blessing apart from God's breaking. If you want great anointing upon your life, just know that anointing with oil always starts with breaking. Olives need to be broken for olive oil to anoint. If you want the choices of wine, grapes have to be broken. There's no anointing without crushing. And we see this all throughout scripture. Abraham and Sarah were crushed years, crushed past their ability to produce a child before the child of the promise finally comes. Or Jacob had to be crippled in his hip before he prevailed with God, or Moses before God used him so powerfully, Moses failed in his own strength, spending 40 years tending sheep.

Vance Havner says, "God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter weeping bitterly who returns to greater power than ever." Most of us aren't too weak to serve the Lord, we are too strong or we think we're too strong. Lord doesn't want our adequacy. He wants our inadequacy so that He supplies the adequacy and He gets all the glory. The impression seems to be that every time the disciples came back to the Lord for more, there was more to give. And this is a perfect picture of the manner in which the Lord calls us to serve Him. The Lord could have even now just made a mountain of bread and a mountain of fish and say, "Everybody come feed yourselves."

No, he chooses the disciples to take the bread. He's breaking it. As he's breaking it, it's multiplying in his hands. He deposits into the empty hands of his disciples who then carry it to group after group. They run out, they come back to the Lord, he's got more. They take it to the people. They're satisfied, they run out, they come back for more. And every time the disciples came back to Jesus, there was more, but not until then. And this is an incredible lesson. How many trips did they take back and forth? This must have taken hours, dozens and dozens of trips. Jesus blesses, he breaks, he gives, they give. They're empty. They come back for more. And this shows us that our need for the Lord, our reliance, our dependence on Him, it's never done. We're never in a position where we graduate from needing the Lord, graduate from dependence on the Lord.

And this is offensive in a sense, to our pride, to our self-sufficiency. You think that you walk with the Lord for a decade or a couple of decades. You think that you've graduated. You think you've studied the word and self-sufficient, no. We never get to a place in life where we do not need to rely on the Lord. We must always be depending on Him every day. We are to take what little we have to Him and say, "Lord, bless it. Lord, break it. Lord, multiply it and Lord use me." And then when we come back to Him at the end of the day for a fresh supply of grace. He breaks the loaves and he gives it to the disciples to set before the people. Despite their perhaps exhaustion, their thickheadedness, their disparaging sarcasm, the Lord chooses to use the disciples and chooses to teach them about His work.

And God delights to include us in His work. 2 Corinthians 3:5, "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God." Or 2 Corinthians 4:7, "But we have this treasure and jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." In 2 Corinthians 5:20, "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made him to be sin who you know sin so that we might become the righteousness of God." Christ will give us His adequacy to meet the needs of people if we yield our inadequacy to Him. And when the Lord calls you to follow Him, He calls you to do something that's impossible, you start where you are with what you've got.

If you're single or if you're married or raising children or you think about managing money or getting along with people at work or mortifying sin, or you look at the world and they're surmounting fears and you say, "Lord, this is impossible. Lord, help me." And what the Lord says is do the impossible, but do it with me because with God there's nothing that is impossible. And whom does God use here? Jesus uses tired, emotionally drained disciples who lack resources, who are bone tired. And the Lord satisfies them. Mark 6:42, "And they all ate and were satisfied." And the word satisfied shows it's not just a snack, something more substantial happened here. These people feasted, there was more than enough to go around for everybody. And this miracle is a miracle of one of the frequent biblical images of the bliss of the age to come, is a banquet, that in the new heavens and new earth, we will enjoy a banquet with the Lord and it's going to be a sumptuous banquet.

Isaiah 25:6 says, "On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, of feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever and the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for Him that He might save us. This is the Lord, we have waited for Him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. God here guarantees to supply our needs, but not necessarily all our desires. It was a very simple meal of bread and fish. And the Lord often meets our needs, and His grace meets our needs, but not necessarily our greeds.

In verse 43, "They took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish and those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men." 12 baskets. Why 12? One for each of the disciples. You guys were hungry, you couldn't find time to eat. You guys doubted, you were a little irritated, a little hangry. The Lord's like, "Here's a basket, here's your carbs and protein for the next leg of the journey." And it shows us that the Lord loves to provide more than enough. This is the way I like to order food. I ask my wife how many pizzas and whatever number she says, I multiply by two. Two pizzas? Okay, we'll take four. And for some reason, crust is tremendous, especially the next day.

First day you're like, "I'm not even crust. I'm watching my carbs." Second day like, "Oh, really good." And the Lord here provides more than enough. And it shows us that God wants to be good stewards of the resources that He provides us with. I teach my girls, it's against my religion to throw any food away. If they're like, "I'm full, I can't do any more." I was like, "The Lord has already provided your next meal. You're having just the broccoli." The Lord here teaches us many a lesson. 5,000 men, and it's the word Andres men. So most likely apart from women and children. With women and children, you're talking about thousands of people that the Lord has fed. And what was the point of this whole lesson? He taught, he taught, he taught all day. What did he teach about? He taught about salvation. He taught about our greatest need. Our greatest need is to repent of our sin because we've transgressed the commandments of the Lord.

And then he does this miracle to do what? To attest to everything that he has just taught. He has taught, "I have come to pay for your sins. I have come, my body to be broken, my blood to be shed for your sins to be forgiven, for remission of your sins, as a substitutionary atone, I am the one. I'm the bread of life." And Hebrews 2, 3, and 4 says, "How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will." He said the whole point of these miracles was to attest to the fact that this message about our salvation is truth.

Salvation's greater than the signs and the signs were supposed to point to the salvation. But most of the people here who ate and were satisfied, most of them missed the point. They missed the whole point of the miracle and the parallel passage of John 6, these people then after Jesus fed them, Jesus and the disciples leave, and then the people find Jesus again. And Jesus tells them this. Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." Jesus calls out their seeker mindset, their consumeristic mindset. They don't want salvation of their sins. They don't want condemnation removed from them. They don't want to be saved from the condemnation that they deserve for their sins. They just want more reprieve from hunger. And John 6:30, "And they asked him, 'Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you, what work do you perform?'"

Jesus said, you fed them. They show up again. They're like, "We're here for some more." And then Jesus is like, "You're not here for salvation. You're not even here for the sign. You're here for food." And they're like, "What sign will you do for us?" Showing they missed the point completely. And the point was that we all need salvation. 1 Corinthians 1:22, "for Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." People gawked to the miracles, but they weren't convicted of their sin. They didn't come to Jesus for salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Last Supper, he uses the same exact phrases, taking, thanking, breaking, giving. Same exact four words in the same exact order.

Luke 22:19, "And he took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, 'This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'" Jesus is the Messiah who provides for God's people, who will host God's great banquet. And if you today are not sure where you stand before God, if you're not sure that you are saved, that your sins are forgiven, we appeal to you, look to the cross of Jesus Christ. That's the God man, Jesus Christ, God who took on flesh, came lived the perfect life that we are supposed to live, but we did not, refuse to. He didn't break one commandment, loved God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, love neighbor as himself.

And then he offers himself as a sacrifice, as a substitutionary atonement on our behalf. So that whosoever believes in him, looks to the cross, asks for forgiveness, repent of sin, and turns from it and turns to him, he will heal. The world tells us that God helps those who help themselves. Well, no, God rescues men and women dead in their trespasses, who cannot help themselves, who will not help themselves, dead sinners. And when we turn to Him, He offers healing, salvation, satisfaction, and sustenance, and He does that with Himself. So dear sheep today, come to the good Shepherd. Hear His voice. He laid His life down for you, to save you, to satisfy you, to sanctify you, and to empower you for service to the King. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the sumptuous meal from the holy scriptures. We thank you for the reminder that only in you can we find true satisfaction for our souls.

And every time, Lord, we have a meal, let us be mindful of the fact that you have provided it and let it be a sign to the greatest provision that you have given, is the provision of salvation, that anyone that would cry out to you and ask for forgiveness, you forgive. And anyone who comes to you and says, "Jesus, I need a shepherd." You are the good shepherd. And Jesus, thank you for laying down your life for each one of us sheep who in many ways are foolish. I pray that you continue to guide us to green pastures and still waters, recognizing that it's your presence that we need above all. Holy Spirit, I pray right now, bless our time of worship. We worship not to get something from you. We worship you because you deserve to be worshiped. And as we do, Lord satisfy us and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Oh Holy God, Heavenly Father, we come to you in reverence and trepidation at your greatness, your mightiness. You are a glorious God. And Lord, we thank you so much that you did not leave us in our sin, in our darkness, but you sent your son Jesus Christ, the light of the world, the truth, the way, the life. And Jesus, we thank you for providing a way for our salvation, for our forgiveness of sin, for our transfer from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of your beloved son. And Lord Jesus, we thank you for proclaiming the truth as boldly as you did, and that boldness took you to a cross.

And we thank you for the example of your choice servants who proclaim the truth, no matter the consequences, many of whom were martyred for the faith. And we thank you that their blood was the seed of the church. We thank you for all those that you sent while we were still in darkness to proclaim the gospel to us boldly. And we thank you, Lord, that you give us grace and that you empower us by the power of the Holy Spirit to go and proclaim the gospel to anyone who would hear.

And I pray, Lord, that you grow our fearlessness in proclamation of the word of God, the truth, the gospel no matter what the consequences, no matter the opposition. I pray that you make us so people who care more about what you think than even what earthly rulers think about us. And Lord, help us proclaim the truth and love and in kindness, but boldly. Lord, we thank you for the example of your disciples, the apostles, and we thank you for the example of John the Baptist who proclaimed the truth to a king, an earthly, wicked, degenerate king, and he was beheaded for it.

And Lord Jesus, as we look at that example, I pray, let us just marvel at the fact that a little embarrassment, a little discomfort when we proclaim the truth, how many of us are thwarted from continuing the mission because of that and how silly all of that is in comparison to those who've gone before us. And Lord, as the world turns even darker in opposition to you, more godless and persecution becomes an ever present reality. I pray that we unflinchingly continue to further your kingdom by proclaiming your truth.

Bless our time, the holy scriptures today. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, amen. On this Communion Sunday, the title of the sermon is Proclaim the King's Excellencies as we continue through our sermon series in the Gospel of Mark. When the Lord Jesus Christ saves a sinner, he doesn't just save us from something, he saves us for something. And that for something should preoccupy our hearts and minds and that for something must be the purpose and the direction of our lives.

Yes, Lord, you've saved me from hell. You've saved me from eternal punishment, from bondage to sin, from being a pawn of Satan. Now what would you have me do? And the Lord answers and says, "Become fishers of men. Continue to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ so people are freed from the nets of Satan and sin to the new exodus and following Christ." And how do we do this? We do it by proclaiming the excellencies of the king.

In 1 Peter 2:9 it says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you are not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Did you notice the purpose? He says, this is why God saved us, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Christ. This is the purpose of every elect, blood-bought, redeemed, justified child of God.

Our purpose is to be representatives of Christ and to represent Christ is to do the work that Christ did and continues to do, which is to proclaim the truth that Jesus is king and he rules the world with his law, the 10 commandments. To proclaim Christ is to tell people that they have sinned, that they have transgressed commandments. They are under God's wrath. However, whosoever repents of their sin and believes in Christ will be forgiven, will be given mercy, and will be given a mission to proclaim the excellencies of Christ.

And for Christ to procure mercy for us, what did that entail? Entailed a gruesome, gory, grim sacrifice. It demanded crucifixion. Jesus Christ was crucified for proclaiming the truth. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised and should actually expect that when we lovingly, faithfully, kindly proclaim Christ, this will come at a cost. For some of us, it may even require death itself just like our Lord and just like John the Baptist and just like most of the apostles. Today, we are in Mark 6:7-29 as we continue our series, Kingdom Come.

Would you look at the text with me? And he, Christ, called the 12 and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them."

So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known. Some said, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him." But others said, "He is Elijah." And others said, "He is a prophet like one of the prophets of old." But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised."

For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly.

But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you." And he vowed to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom." And she went out and said to her mother, "For what should I ask?" And she said, "The head of John the Baptist."

And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guess, he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, Infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. Proclaim that people should repent, proclaim the law and the gospel fearlessly, fearing God is the secret to fearlessness. First, proclaim that people should repent. In verse seven, he, Jesus, called the 12 and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. Why two by two? This is probably reflecting the Jewish practice of sending official representatives in pairs.

And also in the Hebrew scriptures, there is a stipulation that two witnesses are required to establish legal testimony. So he commissions the 12 to extend the work that he was doing. He said, "I have come to teach the word of God and to proclaim the gospel for the kingdom of God is here for people to repent and believe." So here he sends out the 12 two by two. Practically why two by two, well, this provides for encouragement in particular in those moments where there is rejection.

When a whole town says, "We want nothing to do with the message of God. Get out," at those moments, we need encouragement, and also accountability to continue proclaiming the truth as it has been given and not trying to make it more palatable for people by softening it. And this here shows us that we need Christian community. We need brothers and sisters in our lives for our own souls, but then also for the effectiveness of the mission that Jesus called us to. We need Christian community.

We need the church. Hebrews 10:24 says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love in good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near." So even back then in the early church, they already had the issue where people believed that all I need is Jesus. All I need is scripture. I don't need the church. I don't need spiritual authority or accountability. Even back then, people were neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some.

So friends, continue to make it a priority to come to church. I'm obviously speaking to people who are at church. Good job, keep doing what you're doing. But for those who are listening online, and I think during COVID when we were streaming our services, people just got into the pattern of like, that's okay. That's not okay. That's why we took our streaming off. And I'm even tempted at the point of take all the sermons offline. Offline is not real. It's not real. That's just enough to get you into church.

And not just church, but community. At Mosaic, we are a church that draws thousands over the course of a year. There's thousands that come and there's thousands that go. So how are we to experience community? How do we experience this two by two ministry? We do that through our community groups. So if you are not in a community group, these are small groups of brothers and sisters that meet all across the city, all across the region over the course of the week, we'd love to have you join.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 says, "Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe him who is alone when he falls and has not another lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken." And here in our verse it says that he began to send them out.

Not only does this communicate that this is the start of their mission, but also it communicates that the mission continues, that Jesus continues to send us out as he had sent them out. And he says it began to send, this is the verb form of the word apostle, an apostle is someone who has been sent out with the authority of another. And Jesus, while still on earth, physically sends out the disciples to gain experience ministering the word of God.

He entrusts them with his authority, gives them an opportunity to use the authority to make the mistakes that they would make in using that authority so that they can come back to Jesus. He would rectify it and clarify and continue to train them up to serve him. This is just an example of the ministry that Jesus had already been doing. And Mark 6:6, that's the verse before our text. He was in Nazareth and Galilee. He marveled because of their unbelief. That's his hometown.

And he went out among the villages teaching. Despite rejection that he encountered in his hometown, he doesn't give up on his people. He continues to minister to them by sending the apostles out for another round of redemptive teaching. Now, we are not apostles, but we are disciples of Jesus Christ. We are followers of Jesus Christ, and most of us most likely aren't called to being international ministries or cross-cultural ministries, missionaries or full-time pastors and teachers. But we are called to bear witness to Jesus Christ wherever we are.

We might not be sent around the world, but we are still sent across the street. Our city is our mission field and, you and I, we're laborers that Christ sends out to gather in the harvest right here on our doorstep. I don't know if you've noticed, but traffic has been getting worse in the area. The congestion's terrible, the double parking. I've never seen so many people double parking. I think it's the Uber Eats and such, but I used to get irritated by traffic and irritated by people double parking.

I've chilled out partially because I changed my music. I started listening to monastic chants in my vehicle. It's very soothing. It helps with driving in peace. It's tremendous. And now whenever I'm in traffic, I get behind someone, I'm like, okay, you're double-parked. All right. I just pray for them, like Lord, save this person from their wicked ways of not following the law and such. But as I see people, there's people from all over the world all around us. The Lord is drawing people from all over.

They're here. This is why we exist. We are on mission to proclaim the gospel to all who would listen, to all who would hear. And we have the authority of Jesus Christ. Just as he gave to his early disciples, he has given to us as the church. He says, go and make disciples of all nations. And he says, when you do, when you make disciples of all nations, I am with you until the end of the age. We experience the fullness of Christ's presence in particular when on mission proclaiming the truth.

And his authority and the authority that he gave to the disciples is his own. He doesn't just pray to the Father. Father, I pray that you empower them. No. He gives them his own authority which reminds us of who Jesus really is. He is the Son of God. He is God. Authority resides in him and he exercises rule over the church as it goes and he does command us to go and proclaim. In Mark 6:8, he charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics.

The staffs were used for walking on rough terrain and for defense against wild animals and criminals, et cetera. And Jesus here says, okay, fine. Take a staff, but no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. And what he's saying is, I'm going to provide. You're on mission doing my work. It's my business that you are going about doing, and I will provide for you in the same way that I provided for the Israelites in the desert. If you remember, the Israelites were sustained by God. They didn't have food, but he sent food from heaven.

Rain manna. Their clothing by God's grace was supernaturally preserved from deterioration and Jesus instructs them to take just the basics of staff and sandals, which is an allusion to Exodus 12:11 when he was preparing them during the Passover meal before the Exodus. It says Exodus 12:11, in this manner you shall eat it with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. So the disciples' missionary journey is similar to the old exodus, but their journey is a new exodus. T.

Hey are people who are called by Jesus for freedom from sin and bondage and to go about and travel lightly so that they move quickly to call people out of bondage to sin and Satan. I do want to mention the Bible never sees renunciation of physical goods as a good in itself, but only as a necessity in some circumstances. This particular renunciation was not intended as a universal rule binding all disciples at all times. Though the simple faith that Jesus will provide when we are in the middle of his will doing his work, that is a universal rule.

Later in Gethsemane, after the disciples had thoroughly learned this lesson to rely on the Lord for his provision, to depend only on him, after they learned that lesson, Jesus said, now that he is leaving, we are to procure resources in Luke 23:35. And he said to them, "When I sent you out with no moneybag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?" They said "Nothing." And he said to them, "But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one."

First time he sends them out while he was still here. He says, "Don't take any money. Don't take a sword. Don't take food." The second time, he says, "When I leave, I want you prepared. I want you to have resources." After they learn to depend on the Lord, the Lord says, "We are to be prepared with resources if we can have them." Why? Because poverty is never the ideal in the Bible. Although if need be, it must be gladly embraced in God's service for Christ's sake. Verse 10.

He said to them, "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." And here the mission of the disciples according to Christ must be marked by a humble persistence. They were to be aware that not everyone's going to receive this message. Many will actually be opposed to it and reject it.

And whenever the disciples are accepted, they should remain in the place where they are and enjoy the resources that those who accepted the message would provide them with. But we are to be prepared as they were to be prepared that rejection is a reality of being a faithful proclaimer of the gospel. Mark 13:13, and you will, this is a promise, you will be hated by all for my name's sake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.

He says, "Shake the dust that is on your feet when you are rejected," is a sign that when you are rejected, you are to reject the place that has rejected the message. And the very difficulty of the act, dust is not so easily removed, especially from sandaled feet that have been walking on unpaved middle Eastern roads. Hence, that the depth of feeling that evokes it. Not even the tiniest reminder of the place should be left upon them. They must assiduously purge themselves of every trace of it.

And God himself will see to the latter on the day of judgment when the very dust will cry out as a witness against them. And verse 12. So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. They proclaimed that people should repent, not just sharing of the gospel. Sharing assumes that we're offering something that people want, share a recipe or share a meal or share a good laugh.

But we aren't called to just share the gospel, we're called to proclaim that people should repent and boldly declare it whether it's welcome or not. I remember when I just moved to the city and I didn't know how to start a church as a church planner... I did street evangelism. I was just walking around the streets and I did spiritual surveys and asked people if they'd have a couple minutes to answer some survey questions I had. After the 1,000th conversation and no one got saved, I'm like, Lord Jesus, does this text apply to me?

Can I dust off my boots from the dust of Boston, please? This was a message for them in this particular journey, but there were other examples where they lived in an area for years and they continue to administer. The emphasis here isn't on leaving a place. The emphasis here is on not taking a rejection personally. They're not rejecting you, they're rejecting the Lord, and that should grieve our hearts, but it can't immobilize us and we shouldn't be surprised by it. You can't take it personally because then that just keeps you from proclaiming the gospel.

They reject you, go to the next person and to the next person and to the next person. It's not we that converts people, it's God that does it. We are to sow the seed and to proclaim the truth and testify to it. What is the message? The message is that time is short. We're all mortal, and judgment is coming. Hell is real. And we are to flee the wrath that is to come. We are to hear the alarm sounding and get ourselves to safety. And the only source of safety, the only refuge, the only sanctuary is our savior Jesus Christ.

And the message is that everyone is to repent. There are no impendent people in the kingdom of heaven. All who enter the kingdom have mourned over sin, forsaken it and sought pardon for it. In this particular commissioning, Jesus is preparing his disciples for what will happen on Pentecost when they will receive a permanent commission to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth. And Jesus here is preparing them for after they receive the Holy Spirit to do things greater than even he did, which is a startling statement.

But in John 14:12, he says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I'm going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it." What does it mean that we're going to do greater things than Christ himself did? Well, he's not talking about individually. He's talking about as a church, as the body of Christ.

We've been given talents and opportunities, and together, he's saying, we're going to do greater things than Christ did in his incarnate state when he was on earth. The disciples went and proclaimed the gospel, cast out demons, and healed people by anointing them. And James 5:14 says, "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." Point two is proclaim the law and the gospel fearlessly.

Verse 14, King Herod heard of it for Jesus' name had become known. Some said, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him." There's only two passages in the Gospel of Mark not about Jesus Christ, and those two are about John the Baptist in chapter one. And here John was the forerunner of Jesus' ministry and also the forerunner of Jesus' death. And in both cases, both men stood before wicked, cowardly, tyrants fully aware of the innocence of both John and Jesus.

And nevertheless, they feared the pressure of the people, and therefore they executed John and James. I do want to point out that it wasn't the disciples' names that were made known. As they did their work, as they proclaimed the gospel, as they healed people, it was the name of Jesus that had become known. The disciples preaching in wonder working are the means for Christ's name to become known. The miracles worked by the 12 disciples were really performed by Christ.

It was his authority, his power. They were wielding his power. And the work's done by the disciples didn't cause the people in Galilee or even King Herod to wonder who are these disciples. They're wondering who is this Jesus that they are proclaiming. They weren't confused whose power it was. And that brings us to King Herod. Who is this Herod? This is Herod Antipas. He is the son of King Herod the Great who tried to kill Jesus when he was born. King Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, ruled in the Transjordan region from 4 BC until his exile in 39 AD.

This is the king whom Jesus called that fox in Luke 13, a reference to King Herod's malice, his cunning, his shrewdness and lack of pity and his love of degenerate decadence. In 39 AD, he was recalled to Rome and replaced by his nephew, the infamous Herod Agrippa, who later killed James and imprisoned Peter. In Mark 6:15 it says, but others said he's Elijah and others said he is a prophet like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised."

Actually the dirty work wasn't done by Herod himself, it was by an executioner as we see later in the text. But here in the Greek, there's an emphatic I myself have beheaded. This is John whom I myself had beheaded, which reveals that King Herod's conscience has been disturbing him. His conscience has been terrifying him. It shows us that although he thought himself a king, he wasn't king over his conscience. The truth was the law of God was. And for Herod, the supernatural miracle, he thought Jesus was John comeback from the dead, and he believed it.

That supernatural miracle itself was not enough to bring him to repentance. That's how stubborn he was and hardened in his sin. The assumed divine miracle, John's resurrection, is a cause not for celebration but for terror. And here I also want to point out that John was so Christlike that when Herod hears about Christ, he confuses Christ with John. That's how much John had decreased so that Jesus could increase. He represented Jesus with his whole being. Who was John the Baptist?

He was a miracle child born to the aged Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth. He was a Nazarite from birth, a result of explicit orders of the angel Gabriel. His hair was never cut. He never touched a dead body or drank fermented drink, according to Numbers 6. And he took up the clothing of the ancient prophets wearing a rough coat of camel's hair and leather belt and subsisting in the wilderness and the diet of locusts and wild honey. He was a man of good conscience and therefore moral courage.

When he spoke the word of God, everybody knew that it rang true because of John's integrity. And he would lose his head, but not his witness. John made way for the Lord, preparing the way for Christ by boldly denouncing sin and calling people to radical repentance, as seen in Matthew 3:7. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

And do not presume to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he'll burn with unquenchable fire."

Jesus is neither John the Baptist, Herod got it wrong, nor Elijah. Jesus was John's contemporary, so he's not him. And with respect to Elijah, Mark already said he linked Elijah with John, not Jesus. And Jesus wasn't just a prophet. He did use that term to characterize himself, but it definitely wasn't sufficient to characterize him. Verse 17. For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her.

For John had been saying to Herod, "It's not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." And here, what is John appealing to? It's not lawful. What law is he appealing to? Look how simple and plain and straightforward his message was. It's not lawful for you to have another man's wife. You've committed adultery, Herod. You've transgressed the Seventh Commandment. You've taken Herodias from your brother, so she is an adulterous as well, and he's calling them to repentance.

He proclaims the plain truth regardless of the consequences. And what he's telling King Herod, consider himself a king, he's saying, there's a king above you. There's a law above you. You are not above the law. It's the law of God, and the law of God is law over everyone. It's enforced over everyone. It doesn't matter if you identify as a Christian, it doesn't matter if you identify as a believer of the scripture, none of that matters. God is God over everyone. His law governs everyone. Some people erroneously think that when you preach the gospel, you never mention the law.

When you're sharing "the gospel," the law isn't necessary. The law is only for believers. First trust in Jesus, get grace, and then we can talk about the law, then we can talk about how you are to live. This is false, because you can't call people to repentance if they do not know what they are to repent of. And John as an Elijah like figure is zealous for the Lord and his law, and he's going to proclaim it to both Herod and Herodias no matter how much it antagonizes them, no matter how much they want to kill him.

And that brings us to point three, fearing God is the secret to fearlessness. John, where did you get the power to be so fearless, so courageous, so bold in proclaiming this truth to a king? He got it from fearing God more than anyone else. He didn't care what King Herod thinks about him. He cared more about what King Jesus thinks about him. In verse 19, Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe.

When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, yet he heard him gladly." John's very existence caused Herodias unease in her conscience, yet she's hardened and seared in her conscience by her wickedness and won't rest until he is dead. And Herod feared John. He wanted to protect the life of John knowing that he's righteous and holy. So he arrests John to protect John from Herodias. This is how conflicted this man was. Herod was convicted by John's words, yet he gladly listened to them.

Most likely the prison was in the same place where his palace was and he would just bring John up and say, "John, do your thing." And John with his camel hair and he's got his leather belt and he is like, "You broke commandment number seven. Repent. And Herodias too." And then Herodias gets mad and Herod's like, "Continue," and oh, just continuously gladly welcoming the message, feared the guy, knows it's true, it rings true, definitely resonates, and he's willing to listen. He's willing to observe, heard him gladly.

But there was one thing that Herod wasn't willing to do. He wasn't willing to cease from his adultery. He wouldn't give up Herodias, and so he ends up ruining his soul. Verse 21. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading man of Galilee. Those present at this party were the petty lords and the Roman battalion commanders, the tribunes. So these men gather in Herod's fortress palace where John was imprisoned.

And the text doesn't explicitly say, but a birthday in such luxurious confines of the royal palace with all the big wigs certainly implied large quantities of alcohol. And from Mark's report, there's possibility that Herod was definitely well-lubricated when Herodias finally traps him in verse 22. For when Herodias' daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish and I'll give it to you."

Josephus, the famed Jewish historian, tells us that this young woman named Salome was in her middle teens at this time, so she dances in a very explicit way. Here we see that King Herod gets excited to the point where his braggadocio is turned on and he vows in verse 23, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you up to half of my kingdom." And this is probably a figure of speech in any case, because the kingdom wasn't his to give. It was Rome's. And so verse 24, she went out and said to her mother, "For what should I ask?"

And she said, "The head of John the Baptist." And she came in and immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." The instantaneous reply of Herodias implies premeditation. So the cunning demonic forces that have been working for John's downfall now at last have sprung their trap. Here Herodias is presented as another Jezebel, manipulating her cowardly and indecisive husband and seeking the death of the Lord's prophet.

And one begins to wonder who initiated the adultery. Herodias didn't mention the platter. The platter was... It was a touch of the girl, the daughter's own ghastly touch. And verse 26. The king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests, he did not want to break his word to her. The moment of truth has come for Herod. It's a crucial test of his soul. He has to decide between saving face and saving John. He knew who John was. He's a holy and righteous man. He knew that God's hand was upon him, and to go against John is to go against God.

And he here now has to decide between the opinions of the noble guests and the truth. He's got to decide between gaining the world and gaining his soul. It says he was exceedingly sorry. He was greatly distressed. The word is only used one other time the New Testament, and that was to describe Jesus' pain in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was greatly distressed when he saw the suffering before him. And here Herod's grief was real, but he had been trapped. And this shows us that grief over sin is not repentance.

Being sorry over your sin or sorry over the situation that your sin has got you in, that's not true repentance. True repentance is turning from that sin and turning to a path of righteousness and following Christ. Herod's conscience had been awakened by John and he suppressed the truth because of what he feared others would think. I think there are many today who are in a similar predicament where you know that Christ is king, where you know that the holy scriptures are true.

What else is other than scriptures? You know that eternal life is only found in Christ, and you're not public about it or you won't follow Christ in your daily life. And how many people's consciousness have been awakened to eternal truth and they've quenched that because of their fear of, what are my friends going to think? What's my family going to think? And whenever you have conversation like this about the gospel and you get people to the point where you got to make a decision and they're like, okay, what kind of Christian are you?

I'm not a big fan of that question. A true one. There's only one type of Christian. You're saved or not. And if you are saved, you have to be public about it. You have to testify to the truth of it, to care more about what God thinks than what people think. Mark 6:27. Immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. Besides gratifying a sadistic whim, the production of the head on a platter is proof that John has been killed.

And the title king is used over and over in our text in particular here. It's technically inaccurate. He wasn't a king. He was a tetrarch. He was a puppet for Rome. But the title king is repeated ironically because Herod wasn't a king. He was outwitted and manipulated by two women and hamstrung by his own oath and his fear of losing faith before his subjects. The supposed king wasn't king even over himself. He couldn't control himself much less his subjects. He's over mastered by his sin.

He's over mastered by his desires. He's over mastered by his emotions, which swing wildly from superstitious dread, he thinks Jesus is John resurrected, to awe and fascination and confusion to arousal that seems to border on insanity and to extreme depression. In this context, his pretensions to royal authority appear almost like a farce. He appears to rule whereas actually his strings are being pulled by others. The tyrant isn't even a true king over himself. He's a slave to his own passions.

Herod lets John die, and thus shows himself to be among those in whom despite their attraction to the kingdom of God, despite the fact that the seeds seem like they have been planted in his heart, he's gladly listening to the word, he's gladly listening to the sermons, but the cares and concerns of this age end up choking the word. A lesson for each one of us here is if you fear God more than man, you might lose your head, but not your soul. And if you fear man over God, you might keep your head.

You might even become more prosperous and lose your soul in the process. And Jesus said, "What prophet is it to someone gain the whole world and yet lose their soul?" For Herod, saving faith was more important than saving his soul. Verse 29. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. We see finally in these verses how little reward one of God's greatest servants gets in this world. John's life after a life of faithful witness to Christ ends in unjust imprisonment and a violent death.

Like Steven, like James and like the other apostles of whom the world was not worthy, he was called to seal his testimony with his blood. Histories like these are meant to remind us that the true Christians' best things are yet to come. His rest, his crown, his wages, his reward are all on the other side of the grave. Here in this world we must walk by faith and not by sight. And if we look for the praise of people, we're not going to get it. And here in this life, we must sow and labor and fight and endure persecution, and we are to know that this life is not all there is.

One day retribution will come and heaven will make amends for all. Romans 8:18 says, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." 1 Corinthians 2:6. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for his glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this.

For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, what no I has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined which God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. We see what King Herod thought of John the Baptist. King Herod's opinion doesn't really matter. John the Baptist cared more not about what King Herod thought of him, but what King Jesus thought about him.

And what did King Jesus think of John the Baptist? Well, Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:11, "Truly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist. Until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets in the law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

John the Baptist, according to Christ, was the greatest of all men that was ever born. Why? Because John knew his place, he knew his job, and his job was to proclaim Christ. He knew that he was to decrease so that Christ would increase. In John's cruel death, we're also given a glimpse of Jesus' faith, that Jesus' ministry would eventually take him to Jerusalem where he would be rejected and imprisoned and ultimately mocked, scourged, and crucified. And there are numerous parallels between John and Christ.

Each was eagerly heard and become the object of curiosity of a leader. John with Herod, Jesus with Pilate, each false victim to his enemy's murderous intention, is arrested, bound, and ignominiously executed and buried. Thanks be to God, Jesus' head wasn't put on a platter. That Jesus, even though he was crucified, in his crucifixion, in his death, he conquered death and the grave and he rose on the third day. Since he's far greater than even John himself, he overcame death.

And in his death, we see the death of death itself. The last recorded mention of Herod, this Herod, presents him as a hardened blasphemer. At the end of Jesus' life, Pilate sends Jesus to Herod and Herod has another opportunity to repent of his sin. In Luke 23:6, when Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he heard that he belonged to Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him over to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem. At that time.

When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desire to see him, because he had heard about him and he was hoping to see some sign done by him. So he questioned him at some length, but he made no answer. And the chief priest and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. And Herod with the soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him. Then, arraying him in splendid clothing, he sent him back to Pilate. And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other on that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other. Herod gladly received the servants of John.

And here you see the progression into sin, where when Christ is right before, he stands face to face with the Son of God, all he can do is mock. He's absolutely dead inside, jaded. He had passed the point of no return, a point when repentance is no longer given. Friends, you just need to know this is a reality. If you keep prolonging repentance, the day of repentance, the day of turning from sin and turning to Christ, at some point there will be a day of no return, at some point the gift of repentance will not be extended to you, at some point the Holy Spirit will stop wooing.

So what do we need to do? If you hear God's voice today in your heart, repent of sin and turn to him. Acts 17. Paul before the men of Athens and the Areopagus, he says, "The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given insurance to all by raising him from the dead." Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.

But others said, "We will hear you again about this." So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined them and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. Today, if you hear the voices of God, repent from sin and turn to Christ, recognize that Christ is the only way of salvation. His sacrifice on the cross is the only sacrifice that can atone for our sins and the wrath that they deserve.

Today, we are celebrating holy communion in which we remember the sufferings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on the cross on our behalf when he laid down his life for his sheep, for whom is communion. It is for repentant followers of Jesus Christ. If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, if you have not repented of sin, if you have not believed in him, today is your opportunity to do that, repent of sin and turn to him. If you are a self-identified believer in Jesus Christ, but you know that there's unrepented sin in your life, sin that you have not left, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service.

So do nothing for you. Instead, take time to meditate on the gospel. If you are a repentant follower of Christ, you'd like to partake of holy communion. And if you have not received the elements, please raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring them to you. And as they do that, I'll read 1 Corinthians 11:23-32. For I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. Would you pray with me over holy communion? Heavenly Father, we thank you for your lavish love and sending your Jesus Christ for us. Jesus, we thank you that you died on the cross for our sins while we were yet sinners.

You died for us recognizing that this was the only way to save us from our sin and save us from the wrath to come. Lord Jesus, we thank you that even as you hung on that cross, you were busy forgiving people, crying out, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." We recognize from that text even ignorance of our sin is not defense against the wrath of God. So we plead the blood, we ask Jesus forgive us of our sins.

We repent of breaking commandments, transgressing commandments, and we pray by the grace of God that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit to live lives of righteousness. As we remember your suffering on the cross today, let us be sobered by the fact that that's what it took to save us from our sin. So how can we continue living in sin? Give us a hunger and thirst for righteousness and continue to satisfy us with your presence. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you did not stay dead.

You rose on the third day, and today you are sitting at the right hand of God ruling and reigning. We pray that you continue to establish your kingdom all around the world and in particular in our region. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen. There are two lids. You open the top lid to open the cup and the bottom lid to open the bread. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread. And after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take eat and do this in remembrance of me."

Then proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured up for the sins of many. Take drink and do this and remembrance of me." Oh Lord, we thank you that you have chosen us to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for your own possession, so that we may proclaim the excellencies of our king, a king who calls us out of darkness into your marvelous light. We thank you, Lord, that you offer us your mercy and your grace.

We thank you that you offer us your presence in the power of the Holy Spirit. And we pray, Lord, that you continue to bless this church, continue to draw your elect, and continue to sanctify every single one of us so we grow ever more beautiful in your sight. Make us a people who are more courageous than ever, more bold than ever, proclaiming the gospel at every opportunity that we have. And make us a people, Lord, that revel in the fact that we are yours and you are a great and mighty king, an excellent king. And we love you and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Today is exciting as is every day that we open up God's Word. We are continuing in our series Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the secrets of God's Kingdom. And today we're landing in more of the secrets of how God functions in saving people and how God matures His servants. And in fact, He shows us through the model of the way that he constructed Christ's life. And so without further ado, I'm going to start reading our passage from today. It is from Mark Chapter Six verses one through six. Mark Chapter Six, verses one through six. And this is a good Thanksgiving passage. We're talking about a homecoming. We're talking about the ordinariness of Christ, something that we sing praises about at Christmastime, the simplicity of his life and the Lord will use it as a good segue to our Christmas season. Would you please hear the preaching of God's Word.

"He went away from there and came to His hometown and His disciples followed him. And on Sabbath He began to teach in the synagogue. And many who heard him were astonished saying, "Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to Him? How are such mighty works done by His hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household." And He could do no mighty work there except that he laid His hands on a few people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief. And He went about among the village's teaching." This is the word of our Lord. Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you this day for your word. We thank you for assembling your saints here today. We thank you Lord for giving us your word so that we are not people who are clamoring about, walking in darkness. We thank you for your revelation of yourself to us in the life of Jesus Christ. And now in just the opening of His word, we ask, Lord that you prime our hearts to receive what you would have us hear today and let us receive with belief. We pray that our hearts would be good soil to hear your word so that we would believe it and be faithful servants in your kingdom as we go forth from this week, this day. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

Well, I've learned over the years about myself that I like to learn by learning on the positive side of things. I like to be told what to do and to believe a little bit more than being told what not to do and what not to believe. But as I've gotten older, hopefully as a mark of wisdom, I've learned that those lessons that talk just as much about what not to do, what not to believe are just as valuable as those positive lessons, the positive wisdom. And today is a lesson from scripture, a text that teaches us in the negative manner. Last week, the last couple of weeks, we've talked about profound miracles and faith. And chapter five of Mark where we were the past couple of weeks might be labeled as the triumph of faith. So we talked last week a lot about the triumph of faith. Jesus healed a man and who was possessed by a legion of demons. And what does Jesus do when he sees who Jesus is properly, he sees him as the Christ, the Messiah. The Lord tells him to go and spread his faith, tell others about what the Lord has done for him and how he has saved him. Furthermore, Jesus learns of the faith of a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years and He heals her and he says, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease." Furthermore, in chapter five, when Jairus, a father with a sick dying daughter comes to him and pleads with him to go and heal her, Jesus says, "Do not fear. Only believe." And he does, and he saves Jairus's daughter. He actually raises her from the dead.

And so Jesus in Chapter Five, encounters faith in people. He encourages them to have it. And today, as I said, we're learning more in the negative. What do we encounter in chapter six of Mark? We encounter unbelief and in profound ways. In verse 6:6, we come across Jesus doing something that the scriptures do not capture Him doing often. Verse six says, "He marveled. The man who cast out a legion of demons, who healed a woman who was bleeding for 12 years, who raised the life of a dead child, marveled." This is only one of two areas in all the scriptures where Jesus marveled, He was amazed, He was awestruck. Here and in Matthew 8:10. In Matthew 8:10, He marvels at the extraordinary faith of the centurion who asks him to only say the word so that his servant lying at home away from him would be healed. And Jesus does. He marvels over the man's faith, the centurion's faith. But here in chapter six, Jesus marvels at the unbelief of the people of Nazareth. Verse six says, "And He marveled because of their unbelief."

Furthermore, in chapter six, not in our scripture today, but later on, we encounter a profound example of unbelief in the life of Herod. Verse 14 of chapter 6 mentions that Jesus' name had spread to the courts of King Herod. King Herod heard of it, heard of Jesus and his teaching and his proclamation that the Kingdom of God was at hand for Jesus' name had become known, the ruler of the land of Israel knew about Jesus. But verse 20, he tells us, "For Herod feared John knowing that he was a righteous." John is John the Baptist, baptizer. "Knowing that he was a holy and righteous man and he kept him safe. When he heard him," heard John preach. "He was greatly perplexed and yet he heard him gladly." But what we learned is that though Herod liked to hear John preach, it stimulated his intellect. In Acts 12:20 to 23, we hear of his gruesome death and he stands as an example of what unbelief can lead to for all of us.

And so today it is a sermon with a lot of gravity. We're not celebrating a happy homecoming. Jesus didn't go home and have a joyful Thanksgiving. This is a sad story. The people closest to Jesus, the people he spent his adolescence and young adulthood with reject him. But as I said, there's much to learn in this negative teaching, this text told us to not be like the people of Nazareth. And in many ways, our job is to make sure as Christians that we don't repeat the same mistakes and practice such unbelief.

So I'm going to break the sermon up into two sections, the ordinariness of Nazareth's unbelief and the second one, the extraordinariness of Christ's ordinariness, the ordinariness of Nazareth's unbelief. As I meditate upon our texts here in the first section, I'm going to bring out the characteristics of unbelief. Unbelief is a topic that we typically avoid, but it's really good to understand it, to be able to identify it. And when I speak about this, I don't want you to be thinking about all the people out there, all the people sitting around you, maybe a brother, sister in the church who you know is struggling. First and foremost, I want you to check your own heart to be listening, to hear if you have any signs of unbelief, if you are showing the tendencies of unbelief. And so as we discover unbelief, we'll talk about the fact of it, the tendencies of it, the nature of it, the consequences of it as we discuss the ordinariness of Nazareth's belief.

So firstly, I emphasize the fact of unbelief. Nazareth's unbelief is something that Christ disciples will encounter regularly in their ministry. And as I said, this is not your average homecoming for Jesus and his disciples. We read in verse one, "He went away from there and came to his hometown and His disciples followed Him." And so what we find out today is that Jesus, He goes to His hometown, He's bringing his disciples, and this is a business trip. He's been back to Nazareth before a year or so ago, and He goes back to Nazareth. That time He was by himself. This time it's with His disciples and what's he doing? Last time He was at Nazareth, this was the start of His ministry. And Luke Four chronicles this and he basically goes to the synagogue and He reads a passage from Isaiah that talks about the arrival of the Messiah, the arrival of the Kingdom of God. And he says, "On this day the scripture has been fulfilled."

And what do the people do? His hometown, they rejected Him then and then they take him up to the highest point in town and threaten to push Him off the cliff for his blasphemy. But now He comes back a year later after gathering a group of disciples and he comes back after developing this reputation in the land. And so first and foremost, this is a lesson, what Jesus is going through with His disciples through this experience is a lesson about discipleship. It's a lesson for them that He's preparing them for the time when He's not with them. He's given them a dose of reality for what they're going to experience as they serve Him after his death, resurrection and ascension. And I emphasize this first point, the ordinariness of Nazareth's unbelief. I emphasize that with the subpoint of the fact of unbelief because Jesus shows his disciples that a clear and authoritative proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ will not always be met with acceptance and joyful welcome in the hearts of an audience.

In fact, we should be more liable to expect that we will encounter more unbelief than we do belief. In the Book of the prophet Isaiah in chapter 53:1 the prophet writes, "Who has believed what He has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" And these are written as rhetorical questions with the implication that not many. When the arm of the Lord, when Jesus walks the earth, not many hear Him. Not many people heard God's Word and believed it and obeyed in Isaiah's day and not many when Jesus walked the earth. And so Jesus is, by talking about the fact of unbelief, He's trying to get them ready. You are going to encounter this and you need to be prepared. And I lead with this point because if you read the Gospel of Mark up to this point, it's almost as if you're reading a Marvel comic book.

Jesus is this superhero where town after town, He's preaching the truth. He's destroying his enemies in debates, He's healing, He's showing limitless extent of his authority and power. And now this is just an oddity, this point in Mark Six where he goes to His hometown of all places and it says, "He could do no mighty work there." And why? Because of their unbelief. So we as disciples today need to expect that unbelief is something that we are going to encounter often. A lot of churches don't really prep people in their body for this. They tell people, evangelize, evangelize, evangelize, share the gospel.

But they don't really prepare them for the challenges of unbelief. They don't prepare them for the tendencies of it, the way it expresses themself and talk about the seriousness of it. And so a lot of Christians, when they are saved, they're excited. They want to tell people, "God has saved me, he has forgiven me of my sin in Jesus Christ." And they cannot help but speak and share it and tell other people in their life, in their circles on the street of the great grace and mercy that God has shown them. But they have one or two experiences where this doesn't go as planned. They're rejected or met with coldness, hardheartedness attack, attack of them, and they go into being incognito Christians like Secret Service Christians hiding from the world and never or rarely sharing the gospel again.

And so today, I just emphasize this first point, we can't be surprised by unbelief. We're going to face it over and over again in this life. And in fact, we need to see that when we face it. It's not just ... Of course it's sad, we want everybody to believe the gospel, but it's a confirmation that we're doing something right. Christ himself came and he preached the word mightily and clearly and yes praised God, some believed Him, but He also was rejected. It's an affirmation that we're doing something right. If we tell people about God and we're always getting people believing, then that's an indicator that there might be something that isn't faithful with the message that we're sharing and we really need to assess if that's real fruit coming in through our ministry.

But we need to expect that the ordinariness of Nazareth's unbelief, it's extraordinary at this point in the course of Mark, but Jesus for his disciples has shown this is a reality you're going to face regularly going forward. And going forward, I want to talk about the tendency of unbelief. We need to realize the fact of unbelief, but we need to see the common tendencies of it. One of the things, the primary thing that unbelief does is it has a tendency to disguise itself by transferring its object of attention to something else away from the real stumbling block of Jesus Christ.

And so we see here in verses two and three, the people of Nazareth, they practice this. Verse two says, "And on the Sabbath." And just little side note in other towns in Capernaum where Jesus was prior to this, before His disciples, he couldn't go anywhere without crowds gathering in His way, just stopping him in His path and forcing him to preach and perform miracles. He couldn't get a break, but now He enters into his hometown and nobody's welcomed him. He has to wait for the Sabbath to preach. "And on the Sabbath, He began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard him were astonished."

So the people who we know will show extreme unbelief, they actually are amazed at Jesus's teaching. He opens up the word like nobody else they ever heard. Every time Jesus preaches, it's a home run. Imagine a preacher having that kind of preacher show up, but how do they respond? They say, "where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by His hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?" This is a deflection. It's a deflection from the central message that Jesus brought to them. The people respond to Jesus teaching by directing their attention to his ordinariness, the ordinariness of the speaker. They do this in order to hide the fact that it's the message of the gospel that their hearts were hardened against.

And anyone here, anybody who's been Christian for a while and has faithfully shared the gospel, know the tendency of people to do this. People will talk about anything and go for hours and avoid the central message of the gospel. They'll avoid the elements of it that offend them, the elements of it that call them to belief, call them to repentance, and we need to be ready for it. Again, we can't be surprised by this. When we share the gospel, we should expect to face this sort of dodging. And furthermore, we should expect to face that they will attack us. One of the greatest ways they just look at Jesus, "Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this the son of Mary? Aren't his brothers and sisters here in town? Who is this guy? Who is he to call us to repentance before Him as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? He's just an average guy, an ordinary Joe. He's cheese pizza. We shouldn't listen to him." And they poke. They poke at Jesus. They start pointing at his deficiencies according to earthly standards.

And we as Christians, we should expect this. How far did Jesus's opponents go in His life to doing this? They sent Him, they attacked the person to the point of sending him to the cross, leading to His crucifixion and for His servants, we are no greater than our master. We are going to get the same treatment. But one thing, just when this happens, when there's this tendency for people to start questioning our character, questioning our delivery of the gospel, our maybe not so refined delivery of it, though it is full of the truth, we just have to remember the gospel ourselves in that moment.

We can have security to stand before people in our weakness while proclaiming the gospel because what does the gospel say? Our identity is not built upon any good works that we've done. Our identity is not built on the sin that we've committed, the rebellion against God, the guilt and shame that marks our lives. The gospel is that when a person turns in faith, turns from their sin and turns in faith to Jesus, God applies Christ's perfect and righteous record to your account and He applies your sinful, imperfect, prideful record to Jesus. And that's what the transaction that happened on the cross and it's applied to us by faith. And when we are attacked by the world, we can't take those attacks by heart. They're predictable and we have an identity that is rooted in the rock of Jesus Christ.

So we need to be steadfast in these moments when we face these tendencies and we need to redirect people lovingly, kindly, gently to the central question of belief and that is the message of the scriptures of the gospel, God's rescue plan for man and his sin that marks the whole book after Genesis Three, the fall of man. And so we need to anticipate this tendency. Unbelief is always distracting from the heart of the gospel and distract them from the fact that it's really the gospel that is offensive to a person. And so as we discuss the ordinariness Nazareth's belief, next I want to talk about the nature of unbelief. This is something that really needs to be made clear. The reason Jesus marvels at unbelief here in these verses is because it's one of the evidences of the power of sin in man's life. That's the great reason behind marveling at it.

Here in the world upon God's creation, Jesus, the begotten Son of God who took on flesh is seeing firsthand the outworking of the fruit of sin in the lives of men and women that He knows and loves. Men and women who should have known the story of his mom's birth. And we get the understand it's not this Mary's son. In that day you would've never appealed to someone by their mom's name. It would be their father's and they're appealing. They have knowledge that he was born into a unique situation, whether maybe they're implying promiscuous or it was actually a miraculous birth. These people who would've known the story of his birth, who would've thought deeply about Him and His childhood. Have you ever seen a perfect child? If Jesus was in this community for 28, 29 years, a perfect child would really stand out in a community of 500 people and they would've seen him when they engaged with him as a carpenter, an honest tradesman who doesn't raise the prices. This guy would've had a righteous standing before Him.

And these people who would've known Him better than anybody else who walked the earth, they hear His teaching, they hear of testimonies of his miracles in the nearby lens and He does actually heal a few people upon this visit. These people reject him and it shakes Him. And this is why He shudders an agony at unbelief when He faces death later on with his friend Lazareth, He faces the reality of sin and its impact and He marvels, He shudders, He weeps at it. And so unbelief is not something that Jesus engaged casually. It's not something that we should engage casually. What I'm trying to get us to is unbelief. It's really important in a city like ours with lots of just bright people, driven people, motivated people, unbelief it's not just a weakness of one of our friends who's really intelligent. The ultimate key to unbelief doesn't lie in the mind. It lies in the realm of the moral nature of the will of man. That's where unbelief finds its home.

In our text today, the people in their response, they try to deflect from their unbelief. They try to show themselves as not gullible. "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of men and women that we know? We're not going to be tricked by Him. Jesus, you were just one of us. You didn't get the proper education that a rabbi should get. This message sounds too good to be true. We're not going to believe you Jesus. You're not just one of us." And so unbelief in the Bible, it arises from first and foremost a hard, evil heart of unbelief, not a lack of truthfulness or sufficient appeal to the intellect. We need to understand that.

And that's a lot of conversations, apologetic conversations, sharing the gospel conversations, they devolve into these long conversations about minutia, details of scripture away from the heart of the gospel that calls people to repentance and faith in Christ. And we need to treat it seriously, not let people trivialize it. Well, unbelief is one of the ways, it's described in scripture is in essence it's calling God a liar. Where every find our hearts are still an unbelief. We're calling God a liar.

First John 1:5 to 10 says, "This is the message we've heard from Him and proclaimed to you. That God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar. And His word is not in us."

Anybody who denies that they were created by God and His image and have rebelled against Him and do not have right standing before Him is saying, "God is a liar for telling me this, for proclaiming this, for sending His son into the world to proclaim this and be the means of reconciliation between me and Him." We need to be honest with ourselves as we process this. We need to be honest with the people with whom we share the gospel about the nature of unbelief. Unbelief, it's of a moral nature. It is rebellion against Christ's rule and reign of creation of our hearts. And so this isn't to say that they're not intellectual problems, they're not hard questions to take up with scripture, but what I want to say is that the heart of unbelief lies not in the mind but in the moral nature and the will of man. And we need to keep people to think in that area when we engage unbelief.

Jesus further elaborates on this in John 16: 8 to 9. He says that, "When the Holy Spirit comes, when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment concerning sin because they do not believe in me." It's a moral unbelief, it's a moral problem, not an intellectual problem. And we see this further in Mark 6 as we'll talk a little bit more about Herod next week. Herod's a perfect example of this. He loved to hear John the Baptist teach. This guy who was a prisoner in his castle or fort or property. He wants him to come up and preach to him.

So he heard the good news of Jesus' coming, of the King's arrival, about how John said, "He must increase, I must decrease." But Herod had all the facts. He knew everything and he did not believe the message and so therefore ... And why? What's behind that? Herod didn't want to change his behavior. He knew that the message that Jesus Christ was the Lord, that he had a call on his life, that to believe in Him and to obey Him would mean that he has to change, he has to repent and submit to Christ and His ways. And that's behind a lot of unbelief. The nature, it's moral rebellion. We just don't want to honor God with our lives. We want to do what we want to do when we want to do it. And how many of you know that? I know that that was me before I was Christian.

When I grew up in the church, in eighth grade, I wrote at the end of confirmation class, it was a 100 word essay, which is like that was frighteningly intimidating at that point. And I wrote it. I was like, "I think I'm saved because God offers me a great deal here. I sin and Jesus takes the punishment. I get eternal life. I get the power of his spirit in me and it's just a good deal. I'll take it." I intellectually understood that in eighth grade and I was amazed that the pastor of 15 kids was quoting my 100 word essay for a sermon. But I was not saved until I was 23. I was not born again until I really saw that I needed to repent of my sin and give Christ the lordship over my life. I didn't have freedom from the guilt and shame of sin until I did that. I did not walk in the Lord's power and the power of the Holy Spirit until that point. And the nature of unbelief is that we need to repent of that mindset. And this goes for Christians too.

We hesitate to give Christ lordship in specific areas of our lives. A lot of people talk about anxiety as if it's like a friend in their life, as if Jesus doesn't have anything to say about anxiety. He has a whole lot to say. Jesus, we've struggled to give Jesus our finances to steward them for His glory, for His kingdom. We've struggle to give Jesus over our plans for our singleness, plans for our marriage plans, for our career, and the Lord calls us to and we just go on justifying sin, justifying unrepentance. And it isn't just neutral intellectual protest,. It's a rebellious act in which we dethrone in Jesus as Lord of our lives and we call God a liar. So we need to constantly ask ourselves if we're struggling with unbelief to identify that we ask how do we respond to the Word of God? Do we hear with gladness and let it and I just hear it and say, "Well, good talk, good speech. That's clever?"

Or do we hear with gladness, let it take root in our hearts and lives as the powerful of the sower discussed earlier in Mark? Do we have good soil or are we resisting it? Are we holding onto it until we have a problem believing it and applying it into our own life? To close out our discussion of the ordinariness of Nazareth's unbelief, I lastly want to discuss the consequences of unbelief. And this is building off of the last point. When we don't believe, there are great consequences. This is covered in verse five, and the scripture says, "And He could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them." The emphasis here isn't on Jesus's inability. We've seen the extent of his power and authority over nature, over sickness, over death itself. He can function in any way that He wants that is consistent with His holy character.

But the focus here is not on Jesus's inability but on Nazareth's foolishness, on the way that the city robbed itself of receiving more grace and power of the work of Jesus among them. This shows us that there is no greater enemy than to the work of God than unbelief. It causes God to turn away without revealing himself with further grace and power. And when you really take this in, there's something really scary about it. And if you're feeling like this is heavy, there's a lot of weight to the sermon so far, you should. I was feeling it all week as I was meditating on this.

It's scary to think about what happens when God turns away from a place, turns away from a people, turns away from you. Mark 6:11 helps us understand this a little bit more. Jesus gives counsel to his disciples for how they should respond when He sends them out and they are not received with belief. Verse 11 says, "And if any place will not receive you, and they'll not listen to you when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." So Jesus in this situation, what we see after Mark Six is that Nazareth does not believe Him, His hometown, and He turns His back on them. They know they know His Word, they know who He is, they know how they should respond to it, and he walks on them.

Further, Mark 6:11, He tells his disciples that when they're not received with belief to shake the dust off their feet and leave a land. This is a reference to what Jews would've done when they left a gentile, pagan, non-believing land to go back to Israel to the Holy Land. This act would symbolize the shaking off of the defilement that could have got on them in the non-believing land and more importantly, serve as a called to the judgment of God upon that land end. So we need to see there's grave consequences to unbelief. We need to see that the Lord, the gospel not only has a saving effect where it meets true faith, but that it has a judging effect where it meets unbelief. It is the proclamation of the gospel that both exposes and judges unbelief.

And I love this passage in scripture that talks about for someone, the life of Christ you are called. You're not just saved. You're not just given the power of the spirit. You're called into God's profound work to spread His rule and reign on the earth, to go back to the initial mission of being fruitful and multiplying for His glory. And you are given a power and your life is a triumphant possession. You are the victor and God has given you power as a steward of the gospel. And in that power, people are going to receive you with joy and gladness when they hear the gospel and they receive it and repent and obey God. And to others, you're going to have a stench. That power goes out and being a means of judgment to those who hear the gospel and do not receive it.

And this is pretty intense, but this is what the scripture says. When we share the gospel, we have to understand the responsibility that we are given. We need to stay faithful to it and we have to just keep people at the center, keep people at the central focus. We need to try to get people to honestly assess, do they believe God's Word? Do they believe He has a call in their life? He is creator, they're created. The greatest position of experience of peace, love, joy is to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ. We need to keep people there given the consequences.

So now after this solemn discussion of unbelief, one can only wonder how to respond to unbelief when we face it and to get the right answer, we look at how Jesus reacted to it. Look at verse six. It says, "And He marveled because of their unbelief and He went about among the villages teaching." That last part. "And He went about among the villages teaching." How do we respond to unbelief? We keep going. We keep sharing the gospel and leading a life worthy of a child of God. This is what Jesus did and we have to revel over the fact that Jesus kept going when it was really difficult.

Verse four says, "And Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household." Jesus's marveling would have been filled with grievous pain. Of all the people in the world who should have believed in Him, those in His hometown, his own relatives, His own household should have believed Him, but they don't. Do you know what it's like to be rejected in your own household? My wife, when she does not joyfully receive me for five minutes, I'm a broken man and that's two become one. You do become one another and there's something good about feeling that pain, but we have to make sure we don't make idols out of our spouses and their adoration.

But Jesus was rejected by His household and He did nothing. I sin, I say foolish things to my wife, to my family members. Jesus never did that. They had no reason to reject him. Can you imagine the pain He felt when people who He lived with for almost 30 years rejected him, a town of 500 residents? I'm from a town of 17,000 people and you kind of know everybody 5 years above you, 5 years below you who went and did something significant in the world. Jesus is from a town of 500 people. He should have been their poster boy, they should have been seeing how lucky they were to have Him be known as Jesus of Nazareth, put their town on the map, but they reject Him. Imagine that pain.

But how does Jesus respond? He keeps going. He knew that in his walk facing unbelief would be a fact. It would be an ordinary thing. And he says, and what does he do? He continues his primary task. He went about the villages teaching, trying to save others. He's preaching the word for His first task, telling them that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and we need to do the same, and we do it because Jesus did. But we also as we talk about this, it should remind you already about the nature of the Kingdom of God. In Mark 3:26 to 29, we read and he said, "The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not hell. The earth produces by itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe at once he puts in the sickle because of the harvest that's come."

And this is saying that to a degree God has ordained that His kingdom functions this way. What are his servants to do? They're to continue to scatter seed by preaching the gospel whether they are received with gladness and belief or whether they're rejected. And that's the call of all Christians. Regardless of the reception we have, we're called the faithfulness to this task and we submit to the Lord's way of building His kingdom. And this, when you share the gospel, sometimes you feel really foolish. When you are humbled by the grace of God and know your weakness more and more you say, who am I to send this? But it's maintaining that proper heart and keeping to the task that the Lord uses to save people and we keep going whether He lets us live in the day of profound harvest, of salvation of many souls or not, and we're just following the path of Christ himself.

So I've spoken a lot about this topic of unbelief. I hope that you do understand the fact of it, the tendencies, the nature, the consequences, but this passage does offer a whole lot more. One of the reasons Jesus was able to face such unbelief and keep going was because he knew the fact that He would face it. However, Jesus could face such unbelief and stay faithful in ministry because of His faith in his father's chosen plan to develop Him and grow Him as a disciple. And this is a discussion of the extraordinariness of Christ's ordinariness. In our passage today, we see that one of the reasons the people of Nazareth showed such unbelief is because they rejected Jesus for His loneliness and poverty. They say, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of these men and women that we know." They're saying, "His ministry is presumptuous. Who is he to preach to us in this way? Tell us what to do. What did you do? Go and hide in a cave and learn all these teachings."

What are they saying here? They're wrestling with tension of there's a tension between what they hear and learn from him and in all of its magnificence and glory, and what they see when they look at Him, they see an ordinary guy. You see in the minds of the minds people of Nazareth, a person in order to be listened to and heeded as a prophet of God must have gone to school to study and obtain a degree. They should have studied under the best rabbis of the day, God and formal teaching. But Jesus though, astonishing, He does not have that background and they reject him for that. They were offended at him. They're scandalized, they are revolted and they want nothing to do with Him for disobeying these manmade rules, these prejudices that they have over how their faith tradition should be stewarded regardless of what it says, how it weighs against the scripture, they disqualify his ministry. They're offended that such a man with such a background could teach them with such wisdom and power.

And even though the facts say that, wow, this guy's teaching is like no other. This guy performs miracles like no other. If they studied the scriptures, they should have been inclined with all the knowledge they had of Him to say maybe this is the Christ the Messiah, but instead they're revolted by Him. And so the world, it revolts against Christ's ordinariness and the people of Nazareth do that and people still do that today. Christianity is too simple. The gospel's too simple. Christians themselves are too simple. It's been the case throughout all of history.

One a great story from the Old Testament is about Syrian general called Naaman. He is essentially, Syria is the powerhouse, the force, the nation, strongest nation of the day, but he has leprosy and he's their strongest general and he wants to be healed. He hears about this prophet, this power in Israel who has his power in Israel. And he goes, where does he go first? He goes to the king's courts to find his healing. The world always thinks that the extraordinary must do extraordinary, be extraordinary by their sins and he goes to the King, the King says, "Why are you here? I don't have any authority to help you here. I can't heal you."

Then he says, go to Elisha, the prophet, and he takes his horses, he takes his royal chariot and he goes to Elisha and Elisha sends out his servant. Elisha doesn't even greet him and Naaman is offended. The servant tells him, "Go to the water, jump in the Jordan and you'll be healed." And Naaman's revolted at that. He says, "Why didn't I go just jump in the mighty waters in Assyria to get healing if this is what you are offering me?" The world is revolted at the ordinary of Jesus and Christianity, but we need to actually see the extraordinariness of Christ's ordinariness. Our Lord doesn't look at life in the same way as us. What's important to man is not important to God. How could Jesus face such unbelief in his ministry? How did he have the character to not lash out when crowds willfully dishonored Him? The answer is that our Heavenly Father believed that it was the best possible education, occupation for his begotten son before His public ministry to be a carpenter.

Jesus was 30 when his ministry started, but all the time from His early teenage years until the point of the start of ministry, He did the lowly work of a carpenter and He probably did some stone mason rework. That's what the text gets us to see here. That's why the crowd was offended at him. God has his ways of raising up His disciples to do the work of the ministry often against the standards of the world. And we need to be able to appreciate that. God's ways are different than what you and I would ever conceive. And if they were limited to what you and I conceive, would He really be a God that we can worship? And when we project expectations onto God and we say scripture doesn't align with them, we're really just forming a God in our own image. We're breaking the first commandment of practicing idolatry, but God is different.

Isaiah 55:8 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways, my ways," declares the Lord." We should revel in the fact that God's ways are greater than ours. When I know my prejudices, my biases, my preferences, my tendencies, I praise God that I'm not God because I know that I would just destroy people who are different than me. How many times have we seen people of power do that? Just rid the world, cancel the world, be revolted like the people of Nazareth are at those who are not like them and do not meet their standards. But you see, God is different. The object of Christian life when you're saved, it's to be more like Jesus, to grow in the character of Jesus and to tell other people about salvation they can have in Jesus. And so once saved, God starts to do new and good work on you. The object is no longer to impress people with our own strengths and wisdom, but to become like Jesus and pray that He would use us as much as He wills, use us profoundly in our weakness for His glory.

And God to prepare Jesus for such work, what did He do? He didn't want His son to go to the Jewish seminaries of the day. He had another school in mind and that was being a carpenter. Philippians 2:5 to 8 describes the way that God trained up Christ for the task ahead of Him. Have this mind in 5 through 11. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of a God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

I know a lot of you have read this, we return to this passage a lot because it is gold, but what I want you to take away today is have this mind among yourselves. We're supposed to have the mindset of Christ, the humble, the lowly mindset, the faith to believe that God the Father, can use the most trying and challenge of circumstances to save us and to raise us up, to grow our character, to prepare us for greater ministry.

Verse seven, like Christ, we're to empty ourselves, make ourselves some translators say, "Make ourselves of no reputation." Jesus deliberately excluded himself from positioning himself to be of any reputable status before the world. Even going as far as being willing to take on death on the cross to fulfill his calling. Jesus didn't position himself to be great in the eyes of men with His life. He was great by humbling himself and becoming obedient to the point of death on the cross. While the world shames and rejects Him for this, and Jesus was the cornerstone that the Jews stumbled over. They could not believe in a God man, a messiah whose primary mark on this earth was going to the cross, the world rejection for this. We need to praise Him for this.

God the Father knew that the best way for Jesus to have the mindset to carry out His task was to be a carpenter in a place of obscurity, a place of humility in a family without reputation or money. Jesus obeyed the Father. He deliberately chose obscurity in the eyes of men. And throughout His ministry, we see him especially multiple times in Mark to this point, even as ministry is launching, He intentionally tells people not to tell of His mighty works so that He doesn't get popular in the eyes of men according to the standards of men. He doesn't want to draw a following around those things. He wants to draw a following around people who worship Him as Lord and Savior.

And so if we follow Christ, we need to have this mindset. We need to see that all the pain of being the carpenter and Nazareth and facing this rejection from a tiny town. It was preliminary training for Jesus's crucifixion on the wood of the cross as well as rejection from his brothers, the Jews in Jerusalem. Jesus worked with wood, but one day he would be worked upon wood and he had the strength of character and the spirit of God to carry out and endure His task because of His training, God's training program in Nazareth. In His human nature, Christ faced experience that gave him a growing obedience to the Father. And as I talk about the way God, the extraordinariness of Christ's ordinariness, how God used it all to form Jesus, to shape Him for the work that he had for Him. We need to see that this isn't something that seminary offers. This isn't something that's sitting in holy huddles and small circles doing Bible study, filling yourselves with knowledge can accomplish, can teach you.

Seminary and Bible study, of course, we love scripture. I'm taking you to a really hard scripture today, the day after Thanksgiving because that's what the Lord brought us to. That's what the Bible says. We love scripture. But you can fill your head with knowledge through seminary, through bible study, through formalized discipleship programs, but it can leave you lacking in the ability to obey your heavenly Father in the face of hardship. That takes discipline, that takes hard work. It involves the development of pain tolerance, and you see, when you face hardship and the ordinary of things of life, when you're dealing with a stubborn roommate or spouse or boss, facing crazy and rebellious children, being put to the test in the face of unbelief and persecution, you can't just get the good book out and pause every time in the moment. You have to have the ability to fellowship with your heavenly Father in the moment, abide in the moment, rely upon His spirit to give you the wisdom, give you the power to handle that moment faithfully.

This is what Jesus learned in his upbringing and of course he knew a lot of scripture and was quoting a lot of scripture. We want to have our hearts and words saturated with it, but we need to know how to act out our faith as he did in the moment. Jesus learned how to wisely while facing challenges as a carpenter in a household with many unbelieving family members. He learned how to not proudly put himself forward in religious debates. He learned how to respond to rejection, disappointment with grace. He learned how to do good work, careful work, wise work for the glory of God and not himself. He lived for the glory of God in all situations as all of us are called to.

And these lessons are just being able to see the extraordinary in the ordinary in our day-to-day lives. This is some of the most important wisdom that any Christian can have. I mean, it just unlocks life. We read of God. He is sovereign. Jesus Christ, He has ascended to the throne of God and at his right hand of the Father, He is in control of all things. And so all circumstances we face, He has ordained them by his providence and we need to trust and His goodness. That doesn't mean we don't stand up for righteousness's sake in the face of sin and injustice. It doesn't mean that we become doormats in this life. We stand on the truth. We speak the truth in love, but we as Christians, we need to trust in His plan in every moment. And we need to see that oftentimes Christianity is lived out and worked out in the ordinary.

This is important for all Christians, all people, but especially young people in Boston because so many people come to the city and they take up Christianity like any other field or trade or profession, thinking that it's something to be studied, something to be mastered through work, through effort, you reap greater benefits, through study, you ascend to higher levels of knowledge and enlightenment. It's not the same.

When I became a Christian, I associated Christianity with adrenaline that I got while doing things that I was good at. You hear the word flow, the experience of flow. You feel like you're in the zone and you can go for hours and you feel unstoppable and your whole system is working in coordination with your mind. And no. Much of Christianity is going forward while your body and flesh is resisting because Jesus Christ hasn't come back to give us a new regenerated perfect body. You are called to walk forward in faithfulness and it's hard. Your body resists, your mind resists while the soul keeps going forward. And we as Bostonites, we need to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. The goal of Christianity is not to do something, step into a community and master it and get adoration from peers around us, smugly show ourselves to be more capable than others.

The goal of Christianity is different. Our calling is to show ourselves approved unto God. Two Timothy 2:15 says, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." You're saved by God's grace. He gives you a new identity and He is calling you to be faithful in day-to-day life with every task before you. And we need to see that we're workmen, we're carpenters, we're people who don't need to be ashamed, fearful of what people think of them as we pursue this faithfulness and we need to continue to rightly handle the truth. This is for pastors, but every Christian needs to be able to give a reason for the hope within them in a coherent manner.

As Christians like Christ, as we reflect on this pastor, we're to view the world as God's workshop and see that through whatever circumstances that we face in faith, we need to be humble and obedient to His plans, even to the point that obedience brings suffering and even physical pain or death. I know some of you're thinking that this is radical and it is. It's completely radical to the message of the world that tells you to live for yourself, your comfort, your glory, but it's what Christ himself did and told us to do. Matthew 16:24. "Then Jesus told his disciples that anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

Unless a person takes up this mindset, unless they're aiming for this, they can't be a disciple of Christ and their life is going to be marked by the void of God's power. All disciples of Christ should ask regularly, am I losing my life that I might find it? If that's the case, we'll find that the people around us don't approve of us, but God does. And that is what really should please our heart, that our Father accepts us. Even in our stumblings and imperfections, He's willing to give us, clothe us with more and more grace. The world may laugh and reject and despise us for our ordinariness, but we can be okay with that because they did that to Jesus. We're in good company. Isaiah 53 says, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed Him not." The world rejects Him, but when we trust Him in faith and follow Him, we're going to face these same trials.

The world might laugh at us as we try to stay humble, keep a servant's mindset in the face of adversity and persecution, but we know that we take heart knowing that the Lord proves us in Christ. Are you denying yourself to follow Jesus? The travesty of this passage, the tragedy of unbelief, is that the people of God often do not do this. They often do not deny themselves to follow Christ. That's what happened in the synagogue of Nazareth. The people of God were not denying their preferences, were not submitting their view, their religious views, their tradition, their faith to the teachings of the scriptures and the Christ himself. They weren't willing to change their preferences, their actions for Him.

Furthermore, Philippians 2:20 to 22 shows us that even Christians, even in this age of the church, a lot of Christians do not deny themselves the follow of Jesus. He says, "For I have no one like Him." This is Paul writing about Timothy. "For I have no one like Him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare, for they all seek their own interest, not those of Jesus Christ." So what church communities can be marked by people who are all seeking their own preferences and the way they go about things and the way that the ministry is operating and who speaks and how traditions are upheld.

And Paul says that what Mark shows us in this passage is that this is a tragedy and it leads to just the power of God being put out among the people. And so we each as individuals need to check our hearts to make sure that we are dying daily to follow Christ. We need to trust that God can save us and that he can use the ordinary in extraordinary ways to grow us further into the image of Jesus, and to use us for his mighty works in this life. Jesus marveled in this passage that all of these people were seeking their own good, not the things of God, not Christ himself, not faithfulness to His plan for them. Let's make sure that we don't make the same mistake ourselves. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for your steadfast love, your loving kindness, your long-suffering love toward your children, for we are prone to wander. We are prone to favor our preferences, our desires, our ways over yours. But praise be to God that you are patient toward us in Jesus, in the same way that you sent Jesus to Nazareth multiple times in the same way that Christ just continued to minister despite facing rejection. Lord, you just offer us forgiveness in Jesus, in our folly, in our stubbornness, in our hardheartedness, and we can have peace with you because of Christ.

And Lord, we pray, grow our belief. If any of our lives are marked by unbelief, we pray, help us in our unbelief. Lord, help us to identify those areas of our lives where we are not submitting to your lordship. Show us how we can be more faithful servants of your kingdom. Help us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Help us to see your word and your power going forward in our lives while the world might say otherwise and try to quench such power. We ask, give us greater faith to trust you and honor you. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

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Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have chosen to make us yours. We are so thankful that you love us with a tender fatherly love. You are the absolute perfect Father, and we thank you for your loving kindness, and we thank you for your tenderness and, we thank you that you speak truth to us in love.

You sent the word of God, truth himself, Jesus Christ. And Jesus, you came because you were moved by love. When you saw our desperate state, our sin-sick souls, and our sick bodies, oppressed by the demonic and the evil one, living in a fallen world, Lord Jesus, you were moved by love to come and deal with the root of the issue, which is our sin. You came to heal our souls, and in the process you reveal yourself to us. You give us faith and the gift of repentance, and you command us to exercise our faith.

I pray today, strengthen our faith in who you are, and strengthen our faith in what you've said. And make us a people that believe no matter what. Even if things in our life occur that are against our will, make us a people that still cry out to you, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Lord, as we look at this tremendous text, I pray that you reveal the truth to us and apply it to us. Most of all, I pray if anyone has not yet had a true saving salvific encounter with the living God, I pray they do so by meeting Jesus Christ, repenting of sin and turning to him. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is Eternal Misery or Eternal Joy. As many of you know, I've been dealing with a toothache this past month. I finally got it fixed this past Monday, praise be to God. As I was in the dental chair a couple of weeks ago, midway through the root canal, the dental assistant asks the endodontist, "Do you know why the next door dentist has been out the entire week?" She shook her head, and she said, "No." He responded. He said, "Because she had 10 family members who died in Palestine."

The jarring juxtaposition of my temporary pain and this woman's lasting pain made an impression. My pain was temporary because I'm blessed to live in a time where healing is available just by going down the street, thanks be to God, by providing medical professionals. Her pain is lasting because the forces of evil are still alive and treacherous. Despite all of our advances in medicine, technology, people continue to destroy each other.

Jesus Christ is the healing king who has come to heal our souls and restore our bodies. God loves life, and God loves people. He wants us as healthy as possible. But true health always begins at the level of the soul, and we've all come down with a terrible case of sin, and it's time to call Dr. Jesus.

The main subject of our text today is the miraculous healing of a sick woman and the miraculous resurrection of a girl. The text reveals a tender side of Jesus. It reveals Jesus who is most attentive, most sympathetic to the most hurting. He's presented as gentle, approachable, the healer of the brokenhearted, a sanctuary and a refuge for the weak and helpless. He is the great comforter of the distressed even in the present midst of suffering.

Sin makes our world a miserable place, and Jesus entered into this misery to save us from sin, to relieve the miserable consequences of sin in the world. And Jesus does bring a healing power, and we have access to his healing power by believing in him. When we believe in Christ, you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enters your body, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christians are the third temple of God, and God wants your temple, your body to be healthy, strong, resilient, and effective. Whenever we read a passage, like this healing passage before us, when we read passage like this in scripture, we are to be reminded that human health is important to God, therefore it should be important to us. And the Holy Spirit... us holistically healthy.

With that said, would you look at our text today in Mark 5:21-43. Mark 5:21. "And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and alive.' He went with him.

"And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment, for she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.' Immediately, the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

"Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?' His disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" He looked around to see who had done it, but the woman knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'

"While he was still speaking there from the ruler's house, some who said, 'Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?' But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.' And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, and James, and John the brother of James.

"They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered he said to them, 'Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' They laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.' Immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and he told them to give her something to eat."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, fallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Jesus has presented the gospel of Mark as the king of all kings above all kings, king with ultimate authority. He has ultimate authority over God's word. He has authority over nature. He has authority over Satan and the demonic. And in our text today, reveals that he has absolute authority even over humanity's greatest enemy, death itself. He's not merely just a prophet or a miracle worker, he's the very son of God, the one promised through the pages of the Old Testament.

Note the similarities between the two miracles. Both the petitioner here desires to be made well, and the word that's used in the Greek is salvation, to be saved. Both the petitioner falls at Jesus' feet, and both the person who is healed is called daughter.

In the case of the daughter, the little girl had... In the case of the woman, she's been ill for 12 years, and the other, the girl, is 12 years old. The condition of the two female sufferers render them ceremonially unclean, the woman with her menstrual disorder and the other girl by death. In both cases, the uncleanness is boldly ignored, and in both cases, both the case of the woman who touches the garment of Jesus and when Jesus touches the girl's corpse, fear is mentioned in both and faith is a factor in both.

Three points to frame up our time, or three sections. First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. Then, 12 years of joy end in temporary misery. Then, the question before us is eternal misery or eternal joy.

First, 12 years of misery end in eternal joy. This is verse 21. "Jesus crossed again on the boat to the other side and a great crowd gathered about him. He was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, 'My little daughter's at the point of death. Come, lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live,' and he came with him."

Jesus left the shores of Capernaum to escape the crowds. In the interval, he calmed a raging storm and delivered a man from the grasp of a legion of demons. That was last week. Now he returns, and the swarm is there to greet him. We meet Jairus, who's one of the rulers of the synagogue. It's an honorific type bestowed on someone who has been distinguished through their service to the synagogue. This is a person who is respectable, substantial, of good... prominent, and moral.

We see that not all the Jewish authorities were opposed to Jesus. In his homeland, this person's one of the Jewish leaders, and he has particular insight in who Jesus is. He's heard of Jesus' miracles. He sees Jesus. But he's not here as a spiritual leader, he's here as a desperate father. He's heard that Jesus can heal, and he comes to Jesus asking for healing. He's interceding for his daughter.

Despite his high rank and his prestige in the community, he falls humbly at Jesus' feet, prostrated before the king, acknowledging, "Jesus, I'm helpless. I don't have the power that I need. I need your authority, and authority and a power greater than mine." He's probably taken significant risk to his reputation, but his desperation brings him to his knees. There was no other option.

C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, his famous quote is... He says, "We can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

His little daughter is quite ill, at death's door with an unspecified malady. The father here is the first of three parents in the Gospel of Mark coming to Jesus, begging and imploring for healing. In all three cases, the sick can't do it for themselves, and it's a parent that steps up. It's a parent that intercedes.

This is a reminder for every parent. Parents, one of our main jobs is to intercede for our children, to stand on our knees before the Lord and beg for their souls, and beg for their bodies, beg for their minds and ask the Lord to protect and bless. Jesus here listens to Jairus's plea and immediately goes to heal the daughter. As he went, the excited crowd goes with him, surrounds him, making it hard to walk.

Verse 24: "A great crowd followed him, and thronged about him. There was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse." Instead of alleviating her suffering, the doctors had only made it worse. It was a chronic bleeding that she experienced. Despite all of her most persistent efforts, she didn't get better. The illness became increasingly debilitating as she grew older and she spent all her money on a cure to know avail.

Also, this illness makes her ceremonially unclean. She's in a perpetual state of uncleanness, meaning she is virtually ostracized from the community. She can't go to the temple. She can't go to the synagogue. Even being around her meant people were considered ceremonially unclean. It was a miserable condition.

The secrecy with which she approaches Jesus shows that she knows that she shouldn't be out in public. She's violating a taboo. She too, like Jairus, believed that Jesus had the power to heal. And despite the crush of the crowd, she somehow manages to get close enough to reach out to him.

I do want you to notice that the woman is at the opposite end of Jairus, as opposite as you can be, socially speaking, economically, religiously speaking. He's a male leader, she's a nameless woman. He's a synagogue official, she's ritually unclean and excluded from religious community. He has a family with a large household, she has spent all of her money trying to find a cure, impoverished by doctor's fees. How their fortune seemed to be suddenly reversed, his loss of time becomes her gain. The same crowd that slowed Jesus down toward his progress to Jairus's daughter gives her an opportunity to be healed.

Verse 27, "She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." This moment of contact is grammatically highlighted here in the text. The verb "she touched" is the first finite verb after a series of seven participles. It's read, "And a woman being in a flow of blood for 12 years and having endured many treatments, having spent all her money on them, having not benefited but rather having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus," and then it says, "She touched his garment." The word touch here gains extraordinary intensity. This is the climax of the story.

Although her uncleanliness was supposed to transfer to Jesus, the opposite here happens. His purity overpowers the disease. The idea of healing to be brought about by contact with a holy man's garments, we see this idea in the Old Testament. We see this even in the apostles, and the idea's presented all throughout scripture. In one instant, 12 years of pain just disappeared. 12 years of suffering disappeared. 12 years of humiliation, everything just changed in a second. She's healed.

Verse 29, "Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?'"

We know from text like Philippians 2 that Jesus' eternal glory and power were veiled in his human flesh. He did his earthly ministry not from his own power but from the power of the Holy Spirit. He voluntarily set aside divine attributes when he took upon himself the form of a servant. But despite his voluntary limitations, Jesus knew that God's power had gone out from him. He felt that this healing cost him something. It cost him some kind of power, some kind of spiritual energy, which is one of the reasons why we see him often escaping after a season of intense ministry where he loses spiritual power. He goes and he spends significant time with God, the Father, to recuperate in prayer.

At this crucial point in the narrative, the focus suddenly shifts from the human perception of Jesus to Jesus' perception of humans. It's a switch in perspective that's often used particularly in the Epistle Galatians 4:9. "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God." From God's perspective, he does the knowing first.

In Mark 5:31, "his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around, and yet you say, "Who touched me?"'" Are the disciples being dense or sarcastic? I think they're just focused on the mission in front of him. "Jesus, we have to get to this girl. Jesus, you see how important it is that Jairus's daughter gets healed. We know that delay can be fatal. So why are you asking this seemingly silly question?" Since the crowd was so large and people thronged from all sides, the disciples here are perplexed by the question.

But Jesus won't let the woman just touch him and leave. Here you have to pause and say why. She had great faith. She got the miracle that she needed. But Jesus pauses everything and in a very public way has her speak. He wants to speak with her, and he wants her to confess the power of God that she just experienced.

It's not enough for a believer to just believe in your heart. There's no such thing as an anonymous Christian. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord in your heart, the next step is you have to confess that he's Lord with your mouth, and this is what Jesus is doing. He doesn't just want to heal her body, he wants to heal her soul, so he says, "Who touched my garments?" Whenever Jesus asks a question, he's not looking for information. He's looking to elicit a confession. He wants her to speak.

In verse 32, "He looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth." She comes in fear and trembling. Her heart was throbbing. Her eyes are tearing up. Would he take the cure away? Will she be punished for breaking the ceremonial law? Would he be angry that she made him unclean or that she tried to steal healing?

Jesus here, like a skillful doctor, wounds in order to heal, and he does it tenderly. This is a costly confession to her. That's why she comes with fear and trembling. To speak before a crowd above such personal matters would be incredibly humbling. But humility is an essential part of the kingdom of God.

She tells him the whole truth, a phrase that's used in judicial proceedings to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She's not ashamed to publicly testify that Jesus Christ did heal her.

After her confession, Jesus turns to her in verse 34 and he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease." He calls her daughter. She's not related to him. Most likely we don't even know how much older he was than her, but he calls her daughter. He loves her with the heart of God, the Father.

What he's communicating to Jairus, who's here, Jairus, who's enjoyed his daughter for 12 years, just 12 years of bliss, he says, "Jairus, in the same way that you have loved your daughter, cared for your daughter, in the same way that you are in pain because of your daughter's pain, I have felt the same over this woman. She is my daughter."

The woman was healed because she touched Jesus with faith. She touched Jesus, believing that God could heal her, that this man wasn't just a man, that he was the son of God. For her, faith isn't just intellectual ascent. She knows that, "If I touch him, something will happen. I will be transformed."

It's faith in Jesus or is it faith in God? Well, that's a false dichotomy. They come to Jesus, both Jairus and this woman, knowing that the power of God comes through Christ. He says, "Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you." The Greek says... It's a Greek word "sozo". Her bodily healing is a good picture of the healing of her soul, and that's why Jesus stopped her. Then he says to her, "Go in peace," which in the English peace is just the absence of strife or the absence of hostility. In the Hebrew, it comes from the word "shalom", which just means wholeness or soundness, holistic health. He says, "Go in this peace." After receiving the benediction, she does.

The other reason why he has her publicly announced the healing is to welcome her back into the community. He announces this publicly so that the community knows she's no longer ceremonially unclean. She's been healed on a spiritual level, on a physical level. Now on a social level, he welcomes her back into the community.

This story of the woman is our story. We have been, as believers, touched by the power of God, and we've been separated from the faithless crowd by our fearful and wonderful knowledge that Jesus Christ is God, Jesus Christ is Lord, and he has the power to save our souls.

The second portion of our text is point two, 12 years of joy and in temporary misery. Verse 35, "And while he was still speaking, there came from the ruler's house some who said, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" This is the most absolute heart-wrenching news that a parent can hear. What parent has not sat 3:00 AM with a sick child begging the Lord, praying over them, "Lord, remove the fever"? What parent has not driven anxiously to the emergency room with a wounded or severely sick child?

It's bad enough that she was sick, but now she's died. But knowing if Jesus had not been slowed down, he might've made it to the girl in time probably makes things worse. It seems like Jesus slowed down almost on purpose, almost like he did with Lazarus. He waited two days until Lazarus was surely dead before coming and resurrecting him. The time for emergency medical procedures passed. So why was Jesus wasting his time with this woman, having a conversation with her? Her illness wasn't life-threatening. Couldn't he just come back to her later as a sense of triage so amiss? Well, the answer to that is there's enough power of God to go around for all.

My daughters were yesterday arguing, quibbling, quibbling is the word, over which holiday is the best. All three of the youngest landed on Christmas. Christmas is my favorite. Then they got an argument of like, "No, Christmas is my favorite. No, Christmas is my favorite." My response was, "It can be all of our favorites."

This is access to the power of God. His power is not diminished by giving His power to one. It's not lessened to give it to another. Therefore, His timing is always contrary to our timing.

Verse 36, but overhearing what they said, "Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe.'" Jairus at this point must've been reeling. He must've been thinking, "Lord, take my life, not hers. Let me die instead of her." But Jairus had witnessed a miracle. He had witnessed the testimony of this woman. He witnessed how tender and compassionate Jesus was with her, and he had witnessed her faith, and that faith most likely inspired his faith.

Jesus tells him, "Do not fear, only believe. Keep on believing." What he's saying is, "Ignore the reality that you're seeing. This isn't ultimate reality. This isn't all there is. What you see is not all there is. Ignore the |reality of death and clinging to Jesus' promise of resurrection."

Jairus had believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. That's why he came to Jesus. But a resurrection, could Jesus really resurrect her? Jesus is calling Jairus to an even greater level of faith. Often, we do experience delays in life. It feels like when we ask for something from the Lord and it's just delay, delay, delay, sometimes it's easy to sit back and say, "I don't think the Lord loves me anymore." Jesus here is showing that his love is compatible with delays. His grace doesn't come on our timetable, therefore we're not supposed to impose our timetable on the Lord.

For Jesus, there was no more problem to resurrect the girl than to cure the fever. Therefore, in times of delay, we are told to keep trusting. Do not fear, keep believing. We don't know all the facts. God does, therefore we are to trust him.

2 Corinthians 4:17 says, "For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

Teresa of Avila says, "From eternity, the most miserable life in the history of the earth will look like one night in a bad hotel." From God's perspective, 1,000 years is but a day.

Verse 37, "And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John the brother of James." Jesus dismisses the crowds and instructs them to stay behind. He takes his three most important disciples. I'm calling them the big three from now. The big three are Peter, James, and John. He welcomes them in to see the resurrection. These three will be given a foretaste of Jesus' glory at the transfiguration. These three will be welcomed to pray with Jesus and share in his suffering at Gethsemane, so he welcomes them to go with him.

Verse 38, "They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly, the families in shock." In Matthew's narrative, it's clear that professional mourners were hired and they were already brought in. In that context, you would hire mourners, wailers, and flute players who arrived. They communicated to the community of what had transpired.

Verse 39, "When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why are you making commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' They laughed at him, but he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was."

The professional mourners, they know death. They're experts in death, therefore they laughed. "What are you talking about? Jesus, we know that she is dead." They laugh at Christ with derision. Jesus is using this metaphor of sleep to tell them that he is about to resurrect her. He is about to wake her up, so to speak. She's not dead but sleeping. Jesus is interpreting death from God's viewpoint.

The purpose of this declaration is that death will not have the last word for God's people. God's people do not die. Physically, yes. But we, our soul, we continue living. Jesus puts all the scoffers outside and enters the room only with Jairus, his wife, and the three disciples, and the existence of a separate bedroom, for the girl is testimony to Jairus's wealth. Most Palestinian dwellings from this time were poor, one-room affairs.

Verse 41, "In taking her by the ha nd, he said to her, "Talitha cumi," which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.'" Jesus never hesitates to contract ritual defilement by touching a leper or touching a dead person. Why? Because he's holy, and his holiness is overpowering. It's more contagious. It's more transmitting than the sickness.

He says to her, "Talitha cumi," He speaks to her in Aramaic. This is interesting because Aramaic seems to have been the usual speech in the Jewish home, especially in Galilee. Greek was certainly the literary and cultural language. Hebrew was the religious language. But at home, the heart language was Aramaic. Aramaic was Jesus' heart language.

The command "ephphatha" given to the mute man or when Christ was on the cross, he says, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which is Aramaic, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He addresses God as Abba, father.

The risen Lord spoke to Mary in her own language, in Aramaic, and that she turned and spoke to him in Aramaic, "raboni" , which means teacher. Jesus here speaks to this little girl in her heart language. "Talitha cumi." Little girl, wake up. Little girl, arise."

Verse 42, "And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age, and they were immediately overcome with amazement. He strictly charged that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat."

Everyone was overcome with amazement. It was one thing for Jesus to calm the storm, it was something else for Jesus to cast out a legion of demons from the poor man in the text last week, but it's something altogether different for Jesus to resurrect this little girl. And he does so just by speaking. He's demonstrating that he is Lord of all, even death itself.

I love this little detail at the end that he tells them, "Hey, feed her something," which for me shows... This is eyewitness account. Why in the world would you include that little detail that adds nothing to the progression of the narrative? Because it happened. Because Jesus doesn't even overlook, despite the commotion or practical need for food.

That brings us to point three, eternal misery or eternal joy. Jesus here is more than a prophet. He's more than even Moses or Elijah. He's Lord of all creation. He speaks. He commands the winds and the seas. They all obey him. He is Lord even over Satan and his whole dominion. And now the people of Israel see that Jesus is Lord even over death. He is the one who has come to reverse, overturn the curse, undo the effects of the fall of Adam upon the human race.

Jesus' mission wasn't just to come feed people, wasn't just to come teach people, wasn't just to come heal people. No. Jesus has come to deal with the root of all human suffering. He's doing things that the crowd does not understand. They're blinded by their immediate needs. They only see what Jesus can do for them.

Jairus and the woman here are the exception. They approach Jesus not just with demands, but with faith, humble faith. They seek healing, but they also exercise faith in God. Jairus seeks help from Jesus. And when help does not come how he wants it to, he keeps trusting, he keeps believing. They come to him with faith that he is who he said he was.

Even if the woman had not been healed, and even if Jairus' daughter had not been raised, they still would have believed that Jesus was sent by God and that God's will had been done even if the outcome was not what they wanted. This is the difference between faith and unbelief. Faith accepts the outcome regardless. Regardless of what happens, thy will be done, Lord.

The great Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, lost his firstborn daughter. Then 40 years later, preaching on the story of Jairus, he writes this: "I can hardly speak of this matter without becoming personal and reminiscent, remembering a time 40 years ago when my own first lassie lay at the point of death dying. I called for him then, and he came, and surely said to our troubled hearts, 'Fear not. Believe only.' He did not say she shall be made whole. She was not made whole on the earthly plane. She passed away into the life beyond.

"He did say to her, "Talitha cumi," little lamb, arise.' But in her case, that did not mean stay on the earth level. It meant that he needed her, and he took her to be with himself. She has been with him for all those years as we measure time here, and I've missed her every day. But his word, believe only, has been the strength of the passing years."

Like Jairus and the woman who comes to Christ, we must also come to Christ in faith, faith that God is good and that God is loving, faith that he is the one whom God sent, Christ is. And he answers all of our prayers not necessarily according to our desires, and not necessarily according to our timing, but according to God's perfect and holy will.

At times we may hear the glorious words, "The child is not dead," or we may hear the tragic words, "The child has died." But no matter what, faith accepts the will of God. Why? Because true saving, living faith understands that when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, he's pointing ahead to the end of the age when Jesus himself will heal all of our diseases and raise all of God's people from the dead.

What happened would soon become common knowledge, but Jesus strictly charges them not to tell anyone. He is managing the messianic expectations of the crowds. There was much yet for Christ to do, and we see that the raucous crowd was already interfering in some ways.

The word here when Jesus says arise is the same word that Christ uses talk about his own death, that Jesus was buried, that Jesus was dead, and he did rise from the dead. This right here is one of the greatest truths about Christianity, that we will all die. And if the Lord should tarry, after that comes the judgment. And we need someone to raise us from the dead, and we need someone to bring us through the judgment that we deserve.

This little girl, she died twice, as did Lazarus. Then what? Then comes the judgment. Then we stand before God. God at that moment is going to tell us either you go into eternal joy, eternal bliss, or into eternal punishment. This is Matthew 25:46: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." I wonder when's the last time you meditated on eternity. It just does not end. It's eternity. It's not a hundred years. It's not a thousand. It's not 10,000. It just does not end. It's either eternal life or eternal punishment.

2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, "This is the evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering, since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."

Jesus Christ came because he understands that there is eternal suffering in the future of those who would turn from him. That's what every single one of us deserves. But Jesus came in order to provide salvation. He endured infinite misery to save us from eternal misery. Jesus doesn't suffer for all eternity because he is fully God with infinite glory and power. Jesus overcame eternal suffering by overpowering it with his infinite glory.

Jesus, when the woman touched him, perceived that power had gone out from him. Well, that was a foretaste. It's a foreshadowing of what happened on the cross. The reason why this woman became clean and Jesus did not become unclean wasn't because the uncleanness disappeared in thin air. No, he took her uncleanness, and he took it upon himself to the cross. He bled like the woman. He came to become unclean in our place. He had to go into death like the girl so that she could be raised to life. He lost the father's hand on the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the father's hand in order to be able to extend it to us.

2 Corinthians 13:4, "For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God." With his humanity, Jesus endured the crucifixion. With his divinity, he endured eternal sufferings, our eternal sufferings, the eternal sufferings that we deserve."

Jonathan Edwards in his 1729 sermon, The Sacrifice of Christ Acceptable, says this: "Though Christ's sufferings were but temporal, that is not eternal, yet they were equivalent to our eternal sufferings by reason of the infinite dignity of his person. Though it was not infinite suffering, yet it was equivalent to infinite suffering, for it was infinite expense. His blood which he spilled, his life, which he laid down was an infinite price because it was the blood of God, as it is expressly called."

Acts 20:28, "The Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. His life was the life of that person that was the eternal Son of God, though it was the life of the human nature. Now upon this account, the priced offered was equivalent to the demerit of the sins of all mankind, and his suffering's equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole world."

Christ suffered infinite suffering to save you, to save me from eternal suffering. How do we get that salvation? How do we get eternal life? How do we get our sins forgiven, the condemnation removed? All you have to do is reach out to Christ in faith. In faith, reach out, and touch him. Have that encounter. Believe that as you reach your hand is there, his hand is there grasp onto yours, and then his coursing healing power goes through your being.

Faith takes hold of the power of God, and faith takes hold of His transforming power. This is what saves us. It's faith in Christ. He says, "Don't be afraid, just believe." There is a purifying power in the blood of the lamb of God. No matter what we've done, no matter the uncleanness of our sin, the uncleanness of our lawbreaking, all you have to do is ask for the Lord to purify you, and He will, and He does. All you need is need. All you need is recognition of your need.

How much faith do you have to have in Jesus? Just enough to come, just enough to cry out to Christ, just enough to say, "Lord Jesus, have pity on me." The Lord is so gracious. He doesn't refuse anyone that comes to him and says, "Lord, help me."

Even if your faith isn't perfect, even if you're brand new to the faith... There's a guy in the scripture that says, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." Even that is enough. Even that is enough to come and to be safe. So, come to Christ wherever you are, doubts and all, and he will begin the process of healing.

At this point, I'm going to welcome a brother from the congregation, Brother Robert. Round of applause as he comes up. He's going to testify to the incredible work of God in his life and in his family's life, and just a testimony that God's power is real and he's still working amongst us today. Thank you, Robert.

Robert:

Morning, everyone. I'm here to share a testimony on behalf of my wife Carissa, my daughter Caitlin, and my son Thomas. For those who don't know me, my name is Robert. When I'm not here playing keyboard, I'm actually working in a biotech company. In fact, I have medical training as a surgeon. This is relevant because two years ago, the weekend of Thanksgiving, my daughter became very sick.

It started the weekend of Thanksgiving. She had a party with her friends on the Friday. Saturday, she was a little tired. We thought she was recovering from the party. And on Sunday morning, she refused to get out of bed. While that's normal for a lot of teenagers, it wasn't normal for her. She was highly irritable. She just wanted to curl up and sleep. We felt concerned enough that we manhandled her into the car, took her to the emergency room. And amongst other things, they put a needle into her spinal cord, take some fluid, and it was bad news. They found white blood cells in her cerebral spinal fluid, and these cells presumably were there because of an infection that was affecting her brain.

Her ventral diagnosis was something called viral encephalitis. This is where a random virus just affects your brain. It's random enough that it could be one of myriad viruses, and oftentimes you don't even detect which one. The most common viruses that cause this are the ones that cause mouth ulcers and chickenpox. But even then, it's incredibly uncommon. Happens to about one in a million people.

I had the experience of actually treating a patient early in my career who suffered from this. He was a 20-something-year-old PhD student. Came into the ER because he had a fever that was so high it was affecting his brain, something called malignant hypothermia. He was rushed to the ICU. The next thing I heard, two days later, he was dead. That was going through my head the entire time Caitlin was diagnosed.

Viral encephalitis has a mortality rate of about 30%. Of those people who don't make it, these patients who present late like Caitlin, because she was already quite symptomatic, that statistic gets even worse. The patients who actually do push through, the vast majority have lasting serious neurological issues. All these things were running through my mind as we were going through this.

She was rushed to the ICU, had a huge number of tubes and leads hooked up to her. She was comatose. She was looking a lot less like Caitlin, and her body and face were puffing up due to inflammation and fluid retention. I was also thinking, "Did I doom her because we brought her in too late from the hospital?"

At some level, I always thought through my training that I could deal with any medical situation with professionalism and dispassion. I now know I'm not able to do this. I was a broken man, devastated that my daughter was being stolen from me right in front of me and I was powerless to do anything about it.

Pastors Jan and Shane came quickly when we called them. I'm sure Pastor Jan has his own story about what happened. I distinctly remember them walking into the ICU with great gentleness, knowing how grave the situation was. They also told us they usually ask for God's will to be done, but this time their sense was to pray for God's miraculous healing. I don't remember everything that we prayed about, but I do remember a distinct feeling that God was in the room and in control regardless of the outcome.

A couple of hours after they left, Caitlin started discharging fluid like crazy. It was so sudden and so intense, the doctors worried about additional medical complications that could cause fluid imbalance. But her face started returning back to normal, and she showed the smallest hints of improvement, such as moaning a little when they were drawing blood.

There was one particular moment when we were changing her IV fluids, and she muttered something, and I shouted at her, "Caitlin, hi." Miraculously, she pried her eyes open and said back, "Hi." That was the sweetest greeting I've ever heard.

She spent four days in the ICU, another four days in the hospital ward. She missed over three weeks of school, but managed to return and still somehow managed a 4.0 GPA. She's now attending college. She's coming home next Tuesday for Thanksgiving. That will be celebrating two years since we almost lost her.

I don't know how much of this experience was medical versus spiritual, but I do know that every fiber of my being was that Pastors Jan and Shane were vessels of a true miracle that happened that day. In addition, there was an absolute army of people praying for her, our community group, many of you here, were praying for her. Friends, and family, and neighbors across the US, Asia, and Australia. Literally hundreds of people covering her in prayer 24 hours a day. Prayer is powerful. Her neurologist and infectious disease specialists said that her rapid and complete recovery were incompatible with her disease, and I call that a miracle.

One more thing. Caitlin liked to spend time in her room with the door just slightly ajar. When she was in the hospital, her door was open all the way, which was because we dragged her out of bed and got her to hospital. I was forced to close that door, since the open door reminded me that she was terribly sick and that she may not be able to come back home. Maybe that's similar to when Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb, that someone took Jesus' body, which was an additional insult beyond his crucifixion. Right now, her room is wide open, and that's okay not necessarily because she returned to health. Her open door should symbolize God working for our good regardless of outcome.

Her open room door is also a reminder that as great as Caitlin's miracle was, and even greater miracle is the empty tomb, Caitlin's salvation is just a hint of Jesus' redeeming power dying for all our sins and the pain, sickness, and suffering which are consequences of that sin. And he rose again that we could have ultimate hope for our own deliverance.

The lesson in this storm is not just to appreciate God's ability to miraculously heal. The lesson is that whatever happened, it brought our family and this army of prayer warriors back to the heart of worship, and it helped us focus on God's sovereignty, provision, and redeeming power. Thanks for listening.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for revealing yourself to us, revealing true reality to us, revealing that you exist and that the spiritual realm is as real, if not more real than the physical realm. And in the spiritual realm, a battle wages and it's a battle for our souls. And we thank you, Lord, that you did not leave us in captivity to the evil one, Satan, but you sent one who is stronger than the strong man himself. That's Jesus Christ, our king, our conqueror, and our victor. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you came and you came with authority.

By the power of the Spirit, you cast out demons, you rebuked Satan, and you freed many. And I pray, Lord Jesus, if anyone is in the bonds of sin today and the bonds of the evil one, I pray today save them. I pray today send them the power of the Holy Spirit and free them from sin and Satan. And Lord, we do pray that you empower us to live lives of faith and not just walk by sight recognizing that we do have an enemy. Satan walks around, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he would devour.

And I pray today that everyone that hears my voice, I pray today that they are saved by grace through faith in Christ. And I pray, Lord, for anyone who's not in Christ, remind them that they are vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy, even being possessed by the evil one and the demonic. And unless we're covered and protected by your power, we are exposed. And I pray, impress that reality upon our hearts. Bless our time as we search out the scriptures today, as we meditate upon your holy word.

I pray, Lord, strengthen our ability to wield the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen. We're continuing a sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. We've entitled it Kingdom Come, The Gospel of Mark and the Secrets of God's Kingdom, and the title of the sermon today is the King over Legions. What is true power? True power is the ability to exert your will upon reality. And the greatest level of power is the ability to change reality simply by speaking.

However, if you believe the material is all there is, then you'll never understand true power. The material is not all there is and behind the veil of the material, the physical realm is the spiritual realm, the invisible realm, the unseen realm. In the unseen realm, a violent battle is fought over humanity, over both our physical and spiritual destinies. But this isn't a battle of equals. Satan is not equal to God, nor is Satan's power equal to that of Jesus. Jesus is more powerful than the strong man Satan.

And Satan has invaded this world and he's invaded it with his influence and his lies. Satan has colonized the world that belongs to God. Therefore, God sends his Son Jesus Christ to take it back, and he does so by conquering Satan with his word. "Be gone, Satan," and Satan is gone. "Get behind me, Satan," and Satan gets behind him. God's word stands at the intersection of the scene and the unseen, and God's word reveals God's will for us in this realm. God's word exerts his will for this realm.

And Jesus is the source of all true power. He speaks and he exerts his authority. He is truly the word of God, and he reigns in this world when the word of God is proclaimed, when the word of God is believed, obeyed, and rejoiced. Isaiah 55 tells us that God's word never returns to him void without fulfilling the purposes that he set out. Isaiah 55:10. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out for my mouth.

It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I have purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Last week, we read how Jesus in the text prior to ours today, he calmed a storm simply by speaking. Be still and it was still. And now in our text today, Jesus meets a man with an equally violent storm within him and the storm of the demonic that surges within him.

Jesus quiets by doing the same thing, by speaking his word and the violent demonic storm that turned this man's life into misery, and tragedy is stilled and the man is saved, the man is renovated from within. Today, when Mark 5:1-20, would you look at the text with me? They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs of man with an unclean spirit.

He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."

For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit." And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs, let us enter them." So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about 2000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

And the herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.

And he did not permit him but said to him, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. This is the reading of God's holy, inherit, infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. A demon-possessed man is saved, a demon-possessed people are not, and a Jesus-possessed man proclaims Jesus.

First, a demon-possessed man is saved. In Mark 4, Mark has grouped together three of Jesus' parables and he does so to illustrate the nature and the character of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is growing and the kingdom of God is unstoppable. Mark then groups together three accounts of Jesus' miracles revealing that Jesus isn't just the king in name alone. Jesus has the authority of God upon him and he is the king in the kingdom of God. And these miracles demonstrate Jesus' lordship, his lordship over creation and calming the storm, his lordship over Satan and the demonic.

That's our text. And then next week we'll see Jesus' lordship even over death itself as he raises a young girl from the dead. Jesus is Lord of all seen and unseen. In verse one, it says, they came to the other side of the sea to the country of the Gerasenes. With good weather, the boat trip would take about two hours across the Sea of Galilee. But last night we remember from last week's text there was a storm and the disciples spent all night unnerved and reeling. It probably took them all night to cross the sea.

Finally, Jesus calmed the sea. So probably in the morning they're still processing what happened. They're all exhausted, Jesus himself also, from a long day of ministry, and then he was awakened by the disciples. So he and his disciples, they make sure somewhere in the district of the Gerasenes and on a map, these small cities or towns would almost be directly opposite of the Sea of Galilee.

And while the beach there is relatively flat, about one mile south of the city of Kersa, there's a region with steep slopes coming up to the shore where a number of caverns and tombs have been discovered. Most likely this is where it takes place. In verse two, when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. So no respite for Jesus. No break. No rest. There's the pesky word immediately again. It shows that Jesus' life and ministry was a life of whirlwind day in and day out, seemingly speeding up by the day.

Jesus was anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit at his baptism, anointed as the ultimate prophet, the ultimate priest and king. And here the king goes to battle with unclean spirits again. The man characterized as a demon-possessed man, a man with an unclean spirit, simultaneously is frightening and also pathetic, also helpless. And no doubt that people in the area knew all about him. Most likely they considered him either insane or knew that he was possessed by demons, and they knew that he was a threatening presence.

Thus, they tried to chain him up in order to protect him from himself and from the people. He has an unclean spirit. He's unclean because he lives amongst the tombs, and he's in Gentile territory that were considered an unclean people. And they're herding pigs which were considered an unclean animal. Rabbis even condemned the raising of pigs. So this man is an epitome, a very embodiment of uncleanness itself. The furthest you could possibly get from God. And that's exactly where Jesus heads to the person that needs him most.

The demon possession here is not just a psychological problem, but alien occupation. He's with the unclean spirit. He's demonized by it, possessed by it. It's inhabiting him and squeezing the very life out of him. In verse three, it says he lived among the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. So he's absolutely dominated by the unclean spirits and they've endowed him with supernatural strength, the supernatural strength that comes from Satan, who is called the strongman, but he's abandoned. He's alone. He's alienated, ostracized, just living a wretched existence, life of agony, despair, and desperation, and walking around, spending all night crying out and wailing.

The people tried to restrain him. They could not. The restrainment was for his self-protection. Even that didn't help. It says night and day he was among the tombs. He was forced to sleep amongst the corpses, amongst the dead, which in and of itself is frightening. Night and day he was terrorized. And the demons, what are they trying to do? They're trying to destroy him. Thus, the self-destructive behavior, self-mutilating. And the demons who have possessed them, they delight in distorting the divine image in him, the image of God and the dignity with which God created us.

So the demonic possession has reduced the man to living as a suicidal savage and an object of fear, scorn, and disdain amongst the people. And here we got to pause and say, careful with saying that's him, but I'm in a completely different state myself. Apart from God's restraining grace, Satan would bring each of us into a state like this or even worse. Apart from Christ, there's only a difference in degree between you and this man, not a difference in kind.

Apart from Christ, you are enslaved, dominated by sin, therefore leaving yourself vulnerable, exposed to demonic possession, control, and manipulation. And until someone is a subject to Christ's rule, all human beings are subject to the devil's rule and control. It might not be as demonstrable as with this gentleman, it might not be as graphic or as grotesque, but the of ordinary people as just as inescapable and just as deadly as it was for this man. Verse six, when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him.

And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." The demons know exactly who Jesus is. They know his identity, although Jesus is in human form, and Isaiah 53 says that Jesus had no beauty and nothing about his appearance would attract us to him, nothing about his appearance would identify him as the Son of God, but the demons recognized him immediately. They recognized the indwelling power of the Spirit that Jesus has, a very presence that has provoked the demons to wrath.

The fact that the man runs to Jesus, falls down before him shows that the battle in the unseen realm has been waging for some time. And the demons know they're defenseless against Jesus, that they can do nothing to resist him, except cry out and ask not to be cast into the fires of hell. And here the demons, they masquerade themselves. They don't present themselves as legion from the very beginning. They actually speak in the man's voice, in the singular.

Meaning when you have a conversation with someone who is demon possessed, you might have no idea until you bring up the subject of Christ. What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? What do you want to do with me? The demon reacts as though Jesus has come to bring the final judgment. And when the demon speaks of Jesus as Son of the Most High God, it's not a messianic title. He knows exactly where Jesus came from, his divine origin, his divine dignity, and the demonic here, tries to overpower Jesus by speaking an incantation.

He says, "I adjure you by God, do not torment me." The demonic is trying to use the name of God to overpower Jesus. Obviously that won't happen. But the phrase to adjure is standard exorcistic terminology. It was employed when an exorcism would happen. You would say, "I adjure you by the name of God," And that's what the demons are trying to do here. But what they're trying to do reveals how powerless they are. All the demons' actions reveal that in the presence of Jesus, they have no power.

When the demon causes the man to bow down before Jesus, when the demon causes the man to yell out, when the demon invokes the name of God to gain control over him, all of this communicates helplessness in the presence of Christ. The power Jesus exorcizes over the demons is that much greater than their power. Verse eight, for he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit." And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many."

My name is Legion. We don't know the man's name. We know the demonic army's name. The man's whole personality has been commandeered by the demonic. He's completely lost himself. His psyche has been utterly overwhelmed. His consciousness has been subsumed. He has lost his name. He has lost his identity. He's been swallowed up by the demonic. He's lost all control over himself. The term legion is a military term referring to about 6,000 foot soldiers, 120 horsemen.

And the point is that there's a large body of demons acting in concert, just as a military unit would, as they're opposing Jesus. And we're reminded that Satan is real and he is ruler over an enormous host of subordinate spirits, the demonic. And here Jesus is confronted not by one demon, but by an army of them, in the same way that a believer can be evermore filled with the Spirit, evermore led by the Spirit, evermore controlled by the Spirit. The varying degrees of control of humans by Satan is just as real.

How did it happen with this man? We're not given the backstory, but scripture is clear that when we reject God, God gives us up to our sins. This is Romans 1. Three times it's repeated. And God gave them up. God gave them up. God gives people what they want when they reject him. And often that takes them down a spiraling road away from God and ever closer to the demonic. Verse 10. And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. So he's using the man's voice, the legion is, in order to defend himself.

The region across the Sea of Galilee was largely Gentile, and therefore the demons felt comfortable in a region where there weren't any worshipers of God. They wanted to stay there. Verse 11. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him saying, "Send us to the pigs. Let us enter them." So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about 2,000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

Why would Jesus allow the demon permission or the legion permission to destroy someone else's property and their livelihood? Well, first of all, everything belongs to Jesus. Jesus is king. He's king overall, even over people that don't bow a knee to him. He can do as he pleases with what he has. He also does this in order to graphically illustrate to the townspeople the intentions of Satan. This is what Satan wants to do with absolutely every single one of us, to destroy us. He wants our bloodshed.

He wants to kill us, and it gives us a foretaste of the judgment that is coming when Jesus comes back the second time to destroy all of the works of the evil one. The man is set free from the evil powers, but the evil powers want to continue destroying God's created order, and thus they terrorized the herd of pigs. The kingdom has come, but it's not fully consummated. Yes, Jesus on the cross dealt with Satan and he gave Satan a death blow. But until Christ returns the second time, Satan is still at work.

Jesus prevents the demons from doing further harm to the man and he's freed from them. Their rebellion continues today, although restrained by Christ and the gospel and will until the last day when they will be tormented. Uncleanness, like sin itself, is thrown into the depths of the sea In Micah 7:18-19. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us. You will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. This was supposed to be a graphic illustration for the herdsmen and for the townspeople, but the herdsmen responsible for tending the pigs aren't amused. They've just watched their livelihood run down the hill and drown themselves. And that brings us to point two, a demon-possessed people are not saved. Verse 14. The herdsmen fled and told in the city and in the country.

And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. It didn't take long for word to spread about what had happened. People from all over the area came to see it for themselves. And what do they see? They see Jesus Christ, and they see this man who must have been famous in that area who had been demon-possessed. He's dressed.

He's sitting. He's calm. He's composed. And from his demeanor, it's absolutely clear that he is in his right mind, restored and whole at last. Jesus has arrived. The alienated is reconciled. The guilty is pardoned. The demonized is delivered, and the dominion of sin is overthrown. The demons are exorcized. Whereas the chains couldn't hold him down, now he's sitting there of his own will with Jesus Christ. The devils destroy what they can control and that's their only pleasure, bringing destruction.

But God here, what does he do? He purifies the man. He renews the man, beautifies the man, makes him glad, gives him peace, and sets the purposes of his heart on that which gives life, which is God. And when the people witnessed the immediate and dramatic transformation, what do they do? Do they say, "Praise God. The presence of God is with us. Jesus, tell us more now?" No. It says that they were terrified, and terrified not with a good fear of Lord, forgive us of our sins as we enter your presence in fear and trepidation.

No, it's a fear that actually pushes them away from God. This account has powerful parallels with Isaiah's prophecy of the messiah coming and both people part of Israel and people who were part of the Gentiles would reject him. Isaiah 65:1-7. I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, "Here I am, here I am," to a nation that was not called by my name.

I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices; a people who provoke me to my face continually, sacrificing in gardens and making offerings on bricks; who sit in tombs and spend the night in secret places, who eat pig's flesh and broth of tainted meat is in their vessels, who say, "Keep to yourself. Do not come near me, for I am too holy for you." These are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all the day.

Behold, it is written before me: "I will not keep silent, but I will repay. I will indeed repay into their lap both your iniquities and your father's iniquities together, says the Lord, because they made offerings on the mountains and insulted me on the hills, I will measure into their lap payment for their former deeds." Israel's messiah has come. He came to Israel and the religious elite rejected him. And they started plotting to kill him. And here he comes to the Gentiles, and the same thing.

They reject him. This demon-possessed man has been delivered. And yet sadly, the people here act just like unbelieving Israel. They saw a miracle. There's clearly evidence of this miracle. This man has been transformed, but they're not interested in Jesus even though his authority over the demonic is now clear for all to see. And this just points out that for the hard hearts and the stubborn necks, there's never proof enough of God's existence or of Christ's divinity.

And those who had witnessed the event now attempt to explain what they saw to the crowds in verse 16, and those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man to the pigs, and they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. And as is sadly in situations like this, the crowds forget completely about the man who was terrorized, the man who has been saved, who's in his right mind. They're far more worried about what? About what happened to their pigs.

They're far more worried about the financial cost to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, coming in to their lives. And so without a word, they actually beg Jesus. It says beg. They don't just insist. They beg Jesus to leave. Jesus may have made them safe by saving this man, but they obviously wanted nothing to do with him. A word about the pigs. If your first thought in reading this account was, "Oh, poor pigs," I would submit to you that your values are as warped as these people. For God, one eternal soul is more valuable than all the animals in the world.

Matthew 12:12. "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep," Jesus said, "So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Jesus said, if a person is worth more than a sheep, obviously a person is worth more than a pig. In Mark 8:36, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? We hear Jesus is clearly saying, you can take all the wealth, all the treasures in the world, all wealth of all time, and still it would not be as valuable as that of one precious soul.

The very presence of Jesus means the presence of the kingdom of God and the presence of God brings new values. In the kingdom of God, one soul is more precious than even the world itself. Do you believe this? Do you believe this about your own soul? Well, how does that then translate into the priorities of your life, the priorities of your time, the priorities of what you're preoccupied with? Are you preoccupied more with the material, more with food and drink and clothing and housing, et cetera, et cetera, than your own soul?

And then how much more should we care for the souls of the people around us? This is disturbing for these people that the kingdom of God has come in, that Jesus has almost come in with an invasive power. But this is how kings work. Jesus has come with an invasive power. He's invading that which is his. And yes, there's always a cost to following Jesus, and often that cost is financial and the people resented that financial loss. The man was possessed by a legion of demons and these people are possessed by a legion of money.

And sometimes Satan is very explicit as he was with the possession of this man where you could clearly see this man is under the influence of the demonic. But most of the time Satan is much more subtle than that. You look at a person, they look fine. They look calm. They look like they're in their right mind, but their hearts are possessed by idols, and for these people the idol was money. The demons desire to stay in possession of the territory.

Why? Because they want to stay in possession of the people and the human agents here who want to evict Jesus from this land are under the influence of the same demons. The human opposition of Jesus reflects the demonic one, and what's implied is it's the same source. Sometimes Satan reveals himself explicitly most of the time, especially in the West. It's very, very subtle. He comes as an angel of light, scripture even says. 2 Corinthians 11:14. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So it is no surprise if his servants also disguised themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. Think of the greatest opposition party to Jesus Christ, that of the Pharisees and the religious elites. In a conversation that Jesus has with them in John 8, he clearly says, "You are not on the side of God. You are not aligned with God. You're not part of the family of God." He says, "Your father is actually the devil." In John 8:39, they answered him, "Abraham is our father."

Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual morality. We have one father, even God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God.

The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God." If Jesus isn't your Lord, Satan is. And apart from Christ, Satan is having his way with you. And Satan wants nothing to do with Christ, wants nothing to do with the word of God. That's what Jesus makes clear. Ephesians 2:1-10. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which he once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we are dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Apart from Christ, we're all wretches like this man. We're all alienated, hostile to God and impenetrable bondage to sin, hurting ourselves and others. Colossians 1:21.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister. When Jesus Christ comes into their region, so does the kingdom of God, which means the day of decision is here, the day of decision has come.

And people would rather not have to make a choice. They would rather put up with this crazed man, demon-possessed man in the tombs, in the caves. Just you stay over there. We'll stay over here. Your demon-possessed. We're not. They'd rather do that than repent of their sin and turn to God. They'd rather be left alone by God and vulnerable to the demonic oppression than face the reality of God. They would rather believe Satan's ultra convenient lie about a third kingdom, a neutral kingdom.

And a lot of people are like this. No, I don't follow Christ, but I don't follow Satan either. I am in a neutral kingdom, a third kingdom. It's secular. It's humanist. It's material. There's no spiritual. But that, friends, is Satan's most potent lie. It's the strongest, most powerful lie that there is neutrality, that there can be independence. That's not true. There's no such thing as neutrality when it comes to God. Neutrality toward God is rebellion and seeing a man totally free from the bondage of sin, the demonic, hits a little too close to them.

They now can't hide their own bondage to sin. A lot of people want Jesus to free them, Jesus to help them, Jesus to remove guilt, Jesus to remove shame, or Jesus even to remove the demonic and then leave me alone. That's not how it works. Jesus actually has a story where he says, if a demon is cast out of a house and then the house isn't dwelt with the power of the Holy Spirit, that demon goes out and takes his friends, comes back to the house, and the person is left off even worse.

We want Jesus to free us, but not to rule over us. Jesus as savior, but not Jesus as king. But there is no freedom apart from submission to Jesus Christ. Only true freedom is found with him. Sadly, Jesus is too much of a threat to their way of life, to their comfort, to their money, and so they plead with God to leave. Point three is a Jesus-possessed man proclaims Jesus. Verse 18. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.

And he did not permit him but said to him, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." While the locals begged Jesus to leave, the delivered man begs Jesus to go with him. Jesus, you're my new master. And in the Greek it's clear that he has become a disciple of Jesus. So he wants to stay with Christ, stay with the disciples, instead of staying with people that view him as an object of scorn. And Jesus refuses the request perhaps because a Gentile in his group of disciples would be an impediment to the mission to the Jews.

Something interesting you find here is that Jesus gives the demons what they asked, and Jesus gives the townspeople what they asked, but he did not give the man what he asked for. And sometimes when God gives us what we want, what we ask for, it's actually not a blessing. And when he doesn't give us what we ask for, that's where the true blessing often is found. There are times when the worst possible thing for us is that the Lord should actually grant our prayer. Psalm 106:13.

But they soon forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel. But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to the test in the desert. He gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them. So whenever we pray, whenever we plead with God for the desires of our hearts, we also need to end it with, Lord, not my will, but yours be done. Why did Jesus tell him to stay? Wouldn't it be better for the man to go with Jesus? Well, yeah, he would have the physical presence of Jesus Christ, but Jesus cared not just about this person's soul.

You're saved now. He cares about the souls of the people back in town. He cares about the souls of the people that rejected him. He cares about the souls of the people in the 10 cities in the Decapolis. And so the man goes back in the Decapolis. How is the level of his theological training? Zero. What does he know about Jesus thus far? Does he know that Jesus is part of the trinity? Does he know that Jesus is fully God, fully man? What does he know about God?

All he knows is, "I was demon-possessed. I was hurting myself. I was hurting the people in my life, and then this Jesus showed up and he saved me. And now I am a completely different person. Before I was doing what the demons wanted me to do, now I'm doing what Jesus wants me to do. I was possessed by Satan. Now I am possessed by Jesus. I'm possession of Jesus. If he sent me free..." And by the way, people talk about this all the time like demons, demons, demons.

We live in society, we don't really believe in demons. But then Halloween happens and everyone believes in demons, or when people are talking about inner sins or inner foibles, and they're like, "Everyone's got their demons." Everyone apart from Christ has their demons. And this man was freed from the demons, just like everyone today that cries out to Christ can be freed from demons. And when you are free from the demons and when you are saved by Christ and you're free indeed, how are we to respond?

The very first response should be, I want to spend time with Jesus. And then Jesus tells us, "Go and tell your friends. Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, how he has had mercy on you." You are the absolute most compelling preacher of the gospel in your friends' lives, people that know you, people that see the growth in you, people see that God's working in your life. So proclaim to them.

And Jesus says, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you," and then the man goes and he tells everyone how much Jesus has done for him. Why? Jesus is saying, "I am the Lord. I'm the Lord of the Old Testament. I am Yahweh. I'm sent here to do his work." And the man didn't just proclaim, didn't just tell people, he proclaimed it. In verse 20, he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

And this is evangelism. You tell people your personal testimony, how much Jesus has done for you, how much mercy Jesus has had on your soul. And to do that, you got to meditate on how much the Lord has done for you. How much has the Lord done for you? Well, he has had mercy on your soul. He saved you from Satan. He saved you from the bondage of sin. He saved you from a real eternal conscious suffering and damnation. He saved you from the lake of fire. He saved you for his kingdom.

He's given you a new heart, new affections, renewed mind. He's given you a love for him, a love for his people. That's supernatural. And he's filled you with the Holy Spirit and he protects you and he preserves you. And he also gives a submission to go and proclaim the good news. What God has done for me, he can do for absolutely every single person. That man had thousands of demons and Jesus saved him. For those who have fewer, Jesus can save them as well.

And we may not have been delivered from a legion of demons, but we sure have been delivered from guilt and the power of sin. And because our heart should be filled with gratitude because all that God has done for us in Christ, how can we not share this great news that God has saved us? And also, some of you in a group of this size, I'm certain that some of you are still in the grip of the evil one. You're no match for him. That's what the text shows us today. You alone are no match for the evil one.

You're no match for even one demon. You will never escape. And then when you think you are about to escape them, it's too late. Today look to Jesus Christ. He's the only one who is greater than Satan. He's the only one who has a greater authority and a power. He can do for you today what he did for that man who is in the grip of many demons those many years ago. The Lord says, "He who comes to me, I will never drive away." So come to Christ today, cry out to Christ, ask for salvation.

Lord, have mercy on my soul, and he will. I can knock at the door of your heart and others can urge you to be reconciled to God, but Jesus Christ alone can come, insert the key, open the door, and drag out by the hair the forces of evil that are now controlling your heart and mind. Through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus who is Lord over wind and rain, Lord over the forces of hell and Satan, and Lord over even death itself, God will set you free and make you stand strong.

And here I want to close with Ephesians 6 as a reminder that spiritual warfare, it's real. When scripture says fight the good fight, that fight is a real fight. And we need weapons that are greater than just the physical weapons of this world. We need spiritual weapons. In Ephesians 6 they are outlined. But I want you to just notice the emphasis on standing. He says, "Stand. Stand. Stand. Keep standing firm in the strength of the Lord and his might." Ephesians 6:10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breast play of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for a powerful word from your holy scriptures. We thank you, Jesus, that your words are more powerful than Satan himself. Your words are more powerful than even legions of demons. When you speak, they are gone. And Lord, I pray that your word continues to abide in us.

And I pray that your word continues to strengthen us. And I pray that by the power of your Spirit, we have strength that you allot to us to withstand the attacks of evil and to withstand his temptations, to withstand his lies, to withstand his accusations. And Lord, as we proclaim the gospel to our friends, to our neighbors, as we tell people how much mercy you've had on us, I pray that you give us the power of the Spirit so that they too are converted, so that they too are freed, so that they too are transferred into the dominion of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.

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Heavenly Father, we recognize that we live as fallen people in a fallen world. Yes, it's all because of our own rebellion and subordination of trying to reject your authority. Lord, we understand that we live in a world that is under the curse. Lord, in this world, we do experience suffering and pain and we experience trials and tempest. Sometimes life becomes tempestuous. Storms come. Lord, in those moments when the storms do come, I pray that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit to stand unflinching on the gospel and the word of God. That you are a great God, there's nothing outside of your control. You are sovereign and that you are good God. You love us and you long to bless us. Sometimes you bless us by protecting us from the storms.

Sometimes the greatest blessing is your own presence and protection within the storm. Lord, I pray from the holy scriptures today, remind us that a fruit of the Holy Spirit is peace. That we are to be a people who are characterized, defined by peace, the tranquility of heart, despite the storms. Lord, when the winds of this world blow and they blow against us, I pray that we are not blown from one doctrine to another, but we stand fast and hold on to the anchor of our souls, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures and we pray all this in Christ's beautiful name. Amen. We are continuing our sermon series to the Gospel of Mark. We've entitled this, "The Gospel of Mark and The Secret of God's Kingdom."

The title of the sermon on this communion Sunday is the Storm Calming King. One of the most accurate gauges for how strong your faith is, is to take an inventory of your current fears, anxieties, and worries. What worries you the most today? Perhaps the state of the economy or your own personal finances. How are we going to keep paying the bills? Perhaps it's inflation or politics or war or disease or perhaps you're more concerned about finding love or keeping love, about losing health or aging. For the wellbeing perhaps of your children, you're most concerned, or not measuring up intellectually, physically, financially. Or how about death? Do you experience fear when you consider death, of what it would mean to meet the living God?

The Holy Word proclaims that God gave us the spirit not of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control. The spirit of fear is not from God. God doesn't want you living in a constant state of panic. Peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. So we are to be calm and cool, even in the face of storms. The most effective, sustainable way to counter our fears is with a greater fear, a fear of God, and to truly believe in God, to truly know Him as He is to fear Him. Our text today is Mark 4:35-41. Would you look at the text with me? "On that day when evening had come, he said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.' And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was.

And other boats were with him and a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling, but he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And when they woke him up, they said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Be still. Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?' And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'" This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points as we walk our way through the text, a great storm, a great calm, and a great fear. First, a great storm. Jesus had called these disciples by coming to them and commanding them, "Follow me." His very first sermon, both to them and to everyone else, was the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe. What he's saying is, "I am the king. I'm the king of everything. The way you enter my kingdom is repenting of sin and believing in me." Those are the two most important lessons of the Christian faith. This is how everything begins and this is how everything continues. Repent of your sin and believe and follow Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus spends in chapter four, parable upon parable explaining to the disciples, trying and impress upon their hearts the importance of paying attention to God's word, of listening in a way that you actually hear and heed and obey the word of God. So after teaching his disciples lesson upon lesson and preaching, now comes the test. You've all taken tests. Are you a good test taker? What makes for a good test taker? Is it just the power of recall? It's more than that. It's the power of recall under pressure. In particular in a pop quiz, you weren't ready. Pop quiz, here we go. Do you know the information? Have you mastered it? We learn about truth, the truth about God and who we are from the Holy Book. Then we're called to apply this truth in real life.

That's the real test. Can you apply the truth in real time? Often God does test our faith and he does so with sudden unexpected storms. Will your faith be blown off course? Usually, the storms come in the form of some pain, some suffering. Can you continue trusting God when the skies have darkened, when lightning strikes, when you feel like you're sinking? Can you trust God, believe in God when it matters most? So Jesus administers the test in Mark 4:35. "On that day," it says, "when evening had come, he said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.'" On that day and in context, we see what happened on that day in Jesus' taxing life of ministry.

The day started where he's casting out demons and then the Pharisees and the scribes of the Pharisees, they accused Jesus of doing the work he was doing by the power of Beelzebub or Satan himself. Jesus says, "No, you saying that is actually blasphemous." There's tensions. Whenever there's a conflict, whenever there's tension, there's all adrenaline pumped exhaustion. That's what Jesus went through. The second event of that day was when his mother and his brothers came to take Jesus by force almost. Then Jesus turns around and He looks at his disciples and He says, "Who's my mother? Who's my brothers? Who's my sisters? It's those that do the will of God." Then He spends all day preaching to the biggest crowd yet.

There were so many people that He was forced to back off from the shore and start preaching from a boat using the boat as his pulpit. So after exhausting day of ministry in the hot sun, Jesus says, "Let us go across to the other side." The Greek tense reveals a note of urgency in Jesus' decisions to depart. Perhaps he's hit a wall physically where you just can't continue. He didn't have the physical strength to go on. So He tells the disciples, "Let's go out to sea." Whose idea was this? This is important to notice. Whose idea was it to get in the boat that evening and to go into the sea that night? It was Jesus' idea. It was Him taking them right into the storm almost as if it's a setup and it is.

He's setting them up to test their faith. He loves them and He wants to strengthen their faith in God and fear of God. God does not promise that when we serve Him, when we obey Him, when we believe in Him that we're going to lead a life of smooth sailing. Jesus doesn't promise to protect us from experiencing storms. He promises to protect us in the midst of storms. The sermon of the Mount in chapter 7, verse 24, Jesus says this, "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on the house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell. Great was the fall of it." But notice in both of these paths, the people that obey God, the wise people and the people that disobeyed God, the foolish people, they both experience storms. The question isn't, "Are you going to experience a storm?" The question is, "Will your faith weather the storm?" Obedience to God takes them right into the heart of the storm, into the eye of the hurricane, so to speak. This shows us that service to Christ even does not exempt us from storms.

The 12 disciples seem to be doing all the right things, forsaking everything, following him, listening to his teaching, growing in their faith, doing all He commands. They're as obedient as you'll find. Jesus says, "Let us go to the other side." The other side was predominantly the Gentile Decapolis, a region where most of the people there were Gentiles, they were pagans. They did not believe in Yahweh. So Jesus here is showing us that He's the prophet similar to Jonah being sent to the Gentiles except Jesus did it willingly. Verse 36, "And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was and other boats were with him." So He's been preaching in the boat and then He just goes to the back of the boat and to the stern, finds a cushion, and goes to sleep.

What kind of boat was this? It was probably one of the ordinary 15-passenger boats, 26.5 feet long, 7.5 feet wide, 4.5 feet high, with a little platform in the stern that protected from the elements. Also, notice it says that other boats were with him. The other boats aren't mentioned later in the text. It does nothing to further the plot. Why is this detail here? Because it's just showing us this is eyewitness account as they remembered this detail. So Jesus is exhausted from his day, climbs into the back of the boat. The boat hoist sail and begins the five-mile trip across the lake. Verse 37. "And a great windstorm arose, and waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling."

The sea of Galilee is about 700 feet below sea level and it's surrounded by mountains, by Mount Herman and the Eastern Shore. The mountains go up about 9,200 feet above sea level. So there's about a 10,000-foot difference between the top of the mountain and the bottom of the sea. What happens is cool air sometimes rushes from the top of the mountain down to the sea, which is warmer and it creates this thermal buildup. Tremendous storms, violent changes of weather were known in that area, come out of nowhere severe and treacherous. We know that God is creator of all things and He is the controller of the natural world and natural phenomena.

This is also the God that once in a while, He tames or uses creation in order to provide salvation for His people. For example, when he's leading His people out of the exodus and they get to the Red Sea, an east wind was sent by God and dried up the waters. Already Mark has shown that Jesus is the Son of God. At His baptism, the heavens were torn open and the Holy Spirit comes down upon Jesus. God the Father speaks, "This is my son in whom I'm well pleased." Jesus has already proven that He's king over demonic by exercising demons. He's proven that He teaches with a new ring of authority as if it's His word, which it is. He heals the sick, which shows that He has power over sickness. Here Jesus shows us that He has power over creation, but not yet.

He waits until the disciples are unnerved. A tempest arises. The waves are breaking into the boat and the boat is filling up with water. The verb translated breaking in is a strongly expressive verb, meaning literally hurled upon. The description of the storm reminds Biblical readers of the story of Jonah. Note the similarities between the two narratives. There's departure by boat, a violent storm at sea, a sleeping main character, badly frightened sailors, and a miraculous stealing related to the main character, and then a marveling response by the sailors. Even the vocabulary that's used is similar. We're about to die or the sea died down or they feared a great fear. But also, we have a significant difference between this text and the Jonah's story.

Unlike Jonah, Jesus is not fleeing the will of God no matter how hard it is. No, He's actively involved in accomplishing God's will. Also, the disciples don't ask Jesus to pray to the Father. They go to Jesus directly. So they had faith that He could save them. That's why they're asking for the help. Jesus is greater than Jonah in that He has power over creation. So Jesus is more God than Jonah. Life storms are like this. The disciples had smooth sailing for a bit, and then out of nowhere, immediately a storm is upon them. In life, this happens often. Everything's fine and then you get that one phone call. What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? It means to be a learner and there are infinite lessons to learn. Sometimes those lessons are learned by reading.

Sometimes those lessons are learned by weathering storms. Though the disciples were mostly oblivious to this in the moment, the terrifying storm was actually God's grace and teaching them more about God and more about God's power in their lives. Storms and hardship are an adversity, are essential in our spiritual development. God is a loving father. He does not give us a life without difficulties or trials or stresses or pain or suffering or setbacks or failure. Why? Because He wants us to be strong. He wants us to be as strong as possible in the faith. Verse 38, "And he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?'"

By the way, these are very experienced fishermen. Peter and Andrew had their own fishing business, and John and James had their own fishing business. They've seen storms, but here this one terrified them. So it must've been some storm. They're freaking out and they wake Jesus. There's a hint of resentment, of reproach as they rebuke him. It's almost as if they're mad at Jesus for allowing this situation. Jesus, we did all the right things. We did everything that you told us to do. Why would you allow this to happen in our life? Jonah, for example, Jonah's situation, yes, that storm was punishment for his disobedience, but they had been obedient. That's why they feel aggrieved. Jesus is in the stern. I love the detail that he's asleep on the cushion, climbs in there, just finds a pillow.

He's like, "This one's for me," and just goes into comatose, so a nap, just a tremendous nap. By the way, be like Jesus once in a while, take a nap. There's something here that's majestic about this detail if you meditate on. Jesus, He did get exhausted in His human form. He's God incarnate, but in the human body, He's bone tired after an exhausting day of ministry. Even the storm couldn't wake Him up. In a moment from now, Jesus would calm the storm, but first, He slept in a weary body. Here we have a grand display of the opposites of weakness and omnipotence coalesced into harmony too magnificent to be the product of human imagination. No other religion, no other worldview, no other ideology comes even close to something.

God incarnate, God becoming one of us, remaining fully God, yet fully human. There's something so reassuring here that Jesus knows the human experience from the inside. He's been through it. He knows what it's like to be human, and we know His sleep is intentional, thus the cushion. So He is completely in control. He controls the weather, therefore He could have foretold the weather. So this is all a setup. It really is a test. God loves saving at the very last moment, in the 11th hour, when the odds are insurmountable where it just seems impossible. So Israel, as they're coming out of Egypt and the Exodus, they get up to the Red Sea. You got the Egyptian army breathing down their neck. They're trapped, they're doomed.

Then in the last hour, God saves them. Or Gideon's army or Sarah or Ruth or widow loses her son or even Lazarus. Jesus goes to Lazarus' funeral and they're like, "Why are you here? If you came a little sooner, you could have healed him. Why are you here? It's too late." It wasn't too late. Jesus resurrects him. Jesus sleeping here indicates His calm trust in God. Psalm 4:8 says, "In peace, I will both lie down and sleep for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." The disciples call out that Jesus as they're awakening Him. They call him teacher or rabbi. Rabbi's been teaching them and they don't realize that the rabbi's continuing to teach them. They cry out, "We're perishing, we're about to die."

This verb, the identical form in the Septuagint and the Greek translation of the Hebrew is used in the Jonah story. Then the crux of their question is, "Do you not care? Do you not care?" The question uses the negative particle in the Greek, ou. It's asked in a way that makes clear. They think they know He cares, but at this moment, they're not sure. "Jesus, you care, right? Jesus, you care for us, don't you?" That's what they're saying. I think we've all felt this. We've all had moments in life where it feels like God just disappears. God just hid His face or it feels like God is asleep and they're crying out, "Lord, save us. We're about to die, we're overwhelmed, we're crushed."

Worry in our lives comes from either forgetting the power of Jesus over the storm that He is great, or doubting his commitment to us in the storm that He's good. We either doubt that He's great or we either doubt that He's good. In those moments, I'd like you to remember three things. First, realize that feelings of anxiety or fear, trepidation, those are natural, but we are not to trust in our feelings. Our feelings are fallible. The size of the waves and the fury of the wind and the sight of the water accumulating at the bottom of the boat, the boat is sinking deeper and deeper into the water, into the lake. All of this makes the disciples almost forget everything they've learned about Jesus. J. C. Ryle says this, "Sight, sense, and feeling make even believers very poor theologians."

Here you got the theology of what's happening in that moment, in that storm, when all the theologists throw out the window. We have to pause, we got to meditate, because right now, here and now we are not in a storm. It's times of peace in which we need to study God's word and not just learn the truth, but embody the truth. Where the truth becomes so much part of us that we understand that God is in control. At this moment, you could have said to the disciples, "Hey, do you really suppose that God's plan for the world is going to come to an end in some unforeseen accident? Do you really suppose that the Messiah Himself would drown as He's crossing the sea of Galilee?"

Couldn't they see that no boat ferrying the son of God, no boat carrying the savior of the world was going to sink? Couldn't they see that high as those waves were deep as the water was getting in the boat, as wild as the winds were, there was no safer spot in the world than being in that boat with Jesus Christ? Faith knows that God is sovereign, but sight forgets it often. At these moments, we are to walk by faith and not by sight. Meaning don't just judge everything you see physically, but what do you see with the eyes of your soul, with your faith? Second, salvation isn't always from circumstances but through. We'll get to that in the second point.

Then third, even when you feel like you're drowning, even when you feel like everything is falling apart, you are sinking, just dismantling of everything, at those moments, it's okay to run to Jesus and wake Him up. No matter how much He was enjoying that nap. Have you ever had a nice nap and then someone awakens you? What's your first reaction? I know what mine is. It's irritation. You're just groggy. Jesus doesn't get irritated for them waking Him up. He is grieved by their lack of faith, by their lack of trust, but He doesn't rebuke them for their fretting cries for help. In these moments, we are to remember that when we run to God, when we cry out to Him honestly, from the depth of our soul, He hears those pleas and He will answer. So Jesus is awakened.

This brings us the second point of great calm, verse 39. "And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased and there was a great calm." So He says to the sea, "Silence, peace." Then he says, "Be still." That's the same verb that's used in chapter 1, verse 25 where Jesus casts out a demon. He tells the demon, "Be still", but in the Greek, it's more than that. It's be muzzled, or one translator says, "Shut up." He's telling the storm to do what He says because He's king over the storm. He doesn't rescue them from the storm, but He stills the storm itself. Only the one who had initially created the sea and the wind, it's only His place to rebuke the storm and the storm and the wind's instant obedience show us who's in control.

It's God himself that's in that boat. It's Jesus Christ, the creator. In Him all things were created, through Him all things were created. He's also the redeemer. It's significant that when Jesus lends his authority to His disciples to go cast out demons and do miracles, He never gives them power over creation itself, over nature itself. That power belongs to the Son of God, king over the natural world. When the authors of the Psalms reflect on the fact that God doesn't just help us in the storms, He also sends us those storms. Psalm 46, for example, the Psalmist says, "God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble. Though the waters roar and foam." Psalm 65 says, "He stilled the roaring of the seas and the roaring of their waves." Then it says, "There was a great calm."

That's the same verb that's used for the calming of the sea in the Jonas' story. Remember the other boats, there were other boats with them? Well, the text doesn't say anything else about those boats, but that detail shows us that the calming of the storm wasn't just for the salvation or preservation of these disciples, but also, it was a miracle of mercy in a wider scale. Psalm 107:23-32 is an incredible parallel passage to meditate on. Some went down to the sea in ships doing business on the great waters. They saw the deeds of the Lord, His wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths. Their courage melted away in their evil plight.

They reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits' end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters are quiet and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. Let them extol him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders." Whenever you are experiencing a storm in life, let us never forget that with the Lord Jesus Christ, everything can change in a second. With the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing is impossible. No stormy sins are so strong that He can't tame them or He can't save us from them.

No conscience is so disturbed that He can't speak peace to it and make it come. No despair is so deep that it can't be replaced with unspeakable joy. No sinner, not even one is beyond the reach of our savior. Christ can speak so to any stormy soul, "Peace! Be still!" Scripture says, "Greater is he that is in us than he who is in the world." Matthew 4:40, He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" After conquering the external threat of the storm, Jesus turns to the internal threat. This is His follower's unbelief. After rebuking the storm, He now rebukes His disciples and He says to them, "Why are you so afraid?" The word for afraid here is deilos, which means cowardly. So Jesus here is rebuking them for their cowardice, for their timidity, for their lack of courage.

They challenge Jesus by saying, "Don't you care?" Now He's challenging them by saying, "Why are you so cowardly? Why are you such cowards?" By the way, what would your answer be if you were the disciples? We almost died, Jesus. That's why we were cowardly. We were almost dead, wiped out. Yes, you are the God of the world we know, but in that moment, come on. There's a reason for it. So why is Jesus calling it out? What He's doing is He's pointing out that a secondary fear has become a primary fear on their hierarchy of fear. He says, "Why are you so afraid? Why are you so cowardly?" Meaning you are afraid of something more than God. You fear something more than God. What was that in their case?

Perhaps suffering, perhaps pain, perhaps drowning, perhaps death itself. They fear death itself more than fearing the God that was in the boat and that's why they rebuked Him. The Lord rebukes cowardice. Here are a few points just to point out. As believers, we are to grow in courage. This is what it means to be encouraged. God infuses courage in our hearts. Sometimes for that courage to grow, we need a nice rebuking and Jesus Christ rebukes his disciples. If you have a Jesus that never rebukes you for anything, that's not the Jesus of reality, that's not the real Jesus. If you have a God that never contradicts anything you do, never calls you to repentance, never calls you to change, you don't have a God that's the real God of reality.

The real God does rebuke and we are to look to scripture for training and for teaching and for encouragement and edification. But we are look through the scripture and say, "Lord, rebuke me. Teach me where I need to change." Proverbs 24:10 says, "If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small." This is what Jesus is rebuking them for. The Lord's sleep did not only show His very natural weariness, it also showed His tranquil faith. He did not doubt that God is sovereign. Here Mark shows that faith and fear are mutually exclusive in scripture. It was because of their lack of faith that they feared that they were about to drown. So it was for a lack of faith that they are rebuked. The command and scripture that has reiterated more than any other is do not fear.

Jesus says, "Why are you afraid? And then have you still no faith? Don't you have faith yet?" Here Christ is showing that He, God, takes our craving and fear as a personal insult. Where is your faith, disciples? Is it in me? If it isn't me, I'm right here. I didn't go anywhere. I was right there with you the whole time. So we need to hear from time to time from our savior that our faithless ways, especially in light of the Lord's demonstration over and over years in our lives of his faithfulness, our faithlessness is inexcusable. It's actually a sin that we must repent of and put to death. There is no excuse for us to not understand that when we experience troubles and trials and storms of life, it's because God allowed them in our life. They passed through His hands.

If He is for us, then who can be against us? So we need this rebuke and the rebuke itself is a powerful encouragement that we can grow more courageous. We can grow out of our cowardly ways and we can become deeper believers. In our passage, faith seems to have two aspects. On the one hand, it's a trust like Jesus. Here He is exuding a basic confidence in God's provident care. On the other hand, faith is also trust in Jesus. By the end of our passage, faith has come to mean a perception of who He really is, His cosmic stature. He is the son of God and the conviction that nothing bad can ultimately happen to the person who was with Him. In this text, we see this progression that Jesus moves just from being an example for our faith to actually being the object of our faith.

Isaiah 45:6 and 7, "I am the Lord and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make wellbeing and create calamity. I'm the Lord who does all these things." I want to walk you through Psalm 23, one of my favorite psalms, one of our favorite psalms, one of the most famous ones. I want to show you that all of these truths are right there in that psalm and just show you that transformation is promised when we keep trusting the Lord. Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that's where the faith ends. You come to the Lord.

He's your shepherd and He's going to take you in bucolic green pastures, delicious running water. He takes care of all your needs. That's awesome. No, that's just the beginning and then the story continues. Verse four, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they come from me." How in the world did we end up from green pastures... Bucolic running water is tremendous. How do we go from there to a valley of the shadow of death? The shepherd led him there. The good shepherd led him into the valley of death. God loves us and bad things happen. Both are true. Jesus was perfect and bad things happened to Him.

David here, he doesn't fear that despite seeing only shadows, experiencing near death, he takes comfort in the fact that the shepherd is close. The shepherd has been leading me. He continues to lead me and He will surely lead me through and out. Jesus doesn't always lead us around danger or protect us from danger. Sometimes He leads us into green pastures. Sometimes it's into danger and sometimes He protect us by means of danger. Perhaps the valley of shadow of death was to train David, to learn, to grow in wisdom, to not go through bigger valleys, deeper valleys of shadow of death. He allows us to experience present pain often to protect us from future pain.

In verse three, "He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." So the path of righteousness sometimes goes through green pastures and often it goes through valleys of death. Most importantly, David didn't lose sight of the shepherd. I just want to point out that his relationship deepened with the shepherd after going through the valley of the shadow of death. Look at how he changes the way he addresses the good shepherd. In verse two, "He makes me lie down. He leads me besides still waters." Verse three, "He restores my soul." Verse four, "Even though I walk through the valley of shadow death, I will fear no evil for..." It doesn't say he, it's no longer he. It's for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil and my cup over overflows. His relationship with his shepherd changed. It became more personal, it became more real. God became more present, and this is the universal experience of God's people. If you ask a believer, "At what times in your life did you experience the presence of God like never before?", and they will no doubt tell you a time when they had to walk through a valley of the shadow of death. Charles Spurgeon said, "I've learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages." God doesn't always shield us from danger, but He shields us in the danger, sometimes with the danger and leads us through it all.

Sometimes He does it all so that we get a cup that overflows with comfort for others. Sometimes He sends us affliction so that we learn to be comforted to pass through the affliction and then we become even more useful instruments in His hands to comfort others. 2 Corinthians 2:3-6 says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer."

What a difference it would've made if the disciples had exercised faith that night. Imagine if they got a take two. Jesus, let's do this again. We are terrible at that first pop quiz. This is awful, but imagine if the next storm, all of a sudden, Jesus is in the cushion. They were like, "Jesus, we know what you're doing." All the storm comes, it's filling up. I'd be standing right next to Peter. Peter would be the wild man. Just be fishing off the boat, just enjoying it, just maniacal smile, laughter. All of a sudden, the suffering, the storm turns into an adventure. No matter what, I'm in the hands of God. No matter what, until Jesus says we are invincible, we are immortal until our job is done. Imagine being brought to the brink of death but preserved. That would've been the gift of a deepened faith.

Point three is a great fear. In verse 41, it says, "They were filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'" They were filled with the great fear. That's the same idiom that's used in the Jonah's story when the sailors saw the power of God. Here Jesus' great authority leaves them in awe. The word for fear here is different than the previous word for afraid. The word for fear here is phobos, which is the proper response to a manifestation of the divine. They see that God is with them. Whereas the other word, deilos was cowardly. It was reprehensible because they didn't trust in the Lord. The disciples respond to Jesus' question about their cowardice with another question, "Who is this with us in the boat?"

Well, who is this? This is the Messiah. This is the Son of God, the one that Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18. He said, "A greater prophet is coming after me. Obey him." The idea here has been magnified. Magnified because obedience is rendered to Jesus, not just by people, but even by creation itself. Even the wind, even the sea, they obey Him and leaving the disciples stunned. If the storms obey Him, if the sea obeys Him, if the wind obeys Him, then who are we to disobey Him? That's the sentiment here. Who are we to defy Him? This is the fear that they're experiencing. He is creator. We are creation and they stand in fear and on reverence of Christ. Do you stand in a right relationship with your creator? That right relationship must include a healthy respect for God.

You can fear God without loving Him. That's what the demons do. They fear God. They know God but they don't love God. But you can't love God without fearing Him. To truly love Him is to truly know who He is and to truly know who He is to fear Him. What is the fear of the Lord? It's not just pure dread, it's not just shrinking back from Him in terror. You can obey God because you're terrified of him or terrified of the consequence. But if that's the only reason why you obey, then you don't really know God either because God is a loving God. He is God the Father. We are to fear God in the sense that we are to fear offending Him, displeasing or grieving Him. Therefore, our relationship must not be glib or flippant. We are to fear His rebuke more than just respect or reverence.

The word does use the word fear. In Exodus chapter 20, Moses comes down from the mountain given the 10 commandments of God. The people see this. They see that God has been with Moses. Moses has been with God, and they say, "Moses, don't have God speak to us. You speak to us." They're in trepidation. Then this is what Moses says in Exodus 20, "Do not fear for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin." Do not fear but fear. What is he saying? He's saying, "Do not fear approaching God for mercy. Do not fear looking at the 10 commandments and realizing that you have transgressed the commandments." What are we to do? We deserve the infinite eternal condemnation of God upon ourselves for rebelling, for insubordination.

Here Moses says, "Do not fear coming to God for mercy." This is what Christ says. Do not fear coming to the cross asking God for forgiveness. But once you do receive Jesus Christ as savior, recognize that He's also your Lord. As you approach this God, we are to fear kindling His wrath against sin. We are to fear His rebuke. Psalm 25:14 says, "The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant." It's incredible that the Lord would offer His friendship, but this is what the Lord's saying. He's like, "I would rather just be friends." This is why I tell my kids. I got four daughters. I hate the rebuking. I hate the discipline part. I hate that. I hate that. Can't you just do what I say first time?

What I want to say is can't you just know what I want you to do? Can you just read my mind? Haven't we been together long enough and then we can just be friends? We can just hang out. This is what God is saying. He's like, "Do I want to stand over you and tell you what to do?" I want the word to be planted in you so that you don't just learn these truths, but you embody the truths and then your relationship with the Lord is a relationship of friendship. Martin Luther made a distinction between servile fear and filial fear. Servile comes from Latin servus, which means slave, and fillus means son. He says, "Sometimes people have the servile fear of God where they're just slaves and they never understand the relationship with God as children."

Luther is thinking of a child who has tremendous respect and love for his father or mother and who dearly wants to please them. Hebrews 10:31 says, "It's a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God." It is, and this is why we need Christ. So we don't fall into the hands of God's wrath. But also, once we are forgiven, it's like we are in the hands of God the Father and still a very fearful thing to be held lovingly by these same hands. Psalm 130:1-4, "Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you, there is forgiveness that you may be feared."

That last verse is fascinating. With you is forgiveness that you may be feared. Why include fear with forgiveness? Well, because you begin to understand what it took for forgiveness to be procured. It took the cross of Jesus Christ. The bloody cross was the terrible price for our sin, for our disobedience. We have broken God's commandments. We deserve His eternal wrath. Yet God sends Jesus Christ to the cross, Jesus Christ, fully obedient who did the will of God from the heart perfectly. This same Jesus goes to cross to pay the penalty for our lawbreaking. On the cross, what does Jesus say? He says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I'm perishing. God the Father, why are you allowing me to perish?"

God the Father allows the son to perish so that we do not. What do the disciples say? We're perishing. Do you not care? What does Jesus say with His life? How long until you truly believe that I have come so you do not perish. I have come to perish so that you'll be saved. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, so that whosoever believes in Him, in Jesus would not perish but have eternal life. The good shepherd is the one that lays down His life for His sheep. Friends, hell is real. It's reality. The lake of fire is real and the condemnation is for eternity. The suffering is for eternity. Jesus Christ came to save us from the ultimate storm of God's judgment, which is hell. The cross of Jesus Christ is as close of a glimpse of hell that true believers will ever get.

That's hell, God the Son experiencing it. Why? So that we would never have to. All we have to do is turn to Him, turn from sin, repent and believe. What is the storm? The storm is an expression of the curse. The curse was pronounced upon all creation when the first Adam sinned and fell. The ground was cursed and the fabric of creation was disordered and chaotic and became dangerous. Then Jesus is second Adam, the God man came to make His blessings flow as far as the curse is found. He did what the first Adam did not do. Jesus kept covenant with God perfectly. He obeyed. He bled and He died and the curse fell on him. It was etched into Him and the storm of divine wrath engulfed Him and there was no peace for Him.

Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'" The disciples were afraid that they would perish that night. They didn't understand that Jesus came to give them life and life eternal. He would perish that they might live and that's why He came to give us life at the cost of His own. The final question is, who really got woken up in the story? Who really got awakened? We see the disciples trying to wake Jesus up. They wake Jesus up. At the end, it's the disciples that got awakened. They're like, "Who is this? We're in the presence of God Himself." They fear Him with a good godly fear. If you fear God, there's nothing else to fear.

If God is number one in your hierarchy of fears, there's nothing else to fear. There's no one else to fear. This is how we fight lesser fear, secondary fears. We fight them with the greatest fear, fear of God that displaces all the others. Matthew 10:28, "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." This is the Jesus that we worship. This is the Jesus that we follow. He didn't have to save our souls, but He did. He's a good God. If you're not sure where you stand before God today, if you're not sure if you die today where you'll spend eternity, today in your heart of hearts, cry out to Jesus Christ, "Lord Jesus, do you not care?"

He will respond, "Of course, I care. Look at the cross. Look at my death, my burial and my resurrection and my ascension." The moment you repent, the moment you believe, you are saved and you are given eternal life. One of our favorite hymns that we sing at Mosaic is Amazing Grace. We sing in particular when people get baptized. If you've not been baptized a believer, let us know. We can't wait to baptize you and then sing the song. In the song, it goes like this. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. It was grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace, my fears relieved. How precious did the grace appear the hour I first believed?

I'll close with Psalm 42:7-11 before we transition to holy communion. "Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night, his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, 'Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning, because of the oppression of the enemy?' As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God? Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.'"

Well, we celebrate holy communion at Mosaic every first Sunday of the month. We celebrate holy communion as it was commanded to us by our Lord and Savior that we are to do this in remembrance of him. For whom is holy communion? It is only for repentant believers in Jesus Christ. If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, if you're not a Christian, if you're not a follower of Christ, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It'll do nothing for you. Instead, meditate on what you've heard. Or if you today repent of your sins and you become a Christian, you're welcome to partake. Then if you are a believer living in known unrepentant sin, please refrain from this part of the service. Instead, take time to repent and pray.

If you haven't received the elements and would like to, raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring them to you. Would you please pray with me over holy communion? Lord Jesus, we thank you that you gave us this ordinance to remember your suffering, bread that you said is to remind us of your broken body. Your body was truly broken. You suffered on that cross and the cup was given to us to remind us of your blood, the blood of the Holy Lamb of God that was shed for us in order to make atonement for our sins, provide a way for salvation. Jesus, bless our time in holy communion now. We take this moment to repent of sin. We repent of pride. We repent of selfishness. We repent of our own desire to be our own gods, to define good and evil as we deem.

We repent of transgressing your commandments. We repent of not loving you with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and not loving our neighbor itself. Lord, we pray that you give us grace and mercy and pray that you forgive us and also give us grace to empower us, to fear you above all else, and to not be cowardly, to truly grow in our courage in particular when we testify to the world of your name. Bless our time in the holy communion. Now we pray this in Christ's name, amen. 1 Corinthians 11:23 says, "For I received from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'

In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant of my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."

If this is your first time partaking communion with us, there's two lids, one at the top to open the cup and then one at the bottom to get the bread. On the night that Christ was betrayed, He took the bread and after breaking it, He said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." He then proceeded to take the cup and He said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me." Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time of spiritual nourishment from the richness of your holy scriptures.

Lord, we pray that these lessons that we learned don't just stay in our minds, but we pray that they set roots into our hearts and that we become a people who are not just hearers of the word but doers of the word, because we embody the word. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you God incarnate, you showed us what it means to truly live a life of obedience to you and service to people, love to you and love toward people. Lord, we do fear you and we pray that you deepen our fear of you.

As we grow and fear of you, I pray, Lord, that we become more effective servants for you, courageously proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to all who would hear. Give us opportunities even this week to go and to share the good news, to share the fact that anyone who repents of sin and turns to Christ is forgiven, is given eternal life, and is welcome into an eternal kingdom, a kingdom that will stand the test of time and no storms will shake. We pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are God overall, and even over those who don't yet confess Jesus Christ as Lord, You are Lord over them as well. Lord, we thank You for regulating revelation of Your holy truth. By Your Spirit, you're the one that illumines the truth into our hearts, and we pray for more revelation in our church. We pray for more revelation given to us, not just so we can store it, or hold it, or keep it unto ourselves, but so that we can share it with others. As we get light, as we get knowledge and discernment and wisdom, I pray that You give us the unction of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Spirit to then share it with others.

As we come to know who You are, let us be a people that wants to testify to the greatness of Your holy name. Lord, You are so holy, even Your name is holy, and we pray that Your name will be hollowed in our church, in our hearts, and our lives, and we pray that Your name will be hollowed and considered holy and revered in the city. Lord, there are many who don't yet follow You, don't yet even believe in You, and we pray for a revival. We pray for an awakening. We do believe that Your kingdom is unstoppable.

You promised that there was nothing that is going to remain hidden, You will reveal all truth, and we pray, Lord, use us in the process of this harvest of drawn many to Yourself. Give us a zeal, a burning zeal in our hearts to do everything we possibly can to see people whom we love, come to faith, to receive eternal life, to receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and to receive forgiveness of sins and a relationship with You. Lord, we pray that You instill a hope in us, a hope that is unshakeable so people around us do realize there's something different about these people, they do believe, and they build their life on this hope. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series to do with the incredible gospel of Mark. We've called it Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom, and the title today is the Unstoppable Kingdom. Question, "What's one thing that grows the more you share it? The more you give it to others, the more you test it, the more you share, what is that one thing that grows?," and I would submit to you, it's your faith. The more you share your faith, the deeper your faith gets.

The more you testify to the truth of God, the deeper your understanding of that truth is. Jesus Christ told us, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. I'll make you compel people to come into the kingdom. I'm saving you as an instrument of salvation for others." That's part of our purpose.

1 Peter 3:15 says, "But in your hearts honor Christ, the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect." We should be such hope-filled people, that people around us are like mesmerized by this hope that we have no matter what the circumstances. No matter what the situation in the world, we have an unshakable hope. Why are you a follower of Jesus Christ? Well, it's because the Lord sent someone to you at some point to sow the seeds of God's word into your heart, and the fact that you're following Jesus today is evidence that the seed was planted into fertile soil.

The seed goes deep and it germinates, and a root system goes deep into your heart, and that seed grows as it is nourished by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit bears fruit through us, and the fruit that the Holy Spirit bears has seeds, and that's the seed of God's word, and we are then to take those seeds and we are to sow those seeds into the heart soils of other people. Then, by the power of God, they too are saved. They're saved from God's judgment. They're saved for God's kingdom and His mission, and the intention is clear from these parables that the Lord is giving us today. We are not only to receive knowledge, but do everything we can to impart that knowledge to others, and this is how the kingdom of God grows in your life and in the world.

Today, we're in Mark 4:21-34. Would you look at the text with me? "And He said to them, 'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.'"

"And He said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.' And He said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, but when the grain is ripe at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.'"

"And He said, 'With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of the seeds on the earth, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.' With many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to His own disciples, He explained everything." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.

May He write these truths on our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, love the light, hunger for truth, and share the gains, second, sow the seed, trust God for growth, harvest is coming, and third, there's room for all in the kingdom of God. First, love the light, hunger for truth, and share the gains. So Jesus, in the previous text, has interpreted the parable of the sower, and now, He gives us a few more parables, of the lamp, of the hidden in the manifest of having, and not having, and that the kingdom grows like seed.

These parables, with their emphasis on revelation and the necessity of paying attention, extends the theme of the word and its hearers. Verse 21, "And He said to them, 'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?'" Jesus uses very similar phrasing in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:14, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house."

"In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Now, the text in Matthew 5 is very clear. Don't hide your light. Be good witnesses to Jesus Christ, and this world do good works so people see the good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. It's tempting when you come across a text like ours to say, "Oh, there's a similar phrase that's used in a different text like Matthew 5," and just assume that Jesus means the same thing because He used the same phrase.

Jesus, just like us, often uses the same expressions and different context to communicate different truths. So just because Jesus is using the same image, or the same expression, or the same phraseology doesn't automatically mean He's saying the same thing. We have to pay attention to the context. In Matthew 5:15, Jesus is urging us to do something. You shine your light to the world.

Here, Jesus is promising us something wonderful. He's not just calling us to action, but He's giving us a promise, and the promise is about the destiny of the kingdom of God. The parable is teaching us that the future for the kingdom of God is bright, and I just want to point out a couple of things from the text. In our translation, the English standard, it just says a light. There's no definite article.

The definite article is the. In the original Greek, there is a definite article before the word, lamp, so it's the lamp. A particular lamp is in view, and where the text says that the lamp is brought in, the Greek actually says, "Does the lamp come in?" It isn't brought in, it comes in all on its own. There's a personal agency ascribed to the lamp. Meaning, the lamp is a person.

The lamp comes in. The lamp here is the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is what Jesus taught us about His identity in John 8:12. "Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, 'I, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" So probably, the best way to read verse 21 in our text is that the lamp is the revelation of God and His kingdom as has come in the person, the words, the works of Jesus Christ.

It's a message, a revelation summarized in the message of the gospel. If the lamp is here and the gospel of the kingdom is here, Jesus is saying, "What's the intent?" It's here in order to be exposed. It's here in order to shine. This is what He's telling His disciples.

He says, "Be patient. When it looks like the darkness in the world is oppressive, when it looks like there's so much darkness, that no light can penetrate that darkness, be patient. Continue to believe." Even with Christ, many were opposing Him. There was an antagonism that was growing amongst the Scribes and the Pharisees, and partially because they didn't want the light of God in their life.

This is a lot of people, they want God's love, but they don't want God's light, but God is Love and He is Light, and you can't have one part of Him without all of Him. Many people love John 3:16, a verse that many have memorized even since Sunday school, but in the context about God loving the world, He does say like the world has rejected this love because they don't want the light, they want to continue living in darkness. Look at John 3:16-21, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

"And this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed, but whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." He's saying the light has come and the light has come in the form of Jesus Christ, and people reject Him because people loved darkness. This is what the difference between a believer and non-believer. A believer has a brand new heart.

You're regenerated. When you repent of your sin, you're given this brand new heart that longs for God's light. You want to love the light. You love standing in the light, living in the light. You love being a child of the Light, and you love God's word because God's word illuminates more of your life. It shows you more of the ways that you are to walk in and the ways that you are not to walk in light that shows the way to live.

Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." So even in the short-term, God intends those outside even if He does intend that they misunderstand this word. It's not going to be hidden forever. The truth is here, and even if people suppress that truth, there will come a point where the suppression is no longer even possible. Mark 4:22, Jesus continues, says, "For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light."

He did not come to have His light hidden away, and the whole point of His coming in this veiled form, often rejected form, was so that the light might shine, undim to the ends of the earth. He came in weakness and suffering. He came as a seed to be buried in the ground. Look at Isaiah 53, one of the most powerful, prophetic passages about the person of Christ. "Who has believed what He has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"

"For He grew up before Him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed Him not." Just as in the past, nothing was hidden except in order to become manifest, so Jesus is saying this is true.

Even now, in the present, all the hiddenness of the current age will ultimately serve the purpose of revelation. This is exactly what happened with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who is God, the Son of God, King of kings, comes and He proclaims the word of the kingdom. "The kingdom is here. Repent and believe. Everyone who repents and believes is welcome."

But the opponents of Jesus, they misunderstood His word, and they rejected it. The word didn't penetrate their hearts, it didn't transform them, but this rejection of the word led to Jesus' death, and as a result from the divine perspective, it led to ultimate revelation, more revelation. He was killed by those who refuse to believe His word, refuse to see His identity, but in this divinely will death, which is caused by their spiritual blindness, God ushers in a brand new age of revelation. After Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Jesus now is proclaimed as the Messiah, as the Son of God, and after the Holy Spirit falls on Pentecost. Now, when the message of the gospel was proclaimed, the Holy Spirit takes that message and transforms people.

He saves people. The obscurity of the word ultimately serves to lead to greater revelation. The lamp of God's word has come into the room and is casting its light into every crevice for everyone who would welcome the light into their heart. 1 John 2:8-11, "At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in Him and in you because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.

Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him, there is no cause for stumbling, but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes." At the same time, we look around the world and we say, "Well, if the light has come and the light is revealing the kingdom of God, why aren't more people Christians? Why aren't more people following the word of God?," and Jesus here says, "There will come a time when everything is revealed, and at that point, it will be too late." The kingdom will not remain hidden forever. It is seemingly hidden now, in that its full power is not evident, it's concealed in some way, but there will be a day when the kingdom is completely revealed because the light of function is to expose the darkness.

The kingdom of God, the kingdom of Jesus Christ cannot stay hidden. Nothing can obscure it. No shadow can engulf it or eclipse it. Why are we believers? Because God shown His light into our heart so that the knowledge of the glory of Jesus Christ is understood.

The light of the gospel is chasing away the shadows of unbelief, and the people who walked in darkness are beginning to see the light. And what's our job? Our job is to believe this promise, that the kingdom is unstoppable, that the gospel light will continue to shine and God will draw the elect, will draw His children to Himself. And what's our job in the process? We are to love the truth, hunger for the truth, and impart the truth for others. The light isn't just given to us so we enjoy our lives here on earth until we go to heaven.

No. We have work to do to testify to Jesus Christ, that He alone is the Doctor of our souls, that He alone is the Way to salvation. There's no other name by which anyone will be saved. That day, the judgment day, or when Christ returns will reveal that to everybody, and for most people, will be too late then. I understand in a place like Boston, it's easy to lose your hope.

You look around, you're like, "We are outnumbered. Big league, we are outnumbered. We are on the losing side," and that is a lie of the enemy. As soon as you begin to believe that lie, we lose the power. We are to believe that Jesus' kingdom is growing, will continue to grow, and sometimes it feels like our light just isn't enough.

It feels like you're in Fenway Park, all the lights are out, you're by yourself, and you want to light up the night just a little bit. You take out your phone with a little flashlight, and you're like, "Yeah, the light of Jesus," and it looks pathetic, puny, flickering even. It seems like the darkness is absolute impenetrable. You say, "What can my little light do?," and then you realize, "It's not my light. It's not my light, it's not my lamp."

The light is Jesus Christ Himself. The light is God. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Do you believe this? Do you believe that there is no one beyond the reach of Jesus Christ? Do you believe that there is no heart so hard, that grace cannot soften it and change it forever?

The light will pierce the darkness. We just need to proclaim that Jesus is the Light. He is the only Way of salvation. I'm confident of that because of the promise here, that the light came not to be hidden, it came to blaze forth and to give light to the world, and nothing can stop Jesus Christ. Nothing can stop the King.

Last week, I shared that I had a toothache, and thank you for all your condolences. It was supposed to be solved on Tuesday. I woke up the happiest person to get a root canal ever. I even got a shirt, buttoned. I was like, "I'm ready to go."

Did my hair. I'm like, "I'm ready to go to the endodontist." I show up, and they say, "Thank you for coming for your consultation." I was like, "What? No."

So my dental appointment is on Tuesday. Tuesday is coming. Praise be to God. And so I was at a staff meeting. I came into the staff meeting on Thursday. We were praying for one another, and I shared about my toothpaste, and Raquel was praying for me, and Raquel starts praying, and it's just powerful, and then she's like, "Lord, you see the decay in Pastor Jan's tooth, just decay."

"Decay. He's decaying. He's fallen apart. Decay, decay, decay." And that's all I heard.

I'm like, "I am ... Yup." I said, "Amen." We are all decaying. I just want to just share that tremendous news. We are all mortal.

We are all going to die. Time will be up for each one of us. The Lord knows when that is, but I'm telling you, dear soul, dear eternal soul, that moment will come, and you will stand before Jesus Christ, and you will stand before Him as forgiven, welcome into the presence of God, or He will stand before you like a judge. It's one or the other. This is what Jesus is saying, that the kingdom is inevitable.

This is true. This is the greatest truth that there is. This is the truth underneath every single truth, that Jesus Christ is King, and the only way that we can be forgiven of our law-breaking, of our insubordination, of our rebellion against the King, is to fall on our knees and say, "Lord Jesus, please forgive me of all my sins. Lord Jesus, I repent," and Jesus Christ says, "The love of God will be poured into your heart. The light of God will be poured into your mind, and you will be transformed."

This has to be real for every believer. When we meet friends who are not Christians, who are not followers of Christ, you need to believe that they are on their way to hell, eternal damnation apart from Jesus Christ, and this is why we proclaim the gospel, this is why we do what we do. This is the truth, and our job is to sow the seed of the gospel, and not to be afraid of it, not to be afraid of speaking the truth. There are proponents of other religions who are 10 times, 100 times more courageous than most Christians today. I watched the UFC.

A lot of Muslim fighters are in there, and they're all, "Inshallah," and they're just saying, "Praise be to God. If God wills ..." They're just throwing in God in every ... I'm like, "Imagine if believers did that, just on a daily basis, speaking the name of Christ every opportunity that we get, no matter what cost." Why? Because that's how important it is.

In Mark 4:23, He says, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." He's saying that ears to hear this message are a gift from God. Repentance is a gift from God. Faith is a gift from God, but using the ears that God has given us, that's our responsibility. We are to say, "Lord, tune our ears to hear Your voice and give us grace to hear."

In verse 24, "And He said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you." The wake-up call is repeated and reinforced, pay attention to what you hear. He's not saying that it's just hearing per se, you hear. No. It's hearing to understand.

It's hearing with the commitment to obey no matter what it says. Also, he says, "See what you hear." That's the original. It's the sense of hearing doubled by the sense of sight, suggesting we're going to use all of our faculties to listen to the word of God, and significant in the wording, the call is to pay attention not just to how we hear, but to what we listen to. Be careful in the voices you'll allow into your life and to your heart in a world that is still, in some sense, Satan's house and his dominion.

Not all voices who claim to be speaking on behalf of God really are. Many of the voices are deceitful, perhaps even satanic in claiming to be God's word. Later on in Mark 13, Jesus says that, "Satan does everything he can to lead astray if possible, even the elect." So we, as believers need to be careful, careful of the voices we allow. Listening sermons is important.

You should listen to sermons, but I want you versed in the scriptures more than you are in sermons so that you can discern, "Is this truly the word of God or not?" On the other hand, when we listen to God's word with the intent to obey, God gives us more revelation, and as He does, He continues to draw us to the calling that He has for us to go and preach the gospel, to receive, and then also share the gains that we have. Romans 10:14, "How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? How are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news?,' but they have not all believed the gospel, for Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed what He has heard from us?'"

"So faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ." In Ephesians 1:13, "In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory." He says, "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you." Mark here takes a phrase that was known in ancient literature, a phrase that had to do with giving. If you give to others, whatever you give will return to you, but here, he applies it to epistemology, knowledge of God, in particular.

What He's saying is if you receive insight from the Lord, if you receive it with a welcome heart and a pure heart, you will get more insight, and the measure of our engagement with the word, the way we respond, our desire to grasp its message and digest its truth, no matter how hard to chew, will determine the measure of blessing we enjoy from it. Do you want more blessing? Of course we do. He says, "Pay closer attention." The word teaches clearly that if you come close to God, He will come close to you.

He will draw near to you. If you take a tiny step toward God, God will more than match the movement. In verse 25, He says, "For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." Now, Proverbs 13:4 says, "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." Diligence.

Are you diligent about your faith? The Christians that I know, that I've seen them grow spiritually by leaps and bounds, and the ones that have grown in spiritual prosperity are those who are diligent, diligent in their study of scripture on a daily basis, diligent over private devotions and private prayer, diligent over attending worship services and community groups, in the same way that exercise and use of muscles are strengthened with exercise so that the soul is strengthened when we exercise the means of grace that God has given us, and we are to expend all energy to listen to the word and the promises that we will be proportionally rewarded. Those who heed the message get more understanding of the message, get more revelation, get more blessing. Those who do not heed the message end up with nothing, and the idea of the rich getting richer applies to truth, that God gives wisdom to the wise, and He gives grace to those who long for insight and knowledge. For example, Daniel 2:19-23, "Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night."

"Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and said, 'Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding."

"He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him. To You, O God, of my fathers that give thanks and praise, for You have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you, for You have made known to us the kings matter." So we are to pay careful attention to how we listen, to what we listen in terms of the word of God, and let the measure of your response to the word be full, and complete, and heartfelt, and diligent, and real, and those who give themselves to the word like this, they gain much. What do you gain when you pay attention to the word?

You gain eternal life. You gain a relationship with God. You gain energy and strength to persevere despite trials. You gain comforts that the world cannot even imagine and you gain a hope that no tragedy can touch, and you gain heaven itself. But to those who hear the word and do not respond like this, but respond with tepid indifference, "Oh, yeah, God," "Oh, yeah, God's word," "Oh, yeah, Christ dying on the cross, bleeding, crucifixion," "Oh, yeah, Jan, I've heard that before," well, Jesus says those who listen like that, even what they have will be taken away.

So the word of God when proclaimed, no matter how familiar you are with the word, you can't ignore it. What a joy and peace we have in the word. In particular, watch for those texts in holy scripture where you are tempted to plug your ears with your fingers. "No, that's not for me. Yeah, they say that that's God's word, but that's not for me."

Pay close attention to those texts. Some of you have been walking with Christ for years, and your relationship with the Lord has just grown cold. There's no obvious rebellion in your life, but it just feels like your faith is like stale bread, left out too long, dry, crusty, and moldy. The word used to come to you like fresh water from a rock in the desert, like manna from heaven, and now you just sit in services or you're reading scripture, and there's just nothing. There's no life, there's no interest.

There's just boredom. At these moments, the Lord is speaking to you and say, "Pay attention. Pay attention to what you hear, how you hear because the stakes are that high," and Jesus today invites you to turn away from your lukewarmness and draw near to Him, and ask the, "Lord, send me this hunger. Send me a thirst for Your presence and for Your word, and give me this attentiveness, this desire to hear it no matter what and to obey," and the Lord will meet you there. Second, sow the seed, trust God for growth, and harvest is coming.

Mark 4:26-27, "And He said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, he knows not how." The emphasis in this parable is that God grows His kingdom, that God is the One that gives the growth. The farmer, all he does is plant the seed, and then how it grows eludes his comprehension. It's beyond his control.

He can't control how it grows. All he does is cast the seed and weight, and the seed germinates and develops by itself even while he is sleeping. He has no idea how it grows, and the Lord here is saying, "I give the growth." This is from 1 Corinthians. Paul says, "I planted, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth."

Verse 28, "The Earth produces by itself, first, the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, and when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come." Our job is to preach the word. Our job is to sow the seed of God's word. What God does with His word is His business. It's only for us to make sure we're faithful in our sowing.

This is our responsibility, but God is the One that gives the growth. The soil can't produce life apart from the seed, but why? Because humans are dead in sin. Life must come from the outside, and it comes from the word of God. He says, "First, the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear."

The children of God are not born in perfect faith or perfect hope, or perfect knowledge or experience, but the moment you become a child of God, even the weakest child of God is a true child of God, and the true child of God is expected by God to grow. If God began the process of salvation, He's promised He's going to complete it, and the process of salvation includes maturity and growth. Philippians 1:6, "And I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." He's the one that starts the work, and He will bring it to completion. What's our job?

We are to grow ... In 1 Peter 3:18 says, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him, be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. This is how the reign of God grows in your life.

You grow in grace, grow in grace by the means of grace, studying scripture, and praying, and worshiping the Lord. We receive grace when we recognize that we've sinned. "Lord, give me more grace and power me with that grace," and that's how maturity, that's how growth come. The real cause of agent of the words fruition isn't the farmer, it's the seed. It's God Himself.

He says, "Keep sowing, keep sowing, keep sowing until the day of harvest comes." The day of harvest in scripture from Joel, from Revelation we see, the day of harvest is actually an image of judgment. A time when evil is judged and righteousness is vindicated. For example, Revelation 14:15, "And another angel came out of the temple calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, 'Out in your sickle and reap for the hour to reap has come for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.'" The harvest is, in the Lord's parable, is a symbol of the end of the age, the last judgment, the consummation of history, and we have the same text in Joel 3:13, "Put in the stickle for the harvest is ripe."

"Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great." Jesus here is showing us a picture of the whole period of world history from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ, from His first advent to the next, and Jesus is saying that, "Kingdom is growing. The kingdom is growing. The kingdom is growing.

Sow the seed, the kingdom is growing, but a day will come when finally, it's time for reaping and the harvest." Our job is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Were to sow the seed of the word of God. Our task is not to attempt to manipulate the seed, or force growth, or change the seed somehow. No, Jesus wants us to have complete confidence, that there's life in the seed itself, the word of God is living inactive, and the word of God is going to accomplish the work that God has for it.

We are to trust in it, hope in it, and recognize that the kingdom of God is unstoppable, the kingdom of God is inevitable, and God is going to save all of the elect. Galatians 6:9, "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we will reap if we do not give up." One of the reasons why this church even exists is because we believe this. We've believed this from the very beginning when we establish the church. We said, "What kind of church do we ..."

We want to be a church that's faithful of God's word, and we want to do God's work God's way. Sometimes it does feel like the soil here isn't really soil, but it's kind of like concrete, and I remember a while back, I was walking my daughters to school, and I saw the pavement of a sidewalk with a little sprout growing. I was like, "Oh, that's cute," and I just walked by, and then a few weeks later, I'm walking ... I look at it, I'm like, "I can't believe it." It was a tomato plant, a tomato plant just out of the sidewalk with a little tomato, and I should have plucked it.

I should have plucked it. I should have had it. I didn't plant it, though, and it was just an image of like, "No matter what, God's seeds can break through even the hardness of payment." Can God save people in Boston, Massachusetts? Of course He can, and He does, and we see it at this church, and we see it in the other gospel proclaiming ministries we support.

The point of, and this is what Jesus closed it with, there's room for all in the kingdom of God. Mark 4:30, and He said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? How do we understand the kingdom of God?" Here, He's quoting from Isaiah, "To whom will we liken God or what likeness compare with Him?" Jesus is saying that the kingdom is a kingdom that's going to grow.

It starts and it looks like a tiny, little seed, as tiny even as a mustard seed, but it's going to grow because God promised the. Previous parable is a call to patience. The seed's going to grow surely, slowly, but surely. This parable is a call to hope. It's not only going to grow, it's going to grow massively, so we can confidently sow and not grow weary and not grow discouraged, not lose heart.

But remember, the promise that God said, "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it." We are to be content with the growth that God sends us, but we are never complacent. We are thankful for all the people that God saved here in and through this church, and sanctify, but we're not complacent. We do believe that God wants this church to grow. He wants the kingdom of God to grow.

We are a kingdom building force, and how do we build the kingdom? By sowing the seed, and the seed can be even as small as a grain of mustard seed. Verse 31, "It's like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth," and here, Jesus is hyperbolic. He's comparing something very tiny, mustard seed to something great, and that's the growth that comes from the mustard seed, over 700 mustard seeds to a gram, and the height of the bush or the tree can grow to 10 feet. What He's saying is that the kingdom of God grows like this.

In the beginnings, there's small, paltry in appearance, but there's tremendous power, divine potency in the word of God. The mustard seed is chosen because of its commonness, and because of its smallness, but it grows into something vast and incredible. What is Jesus here saying? He's saying, "Well, look how the kingdom came into the world initially, and weakness." How did the King of kings, the King of the universe come into this world?

He came as a baby, born in a manger, at Bethlehem, without riches, without armies, without attendance, without power. And who are the men that God chose to build His church? Who were the appointed apostles? Just average men. What was the last public act of Jesus' earthly ministry as the King of kings?

Well, He was crucified between two criminals, between two thieves, and He was forsaken by His disciples, betrayed by one, denied by another. What was the doctrine that the first apostles, the first builders of the church ... What was the doctrine they preached? They preached Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and to Greeks. It was foolishness, but because of the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit took that message, that we have all sinned, we have all transgressed the commandments of God, Jesus Christ lived a perfect life on our behalf, and then He died on a cross as our substitutionary atonement, and then He rose in the third day, and whoever believes in Christ has all of their sins blotted out, forgiven.

It's as if God cast our sins as far from us, says the east is from the west. He chooses to not just forgive, but forget our sins. When that message was proclaimed and the Holy Spirit took and applied to people's hearts, lives were changed. The world was changed, in the same way that the gospel changed people's lives, then He does so today. In all this, the mind of man can only look at Christ, can only look at His disciples and see weakness and feebleness, but we, as believers, we understand that beyond the feebleness, beyond the weakness, is the power of God, a power that can truly save. Mark 4:32, "Yet, when it is sown, it grows up and it becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

Now, this phrase, birds of the air is used in Ezekiel 31 and Daniel 4. It's to represent the multitude of the nations, that the kingdom grows and it's going to grow in vastness, and then people of all nations are going to come and build nests within this tree. Ezekiel 17:23, "On the mountain height of Israel, will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar, and under it will dwell every kind of bird in the shadow of its branches, birds of every sort will nest." Every time this phrase is used in the Old Testament, describing a mighty kingdom, be it Israel or Egypt or Babylon, the kingdoms will gross in vastness, that the other nations will come and seek refuge in this kingdom. What Jesus is saying here is, "My kingdom is like that."

"My kingdom, the kingdom of God is like this, though its beginnings are improbable, a small seed, a crucified Messiah, suffering church, preaching, baptizing, and holding holy communion, praying. Its beginnings are improbable, but its destiny is vast, and there's room for all." In the kingdom of God, there's room for every single one of you, there's room for every single one of your families, there's room for everyone in the world that will come and repent, and to build a nest. I like the idea of just building a little nest with your loved ones. In the kingdom of God, He's like, "Make sure you're building this home that you have in the kingdom of God."

"Come and find shelter," Jesus is saying, "In the shade of this kingdom." The parable emphasizes the shelter that the kingdom brings. In Psalm 91, "He who dwells in the shelter of the most high will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, 'My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust, for He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings, you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.'"

Jesus concludes our text in Mark 4:33. "With many such parables, He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately, to His own disciples, He explained everything," as they were able to hear according to their God-given ability to hear. What He's saying is, and He concludes with this, if you want more revelation, you do it by spending more time with Christ, by following Christ, by communing with Him and abiding in Him. Three points to summarize, and then we'll close with prayer, love the light, hunger for truth, and then share the gains.

Sow the seed, trust God for growth, harvest is coming, and there's room for all in the kingdom of God. Let us pray. Lord, we thank You for continuing to build Your kingdom in and through us in this city, in a place of stifling darkness, sometimes it seems, but Lord, You are the Light, and You're the Light that shines in the darkness. Lord, as you saved us, we believe that You can save others, and we pray that You use us in the process, even this week, Lord. Give us opportunities to speak of You, speak of the gospel, speak of Your grace.

We pray that You open the door for the proclamation of the gospel here. We pray for revival in this city and beyond. We pray for an awakening, and we pray that, Lord, You save many and draw them to yourself and to Your incredible kingdom, and we pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are good, and glorious, and gracious. And despite our sin, because of your loving kindness and grace, you sent your son, Jesus Christ, the word of God. Jesus, everything was created through you. Nothing was created apart from you because you are the word of God. God spoke everything into existence ex nihilo. And Jesus, you, the word of God, came to reveal yourself, and you do that. You reveal God to us through the written word of God.

I pray, Lord, in the same way that everything was created, I pray that you recreate us by your word today. I pray that you give us tender hearts, humble hearts that are teachable, hearts that can truly pay attention to you, pay attention to your word, to listen in order to heed and obey. I pray, Lord, if there's anything in the soil of our hearts that is not conducive to the seed growing, be it thorns, or thistles, or rocks, or hardness, I pray today by your love and by the power of the Spirit, till, break the ground up. No matter how painful it is, I pray make the ground fertile by the power of the Spirit.

Lord, prepare us now to hear from your holy scriptures, the holy Bible, your word. This is the seed that Jesus is talking about. And I pray this seed is planted deep in our hearts, that the root structures go deep so that the harvest may be plentiful, and make us a people who want to be fruitful, who want to bear the fruit of the spirit in our lives, and want to be fruitful by drawing others close to you by making converts, making disciples not of ourselves, but of Jesus Christ.

Lord Jesus, I pray that you send a hunger for your word in this nation, in the world at large. There's a famine of your word because there's a lack of hunger for your word. And I pray that you make us a hungry people, people that hunger, in desperation cry out, "Lord, speak to us. We're ready to do your will."

Lord bless our time in the holy scriptures. Holy Spirit, come meet with us. Do the deep work. I pray, prepare us to hear from you, to hear from your holy scriptures, and give us power to then go and do what it says. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark. We're entitling the series Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. The title today is Pay Attention to God.

In the same way that there's a difference between just viewing and actually seeing, there's a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is the process, and function, and power of perceiving a sound. Listening is to hear with thoughtful attention. Hearing is passive and involuntary. Listening is active and requires attention. You can hear without listening, in one ear and out the other. Listening requires focus, concentration, and effort. Listening requires paying attention.

One time I was taking one of my daughters to school, one of the younger ones. I always say this. It got into just habit. My parting words, my parting blessing is pay attention. There was a mom standing right next to me, and she's like, "Hey, that's a good thing to say." She turns to her son, and she's like, "Pay attention." Because kids forget. They think it's just you go have fun and it's just a social thing.

Well, a lot of us, we forget to pay attention to the word of God. Many people hear God's word but they don't listen to it. They don't seek depth of understanding. And to listen to God's word also means listening with the intent to accept it and obey it no matter how paradigm-shifting the implications. And that's when true understanding comes, when you receive the word humbly and you seek to do God's will.

These are the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in John 7:17. He said, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority." He's saying, "Do you want certainty that this is true, that this is truly true?" Well, do you listen with the intent to do God's will? And the more you desire to listen to God's word in order to do his will, the more understanding, the more certainty you receive that it's really God's word.

Today we're in Mark 3:31 through 4:20. This paragraph at the end of chapter three, Tyler covered it last week. I'm just going to just make a few comments upon it because it does prepare us to hear the parable of the sower. Would you please look at the text with me?

"And his mother and his brothers came. And standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, 'Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.' And he answered them, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' Looking about at those who sat around him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.'"

"Again he began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gather about him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. The whole crowd was beside the sea on the land, and he was teaching them many things in parables. And in his teaching, he said to them, 'Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil, and immediately it's sprang up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away.

"'Other seed fell among thorns and thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. And he said, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear.'

"And when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables, and he said to them, 'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, everything is in parables so that they may indeed see but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.

"And He said to them, 'Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word, and these are the ones along the path where the word is sown. Where they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who when they hear the word immediately receive it with joy, and they have no root in themselves but endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word, and accept it, and bear fruit thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.'"

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points to frame up our time. First, the king's true family does the will of God. Second, the king reveals the secret of the kingdom of God. And hear the word, and accept it, and bear fruit.

The king's true family does the will of God. In the previous text, Jesus decisively puts down his most vociferous opponents, the Pharisees and the scribes. And Jesus now turns to a more intimate "enemy" of his opponents, his family who encounter him because they think that he is out of his mind. They grew up with him. They saw him on a daily basis. And as the phrase goes, familiarity breeds contempt. So they think he's out of his mind, that he's insane.

This is verse 20. "Then he went home. The crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying he's out of his mind." Jesus in the previous context said that those who follow him are those who do God's will. And those who do God's will, that's who is part of his true family. And what happens is his family who is saying that he is outside of his mind, literally in the Greek, they find themselves to be outside of the inner circle of Jesus. They find themselves, the family of Christ, to be outside of the family of God.

Verse 31, "And his mother and his brothers came. And standing outside, they sent to him and called him." His family find themselves outside of his circle of followers, which is emblematic of being in opposition to God's will. His mother was Mary. His father is not mentioned after the Christmas and the advent narrative of Jesus' birth. After that narrative, Jesus' father isn't mentioned at all. Most likely it's because he has already passed away.

His mother and his brothers are here. If you remember, his brothers later get converted. James and Jude actually write the later books of the New Testament. They introduce themselves as the brothers of Jesus Christ. But here they're not yet believers. And instead of responding to Jesus' call, they actually try to pull Jesus away from his mission away from doing God's will. Why? Because they absolutely misunderstand the nature of his ministry. Why? Because God's thoughts and plans run contrary to all natural human inclinations.

They weren't given the revelation just yet. They needed a move of the Holy Spirit to believe in the resurrected Christ. It wasn't until probably Pentecost and the Spirit came that James and Jude were converted.

Who's in the kingdom? It's those to whom the mystery has been revealed. In Mark 4:11, in our text, "He said to them, 'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, everything is in parables.'" Lesson here is friends don't let your family tempt you away from God, don't let your family pull you away from God.

There are many people who have been saved at Mosaic and have been baptized at Mosaic. They say, "Look, no pictures or videos of the baptism. Because if my family finds out, there's going to be dire consequences." That's the world that we live in. And yet we are called to stand firm in Christ no matter what our family believes. We have to close our ears to the siren song even of family if they try to pull us away from the Lord.

Matthew 10:34, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I've not come to bring peace but a sword, for I've come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

In Mark 3:32, "And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, 'Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.' He answered them, 'Who are my mother and my Brothers?' looking about at those who sat around him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.'"

How serious were the concerns of his family for Jesus? Well, where is Jesus? He is ministering in Capernaum. He's probably living out of Peter's house in Capernaum. Where did Jesus grow up? Where is his family based out of? In Nazareth? How far is Nazareth from Capernaum? 25 miles. They make a 25-mile trek, presumably largely on foot, which tells us something about how seriously their concerns were for Christ. But when they get there, the house is so filled they can't even get in.

A little about his family, from Mark chapter six, we know that Jesus has four brothers, James, and Joseph, Judas, and Simon. He also had some sisters. Interestingly, in the parallel passage in Matthew 13, Matthew talks about all of Jesus' sisters, not just both of his sisters, so the implication is there's more than two. So he's got at least three sisters and at least four brothers, so there's at least eight of them. And they didn't believe in him. They didn't believe that this was the Messiah. They didn't believe that this was the son of God. In John 7:5, "For not even his brother believed in him."

You and I have a savior friends that understands, totally gets it when family gets complicated, and sometimes family gets really complicated. But Jesus bore with them, and he continued to minister to them and told about the arrival of his mother and brothers. Jesus refuses to submit to their summons. Instead, he gestures to his followers with his eyes, and he says, "These people, these who are following me, and listening to the word of God, and doing the will of God, this is my true family."

Indeed, this is another demonstration of Jesus' deity. He equates following him with doing the will of God. It is remarkable condescension on God's part to call us children. It's remarkable privilege, remarkable privilege for us to be granted a place in God's family. He doesn't just call us servants. He could have just left at that. He says, "No. When we repent of our sin and trust in Jesus Christ, he becomes our older brother. God becomes our father, and we become brothers and sisters." It's a point that the text makes here by adding the word sister in that culture, at that time, this was a significant addition which validates the equality of men and women in admission to the kingdom of God.

As Jesus will say later point-blank in the Sermon of the Mount, it isn't just the one who believes in Jesus that enters the kingdom of God. Jesus says, "A lot of you'll say, Lord, Lord. We knew you as Lord." And Jesus said, "You didn't do my will." He says, "A lot of you'll say, 'We did religious works in your name. We even cast out demons in your name.'" Jesus says, "That's not what brings you into the kingdom of God. No, it's doing the will of the Father in heaven."

This is what repentance is, and this is why repentance is so important. Repentance is saying, "Lord, I lived doing my will. I lived according to my terms, according to my values, according to my own truth. I repent of all of that. Now I want to follow you and do your will." And these are the true sons and daughters of God who seek to do God's will.

Take Abraham for example, the father of the faithful. Scripture says that Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. But the story doesn't end there. His faith led to his obedience. Later, he proved willing to sacrifice even his son Isaac should the Lord demand it. And God solemnly repeats the promises he made to him, to bless him and to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, to bless him above all nations. He said he would keep all of his promises to Abraham. Why? Because you have obeyed me. In other words, Abraham showed himself a true child of God by doing God's will.

We see this same message to the very end of scripture. It says in Revelation, Christ says to the Christians in Thyatira in Revelation 2:26, "To him who does my will to the end shall be saved." In some of the very last chapters of the Bible, the beginning of account of the second coming, we're told that the bride, the church has been made ready for the wedding of the lamb. And her dress is fine linen given to her to wear. The fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints. The saints, in other words, are those who do the will of God. They live in obedience to his will, his commandments, and his summons. They serve the Lord.

Galatians 5:6 says, "For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love." Well, what is faith working through love? We have a parallel passage that defines it. 2 Corinthians 7:19, "For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God."

This new relationship with God is spiritual. It's inward. It's not outward. It's not natural, as was generally assumed by Israel in the time of Jesus. They assumed that the Messiah belonged to them by right. This was the attitude of Mary and the brothers of Jesus. This was the typical attitude of the whole nation. They confidently believed that they have a prior right to the kingdom of God because of their physical descent from Abraham. Jesus is saying physical descent in terms of kingdom of God, it actually means nothing.

This is incredibly revolutionary teaching that Jesus brought in a Jewish context where the primary obligation was to one's own family. It's commanded, "Honor your father and your mother." But there's a commandment that is higher, more important than that one, which is, "Thou shall have no other gods before me." What's happening is that Jesus is acknowledging whatever claims of love and honor his natural family had on him, God, the Father, has a higher claim on him.

Here, before we go into the parable of the sower or the parable of the soils, I want to meditate on Mary's faith for a bit. However bright and strong Mary's faith was when the angels came to her, when the magi came, when the shepherds came while she held infant Jesus in her arms, however strong her faith was then, somehow, the course of her journey between then and this moment has led her to a place where her faith has been eclipsed. Yes, she's had a very difficult journey. We don't know how long she's been a single mom, a single mom to eight children, no husband in the home to help. Her faith has been eclipsed because of suffering.

Now we know from later on in scripture she doesn't stay here. She doesn't stay in this moment. She doesn't stay in this moment of disbelief. When her son Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross crucified and all of his disciples were scattered, bar John... One of his disciples betrayed him, the other denied him. And there she is standing there. She was there right to the very end watching her son die. The Lord Jesus Christ, in a very tender moment, speaks to her from the cross, and he entrusts her to be kept by his beloved disciple, the Apostle John. She seems to have come back to the place of trust in the Lord Jesus. But at this point in the story, her faith has suffered eclipse. At this point in the story, she's more like the first soil, hardened by suffering of life. She can't even hear the word of God.

Just a moment just to meditate, I will say there are moments when we do suffer. There are moments when we go through darkness and it seems like the darkness is so thick that eclipses our faith. And friends, my pastoral encouragement to you is at those moments, do not allow Satan to steal the word of God from you. The word of God is the only nourishment to keep you going through those moments, and he will get you through.

Point two is the king reveals the secret of the kingdom of God. This is Mark 4:1. "Again, he began to teach beside the sea. A very large crowd gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land." This is the very first time the adjective very large is used. It's the biggest crowd yet. His followers are continuing to invite people to hear the message of the gospel, and the size of the group thronging about Jesus is steadily increasing. He's beside the seas preaching from a boat, which is a floating pulpit so to speak.

This picture of Jesus, God, on the sea, on the boat reminds us of Psalm 29. In Psalm 29, God is sitting in royal majesty on the waters giving utterance in his earth-shattering voice. Psalm 29:1, "Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The Lord sits enthroned over the flood. The Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people. May the Lord bless his people with peace."

He got into the boat. He sat on the sea, and the size and the urgent interest of the crowd is emphasized by the fact that they are not all here to listen to his word. Probably anchored in shallow water, shallow kind of like the hearts of many listeners. It's an impressive scene. Crowds are always impressive. Seeing a lot of people gathering to hear from one person is always very impressive. But large crowds don't necessarily mean that God's work is being done.

Jesus knew the selfish and fickle hearts of sinful people. John 2:23, "Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man for himself knew what was in man."

People love a gospel that is good news as they define it. Especially nowadays, it's like there's an internal translator whenever even people are having conversations. Someone says something, and they're like, "So by saying that, you're saying this," and they say something completely different. This is what people do with God's word times infinity.

Many didn't come to hear his word, but just to sample it, just to get a taste. You know charcuterie boards? I love charcuterie boards. They're incredible. A lot of people approach the word of God like that. They just say, "I like this part, I like this part. I don't like that part. I'm going to skip the rest," just like I usually skip all the vegetables. I go straight for the cold cuts. No, it's take it or leave it. It's the whole thing.

Some people had no spiritual interests whatsoever. Crowds attract crowds. It's very entertaining. Go hear something. You've got something to think about, and you leave. By their repeated hearing Jesus's warning here, by their repeated hearing the word of God, and not believing, and not obeying, the word of God actually hardens them to make it even harder for them to believe.

In Mark 4:2, "And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them." Now the word parable in the Septuagint, that's the Greek translation of the Hebrew text. In the Hebrew it is masal, and is a term related to the verb to rule. Therefore, it's talking about authoritative speech. Jesus here is using parables to say, "I have authority to regulate revelation." By using this form of teaching, he is regulating revelation where the same teaching reveals the truth to those who are willing to hear it and obey it, and it conceals the truth from those that do not have spiritually sensitive hearts. It's a system of instruction specifically designed to sift the wheat from the chaff among his hearers because he knew people had mixed motives. And his parables, they're designed to test not intelligence, but the spiritual responsiveness.

Matthew 13:34, "All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables. Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world."

Psalm 78:1-2, "Give ear, O my people, to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old."

In verse three of Mark 4, we have the parable. He says, "Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it. Listen, this is verbal. Use your ears." Then he says, "Behold." He says, "Look." He's painting a picture with his words. This is a crucial parable, and it's bracketed with exhortations to listen on the front and on the back.

He uses a very familiar agricultural image. Perhaps there was a guy sowing as he is preaching. It was a man, a farmer would take a bag of seed, tie it to his waist, and walk the fields, rhythmically casting the seed, broadcasting the seed.

We do devotions with our daughters in the evenings and a scripture study, a little prayer. I call it community group for our family. Same thing we do in community group, we do with our group. I was just zonked yesterday. I was like, "Ah." I was like, "I'm going to re-preach my sermon to you real quick right now."

As I'm going through, I said the word broadcast. One of my daughters is like, "What's broadcast mean?" I'm not talking about television. I'm talking about broadcasting. That's what he's doing. He's throwing it indiscriminately, just everywhere. He's got a lot of grain. He knows not all of it is going to produce fruit. Here in the beginning, some falls on a path, a path that was tread probably by villagers, worn down since the last time of the harvest. Birds eat that one.

Verse five, "Other seed fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil and immediately it spraying up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. Since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it and it yielded no grain."

The landowner didn't cut back the thorns. He didn't uproot them. Or perhaps he just cut them back and they grow up even stronger, and they throttle, and choke the fruit. There's been a progression in the case of the first three seeds. The first never took root at all. The second started but died. And the third survived but bore no fruit. In the end, the first three are of no value to the farmer. What is he after? He's after the grain. He's after the fruit.

Verse eight, "And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold." The yield was calculated by comparing the amount of seed that was sown with the amount of grain that was harvested. The yields of 30, 60, a hundredfold are considered remarkable, especially even in modern times in which yields of sevenfold to elevenfold are typical of countries using traditional cropping systems.

The punchline is given verse nine. "He said, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear.'" Because of the mysteriousness of God's kingdom, a special sort of perception is required to understand, to register its presence. The parable concludes with another exhortation to hear. There is, however, progression between these two uses of the word to hear. In the beginning, he says, "Everybody hear. Everybody listen." Here he says at the end, "Let him who has ears to hear. Let him who has been given the gift of spiritual hearing, make sure you use those ears."

Not all can receive Jesus' strange message about the arrival of God's royal power. In the midst of suffering, in the midst of weakness of this fallen world. Not everyone has ears to hear. The only ones who can hear this paradoxical message, rather, are those who have been granted the organ to do so by God.

In verse 10, "And when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables. And he said to them, 'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, everything is in parables.'" Jesus now retires with his disciples to a private place, giving his intrigued and mystified followers an opportunity to ask about the parable. And to speak about the arrival of the dominion as a mystery or as a secret implies that there is something elusive to it. The parable does not only describe successful seed, but three quarters of its space is devoted to unsuccessful seed. Because of this mysterious hiddenness, one needs eyes of faith in order to discern the presence of God's reign.

Why didn't Jesus' brothers believe in him? Why didn't Jesus' mother believe in him? Especially his mother. I've been meditating on this. I think it's because she lived through incredible suffering for years. She's like, "You're the son of God? You're the son of... You're supposed to make everything better. You're supposed to alleviate the pain. You're supposed to remove the suffering and here we have years of suffering. You're saying you're the king of kings?"

And When we proclaim that Jesus Christ is king, we understand the difficulty of believing that he's king. When you look around in the world and you're like, "What? Jesus is kingdom. Why are you allowing all of this to happen?" Especially moments of pain.

This last Friday, our worship night, I was worshiping through pain because I got the biggest toothache I have ever had in my whole life, consequences of being a son of immigrants. It's mind-numbing. I wish it was mind-numbing. Mind-splitting. It's pain I have not experienced in probably ever. That was Friday, and then last. By the time I called... Long story. I'm going to the dentist on Tuesday, Lord willing.

But moments of pain where you're just crippled. You're like, "Lord Jesus, I'm preaching that you're a healer. Could you please heal me?" I'm casting out demons from my... Whatever it is. In the name of Jesus. Moments like that, and it's fallen world, and it's fallen flesh where just pain, and suffering, and just evil and darkness. You're like, "You're the king?" Jesus says, "I'm a king that comes like a seed. I'm a king that comes like a seed. I need to be put in the ground. I need to die in order for that seed to bear fruit. Everything that I'm teaching here is along those lines. It's a mystery. It's truth, but it's shrouded. It's veiled revelation." And we do need the power of the Holy Spirit to see that God truly is King.

Martin Buber once put it, "The true victories won in secret sometimes look like defeats." In the limelight, our faith that God is the Lord of history may sometimes appear ludicrous. But there is something secret in history which confirms our faith. This secret is most evident on the cross of Jesus Christ. On the cross of Jesus Christ, you have God who is dying. The author of life is being crucified. The blood from the author of life is dripping down the cross. It seems like the greatest defeat of all defeats. Then, Jesus is buried, and then he rises on the third day, and the greatest defeat turns into the greatest victory, God's victory in apparent defeat.

Those outside only see the defeat, and the secret has not been revealed to them. Therefore, what is spoken to them is spoken in parables. "Jesus, why are you using parables?" And this is his answer, Mark 4:12, "So that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven." God does not intend for everyone to receive his word, so it should come as no surprise that some people reject it. It is not God's intention that Jesus' parables should enlighten the outsiders. Instead, it should blind them, close off their understanding, prevent them from attaining repentance and forgiveness.

There is deliberate divine intention that some people misunderstand and remain impenitent. It's part of God's justice upon them. We see this in this text that's quoted by Jesus in the original context in Isaiah 6. Isaiah 6 begins with the revelation of God enthroned in awesome splendor, the king of the cosmos. Isaiah sees this. Isaiah is in the throne room of God. He sees the seraphim, the angels of God, serenading God, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty." Isaiah, realizing he's in the presence of God, he says, "Woe, that's God. Woe is me. Who am I, a man of unclean lips that lives amongst the people of unclean lips." God then sanctifies, forgives him of his sin. Then, God says, "Who shall we send? Who will go for us to preach the word?" Isaiah says, "Here am I. Send me."

Then, the following verses, we see one of the deepest mysteries in all of scripture, that God sovereignly grants salvation to his elect, and sinners are fully responsible for their persistence in sin and their ultimate condemnation. Isaiah 6:9, "And he said, 'Go, and say to this people, 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes, lest they see what their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed."

How did Isaiah obey the strange commission? It wasn't by preaching obscure expressions or complex reasoning. No. You read his preaching. It's very plain, very systematic, very reason. People's reaction was they scoffed at him, and they scoffed at the message. When we read this and we realize to know the truth of the gospel, to believe the word of God is a gift. Why are you a Christian to dear saint? Why are you a follower of Jesus Christ? The only answer that is true is that Jesus saved me. God saved me. God changed my heart. God revealed the truth to me. It wasn't because of my ingenuity, it wasn't because of my studies, it wasn't because of my own reading. No, it was God saved me. God chose to reveal the secret to me.

So what does that do to our pride? Absolutely decimates it. We have no pride. We're on our knees before the throne and we say, "Lord Jesus, thank you for revealing the truth." To me, the same word that comes as revelation to the insiders comes as blinding to the outsiders. The difference between the two groups is not that one gets parables while the other does not. No, it's one gets parables in order to understand and the other group gets parables in order to harden them in disbelief.

Veiled revelation, just like God in Christ is both revealed and veiled. His siblings saw him and they're like, "You look normal. You look like us." Because his mother saw him like, "Can you unveil, please?" It's veiled revelation.

I have sisters. One of my sisters, she's a tremendous gift giver, even better gift wrapper. Whenever you see her gifts wraps and the gift bags, I'm like, "Oh, this is going to be good." then you get the present. It's pretty good.

Then, I have another sister who caress nothing for wrapping. She wraps all her presents in Trader Joe's bags. You get it, you're like, "What is this, Amazon? What's going on?" You know it's going to be good though because it's coming from her. Don't let the packaging keep you from opening the package. Don't let the veil keep you from unveiling the veil and seeing the revelation.

I saw a video of this guy walking around offering people either $20 or an ounce of gold, gold coin. Everyone took the $20. I'm watching. I'm like, "No, don't take the $20." Then, he revealed. Someone took the 20 bucks, and he's like, "How much is an ounce of gold?" He's like, "I don't know, like $1,200 give or take." Everyone's like, "Is it too late?"

A lot of people, they read the word of God, they don't have taste buds that value. There's taste buds of your soul. Their soul don't value that this is the word of God that leads to eternal life. We're not just talking about money or this... You can't quantify the value that you can get from the word of God. It's veiled, but it's veiled for a purpose, a purpose of those with humble hearts to go and to keep asking, to keep seeking, just like his disciples. The crowds all left. They didn't understand. The disciples, they come to Jesus like, "We don't get it." And Jesus gives them even more revelation.

God has hidden his mysteries from the wise and discerning, but he does so only in order to accentuate the miracle that God has now revealed them to babies. The parables serve two functions, first to reveal truth to those who are spiritually responsive and, second, to conceal truth from those who are spiritually superficial or scoffing. One commentator says, "Parables are a mine of information to those who are in earnest, but they are a judgment on the casual and careless."

Verse 13, "And he said to them, 'Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?'" Here, the word understand in the English, in both sentences, it's the same word, but in the Greek it's two different words, oidate and gnosesthe. The first one is to know as if by intuition. That intuition is a gift from God. You can only have the intuition, spiritual perception, intuition if you're gifted it. And the second one is knowledge that comes with experience. He's saying, "Do you understand? Do you have the intuition? If not, I'm going to give it to you." Then, that intuition must deepen with the experience, and only God can give you spiritual intuition which deepens with experience.

Here, Jesus makes the cruciality of this parable clear. He's saying, "This parable is the key that actually unlocks the rest of the parables and the rest of the scriptures. To one who already has something more will be given some spiritual insight into the meaning of one parable will lead to further insight into the meaning of the other parables. And failure to understand this one continues to mystify and further and further brings people into the fog of disbelief."

As in all spiritual matters, we either hear or we do not hear. And to see the spiritual truth, to hear is proof that we have received illumination from the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can give us eyes to see spiritual truth. Why? Because we're blind by nature, blinded by sin.

The more of God's revealed truth we assimilate, the more our capacity for assimilating truth grows. And further spiritual perception of God's truth can be perilous. It only condemns us unless we act upon it. Increased knowledge merely brings increased responsibility.

In Luke 12:47, Christ says, "And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more."

This brings us to point three. Hear the word, and accept it, and bear fruit. In verse 14, Jesus begins expounding his own parable. The sower sows the word. The seed here is a powerful symbol of the word of God that has power to sprout eternal life, bring forth eternal life.

James 1:8, "Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures." 1 Peter 1:23, "Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God, for all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you."

Four soils symbolize four hearts. The first is the hard heart. The second is the shallow heart. The third is the over-cluttered heart. And the fourth is the good heart. How does the seed, which is the word of God, release power? By going deep. What does the depth depend on? The condition of the soil. The soil represents the condition of each listener's heart. Are you listening with your heart? Are you listening with a soft heart?

And how do you know that God's power has entered your life? Well, he's no longer a theory. He's no longer an abstraction. He's no longer a thing. He's no longer just a religious category. No, he becomes the priority. He becomes the center. He becomes number one in the hierarchy, in the org chart of your life. Everything revolves around him. The whole of the Christian life is one of continual and progressive response to the fresh spiritual revelation we get from God's word.

Verse 15, "And these are the ones along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them." This word falls on deaf ears. Perhaps the heart has been hardened with distractions. Perhaps not necessarily anything bad, just something that takes your mind off of God. It's like you're reading the Bible, and then you read a chapter, you read a second chapter. And if someone stopped you there and they said, "What did you just read?" You're like, "I have no idea. I have no clue."

Or you're listening to the sermon, and you're like, "I've already heard this before." all of a sudden you think about how Mac Jones is terrible. The Pats are awful. And Belichick-Brady, it was clearly Brady, not Belichick. All of a sudden, you're not thinking about the word at all. And you know that's all true.

Or you're like, "You know what? That's interesting." There's a lot of intellectuals in the city, and you're like, "This is very interesting. I'll just think about." But then you never think about, "Well, how should I respond? What does God want me to do with this word?" That's how you take it in. You receive it so that it actually changes you.

The words that we read in holy scripture, in the holy Bible, these aren't just human words. This is the word of God, and it gives us power for life, and it gives us power to find eternal life.

Deuteronomy 32:47, "For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess." This is Satan tempts Jesus, and Jesus says, "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." There he's quoting the book of Deuteronomy. Every single one of those words is from the mouth of God himself.

Or maybe you hear a sermon or you read scripture and you think about the implications of this for someone else, but never for yourself. Distractions send more people to hell than even doubt. Satan, what does he do? Satan's, by the way, not a figure of speech. Jesus knows who Satan is. He's taking Satan head on in the desert. There is a real spiritual battle raging for the souls of men and women, and Satan hardens people's hearts by the traffic of world philosophies. This is one of the main things that hardens people's hearts. Just years and years of indoctrination, of demonic ideologies, and it hardens your heart to the point where the word just bounces off. That's all Satan's work.

Verse 16, "And these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who when they hear the word immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves but endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away." The seed falls on a thin layer of soil over hard limestone or other stone. This is people who are initially moved. They hear the word, and they make a decision that's short-lived enthusiasm. Perhaps it's very impulsive, but not always are they responding to God. Perhaps they're responding to a feeling. And as soon as that feeling is gone, so is the faith.

What's proof of our faith? It's not the intensity in the beginning, but endurance to the end. Once saved, always persevering. The word for fall away here comes from the word skandalon or scandalized. Refers to someone who views the message of the cross as an offense, as a barrier to belief. And to fall away is to trip over an obstacle. Jesus points out in these cases the shame of persecution is greater than the person's embrace of the message, and they stumble over the message in times of trouble, when things get hard.

Here, dear Christian, dear saint, we have to resolve. We have to make a resolution. No matter the persecution, no matter the trials or the challenges, I will stand strong on the word of God no matter what. God help me.

Verse 18, "And others are the ones who are sown among thorns. They're those who hear the word. But the caress of the world, and deceitfulness of riches, and the desires of other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful." Here we have the case of a divided heart, a heart infested with irreconcilable loyalties. Some of you won't follow through on obedience to God's word because the caress of the world begin to choke it out.

It's not a conscious decision to reject God, but little by little God's word gets crowded out by other things. And all of a sudden, God's not that important. Reading scripture doesn't become that important, doesn't become... It's no longer imperative. Little by little, we lose our love for the Lord.

Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters." And 1 John 2:15 says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." This soil pictures those who get so encumbered with the basic enticements of this world that they produce no fruit. Again, the seed fails to accomplish its purpose.

Think of someone like Judas, Judas who heard all of Jesus' sermons. He saw all of Jesus' miracles. Why, he even performed some miracles himself in Jesus' name. How could this man, how could it possibly be that this man would turn away from the son of God? And how could theologians, describes in the Pharisees, who knew God's words supposedly, and saw Jesus drive out demons, and do miracles, and heal the sick, and they call him an agent of Satan? Well, why didn't they believe? Because no one expected that the king of kings, the Messiah, the God of the universe would come like this. When the king came, all of Israel was to fall into his train and worship him, or so they thought. But the kingdom didn't come that way, not the first time. It comes the way of the seed.

In John 12:23, "Jesus answered them, 'The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.'" If you think about planting a seed, it's such a tender thing. It's so gentle. You take some soil, you take a pot of soil, and you place it gently in, you water it, you care for it. Jesus said, "This is how the kingdom enters your life." Jesus, in the same way that your body entered the ground, you are the living seed of God, the living word of God. You died in order to be raised again. Why? To give us life, to give us new life.

In Mark 4:20, "But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who bear the word, hear the word, and accept and bear fruit thirtyfold, and sixtyfold, and a hundredfold." 30, 60, a hundred shows that different disciples have different levels of productivity, just like different people have different talents that the Lord gives one talent to some, two talents to another, five to another. But they're all productive. They do the best that they can with what they have. When the word reaches a prepared heart, it flourishes, and the seed does what the seed is supposed to do to, bear fruit.

I urge you to aspire to greater fruitfulness. Where are you in this category? First of all, which soils are you? I urge all of you to join me in being number four. Altogether, all of us number four, please. Receptive to God's word, humble under the authorial intent. Focus on exegesis, taking the truth out of text, instead of eisegesis, infusing it into the text. But the whole goal is to be as productive as possible. By productivity, yes, I mean fruit of the Holy Spirit and being transported, be more and more Christ-like, but I also mean converts. And this is what this text is, that one seed led to 30 seeds, or 60 seeds, or a hundred seeds. In the same way that someone shared the gospel with you, you are to share the gospel with others.

How many people have entered the kingdom of God thanks be to your witness? Now, let's aspire to do more. Whenever I see categories like this, I was like, "I want to be in the hundred mark. I want to be in the hundred mark." How do we get there? Lord, I come to your word with a humble and contrite heart. Lord, plant your seed in my heart. And Lord, bring the growth.

When you have a receptive heart, I'm like, "God just does incredible things." I'm walking to church today, and some lady's walking her dog. She comes up to me. In Boston, no one really comes up to you. I'm like, "Oh, this is strange." She's like, "Do you know where the dog park is?" Oh, do I know. Because I have a daughter that wants a dog, and we won't get her dog, so we spent a lot of time in the dog park. So I told her. I gave her directions, the dog park.

Then, I'm preaching, and I see her come in, like the first service. Then after the service, all of a sudden, she's weeping. She's like, "God brought us together." I'm like, "Yes, he did. You need to repent and trust in Jesus Christ." She's weeping and praying.

When you say, "Lord, this is my posture of heart. Lord, use me. Lord, plant your word into my heart. Have a go deep. Lord, I want to be used by you so that other people meet you, lots of people, 30, 60, a hundredfold, even more."

The word is not only the message about the kingdom, but also God's instrument for liberating humanity, and thus bringing in the kingdom. The people who really hear the word, listen to it continually, allow themselves to be broken apart and put together again by the word, as they're growing, plant shatters and transforms the earth in which it is sown. It no longer occupies a secondary place in their lives but has moved to the very center of existence.

The word of God promises... When we seek him with all of our heart, we will find him. Jeremiah 29:13, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 'I will be found by you,' declares the Lord. 'And I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I've driven you,' declares the Lord, 'and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile."

Dear friend, if today you're not sure that you are a believer, that you are saved from your sins, from the condemnation that your sins deserve, today, in your heart of hearts, cry out to the God of universe, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on my soul. Lord Jesus, give me grace. Forgive me of my sin. Plant the seed of the gospel in my heart," and you shall be saved. Then, follow Jesus Christ. Study the good book, and do what it says.

For us as believers, if there is anything in your life, in your heart that's choking out the productivity of the word, if there are any distractions today, remove them, and ask the Lord to cultivate a good soil in your heart. Amen.

Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for this time in the word. What a rich word this is. I pray that you make us not just hearers of the word but doers of it by your grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lord, everything that you call us to do, we cannot do perfectly. But still, you say, "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

So Lord, we aspire to do your will perfectly. We thank you for the grace when we fall and don't do it perfectly. I pray, Lord, continue to tenderize our hearts by the power of the Spirit so that we can be evermore fruitful as individuals, as families, and as a church. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

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For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm the youth and hospitality director here at Mosaic Boston, and whenever I get the opportunity to preach, I always say it is my honor and my privilege to be able to deliver God's word to all of us today. We will be continuing our sermon series through the book of Mark. We'll be in Mark 3:20-35, and the sermon series title is Kingdom Come. And we're going to be looking at what does life in the kingdom of God look like? What does that look like here? But before we get into the text in today's sermon, I have something to say. "I will never forgive you." Harsh words to hear on a Sunday morning. First service was even more appalled. No, I hope you know that I'm not saying that seriously. You have not offended me. You have not done anything to cause me to hold forgiveness from you.

But I want to know what would it take for us to say that to someone? What would someone have to do to us to say to them, "I will never forgive you." Maybe it's something as simple as, "If you lie to me, you break my trust, there's no way I could ever trust you again. I will never forgive you." Maybe say, "Oh, I'm a little bit more holy than that. They would have to cheat on me in a relationship. That I couldn't forgive." And then maybe someone says, "I'm a little bit more holy than that they would have to murder someone I love in order for me not to forgive them." Maybe it's things going on in the world and you say, "I could never forgive that." Maybe you're here and you're saying this is church on a Sunday. This is a trap. I know the right Sunday school answer is, "I'll forgive everyone of everything." I would ask you, does your heart really truly reflect that? If we're honest with ourselves, is there anything that we say and believe someone can do to us and we will never forgive them?

Now, what if I told you that there is something that God Himself says he will never forgive? Now, this is the harsh reality of the text that we will be in is what we call the unforgivable sin that Jesus says is an eternal sin that will never be forgiven. We're going to get to that. But before we do, I want to point out something that's really important about it. It's a sin against God, not a sin against man. So what does that mean? It means that we are not able to have a sin that we withhold forgiveness from others, right? That's not our job. God is the one who forgives and declares that this one sin is unforgivable. So with that sombering mood to set the tone for our service today, will you pray with me over the reading and preaching of God's word.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you that you are a God who forgives. You are a God of mercy and grace, but you do not take sin lightly. Lord, help us to not take our sins against you lightly. Convict us where we need to be convicted. Help us to turn and run to you in repentance, knowing that you do desire to forgive and you are willing, ready, and able to forgive. Help us to trust you more. Lord, use this time. Encourage your church, speak through me. Speak through your word and your scriptures to encourage and strengthen your church and convict us where we need to be convicted. In Jesus' name, amen.

So it is going to be a hard text today and there's a lot going on in it, but I do want to say I believe it is an encouragement to us. I have been greatly encouraged in my studies of this text this week, and I hope it's an encouragement to you. And so to be able to frame up our time, we're going to be spending in three sections. I hesitate to call them points. They are pretty distinct thoughts, but at the end we'll wrap it all together. We'll see how it's all connected. But our three ideas for the sermon are one, liar or lunatic, liar, or Lord, we'll get to that. Number two, the unforgivable sin. And number three, right relationship with Jesus Christ. So that's how we'll be framing our time today.

And this is what we see in our text in Mark 3:20-35. If you have your Bibles, you could open it, you could find it on your phone or you could follow along on the screens behind me. God's word says, "Then He, Jesus, went home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat.

And when His family heard it, they went out to seize Him. For they were saying, 'He is out of His mind.' And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying He's possessed by Beelzebul and by the prince of demons, he cast out demons and he called them to him and said to them in parables, 'how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, the house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, then indeed he may plunder his house. Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven. The children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin,' for they had said he has an unclean spirit."

"And His mother and His brothers came and standing outside, they sent to Him and called Him and a crowd was sitting around Him and they said to Him, 'your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.' And He answered them, 'who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking about at those who sat around Him, He said, 'here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother'." This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Point number one, the fun one, lunatic, liar or Lord? This is a phrase that was coined by C.S. Lewis in terms of these are the options that he presented that we can believe about Jesus and who He is. You can either believe that He is a lunatic, a man out of His mind claiming to be God. Think about it. Where in society today do we see people who claim to be God? Most of the times it's in some sort of institution because society has said, "You're not in your right mind." Second is liar, that Jesus claimed to be God. And so He willfully led people onto believe that even though He knew he wasn't and He was lying to lead people to follow Him. Or thirdly, that He is Lord, that He is who He says He is.

And this idea was brought up by C.S. Lewis to combat the idea of Jesus as a good moral teacher and philosopher. This is something that I think is still prevalent in our society today. We're okay with saying that Jesus brought good ideas that help society, that Jesus is a good man with moral teachings, and so it was good for society that He came. But C.S. Lewis argues we cannot hold that position because good people do not claim to be God. If He willingly knew that He was God, then He was who He says He was. And if He willingly knew He wasn't and lied about it, then He's a liar and He is not a good person. So these are the only three options that C.S. Lewis presents. And many scholars believe that this text in Mark is where C.S. Lewis gets this idea from because we see all of these options here and we're going to go through them.

The first option is lunatic. And this is the very first two verses, verse 20 and 21. "Then He, Jesus, went home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. And when His family heard it, they went out to seize Him, for they were saying, 'He is out of His mind'." His family, His mother and His siblings said about Him, "You're out of your mind. You're crazy." This is what we mean when we say lunatic.

And for the context of where this chapter falls, in the previous sections, Jesus has been healing people and been casting out demons. And while He's doing that, more and more people are coming to Him, bringing their sick, bringing those that are demon oppressed for Jesus to heal them. And so such a great crowd comes around Jesus that He goes down by the sea, He goes, "I can't stay in the city anymore. It's too much chaos. We're going down by the sea." And then the crowd got greater and greater and greater to the point that Jesus was like, "I need to retreat up in the mountains. I'm taking my disciples. We're going up to the mountains to be with the Lord and then we'll come back eventually."

So Jesus is up in the mountains and then verse 20, "Then He went home." So He's coming down from His retreat in the mountains to home, but where is home? Home is in Capernaum. It is most likely Peter's house, not His own home. Why is this what we believe? Is because Peter's house is the only house mentioned in the book of Mark and His family had to go out to find Him. So it's not His parents' house, 'cause they wouldn't have to go anywhere to find Jesus. So it's not His parents' house. It's most likely Peter's house.

So He comes down from this retreat and everyone's like, "He's back. Let's go find Him." So the crowd gathers again and they're swarming Him with so many people that need healing and casting out of demons that they don't have time to even eat. They can't gather anything, they're just working the miracles of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. And His family sees it and they're like, what kind of person draws such a crowd? What kind of person spends so much time with the sick and demon oppressed? He must be out of His mind. He must be crazy. So that's the first option that we see people believing about who Jesus is.

And the second is that He's a liar. And this is the next verse, verse 22. "And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, 'He is possessed by Beelzebub and by the prince of demons, he casts out demons'." And so the scribes come down to see what's going on with this great gathering and they find Jesus casting out demons and they're saying, no, no, He's saying He's doing it by the power of God. He has claimed to be God the Messiah, but no, He's a liar. He's doing it by the power of Satan instead. That's a bold, bold claim.

Now the purpose of the book of Mark is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is the one true messiah, that He is God come to earth and Mark has written this book to convince the Jewish readers of his day that Jesus is the Messiah and its purpose is the same for us today. Yes, I agree with C.S. Lewis in a lot of ways that these are the only three options. We cannot say Jesus is a good person, but the Gospel's point is there's only one option. You could say that He looks like a lunatic. You can accuse Him of being a liar, but those do not hold any weight. He is clearly who He says He is. He is Lord. And Jesus proves that point in the following verses. This is Mark 3:23-26.

"Jesus then calls the scribes to Him and said to them in parables, 'how can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, the kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand but is coming to an end'." Jesus defeats the arguments of lunatic or liar by these few sentences and appeals to the scribe's natural understanding of the world. Logically, He says, can Satan cast out Satan? How is that even possible? Think about it this way, if that doesn't make sense to you, how can a kingdom divided against itself stand? Think about a kingdom that's at constant civil war with one another. How is that kingdom going to stand until one of the side cedes to the other and there is unity between the two. It can't. Constant battle will eventually destroy them. So a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. And if you're saying Jesus is casting out demons by the power of demons that makes no sense. It would be a kingdom divided.

But maybe the kingdom analogy doesn't work as well. So what about a household? It says a house divided against itself cannot stand? Unfortunately, this is one that many of us are much more familiar with in our day and age is the broken household. How can a broken household stand? How can a household where mother and father are constantly pitted against one another, arguing without any unity, without any forgiveness, how can that household stand? And most of the times it does not.

And Jesus is appealing to their logic. He's appealing to their reason, He's appealing to their natural sense of saying, what you are accusing me of makes no sense. And by doing this, He defeats both arguments of lunatic and liar. The argument that He's making is against Him being a liar. He is saying, "I'm not lying. What you're saying, it doesn't make any sense."

And He proves not to be a lunatic because He's in His right mind and He's able to out reason the scribes. Well, the question is who are the scribes? Scribes aren't just your average, everyday Joe Schmo on the block who likes to pick fights and argue? No, the scribes were religious lawyers. So they were the ones who were charged with interpreting the laws of scripture and giving it to the synagogues, that's the temple to the Jewish people, for what to follow. It was their job essentially to be the most logical and reasonable. And Jesus outlogiced and reasoned them. And He is saying, I cannot be a lunatic. I'm in my right mind. I'm more reasonable than the most reasonable people in our society. And I'm not a liar. I just proved that in the argument. So what else is there? Is Jesus who He says He is? Is He Lord? Is He God?

And this is verse 27. Verse 27 is actually a statement, a claim of divinity by Jesus. Jesus says, "But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed, he may plunder his house." The strong man here is not Jesus. The strong man here is Satan. The argument is if you're casting out demons by the power of Satan, that's what they're accusing Him of, He's saying, how can I do that unless I first bind the strong man, bind Satan, then I can cast out the demons, then I could go in and plunder his house. So what Jesus is saying is He's not the strong man, but in order to be able to bind a strong man, what do you need to be? You need to be stronger. Jesus is saying, I am the stronger man. I am the strongest man.

And that is where the statement takes place in terms of Jesus claiming His divine authority that he is God, because in the spiritual realm, everyone at this time understood that the most powerful spiritual being was Satan, apart from one, that there was only one who was greater in power and might than Satan, and that was God Himself. So by Jesus saying, I am stronger than Satan, He is saying to the people and they well understood it, I am God.

Jesus doesn't just defeat plausible arguments about who He might be. He declares boldly that He is God. And as we are going to transition into this topic of the unforgivable sin, the first thing that we need to talk about before we get anywhere near there is who do you say Jesus is? Who is Jesus to you? I want to put forward this to you and argue and plead with you to hear that Jesus is who He says He is. He is Lord, whatever cultural or societal or prejudices or ideas about Jesus that you might have, I urge you to consider is He who He says He is? And I promise you that He is God, He is Lord, and He is savior. And that is the setup for this section on the unforgivable sin. And this is verses 28 through 30 where Jesus says, "'Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven. The children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin,' for they had said He has an unclean spirit."

So before we get to the awkwardness of the unforgivable sin, we have to understand that this is ultimately about forgiveness as a whole and it's forgiveness by God. This is what I mentioned in the beginning, and John Piper wrote an article on his website about these verses and he says this, "First, the forgiveness in view is God's forgiveness. The sweetest news for a sinner is that God has forgiven him, that God no longer holds his sins against him. But the worst news in the world is that God will never forgive you. God is the one to reckon with. What men think about our sin is relatively unimportant. What God thinks is infinitely important." So we're talking about forgiveness from God and what does Jesus say? The first part that he says, "All sins will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter."

I want to pause there because oftentimes this gets lost by the following section of the unforgivable sin, we can't even hear these words of Jesus. Do you feel the weight of these words, all sins will be forgiven the children of man? I kind of say, do you feel the weight of that facetiously because it's light, it's freeing, it's something that sets us free, that we know with certainty God is able and willing to forgive us of anything we do. Do we run to Him in forgiveness? And not only is He willing, He is able, He's able, He's powerful enough to do it. This is my favorite part of that strong man section that I skimmed over a little bit. But He says He's going to go in and plunder the goods once He binds the strong man. So Jesus is strong enough to bind the strong man and plunder his goods.

What is pluming goods? It's taking the goods from, say, someone's house and then bringing them into your own and saying, These are now mine, making them your own. Well, what are the goods of the kingdom of Satan and what are the goods of the kingdom of God? What are the most valuable possessions of them? It's people, it's you, it's me. It's souls. It's eternal beings that Jesus doesn't just sit back and say, "I could forgive you if you want," but he says, I am actively going in and I am plundering. I am setting free those who are in captivity to the kingdom of Satan, those who are in captivity to sin and to death and to Satan. Jesus comes in and plunders us. He sets us free from that and brings us into His kingdom and says, "You are mine now." That is the freedom of this verse and it's really important that we get it before we get to the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit because we like to hold onto the like, what about the but?

But the main thing here is that there is ultimate complete forgiveness from God for all sins. Psalm 130:10-13 says this, "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to His children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him."

God's love is so great. It is higher than the heavens. It is so great that He's willing and able and powerful enough to forgive us of all of our sins if we just turn to Him and repent. And the incredible thing about this is even if you called Jesus a lunatic or a liar or anything else, any other words under the sun, Jesus is willing to forgive you of that. Many of us at one point in time, maybe were angry with God, maybe said some things we didn't necessarily mean or maybe we did mean and don't want to admit that we meant it. But if we have called Jesus a lunatic or a liar, God is willing to forgive. If we have hated Jesus and even hated some of His teachings and said, "I don't like what the Bible says about X, Y, or Z," God is willing to forgive. Even if we say, "I hate God's people, I hate Christians, I hate the church," even if we have ever said any of those things, God is still willing and ready and able to forgive.

So if you're here today and you're not a Christian, I want to encourage you, God is looking to forgive you. He is willing and ready to forgive. Nothing that you have done is so grievous that He will not forgive. And if you're here today and you're a Christian, what this means is that we can joyfully repent when we have the conviction of sin because we know that He wants to forgive us. So then you're all wondering, we're all wondering what about the exception to the rule? What about this blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? Where does this come in? I have always said that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is equating the works of the Holy Spirit to the work of Satan or to the demonic, and that is true in a lot of senses. I think it's a clear example of how we see this sin take place and it's the example we see here in our text, but I think it's a little bit more nuanced and the heart of the sin is a little bit more nuanced.

And John Piper, in his article on these verses, again, the same article says this, "What then is it? The unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an act of resistance which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that He withdraws forever His convicting power so that we are never able to repent and be forgiven." I'm going to say that again. "Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an act of resistance, which belittles the Holy Spirit so grievously that He withdraws forever with His convicting power so that we are never able to repent and be forgiven." This is important because what it means is there is no sin so grievous that God holds a grudge and won't forgive. I think the initial thought-provoking question of what would someone have to do for us to say to them, "I will never forgive you?" Our mind immediately goes to how bad of a sin is that thing going to be?

And the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not unforgivable because it's so bad that God is incapable of forgiving. No, and it's not that. It just is this one thing God said, "I guess I can't forgive it, so I'm stuck in this and I can't forgive." No, it's a belittling of the Holy Spirit so grievously that the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin, we push away, we say we want nothing to do with you. We remove the ability of God's convicting power from our lives so that way we are never caused to repent and therefore cannot be forgiven. This is where the word that the scribes use to describe the spirit that they believe God is or that Jesus is working through is so important. It's the word Beelzebul. Beelzebul. It's a actual nickname for Satan. Not a good nickname. But the title for Satan that they're kind of doing a play on is Beelzebub. The name Beelzebub means Prince of Demons or Ruler of Demons. And so that was kind of the formal name that Satan was called by.

But man, the Jewish people and the scribes, they had a great sense of humor. We think that we're the greatest memers of all time, memers, look at me, I don't use memes ever, but we think that we have the best memes of all time, but it's just that we have the internet to spread it more. But the Jewish people are like, yeah, Beelzebub, we'll call them Beelzebul. Well, what does that mean? Beelzebul, by changing one letter, they changed the name from Ruler of Demons to Lord of the Flies or Lord of Dung.

In a lot of ways this was a relatively good thing. Satan is not Lord of anything good, all that he rules leads to death, destruction, despair, you could say dung. The issue is the scribe said the clear working of the Holy Spirit is as dung to us. Those are harsh words to say about the Holy Spirit. It's a harsh thing to say about the Spirit of God. And Jesus's warning against the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. He uses the words very specifically saying, Holy Spirit.

This is something that I learned. I don't know when, but I didn't know growing up, and I don't know if you guys know this, but the Holy Spirit is not His formal name. It's not like Holy, His first name, Spirit, His last name. It's a descriptive word many times throughout scripture, Jesus just calls Him Spirit or the Spirit of God. Holy is not a requirement to be attached, but it's an identifier. And Jesus uses this very intentionally here to counteract the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is saying the spirit you are working with is dung to us. And He says, no, no, I'm going to tell you who the spirit is. It's the Holy Spirit, it's the anointed one, it's the cleanse, holy, clean spirit of God. That is the power by which Jesus is working His miracles here.

So the question then becomes, okay, that's a whole lot of theological talk. What does it mean for us today? First, very simply, honor the Holy Spirit. Bestow honor upon whom honor is due. And this is one of the beautiful things that I love about the Trinity, is that each person of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bestows honor on the others. The Father bestows honor upon the Son and upon the Spirit, the Son bestows honor upon the Spirit and upon the Father, and the Spirit bestows honor upon the Son and on the Father. And I think oftentimes we neglect to honor the spirit because of two temptations. One is that we are very academic, intellectually based people. And so spiritual things tend to be harder to understand. They don't come as naturally to understand. And so we kind of shy away from it a little bit. Or the other temptation is to over exalt the giftings of the spirit, right? We say the Spirit enables people to do good things, to prophesy, to teach, to do all these wonderful good things. So we want the gifts more than we want the Spirit.

And so, one thing that we are called to do in terms of avoiding and getting as far away from the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is to just honor the Spirit, recognize His working in our lives, recognize the conviction of sin when we feel it, recognize the gift of comfort and peace in hard times as a gift of the Holy Spirit, that God is with us, He is not leaving us. That when we are able to do work for the glory of God, that it is a blessing of the Holy Spirit and praise God for His spirit and ask for more. Say, Lord, I need more help. Lord, give me more of your spirit. Help me to live for you.

And the second thing, and I think the most directly relatable to this text that we are called to do in terms of avoiding the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, is if you feel conviction of sin, don't take it for granted. Don't take it for granted. If you feel conviction of sin, don't say, "Yeah, but it's not that bad of a sin. I know I got to work on it, but I'll deal with it later." Don't say, "No, I don't believe that's a sin. God, I think I'm okay. I'm going to hold onto this for now." When you feel conviction of sin, repent quickly. And while you are able and ready to forgive or ready to be forgiven and to repent, remembering again that God is willing, all sins, He says, will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemes they utter. So God wants to forgive when you feel that conviction go and repent.

And I think one of the lies of Satan is that when we feel conviction, we associate it with guilt and with shame. What I want to tell you today is recognize that the conviction is a gift from God of the Holy Spirit. It's a good thing. It is something to rejoice over when we feel conviction and not be ashamed about because we could say, hey, the Holy Spirit's still with me. God is with me. He's talking to me. He's correcting me, He's guiding me. It's a blessing. It is a good thing to feel conviction of the Holy Spirit.

And the other side of this is the more that we reject that conviction, the easier it becomes to continually reject that conviction of sin. In a separate account of Jesus warning His disciples about this sin a second time, in Luke chapter 12, it immediately follows the passage on the warning of the leaven of the Pharisees. Well, what is that? Jesus is warning His disciples about what He calls the leaven of the Pharisees, which is a little bit of yeast, a little bit of leaven that gets into a loaf of dough will eventually take over the whole thing and the whole thing will be infected with this leaven. And so beware of the little things, beware of the little sins that continually perpetuate within you and ultimately lead to something that is much greater than what it set out and started out as.

And I believe that this connection is very intentional with the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit because the more we continually reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the more we're going to do it, the more we're going to say, "No, that's okay. I'm good. No, I don't need to repent. I'm fine. I'm good." Until we get to the point where we're like the scribes who stand above the law, they say, we're the ones given the right to interpret the law. We're the ones given authority to say the do's and don'ts of the scriptures. I don't need to repent 'cause I know what I'm talking about. I know what I'm doing. Beware in the leaven of the Pharisees, beware the rejection of the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

And the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event. It's not something that you say once and it's like, "Oh, sorry, you're done. No hope." It actually comes out of the state of our hearts. It reveals the state of our hearts. And in Matthew chapter 12, it's the same story of Jesus warning, the scribes and the Pharisees about the sin of the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit. But He doesn't stop there. He continues. Matthew continues the account of what Jesus says to them. And in Matthew 12:33, it says, "Either make the tree good and it's fruit good or make the tree bad and it's fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers. How can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." I'm going to stop there for now. But for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Jesus knew the heart of the scribes and of the Pharisees. This wasn't just something that they were wrong about. This wasn't just them not believing in Jesus. Within their hearts, they had built up this resentment towards the working of God. Why? Because they had a nice job. They had a good living. They were high in society and anything that challenged that, they wanted nothing to do with. And so they put themselves over God and over His scriptures rather than submitting to it and trusting the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the point that they have belittled the spirit so much that they couldn't hear that conviction any longer.

What I want to say to you is I do believe that this text is an encouragement. I know you might be like, "How? Why?" It's an encouragement because again, we cannot forget God's willingness and readiness to forgive us when we repent. And also it's an encouragement because if you have ever worried, maybe you're worried now, have I done that? Have I committed the sin? Oh, maybe I'm headed down that way. That's a good sign because it means that God is convicting you, right? It means that the Holy Spirit is still with you, is still active, is still moving in your life. Many people when they talk about this sin, they'll say, if you ever fear that you have committed it's proof that you haven't. And I agree because that is the conviction of the Holy Spirit within you saying that you're not in a right place with God. And then whatever you need to do to get in a right place with God, do and repent of whatever sins the Holy Spirit is convicting you of.

So Jesus proves that He is Lord, which proves that the working He is doing is by the power of the Holy Spirit and He exalts and lifts up the Holy Spirit, calls us to repentance. So now what brings us into right relationship with Jesus Christ. This is the last section of our text which connects back to the very beginning of this text. In verse 31 it says, "And His mother and His brothers came and standing outside, they sent to Him and called Him and a crowd was sitting around Him and they said to Him, 'your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.' And He answered them, 'who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking about at those who sat around Him, He said, 'here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother'."

Remember back in verse 20, it said that Jesus's family was going out to seize Him. In other words, seize is take by force. So they go and they finally get there. They get to where He is, and the crowd's still there and they're looking around at the crowd and they're like, maybe it's not the best idea to take Him by force. We might cause an uprising. Let's just tell people, "Hey, we're here to see Jesus. Can you tell Him His mother and His brothers are here?" So the crowd is like, "Jesus, your family's here. Go see them."

If you want to start a fight with your family, go home and say these words, "Who are my mother or my brothers or my fathers?" Oh man, I said first my mom would never hit me, but she would want to slap me if I said that to her. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't. But she would want to because that is offensive. That is harsh words, Jesus. What are you getting at? What are you saying here? And Jesus is defeating another argument about Him, not just who He is, but how do we have relationship with Him? You see, Jesus's family thought, we're His family. We have the right to tell Him when He's going too far. We have the right to tell Him that He is wrong and tell Him what to do because we have that familial relationship.

I want to tell you friends, no external relationship will make you right with God. I work with the teens, the middle school and high schoolers, so I often tell them, but any kids, teens that are here, you're not saved just because your parents bring you to church. The question is, who do you say Jesus is? Do you repent of your sins? Do you have right relationship with God? Maybe you're here because you're an adult, but family or friends invited you and God is good to them, so I just want to know a little bit more about this God. We're glad you're here, but God being a friend of a friend is not going to save you. Are you right with God? Do you repent of sins and trust in Him and recognize Him as Lord of all?

And I also want to point out that Jesus has already, and I just wanted to loop it in here, defeated the other second presumption of the scribes and the Pharisees on how they thought they could have right relationship with God. Scribes said, we are the religious lawyers of the day. You get all the benefits of being a lawyer. We think of lawyers, what do we think of? Liars, cheaters, swindlers. My wife's a lawyer. She's none of those things. Praise God. But we think negatively of lawyers, but we recognize they make a lot of money. They do good work. They're very smart people. So take all the benefits of a lawyer and all the benefits of being a religious leader like, oh, great, they're the moral virtuous lawyers. We are so upstanding in our society. Jesus didn't care. Jesus understood their hearts were not right with God.

They had the most schooling. They had the highest education of the people of their days. Friends, I tell you, God doesn't care about how many letters come after or before your name. They don't care about what degree titles you have. Those are good. I'm not saying don't study, don't get education. But when you stand before God, He's not going to say, "Wow, PhD. Nice, nice. Okay, I guess you could come in." No. What makes us right with God is right relationship with Jesus Christ alone. Nothing societal, nothing external, nothing but faith and trust in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him will make us right with God. This is why Jesus says, "Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother." Do we do the will of God? Do we understand the will of God? This is where it connects back to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the one who guides us in the will of God. So if you reject the Holy Spirit, you will never be able to do the will of God.

So I challenge you today, Christians, anyone who is here, Christian or not, ask God for His Holy Spirit to guide you, to lead you in His will. Study scriptures that reveal God's will to all of humanity for us, and listen and obey them. I pray that we can be humble and quick in our repentance of our sin and bold in our obedience and faithfulness to Him. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good and You are stronger than sin, you are stronger than Satan, you are stronger than the penalty of death. Lord, we thank you and we praise you. Remind us of your greatness, of your ability to forgive and your willingness to forgive when we are in sin. Help us to run to you quickly, to confess our sins to you and to repent quickly. As soon as we are convicted, help us repent, because we know how good you are, because we know how willing and ready you are to forgive. Lord, help us to then change our lives. Help us to live in accordance to your word, to faithfully follow Jesus, to recognize Him as our one true Lord over our lives and overall, and submit faithfully to you and to Him. So Lord, we thank you and we praise you. Encourage us with this text in Jesus name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word, and we pray that You make us a people that love Your Word and love every part of Your Word and people that love Your law even. As the psalmist in Psalm 119 says, "O, how I love Your law. It's my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies for it is ever with me." Lord, I pray that You give us a love for Your law, and I pray that You give us a desire to meditate on it all the day. And I pray that You make us a people who grow in wisdom and knowledge and discernment.

Lord, as we continue our sermon series in the Gospel of Mark, I pray that You focus our attention on not just how Jesus taught or how He lived, but how He did everything He did according to Your will, to fulfill Your commandments. And Lord, I pray that You extend grace to us, that if we and where we break commandments that You forgive us and then You give us grace to live according to the law. Lord, I pray that You bless our time in the holy Scriptures. Send us the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, regenerate anyone who's not yet a believer, speak to their hearts, and draw them to Yourself. And Lord, fill them with the power of the Holy Spirit. And continue to refine Your church, Lord, to continue to build up Your body and with the washing of water, with the Word continue to cleanse Your bride. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. We call it Kingdom Come: The Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's kingdom. And the title of the sermon is Yes, God Really Said. There are two ways offered to people, two ways of life. One way promises God likeness and one promises godliness. Both offer a way of becoming like God. The first one is offered by Satan, God's adversary. He tempts each person with the following: "Reject God's law and you'll become like God, God likeness, defining what is good and evil for yourself. The second way is offered by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who says, "Follow me in keeping the law of God from the heart."

Satan is too crafty to just come out and say, "Reject God's law" or "Follow me." No, the way Satan builds his kingdom is by veiling, God's law, by obfuscating, distorting it. And he does it by undermining it with the question, did God really say? Did God actually say? Those are his very first words spoken in Scripture when he tempts Eve, "Did God really say that on the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you will die." Jesus Christ comes declaring with divine authority, "Yes, God really did say. God really said it." God really did give us a law, a perfect law, an everlasting law written by the very fingers of God. It was initially just called the Word, the Word of God, written with His finger, the Ten Commandments.

Trivia question: who was the very first person to break all Ten Commandments in one day? It was Moses when he broke the Ten Commandments as he's coming down from the mountain. I asked two people this week and within two seconds of asking, I asked my third daughter and she nailed it. I was like, "How did you know?" She's like, "It's obvious." But that happened because it's a symbol, it's a symbol of the fact that God has given us His law. And the very first thing that the person entrusted with the law, the very first thing he does is break it. Why does he break it? Because he sees the people of God not worshiping God. His heart was broken by the fact that their hearts were so far from God that they wanted nothing to do with worshiping God. And therefore, God does send us the law and the prophets.

God gave the Ten Commandments through Moses to all of humanity in all places for all time. God also provided a sacrificial system for atonement when the people of God broke commandments. Then God sends Jesus Christ as the king to establish God's kingdom on earth. What are the laws of the kingdom? It's the Ten Commandments. Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven."

So when Jesus says, "I've come to fulfill the law," what does He mean? To fulfill the law means that Jesus kept the law, He followed the law. He kept every one of the Ten Commandments from the heart, and then He offers Himself as a sacrifice to provide atonement for our law-breaking. Then He says, "Repent of your breaking of God's law. Receive forgiveness. Receive a new heart. And in that new heart, the wineskins, new wineskins and filled with new wine of the Holy Spirit and with the indwelling power of the spirit in the new heart. We want to follow God from the heart. We want to obey His laws as they're written on our heart.

The righteous law of God, which condemns our sin, is as permanent as the good news from God, which promises salvation from sin's judgment. It's an inside-out kingdom because God regenerates our hearts, writes His law on our hearts. We want to obey the letter of the law and also the spirit of the law, which is love. It all starts in the heart, but it doesn't stay in the heart. And that's really the issue with Jesus and the Pharisees. We keep coming up on Him going toe to toe with them in debate on the Sabbath. Why? What's the fight over? It's what is God's law? They ended up adding traditions and regulations, their own law on top of God's law to obfuscate the law.

So today we're in Mark 3:1-19. Would you look at the text with me? "Again He," Jesus, "entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus to see whether He would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man with the withered hand, 'Come here.' And He said to them, 'Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?' But they were silent. And He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him, how to destroy Him.

"Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galileo and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that He was doing, they came to Him. And He told His disciples to have a boat ready for Him because of the crowd, lest they crush Him, for He had healed many so that all who had diseases pressed around Him to touch Him. And whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, 'You are the Son of God.' But He strictly ordered them not to make Him known.

"And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those whom He desired, and they came to Him. And He appointed 12, whom He also named apostles, so they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. He appointed to the 12: Simon, to whom He gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James, to whom He gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder, Andrew and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him. This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, King Jesus defends the law of God. Second, King Jesus endures the crush of service. And third, King Jesus appoints the 12 apostles. First, King Jesus defends the law of God. Here in verse one it says, "Again He entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand." The emphasis here is on the word again. This was the pattern of Jesus' life, on the Sabbath day, He would go to the synagogue, which was the place of the gathering of the people of God. He did this on a weekly basis. He enters this synagogue, this was his way of going to church. And the way of Jesus is the way of God's law. He fulfilled God's law.

When He says, 'Follow me,' He say follow me in obeying God's commandments. And thus the emphasis on the fourth commandment, thus the emphasis on the gathering to worship God on the Sabbath. He's keeping the fourth commandment, and He's doing it from the heart. He gathers on the Lord's day to give God His due glory because He loves the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, strength, and mind. And in the synagogue are the Pharisees, the representatives of big religion, the religious establishment. They were pitted as the enemies of Christ here because Christ's popularity is growing His authority, it's self-authenticating. They're losing authority, and they recognize that Jesus is a threat to their dominion, so to speak.

In verse two, "They watched Him to see whether He would heal Him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him." It's a gentleman with a withered hand and most likely it's an image of paralysis, most likely he couldn't work. The Pharisees are watching Jesus closely because they're concerned with Sabbath observance. The word for watch here is used in the Septuagint and other places in the salter of sinners who are lying in wait for a righteous person to slay him, lying in wait. So the Pharisees who objected to Jesus eating with sinners, well, they are revealing themselves to be sinners here. So that they might accuse Him, they want to bring charges against Him because they're breathing murderous plots in their hearts. So this is the second run in with big religion over the Sabbath between the Pharisees and Jesus. In the previous text, they accused Jesus' followers of not following the Sabbath law. Here they're accusing Jesus Himself. Why? Because the deliberate transgression of the Sabbath law carried the death penalty. If they can find Jesus breaking the Sabbath, they can bring charges against Him in order to execute Him.

Exodus 31:12, "And the Lord said to Moses, 'You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, "Above all you shall keep My Sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among the people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed."'"And He gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

And then in Numbers 15:32, "While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath. And those who found him gathering sticks brought them to Moses and to Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had been made clear what should be done to him. And the Lord said to Moses, 'The man shall be put to death, all the congregations shall stone him with stones outside the camp.' And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones as the Lord commanded Moses."

So Jesus is here to fulfill the law. He's fulfilling it. Now the question is, is He transgressing the law by healing on the Sabbath? Well, Jesus is going to heal the man on the Sabbath. He has an opportunity to do a good work. And no, He's not transgressing the law, as He's going to explain, because the law was given for the people of God as a day that is designated in holiness. This day is different. This day is devoted to the Lord, and it's devoted to good works. So no, doing good works on the Sabbath does not transgress the fourth commandment. Verse three, He tells the man, "Come here." Jesus calls him to stand up publicly. Jesus knows that the man wants to be healed, and if the man truly desires healing, he must confess his need and show his faith in the power of Jesus Christ by standing up in the face of the whole congregation and displaying his need.

It's a moment of public confession, of faith, and potentially costly confession. He understands by standing up and doing what Jesus says, he is going against the religious establishment which might come at a cost. This is one of the reasons why baptism is what it is. Jesus Christ commanded us to be baptized, and baptism is a public profession of faith. When we do baptism here at Mosaic, we ask that whoever's being baptized to come on up and to answer one question, why do you love Jesus Christ? We do that because that's the pattern of Holy Scripture and that's commanded to us. The person gets up, and they're confessing their need for Christ. "I've broken the commandments. I need Christ. I need His sacrifice. I need His grace. And I commit to follow Jesus Christ all of my days." So that's what He's doing here.

And then Jesus, before He heals the man, He has a theological debate with the Pharisees by asking them a question that leaves them silent. He said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. And here Jesus is getting at the intent of the law, and He's saying, "What is the point of the law?" The point of the law is that God is a God who loves life. He's the creator. God is love, so whatever he does command, the point of what He commands is love. He's given us the law because He loves us, He wants us to flourish. This is the pattern of the less life, the life of shalom, the life of universal flourishing.

So on the Sabbath He's saying, "What's lawful? What's lawful? Is it lawful to do good or to do harm?" The point of the Sabbath is to designate one whole day where we do good, where one-seventh of our waking hours are devoted to God, loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love people, to do good. The reason why they fall silent is because they understand that in their hearts they are intending to destroy Christ. What are they doing in the Sabbath? Are they doing good, or they doing harm? They're doing harm. So Jesus reads their minds, He asks a question that answers the doubts of their heart, and He's like, "Obviously the point of the Sabbath is to do good, is to promote life, is to promote rest in the Lord."

And also, He is showing them their inconsistency. On the Sabbath they allowed for people to rescue animals. Obviously if it's true for animals that they could be saved on the Sabbath, it's an order of magnitude more true for humans as image bearers of God. This is more explicit in Matthew 12 where it says, "He went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. They asked Him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" so that they might accuse Him. He said to them, "Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep. So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

According to most of the rabbis, they would argue that what Jesus here is doing transgresses the Sabbath law because the man is not in imminent danger. According to most of the rabbis, and certainly those the Pharisees followed, unless the person's life is at stake, it's work to help the person. But there's nothing remotely even close to that in the Old Testament. Why are they judging Him according to a standard that's not in Scripture? Well, by the time that Christ has come, they have created an elaborate set of rules regarding what could and could not be done on the Sabbath. And their rules, their own regulations, their own traditions were presented as inert, infallible, and more authoritative than the Word of God itself. Jesus here is saying, "No, I'm not going to be ruled by human tradition. I'm not going to be ruled by human rules and laws. I'm going to be ruled only by the law of God." Jesus was, and that's why He's the righteous king.

We always have to be careful of that. Whenever we look at the faith, we have to ask, "Is this in Scripture? Is this from the Holy Scriptures, or is whatever we're doing, whatever we're teaching, whatever we're following, is it based in tradition and human tradition?" So Jesus as the holy one of God, He knows exactly what God's law says, and He knows the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, and He's saying that, "No, on the Sabbath we should be doing kindness. It is permitted. We should be doing good works. There's no better day of the week to do good works than on the Sabbath."

The Pharisaic attitude, on the other hand, not only misses the point of the day but smacks of indifference to this human being who's suffering. So they were silent. Their silence is hostile. They understand that they have been publicly humiliated because how do you answer that question? There's only one answer, and they know that Jesus is right. They understand that they've lost face in front of the people, in front of the crowd, which makes them for dangerous enemies.

To what extent was it lawful to watch for the life of another as they were doing? They're looking to destroy Christ. Verse five, "And He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' He stretched it out, and his hand was restored." There's anger in Christ's heart because He understands that they don't have love for God and they don't have love for neighbors. So they are law-breakers and they present themselves as the guardians of the law. So he's angry at that. He's angry and grieved at their hardness of heart. Hardness of heart is willful refusal. When you see a miracle in front of you, when you see the power of God in front of you, when the truth is evident and you just choose to refuse it, choose to not believe.

Some of the commentators are saying that this appeal of hardness, it's actually an illusion to in the Old Testament where Pharaoh exhibited hardness of heart. He saw miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle, and he chooses to harden his own heart, and then God hardens Pharaoh's heart as well. Some of the commentaries say that that's why the Pharisees, it's a play of words, Pharisees and Pharaoh perhaps. But the hardness of heart is the Son of God is in front of them, the Son of God who knows the Word of God better than them, who reads their thoughts and actually does miracles right in front of them to authenticate that what He's saying is true, in the face of all the evidence, they still choose to disobey.

Jesus heals the man, and He does so by telling the man, "Stretch out your hand." Here you see the cleverness of Jesus. Can they accuse Him of doing works by healing the man? Well, what was Jesus' work? Jesus told the man, "Stretch out your hand." The man stretches out the hand, the man does the work, and as he does, the man is healed. Verse six, "The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Him, how to destroy Him." The Herodians were the Jewish supporters of Herod. And so you have the religious Jews, that's the Pharisees, and the political Jews, the Herodians, teaming up, uniting in wanting to kill Jesus Christ. How to destroy Him, that's a phrase that was used by the demons when they said, "Are you the Son of God come to destroy us?" And here the Pharisees are seeking to destroy Christ.

Big religion's response to Jesus stands in stark contrast to the other response, which is the crowds. They flock to Jesus Christ to experience healing and to experience exorcisms. And this is point two, King Jesus endures the crush of service. Verse seven, "Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from a round Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that He was doing, they came to Him." He withdraws, and the emphasis here is that He's leaving the danger from the Pharisees. Withdrawal from danger fits in this context. And it shows us that as He goes outside He's entering Gentile territory. He shows that He's not just the savior of Israel but the savior of the nations.

As He told the shocked Pharisees in Matthew 8:11, He says, "I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." So the people flock to Jesus Christ. In verse nine, He told His disciples to have a boat ready for Him because of the crowd, lest they crush Him. The crowd is growing and they're exerting pressure on Him. It's a phrase that's used metaphorically, to oppress or afflict. These are people that know that Jesus can meet their physical needs. They're attracted to Jesus primarily for that. They're pressing in to just touch Him and get just a taste of His power to be healed.

Jesus backs away from them onto the boat that's probably owned by Peter, James, and John. And He heals them. In verse 10, "He healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around Him to touch Him." The word for press here and crush, those are two implications that when Jesus comes as the Messiah, as prophesied in Isaiah 53, our diseases will be placed upon Him, our chastisement and sins will crush Him. This is Isaiah 53:4-6, "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteem Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

Along with healing, Jesus exorcizes demons. Verse 11, "Whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, 'You are the Son of God.' And He strictly ordered them not to make Him known." The human and demonic reactions to Jesus here are similar. The human sufferers fell upon Him, the unclean spirits fall before Him, and they confess that, "You are the Son of God." This is the second time in Mark that Jesus is called the Son of God, the first time by God the Father. He said, "This is my Son, my beloved Bon whom I'm well pleased and whom I've taken delight." The demons say similar thing, "You are the Son of God," but there's no love for Christ in their hearts, that's why they're demons, and they do not delight in Him. But Jesus doesn't want their confessions. He tells them, "Don't say this out loud." Because it's not their job to proclaim the good news. It's not their job to proclaim who He is. That's the job of His followers.

Speaking of His followers, this is point three, that King Jesus appoints the 12 apostles. Verse 13, "And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those whom He desired, and they came to Him." And here Jesus as sent on the mountain, recalls Moses as sent to Sinai. Throughout the Pentateuch in Exodus 19, God prophesies and He said, "Israel is my treasured possession." And here Jesus in calling the disciples calls them to intimacy, that they are His treasured possession.

Another important mosaic ascent of Moses occurs in Exodus 24 when Moses ascends Sinai in the company of the priests and the elders and sets up 12 pillars to symbolize the 12 tribes. The emphasis here is on Jesus' call. He called the disciples to Himself. He initiates the call. Those whom He desired, it's to emphasize His power of choice, that He chooses whom to follow Him. When Jesus calls, it's a prophetic call, and it's a call that's effectual, with a desired effect because God's Word does not return to Him void. Isaiah 55:11, "So shall My Word be that goes out from My mouth, it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

So they come up the mountain with Him, they follow Jesus. They leave behind whatever their vocational calls were in order to devote themselves to Christ. In verse 14, "He appointed 12, whom He also named apostles, so that they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons." He appoints the 12, and this reawakens the Jewish hope that the Messiah will come, renew the nation, and these 12 are to symbolize that.

What does He call them to? He calls them to be with Him. He calls them to be with the presence of God. In the Garden of Eden, the greatest blessing that Adam and Eve experienced in that garden, the greatest blessing was the fact that they had unfettered access to God. They walked with God in the cool of the day. Whatever questions they had, they could ask God face to face. He knew them, they knew Him. When we listen to Satan's lies of, "Did God really say?" and we rebelled against God, they lost that access to the presence of God. They lost the ability to walk with God in the garden.

Jesus Christ comes and He offers His presence. He offers the presence of God. He offers that same ability for them to walk with God. So He called them to be with Him, that's the first step. Before they preach, they got to spend time with the Lord. But if you spend time with the Lord, if you truly experience the presence of God, your heart gets filled, it brims with truth about God, and you have a desire to speak about the Lord. So He calls them to be with Him, and then He calls them to preach, to preach the good news. A lot of Christians, they just want to be with Jesus. That's all they want to do. Jesus, me, Jesus. It's all privatized. It's all very self-focused.

No, Jesus says, "If you spend time with Me, go and make disciples of all nations. If you follow me, I'm welcoming you into the mission of God." And what is the mission of God? To seek and to save that which is lost. He gives them power to preach the word and also authority to cast out demons in the name of Jesus Christ. He gives them power over even the demonic realm. In Mark 3:16, "He appointed the 12. The first one was Simon, to whom He gave the name Peter." Simon was His Hebrew name. He's renamed by Jesus to Peter. In the Greek that's Petros. So he's got a Hebrew name, Simon, he's got a Greek name Petros. And then the Apostle Paul affectionately calls Peter Petros. He calls them Syphus.

If anyone that knows multiple languages, you know affectionately you do that with people, you call them their name, but you do it in the language that only the two of you know. Syphus is the Aramaic version of Petros, which is the new name, and Simon was his Hebrew name. I say that because a lot of people think the disciples were morons. They're like, "Oh, He picked fishermen. They don't know anything." These guys were very well-educated. They grew up most likely trilingual in an area that was trilingual. They knew Aramaic, they knew Hebrew, and they knew Greek. That's why Jesus chose them, because they knew the scriptures of Hebrew and Aramaic, and they understood how to communicate it to the Greek world and the Greco-Roman Empire.

So Simon Peter is the first one. And then verse 17, "James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James, to whom He gave the name Boanerges, that is Sons of Thunder." Then Peter, James, and John, they formed the inner circle of the three disciples of Jesus Christ. He changes the name of Peter. He gives the others, James and John, He gives them a nickname, but Peter is the one that gets the name changed. And this is significant because of the patriarchs in the Old Testament, whenever God chose the spiritual leader of the people, He would change His name, Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel. Abraham is called the rock in the Old Testament, which is why Jesus, who gives primacy to the leadership of Peter, calls him the rock.

Isaiah 51:1-2, "Listen to me, you'll pursue righteousness you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you, for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him." So Peter is presented as the man in charge. That's why in all the lists of the disciples he's the first one. This is why Jesus resurrected Christ, revealed Himself to Peter first. James and John are called Sons of Thunder. Why? Because they had a hot temper. They were very zealous for the Lord, and sometimes the zeal overcame their wisdom. For example, in Luke 9:51, "When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem. And He sent messages ahead of Him, and he went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for Him. But the people did not receive him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' But He turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village."

I always find that text funny or interesting. "Jesus, You want us to call fire from heaven? No one believes here, let's just smoke the whole place." What if Jesus said yes, "Yes, I want fire from heaven."? They'd be like, "Jesus, could You send the fire?" Everything they did was in the power of Jesus. What Jesus is there saying is, "They didn't receive me, yes, but hold on, the power of the Spirit isn't here yet. That'll come on the day of Pentecost." And that changed their hearts as well.

The other disciples in Mark 3:18, "Andrew, and Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him." I'm not going to get into what the names is, but the titles here are important. Simon the Zealot is pointed out. Who were the Zealots? They were nationalist party willing to fight to free Israel from Roman rule. So on the one hand, you got Simon the Zealot. They hated the Romans, and they hated anyone that collaborated with the Romans. And then you got Levi, who then became Matthew, was a tax collector. Who's he collecting taxes for? The Romans. So God brings these two people, diametrically opposed, completely different political ideologies, perspectives in the world, brings them together and saying, "Now I'm going to show you what it means to love one another as I have loved you."

Iscariot, Judas Iscariot, it's from the Greek sikarioi. Commentators say there were also a group of Jewish revolutionaries who practiced assassinations. Perhaps that's why Judas did ultimately end up betraying Jesus Christ, because he assumed Jesus was going to be primarily a political king. And the first time that Christ came, He came to build His kingdom from the inside out by saving people. Although the text ends on a somber note, foreshadowing of violent crucifixion, the main theme of this text is joyful of being called by God, being called by God's grace, being chosen by Jesus Christ, personally enlisted in the war where battles are won by proclaiming good news and thereby shattering demonic structures of evil.

God gave the Ten Commandments through Moses, and Jesus Christ lived according to the Ten Commandments. He summarized them by saying, "This is the point: it's love God and love people." He was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?" and He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. The second one is love your neighbor as yourself." But in summarizing the Ten Commandments, He does not obliterate or abrogate the Ten Commandments. The summary does not abrogate the expansion of which is a summary. A lot of people think that in the old covenant the law was in force, then Jesus Christ comes and gets rid of the law. A lot of Christians think in the new covenant there is no law and the new covenant is just grace.

I would push back and say, "No, that's not true." Because in Hebrews 8 it says that in the new covenant, when God gives us new hearts, He writes His law on our hearts. Which law? It's God's law, the Ten Commandments. This is Hebrews 8:8, "For He finds fault with them when He says: 'Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," and they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and will remember their sins no more.'"

I do, I pray for a day when the Spirit descends upon our town, upon our city where people's hearts are regenerated, and then they turn to Jesus Christ as king. And then what? Then I pray that they join the Body of Christ, join the church. Recently school restarted, and I have a high schooler now, so I was driving to the high school. I have a high schooler now, Christ. I was driving to the high school and there was traffic everywhere. I've never seen that many people on the street just crossing left and right. And when it's that chaotic, we've got crossing guards. Just families going to school. I was like, "That's awesome that that happens Monday through Friday. Imagine if that happened on Sunday. That's where people just come and they're drawn by the Spirit and they want to worship God and they want to obey the fourth commandment, which is worshiping God on the Sabbath day."

We practice Sabbath on a Sunday because Jesus Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday. The church was birthed on a Sunday. Have you broken any commandments? Jesus Christ calls us to repent, believe, and follow the king. I do want to mention that obeying the commandments and loving God's law, the approach with God's law is very different than the approach of man-made laws. I've been pulled over one time by the Brookline Police. On Route 9 going east, there's a speed trap, it goes from 55 to 35. I realized I try to obey man-made law basically to keep the cops away, to keep the authorities away. I don't keep the law to get to know them or to have a relationship with police. No, no, no, just leave me alone.

But it's the opposite with God's law. That's why Psalm 119, meditate on Psalm 119, says, "I love your law, O, Lord." Because the law is an extension of God. God is holy, His Word is holy, His law is holy. By walking in the commandments of God, you grow in holiness and you grow in the presence of God. You grow closer to the Lord. Have we broken the commandments? Of course we have. What are we ought to do? We are to repent and believe that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law perfectly in our behalf. And then He goes to the cross and He bears the penalty for our law-breaking. The wrath of God comes down upon Him. Why does Jesus do that? So that after He is resurrected and ascends, when we repent and believe, our sin is counted to Him on the cross and His righteousness counted to us.

And He gives us grace to do what? To then follow Him. And following Him means following Him in the obedience of the law of God from the heart. Following King Jesus and keeping God's law and to live lovingly is to live lawfully, and to live lawfully is to live lovingly. Hebrews 5:9, "And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." Does that verse contradict salvation by grace through faith? No. It's the inevitable outworking. We're saved not by our works, not by fulfilling a law, but by Christ's work in fulfilling the law and Christ's work on the cross. And then we're saved by grace through faith for works, which is walking in the commandments of the Lord.

1 John 3:24, "Whoever keeps His commandment abides in Him, and God in Him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us." If you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, today, the Lord commands you, King Jesus commands you, God commands you, follow Christ by repenting of sin, turning to Him, receiving grace, and then following Him the rest of your days. And then if you are a believer, is the law of God, is it on your mind, is it the meditation of your heart? This is what every single one of us should be doing, every day going through the commandments, "Lord, where have I not kept the law from my heart? In those places, Lord, forgive me, give me grace, and give me the power of the spirit to live in obedience to you. Amen.

Would you please pray with me in conclusion? Lord Jesus, we thank You for being a great God, and we thank You for being a great king, a righteous king. We thank You, Jesus, that you don't call us to do anything that You have not done yourself. When You call us to live in obedience and obedience of faith, it's because You've already done that. You are the champion of our faith, and You lived perfectly according to the law. And Lord, we thank You for saving us. We thank You for giving us, and we pray for the power of the Spirit to empower us to continue to walk in Your ways and continue preaching the good news to those who are far from You, so that people meet You, so that people are transformed by You, so that Your church is built up and so that You are glorified.

We pray for a revival. We pray for Your Spirit to fall on this church, to fall upon our neighborhood, on our community, on our town, on our city, and we pray, Lord, that You do that for the glory of Your name and for our joy. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, as we come to you on this communion Sunday and we will remember the sufferings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we come to you with hearts full of gratitude. We thank you for the salvation that you offer us. Each one of us has broken your holy law, the 10 Commandments. We have transgressed the commandments, and the penalty for our transgression is banishment from your kingdom for eternity.

Therefore, we're so thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ, who came and lived perfectly according to the commandments and taught the people what your word is, what you expect, what the duties and the obligations are. As they recognize that they haven't fulfilled the commandments, they sought grace, they sought forgiveness by repenting of sin. Lord, that's what we do today. We repent of our sin. We repent of our self-righteousness.

If there's anyone here who thinks that they don't need grace, if they are like the Pharisees who consider themselves healthy, why would they need the great physician Jesus Christ, I pray today show them that every single one of us has sin and every single one of us we need grace, and every single one of us is sick in our souls and we need the healing of Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you for the gift of a new birth, the gift of a new heart regeneration. When we repent of sin, you give us that new heart.

You write your laws upon our heart, and you imprint them on our minds. And then you give us the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit is placed in that new Holy Spirit. Today, empower us and we pray convict us where we need to be convicted to live a life of faith and obedience to our Lord and Savior. Bless our time, the Holy Scriptures, Lord. We pray all this in Christ's name, amen. We're continuing our sermon series in the Gospel of Mark called Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the secret of God's kingdom, and the title of the sermon today is Seek First the Kingdom of God.

How often do you think about food? How often do you think about clothing? How often do you think about money, material things? To think about physical things is human. We need food to live. However, you can be full and live life to the full, materially speaking, and still not experience the fullness of life. You can be full, yet empty in your heart. Jesus Christ said that he came to offer us life and life to the full. It's not that Jesus doesn't want you to eat, drink, relax, and enjoy life.

He doesn't want you to live primarily for those things. He doesn't want you to be ruled by your appetites. He doesn't want your stomach to be your God. He doesn't want money to be your God. He doesn't want your appearance to be your God. He doesn't want your job to be your God. None of these things satisfy the soul. Only he does and only he can fill your heart with joy and joy unspeakable. Matthew 6:31, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Therefore do not be anxious saying, 'What shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?'.

For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you." In our text today, we see Jesus Christ, the king of kings, King Jesus bringing joy into the world. His kingdom is a joyful kingdom. His followers rejoice in his presence. Would you look at the text with me? We're in Mark 2:13-28. He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them.

And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. The scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, "Why did John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sows a piece of shrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from old, and a worst tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins." One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.

And the Pharisees were saying to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" And he said to them, "Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?" And he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

This is the reading of God's holy and unfathomable authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, King Jesus heals sin-sick sinners. Second, King Jesus serves new wine, and third, King Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. First, King Jesus heals sin-sick sinners. As was Jesus' way, as was his mission, he comes teaching and preaching the word of God.

He said earlier that that's why he came to teach people God's word and to teach them that we have broken God's law and to show them that we are under condemnation, that we need grace. He's the only one who can offer that grace as the one who fulfilled the law perfectly and then offers his substitutionary atonement on the cross for us, for our lawbreaking. He's teaching them. As he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth. He said to him, "Follow me."

And he rose and followed him. Levi, whose name is changed to Matthew later, he actually wrote the Gospel of Matthew and he does not introduce himself as Levi. He introduces himself as Matthew. That's what he calls himself. The name Matthew means a gift of Yahweh, a gift of God. He wanted everyone to know that when he followed Jesus Christ, Jesus changed him. Jesus changed his heart. Jesus changed his purpose. Jesus changed his whole life, his whole identity. Therefore, Jesus gave him a new name, not Levi, but Matthew, the gift of God.

Well, the gift of God before he met Jesus Christ was not a gift to most people as a tax collector. Anyone named Levi at this time most likely came from the tribe of the Levites and their hereditary job was service in the temple as priests. But the life that Levi chose, it was diametrically opposed to being a priest in the temple. Instead of choosing to serve God, he chose to serve money. Money was his true God. No matter the cost, he followed the money. In passing by him, Jesus fastens his eyes on Levi.

It doesn't say that he saw a tax collector. That's what everyone else saw. A man judges by appearance. Jesus Christ, God judges by the heart. It says he saw Levi, he saw the person, he saw the eternal soul, and he saw what he could do with him if Levi followed. Tax collectors were collectors of indirect taxes, especially in the transport of goods. That's why he's sitting at a toll booth. The Roman Empire was in charge at this time, and what they do is they look at a district and they would assess how much money they could get from that district doing as little work as possible.

They assess how much, and then they would sell a license to collect taxes to whoever the highest bidder was. This was a farming system to the highest bidder. Whoever paid for that license, they gave Romans the money. Romans took that money, and then it was the job of the tax collector to get his money back and more, and overcharging was the usual. The buyer had to hand over the assessed figure at the end of the year and keep any extra for himself. There was ample opportunity for extortion, for exploitation.

Obviously the locals and the people of that region did not like tax collectors. They hated them. These were corrupt lackeys of the hated imperial presence. They were traitors' turncoats. They collaborated with the Romans, the oppressors, and fleecing their own people. Usually to be a tax collector, you were involved in some criminal activity. Most likely you had friends who were thugs and gangsters and enforcers to get your money back. The religious people of the time hated tax collectors, viewed them as unclean, wouldn't even allow them in the synagogue or the temple.

They were excommunicated by default. Jesus comes to this guy Levi that everyone absolutely hates because of his chosen path in life. Jesus looks at him and commands him, "Follow me." He says he rose and followed him. Something happened in his heart where he realized, you know what? I have been transgressing God's law and there is one that has come that said he's the Son of God, that he is the king of kings. I'm going to follow him. He does that. In following Jesus Christ, he had to make a decision that was a little different from the other apostles.

The other disciples, Peter, Andrew, John, and James who were previously called by Jesus, they were fishermen. They could keep their fishing business on the side as they follow Jesus Christ. They even used their boats in the ministry of Jesus. In the next text, they provide a boat pulpit, so to speak. Jesus was on the boat and he was preaching to the people. No, for Levi to follow Jesus Christ, Levi has to leave this job. He has to leave this corrupt path that he had chosen. For Levi, it meant leaving behind his thieving ways.

He's no longer to follow money, but Jesus. In Matthew 6:24, no one can serve two masters, for either he'll hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. When Levi broke the command, thou shall not steal by taking from people more than he should have, the reason why he broke that commandment was because he broke the first commandment, and the first commandment was thou shall not have any gods before me.

Levi, his God was money. Jesus comes displaces money on the throne of Levi's heart and Jesus now is king. Now, where did they go? Jesus says, "Follow me." We saw this with Peter. Jesus told Peter, "Follow me." And then the next text, they end up at Peter's house. Follow me. Where are we going, Jesus? We're going to your house. And all of a sudden, Peter's house became a place of ministry and his roof got disassembled. That was last week. Same thing here with Levi. Levi, you have wealth.

Levi, you have a home. Levi, you have friends from your former life. Now, what are we going to do? We're going to go to your house and you're going to throw a feast, and you're going to invite all of your former colleagues to come and meet me. That's exactly what happened in Mark 2:15. As he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. Is this clear evidence that this was Levi's house?

We get the clarity of the evidence from the parallel passage in Luke 5:27. After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with him. Levi understood that to follow Jesus Christ wasn't just to join a Bible study or to study theology. He understood that to follow Jesus was to enter the work of Christ.

What was the work of Christ? He said, "I've come to fish for men, to save people from the nets of captivity and sin of Satan." That's what Jesus has been doing and this is what he called Peter James and John to do. This is what he called Levi to do. Follow me and I will make you become a fisher of men. This is what Levi is already doing. He's fishing for sinners to free them from the nets of Satan and sin. It's not just random people that he's never met. Who's he invite?

It's people who knew him, who knew him inside and out, who knew his heart, who knew his whole past, his old business acquaintances, and he gets them together for a party. He doesn't know much theology. He just knows that this one Jesus has come. He's claimed to be God. He's claimed that we've transgressed his law, and he's claimed that if we repent, he gives us forgiveness of sins and welcomes us into his kingdom. The lesson here for us is when you come to faith, when you come to faith for the very first time in Jesus Christ, don't just cut off all of your social network.

Don't just cut off all of your former friends. If Jesus has saved you, he saved you for a reason. He saved you to impact people that know you. You share your testimony. You get them together. You throw a party. You have a little feast and you say, "Look, I might not know everything there is to know about Jesus, but I know Jesus. I know that I've broken the commandments, the 10 of them, and Jesus Christ is the only one who offers me forgiveness. What's stopping you from trusting in Jesus Christ now?"

They're reclining at table. That means this was a big feast. This was the posture of dining at feast in the Greco-Roman world. Regular meals, people would just sit at tables. Luxurious meals, they would sit back and enjoy themselves. What we see here is they're relaxed. Their guards are down. They're having a good time. There's food, friendship, fellowship, and Jesus is at the center and he's teaching them the word of God. There's tax collectors and they're sinners. What's the religious establishment do?

They get worried. On Mark 2:16, and the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" The scribes of the Pharisees, these are the people who are in charge of religion. They're in charge of who's in and who's out, who's clean and who's unclean, who's righteous and who's unrighteous. They don't view that Jesus is following their traditions. He's not following their traditions.

In their traditions, you don't hang out with tax collectors and sinners. Those people are sinners. We are the righteous. We're better than they are. They don't belong in our presence. The New Living Translation that translates the tail end of verse 16, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners, it puts it like this. Why does he eat with such scum? It brings out the hatred that they experienced toward these people. Why does he eat with such scum? They didn't view these people as in need of righteousness.

They view these people as people that could never receive forgiveness, could never be entered into the kingdom of God. I wonder if you have people in your life that you categorize in this category. You might not say they're scum, but they're like people that even Jesus couldn't save them. Do you have people like that in your mind? For me, I got a love-hate relationship with tow truck drivers. Tow truck drivers, they're number one. Number two is parking enforcement. But tow truck drivers, I view them as tax collectors because they can charge whatever they want.

If they got your car, they take it to their lot and they charge you for the towing fee, the parking fee, all their fees, and then you pay for the ticket on top of that. Jesus said we got to love everyone, but he also said you are to love your enemy. They've been kind of my enemy camp, like tow truck drivers, and they're in that camp until you need them. A couple of weeks ago, I shared that I had issues with my car, with my Suburban, battery problems. We fixed the battery. Friday I drive.

For two weeks I was good. Friday I drive home, park the truck, then I go later, restart it. I put it in my parking spot, dead, dead. All the lights are on but won't start. Click, click, click. I tried to do everything I could, and in the morning I went to the mechanic. The mechanic's like, "You got to bring it here." I don't know what to do. He's like, "Here's a phone number." I was like, "Of who?" He's like, "A tow truck driver." I was like, oh no. Cassidy Towing pulls up. I like that little motto, the small business, their motto is Don't Cuss, Call Us.

A gentleman comes out of the tow truck and he's like, "What do we got here?" Thick Boston accent. I'm like, yeah, I love these people, but love-hate relationship. I was like, "It's not the battery." He's like, "It's the battery. Trust me." I was like, "It's not the battery." He slams his hand in my door and then he just started cussing really loud. It's Saturday morning. I was like, dude, come on. I got to live with my neighbors. I was like, it says right there, don't cuss. So then we got to talking and there's a car behind my truck.

He's like, "We got to get this car moved if we're going to tow." I was like, all right, I guess we'll wait. And then immediately at that moment a lady comes down and she's like, "Oh, you need to move my car?" I'm like, yeah. I told him, "I guess God hasn't forgotten us yet." He's like, "You think so?" I was like, oh, that's my in. Great. His name's Matt and he let me drive in his truck as he's taken to the mechanic. And then we got to talking and got to talk about his family, got to talk about the fact that he grew up in Brookline.

His grandma's been here since '77. He went to Devotion School, formerly known as Devotion School, and we got to talking. He's like, "What do you do?" I was like, "I'm a pastor." He's like, "You're a pastor." I was like, "You should come to our church." He's like, "Oh yeah." We got to talk about the Lord. I'm praying for Matt. I pray for people like that where it's like, you know what? Probably not welcome anywhere, but they're welcome here. We welcome sinners because Jesus welcome sinners and we're all sinners.

This posture of the Pharisees of they're scum and we're not, that's what actually kept them from salvation. That's what kept them from knowing that Jesus Christ is Lord and Jesus Christ is savior. They thought that if we spend time with sinners, we are going to be infected with their sin. What Jesus Christ is telling them is everyone's infected with sin. Everyone's soul is sick with sin. If you think that you're healthy, you're never going to go to Jesus the physician to ask for healing for your soul.

But if you know that you're unhealthy, if you know that you're sick, that's the first step to being healed. That's what Jesus tells them in verse 17. When Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Jesus came not to call the righteous. What's he mean? He means self-righteous. He means people who think I don't need God because they measure righteousness according to their own standards.

That's what the Pharisees did. By what standard do we figure out if we're righteous? By the standard of God's 10 Commandments. Did the Pharisees fulfill the 10 Commandments from the heart all of their life? Of course, they didn't. They themselves were sinners. They themselves were unrighteous, but they didn't see that. Pride was in the way. This is how we are to do evangelism and share the good news of Jesus Christ. Invite sinners into your home. The way we do church at Mosaic is we simplify the church.

We expect that you come to worship gatherings, and we expect that you come to a community group during the week, but we don't want you to spend much more time with just believers. Hanging out with believers is fun. Bible studies is fun. Studying theology is fun. We can't forget we have a mission. In a place like Boston where everyone's really busy, everyone's got a lot of stress in their life, we have to carve out time to spend with those who are far from the Lord to get to know them, to invite them to your house, to have a meal, to practice hospitality, and to introduce them to Jesus Christ, the great physician of our soul.

Your soul, dear friend, is sick apart from Jesus Christ. It's sick with sin and Jesus is the only one who can heal you. He heals you at the very moment that you ask for him to forgive you, you repent and you say, "Lord Jesus, I want to follow you. I want to follow you like Levi no matter what's keeping me back from you. I want to leave the sin. I want to leave anything that easily entangles and follow you." In John 17:15-17, Jesus prays for his disciples. He says, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." Jesus saves us in the world. We are not of the world, so we're not like the world, but we're in the world. As saved sinners, as sanctified sinners, we are to do everything possible to be sanctified by the word of truth and then to share that same word with those who are far from the Lord. Point two is King Jesus serves new wine.

In verse 18, now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, "Why did John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" A fasting in holy scripture is abstaining from food for spiritual reasons. The Pharisees, they saw in scripture that there is fasting. People of God do fast, abstain from food for prayer and for proximity to the Lord. There was one day that was commanded for fasting, that was a day of atonement for everyone once a year.

But what this passage is concerned with is not the annual fast, but the additional voluntary fast that were practiced by the Pharisees. This is how they wanted to show the people around them how fastidious they were in their spirituality, just how religious they were. They assumed that Jesus Christ did not fast because his disciples didn't fast. Did Jesus Christ fast? Yeah, he fasted for 40 days. They just didn't know about it because he didn't fast to be seen by people. But Jesus does tell us that in the Sermon on the Mount we are to fast.

In Matthew 6:16, when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. The disciples of John fasted. The disciples of the Pharisees fasted. But Jesus says, while I'm here in my physical presence, my disciples do not need to fast.

Because what's the point of fasting? The point of fasting is to come closer to the Lord. The word says, if you come close to God, he will come close to you. If the point of fasting is proximity to the Lord, when the Lord is with the disciples, they don't need to fast because they already have his physical presence. Jesus says, "When I do leave, then my disciples will fast." Well, why didn't the disciples need to fast? Because Jesus answers in verse 19, Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast." In Jewish law, wedding guests were freed from certain religious obligations in particular because of the wedding. If there was a day of fasting, they were not obligated to do it. Why? Because what's the point of a wedding? It's to rejoice. Jesus says, "I am the groom. And in my presence, we are not a fast but feast." Imagine going into a wedding. It's a good wedding where they've got appetizers. The best weddings, the appetizers are the scallops wrapped in bacon.

If you see one of those coming out, that's a good wedding. Imagine there's a plate they bring you and you're like, "Oh, no, thank you." What? And then the next waiter comes with the lamb chops. Oh, that's next level. You're like, "Oh, no, thank you." Why aren't you? I'm fasting. You're fasting on a feast day? That doesn't make any sense. Jesus, he is the bridegroom, John the Baptist in John 3:28, the text says, you yourselves bear me witness, that I said, "I'm not the Christ, but I've been sent before him."

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. Here, Jesus by invoking the wedding imagery, he's saying that the Messianic Age has arrived. In Isaiah 62, the future redemption is compared to a wedding feast.

Isaiah 62:4, you shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight is in Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Jesus is the bridegroom. He's the groom. Everything he did, he did in order to redeem a bride.

That was the point of his whole life. That was his goal. That was the goal of the sacrifice on the cross. The bride is the church. The bride is all the redeemed. The bride is us. Verse 20, the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. Jesus here by using the phrase taken away, that's a phrase from Isaiah 53:8. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

He's alluding here to the fact that he will be taken away, his physical presence will be taken away through the crucifixion, resurrection, and then ascension. And then when he is physically taken away, we are to fast. Fasting from food for the purpose of drawing closer to the Lord should be a regular rhythm of our lives as followers of Christ. Verse 21, no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, and the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.

Here he's talking about a new cloth was not pre-shrunk and the process of washing and drying the garment would cause it to shrink. What he's saying is you can't just come to Jesus and say, "Jesus, I need a new patch of grace. I need a new patch of forgiveness." He's saying that when you come to the Lord, he doesn't just patch you up. When you come to the Lord, you become a new creation. You are regenerated from the inside out, and that's how God's kingdom grows from the inside out.

You get a new heart and that new heart is filled with the Holy Spirit, and then Jesus Christ clothes you with the robes of his righteousness, not just he patches up areas of your life. In the old garment, that imagery is used in Hebrews 1, where Christ rolls up this old world garment and unfurls the new cosmos. Hebrews 1:10-12, and you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you'll remain. They will wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed.

But you are the same, and your years will have no end. Jesus is saying something brand new is here. He is bringing in the new covenant, ushering in the new covenant. The new covenant is different from the old covenant because the old covenant did not give us internal power to fulfill the law. A lot of people think that the new covenant abrogates or gets rid of the 10 Commandments. It does not.

The new covenant actually, it says in the new covenant, it says God will give you a new heart and he will write his laws upon your heart, imprint them on your mind, where you want to do the will of God, the 10 Commandments, from your heart because you love God and you love people. And then finally, you have the power to do it because of the Holy Spirit. That's why he brings in the wine imagery in verse 22. No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins.

But new wine is for fresh wineskins. The new wine was a symbol of the new age, like in John 2, or Jesus at the wedding in Canaan in Galilee turns 180 gallons of water into wine saying that the new Messianic era is here. Jesus doesn't just pour in the Holy Spirit into our hearts. No. First, he regenerates our hearts, that's the changing of the wineskins, and then brings in the new wine. The imagery there is that wine was kept in leather skins and old skins were less flexible and fermenting wine kept inside of them would expand and sometimes burst the skins.

If you put new wine into old skins, it's going to burst and you ruin both the old and the new. You need new wine for new wineskins. What he's saying here is don't just come to the Lord with your preconceived human traditional categories and say, "How does God fit into my categories? How does God fit into my manmade humanistic paradigms?" No. When you come to the Lord, you say, "Lord, obliterate any paradigm that is not from you. Build up your paradigms in my mind and heart, and then give me the power to live according to them."

Whenever the fresh life of the spirit breathes into the church new life, paradigm shifting category, destroying life comes in. Christianity with all its outward differences was not a breach of Judaism, but its fulfillment. And now with the Holy Spirit offered to us, and when you come to the Lord, you repent of your sin, he gives it a new heart to house the Spirit of God. Jesus has been physically absent since his ascension, but that absence is paradoxically the means by which his presence is achieved.

And then we see in the text following an escalation in the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus' disciples are implicitly accused of breaking the pharisaic traditions first of the table fellowship and now of fasting. But now the Pharisees are like, okay, it's not just our traditions. Now he is breaking, they are breaking our interpretation of the law. And that's point three, King Jesus's Lord of the Sabbath. One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields. And as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.

And the Pharisees were saying to them, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" The disciples are a little hungry. Perhaps all the fasting talk got them are really hungry. They want a little snack and they're making a little snack in the grain field. The Pharisees, who've been spying on them, by the way, it sounds like a lot of work that they're doing spying on them, but they come to Jesus and they're like, "They're breaking the law." That's why they use the word lawful.

They're doing what is not lawful. Jesus dining with the tax collectors and sinners, they couldn't say that was not lawful. They said that he's breaking our traditions, he's breaking public spiritual decorum, religious decorum. And now here they are accusing them, the disciples and Jesus, of breaking the fourth commandment, the commandment requiring the keeping of the Sabbath Day. They knew that this was an important commandment. It's the longest of the commandments.

It's the only one that hearkens back to creation. It's the only one in which we are commanded actually to imitate God himself. They noticed that among the 10 Commandments, this one receives special attention. Exodus 20:8- 11. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea in all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and made it holy. Is this commandment relevant to us today? Well, of course, all 10 Commandments were given to all people that lived in all places at all times. This is how God decrees how he wants us to live. This is how King Jesus rules his kingdom by the 10 laws. They're commandments. They're not just recommendations. This is the law of God.

This commandment, number four, is part of the first four that show us how we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. If you love God because he has first loved you, you devote a full day, every seven days you devote a full day of the week totally to God. God, this day is holy. You made it holy. God, I want to bless you on this day, and I pray this day is a blessing. Do you want the fullness of life that King Jesus offers? Keep the Sabbath. This, of course, includes gathering with the people of God to worship God.

We worship God because that's his due, and God commands you to attend church. We are to gather with the people of God, and we do it on Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday and the church was birthed on Pentecost Sunday. Obviously we are to go to church on a Sunday. By the way, if you notice how Jesus operates, he's in synagogue on every Sunday. This is where the Pharisees get him. Whenever there's a Sabbath, he's in the synagogue and he's teaching the word of God.

What's he teaching? He's teaching them that we've transgressed the 10 Commandments. And by the way, the 10 Commandments, this is where you show people their need for grace. In evangelism, a lot of people want to talk about Jesus and grace first, which doesn't make much sense to people who think that they haven't broken any commandments. God has given us the 10 Commandments. You show people where they've transgressed commandments, and that the penalty for sin is death for eternity in a place called hell.

We need Jesus Christ. This is how I share the gospel. Whenever I see someone breaking a commandment in my presence, I've gotten to the point where I just call them to repentance right then and there. With a smile and loving, I just call them to repentance. I was at the boxing gym this week and we're doing grueling workout on Thursdays. It's me and my friend Billy. Billy and I are brothers in big arms. That's what we call each other. Billy is next to me. The grueling part of the workout, the first 20 minutes we're just dead, and I sat down for a sip of water.

He comes up to me and he says, "Jesus Christ!" He said it like that. I said, "Is king, Billy." I was like, "You transgressed the third commandment, Billy." He's like, "Oh yeah, I used the Lord's name in vain." I said, "Billy, you need to repent. "He said, "I repent." I was like, "King Jesus forgives you. Now follow him." And then we continued the rest of the workout. I planted the seed. We're going to continue the conversation, but that's what transgression, you broke the law, which shows you your need for Jesus Christ, the only one who lived according to the law perfectly.

Therefore, he could represent us on the cross. The Pharisees are spying on Jesus here. They're waiting to catch him in some transgression. If they had caught him in transgression, they would have presented that as evidence at his trial before the Sanhedrin. They had no evidence to present. Therefore, they knew that he did not break the commandment. He broke their interpretation of the commandment, which would not hold up in the Sanhedrin. Jesus could not be accused of breaking any of the commandments at his trial.

That's why they had to bring in false witnesses, and we see that later on in the text. Jesus isn't breaking their commandments. The Pharisees aren't breaking their commandments. The Pharisees viewed this as work because they viewed it as a subset of reaping which is prohibited on the Sabbath. That's how they operate. That's how they built their rules. They said, okay, here's the 10 Commandments, but then how does that work out in real life?

They would add their own interpretations, and then their interpretation distorted the word of God because their interpretations were more important than the word of God in defining what is sin and was not. How does Jesus respond to this in Mark 2:25? And he said to them, "Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?"

First of all, just notice how Jesus argues with them. He says, "Have you never read?" He counters their misinterpretation of God's word with God's word. In the story of David and Abiathar the high priest, David and his soldiers are exhausted and they enter the house of God. They're hungry. They're famished. He said, "Do you have any bread?" They said, "We have bread, but this is bread that's only allowed for priests to eat." They would bake 12 loaves, and on the Sabbath they would leave it on the table and then wait for a week.

And then next week, those 12 pieces of bread... What's the word? Those pieces of bread were then replaced, and then the priests would eat that bread. The issue here is that the ceremonial law, that's the law that Jesus is referring to with Abiathar the high priest. That's part of the ceremonial law. If you study God's law, the 10 Commandments, that's the moral law. That's for everyone. The ceremonial law, that was how you are atoned before God, made righteous before God.

David comes in and says, "God's law, the 10 Commandments, is more important than the ceremonial law. Because if we don't eat, my soldiers are going to die. The word says thou shall not kill." That's the issue that's going on. That's why Jesus goes to this example of the loaf. What Jesus is saying is if David could say that the moral law was higher than the ceremonial law, how much higher is God's moral law over human interpretation and the rabbinic traditions, et cetera? Jesus here trumps their human traditions with God's law with the 10 Commandments.

I saw a clip of a famous podcaster, and he was just talking about... He's like, "Human existence is the greatest thing in the universe." He said, "I wish we had a manual for how human existence could be best done. What's the optimal way of living? What are the hazards that we are to stay away from?" I'm like, this is it, bro. That's what the 10 Commandments are. This is why Jesus said, this is for life. This is the fullness of life. The commandments are given to us as a manual. It shows us how we best operate.

It shows us how we can be connected with God, how we can love one another, and it shows us that when we break the commandments, there's grace that we can access. Thanks be to Jesus Christ. And then Jesus says that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Why? Because the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, is king of kings and the 10 Commandments is his 10 Commandments, and the fourth commandment is ruled under Jesus Christ. He says that Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

The Pharisees, they lived for the Sabbath. Fulfilling the Sabbath was so much work that it wasn't restful for people, and Jesus restores the compassionate aspect of the original Sabbath, which in the interim was effaced by the hardheartedness of the Pharisees. Have you always kept the fourth commandment from the heart all of your life? No, you have not. You have transgressed that commandment. I have transgressed that commandment. What is Jesus telling us today?

We are to repent, and we're to ask for forgiveness and make the Sabbath a priority. Jesus obeyed it, all of the law, to forgive us for disobeying the law. Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and then he said with his last breath, "It is finished." And then his body rested in a tomb on the Sabbath, and Jesus rose victoriously on Sunday in order to give us power to devote every Sunday to him. This is how you and I follow the risen, ruling, and reigning king. This is how we begin to live life to the full by saying, you know what?

Every start of the week, the first day, I'm going to devote to the Lord, and this is how I'm going to seek first the kingdom of God. And everything else shall be added onto you. Today is Holy Communion Sunday. We talk about bread, the loaves of the Presence, and we talked about the new wine. Jesus Christ gave us Holy Communion and he gave us the symbols of bread and wine in order to turn our attention, to focus our attention and our memory on the suffering of Christ on the cross.

I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 11:23-32. For whom is Holy Communion? Holy Communion is for repentant followers of Jesus Christ. If there is unrepented sin in your life that you know of, right now is an opportunity for you to repent and trust in Jesus Christ to receive grace. If you do not repent, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. But if you today repent of sin and turn to Christ, you're welcome to partake. I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 11:23-32.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also, he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

If you'd like to partake in communion and you have not received the elements, please raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring them to you. With that, I will pray over Holy Communion. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of salvation that was purchased for us on the cross by Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, you were absolutely without sin. You had never sinned, not even once. There was not one commandment that you broke. You gladly lived a life of obedience to God the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Lord Jesus today, we remember your sufferings on the cross. We remember that your body was pierced with nails as you were crucified to that tree. Lord, your blood was poured out so that we could be forgiven. We remember your body that was broken so that we could have healing from the great physician. We remember your blood, which removes our guilt and shame. Lord, today we come to you with contrition of heart. We come to you with humility, recognizing that we are not righteous, recognizing that we are like the tax collectors and the sinners.

We are like the scum of this earth. And yet, Lord, you chose to love us, you chose to pour out your love for us, and you chose to call us to yourself. Lord Jesus, as we partake in Holy Communion now, I pray that this will be a blessing for us. I pray as we receive the bread and the cup and as we internalize these physical symbols, I pray that we also receive your grace, and that by your grace we are transformed from the inside out. We pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen. There are two lids, one at the top, which opens the cup, and one at the bottom, which opens the bread.

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus Christ took the bread. And after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." He then proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me." Lord Jesus, we thank you that you came with power, and we thank you that your word is effectual. That when you tell us to repent, you also give us the power to repent.

When you tell us to follow you, you give us the power to do it. When you tell us to believe and trust in you, you give us the gift of faith. I pray that you, Lord, continue to draw us closer to yourself, continue to sanctify us from sin, and continue to empower us to be witnesses of your grace, witnesses of salvation to all those around us.

I pray that we follow the example of Levi, who threw a great feast for all his tax collector and sinner friends, and invited you to be the center of this so they can meet you, so they could have their sins forgiven, so they could follow you and be transformed from the inside out. I pray, Lord, that you empower us to do the same with our friends, with our neighbors, with everyone around us, Lord, who is far from you.

Lord, continue to draw them to yourself and continue to miraculously build up your kingdom here in Brookline and Boston, Massachusetts and beyond. We pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

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Welcome to this space. Every once in a while, I'm glad that we worship down here, it's to keep us humble, keep us grounded, and to remind us that the space upstairs really is a blessing.

We're continuing our sermon series called Kingdom Come through the Gospel of Mark: The Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. The title today is Supernatural and Revelation.

So Jesus Christ has come as a king, and in chapter one, he was anointed by the Holy Spirit and the King comes preaching that the kingdom is here, the kingdom has been established with the coming of the King. Therefore, what are we to do? We are to repent of sin, believe in him and follow him and live for the King.

Jesus Christ did come performing supernatural miracles for the purpose of revelation to reveal that he is the Son of God and he performed what only God can do. Only God can forgive sins, and that's what Jesus does. He cast out demons, he heals the sick, he even resurrects the dead.

And what's fascinating is that the contemporaries of Jesus Christ, those who saw his miracles, those who experienced his power, most of them did not believe in Jesus Christ, they did not have their sins forgiven. And it wasn't until the day of Pentecost, St. Peter's filled with the Holy Spirit, he has the indwelling power of the Spirit and he preaches to these same people and he preaches to people who have seen the miracles of Christ, have heard his sermons, seen his crucifixion, heard about his resurrection, but they weren't saved. The miracles did not convert their hearts, they didn't yet have their sins forgiven and their hearts were still hardened by sin, in disbelief.

In Acts 2:22, Peter says, "Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, losing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it." And it's not until they realize that they have sinned against Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God, that they're cut to the heart.

This is Acts 2:37, "Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' And Peter said to them, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.' And with many other words, he bore witness and continue to exhort them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' So those who received the word were baptized and there were added that day about 3000 souls."

So the Apostle Peter responsible for much, if not most of the material of the Gospel of Mark, he presents the miracles of Jesus Christ in such a way that they attest to who Jesus is. He is the King and he offers us, every single one of us, the greatest miracle, the miracle of all miracles, salvation by grace through faith, forgiveness of sin and entrance into the Kingdom of God.

And in our text today, we see that Jesus heals a leper and he heals a paralytic, but only one of these men walks away with his sins forgiven. And the question posed before us is, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, forfeit his soul? What's the point of being healed of paralysis if you then use your legs to serve sin and Satan? What does the profit a man to gain pristine skin in this life while being tormented in hell for eternity?

So Mark 1:40 through 2:12, would you look at the text with me? "And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling, said to him, 'If you will, you can make me clean.' Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I will. Be clean.' And immediately, the leprosy left him and he was made clean.

And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once and said to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for proof to them.' But he went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places and people were coming to Him from every quarter.

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. And they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytics, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, 'Why does this man speak like that? He's blaspheming, who can forgive sins but God alone?'

And immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves said to them, 'Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, 'I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.'' And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all so that they were all amazed and glorified God saying, 'We never saw anything like this.'"

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, the King is used. Second, the King is sought. And third, the King is questioned.

First, the King is used. In Mark 1:40, the gentleman is characterized as a leper. He has a scale disease and this term designates a variety of conditions in which the skin becomes scaly, but not what today is called leprosy or Hansen's disease. But in Leviticus 13 and 14, this skin disorder was treated as a grave danger to the purity of the community. So sufferers were regarded, in effect, as corpses, walking dead, and physical contact with them produced the same sort of defilement as touching dead bodies.

Leviticus 13:45 say, "The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip and cry out, 'Unclean. Unclean.' And he shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp."

So the disease was serious and also, it rendered the person socially as an outcast. Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, he said that the disease, those with it were treated as, in effect, walking dead. And if anyone is healed, it was as if someone dead was raised to life. If the person so much has stuck their head in someone else's house, the house was rendered unclean.

So the person has been suffering, he's been suffering for a long time, both physically and socially, and what happens is he hears that Jesus Christ has come, he has power and he has been healing people. And the man, immediately, boldly comes to Jesus Christ, it says imploring him, pleading with him. And it's followed by kneeling. So he's entreating with the most earnest urgency, he's crying out, "If you will, you can make me clean."

And first, this is great. This is a great start. And pain does this often, suffering does this often. God often allows us to go through seasons of suffering. C.S. Lewis says that pain is God's megaphone to wake us up. So he has pain, he goes to the one that can alleviate the pain and he implores him. And with humility, he asks, "If you will, you can heal me," that, "You have the power." So we see even faith here.

In verse 41, it says, "Jesus is moved with pity," in the English Standard Version, "he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I will, be clean.'" Now, if you are reading along in your Bible, most likely, there's a footnote right there at that word, moved with pity or moved with compassion. So this is a question of which word is original. There is a textual question here.

The oldest manuscripts that we have do not say moved with pity, it says moved with anger. And if the word was compassion, most likely, in the parallel, Matthew and Luke and the story, that word would've been used, it is not. And if you study textual criticism, you get to text like this, you got to ask why would a scribe change the word? Most likely an overzealous scribe here, read the word anger, Jesus is angry, and he can't believe in an angry Jesus and so, he changed the word to compassion.

But I do see an anger here. I do see the indignation of Christ here, a similar indignation to where Jesus, it says, was indignant in John 11 about the death of Lazarus. He was deeply moved in the spirit and greatly troubled. So perhaps there is anger here, we'll see why. And Jesus does stretch out his hand, certainly compassionately, and he touches this man, the Greek pronoun him is left out. So He just stretched out and touched this person, shocking to anyone seeing this because you weren't supposed to touch a leper. Jesus touches the leper, and instead of the impurity passing from the man to Jesus, Jesus's power overcomes the impurity and disease.

In verse 42, "And immediately, the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once." Sternly charged, it's a word that means growling, it refers to the snorting of a horse. And as applied to human beings, it means to express indignation by explosive expulsion of breath. And I think that's biblical, whenever I'm in traffic, that's how I breathe with this expulsion of breath. My wife rubs my arm and I feel better.

And then, he uses the word to send out, ballo. And it's the same word that Jesus used to exercise demons. So it was like casting this man out. He ejects the person from his presence and then he charges him, verse 44, "And said to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them.'"

And what he's referring to is Leviticus 14, if you have been healed, you are to bring three lambs or one lamb and four birds depending on a person's wealth. And as proof to them, as proof to the priesthood that Jesus has come with the power of God.

What does the gentleman do in verse 45? "But he went out and began to talk freely about it, to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter town, but was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter."

And what an amazing, wondrous moment this must've been for the gentleman, having lived for so long, ostracized by society, no human contact. He had lived in isolation for years perhaps, and pain without a single touch of a human hand. What does he want to do? He wants to immediately go show his family, show his friends that he has been healed.

And you say, "This is great." This is like, "Jesus, you healed the person. He's basically a walking advertisement to your power. Don't you want him to go and preach about you?" And Jesus didn't want him to because Jesus knew that the substance of the man's message is going to be come to Jesus as the miracle worker, come get this blessing, come get healing from Jesus. And Jesus doesn't want just to heal our bodies, he doesn't just want to meet our physical needs. No, Jesus has come to preach the word, to convert our hearts, to regenerate us, and to save our souls.

And what we see here is that the word, but to contrast, Jesus said, don't do this, and the word but is saying he went directly against the orders of King Jesus. Jesus' anger may also stem from the fact that the man completely disobeyed Jesus' instructions. The ability of Jesus to heal now becomes the cause of his inability to move about. Jesus came to preach, he came to preach the gospel and now he can't do that.

So he ends up in a desolate place, it says. And this is fascinating because that gentleman had to live in a desolate place, he had to live away from people, he gets healed. And then, right after the healing, Jesus is the one in the desolate place. And what's the text showing us? It's showing us that Jesus exchanged places with the leper. Jesus is saying, "Not only am I willing for you to be clean, I'm willing to make myself unclean for you."

And this is really at the heart of the gospel. It's the double imputation, Jesus gets our sin, we get Jesus' righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might be become the righteousness of God."

Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree,' so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith."

Instead of repenting and believing in the content of Jesus' preaching, the man disobeys Jesus tells everyone that Jesus had healed him, which makes it more difficult for Jesus to preach the gospel. The poor man was so thankful to be healed, but he missed the whole point. What was the point? The point was that he had a deeper uncleanness, he had a deeper leprosy, he had an issue that separated him, not just from the people of God, but from God himself. And he receives the skin healing, but he doesn't receive the heart healing. His faith is only skin deep. He did the right things, he came to Christ, he implored, he kneeled, he begged, he received, and then, he walked away only to disobey the king, revealing that he has not received the cleansing of his soul from sin.

God does miracles, God does miracles even today, but the miracles always have a purpose, it's always to attest to the person of God. And unless we repent of sin, those miracles aren't going to do anything for us, not spiritually speaking, not eternally speaking. So when we do experience seasons of pain, when we do go through difficulties, yes, do go to the Lord, yes, beg for the Lord's healing, but stay there, stay with the Lord, stay obeying the Lord.

We had a nice lady that came to our community group for quite some time. And she said, "I don't believe. I don't believe. I'm here, just you guys are nice people." And I was like, "Okay, keep coming." And she said, "I don't believe because there's too much suffering in the world. How can a good God allow so much suffering in the world?"

And that day at community group, she's like, "For example, there's a hurricane coming directly at Mexico right now and it's going to absolutely decimate Mexico and thousands of people are going to die. Where's your God now?" I was like, "Look, I don't know. Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray for a miracle for the hurricane to change directions. Let's pray. The Spirit blows where it wishes, so does the wind." So we pray, we fervently prayed, prayed zealously. And I remember that just like...

The next day, what does the hurricane do? The next day the hurricane completely changed its trajectory, completely misses Mexico. And I was like, "Oh yeah, I can't wait for community group. She's going to come in extra saved." And then, she comes to the group, pretends nothing happened. And I was like, "Remember our prayer request?" She's like, "It was a coincidence." I'm like, "No. Oh, my goodness. There's no such thing as a coincidence."

Miracles don't save anyone. God does do miracles, but there is a passage where a rich man dies, and a gentleman named Lazarus goes to heaven. And the rich man says, "Lord, please, Father Abraham, resurrect Lazarus, bring him back so my brothers don't end up in this place of torment." And what does the Lord say? The Lord says, "Even if someone comes back from the dead, they're not going to believe." It's not enough.

I've seen people experience the power of God in their life and then I've seen them walk away. During COVID, we had a gentleman that came to service. You could tell something was wrong and he's like, "I think I have a demon. Can you please pray for the Lord to cast out the demon from me?" I prayed. His body language completely changed. He received forgiveness from the Lord. And then, I gave him my number. And then, he just disappeared. He received a gift from Lord, disappeared. And then, I found out that he went back to his sinful lifestyle instead of repenting and following the Lord.

So don't allow your faith to just stay there at the physical level or at the skin level, no, follow the Lord and ask for the greater healing, which is that of having sins forgiven.

Point two is the king is sought, Mark 2:1, "And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home." So Jesus returns to Capernaum, that's his base of operations for the early portion of his ministry. And it says he was at home, whose home is this? And scripture doesn't say that Jesus had a house. Most likely, this is Peter's house because Jesus called Peter in chapter one, "Follow me." And then, Peter says, "Where are we going?" And Jesus ends up at his house. "Follow me to your house because that's now my house."

And this is how Jesus operates. When Jesus forgives you of your sins, he is now your king. You and everything you have now belongs to the king, in service to the king. So Peter's house, what is Peter doing? He's hosting the first community group. He's inviting his friends. Jesus is there at the communion group. I don't know if they have some snacks. And they're having a good time.

And by the way, this is a great plug for community groups. So if you are not in a community group, it is imperative for you to join a community group. They're awesome. My community group, this week we had 26 people. And you say, "Wow." Well, I always start by counting my family, that's six, six eternal souls. And then, there's another family that has three kids, so that's 11. But we do welcome, we got 25-plus community groups all around the city. We'd love for you to sign up and to join.

And just a reminder, it's also a great place to invite those who are not Christians. Sometimes people feel a little self-conscious or insecure about coming to a large group gathering, but in a small setting, especially friends, neighbors, invite them, especially with the Gospel of Mark, this is a tremendous series for you to invite your friends to community groups and to church.

So verse two, "And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them." So the full house. What's he doing? He's preaching the good news, the arrival, and dominion of God is here.

And then verse three, "And they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay." Roofs in the dwellings of common people in Israel were made of wooden beams placed across stone or mud brick walls. And the beams were covered with reeds, thorns, several inches of clay. So Jesus is preaching, and all of a sudden, there's dust falling on his head.

I wonder what Peter's feeling. Like, "Oh." And by the way, Jesus completely invades his life, that's how Jesus works. When you welcome Jesus into your life, he invades, he dominates. So the roof is falling apart, stuff's falling from the ceiling. And this is just a reminder that it is a sacrifice to welcome people into your house. Hospitality takes work, that's why Peter says, "Be hospitable without grumbling." Why does he say that? If you have been hospitable, you know exactly why he said that.

I remember, recently, I repainted my apartment, repainted beautiful. The very first community group, three boys walk in with a basketball like, "Oh no." Scuffed up all my walls, and I was like, "Come on." But I use the best paint, Benjamin Moore, you just wipe it off. But it is a sacrifice, but it's worth it.

It's worth it because these gentlemen love their friends so much, their paralytic friend, they know that God can heal him, Jesus can heal him, Jesus has the power to do it. They take Peter's roof apart, unroof the roof, Scripture says, and they lower him down.

Verse five, "And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" Jesus saw their faith, he doesn't see the paralytics' faith. The emphasis here is he saw their faith, they believed on behalf of their friend. The friend's faith isn't emphasized here, perhaps it's because he has been paralyzed, not just physically, but he is paralyzed spiritually. And that's why Jesus starts the healing process by saying, "Son, your sins are forgiven." It was their faith in Jesus leading to action, initiative to overcome obstacles that changes this man's life.

And here, I just want to point out that sharing the good news, sometimes it takes teamwork, four-on-one. If you have an unbelieving friend, get three Christian friends, a four-on-one, it's more effective because they ask questions if you don't know the answer, the other person knows the answer, but then, you have some time to think and you just go back and forth. And that's what they're doing here.

And Jesus is impressed by their faith in action, and that's true faith. Truth faith is always an action. And Jesus perceived their improvisation as an expression of faith.

Mark loves using the word immediately, he uses it all the time, 41 times in the book, immediately, immediately, immediately. And this one text where it's clearly you just need the word immediately, it's not there. And I've been meditating on the fact, why didn't they wait? Why didn't they wait until Jesus is done preaching? Why didn't they wait until he leaves the house? My working theory is that Jesus sermons just took forever and he just preached and preached and preached. But also, I think they felt an urgency from the Holy Spirit that we have to do it and we have to do this now.

And I do, I pray that the Lord impresses that urgency upon us to share the gospel with our friends who don't yet know the Lord. And we are to tell them to strive, this is what these gentlemen are doing. Luke 13, it says, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.'"

There is an urgency because we don't know how much time is left, we don't know how much time anyone of us has left, therefore, "Today," Scripture says, "Today is the day of repentance." Today is the day to turn from sins to turn to Christ.

Jesus says, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Whatever the expectation of these gentlemen, Jesus is addressing, not this man's felt need, his obvious felt need was healing of his legs, but he has a need that is greater than even that. His deepest need, his most pressing need was that he has transgressed God's law, God's holy law and God is holy. And after all, what's the value of the use of all our limbs if we continue to yield our members as instruments of sin? What good if after having restored his health, the man remains under wrath and the curse of God?

And Jesus calls him child, my son. Here he is showing us that this is the relationship that God has for us. He wants to forgive us of our sins and to make us children of the Father.

Sin is presented here as the obstacle to healing and sin and sickness are very closely connected in Scripture. 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

In the Old Testament, transgression can lead to illness. Deuteronomy 28 lists out blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Therefore, healing and forgiveness are often closely related to each other. Isaiah 38:16, "Oh Lord, by these things men live and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh, restore to me health and make me live. Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction for you have cast all my sins behind your back."

In places, the terms are even interchangeable, we see heal and forgive almost as if you can just replace them. Psalm 41:3, "The Lord sustains him on his sick bed. In his illness, you restore him to full health. As for me, I said, 'Oh Lord, be gracious to me. Heal me for I have sinned against you."

And Jesus himself links disease with sin and healing with forgiveness. In John 5, he heals a gentleman there who also could not walk and then, Jesus finds him after, in John 5:14, he says, "Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, 'See, you are well, sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you.'"

But of course, we have to balance this out with John 9. And John 9, the disciples are walking and they see, it says, "As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'It is not that this man's sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.'"

The Bible never says that we suffer in relation to how much we have sinned, and many times God calls the righteous to suffer and allows the wicked to prosper. And this is part of his purpose and remains a mystery to us. But we do know if the Lord allows seasons of suffering for us, it's always with a purpose.

In Luke 13:1-5 says, "There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you'll all likewise perish.'"

The point is that we do not necessarily suffer or get sick and direct proportion to our sins. We live in a fallen world. We're all born guilty of Adam's sin. We all have a corrupt, sinful nature, and we all commit acts of sin which may or may not bring down God's punishment upon us. Therefore, our sin, in Adam, lies at the root of all our suffering. This is what Jesus' point is that he wants to forgive sins, and that begins the process of our total restoration. Our total restoration begins with forgiveness.

Point three is the King is questioned, this is verse six of Mark 2. "Now, some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts." The scribes were the so-called teachers of the law, they were the specialist in the interpretation of the law, the application of it in particular situations or disputes. And these men, it shows that they continually challenged Jesus' teaching and his authority. They did not approve of his message. They didn't approve of him because he didn't go to them for credentials, he didn't go to them for permission, and he's not part of their established big religion, if you will. And so, the opposition here asserts itself.

In chapter one, Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days. He won, he overcame. And then, Jesus goes into the synagogue. As soon as he starts preaching, a demon begins to interfere with Jesus' teaching, and Jesus casts out the demon from the gentlemen.

And here, we see in chapter two, and this is through chapter three, that these Jewish religious leaders, the scribes, members of the sect of the Pharisees, they come as representatives of Satan, as servants of Satan because they are doing Satan's bidding. In being against Christ, they are actually doing the work of Satan. Though routed for a moment by Jesus' exorcisms and his healings, the demons now counter-attack Jesus through human instruments with special fierceness. Why? Because they know that Jesus has come to destroy the works of the evil one and they know that their time is short. Revelation 12:12 says, "Therefore, rejoice o heavens and you who dwell in them, but woe to you o earth and sea for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short."

So this counter-attack takes the form of arguments with the scribes and the Pharisees and it always begins with the question why? "Why do you speak like this? Why do you and your disciples don't fast like John and his disciples do? Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" And Jesus responds to each objection in a forceful manner. It's not wrong to ask questions, it's fine. The Lord actually says, come, let us consider, let us think, let us meditate. But here, they're not asking questions, they're questioning. It's a negative word, connotation of calculations only used in the negative sense and they're questioning in their heart. And Jesus sees the heart, he knows exactly what's going on.

So in verse seven, they say, "Why does this man speak like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Who can forgive sins but God alone? And this is true, only God can forgive sins. Only the one that was sinned against can forgive sins and that's why God is the one that forgives sins, it's his prerogative.

Exodus 34:6-9, "The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.' And Moses quickly bowed down his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, If now I have found favor in your sight, oh Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us for is a stiff-necked people and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance.'"

Isaiah 43:25, "I am he who bloats out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins."

So by forgiving the man's sins, what is Jesus doing? He's revealing that he is God. "Your sins are forgiven. Because you're the one who sinned against me, I am the one that can forgive you." He's proving that he is God. By saying, "How can you say this? No one can forgive sins except one, that is God," they're appealing to the Shema, the Great Shema, this is Deuteronomy 6:4-5, "Hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength."

Verse eight, "Immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves said to them, 'Why do you question these things in your hearts?'" Later, he's going to prove that he has the power for forgive sins by actually healing the gentleman, but here, he proves that he's God by reading their minds. He knows exactly what they're thinking in their hearts.

1 Samuel 16:7 says, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him for the Lord sees not as man sees man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."

Verse nine, it continues, "Which is easier to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven, or to say, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk'?" And here, you got to pause and say, which is easier? From the standpoint of systematic theology, it may be simpler to perform a miraculous cure for God than to forgive a person's sins. We'll get to that in a bit. But in terms of external proof to these people who are questioning Jesus, it's easier to say your sins are forgiven because no one knows. Who knows if the person's sins are forgiven? It's a lot harder to do a miracle and outside observers have no immediate way of knowing if the sins are forgiven, whereas you can immediately verify a miraculous cure.

So Jesus' ability to heal the gentleman is an argument from greater to lesser. If Jesus can do the greater, which is healing the paralytic, he can do the easier from the human perspective of forgiving his sins and the miracle thus confirms the claim to forgive sins. If the man is healed, there can be only one conclusion, that Jesus is God, that he has authority to forgive sins and both the healing and the forgiveness of sins are sure sign that Jesus is God and Jesus is king.

But which is easier from God's perspective? The miracle is easier because God created everything just by speaking, he could speak and the man's legs are immediately healed. But to forgive this man's sins requires so much more than just a mere utterance of the word, it would require the greatest thing that has ever been done by God himself. It will take more to forgive this man's sins than to create the entire universe. All God did to create everything was speak, recreating the man's legs, so easy for God.

But to forgive this man's sins required the father sending the Son who took on flesh and took the working of the Holy Spirit, all three to undergo terrible suffering. Yes, Jesus Christ suffered in this life, and yes, he suffered on the cross, but the Father suffered also in allowing all of that to happen, the Father suffered in bringing down his wrath on the Son, the Holy Spirit suffered as well. Forgiveness of our sins requires nothing less than the incarnation, the suffering, the humiliation, and finally, the crucifixion of the Son of God. All of this required to forgive even one man of his sins. God created everything just by speaking, but to recreate us from the inside out, it took the gospel, it took the cross. And this is what Jesus did, and this is what Jesus offers us.

Mark 2:10, "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, 'I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home." The phrase "that you may know" is a phrase that's repeated often in the Exodus account. When Moses stands in front of Pharaoh, in his confrontation, he says, God's going to send miracles and he's going to send these curses that you may know.

This is Exodus 9:13 and 14, "Then the Lord said to Moses, rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me, for this time, I will send all my plagues on you yourself and on your servants and your people so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.'" And what's fascinating is this divine oracle that you may know, that same phrase that was used against Pharaoh is now his prophetic judgment against Israel's own religious leaders.

The Son of Man, it's a divine term for the Messiah from Daniel 7, and he has the authority, he has the power to forgive us.

Verse 12, "And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all so that they were all amazed and glorified God saying, 'We never saw anything like this.'" The healing establishes the reality of the forgiveness, and it's the sure sign that Jesus is the king, the king has come and the Messianic age has dawned as promised and prophesied in Isaiah 35:5, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy."

The people here of Capernaum were witnessing incredible miracle. It says that they were amazed. They've never seen anything like it. They see the first reverberations of the messianic kingdom of King Jesus. And indeed, throughout the Gospels, we see that Jesus healed all manner of sickness and disease. And the miracles that are emphasized are emphasized for a reason.

When Jesus heals a leper, this means that Jesus can remove the uncleanness of sin and corruption from us. When Jesus gives sight to the blind, he's showing us that those who believe in him now see things from God's perspective and Jesus gives spiritual eyesight through faith. When Jesus restores hearing to the deaf, he's demonstrating that he is the one who can give people the ability to hear God's word and understand its meaning and know that it's true. And when Jesus enables the lame to walk, he's showing us that we must follow him. When Jesus resurrects Lazarus in verse 25 of John 11, "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world.'"

In other words, the miracles that we see in the Gospels aren't just meant to impress us or impress people, rather they are signs and pictures that those who believe in God's promises, those promises are true and they will come to pass. In this sense, the greatest miracle of Christianity isn't just the fact that Jesus does miracles, the greatest miracle is that we can be saved.

But also, miracles don't just increase people's faith, for some people, if they see the miracle and they turn from it, it serves as damnation for them. I wonder how many people from Capernaum actually believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? How many people followed him as a king? And not many. I think it's not many.

And we see this in particular in Matthew 11:20-30 where Jesus includes the miracles in Capernaum as actually damnation against them. "Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent. 'Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You'll be brought down to Hades for if the mighty works done and you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on that day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.'

At that time, Jesus declared, 'I thank you, father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father. And no one knows the son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.'"

So friends, today, as you hear the word of God, we call you to repentance, call you to faith in Jesus Christ. And because Jesus Christ forgives sin, healing is guaranteed to all Christians. And that sounds shocking, but God has forgiven you through the shed blood and perfect righteousness of Jesus. And God has even healed some of you, perhaps miraculously through natural means or supernatural means. And God has seen you through every trial which has been brought into your life. And God will heal every one of us, if not in this life, then certainly, at the great day of resurrection. Why? Because you are forgiven of sin, you will be healed.

So have you been forgiven of your sins by Jesus Christ? If you don't answer with a resounding yes, then today, right now, as we pray and as we worship, pray in your heart. Lord Jesus cleanse me from my sin. Lord Jesus, heal me of my spiritual paralysis. Wherever in your life you can't follow Jesus because you are just chained by sin today, say, "Lord, free me from that paralysis. Draw me to yourself and put me to work in the kingdom of God." Amen.

Let us pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this incredible text and I thank you for revealing your power. And I thank you that you offer us the revelation of your person, that you give us the gift of repentance and you offer us forgiveness of sins. And that's the beginning of our complete and total restoration. And I pray, Lord, fill each one of us with the Spirit. And give us a zeal, a passion for our friends, our neighbors, our loved ones who don't yet know you, are paralyzed by sin. And I pray that you give us the zeal to do everything we can to draw them to you, bring them to you, to answer their questions, to bring them to scriptures so that they also are given the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. And Lord, we pray for your spirit to be poured out on this church and upon this city, and we pray for great revival and I pray that you use us in the process and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you that you did not leave us in our darkness and rebellion, but because of your great love, your lavish love, the word tells us you sent your beloved Son, your one and only, the holy one of God, the Holy Lamb of God. Jesus, we thank you that you came to establish your kingdom and it's a kingdom that's ruled by your holy word from the inside out. You came preaching the word, and by doing so, you went to battle with Satan and the demonic, battling his lies and battling the confusion that comes with that. Jesus, we thank you that you taught God's word, God's pure, unadulterated, full throttle word. We pray that you make us a people, a church that loves your word, that searches out your word to find eternal life.

And we thank you, Jesus, that you fulfilled all the Commandments of God. You fulfilled the will of God perfectly. And then we thank you that you offered yourself as a sacrifice on the cross. And Lord, on the cross, you cried out, "It is finished," because you came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. And you did that in a perfect life and full of obedience and love. And we thank you Lord that you triumph over Satan's sin and death by your resurrection. And we thank you that through your ascension, you now have taken a seat at the right hand of God, the Father. You went to the cross for the joy that was set before you, the joy of saving souls, redeeming humanity, and for the crown that you were given, a crown to reign and rule over us.

We thank you, Jesus, that you're sitting at the right hand of God and you're waiting until all of your enemies have made a footstool for your feet. And you call us into this battle to know your word and to fight the powers of the demonic by the power of your Holy name. Lord, I pray if there's anyone here today who's caught in the nets of sins and the net of the demonic, I pray to release them today. Release them by proclaiming the truth to their hearts and minds, and when they know the truth, the truth will set them free. Lord, make us a people who want to not just learn about you, not just learn about your teachings, but to learn and then to follow you on a daily basis empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, which is given to each one of us when we repent and believe. Lord, bless our time in the Holy Scriptures. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. We've called the series Kingdom Come: The Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom. The title of the sermon today is the The King Came to Preach. What Mark is doing is he's revealing that Jesus is King. He's the King over everything because he's God incarnate, come to vanquish Satan's sin and death and to reclaim all that is his. One of the effects of the fall when Adam and Eve were created by God, they were placed in the Eden. Everything was beautiful and perfect, and they lived in perfect harmony with nature, with God, and with one another. They believed the lies of the enemy, and by doing so they rejected the word of God. Therefore, they lost dominion of this earth. Satan usurped dominion through his lies.

When Jesus comes, he comes to dethroned Satan, and it's fascinating how Jesus comes to establish his kingdom. One would expect that he comes with a host of armies forcing people into submission. He could have done that, but he chooses to come and wage war a different way. Yes, he does fight Satan's temptations. Yes, he does cast out demons, but the focus of Jesus' earthly ministry was countering the lies of Satan, which veiled the minds of human beings. Jesus came to wage a spiritual war, which in many ways was an ideological war. It's a war for truth. It's a war for the truth of who is God? What does he want from us? What are his commands and how are we to follow him? What you believe to be true about God is the battleground.

St. Paul comments on this in 2 Corinthians 4:3. "Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this world," that's Satan, "has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord with ourselves as your servants, for Jesus' sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

So it's a battle for truth and thus the phrase "blinded the minds" but it's not just a battle for truth. Satan knows the truth about God much better than any one of us knows. But Satan hates God. He hates the idea of God reigning over him. He knows he believes the truth, but that's not enough for us. As James says, "You believe that God is one. You do well." Even the demons believe and shudder. So it's not just a battle for the minds, it's a battle for the heart. We need God to speak to our hearts, to quicken them, to energize them, to regenerate them, cleanse them, illuminate them. This is why Jesus' kingdom is not an outside in kingdom. Every other kingdom is like that. Every other religion is like that. Here's the path. Here's the externalities that you do in order to be part of the religion of the kingdom, et cetera.

No, Jesus' kingdom's inside out. He comes, he regenerates our hearts, he illuminates our minds and now we belong to Him. We are now his. Our life is now his double fold. It's his because he created us and it's his because he recreated us in ransom dust with his blood. Let's look at the text today. Today it's Mark 1:16-39. "Passing alongside the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen." And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I'll make you become fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother who were in boat in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. And they went into Capernaum.

And immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching and they were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God." But Jesus rebuked him saying, "Be silent and come out of him." And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him, and they were all amazed so that they questioned among themselves saying, "What is this, a new teaching with authority?" He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. At once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

Immediately, he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew and James and John with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her and he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up and the fever left her and she began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons and the whole city was gathered together at the door and he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place. There he prayed and Simon and those who were with him searched for him and they found him and said to him, "Everyone is looking for you." And he said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also. For that is why I came out." And he went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, King Jesus commands, "Follow me." Second King Jesus exercises lies and demons. And third King Jesus came to preach truth and grace. First King Jesus commands, "Follow me." In verse 16, it starts with the word passing. He's passing alongside, but it's not just a word of him walking by. It's an allusion to the Old Testament and the Old Testament, Elijah passes by Elijah before commissioning him. In the preceding passage, God, before he commissions Elijah, he passes by. And if you recall the theophany to Moses, this is when God appeared to Moses. It was the same idea that God passed by in order to share his presence and then also to commission. As he passes by, he saw these two young men. The verb for saw is a possessive gaze. That means Jesus Christ sees them and he sees that they are his, and what's fascinating is he doesn't see the externalities. He doesn't judge his people, judge people by the outside. God judges by what's in the heart. He doesn't see their entrepreneurial spirit. He doesn't see their hardworking ethic.

It's not those things that drew him to them. No, it was his choice. It was his initiative. And salvation is always the initiative of God first. He pursues, he comes to us, he seeks us out. He subdues our hearts. He calls us to himself. If you remember John 15, Jesus said, "You did not choose me. I chose you. Why? And I appointed that you should bear much fruit." And this is what he's telling these young men. He says, "Follow me and you'll become fishers of men. Follow me, and I have a vision for your life. I have a vision for the best version of you, the best version of your life." And the best version of your life is to follow Jesus as closely as possible. How do you get as close as possible to Jesus? You do what Jesus does. You go where Jesus goes.

Jesus is saying, "I'm in the business of fishing for people, fishing for men." What he's saying, it's an allusion to the Old Testament. Anytime the phrase or the metaphor "fishing for people" is used, it's a metaphor for warfare. So Jesus comes as a king, as the commander in chief of the world, so to speak, and he's saying, "I'm the king. Come bend the knee to me. Begin to live under my lordship and reign and I'll be your perfect redeemer, and I will take you where I go and I will make you do what I do, which is saving people." A lot of people think that if I'm not a follower of Jesus Christ and I'm free from Christ, I'm free from God, I'm free from the commandments. And that's the lie of the evil one. That was the lie from the very beginning.

Satan told Adam and Eve, "Don't listen to God. You don't have to obey him. Have freedom. You'll be like gods if you obey me. But if you stop obeying God immediately, you are in submission to the enemy." Those are the only choices and therefore you're caught in lies and you're caught in sins and you are not free. And Jesus here, he says, "I'll make you fishers of men." It's warfare language. I am recruiting you as soldiers. So when he says, "Follow me," he's drafting them into the holy army for hearts and souls. What's fascinating is that the word follow me, this is a command. He shows up to them, he says, "This is what you're doing." They drop their nets, they follow him. You mustn't forget that when God speaks, he speaks with authority because he is God.

Every evening, we have devotions with our daughters. We have four daughters, and recently we've been going through this little book of devotions where they make the Bible digestible. Sometimes a little too digestible. So I'm reading a story about Jericho where the people of God were told by God to walk around the city for six days and it doesn't make sense to them, but they do what God says. On the seventh day, the walls crumble, et cetera. And the punchline for the story was sometimes when God asks you to do something, it doesn't make sense on the front end, but then after you do what he asks you to do, then you see the point. And I was like, "What?" As I read it, I'm like, "Whoa, hold on, hold on. God never asks us to do anything." When God speaks, he speaks with authority and he commands and that's what we see here. This isn't an invitation. This is a draft notice. You are mine and you are going to do what I said. And obviously that's the best thing for us.

We see the brothers are named Simon and Andrew. Simon is the first one. Simon is Simon Peter. Later on in this book, Jesus changes his name in chapter three. He said, "You were given the name. Your birth name is Simon, but since you followed me, now you are mine. I'm going to give you a new identity. I'm going to give you a new vision and a purpose for life and a new name, the name of Peter, which means rock." And he's called Peter the rest of the gospel from chapter three on until chapter four. In chapter four, he reverts back to his old ways in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus said, "Peter, I need you to stay up. I need you to pray for me. I'm about to enter the biggest battle of my life, of my existence." This was on the cross as he battles Satan's sin and death and absorbs the wrath of God. And Peter fell asleep. So Jesus comes to him, says, "Simon, Simon, could you not even stay awake for an hour?"

And it shows us that there is a tendency even after we come to Jesus Christ, even after we have been redeemed to revert back to our old ways, Peter is given the pride of place here in this list. In this chapter, four men are called. Peter is first and he's also always first in the list of the 12. He was the first disciple chosen by Jesus, and therefore he was the first disciple to whom the resurrected Christ appeared. We see this in 1 Corinthians 15.

Now, I would remind you, brothers of the gospel, I preach to you which you received and which you stand by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins. And according with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas. That's Peter. Then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive though some have fallen asleep.

And Jesus tells them, "Follow me." In rabbinic literature, the pupil or the disciple goes after the rabbi, but the Rabbi never says, "Follow me." The Rabbi would always say, "Follow my teachings, follow the teachings or the school of thought that I prescribe to." Jesus doesn't say that. Jesus says, "Follow me." Not just my teaching, but my teaching lived out. And this is important because a lot of people when they come to faith, they start studying scripture, start studying theology, and they're so engrossed by it and you should be because it's fascinating. It's mind boggling. It's mind blowing. It's incredible. Study the scriptures, but also understand that the God that wrote the scriptures is also the God who's always with us. When you close the book, you're still called to follow Jesus Christ.

And this is what Jesus told the disciples. He said, "It's better that I leave. It's better for you that I leave because when I'm here, I am physically in your presence. But when I'm physically not in your presence, I'm not in your presence. It's better that I leave because when I leave, I will send the Holy Spirit." And the Holy Spirit allows us to always be in the presence of God, to always walk with God, to always speak with God. When we're reading the scriptures, you have access to the author of the scriptures as you believe and obey.

So immediately they left their nets and they followed him. And we see the power of Jesus' word, "Follow me." And all of a sudden, all of the human reticence and reluctance has been washed away instantly as God has arrived on the scene. He speaks, they obey, they get in line, they follow him. It's commanded. Delayed obedience is disobedience. I know when God is moving in our church, and I know he's moving in this season in particular way because people come to me, people I've never met, and they say, "Look, I've never met you, but for some reason something is compelling me to come here. I don't know what it is. I have no Christian background, but I'm being drawn." I say, "I know exactly what that is. That's God drawing you and wooing you in. That's the authority of his Holy Spirit saying that you belong to him."

He continues in Mark 1:19 going on a little farther. He saw James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. Again, he saw. That's the seizure with his gaze. He sees because they are his. Zebedee here is mentioned to distinguish James and John from the other James and John in scripture. James the Lord's brother and John the Baptist. Peter with these two form the inner circle of Jesus Christ, and later they become the three pillars of the Jerusalem church. They were in the boat mending their nets. They're working. This was a small business and they had hired servants. In verse 20, it says, "Immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat and the hired servants and followed him." So they're living a nice middle class life. They have some employees and a business. They're doing fine.

Then Jesus shows up and messes up their plans for their own life. And what we see is instantaneous obedience. He speaks. There's urgency. They immediately leave everything. There's an escalation from Simon and Andrew's calling because James and John don't just abandon their property as Peter and Andrew do, but they do leave their father behind. This shows us that Christ the king deserves commands, expects our uncompromising dedication. And no, we're not all called to be vocational Christians where we do this for full-time job, but we are all called to be full-time Christians, full-time followers of Jesus Christ. The point here is that nothing must stand in the way of our wholehearted devotion to Christ. Not finances, not family, not partnerships, not even parents. So Jesus Christ takes precedence. His authority is greater than even our parents. He must be first of everything in life.

Mark 8:34, Christ says this explicitly in calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what is a prophet, a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul, for what can a man give in return for his soul?" So friend, today, are you following Jesus Christ? This is what it means to be a Christian. Are you following Jesus Christ wholeheartedly with wholehearted devotion? Or is there something in the way? Or is there something pulling you back from following him? Is he commanding you some specific mission that you just keep putting off, keep putting off? When Jesus commands, we are to say, "Yes, sir."

So here we see the first batch of recruits and they're given a taste of battle as Jesus Christ goes to battle. In the previous sermon, we saw Jesus went into the wilderness to fight Satan. Satan tempted Christ. Jesus did battle with Satan against his temptations with the word of God as he memorized Deuteronomy. Every response was from the Book of Deuteronomy. And here we see Jesus go into the battle of a synagogue. He goes into a synagogue where the people of God met on a weekly basis and he begins to preach the word of God. And you say, "What was the substance of his teaching?" I think the substance of his teaching, wherever he went into the synagogues, the Sermon on the Mount. If you read the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus is doing there is he's saying, "I'm establishing a brand new kingdom." But it's not different than the kingdom of the Old Testament. The kingdom of the Old Testament, God gives the 10 Commandments. These are the moral laws by which we are to live in the kingdom of God and establish the kingdom of God.

And then Jesus said, "I didn't come to abolish law but to fulfill it." And then every single one of the commandments he goes through and he says, "You have heard it was said. But I say unto you, you have heard that it was said. The externals are enough." And Jesus said, "No, they're not enough. You have to obey out of heartful of love toward God, and you have to obey from the heart." So here Jesus goes into a synagogue. This is 0.2. King Jesus exercises lies and demons and we see the opening battle. He and the four disciples walk into the synagogue, verse 21, and they went to Capernaum. And immediately on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching. A Capernaum small village at the north end of the Sea of Galilee. Even today there's a magnificent restored synagogue there on that site from about the fourth or fifth century. They say it's built on the remains of the first century synagogue, presumably the one from the story.

He goes there on the Sabbath, on the Lord's day, he's

fulfilling the commandments by worshiping God on the Sabbath. It was a

Saturday. We gather as the people of God on a Sunday because Christ rose from

the dead on a Sunday.and he goes into a synagogue. Whenever I come across Jesus

in the synagogue, I'm like, "We are very biblical." We are so

biblical as we are in a synagogue on the Lord's day. What the word synagogue

just means, it's a place of gathering for the saints of God, of Jewish people

who gathered for worship, scriptural study. The word for church, ecclesia, has

the same idea. It's the gathering of the saints of those who are called out by

God. And the Lord tells us, "Do not forsake the gathering of the

saints." And this is why we gather.

What does he do? He teaches. What does he do? He probably teaches from the word of God and he teaches the word in a way that the people have never heard. This is verse 22, and they were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one who had authority and not as the scribes. So Jesus as the word of God, as the Son of God, opens up the word of God and he teaches with the authority of God. He doesn't just say, "Some people said this about the ..." This is the word of the Lord, thus sayeth the Lord and the divine king is preaching and applying the word.

It's fascinating that people have never heard sermons like this. They gather in the synagogue as the people of God and the scribes would get up. There's a difference in the content and the authority. And you say, "What were the scribes doing?" What the scribes were doing was they were teaching what the other scribes before them taught them. What happened through the years was people stopped preaching the word of God because the word of God is inherently offensive to sinners. It's inherently offensive to those who rebel against God. So they started placating the word, making it more palatable, softening it a little bit. What happened was they started teaching manmade rules instead of the law of God.

And Jesus calls them out on this. He says, by quoting Isaiah, "These people, they honor me with their hearts, with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." They teach manmade rules as commands of God, therefore skillfully sidestepping the commandments. Jesus came in and he says, "Look, the commandments are still enforced, the 10 Commandments, and we've broken them." Every single one of us, we've broken the commandments. You can go through the 10 commandments. I'll just focus on the last one. The last one says, "Thou shall not envy. Thou should not envy anything that your neighbor has." We have all broken that commandment, especially in the day and age that we live. If you have social media, you've definitely broken that commandment. If you've driven around the house and seen some of the houses in Brookline, you've definitely broken that commandment. Inside our hearts, we've broken the 10th commandment and the word of God says that the penalty for breaking any commandment is death.

Jesus comes in and he preaches the commandments and he says, "You have not kept them from the heart." So what do we need? We need someone to die instead of us, die in our place. And St. Paul talks about the law of God as a school master. It's supposed to teach us our need for grace. It's supposed to drive us to God, drive us to the cross and say, "Lord, I need grace." And this is what Jesus taught. In Mark 1:23 as soon as he's teaching the word, all of a sudden we see the Satan's not happy. Immediately, there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit and he cried out. So immediately as Jesus starts proclaiming the word of God, the demon makes his appearance and he does the same thing that Satan loves to do. Jesus tells a parable, "The sower is like the preacher. The sower goes and sows the seed of God's word. There are four different soils. One of the soils, the word lands on top because of the hardness of the heart and doesn't penetrate."

And then Jesus says, "Then Satan comes swooping and steals the word and the word doesn't bear any fruit." And that's what this demon is doing. It says it's an unclean spirit. It's the opposite of the Holy Spirit and the man is with an unclean spirit. It was in him. The literal interpretation was the man's personality has been usurped by the demon. The demon has swallowed up the person. This is how Satan works. If you do not belong to God, you leave yourself open to being influenced and possessed by Satan. Satan as he enters you, demons as they enter you, they want to make the absolute worst version of you. They want to oppress the personality of the person where ultimately it's just the demon.

And demons do the opposite of what the Holy Spirit does. When you repent of sin and you turn to Christ, you enter the kingdom of God. You're filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants you to become the best version of yourself, the most powerful version of yourself. He says, "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men." That's the best version of you. In verse 24, the demon speaks, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God." The demon understands there's a conscious difference. There's a difference of consciousness between them and Jesus.

What are they doing? What's the demon doing here? He's invoking the name of Christ. He says, "Jesus of Nazareth." In ancient magical text, the magician would invoke the name of the God or the demon and say, "I know you." So the demon here is battling Jesus. And he's saying, "I know you, therefore I have authority over you." But he understands that authority is non-existent because Jesus has come to destroy them. He says, "Have you come to destroy us?" And the demon here is speaking the first person plural on behalf of all the demons.

Zechariah 13 gives us a passage that is associated with exorcism when the Messiah comes, when the King of Israel comes, Zechariah 13:1. "On that day, there will be a fountain open for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness. And on that day declares the Lord of hosts. I will cut off the names of the idols from the land so that they shall be remembered no more. And also, I will remove from the land, the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness." He says, "I know who you are. You're the holy one of God. You're the one that's sent by God to silence the demons and to cast them out, to cleanse the land of the demons."

In Mark 1:25, Jesus rebukes him saying, "Be silent and come out of him." By be silent, one translator says, "Be muzzled." Another says, "Shut your trap." It is rude language and he is rude to the demons because the demons have ruined absolutely everything. So we see Jesus' authority. He stands over the demons. Yes, they have a power, but his power is greater. In verse 26, "And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him." Convulsing him, the verb literally means to tear and rend. It's used especially of the action of dogs or carnivorous animals. And this is his last gasp. This is his last attempt to destroy his host. The demon submits, but he doesn't do it quietly, he does leave and he does depart. And Jesus miraculously saves this person from demonic influence.

Are the demons alive today? Yes, they are. Are they operating today? Yes, they are. And we live in a day and age where they're becoming more and more explicit about it in music and Hollywood, et cetera. And there is a power. There is a power in the demonic. There is a power in the satanic. Satan does offer people things. "Follow me and I will give you..." This is the same temptation that he attempted Jesus with. "Submit to me, worship me and I will give you reign and rule over these cities." And this is happening and people are vocal about it. There's videos. I was watching a video of Bob Dylan when he was talking about when he was young, and he said, "I made a deal with Satan and he's the commander in chief of the world." And he said, "As soon as I did that, I would sit down and beautiful lyrics just started pouring out, but I can't do it anymore."

It's true. People give room to Satan. Satan does possess. Satan does operate. And therefore, this is one of the commands of God is to repent of sin and turn to Christ. Leave that kingdom, leave Satan's power, accept a greater power. As soon as you repent and believe, God gives you the power of the Holy Spirit. Satan can no longer possess you, and God continues to use you and he continues to sanctify us. But demons do oppress. Even believers, they do attack, they do attempt to bring affliction. And we live in the city where demons are at work. Whenever I leave the city and I come back, I feel the oppression. I've even gotten to the point where I don't even want to leave the city because I don't even want to know that there's more tranquil places in the world. I just want to stay here, I'm rooted here, and battle Satan with prayers and the word of God.

But we must know that the one who is in us is stronger than the one in the world. So if you are oppressed by a demonic, if demons do tempt, et cetera, et cetera, rebuke them. Rebuke them in the name of Jesus Christ. Say it out loud. "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ, by the blood of Jesus Christ. I rebuke you." And they flee at his name. Mark 1:27, they were all amazed so that they questioned among themselves saying, "What is this, a new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him." And there is an ironic contrast in this text. They understand his authority. They understand that teaching is different. They understand that he rebukes even demons. And how many of them say, "Can I follow you? We want to follow you. We want to submit to you." No, it's just Jesus and the four disciples. So what's ironic here is the demons know the identity of Jesus better than these people. The demons obey Jesus, and these people do not.

The question before us is, do we obey? Do we obey the king of kings? When he speaks, when his word is absolutely clear, when his will is absolutely clear, do we obey Jesus Christ? Matthew 25:41, "Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Hell was prepared for Satan and demons, and Jesus came to save people from this place of torture, of eternal damnation. We do it by repenting of sin, turning to him and entering his kingdom. In verse 28, once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee, his fame spreads and people are beginning to realize the Messiah is here. The question is, will they obey?

Point three is King Jesus came to preach truth and grace. Verse 29, "And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her." A few yards away from the site in Capernaum where they built a synagogue in the fifth century, there was a group of small one room houses over one of which is built an octagonal church in the fifth century, presumably because they thought that this was the place where Peter lived and it was the base camp for Jesus Christ and his ministry. I do want to point out that Peter had a house, and when Jesus Christ called Peter and said, "Follow me," one of the things that Jesus is doing is he's saying, "I have your heart. I have your time. I have your life." And everything that belongs to you now belongs to me. Jesus Christ here commandeers the house of Peter and Andrew. Later on, he commandeers their boat and he preaches off their boat. This is how King Jesus works.

When your sins are forgiven, you enter the kingdom of God, you and everything you have, your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, all of your talents, all of your opportunities, all the stuff you have is now in service to King Jesus. And here I do also want to point out that Peter was married. Simon's mother-in-law lay ill. He had a wife. So 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul comments on this, "Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do the other apostles?" And the brothers of the Lord and Cephas. I say that because Peter is considered the first Pope. A Catholic church considers Peter as the first pope and the first pope was married. This is important. That should have set the example for the rest of the church. So many implications there.

Mark 1:31. "And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up and the fever left her and she began to serve him." I love the tenderness of Christ's compassion. He sees Peter's mother-in-law sick. He takes her by the hand and he heals her, which is an incredible image of God. This is how God tenderly ministers to us in particular moments of darkness or pain or suffering. Isaiah 41:13, "For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand. It is I who say to you, fear not. I am the one who helps you." And he lifts her up. The word for lift her up is he raised her. It's the same verb that's used in his resurrection of the dead girl. And the fever leaves her immediately. As soon as she gets up, this is fascinating, she begins to serve them. They had just been in synagogue all morning and doing battle against lies and against demons. Something about the Sabbath when you come home, that lunch after Sabbath, you know what I'm saying? It's more delicious than any other lunch.

And then the nap that comes after. It's just a glorious blessed sleep. That's what they were expecting, but she was sick. So Jesus heals her. And then it says she started to serve them. And this is the pattern of salvation. When Jesus saves us, the next response should be, "Jesus, what am I to do? How am I to serve you? How am I to serve your people?" Verse 32, "That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons." So Peter's house is now the center of Jesus' ministry, and these people waited until the Sabbath ended. Because of their religious understanding of the Sabbath, you can't do any work and they assume that you can't even do good. And Jesus said in Mark 3:4, he said, "Is it lawful in the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent.

So on the Sabbath, we are to worship God. It's a day devoted to the Lord, and we are to do good to people. So these people wait until the end of the Sabbath, start bringing these people to Jesus in verse 33. The whole city was gathered together at the door, and he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. Jesus puts a divine gagging order on the demons. He doesn't want them to preach the gospel. He doesn't want them to preach his identity. He wants the disciples to do that. And then he wants to protect himself from the charge that he is colluding with Satan, which was a charge that the scribes and the Pharisees brought against Jesus. And Jesus said, "If a kingdom rises against itself, it shall not stand. I come to you casting out demons with the finger of God."

Verse 35, "After a very busy day of ministry, after preaching and teaching and casting out demons, you expect Jesus to take a couple days, rest up." No. Instead, he steals hours from his sleep in order to spend time with God. Verse 35, "And rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place where he prayed." Why did Jesus do this? Why did Jesus take time to pray? He had no sins to repent of. He didn't need human possessions. Why does he spend time with the Father? He wants the Father's presence, and he understands that after serving people and after casting out demons, he needs power. He spends time in the presence of God, and by spending time in the presence of God, he is powering up. That's what prayer is. Prayer is powering up. This is how we recharge our battery.

Satan attacks me usually on Saturdays because he wants to throw me off from preaching the word of God. And yesterday, I drive to the gym, I go to the gym, I do the workout. I'm exhausted. I'm just drenched with sweat. And I get in my car, and this is supposed to be the moment where I'm like, "All right, I can relax. I can drive home." It doesn't start. There's no lights. Nothing's working. I'm like, "Oh man, I've never had issues with my battery." And there's a guy that pulls up on one of those minis and I'm like, "It's okay. It'll do it." And I've got the jumper cables, I hooked up the mini and the whole time I'm like, "Lord, what are you trying to do? You want me to fish for this guy? I'll fish for this guy." And then he's like, "What do you do?" And I tell him what I do.

So we had that conversation. His car wasn't strong enough. Then I had to go into the gym. There was another gentleman that let me jumpstart from his car. Wouldn't work. And then finally bring in Coach John from the gym. Coach John, big guy. He drives a white Highlander. Pull up the Highlander 2020. I'm like, "This'll do it great." Nothing. Nothing's working. And then I realized I probably need a new battery. Call up my wife. She comes. I tried to jump from the car. It doesn't work. We go to Auto Zone, get the new battery, come back to the truck. So much work. I'm not mechanically inclined. I know how to use YouTube University. So I'm on YouTube because the guy at AutoZone, he told me, he's like, "You need professional help." And I was like, "I know." He's like, "I mean professional mechanic." And I was like, "I know."

And then he let me borrow his tools. I take the stuff apart. It's such a pain. I put the new battery in and my wife's like, "Don't put the bar on top. There's a bar that covered the battery." She's like, "Don't do it because it probably won't work." And I was like, "Get away from me with this lack of faith. Stop it." And she's like, "It's just the way the Lord always works with you. He makes you suffer." So then I get into the truck, I get into the truck, and it's not starting nothing. Nothing. At that point, I just started praying. I got nothing else. In Jesus' name, I'm casting out demons from my vehicle. Lord Jesus, please, please. And I said, "Amen." I pressed the button and it starts. So it was a little miracle. Praise the Lord.

But it's all to say, it doesn't matter how powerful your engine, it's a V8. It doesn't matter how powerful, robust the frame, the tire. If the battery is dead, nothing works. And this is why prayer is so important. Prayer is how we recharge. In the presence of the Lord, you power up and you say, "Lord, what would you have for me to do?" And we live in a day and age where a lot of people are more concerned with the battery on their phone, how much the phone's charged than you're worried about the battery of your soul. And here Jesus gives us not just an example, but it is a charge that we are to make time to spend with the Lord, to power up in order to continue to serve him effectively.

So as he's praying, Simon says, verse 36, "And Simon and those who are with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, everyone is looking for you." And you say, "Well, that's good. Everyone's searching for him." But the word for search here is always used in the hostile sense as if they were hunting for him, desperate in their search. Why this word to describe their search? Because they wanted what God could do for them. They wanted what Jesus could do for them. They wanted to use Jesus. They view Jesus as a king with external authority that's going to help me in the externalities of life. They weren't looking for a king to rule their hearts, their minds, their souls. They wanted a king to submit to them rather than submitting to the king and his agenda. They were seeking to control Jesus rather than following and obeying him.

I saw this... It was like a cartoon of a guy who's in prison and he's behind bars and he's reaching for outside the bars. There were two things. There were keys. It's like you can get out. And there was a loaf of bread, and his hand went to the loaf of bread. This is what these people are doing. They're like, "Jesus, we want you to fix our short-term problem." Instead of saying, "Jesus, please release us from the captivity of Satan and sin." So what does Jesus do? He sees they're not looking for God. They're not looking for transformation. They're not looking to enter his kingdom. He says in verse 38, he said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out." And he went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

The phrase for why I came out is an important phrase. It's used elsewhere to come out for battle. When Jesus was being arrested by the scribes, the Pharisees, the Roman soldiers, Mark 14:48, he uses the same phrase. And Jesus said to them, "Have you come out, as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me." But let the scriptures be fulfilled and they all left him and fled. And Jesus says, "We could do miracles here." A short-term fix. Jesus didn't come just to heal the body primarily. He came to heal the soul. He came to regenerate heart. So he says, "Let us go on. This is why I came out, to battle Satan, sin and death." And he does that with his word. And then he says, "Let us go." He's including his disciples in that church. "Let us go. Let us preach the word. This is how we do battle against Satan, against the lies of the evil one. This is how the kingdom of God is built."

In conclusion, there are ultimately only two kingdoms, the kingdom of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of Satan. And you today are currently in one or the other. You belong either to Jesus or to Satan. You are possessed either by Jesus or you are a possession of Satan and he can possess you at any time. King Jesus came to save you from Satan's dominion. And he did that by living a life of perfect submission to God, the Father, thereby fulfilling all the commandments from the heart. And then Jesus allows Satan to take his best shot at destroying the holy one of God. And Satan did his best, but he failed, praise be to God. And Jesus rose from the dead victoriously, proving once and for all who the real king is. The king today says, "Receive the good news. Repent, believe, submit, obey. Follow the king, and he will make you fishers of men."

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your incredible word. We thank you, Lord, that you have a power and authority that is greater than even Satan, than even the demonic. And Lord, you entrust us with that authority, and you tell us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that you taught us. And Lord, let us start with ourselves. Let us be a people who obey everything that you taught us, empowered by grace. Because we have been saved, we want to and we long to serve you. Praise your name, glorify your name.

And Lord, do make us fishers of men. Make us people that follow you and recognize that we experience you more closely when we do what you called us to do, which is to tell people about the good news, to tell people that they have broken commandments, that they are in the nets of Satan and sin. And to call them to repent and believe and submit to the king. Continue to build up your church, continue to build up your kingdom. And Lord, we thank you that we get to be used by you in the process. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

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Lord God, we thank You for giving us the holy scriptures, and we know that the center of the holy scriptures is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Jesus, we thank You that You lived the perfect life on our behalf, fulfilled all of the commandments of God, all the will of God perfectly, and then Lord, You went to a cross, so You were crucified on our behalf, burying the wrath of God that we deserve for our law-breaking. Then, Lord, we thank You that You didn't stay dead, but You rose victoriously over Satan's sin and death, and because of Your resurrection, You offer us salvation, You offer us both mercy and grace. Mercy in that, You do not give us the condemnation we deserve. Grace in that, You give us the righteousness of Christ, and we thank You, Lord, for Your grace.

We thank You that we are saved by grace through faith. If there's anyone here who's not yet a Christian, has not had their sins forgiven, I pray today, Lord, draw them to Yourself. By the power of the Spirit, convert them, and, Lord, use this sermon series to teach us that we will never graduate from needing grace, and at some seasons in life, we do need a graduate-level grace, and if there's any one season like that now, a season of suffering, trial, tribulation, I pray be especially close to them. Show us that because of what You did with Christ, You took the greatest evil ever in the crucifixion of Christ, and You turned it into the greatest good ever, the resurrection of Christ. You can turn our evil into good as well.

Bless our time in the holy scriptures, and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Today, we're excited to start a new sermon series through Genesis 37 through 50. We're entitling it Graduate Level Grace: A Study In the Life of Joseph. The idea behind this text and behind the series is we come to know the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ when we're saved by grace through faith, but that's just a start of our relationship with the Lord, a walk with the Lord, and then often, the Lord does take us through seasons in life where it seems like we're about to embark on the next level, and with the next level, we need next-level grace.

The title of the sermon today is Reject Victimhood. Why this series? It's a story about a young man, who goes from just a shepherd to a Prime Minister in 13 years, but those 13 years include a lot of suffering. We're going to learn many lessons, Lord willing, glean much wisdom about the most important things in life, the most important parts of life, family, relationships, work, prayer, vision, godliness, influence, authority, leadership, integrity, rejection, betrayal, reconciliation, forgiveness, adversity, and prosperity. A quick recap of where we find ourselves, Genesis is the book of beginnings.

In the beginning, we see a personal, loving, sovereign God, who creates the universe and rules over it, and God creates humanity in His image and blesses them with the mandate, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and govern it, reign over it. Love God," He tells them, "And love one another, have a family, raise your children to do the same." That was God's vision for humanity, but in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve, man, humanity, wickedly rebels against God. They seek to be equal with God, and so sin introduces the reign of death in the world, but God is a good God and He doesn't leave us in our sin. To save humanity, God promises to send a Savior, who will come from the seed of Abraham to save the world.

The Lord chooses a family, chooses Abraham and says, "Abraham, I'm going to bless you with a family, and through your family, I'm going to send a Savior that will bless the families of the world." Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob. We find ourselves here in the story of Jacob. He takes us Genesis 25 through 50, half the book. He is Israel after all, the direct ancestor of the nation of Israel and the father of the 12 sons from whom would come the 12 tribes.

The thing that we notice about the life of Joseph is he comes from a big, dysfunctional family, a family that's riven by jealousy and hatred. They're a covenant family with God's blessing upon them, but they're torn apart by conflict, through intermarriage with pagans, et cetera, but we see that the Lord uses Joseph and his suffering to bring this hate-filled family together, and at the end, we see the family reconciled, purified, and preserved in safety in Egypt. Look at the stories of redemption in scripture. One of the greatest is the apostle Paul. He goes from being a terrorist of the Church, a persecutor of Christians to being the apostle, the evangelist to the Gentile's incredible redemption, story of redemptive arc, but ultimately, this story of Joseph is arguably even greater of a redemptive story.

The story is about how God intervenes despite the brokenness, despite the sin, despite the folly, we see His grace intervene, and He takes all of the evil, the sin, the brokenness, and He brings it all together for the good of both this family and us. Toward the conclusion of the great narrative, when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, this is what he says in Genesis 45:7, "And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over the land of Egypt." What a God He is, because He's not just a God of the extraordinary, but a God of the ordinary.

He takes the ordinary actions of people despite their folly, despite their sin, and He turns it all around to fulfill His perfect plan. Three points to frame up our time as we walk through the text in Genesis 37. The first is for those who love God, all things work together for good. Second, beware the soul-rotting sin of jealousy and covetousness, and three, replace a victimhood mindset with a sovereignty mindset. So first, for those who love God, all things work together for good.

We get this from Romans 8:28, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose, and this, we see over and over in the life of Joseph and his family. The story begins in Genesis 37:1. "Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan." In the previous chapter, Jacob's older brother, Esau, forsakes the land of the promised Canaan, and he goes to the land of Seir, so this acknowledges that Jacob has a right to the promised land, so Jacob settles down. In verse 2, "These are the generations of Jacob.

Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the songs of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father." Joseph was the second to last son, so he's number 11. Benjamin came after. Joseph lived 17, and this is a fun fact, but I think it's important for parents, in particular.

The first time my oldest daughter made me an omelet, I said, "Oh, my. Finally, a little ROI. A little return on investment," but you look at Jacob, and Jacob raises Joseph for 17 years, and then he doesn't see him again until the end of the book, and then, Jacob, when he and his family moved to Egypt, he lives with Joseph for 17 years, the last 17 years of his life, but here, we see conflict between the sons of Joseph's older sons. The fact that there were bad things to report on shouldn't come as a surprise. We've already learned that they had significant behavior issues, sin, et cetera.

Reuben, the oldest, slept with his father's concubine. Simeon and Levi slaughtered the Shechemites because of their sister's disgrace, so these were hard, rough, and reckless men, that were the older brothers of Joseph. Would this endear him to his older brothers, that he's bringing a bad report about them to his dad? No. Of course not.

They would consider him a tattletale or a snitch. The word for brothers here is used 21 times in the text keyword, but there's dramatic irony every time the word's used because though outwardly, these men were brothers, but inwardly, spiritually, they were the furthest from the truth, so Joseph's bad report reflects badly on all of them, the brothers because they were bad things to say, and Joseph because he chose to say them. So we see resentment smoldering in the hearts of the brothers of Joseph, and we're only at verse 2. In verse 3, "Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a robe of many colors." Favoritism had been a generational sin in Jacob's family. If you remember Isaac preferred Esau over Jacob, and if you remember, Rebecca loved Jacob more than Esau, and recall that Jacob loved Rachel and her children more than Leah and her offspring, and Jacob probably could not even help his feelings of favoritism because Joseph was the son of Rachel.

She had passed already, but she was his never-forgotten first love, and Joseph had been born late in life after many years of frustration. Also, along with all of this, Joseph seems to be free from the sins of his older brothers, which was a source of solace and joy to his father. Nevertheless, Jacob's blatant favoritism was unconscionable. The lifelong hurt inflicted by his own father's favoritism should have made him weary even a hint of not being even-handed with his children, and he made him a robe of many colors, so not only did everyone already know this, but now, everyone sees that Joseph is the one who's loved most, through this public mark of Jacob's greater affection. So it doesn't surprise us that his brothers hated him, even more after the father lavished his gift on them.

Quick word to parents, fathers in particular, fathers, don't be as stupid as Jacob was. Very simple lesson here. "Don't exasperate your children," the apostle Paul says. One of the ways that children can be exasperated is if you love one more than the others. How do I do this?

I do it like this. I equally favor each of them, so I tell them when they're one-on-one, I was like ... I have four daughters. I tell them, "You're my favorite. Don't tell the others," but it's okay 'cause I say it to all four, so that's fine.

The point is we got to love our children equally, uniquely, yes. We, uniquely, parents need to know our children's hearts, how they're wired, et cetera, but equally, we are to love them. Genesis 37:4, "But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him." So young Joseph's sudden appearance, in his distinctive robe, ignites their hatred, so he's alienated from them. They can't even speak civilly to him. The robe inflames their burning rage. They loathed his presence.

Insult to injury, Joseph gets a few dreams, and he decides to share them. Verse 5, "Now, Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, 'Hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.' His brothers said to him, 'Are you indeed to reign over us, or are you indeed to rule over us?' So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words."

So fuel here is added to the relational strife in the form of these Joseph-exalting dreams. Was he excited about the dream? Of course, he was. He was so full of the dream. He was compelled to pour it our to his brothers, tactless, insensitive perhaps.

The brothers had no difficulty interpreting. They know exactly what he's trying to say. They don't believe it, of course, and what was the expected reaction from him? What did he expect from them? We don't know, but they respond with hatred.

Verse 9, "Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, 'Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars were bowing down to me.'" Repetition here in the book of Genesis when it comes to dreams, repetition is a sign of certainty, so Joseph, when he interprets the dreams of Pharaoh, later on in the book, in Genesis 41:32, it says, "And the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about." So Joseph knows this God communicating to him. In the second dream, for him sealed the matter.

God would sovereignly bring this to pass, and that perhaps was the reason why he found the audacity to share with his family the content. His father loves him, and his father has been doting upon him, but even his father rebukes him at this point. This is verse 10. "And when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, 'What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?' And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind."

To his credit, even though Jacob rebukes his son, he didn't dismissed the dream, as the brothers did. He knew Revelation when he saw it and when he heard it, so he keeps the matter in mind. Without the dream, there would be no Joseph story. Without the dream, his brothers just hate him for the robe, but God does send the dream, and He sends two of them, and because of the dreams, Joseph can't, but share the dreams with his brothers, which sets the whole story in motion, that God sovereignly sealed and ensured the rejection of young Joseph. Do you see what that tells us?

It reveals that any of us, who follow God, will live a life that will sometimes get very tangled. At times, complications will arise from our own sin, as with Joseph, or from the sin of those around us, and we live in this world that is fallen. People around us are fallen, and this world is caught in a web of sin, and it constantly casts you webs, but we know that amidst life complexities, God's creative power is at work to do us good. This is true when we get sick. This is true when we have trouble with our children, our grandchildren, when professional problems engulf us.

We have the providence of God, a God who sustains our souls and all of life, perpetually working good. This is a truth to learn because life is not going to get easier, from this moment, friends. Your life is not going to get easier. With every coming day, as you get older, as we get older, with every day, it seems sometimes that the crosses that God entrusts to us get bigger, and God promised us, "If you want to follow Me, you got to deny self and take up your cross?" In fact, the more you follow God, the more complicated life will become, because your life's cores will buck against this world.

So what are we to do here? Take heart that God is at work in our lives to do us good because we belong to Him, so rest your soul in that and submit yourself to Him in great processes of life and follow Him. Second is, "Beware of the soul-rotting sin of jealousy and covetousness." This is Genesis 37:11. "His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind." This entire story of the 12 sons and their animosity and eventual reconciliation begins with God, making a clear distinction between Joseph and the other brothers, thus, the significance of the dream.

Joseph got the dream, the others did not. Here's a fact of life, and one perhaps that we struggle with in one way or another as the brothers struggled with. God does not treat us all the same. No. He does not give us all the same things.

He does not give us all the same favor. He does not give us all the same blessings. Some Christians are smarter than others. Some are better-looking, more athletic, more successful financially, marry to lovelier and more impressive spouses, some have better jobs than others, some have higher-achieving children, some have better health and live longer lives. Some people seem to step from one victory, one triumph to another, and others never seem to be able to escape the long reach of trouble, only sometimes of their own making.

Even among Christians, for someone it seems they're just naturally wired to be better Christians. Some are naturally sweeter, some are naturally more patient. The rest of us got to work a lot harder, so you look at this and you're like, "It's not fair. This isn't fair." Well, we learned this through Jonah, we learned this last week.

"No, no, no, grace isn't fair." Of course it's not fair because no one earns grace. Grace is unmerited favor. Samuel Eliot Morison, the American historian and writer, he puts it like this. He says, "Life is like a card game.

God deals a deck, and He gives some a strong hand and some a weak hand, and some people with a strong hand, they squander, and some people, the weaker hand, they play to the best of their ability and do well," but if a great hand is dealt and a great hand is played well, it's unbeatable, and Joseph was dealt a great hand, a mom and a dad that absolutely love him, and his father, I think made a lot of mistakes with the older sons, and by the time he gets to 11, he's like, "I think I got this," but then, he messes up with the favoritism part, but God chooses Joseph for prominence. He chooses him for power. He puts him in the position of the Egyptian core, and so the brothers have some ... They got to decide what to do. Clearly, this younger brother is blessed in a unique way.

How are we going to respond? And they respond with jealousy and covetousness, and they respond with the resentment and bitterness at Jacob, at Joseph, and even at God, and they tried to resist God's will, which obviously is futile. In fact, everything they did, every evil motion, every evil act only served to fulfill God's plan. We must recognize that the way in which the Lord gives to others things that He has not given to us is an opportunity for us to step back and say, "What is grace? What is the principle of grace?"

Paul would later ask, "What do you have that you have not received? Who makes you to differ?" Well, it's God, of course, who gives us what we have. If God wishes to give one of His children something He has not given you, what is that to you? Everything He gives, He gives in defiance of the fact that we don't deserve anything, except for His punishment. And who are you to tell the Almighty and your heavenly Father how to run His own family?

We're called to put on humility, right? The root of all sin is pride, and I will say that if you have been given less than others, entrusted with less to steward, well, then your path of humility is a little easier than theirs. Listen to some of the wisest Christians before us about goals. Thomas A. Kempis says, "Desire to be unknown." Jeremy Taylor says, "O, teach me to love to be concealed."

Archbishop Leighton says, "Be ambitious to be unknown." Augustine says, "if you ask me what the first thing in religion is, I should reply the first, the second, and third thing is humility." Alexander Moody Stuart, "There is not a humble heart in all the world that the high God is not dwelling in." Pascal, "Without humility, all our other virtues are but vices." Joseph, you do get a little hint of arrogance here.

Yeah, he's dressed better than everyone else. By the way, when you're dressed nice, you know there's something there, and so you walk on a ... There is a little arrogance. There's arrogance in his speech, the dreams he could not wait for the brothers to hear. Gentlemen, do you see what's ... And how long did the Lord take to humble Joseph?

His path to humility was so much harder, in many ways, than his brothers. If God wishes to exalt Joseph, that was God's doing, and it's our duty to acknowledge that it's His right to do so, and so adore God's wisdom and sovereignty. Verse 12, "Now, his brothers went to pasture their father's flock near Shechem, and Israel said to Joseph, 'Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.' And he said to him, 'Here I am,' so he said to him, 'Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word.' So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem."

A path, a journey of about 50 miles, or it definitely took a significant time, and so he gets to ... By the way, before he gets to Shechem ... I'll give you a little backstory. So you know the backstory where his brothers can't stand him, but the other backstory about Shechem is the Shechemites can't stand the sons of Jacob, because his two older sons went in after their sister was disgraced, and they slaughtered a bunch of the Shechemites, so they're in peril and the father wants to know, "Okay, how are they?" By the way, this is a tall ask for Joseph.

Joseph knows, "My brothers hate me. I'm going to a dangerous place. This is going to take a long time," and all we hear from him, when his father gives him this duty, all we hear is, "Here I am," so he's presented as diligent, as hard-working as an obedient son, even doing an unpleasant bidding. Verse 15, when he's at Shechem, "And a man found him, wandering in the fields, and the man asked him, 'What are you seeking?' 'I'm seeking my brothers,' he said. 'Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock,' and the man said, 'They've gone away, for I heard them say,' 'Let's go to Dothan,' so Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan."

So Dothan is another 14 miles that he's got to travel further, and here too, is a hidden hand of divine providence of the careful reader, is to know and to ponder Joseph, it says, "Is wandering in the fields." How long was he wandering? I don't know, but probably a significant time for it to even be mentioned he's wandering around. Perhaps, he feels like he's wasting time. Perhaps it feels like it's all aimless. "What am I doing here, Lord?"

"Why am I stuck in this field?" Well, this is how the providence of God often works in our daily lives. You'll have a job to do, you'll get to a place, and here, he knows he's wasting time. It's a waste of time. It's aimless, and it's brought from the perspective of the story had he not taken this little hiatus at Shechem, had he not paused there, he would not have gotten to Dothan in time to coincide with the caravan of the Ishmaelite traders.

So we see God pauses him on purpose. If he were not paused, the brothers would've killed him, instead of selling him into slavery, and this is what the scripture teaches, that often, in our lives, God works through the ordinary details, and if we are not paying attention, we miss the lessons. Scripture teaches that every single moment of life is supercharged with significance, because every piece of it is falling through the fingers of your heavenly Father. One of the biggest fallouts of living in a secular society, where people just don't acknowledge that there is a transcendence, supernatural, sovereign God over us, who cares about us and cares about the details of our lives, one of the things that we miss in this culture, where we don't believe that God is over all and in all and through all, we miss the purpose of just everyday life. We miss the purpose-filled infusion of God in everyday life, and I think that's why a lot of people are bored.

Perhaps you in your daily walk with the Lord, you feel this boredom, this ennui sometimes, because you don't realize that God is working every single detail for your good, so we are to pay attention to the details of our lives, knowing that God is sovereign. Verse 18, "They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him." They recognized him from his distinctive robe, and now, they hatch a plan. Verse 19, "They said to one another, 'Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then, we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we'll see what will become of his dreams.'"

Dreamer here obviously is used sarcastically. They would prove his dreams wrong by killing him. They want to throw him into a pit, which was a cistern hewn out of rock for the storage of water, found all throughout. Israel served as an excellent dungeon, and they wanted not just to kill him, but to kill him in the most dishonorable way to kill him, and throw his body in the cistern, where he would not be buried. Genesis 37:21, "But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, 'Let us not take his life,' and Reuben said to them, 'Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him, that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.'"

Reuben, now, we learned in the previous chapters, if you read, he had fallen from his father's favor, because he had an affair with Bilhah, and he couldn't further afford anymore animosity or from his dad, so he knows he's going to have to bear the responsibility, so he steps into rescue his brother seemingly. In verse 23, "So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty, there was no water in it." We're only left to imagine Joseph's response. How did he respond?

Did he scream? Was he terrified? On Genesis 42:21, the brothers recollect exactly how Joseph responded. "Then, they said to one another, 'In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother. In that, we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us, and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.'"

By God's grace, their posture of heart changed toward the end, but what was their posture of heart at this moment, after beating him, stripping him, mocking him? It says in verse 25, "Then, they sat down to eat, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead, and their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry down to Egypt." We see callousness, we see heartless barbarity as they sit down to eat the meal that Joseph had brought them from their father. Verse 26, "Then, Judah said to his brothers, 'What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh,' and his brothers listened to him."

So Judah is right after Reuben, and was he trying to save his brother placate his own conscience, make a little profit? We're not told, but we see that God does use this situation to save Joseph's life. Verse 28, "Then, Midianite traders passed by, and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt." So Joseph was sold to a non-covenant people.

The brothers had disposed of Joseph and his dreams, or so they thought. Verse 29, "When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, 'The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?'" Oh, Reuben knows the agony that his father is going to experience. He asked his brothers, "What do we do? What do I do?"

And the only response from them is silence. Verse 31, "And they took Joseph's robe and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood." This real irony here, Jacob had deceived his father by taking his brother's clothes and used a goat in order to deceive his dad. Jacob's youthful sins come full circle, his deceit. His deceit comes back to bite him.

In verse 32, "They sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, 'This, we have found. Please identify whether it is your son's robe or not,' and he identified it and said, 'It is my son's robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.'" Verse 34, "Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days, and all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, 'No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.' And thus, his father wept for him."

Conventional grieving lasted a week for a child or a parent. For Moses, it was a period of a month. Jacob refused to be comforted and promised here to continue mourning. We see the titanic hypocrisy in the sons. They're attempting to comfort their father in the death of his favorite son when they knew very well he wasn't dead and what had happened.

Verse 36, "Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard." Narrator reminds us that while Jacob struggled to adjust to the tragedy, Joseph was beginning a new life in Egypt at the age of 17, and this brings the point, three, replace a victimhood mindset with a sovereignty mindset, and I say it because that's the only way to understand what happened with Joseph. For this next 13 years of suffering, this is a man of God that pressed into the suffering, instead of blame-shifting and being immobilized by a victimhood mindset. Scripture teaches that God is sovereign, therefore, we are responsible. Look at Joseph.

He's dragged naked from the pit, tethered to a beast of burden. He himself is probably carrying stuff all the way to the Nile, and he began the story as a robe prince in Israel, and he ends as a slave. He, of all people, had a massive case for victimhood. Why not pity himself? He was indeed pitiful.

He had done nothing to deserve this. His biggest sin was he had a big mouth and he didn't know to keep it shut when he should have. And where was God in all of this? Why didn't God intervene? "God, why didn't You protect me from my brothers?"

"God, why didn't you protect me from this caravan bound for Egypt? Why, why, why?" What's fascinating is Joseph takes absolute responsibility for himself in Egypt. He knows who he is, he knows who's he is, and he lives his life as you and I live ours. He had God's word guiding him, and he had God's Spirit with him, he had an imperfect understanding of life around him, he had his own besetting sins, but he knew that he was with the Lord.

Joseph had ample reason for self-pity, for rage, for anger with God and revenge, and he doesn't do any of it. It's as if he forgets what lies behind, and he's ready to lean into what God was teaching. I say that because in this family, you see the victimhood mindset arise every once in a while. Jacob. Jacob had ...

He could blame everybody. "Laban, you weren't righteous to me. Esau, you weren't righteous to me. My parents, you weren't righteous to me. It's all your fault."

"It's all your fault," even with the brothers, Reuben. Reuben could've said it to Jacob, "My dad didn't love me." Judah could've said the same thing, "That's why I am the way I am. It's all their fault." That's a victimhood mindset. "I'm a victim of someone else's sin."

Joseph could have done that. He does not. He rejects it because he believes in the sovereignty of God. "God allowed this in my life, therefore, God has purposes for it." He knew Abraham, of Abraham, his great-grandfather.

He knew that God had spoken to him. Joseph believed that same promise that was handed down from Abraham and Isaac, and he knew that God is with him, that God will bless him, that God will use him. He had an immense view of God, and thus, reason that God was doing his will throughout the inscrutable drama that we see. Friends, no one will escape the will of God. No one will escape the hand of God, the rule of God, the plan and purpose of Almighty God, for children of God that comes as a great comfort, and no matter what, God is going to use all of these things in my life to bring about good, but for enemies of God, or for those of you, you're not sure if you're a child of God or an enemy of God, well, the fact that God is sovereign, no one will escape His reach or His plan should send a shiver down our spine, so what are we to do? We are to seek mercy and seek grace.

As Dante puts it, "In His will is our peace." Yes. Can you say, "God, thy will be done," because thy will is good, because you are loving? Our heavenly Father orchestrates our lives moment by moment, we know His love, we know His wisdom, we know His faithfulness because we know His Son, Jesus Christ and what Jesus did for us. The love of Jesus Christ, the kindness of Christ, that's what separates Christianity from every other religion, it's that God offers us grace, and how does God offer us grace?

Through both the sacrifice of Christ and His suffering that comes to us. Also, as an example, 1 Peter 2:21-25, "For to this, you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return, when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His Body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness."

"By His wounds, you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls." If there was ever a victim, it's Jesus Christ, but even Jesus turned that tragedy into a great victory. In Christ, we see that we can be more than conquerors. The story of Joseph is incredible in many ways, but it does point to the greater Joseph, Jesus Christ. Many ways, Joseph's life is a type, a typology of Christ.

Joseph was rejected by his brothers, sold into captivity, and it is through that, through the fat that he was enslaved through his suffering that his brothers are freed in the end, his brothers are saved, that reminds me of a story where Pilate has Christ right before him, and they had this traditional Passover week, where he would release a prisoner, and he says, "Do you want me to release Jesus to you?," and they said, "No." The text is clear that they had brought Christ to be crucified because they envied Him. Matthew 27:15-23, "Now, at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd, any one prisoner whom they wanted, and they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas, so when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, 'Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?,' for He knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered Him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, 'Have nothing to do with that righteous Man, for I have suffered much because of Him today in a dream.' Now, the chief priest and the others persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus."

"The governor again said to them, 'Which of the two do you want me to release to you?,' and they said, 'Barabbas.' Pilate said to them, 'Then, what shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?' They all said, 'Let Him be crucified,' and he said, 'Why? What evil has He done?,' and they shouted all the more, 'Let Him be crucified!'" We worship a God who took the greatest evil that was ever done, the crucifixion of the Son of God, and He turned it into the greatest event, the greatest good that could ever be, and that's the resurrection of Jesus Christ, through which we have forgiveness of sins.

So if God can take the greatest evil and turn it into the greatest good in the life of Christ and the death, burial, and resurrection, well, He can do the same thing in the life of Joseph, and we'll see He does. He takes what they meant for evil and turns it into good. In the same way, when we entrust ourselves to the Lord, He can take everything in our lives, the good, the bad, the ugly, even the sin, even the evil, and He brings it all together, and He works out His good purpose. I'll close with Romans 8:31-39, "'What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?'"

"'He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?' It is God who justifies. 'Who is to condemn?' Christ Jesus is the One who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of the God, who indeed is interceding for us."

"'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?' As it is written, for Your sake, we are being killed all the day long, we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Now, in all of these things, we are more than conquerors through Him, who loved us, for I'm sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Amen.

Let us pray. Lord, we thank You for this incredible word, and we thank You for You sovereignty, and we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for taking this really miserable account of brothers who hated one of their own, sold him into captivity. We thank You for the story, where You showed that You can override even our greatest acts of evil. Lord, we come to You and we come to the cross of Christ.

We repent of sin of pride, of folly. Continue to lead us in the ways of sanctification and continue to produce much fruit through us, and pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace. And in many ways, Lord, your grace is unfathomable. We can't understand it. And in many ways, your grace is scandalous. You're going to save those people after they did that? In many ways, your grace is outrageous. I pray, Lord, that you give us the grace today to humble ourselves before you recognize no one deserves grace. Grace is unmerited favor. You can't deserve it. We have it only because of the work of Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his burial, and his resurrection. Jesus, we gather here today, redeemed as your children, children of God, the Father, thanks to your sacrifice on the cross for us. Holy Spirit, come in to the space if there's anyone who is not yet reconciled with God, is not a worshiper of Yahweh, has not been saved from their sins, does not have eternal life, I pray, today, save them and show them that life is short and we are not guaranteed tomorrow and that eternity is forever.

Lord, bless our time in Jonah chapter four as we look at him. And let us not stand over him in condemnation but let us learn from him. As from an older brother, he was not perfect. We are not perfect. He didn't fulfill his mission perfectly. We haven't fulfilled ours perfectly. You gave him grace, Lord, and give us much grace. We pray this in Christ's name, Amen. So, today, we're continuing our sermon series through Jonah. We're finishing it next week. We're starting a new series, our summer series through the end of Genesis 37 through 50. We're entitling it Graduate-Level Grace Study in the Life of Joseph. And we're calling it that because we're saved by grace through faith. Salvation is by grace. But growing in usefulness to the Lord, growing in usefulness and fulfilling our calling, well, that also takes grace, and that also takes faith, and that also takes a lot of work.

So, we're excited for that series. Join us starting next week. Today, we're in Jonah 4. The title of the sermon is Outrageous Grace. And hopefully, you've enjoyed this little book. It's strange. It's surprising. It's convicting. It starts with Jonah. God comes to and says, "Go preach to Nineveh." Jonah flees from the presence of the Lord. It takes an unexpected detour on a boat. And God sends a storm, Jonah's thrown overboard by the repentant sailors, and then he spends three days, three nights in the belly of a great fish. Finally, and this was last week, Jonah goes. He fulfills his calling. It's incredible. He preaches unwillingly. He's the most reluctant preacher in the history of reluctant preachers. He does not want to do it. He didn't even plan the sermon. There's no points to the sermon. Just five words. Just judgments coming. And the crazy part is people got saved. The king got saved. They prayed. They fasted.

And I know they're truly penitent because their priorities are in order because the king said, "We're all fasting including the cattle. Including the animals. Lord, save our souls but also save our meat. Please, Lord." They got everything in order. And Jonah 3:10 tells us when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. The Ninevites were ripe for the picking. The harvest was plentiful, although the worker was only one. And this should have been the end of the story.

And what a perfect story. It would've been so beautiful moving from crisis to resolution, moving from Jonah's rebellion all the way to his obedience, from Nineveh's impending destruction all the way to immediate deliverance. It's the perfect narrative arc. Amen. Boom. End of chapter three. We're done. That's how it should have ended. Here's God's saving Nineveh through the witness of even the most reluctant evangelist. That's me. That's you. There's hope for him. There's hope for us. Isn't that encouraging? But that's not how it ends at all. I was thinking about this. It ends like a Russian novel. Like the Tolstoy, Dostoyev. You made me read a thousand pages to get to this ending, man. Super disappointing. That's kind of how it ends. But there's many a lesson here for us.

So, today we're in Jonah 4:1-11. Would you look at the text? "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, "Oh, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country. That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live." And the Lord said, "Do you do well to be angry?" Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, until he should see what would become of the city. Now, the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort. So, Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" He said, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." And the Lord said, "You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came up, came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" Amen. This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our heart.

The last word of the story is cattle. That's how the book ends in the Hebrew. It's much cattle. What a disappointment this is. Jonah here is left in a worse situation, spiritually speaking, than he was when he ran from God. He's still locked in the old patterns of xenophobia and ethnic and religious superiority. He had a besetting sin that he seemed to have repented of in the belly of the fish, though that wasn't a true repentance, and here, it was subdued for the time he was preaching in Nineveh. But now, it flares up and it flares up suddenly. What kind of ending is this one? Well, it's a realistic ending. It's a realistic ending in that we need grace to be saved from our sins, from the condemnation that our sins deserve. But we also need grace to grow in our relationship with the Lord.

Jonah doesn't come out being the hero of this. The book's only disappointing if you thought Jonah was the point. Jonah wasn't the point and he wasn't even the main character. God is the main character. The chapter here is composed in three great moments, beginning and then ending with an interview between God and Jonah. And between those two bookends is an enacted parable, a little object lesson about a little vine and a worm and a wind. What's going on there? While this text reveals three contradictions in Jonah's heart, and these are the points.

First, contradiction is he understands grace confessed, he confesses. Grace confessed, but misunderstood. Second, providence enjoyed, but ignored. And third, love felt, but disordered. So, point one, grace confessed but misunderstood. Jonah 4:1, it, what was the it? But it. The great revival of Nineveh, you're talking about a million people, maybe 120,000 commentators say, "That's probably children. They don't know the right hand from their left." So, if there's 120,000 children, might be upwards of 600,000 to a million people. There's a lot of people. They get saved. Jonah, not only is he not exceedingly glad about it, he's exceedingly displeased. He's actually angry. What pleased God only made Jonah mad? It's strange to the point that it's inexplicable. You would think that Yahweh's chosen prophet would be thrilled to see people come to faith. Yes, pride is a sin, but there is a certain allowable sense of satisfaction about witnessing people come to faith. I can tell you just from my experience in the Christian walk, the greatest thrill is the moment you get saved. There is no greater thrill in that.

When you recognize that you have been transferring from the domain of darkness, from the kingdom of light, you were a child of Satan, now you're a child of God. That right there, the greatest thrill. Right up there, I am telling you, friends, is seeing people get saved. Seeing people who are far from the Lord, pagans who want nothing to do with God, living for themselves, selfish, thinking that the world revolves around them, entitled, proud, self-righteous, everything that you and I were, are, were. And then they get saved. They see Jesus Christ and they're like, "Ah, I need grace." And they're praying. There's nothing greater than that. Jonah should have been pumped. He should have been in the city. They should have had a parade. He should have said, "Okay, the cattle. Stop fasting the cattle. We're going to have a barbecue. We're all going to enjoy the fact that there's a revive." He doesn't do any of that. What happened? Why is he back to where he started, angry at God and angry at the people of Nineveh?

And in the Hebrew, it says that the repentance of Nineveh was actually evil to Jonah. It was a great evil to him. The same word here that God said, "Nineveh, there's evil there. Your evil has risen up." That same word is used to describe Jonah. Jonah's feelings are evil. Why? Because Jonah's a loyal Israelite. He's a Jew. He's a prophet of Yahweh and loyal to the northern kingdom. And the northern kingdom was long at war with Syria and Assyria to the north. And we know from the books of the Kings, that Yahweh used Assyrian aggression to weaken Syria. And so, now, Assyria is growing in strength. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. Jonah knows if these people gets it and they get the power of God, who knows what'll happen with Israel because Israel is under judgment of God.

Partially, what's happening here is God wants Israel to be jealous in that the Ninevites got saved. Maybe we should get saved. Maybe we should stop being idolatrous. But they don't. So, Jonah, he looks at these people and he is like, "They don't look like me. They don't smell like me. They don't talk like me. They're not me. These are not my people. These are my enemies. God, do you not know how bad these people are? They are degenerate to the core. They are unredeemable. God, why would you save Assyrians and then use them to bring judgment upon Israel? How can that be?" And what he doesn't understand is that God is not a territorial God. God is not just a God of one group of people or one nationality, one ethnicity. No. God has elect from all of the nations. And God's purpose is to save his elect, which includes both Jews and Gentiles and even Ninevites. Now, sadly, in Jonah's reaction, we may see our own sinful prejudices that God may choose to save some people whom we do not think he ought to save.

And his grace may extend to places where we do not think he ought to extend it. And Jonah should have known better. He knew the Psalter. Psalms 145:9 says, "The Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made." So, Jonah turns what should have been a time of great celebration into a little pity party about his Jewish nationalism. His politics win out over his faith. Those people, their politics, diametrically opposed to mine, I don't want them in the people of God. I don't want them in my church. I don't want them in my community group. I don't want them in my friend group, et cetera. That's what's going on.

And you see his self-justify, accusatory tone in verse two. "And he prayed to the Lord and he said, "Oh, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee at Tarshish, for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live." What's he saying? He's saying, "God, I told you this is what... God, you should have listened to me. God, you never listened to me. I told you this is what you were going to do. I knew you were going to forgive him." That's what he's become, so self-absorbed, he's wagging his finger at God. Because of this self-pity consumed with himself, he's forgotten who he's speaking to.

And yet, by the way, this confession is tremendous. It's all true. Everything he says, it's all gloriously true. But it's conflicted, his little confession. It is true. But here it comes as a complaint and he is quoting scripture Exodus 34:6-7. This is how God revealed himself to Moses. "The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation." This confession we see all throughout the Old Testament scriptures, the Book of Numbers, second Chronicles.

And we see this in Nehemiah. We see this in the Psalter. This is who God is. God is a God who is gracious. He wants to forgive people and Jonah is not happy with that. He loves the idea of a loving God, loving toward him and his people. It's a precious concept when it's directed toward him. But the moment grace is turned to Israel's enemies, Nineveh. Well, now, God's grace is a problem. Now, it's a source of frustration, not a source of joy. Jonah confesses the doctrine of grace, "God, you're gracious. I knew you were. I knew you were going to be gracious."

But he can't accept the reality of it. He confesses the religious part. He can't accept the reality. Confesses the theology of grace, but there's no room for the working out of the grace. In his reality, he's happy with grace as long as it's within the boundaries of his comfort levels. And friends, here, you just got to pause it in. This is a reminder. You're in Boston. Once in a while, you need a reminder. You got to get out of your heads. In your head, theology, it's all tremendous. That it doesn't make a difference in the world when you have all the perfect theology pristine in your head. It does have to take root in your heart and you can't let orthodox theology mask an unloving, unchanged heart. Jonah, man, you should have known better. You know how gracious God is. Bro, you ran from him. You wanted to die in the ocean.

God says, "No." He sends the grace of a fish. It didn't feel good for three days and three nights, gastric juices, and all but whatever. You didn't die. He didn't die. He is living proof of God's grace, but he can't stand the idea of that grace being given to others. If gospel truth is something you really take pride in knowing, if you're like, "Yes, as a believer, I know the truth." But you never share it. You're not much better than Jonah. Jonah shared it only because he was forced to. He didn't have a choice. God has given us the truth and we are to take pride in knowing the truth, but it's only by grace. But if you keep it to yourself, then we're just as much as sinners as Jonah. Although Jonah is angry, he does the right thing and complains to God in prayer.

So, as much as we want to knock Jonah. First of all, when he's really angry, who does he go to? He prayed. He's like, "Lord, I don't get it." He doesn't complain about God to his readers. He could have done that. And he does not curse God. He doesn't take even Yahweh's name in vain. He pours out his heart to God even when nothing made sense. A lesson in there for us. Jonah verse three of chapter four, "Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." And the Lord said, "Do you do well to be angry?" Now, Jonah's complaint crosses the line from asking the God grant him understanding to just, "God kill me." Moses pled to die in Numbers 11, the prophet Elijah pled to die in 1 Kings 19. And I don't even want to ask, but many of us have been there.

"God, I see the test before me. I see the circumstances I'm in. Kill me." And that's the easy way out, just FYI. How much easier to seek to escape life's difficulties than face the fact that God does transform us and he does sanctify us by taking us through trials, tribulations like this. What's fascinating is that God doesn't rebuke Jonah. He could have right here rebuked Jonah. He could have killed him right there. He could have rebuked him. Like, "What are you doing?" No. God asks him a question. And in this, we see God's grace, his mercy, his love, his patience, his willingness to relent his love, even for Jonah. "Jonah, is it good for you to burn with anger, to kindle the fire already within you? Look within yourself. Examine your heart. See if your anger is justified," that's what he is saying.

"Art thou very much grieves," the King James version says. Jonah doesn't respond to this first question. He's still stuck in his patriotism that prevents him from loving his neighbors. Here, we need to pause and say, "Look, there's much to be learned here." Jonah has no right to be angry with God merely because of God's purposes in saving someone other than Jonah. And neither should we be angry with God when God extends his grace to those in different socioeconomic groups, cultures, ethnicities, political parties. Let's have a moment of honesty before God, shall we? What class or group of people in our society do you find it most difficult to trust, to relate to however you define that group? Maybe it's ethnically different, or economic, or educational, or professional, or political, or maybe it's more personal in that. A person that looks like that abused you or hurt you, sinned against you.

So, the thought of grace for abusers, that's beyond you. Which group of people do you find at hardest to trust, to be around, to talk to, to want to know? Be honest. What if next Sunday, you are late to serve? You come in at 9:16, like 90% of service one. At 9:16 you mosey in, and that person is sitting in your assigned seat. They don't know it's your assigned seat but they should have. And they're on time because new people always are. How do you react? What happens in your heart? What if our church begins to fill up with people like that? What happens? Is there room in your heart for them? Is there room in your gospel for them? Is there room in your life for them? Would you talk to them? Would you do the hard work of building a relationship? Or is grace just for you and only of those whom you approve? That was Jonah's problem. He confessed grace. He misunderstood grace. So, God continues to teach him.

This is point two, providence enjoyed, but ignored. And this is verse four of Jonah 4. "And the Lord said, "Do you do well to be angry?" See, he didn't answer. "Jonah went out of the city and sat in the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade until he should see what would become of the city. So, here is the finger of God pressing into the festering wound of Jonah's sin. And God does ask him, "Do you do well to be angry?" It's the first of three questions, "Jonah, do you actually think it's justified? Do you think your anger is justified? Do you really think that your anger is without sin?" Instead of wrestling with God's question, Jonah ignores it and goes camping. And what's he doing? He camps outside the city to the east to sit and wait." What's he waiting for? He's waiting to see if God will relent from his relenting.

God said, "I'm going to punish Nineveh, condemnation, unless they repent." They repent. He relent. Jonah wants God to relent of his relenting. He wants to see the fireworks. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, like fire from heaven, brimstone. That's what he wants to see. Jonah 4:6, "Now, the Lord God," so, he's waiting, "Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort."

So, Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Three times, we see this phrase in the book, in this chapter, in verse six, seven, and eight, that God appointed as the same verb that that's used in chapter one, verse 17 when God appoints a great fish. And what it's doing is it's pointing out the absolute sovereignty of God over all of his creation. What's the vine all about? What's this plant all about? Is it an ivy? Is it a gourd? Is it a castor-oil plant? I don't know. It's pretty big and it grew rapidly and it provided shade. Why the vine? Symbolically, I don't know if it really means anything, but it shows us that it completely changed Jonah's mood. Jonah, in the beginning of the chapter, was exceedingly mad, exceedingly angry, and now he's exceedingly glad. Why? What's changed? Well, what's changed is his comfort.

And so, he is sitting very comfortably. So, he's sitting. He wants to see fireworks, condemnation. He wants to see the people of Nineveh in great discomfort. That's what he wants to see. And then God sends him a little vine, a plant to comfort him. And what we see here is incredible irony that the personal comfort that Jonah receives is the absolute opposite of what he wants for Nineveh. He wants all of Nineveh to burn. He's got ringside seats and popcorn as he waits for fire and brimstone. And as he's waiting for fire and brimstone, God sends him a plant to comfort him. Now, what is God doing here? I can't wait to find out when we get to heaven. But I think what God is doing here is he's teaching him. Jonah is too blind to realize what God is doing through providence.

So, verse seven. "But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered. And when the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, "It's better for me to die then to live." For the fourth time in the book, Yahweh directly intervenes, this time, by sending a worm, completely withers the plant that Yahweh had just raised up the day before, leaving Jonah completely exposed to the sun. And then God, on top of that insult to injury, sends him a wind, a sirocco wind, which it rises quickly and raises the temperature and drops the humidity. It's unbearable.

And by the way, if you take that Jonah was still alive in the fish, gastro juices, his skin was definitely damaged. This guy is in pain right now. So, he cries out, "It's better for me to die than to live. Just kill me already, God. If you're going to spare Nineveh, just kill me." So, verse nine, "And God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" And he said, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." And again, instead of rebuking Jonah, God teaches him. Asking him a version of the same question, "Jonah, are you glad I judged the plant? Are you glad I killed the plant?" And this time, Jonah actually responds to God's question. Jonah said, "Yes, I do well to be angry. Angry enough to die." Jonah's come to the end. He still expects that Yahweh will relent of his relenting, but he just can't deal with the misery of what's happening here.

He's losing all perspective. We don't know the state of mind that he's in, but he just can't believe that God would extend mercy to people unworthy of it. And here we see the lesson of providence. Did Jonah know that the plant was from the Lord? Did Jonah know that there was a worm from the Lord? Did Jonah know that there was a wind from the Lord? I think he knew. I think he knew. But there were times when it's like, "I don't want to know." He enjoyed the comforts of providence. The vine goes up, he's comfortable. But he's unwilling to listen to the lessons providence is teaching. God sometimes teaches us through supernatural revelation. That's primary where we learn from holy scripture. But God does, through providence in our lives, teach us. And if we are wise, we will pay attention to the events of our lives and see what God is teaching us.

Often when something bad happens, no, no, no. God has nothing to do with this. No, no, no, God's hand is sovereign. He's absolutely over everything. Often, we're too quick to run to Romans 8:28 that, "All things work together for the good of those who love him and are called to be his." Something bad happens in your life and you're. But all things will work together. Good. We are to go there and we'll learn much of that from Joseph. But we are to go to Hebrews 12 as well. And sometimes, the difficulties in our life are actually a result of God's discipline. And we are to endure hardship as discipline because God is treating us as sons and daughters, if we are wise to learn the lessons of that providence. And I say that because in Hebrews 12:11, it says, "For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

Meaning that you can go through discipline which is unpleasant and you never reap the harvest of righteousness because you refuse to learn the lessons. Don't be an unwise. Don't be a foolish child. The wise child, you speak to the wise child. The wise child learns. The foolish child, words are not enough. We are to be trained up by its possible. Hebrews is saying to endure the providential discipline of the Lord and not bear fruit because we weren't listening, we weren't paying attention like Jonah here. He should have stopped and said, "God, why did you send me that vine? Would it not be to expose the hypocrisy in my heart that I care about my comfort, my comfort, my body's temperature, I care about more than someone else's soul?"

By the way, I can get this because my body temperature runs high and when I'm sweating, I can't think. Maybe Jonah is here, I don't know. But he is idolizing, prioritizing his comfort over everything else. And here's the lesson God is teaching us in the hard blows of frowning providence. He's teaching us that through providence, he is training us to become more effective instruments in his hands. So, Jonah didn't learn the lessons of providence. And point three, he has a love. He feels a love. Love felt, but it's disordered. So, verse 10, and the Lord said, "You pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and all so much cattle."

The truth is, Jonah had no right to the plant, did he? It was all a gift of undeserved grace. It was nothing but a misguided sense of self entitlement that made Jonah resentful that he lost something that was not even his. And what the Lord here is teaching through this question is teaching the same lesson that we see in Matthew 20. In Matthew 20, Jesus Christ tells a parable. And then the parable, so, this guy owns a vineyard, he needs day laborers. And he goes to the market, he takes some laborers, he says, "Okay, I'll pay you this amount." And he comes back three hours later, comes back three hours later, comes back.

What happens is not everybody worked the same amount of time. Some of the workers worked all day, some of the workers worked just a few hours and they all got paid the same. And the guys that worked all day come up to the owner of the vineyard, they say, "That's not fair." That's not fair. They worked an hour, we worked all day in the sweat of our brow, in the heat of the day. And the owner responds by saying, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" And this is exactly what's happening with Jonah. Jonah is like those workers, "I have served you all of my life. My whole family, we have served you. And God, you're going to welcome these people in and give them the same blessings you've given us?" And what God says here to Jonah is, "Jonah, I made them. I'm their God. I'm their Lord. They are mine. They depend on me. Do I not have the right to do what I want with them?"

And Deuteronomy 7:6-8, "God does remind the people of Israel that he did not choose them because of anything great in them. Verse six, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were much more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." It wasn't because you were greater than any of the other people, that it wasn't because you were more noble, more mighty. It wasn't because you were worthy. It was because, "I'm loving," that's what God is saying, "I don't love you because you're lovely. I love you because I'm loving."

And in Christ, this is exactly what the Lord teaches us, that we do not deserve any. Christ died for us when we were yet sinners. We all deserve condemnation. We all deserve wrath. Jesus Christ died for us when we did not deserve the grace. And this understanding of grace, this is what begins to change us. I didn't deserve it. And this second, I'm receiving grace. I don't deserve this grace either. Every moment, every second, the gospel extends grace to us. And we're not doing everything we're doing for the Lord because we are trying to earn grace. No, it's all from him. It's all free. And what grace does is it reorders our loves. And this is crucial. Because a lot of people, they follow the Lord and they go to church.

What you don't understand is that God doesn't want to just transform your mind with truth, he wants to transform your heart by reordering how much and what you love by reprioritizing. So, we're not wrong to love fervently our people. We're not wrong to love our comforts. We're not wrong to be patriots. But we are wrong when we put any of those things above God and above what God loves. So, what this is what God is doing with Jonah. God is saying, "Jonah, look into my heart. You love a vine more than you love people."

These are image bearers of God with eternal souls. God is saying, "I love them. I love the lost. I love the nations. I love Nineveh, that great city." It's a love just glimpsed here in Jonah, we see just a glimpse of God is gracious, God relents when we repent, he does forgive. But we see the fullness of the supreme expression of the love of God on the cross of Jesus Christ. Here is God incarnate. Here is God who is gracious and merciful. Here is God on the cross, who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Here's a God who relents from disaster. And here he is, that same God nailed to a tree. How did you get there, God? Jesus Christ, God and, how did you get on a tree? How did you get nailed to a tree by the people that you came to save?

How did that happen? Well, Jesus Christ is answering the questions, the contradictions that are within the heart of Jonah. Jonah is saying, "God, you're too just to forgive those people. No. You can't be that loving so that your love actually satisfies your justice." How does that work? He can't make sense of it. And then Jesus Christ makes all the sense of it in the world, that the way, the only reason that God can forgive us is because someone paid for our sins. The only way that God retains his justice, retains the fact that he is just. And he gets to justify, is the only way that happens is the cross of Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus became our sin. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the wrath of God that we deserve. Jonah wanted to see that. He wanted to see the wrath pour down on the Ninevites.

He didn't get to see it. But in the sign of Jonah, that's what Jesus says, and it says the sign of Jonah. In the sign of Jonah, we do see the wrath of God poured out on Christ. Jesus died so that the Ninevites can get saved, but also the Brooklynites and the Bostonians, so that all of us can find a home in the family of God. And the measure of the love of God for the nations is ultimately in the cross of Jesus Christ. In Romans 15:8-12, "For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name."

And again, it said, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people." And again, "Praise the Lord, all you gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him." And again, Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles, in him will the Gentiles hope." That's what the cross was all about, to bring into his kingdom men, women, boys, and girls, from every tribe, every language, every nation under heaven to be saved by grace through faith. And when we see people where we want to say something like, "Ah, they don't deserve grace." You got to be a reminded, of course, they don't deserve grace. No one deserves grace. That's what makes grace, grace. It's undeserved. It's for the unworthy. It's unmerited favor. What do you love more than your neighbor, that you'd put before the great need of their souls for Jesus? I think, in Boston, it's reputation. That's what I think. I think we love our reputation more than we love the souls of our neighbors. I think that's true. I've seen, I've been watching this for a while. "What are they going to think of me?"

That question doesn't matter. Well, because that question's the same thing as Jonah crying out about the vine. "My comfort. I'm discomfort. I'm uncomfortable. They don't like me. I'm uncomfortable." It's the same thing. You like being liked more than you love the souls of people. And if that were not true, we'd be sharing the gospel all the time with absolutely everybody. God calls Jonah to give up his misplaced pity for himself and learn to pity the nations. He calls him to give up his misplaced love for himself, for his comforts to love like God loves, like Christ loves. This is the call to cruciform love, a love that gives and goes and serves and sacrifices for the sake of the lost. Did Jonah learn his lesson? I want Jonah chapter five. Where's chapter five? I want to know, did he learn his lesson? That he repent?

That doesn't matter. That's not the real question. The real question is, will you learn the lessons that God has for us from this book? Will you give up being satisfied with knowing truth but never sharing it? Will you learn to love this great city in which we live, in which there are more than hundreds of thousands of souls, many of whom don't know Jesus Christ? These are questions that Jonah presses into us. Will we go where God is already? And where is God already? He's on mission. Our God is a missional God. Our God is a missionary God. God had one son and his son became a missionary. Someone said, "Jesus Christ came as a missionary to seek and to save that which is lost."

Christopher Wright, in his book entitled The Mission of God, makes this statement, he says, "Mission was not made for the church. The church was made for mission, God's mission." Well, that's true that God has given us some missions, a great commission to go and make disciples of all nations, God's already on mission, that God is on mission, that you and I have this great privilege of joining him in that. That's part of the grace we get. And the more you know this missional God, the more you care about mission, about people through your life, through your words, through your actions coming closer to meeting Jesus Christ. Jonah, as an example to us of a very flawed man, being chosen by God and being used by God. He's sinful, he repents, and then he sins again. He's flawed in every way. And yet Jonah is the one who's preaching, converts an entire city. Is the power in the man or is the power in the message? Well, what is the book of Jonah teaches?

What is the Romans teaches? Romans teaches, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And you should take comfort in that. If you've never shared the gospel, a lot of people don't share the gospel because they feel unworthy of it, of sharing it. If I tell people that I'm a Christian, what are they going to think about Christianity? Well, first of all, you should probably rethink a few areas of life. Second of all, man, what are we giving people? When we share the gospel, what are we giving people? Are we giving people our own righteousness? Did you die in the cross for someone's sins? Or is your righteousness going to be imputed to someone? No.

Obviously, we need to live lives of integrity. But also, obviously, you're never worthy enough. The power is not in you. The power is in the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit takes the gospel of Jesus Christ. As you take these words and you proclaim, "Yeah, I'm a sinner." You are a sinner. I'm a sinner. We're all sinner. We've all sinned. We've all transgressed the commandments of God. And God is holy and we all deserve condemnation for all of eternity. That's how holy he is. But God is also loving and because he's loving, he's provided a way for all of your sins to be forgiven. All you have to do, you repent of your sin, you trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you turn from sin, you turn to him, and then you devote your life to worshiping him. And when you do, man, I'm telling you, when the power of God takes that, takes the opportunity, takes that scenario, takes your words, and people, the lights start coming on, you get addicted to it. You get so addicted to seeing people come to faith.

I want everyone addicted to it. I want this whole church addicted to people coming in faith. Share the gospel. The power is not in you. The power is in the Holy Spirit and the power is in the word. Romans 9:14-16, "What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means, for He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So, then it depends, not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. So, huge, huge breath of, sigh of relief. You can't mess up someone else's salvation. You can't say the wrong thing and then they're like, "Oh, you said the wrong thing. So, now, I'm not going to get..." God does the saving. You can't even get in the way.

But what I'm saying is there's a huge blessing in sharing the gospel and being used by God. Under the new covenant wherein God extends his saving mercy beyond Israel to the ends of the earth, the principle that God saves whom he will becomes even more clear. And he does it. The power resides in the message. Revelation 7:9-17 of vision, "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb." And all the angels were standing around the throne, around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God saying, "Amen. Blessing glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen."

"Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city?" Oh, my God. Lord, would you pity Boston, this great city? "Should I not pity Boston, that great city?" Lord, pity this city. And don't just pity the city in general, a lot of the city in general, Lord, there's people in my life that are far from you. Lord, you've poured out your pity on me. Lord, show your pity to them. If you're not a Christian, if you're not sure of where you're going when you die, if you're not sure of your relationship with the Lord, if you are not a worshiper of God, of Jesus Christ, well, turn to God today. A couple passages from Isaiah, Isaiah 45:22-23, "Turn to me," the words of the Lord, "And be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not return. To me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance."

And Isaiah 55:6-7, "Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near, let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon." Amen. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for this great message from the book of Jonah that points to a greater Jonah. Jesus Christ, Jesus, we thank you in the same way that Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. You were the heart of the earth and yet you rose from the dead, and we thank you for that. And Lord, Jesus, we pray, continue to strengthen our souls, and give us the power of the Holy Spirit and continue to build up your church. And Lord, we do pray for a revival upon this great city. Draw many to yourself and use us in the process. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Lord Jesus, as we just sang, when we walk with you, Lord, in the light of your word, what glory you shed on our way. While we do your good will, you abide with us still, and with all who will trust and obey, and in fellowship suite, we will sit at your feet, or we will walk by your side in the way. What you say we will do, and where you send, we will go. Never fear, only trust and obey. Jesus, I pray that you would help our minds to understand, and our hearts, to believe that true happiness is found in you. The good life, that we are all long for, that we're all after, a life of purpose and meaning of peace and joy and fulfillment, it is offered to all who commit to follow Jesus Christ, to walk with you and the obedience of faith that we've just studied over the last year in the book of Romans, Lord. Lord, I pray that every soul here would come to experience the fullness of what it means to be happy in Jesus. It's in His name that we pray. Amen.

Well, it's kind of a bittersweet morning after a really good long year in the book of Romans, we are turning to a new sermon series today in this new series that we're starting, we've called Committed: Essential Habits of an Abundant Life. This is going to take us from now all the way until Easter. I'm really praying that this is a blessing to God, a blessing to our church, a blessing to each one of you. The big idea of the series is simply this, that Jesus Christ said that I have come to give them life and to give them life to the full. Other translations say to give them abundant life. Jesus gives this as a gift.

It's not something we have to earn. It's something that is given to us on account of what he has done for us. But it is a gift that we are never going to fully experience and enjoy unless we commit our lives to follow him in obedience and faith. It's like hopefully you got some good gifts. You're coming out of the holiday season. Hopefully you got a good gift or two over a Christmas. It's one thing to get a gift, but it's a whole lot more fun if you actually take it out of the box and play with it. You don't just set it on the shelf and look at it from time to time. You've got to do something with it. Christianity is a whole lot more fun when you don't just set Jesus on the shelf, don't just invite him into your life once in a while or on Sunday mornings, but you've got to take him out. You've got to do something with him. You got to walk with him in obedience and faith.

I asked Caleb kind of last minute if we could sing that old hymn, Trust and Obey, because it really sums up the big idea of where we're going with this series, that to be happy in Jesus is to trust and obey. We all want the good life. We all want a happy life. I'm not talking about a life that's full of pleasures and comforts, right? We know that you don't have to look very hard to find people who are surrounded by comforts and pleasures and yet their lives are miserable. They feel meaningless and depressed. No, deep down, we're longing for something deeper than just comfort or pleasure. We long for purpose. We long for meaningful relationships. I would argue that whether you fully understand this or not, you long for that meaningful relationship, not just with the people around you, but you long for it with your creator. You long to feel the love and the approval of a heavenly Father and to live in his presence, to go where he goes and to do what he does.

As a father and myself, I have two kids and I can tell you that one of the most satisfying experiences in my kids' life is when they get to go to work with their dad. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be something as simple as washing the dishes, taking out the trash, shoveling the snow, but just to be with me and to feel that they're doing something important, accomplishing something meaningful. They love that. They long for it. We long for that with God as well. How do we get there? How do we live this good, this satisfying life? We get there by committing to a life of obedience and faith in Jesus Christ. I say committing, because we all know that good intentions aren't good enough.

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's easy to have a vision for who you want to be, for where you want to go, or for what you want to do, but that vision isn't going to get you anywhere unless it's accompanied by a couple of other things. First of all, having a good vision isn't going to get you to where you want to go unless you also have a strong motivation. Why do I urgently need to be that person, get to that place, accomplish that whatever. Your vision and your motivation, really most importantly, what you need along with those is a strong commitment to make sure that you get there. That vision and motivation without commitment, it's like going on a journey without a map. You might be excited to get to where you want to go, but if you don't have a fixed course of action to know how you're going to get there, you just end up driving in circles.

And so we need that vision, we need that motivation, and then we need to make that commitment: to stay the course, to follow the right path, to not get distracted along the way, to not get discouraged along the way, and to keep pressing on that goal, no matter how hard it gets, no matter what stands in our way. There's going to be difficulties. Anything worth doing is going to be hard. But this is the example that Jesus set. This is the example that he calls us to follow. This is Hebrews 12:1. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay us aside every weight and sin which clings us so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him, who endured such hardship from sinners such hostility against himself, that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

For some of you, what I hope, what I'm praying, is that this series would compel you to count the cost of following Jesus for the first time. Not so that you see the cost and that you're scared away, but so that you count it and you see how worthy it is so that you commit to follow him, to run this race with endurance, knowing that it's not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it. For others, maybe you've been running the race and you're tired. You feel your endurance being tested. Your pace has slowed, and if you're honest with yourself, you're not following Jesus as closely as you once did. I hope this series helps you to refix your eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Then some of you, by God's grace, you're running well, your hearts are on fire and you just need to know how do I keep this pace? How do I keep running? How do I keep my endurance? How do I maybe even stoke or fan this into an even greater passion and even greater flame? My hope is that this series would serve as kind of a training program for your soul. That these are the commitments that we need to make, the habits that we need to instill in our lives so that we can continue pressing on, progressing in our spiritual maturity and health. Over the next 11 weeks, we're going to be taking a look at some of the essential non-negotiable, super practical commitments that every single Christian needs to make in order to grow in their faith, in order to persevere through the trials and the difficulties of life, in order to fulfill God's purpose and calling on your life, and in order to truly experience and to enjoy this abundant life that Jesus came to give.

We're starting our series today with the first and most important commitment, that every single one of us we need to make at a certain point in time, but then we also need to continually make every day thereafter. The title of today's sermon is just simply this, Commit to Follow Jesus. Commit to follow Jesus Christ. In John 10, Jesus said, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and he'll go in and out and he'll find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This is the life that he promises, and how do we experience that? He tells us a little bit later on in verse 27, he says, this is how my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hands.

If you have your Bibles, open up to Acts 2. We're going to be looking at verses 22 through 41. This is the birth of the church. The context is the Holy Spirit has just been poured out on the disciples. They're hiding behind the locked doors. The spirit is poured out. All of a sudden they burst out into the street, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, they begin preaching the gospel. Out in the streets what you find is people from all over the Roman Empire had gathered in the city of Jerusalem in order to celebrate the Pentecost.

And so, the disciples go out into the streets, they begin preaching the gospel, and the crowds are amazed because they miraculously hear the disciples preaching, all of them in their own native tongues and from a variety of languages as people from all over the empire had gathered here. And in the midst of this, the apostle Peter, he stands up and he preaches the sermon that we're going to look at today. As a result, what we're told is that 3000 souls get saved, that 3000 people repent of their sin, turn and commit their lives to following Jesus Christ, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's the context. We're going to be looking at kind of the second half of Peter's sermon from Acts 2, beginning in verse 22.

Peter says this, men of Israel hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs, that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up. Loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it, David says concerning him, and he quotes from the Psalms.

I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue rejoice and my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades. Whether your holy ones see corruption, you have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died, and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.

But being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of its descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ. That he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. They said to Peter and to the rest of the apostle's, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promises for you and for your children, all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord God calls to himself. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. Those who received his word were baptized and they were added that day, about 3000 souls.

This is the reading of God's word for us this morning. This is my hope and my prayer for you, that as these 3000 did, that you would commit your life to follow Jesus Christ, some of you perhaps for this first time, but all of us with a deeper commitment, with a deeper passion and devotion. Peter gives us three compelling reasons in this sermon for why we should follow Jesus Christ. The first and the most obvious reason is that we should follow Christ because he is the risen Lord. A lot of people say like, oh, I would believe in God if he would just come down and show himself, reveal himself. Let me tell you a little about Jesus Christ. That's exactly what he did. He came down in the flesh. Jesus Christ is the son of God, the Messiah, fully God, fully man, second person of the triune God. He is the Lord. He is Yahweh come taking on human form.

In other words, we follow Jesus because Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be. And who did Jesus claim to be? On John 10, we have this story. In verse 24, we're told that some of the Jews gathered around him. They said, how long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you and you didn't believe me. The works that I do in my father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you're not among my sheep. This is where he says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. The Father who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

And then he says, I and the father are one. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered, for I've shown you many good works from the Father, of which of these are you going to stone me? And the Jews answered, it is not for good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God. Jesus claimed to be God. He was not merely some confused carpenter as some people would say. He wasn't just some nice moral teacher who kind of taught us to get along and to love one another. If that's all that Jesus was, if that's all that he was, then why would he have been crucified? And historically we know that Jesus Christ was, he's a real historical figure, and historically we know that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

Even non-Christian scholars now readily admit that the evidence is there, that Jesus Christ is not just myth or legend. He was a historical figure, a real person, in that he really was crucified in Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. We're not going to have time to get into all of that today, but if you're curious to learn more about the historical evidence of Jesus' life and death and resurrection, I preached a sermon on this a few years ago called Jesus Among our Doubts. You can go to our website. You can go to YouTube. That whole sermon kind of in 50 minutes unpacks and looks at some of the historical evidence for why it is not just reasonable but probable that Jesus Christ really did live. He really did die. He really did rise from the dead. The question is not was Jesus crucified. We know historically this is true.

The question is why. Why would this nice man, this good moral teacher, need to be put to death executed in such a gruesome manner? We see why. The reason we just saw is because this guy claimed to be God. Peter here in this sermon gives us three pieces of evidence as to why those claims were actually true. Now, the first piece of evidence Peter points to is that of the miracles of Jesus Christ. Jesus was known as a worker of miracles. In verse 22, he says, men of Israel hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. Everybody knew. Word had spread all over the region about this Jesus and the miracles that he did. The religious leaders, they may have hated it, but they couldn't deny it.

And so, what are they to do with this man who's healing the sick and giving sight to the blind, who is walking on water, who was calming the storm in the raging sea? This guy who even raised a man from the dead. We're told in the following chapter in John 11, that after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, we were told that many of the Jews therefore who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. The chief priest in the Pharisees gathered the council and said, what are we to do, for this man performs many signs, and if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And then the Romans will come and take away both our place, our position of authority and power, and they'll take away our nation. And then a little bit further on in verse 53, it says so therefore from that day on, they made plans to put Jesus to death. Jesus was a worker of miracles, and everybody knew this. He did things that no human being could do and that really no human being could explain.

The second evidence that Peter gives us comes from Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy. He gives us just one example here in this text. Verse 23 says Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, but God raised him up loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it, for David says concerning him. This was not a surprise to God, that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was part of God's will God, the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, which God had revealed to King David more than a thousand years earlier and that David in Psalm 16 prophesied about when he talked about verse 27, my soul not being abandoned to Hades, you're not going to let your holy one see corruption.

Well, as Peter says in verse 29, brothers, I can tell you with confidence about David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. Clearly he wasn't talking about himself, but verse 30, being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ. That David was looking forward prophetically writing about the resurrection of the Christ, of Jesus Christ. Now, this is just one example, but if you study the Hebrew scriptures, there are hundreds of prophecies, illusions, references to the Messiah of what he would do, of who he would be, and Jesus Christ fulfilled them all.

You can go down like crazy rabbit holes of statistics on this, but out of the hundreds of prophecies that we have in the Old Testament, there are 60 or 70 or so that are considered to be major prophecies. The chances of one individual fulfilling even a small handful of these major prophecies is so astronomically, statistically ... it's unfathomable that anyone could do and fulfill even 5, 6, 7, 8 of these prophecies. And yet Jesus Christ fulfilled every single one. Peter gives us just this one example, that again, points to the Lordship of Christ. But this example itself is also another piece of evidence. It's not just that Jesus performed miracles. It's not just that he fulfilled prophecy. He also rose from the dead, Jesus' death and resurrection, something that was foretold not just by King David, but by Jesus himself. He said, I will rise again in three days.

Next, chapter two, verse 32 says this Jesus God raised up, and Peter says, and of that, we are all witnesses. This wasn't something that just kind of happened in secret in a corner somewhere. Peter's making it clear, we're not talking about Jesus figuratively rising from the dead, spiritually in some sense. We're not just saying that his memory or his legacy or his teachings live on in us. No, he's saying Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead in a resurrected body and and we are witnesses to it. In fact, there were hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some will say, well, yeah, but people can say whatever they want. It doesn't mean that it's true. But what makes the testimony of these early disciples so compelling is not just what they claimed, but that these people were willing to suffer to the point of persecution, the punishment, even death, rather than recant their claims that they saw Jesus Christ rise from the dead. Right?

We know that the Apostle John was punished, was exiled to the island of Patmos for his testimony. We know that every single one of the other apostles died a brutal martyr's death because they refused to deny that they really had seen Jesus Christ raise from the dead. The early church endured severe persecution at times because they refused to deny that Jesus really truly rose physically in a body and we saw it. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15. He says I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas. That's Peter. Then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. You can go talk to them right now, he says. You can ask them what they saw.

He says though some of them have died, some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles, and last of all, as the one untimely born, Paul says, he appeared also to me. Jesus performed miracles. He fulfilled prophecy. He rose from the dead. Then the final piece of evidence we see that Peter gives us here is that after this, he ascended to the right hand of God and he poured the Holy Spirit out on his church. This is verse 32 and 33, that this Jesus God raised up and of that we are all witnesses, and being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father of the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. Peter says, "You want proof? Just look around. Look at what is happening before your eyes right in this very moment, on the day of Pentecost."

We stand here, Peter, an uneducated fisherman, boldly preaching this gospel message, as people from all over the empire hear him miraculously speaking to them in their own language. He's like, "You're seeing a miracle of the Holy Spirit. You're experiencing it right now." For those of you who are maybe on the fence about Christianity, along with these other pieces of evidence, I would challenge you to do what he's saying, calling on the crowd to do right now. Look around. Look around this room. Get to know some of the people in this room. Ask them about their stories. Ask them what has the Holy Spirit done in your life. What evidence is there of his work in your life? Because I can tell you that there are people in this room whose lives have been miraculously transformed: addictions that have been broken, marriages that have been restored, miraculous healings that the doctors couldn't explain, but we can explain them, because we serve the living God, the creator of heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is Lord and he's here, and his Holy Spirit is working in his church. Get to know some of these people. Ask them to tell them you their testimonies.

We commit to follow Jesus because he is the risen Lord, and these things have proven that to be true. But secondly, we also follow Jesus because he's our merciful savior. He is both Lord and Savior. That's important. It's not enough to just merely know Jesus' identity or to agree to the facts, to the reality that he is God, that he is Lord. Because as James tells us in James 2:19, it's like you believe that God is one you do well, that good for you. But don't you know even the demons believe and they shutter?

Peter continues in verse 36. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. They said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As Peter preaches, the crowd hears that Jesus is Lord. They believe it to be true. But more than that, they are cut to the heart. That it's not just an intellectual acceptance of the facts that Jesus rose from the dead and proved to be God. It's more than that. They are convicted. They feel a heartfelt remorse.

Now why? Because suddenly they realize that yeah, Jesus is Lord, and we crucified him. Verse 36, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. A few verses earlier, verse 23, Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified by the hands of lawless men. The lawless men that Peter's talking about, it's the Pontius Pilate. Right? The Jews, the religious leaders didn't have the authority to have Jesus executed, and so they get Rome involved to do their dirty work. And so, is Peter just placing the blame for Jesus' death here on the Jews? No, that's not what's going on.

If you remember the context, the Jewish people that are here in the crowd that Peter is preaching to, they've just gathered in the city to celebrate Pentecost, people that have come from all over the Roman Empire. Most of them weren't even in town when Jesus was crucified. How could they have crucified Jesus? If they hadn't been directly involved in the crucifixion of Jesus, then why are they cut to the heart? That's what you need to ask. The reason is because they understood. It wasn't the Romans that killed Jesus. It wasn't the Jews that crucified Jesus. It was them. It was us. It was you and it was me. That Jesus wasn't being punished for his own crimes before Rome. He was innocent. Even Pontius Pilate admitted that, washes his hands, I say find no fault and guilt in this man. Jesus wasn't being punished for his own crimes before Rome, he was being punished for our crimes, our sin before God. That he went to the cross and account of their sin, of your sin, of my sin, and they're cut to the heart because they understood this. This is what we all need to understand personally, that Jesus died for your sins and for mine.

Have you ever watched the Passion of the Christ. The movie came out when I was in college. I remember Kelly and I, we were dating at the time, and we actually went and we watched it in the movie theater. I have never experienced anything like that. The experience of walking out of that movie theater when the movie was over was just silence. Nobody knew what to say. The gravity of what Jesus did just left every single person in the room speechless. The price that he paid so that we could be forgiven, it was chilling.

It was sobering. One of the things that always stands out to me when I think about that movie was Mel Gibson who directed it, he shared in an interview that he wanted to make a cameo in the film. The only scene where you can be seen, you can't see his face, you can't see his body, but it was the moment, Jesus' body is bloody and broken and bruised. They lay him on that rugged cross. Mel Gibson says, "In that scene, you can see that it is my hands that are holding the nails as they're pounded into the hands and feet of Jesus Christ." That he wanted to communicate and he wanted to commemorate this reality, that he knew on a personal level that Jesus died because of him. That it wasn't the Romans or the Jews that killed him, that Jesus died for me, not just because of me, but for me. That it was my sin that held him there. That this was the price he paid so that I could be forgiving.

Jesus didn't merely come as Lord. He came as Lord and as Savior, as the Christ, the Messiah. He did not die according to the schemes of man alone, but Peter says he died according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. Think about that, that before the foundation of the earth was laid, an eternity passed, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they knew that this day would come. They planned it together. That this is what it was going to cost us to love our creation. This is the price that would need to be paid to save people from their sins. That Jesus would have to come, not just as a shepherd, but as the good shepherd. The shepherd who lays down his life to save the sheep, as the sacrificial lamb of God, who by his own blood shed on the cross, would take away the sins of the world to redeem God's elect.

Jesus seeing every one of us, long before you were born, he knew you, everything about you. He could see every sin you've ever committed and every sin that you will ever commit. He knew it all and yet he still chose to love you and to give himself up for you. To go to that cross, to pay the penalty that our sin deserves. The crowd sees and they feel this reality for the first time. In verse 37 it says when they heard this, they were cut to the heart. They say, brothers, what shall we do? I'm praying that right now, some of you are asking that. We've rebelled against the holy loving, perfect, innocent creator of the universe, that God came and showed himself to us, and we crucified him. What shall we do? What could we possibly hope to do to write this wrong? Thankfully Peter tells us right away, he just says repent and be baptized. Every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. He says this promise is for you, and for your children, all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord God calls to himself. This promise is for you, that Jesus died for your sins.

Now, how do we respond to this? Well, Peter says first of all, Jesus died for your sins, therefore repent. Repentance, if you're not familiar with the word, it's not really a word we use very often in our culture today. It just simply means that you turn around. You're walking this direction, living life your way, you turn around and you begin following Jesus, living life God's way. You reverse course to follow Jesus Christ. That when the Holy Spirit regenerates your heart, when Jesus Christ gives you the gift of faith, when those lights are turned on, when you're cut to the heart, you should feel remorse as they did. But that remorse should lead you to repentance. Not to run away from God, but to turn to God in faith and to run and to embrace him. You embrace Christ as your Lord and savior. Repentance, it's not just something that we do once, it's something we do continually, day after day. We take up our cross. We follow Jesus. We continue to repent and submit our lives to Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, he's faithful and he's just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

In Romans 13:14, we read the Apostle Paul says put on the Lord Jesus Christ to make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. I like that imagery of putting on Christ, that the act of repentance, of faith, of committing your life to Jesus Christ, I've heard it described its kind of like putting on Christ is like putting on a parachute. Right? It's one thing to say that you understand how the parachute works and that it exists. It's another thing to claim that you trust it. The question is, when it's time to jump as the plane's going down, are you actually going to put the thing on, strap in, and hold on for dear life? That if you know who God is and if you trust that Jesus Christ can save, then you put on Christ and you jump. You live this life of repentance and faith, that yes, Jesus, I am going to follow you wherever you go.

Jesus died for your sins, therefore repent. Then next, Peter says and be baptized. What is baptism? Literally the word just means to be immersed. It's like to be plunged underwater. All right? It is something that Jesus commanded us to do as his disciples, and as we say around mosaic, what is baptism? Baptism is an outward sign of an inward reality. It doesn't save us, but it shows that we were saved. It's an outward sign of an inward reality in which we publicly reenact what Jesus has done for us. Romans 6:1 says what then shall we say? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can have died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

This is what baptism symbolizes. Baptism symbolizes that just as Jesus died and was buried, that when we repent and put our faith in him, when we commit our lives to Jesus Christ, that we are dying to our old life, our old life of sin, of living in the flesh. We are buried under the waters of baptism. Then we are raised up out of the waters of baptism to symbolize that just as Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, we too had been raised to walk in this newness of life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not only that, but we also live life now with this expected anticipation that Christ is going to return to make all things new, and when he does, we will be given physically resurrected, glorified bodies then as well for all of eternity. That's what baptism symbolizes.

Now, the second question is if that's what baptism is, who should be baptized? The answer is just simply only those for who this symbol is true. If this symbol is true for you, that Christ has saved you, he's raised you to this new life, then you should be baptized. Everyone who has made a commitment to repent and put their faith in Christ to follow him as Lord and Savior should get baptized. Jesus commanded this. All right? It is a blessing to you as a believer. It is an encouragement to the church. And it is a testimony to the world, that you didn't save yourself, that Jesus Christ saved you and gave you new life. And so if you haven't been baptized, you should get baptized. And you should do it soon. Ideally, this is the first act of obedience to a follower of Christ when a person comes into faith.

And so if you haven't been baptized yet, we would love to talk to you. Get connected to us somehow. Pastor Andy and I will be up here after the service. We'd love to talk to you about baptism. Pastor Andy routinely leads a baptism class where you can learn more about baptism and how we do that, but definitely encourage you to do that. You can mark that on your connection card if that's easier. Talk to somebody at the welcome center. Whatever you need to do, encourage you to do that.

Jesus died for your sins, therefore repent and be baptized. Then 3 Peter says, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Repentance is something we do. Baptism is something that is done to us. We don't baptize ourselves. We're baptized by someone else as a symbol of what Jesus has done for us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift that we receive. This is something that every Christian receives at the moment of salvation. The moment that you put your faith in Christ, repent of your sins, and commit to follow him, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You look in the Book of Acts and you realize if you've read through Acts. Yeah, there's some weird exceptions to this where some of the believers in the beginning days of the church didn't receive the Holy Spirit until a little bit later. But as the teaching of the apostles to the church was established, it becomes clear that those cases were unique. But that what is normal and what we should expect is that every believer has the Holy Spirit and received the Holy Spirit the moment that they were saved.

The Holy Spirit is a gift. It's a gift that can't be taken away from you. It's a gift that can't be lost. It's a gift you can't return. That Jesus says, no one will snatch you out of my hands. But it is important to understand that our experience of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, while the Holy Spirit can't be taken away, that our experience of his power and presence is something that can be quenched. The scripture talks about this, that when we grieve, the Holy Spirit through pride, through stubbornness, through unrepentant sin, you can quench the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if you are in Christ, you have received the Holy Spirit. Therefore, now walk in the Spirit. Live in the power and in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We commit to follow Jesus because he is the risen Lord. We've looked at the evidence for that. We commit to follow Jesus because he is the merciful savior, and we've seen how we should respond to that. Then finally, before we close, we commit to follow Jesus because he is our beautiful inheritance. We kind of skimmed over this earlier. But before I close, I want to kind of quickly go back to the Psalm that Peter was quoting in his sermon. As in Acts chapter 2:25 through 28, peter quotes a Psalm of David in order to show that David was prophetically writing about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it's clear, however, when you read that psalm that David was not only talking about what was true for Christ, he is also prophetically writing about what is true and about what will be true for all of us who are in Christ.

And so as I close, I want to read that psalm for us as an encouragement to us this morning. This is Psalm 16, beginning in verse one. King David writes this. It says, Preserve me, oh God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord and I have no good apart from you. As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply their drink offerings of blood. I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel, in the night also my heart and instructs me.

Upset the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand. I shall not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices. My flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your holy one see corruption. And make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

This is a glimpse of the good life that the good shepherd came to give, of the abundant life that Jesus promised. It's a life that we live in the presence and in the pleasure of our God and Father. It's a life that we can experience and enjoy in part right now as we turn and trust and follow Jesus and walk in the Holy Spirit. But it is also a life that we will fully inherit, that we will most perfectly enjoy in the future and for all of eternity when Christ, our good shepherd, returns. As surely as Christ was raised from the dead, we live with the expectation, the anticipation, and the hope that when he returns, he's going to raise us up as well with him to share in his beautiful inheritance. That for all of eternity, we will be with our Lord and Savior and see him face to face. That as the psalmist wrote there in his presence, there will be fullness of joy, and at his right hand will be pleasures forevermore.

Listen, if you want to commit to follow Jesus Christ and to begin this new life today, I want you to pray right now as I close. I want you to cry out to God in repentance and faith. God promises that all who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, they will be saved, and so ask him to save you. Also, if you have chosen to make that commitment, would you please let us know? Please talk to us. Every week we have people that mark out on the little connection card that I've committed my life to Christ today or have recommitted my life to Christ this week, but not very many of those people follow up with us. We want to get to know you. We want to talk with you. We want to pray with you. We want to answer any questions that you might have. We want to talk about why baptism is important, why it's important, and why it's going to be a tremendous blessing for you to get plugged into a community group to begin building some meaningful relationships here at church. Because you're going to need people around you to support you, to love you, to care for you, to hold you accountable.

We're going to talk a whole lot more about that next week, but for now, if you've made this decision, please come talk to us. Members of our prayer team will be up here after service. Pastor Andy and myself will be over here. You can mark that on your card and we'll try to follow up with you. You can talk to people at the welcome center. Whatever you need to do, we just want to talk to you and we want to pray for you. Jesus told us that when every time one single sinner repents, that there is rejoicing among God and among the angels in heaven, that this is a big deal. We want to know about it. We want to celebrate it with you and want to do whatever we can to help you as you commit to this life of following Christ. All right. That being said, let's spend some time in prayer and then we're going to spend some time just praising God together for his amazing grace toward us. Let's pray.

God, we just thank you and we praise you for the mystery and the majesty of your gospel, of your plan of salvation. It's hard for us to grasp the greatness of your love for us, that you would send your son, your beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us, to save us from sin and death and to offer us this abundant life, a life that we know is not going to be easy, but we also see is going to be worth it. That Jesus, you are truly worthy of all of our praise and devotion and allegiance and obedience, and it is so good to follow you together, our good shepherd, and to worship you together right now. Lord, I pray that as we continue and worship and as we sing these songs, that the sound of our praise would be pleasing to your ears and that would bring joy to your heart. Lord, we love you. We praise You. In the name of your Son and the power of your Holy Spirit, we worship you together now. Amen.

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Father, we just rejoice in the fact that you loved us, not because we were lovely, not because we deserved your affection, but because of your character, because you were rich in mercy, and you had great love for us, and so you chose to come and rescue us in our lowly position. Even though we were dead in our trespasses and our sins, you made us alive again in Christ. You poured out immeasurable riches upon us, and I just pray this morning as we come before you, that, Lord, you would humble our hearts, you would clear our minds, you would give us eyes to see. I pray that your spirit would be with us, that it would lead and guide us, that it would continue to equip us for all the good work that you have called us to, and so, Lord, just pray that we continue to walk in the newness of life, and that we worship and glorify you in all that we do, and it's in the name of Jesus that we pray this morning. Amen.

So this morning, my assignment is Romans 8, and we're going to be looking at verses 18-25. You might have heard the last couple of weeks that this chapter that we're in, it might be one of the most encouraging single passages of all of scripture. It is a chapter of rejoicing built upon a theological foundation that Paul has been laying for a while. We've been sitting in the book of Romans for a few months now, and I almost feel like every sermon needs to start with some sort of recap, like a previously on section from a TV show, because as we've been going through so many different things, it's hard to keep all of it in focus, to keep it all visible in our minds. So what have we covered over the last five months?

Well, Paul starts us off in the very beginning in chapter one. He shows us the condition of humanity, that those who pursue the flesh, who actively suppress the truth of God, they are rebels. They are destructive to themselves. God's wrath falls upon them, because they are unrighteous, but likewise, in chapter two, Paul then proceeds to explain how everyone who tries to pursue the law, everyone who tries to do what's right is also unrighteous. Those who preach do not steal. Well, they stole. Those who preach do not commit adultery. They committed adultery. So even though in their minds they thought they were righteous, they weren't.

And this leads to one of the first big conclusions that we have from Paul, that it doesn't matter if you're a Jew, a Gentile, whether you live a lawful or licentious life, all of us are missing the mark. He gives us a harsh conclusion in the middle of chapter three, "None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive." At this point, this is almost like a cliff hanger in our story. The chips are down. The threat has been realized. We're in a rough spot, but thankfully everything works according to the will of God. He does not get canceled, because if we keep reading in that same chapter, we go from lamenting at the beginning to rejoicing by the end.

Keep reading, "For all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith." This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Hallelujah, what a savior. We who were short of the glory of God have been redeemed by the work of Jesus. The wrath of God has passed over us because of the blood of the lamb. Amen.

This is good news, and if you're here today, and this is new news to you, if this is the first time you have heard this, then there is nothing more important for you to pay attention to, that all of us, all of humanity, we are sinners. We are against God, and yet God still loved us. He loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to intervene on our behalf. Because of our sin, because of our rebellion, our right reward was death. It was removal and separation from God, but by the blood of Jesus, he has come, and he has purchased our salvation, and this salvation is available to those who would repent and believe, and this salvation changes everything. This salvation is the most important thing that can happen to you.

So if you are not redeemed by the blood of the lamb, then I implore you repent and believe, because going forward, Paul is going to continue to expand on this salvation. Chapter four and five he starts giving us greater detail, that we now have a new life that we live in. Like Abraham, we were saved not by our works, but by faith in God. Furthermore, we don't live in the sinful inheritance of Adam any longer. We now live in the righteous inheritance of Christ, and because of all of this, because of the accomplishment of God that he has given to us as a gift, we now rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Chapter six is almost a pivot point. From there, Paul starts addressing consequences and questions of our salvation. You could say chapter six and seven is almost like dealing with the negative consequences. Can we keep sinning so that grace can abound? No. Can we keep sinning because we're not under the law? No. Because the law aroused sin in us, does that mean that the law is sin? No. And Paul is just batting these away one after the other, and finally we move into chapter eight where Paul starts discussing the positive consequences for our salvation. These are wonderful things that are now true, because what Christ has done. This is the reason we say this is one of the most encouraging chapter of all of scripture, and he starts off with a blockbuster. We are now not under condemnation because we are in Christ. Praise God.

The law of the spirit has set us free from the law of sin and death. This is amazing, because we have lived our entire lives under the weight of condemnation, under the slavery of sin, and we are now no longer bound to that, but we can now walk in the spirit. This keeps getting better, because we are also children of God. God has always been a righteous king over us, but now he is our Abba, Father. We have this relationship of affection with him, and because we are his children, guess what? We are co-heirs with Christ, and if you're like me, as you're reading through Romans 8, this is the part where you're getting really pumped. I'm getting super excited, because this is so encouraging.

Then you might, if you're not being careful, miss out on a very important qualifier that Paul adds. In verse 17, Paul tells us that if we are fellow heirs with Christ, we are that way, "Provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him." Wait a second, Paul, you were just laying out the perks. We're not under sin. We're free from the law. No condemnation, live in the spirit, co-heirs of Christ. What is with this suffering thing? Can we get back to the perks of our salvation? I want to hear more about that, and Paul being inspired by the Holy Spirit seems to anticipate that we reading these words might be a little jarred, might be a little jarred by this requirement that the glory of Christ goes hand in hand with the suffering of Christ, that they're tied to each other. And that's where we pick up our passage here, where Paul is responding to this revelation about suffering.

And so would you open up your Bibles, and we're going to be looking at Romans 8:18.25, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing what the glory that is to be revealed to us, but the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, but the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we weigh eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

This is the reading of God's Holy Word. Three points to help us frame our time today, point number one, the bad news, point number two, more bad news, and point number three more good news. So point number one, right off the bat, what is the bad news? Well, the bad news is Paul is making an assumption. He is presupposing that in our present time, there will be suffering. Even though we are not under condemnation, we live in the spirit, we're co-heirs of the Christ, we are going to suffer. One of these things is not like the other. Here, in this chapter of all the encouragements of our benefits that we have because of our salvation, Paul is drawing a foregone conclusion. He acknowledges that suffering is included in the purchase price.

So the first question we might ask ourselves is, "What kind of suffering is Paul talking about? Is Paul talking about physical suffering?" I mean, Paul himself did share in physical suffering for the sake of Christ. He reminds us in chapter 11 of II Corinthians how he was whipped, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked. His body most definitely bore the marks of his physical suffering for Christ. Is that what he's getting at? I would submit to you the answer is, "No." Not that physical suffering is excluded from following Christ, just simply that is not specifically what he is referring to in this passage. So what is it?

And we have a big clue in verse 18 for the word of suffering. The word means to feel deeply, to feel with passion, to have a capacity for strong emotion, and so this suffering that Paul is referring to I would submit to you is very similar to what the prophet, Isaiah, said in chapter 53. When speaking of Christ, he said that, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief." The suffering that Paul is addressing, the suffering that we are going to share with Christ is sorrow, is an acquaintance with grief. And this brings us to one of our first big principles for today. We have to understand that as Christians living in a sinful world, we cannot escape internal, emotional sorrow and suffering.

Paul just got done telling us that this suffering goes hand in hand with the glory of Christ. Let's pause there for a moment, because this might be something we need to digest, something we need to recalibrate our thinking regarding, that even though we're free from sin, we're free from the law, we're co-heirs with Christ, suffering is going to mark our lives as Christians. And on face value, that seems like bad news. I was meditating the last couple weeks on suffering, which is a super pleasant activity to do. I would not recommend it, and I kept coming back to three different ways that we as Christians suffer, three ways, three types.

The first type is kind of a base level suffering, best case scenario. It is spiritual suffering. As Christians, we live with open warfare within us. Paul just got done talking about this earlier in the chapter in verse 13, "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Paul is letting us know that if we're going to live as the new creations that we are called to, then we have to put the flesh to death, and if you've ever tried to put the flesh to death, you can testify it doesn't go quietly, right? You have to fight it. You have to endure it. You have to flee from it. It is not a pleasant activity.

Peter takes the other side of this. I Peter 2 he puts it this way, "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul." So here's the deal. Best case scenario, you are called to go and make war against your flesh, likewise, that flesh is making war against you. There is no demilitarized zone. There is no conflict region here. It is one side or the other. Kill or be killed. I don't want to speak for all of you, but that's not very comfy. It's not very cozy.

Furthermore, we're children of God, right? Well, as children of God, then we share in the discipline of our Father. God uses discipline to grow us, to forge our sanctification. Look at Hebrews 12, starting in verse 7, "For it is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons." So for all of us who are in Christ, we will properly receive the discipline of our father. How does that feel? Keep reading. Verse 11, "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruits of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

This is our best case scenario, bear minimum for us as Christians, that we pick up our cross, deny ourselves, participate daily in the war that is going on inside of us, while simultaneously our Father is rightfully and lovingly disciplining us. All of this causes discomfort, causes pain, suffering, and this is the first type of suffering that we experience. The second type of suffering is sacrificial suffering. This is a type of suffering in which we sacrifice one thing that we value in order to achieve something of greater value. It's an investment.

Okay, first thing we might ask ourselves, "Well, what's on the table? What am I called to invest?" Well, we are now slaves to righteousness. We are not our own. We have been bought with a price, and so the correct answer in short is that everything is available, everything. This is why we are called to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Our entire internal capacity belongs to God, but furthermore, Paul later in this same book of Romans is going to go on and say, "Present your bodies," physical, "as living sacrifices unto the Lord," to use however God is going to see fit."

So when it comes to sacrificial suffering, when we trade one thing that we value for something of greater value, everything that we have is available for God to use as he would choose. This might be another place for us to pause and ponder. How does the calling to sacrificial suffering change our lives? How has it changed the way that we view our families, or our jobs, or our assets, or our talents, everything? Because the cost can be steep. Let's consider two categories, two areas. In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is sending out the disciples for the first time. He's giving them a pep talk. He's sending them out with power and authority to do miracles, but he warns them they will be persecuted. In order for them to go out and achieve this good work that the father has called them to, there's going to be a cost.

What type of cost? They're going to be hated. Hated by who? Their families. Read in verse 35, "For I've come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A person's enemies will be those of his own household." So when it comes to relational cost for following Christ, what Jesus is letting us know is that there is the potential that our closest relationships may be sacrificed, that this may create enmity between our own families for the sake of following him. Furthermore, sacrificial suffering is not just relational. It's not just about giving up brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and fathers. It's about giving up houses and lands.

Let's think about the parable in Matthew 13, where a man finds a treasure in a field. We all know this one. What does he do? He covers up the treasure. He goes, and he sells everything that he has, and goes back, and buys the field. This is an analogy for our lives as Christians. We have found the treasure in Christ, in this salvation. Now we go, we sell everything that we have, and we invest it in the kingdom of heaven. Allow me to pause for just a second. I'm not saying that every single one of you needs to go out and liquefy all your earthly assets, and I don't know, donate it to the Mosaic Build Fund. I'm not going there, but what I'm trying to drive at, what I'm trying to bring in focus is that Paul assumes that there is going to be suffering for those of us who are in Christ, and I'm trying to clarify that this suffering is going to include sacrificing things we hold dear, material, relational, you name it.

As Christians, our investments are no longer primarily in this world, but the next. They're no longer primarily in our kingdoms, but in God's, and this process of investing in the kingdom of heaven has a cost. This is another point for us to meditate on. Are we sacrificially suffering? How are we bearing this burden? Do we live lives that desire to continue increasing our sacrifice of this world for the next, or are we still trying to build up treasures here on earth? If you can soberly review your own life, and you have a hard time pointing to the areas in which you are sacrificially suffering for the kingdom of heaven, then my question for you is, for what purpose are you using the things that the Lord has given you? Where are you investing? What treasure are you trying to obtain?

So as Christians, we fight the good fight of faith within ourselves. We also pick up our cross, and we follow Jesus. We sacrificially suffer this world for the next. And the third type of suffering that I believe we experience is just the suffering of loss, of loss. When it comes to those first two types of suffering, we're a little less serious. When we're waging war against the flesh, we all kind of encourage one another. There's backslapping, and fist bumping, and, "I'll pray for you. You go get them." When it comes to sacrificial suffering, we all kind of get it. We make snide remarks about the cost of real estate in Boston, or how somebody gave me a lecture at the supermarket, or about how I had to have a meeting with my boss, because I didn't put my pronouns in my bio. Right?

We make jokes about it, but when it comes to the third type of suffering, the suffering of loss, these are the type of sufferings where we just turn to the Lord, and we ask, "Why? Why, God?" Sometimes they're a little smaller. "God, I worked really hard. Why didn't I get into the program?" "God, I've been praying for a long time. I really want to be married. Why her and not me?" Sometimes the suffering is heartbreaking. "Lord, I loved him like a brother. I poured myself into the relationship. Why did it end in betrayal?" "God, why did it have to be cancer?" "Lord, why the bloodshed?" "Why does it have to be the children, God?" It's in these moments that our hearts just ache, and they groan, and we feel the suffering, and this is the harsh reality of living in our sinful flesh and living in a sinful fallen world, and part of what Paul is letting us know in this passage is it's baked into the cake.

It's part of our experience, not just us, but the entire world. All of creation is experiencing the weight of sin, and there's nothing we can do, but be patient, and in the interim, there will be tears and mourning. And if that wasn't bad enough, well, guess what? I have more bad news for you. I know that's what you wanted. You signed up for it, more bad news. Look at verse 20 with me, "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." So at the very beginning, Paul assumes that we who are in Christ, we are still going to suffer internal, emotional pain, even though we are heirs with Christ, but what starts to make this worse is there's really nothing we can do about it.

The environment that we are living in, creation itself, has been set on a course. It wasn't what creation willed. It wasn't what creation took a vote and decided to do. It has come to pass by the ordained will of God, and any attempts to try and stop it are ultimately futile. The Greek word for futile here means vanity, emptiness, ineffective. What Paul is getting at is that in this state of suffering where we are groaning, any change to really try and modify that condition is going to end up being ineffective. It can't be done. Creation cannot remove itself from the weight of sin, and neither can we. Look in verse 23, "And not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." And so just like creation, we, who are children of God, we have to wait patiently. We have to wait and groan for God to come and redeem our bodies. Efforts to remove the suffering will ultimately be futile.

In this passage, we've concluded two things, that suffering is a normal and expected part of our faith, and that we don't have the capacity to remove ourself from the suffering. There's no way to completely opt out. The only thing we can do is wait for the Lord to faithfully fulfill his promise. As we stop and consider the consequence of these two ideas, it really makes at least me reconsider some things. Some of the things that makes me reconsider is all the if only statements that I make in my mind, right? "If only I had this, well, then I wouldn't have to deal with this thing over here that causes me suffering." "If only I had enough money, and then I wouldn't have to deal with all the frustration of living in Boston." "If only we had the right program, then people would no longer be in conflict, and we could fix all the problems." "If only we educated, then we wouldn't have..." "If only we had the right person..." If only, if only, and ultimately it's all futile.

The only person who can remove us from this position is God. He is the only if only. To be clear, I am not saying that we cannot pursue change in our lives. I'm not saying that there isn't wisdom in taking this course of action or the other. We are called to strive and improve things, but what I'm saying is that we have to remember that we don't have the capacity to take this sinful world and make it perfect. We cannot remove the suffering of our present time. It's something that only God can do, and everybody else who tries to do it is going to ultimately be futile. So you might be saying to yourself at this point, "Well, thank you very much for the pep talk, Nate." You have told us this was the most encouraging chapter of scripture, and you have spent nearly 28 minutes talking about suffering and futility. I appreciate it."

Well, praise be to God, the suffering and futility is not the whole story, because now we get to talk about more good news, and if you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that I've tiptoed around the passage a little bit, because running through the entire passage intermingled with all this talk of suffering and futility is a discussion of hope, that paired with suffering and futility is hope. These two things are bonded together. This is not a new thing. This is why we talked so much earlier about what we've covered in the book of Romans, because in chapter five, Paul started this pairing.

Chapter 5:2, "Through him," the him being Christ, "Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." So we are standing in a new position because of Christ, and in Christ, "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given." Okay, Paul, so you started talking about that a couple chapters ago. I still don't get it. I'm still a little confused about the organization. Why is suffering right here in the list of the benefits of being in Christ?

We're not under condemnation. We live in the spirit. We're co-heirs with Christ. How does the suffering and hope in Christ, how is it all related? The reason that Paul has linked suffering, hope, and being in Christ altogether here in this passage that's describing the benefits that we have in our salvation, is that for those of us who are in Christ, we no longer suffer in vain. Paul's letting us know everyone, everywhere is suffering. Even creation is suffering, but for those of us who are in Christ, we don't suffer in vain. We suffer in hope. We don't suffer like those who are no longer in Christ, whose pain, and sacrifice, and groaning, it never gets better. It never resolves into anything more meaningful, but for those of us who are in Christ, we rejoice in our suffering. Why? Because we have hope.

We have hope that all of this resolves into something more meaningful. That's why Paul is talking about it right smack dab here in the middle of the benefits of being in Christ, because even though suffering has not been removed, in Christ, hope has come. Hope has been delivered, and we now rejoice in our suffering, because we know one day that there will be a redemption of the suffering state that we are in. And this is more good news. The good news is that Christ has saved us, that he has provided for our salvation. We have been adopted by God, but now we have more good news, because we who are in Christ, we now have hope, even though there is still suffering here today, there is hope for tomorrow, and this is a tremendous benefit that we have in Christ, and it's so encouraging to me, because without Christ, suffering is the whole story. There is no happy ending. There is no satisfying resolution. It just goes from bad to worse. Suffering is all consuming.

But for those of us who are in Christ, because we have been justified by his blood, we are not under condemnation, we are co-heirs with Christ, even the suffering in this present time has meaning, because at the end of this story is the glory of God, and it is in the glory of God that we put our hope, and we rejoice, and that's not even enough for Paul. Paul needs to make it just explicitly clear how great the hope that we have is, which is why he starts off with verse 18, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us." What Paul is saying is like, "Listen, I get it. There's suffering. We're going to have to endure the suffering, but these two things are so far apart. The glory of God and the suffering of today, that the gap between them is so great, that we can't even compare the two, that the magnitude of where we are today versus where we will be with God is so tremendous that it doesn't even fit onto the same scale.

And the example he gives us is childbirth. Childbirth. Here we are today, right now, we are in the pains of childbirth. We are dealing with suffering. We are waiting patiently. We are pouring ourselves out sacrificially trying to accomplish all that God has called us to, and we have a hope that one day this child will be delivered, and the suffering will cease, and in that moment, the joy that will fill our souls, the satisfaction that will overwhelm us will be so great that we can't even compare it to the suffering of this age. They're so far apart from one another, and this is how we endure suffering. We look forward to the hope of the glory of God that is so much greater than the suffering today. Practical example of this for us is Jesus. Big shock, I know nobody saw that coming. Hebrews 12 tells us that, "We are to look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross."

So Jesus seeing the joy and satisfaction that was ahead through his willful obedience to the father, decided to sacrifice himself. He willingly endured the suffering of the cross, and this is the application for us today, that we acknowledge where we are. We are in this present condition with suffering, with futility, that we patiently wait on the Lord, but before us is incredible joy and incredible satisfaction that we can't even fully comprehend when we are finally adopted as sons and our bodies are redeemed. This is a glorious hope that should stir up joy in each one of us, as we put our hope in what our faithful God will do. And with this view of joy ahead of us, let us lay aside every weight and sin, which clings so closely. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Let us forget what lies behind and spring forward to what lies ahead, press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

So, Christians, let us not become discouraged. Do not let us wallow in the suffering. Don't let our eyes become fixed on the waves, because the cost of this life cannot compare to the reward we will have in Christ. I will say that again. The cost of this life, even with its pain, even with its suffering, cannot compare to the reward we will have in Christ when we are in the glory of God. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. So let me conclude with this, two things. First, an assignment, read this week Revelation 19-22. Why? Well, let me give you an exhortation about it and give you the short version, because in that part of scripture, at this point, the marriage of the lamb has come. The bride, those of us who are in Christ, we are ready, and our husband, he comes for us. The one who is faithful and true, the Word of God comes riding on a white horse. His eyes are like flames and out of his mouth comes a sword. He has come to strike down the nations and to rule them with an iron rod. He comes with a tattoo on his thigh, which has his name, and is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His enemies, they'll fight against him, but they will be defeated. They will be captured and thrown into the lake of fire.

Those of us who are in Christ, we will be resurrected from the dead, and the second death will have no power over us. Satan himself will be defeated. His campaign against the almighty will finally come to an end, and every single person will be judged. And for those of us whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life, for those of us who have been washed in the blood of a Lamb, we finally get to go home. And the best part is we finally get to be with God, and in this new home with God, there will be a new heaven, and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. There will be no more sin. God will be our God. We will be his people, and the part that I look forward to I think the most is that our God will wipe away every tear. Death will be no more. There will be no more crying, nor pain. All these things will pass away.

And so when Paul tells us he doesn't consider comparing the suffering of today to the glory that is to come, this is what he's pointing to. This is why our suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, because we have our hope in the fact that Jesus has saved us, and that Jesus is coming again to bring us to himself, and that when we are with him, our loving father will wipe away all the suffering of this world, and the only thing that remains will be the worship of God, the love of God, and the glory of God forever and ever, so take heart. There will be suffering, but we rejoice in our suffering, because we have our hope and a faithful and glorious God. Let's pray.

Father, we just rejoice, and we praise your name. We look upon all that you have done for us, and we are overwhelmed. Lord, I'm comforted by the fact that you specialized in bringing good from bad, bringing beauty from ashes, strength from fear, gladness from mourning, and that, Lord, even death itself is unable to stop you from accomplishing all that you promised to do. And so, Father, it is in you, it is in your character, in your faithfulness that we place our hope.

Lord, I pray that we do not get bogged down in the mere of this life, that, Lord, even though there is pain and suffering, I just pray that you would send your Holy Spirit to encourage our souls, strengthen our wills, motivate our hands, Lord, fix our eyes upon the glory that we have and use, that we would run this race to win the prize. And so, God, I just pray that you would remind us that because of our hope in you, we can be assured that all of this journey is worth it, that all of it will end in good. Let us rest in that security, and it's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

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Our good, unchangeable, immutable God. Father you are gracious, you are merciful, you are slow to anger and you abound in steadfast love. Father I specifically pray for those who are not saved that hear this message. Maybe they're here, or maybe they're listening to it online. God I pray that the truth in the words that you have for us this morning prick their hearts, that it softens their hearts. God that you shine your light into their darkened souls that they may be awoken into the beauty of a life with you.

And God for us who say that we are believers, God help us understand and rest in the assurance of salvation that's presented in this text. Give us an understanding to know that we are children. God help our spirits cry out to you in rejoicing by the truth that you have in this word. Show us that your Spirit is leading us to the end goal of glorification, assure us this morning of our peace with you and our sealed promise of everlasting life in your presence, in Jesus name. Amen.

Really is truly a privilege to speak to all of you this morning, I'm really excited to talk about Romans 8. I've actually been meditating on this scripture for about a month. The pastors told me that I was going to be preaching and this was my text. And so it's been a month now, and I've done a lot of research. In the last week, as things were starting to get put together and I was formulating the finality of this sermon, I was unable to sleep because when I finally went down to sleep, my mind just kept thinking of more things to say.

I'm really excited if even just to be able to sleep this coming week, but I've got some really good news to share with you today. In fact, I think it's the best part of the good news. Pastor Shane mentioned in Romans 8 that, or mentioned that Romans 8 is known as the inner sanctuary within the cathedral of the Christian faith. I would argue that this section that we're going to read today is the reason that it's called that. It summarizes the chapter thus far, it introduces this beautiful truth of our current and eternal standing with God.

And all of that's going to be furthered and concluded in the rest of this chapter with a glorious portion that Pastor Shane has also coined the party passage. I think this is the pinnacle of the gospel. I think this is the crowning jewel for a believer, because not only does God save us from his wrath against our sin, but then he adopts us and he gives us an inheritance, we're now called heirs of God, we're called heirs with Christ. We are called the children of God.

With that said, let's read Romans 8:12 to 17. If you have your Bibles, please turn to that passage. If not, it'll be up here on the screen. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba Father." The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

I think the best way to kick things off is to give you a quick summary of this passage. I don't have a big outline, three points that you were accustomed to. I have one point, it's a beautiful passage and we're going to pick it apart. And I'm going to give you all the different facets of how it is presented, but I want to make sure we understand the overall meaning. And it is this, you are a child of God. And being a child of God, you will be led by the Spirit of God to slay the sin that is in your life.

You will be led by the Spirit of God in your walk, as you're tossed about in the storms of this life. And all of that is done in order to reach the hope that is set before you. And that is an inheritance from God. Believers in this passage are given three names, three names of our new identity, of our position before God that have profound meaning and they should give us a full assurance of our salvation. The Apostle Paul builds his case for our assurance sequentially through these three names, through the use of transitional clauses.

Now the transitions are not if, then statements, which would make us question whether or not we were actually in God's family at all. For example, if you have good taste in movies, then you agree objectively, that The Lord of the Rings is the best trilogy ever made. Oh yeah. Now this disagreeing with the second half would make you question whether or not you actually had good taste in movies. That's not what's happening here. These statements are therefore statements, A is true, therefore B is true.

And don't forget The entire theme of this passage is, a full assurance of your salvation. With that said, the first thing that we're called is debtors. Verse 12 begins by saying that we are debtors, but not to the flesh. As we've covered in previous weeks, the Apostle Paul uses the word flesh to embody a person who dwells in the realm of the flesh. Those who are weakened by the sinful nature, those who are powerless to uphold the law.

And remember the context that we just came from. Chapter six, chapter seven, we established that there are two reigning powers of humanity state before Christ came on the scene in the likeness of flesh, and that's sin and the law. We can call these the powers of the old regime and they are two sides of the same coin. I'm not saying that sin and the law are the same thing, by no... In fact, Paul already made mention of this in chapter seven verse seven, when he says, "What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means."

Well, how then are they the same coin? Well, they both lead to eternal separation from Christ. This is the point of the last few chapters, whether we live to be justified in our own desires or we live to be justified by fulfilling the law, we are without grace of God. Paul writes specifically to the Galatians about this. They were struggling with how to incorporate the laws and the expectations that are found in the Old Testament with their new identities as believers of Christ.

The Galatian church specifically was dealing with the false teaching of circumcision as a requirement for justification. Let's take a step back, I just used the term justification. If you're unfamiliar with that word, the Bible talks about salvation in three ways. It says justification, sanctification and glorification. We're going to talk about all three of those today because our passage hints at all three of them, but let's first start with justification.

Justification is that which justifies us, makes us righteous, presents us as unblemished and perfect before the judge, God. Paul is saying in Galatians, that circumcision does not matter in justification. Let's read Galatians 5:1-6. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

It's not circumcision that justifies you. In fact, it doesn't count for anything. In saying, I, Paul, say to you, Paul is using his own credentials as a Pharisee of Pharisees, a Jew of Jews, a teacher of the law to say that one of the foundational elements of the Old Testament, a consecration to the law counts for nothing. What does count however, is faith working through love. By grace through faith, we are justified. By the grace of God, Christ takes on our sin at the cross, pays the penalty for our wickedness. In turn, we receive his perfection, we are clothed and robed with his robes.

Now this is grace, this is justification. We are not as Paul writes to the Galatians, obligated... Keep the whole law. And the word for obligated is the same word that's found in our text for debtors, debtors to the law, obligated to keep the whole law, a debtor to God through the law. Paul's argument in both cases is, that's not who we are. We as believers owe nothing to the flesh, for in fact, we've died to the law and Paul speaks about this in Roman 7, where he says, "But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old ways of the written code."

What's also interesting to note from this passage in Galatians is that there's a similar wording being used to describe this obligation to the law. In Galatians, Paul mentions a yolk of slavery, but in our text, he calls it a spirit of slavery. in Romans Paul's warns us not to fall back into fear, whereas in Galatians, he says to fall away from grace. These are the same concepts, you put them together and you get the spirit of slavery is a yolk, a burden that keeps you in fear and away from God's grace.

Romans 8:13. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. So then, we are not debtors to the flesh, but if not to the flesh, then to what? Well, Paul begins in verse 12 by saying, so then, which tells us that he's saying that we are debtors in light of the previous statement. So let's backtrack Romans 8:11. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then brothers, we are debtors.

We're not debtors to the flesh, but if we put to death the flesh through the Spirit, we will have life. We're not debtors to the flesh, but we are debtors to the Spirit. We're not debtors to God through the law, but we are debtors to God through grace. And we sing hymn quite often here at Mosaic called, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. And perhaps you've missed the beautiful writing that's in this hymn that speaks to this theological truth.

It says, "O to grace, how great a debtor. Daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy grace now like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee." We are a debtor to grace and the writer here begs God that grace will act as some kind of chain as a restraint to keep his heart from wandering from God. He continues by saying of his heart, it's prone to wander, prone to leave the God that he loves.

How are we supposed to deal with the heart that wanders from the God that we love? How does this enactment of grace binding work? Well, if we look back to Tyler's sermon last week, it points us to say that we need to side, We need to submit and we need to live in the Spirit. And if you haven't listened, or you haven't watched that sermon, I encourage you to do so, because it leads us to say that we do this side, submit and live in the Spirit by putting sin to death through the Spirit. See, verse 13 is very clear, it says, "If by the Spirit you put to death, the deeds of the body, you will live."

And this is the synergistic concept of sanctification that pastor Jan talked about a few weeks ago. Sanctification, the second element of salvation. Sanctification is the word that we use to speak of a life of a believer between justification and glorification. It's a spiritual walk that we go through after the moment we repent and believe until we are reunited with Christ. This is the process where God leads us ever closer to his throne. The process where we are refined, this is where we grow to imitate Christ more and more.

In this verse, we also see the first transitional clause. You are debtors, therefore you are led by the Spirit. The Apostle Paul lays out the way in which we live. He says, "We slay our sin through the power of the Spirit so that we may abide it in the Spirit." Let me say that again, we slay our sin through the power of the Spirit so that we may abide in the Spirit. You see, it begins, is sustained by and ends with the Spirit working. And yet in this process, we're actively pursuing that in which we are led to do.

We don't control the Spirit as a tool, but we are empowered. We are enabled by the Spirit to do the things that we know we should do, but we don't actually do that. We cannot do. And the statement here of put to death, that's a present calling to believers. The one who lives in the Spirit does this in perpetuity. Meaning, that the scripture always applies to the life of a believer while they are here on this earth, it's present, it's persistent. The theologian, John Murray puts it like this, "The believer's once-for-all death to the law of sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members; it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so."

The ability to put to death the flesh, that's a result of the Spirit impelling you forward in sanctification, your daily progression in the faith. And this is a proof of your adoption. Verse 14 lays out the second, therefore statement. You are led by the Spirit and therefore, you are sons of God. And therein we find the second name that we are called, sons. Romans 8:14-16, says, "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

You may have noticed it says sons, it doesn't say child. That's on purpose. The Greek word here specifically emphasizes the maleness of this pronoun. Now it does mean in the larger context that we are children of God, but it says sons for two reasons, specifically. Firstly Israel, God's chosen people were called sons of God in the Old Testament. Exodus 4, then you shall say to Pharaoh, "Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first born son." This is also the case in Isaiah and Hosea.

It should make us see that we are also God's chosen people, his elected people, God chose Jacob, not Esau, therefore he also chose you. But secondly, and most importantly, Paul is making the case that we are sons in relation to being hidden under the son. If you recall, Romans 1, Paul writes that Jesus is the son of God. He now says that we are welcomed into that same relationship. Take a look at Romans 8:17, it says we're heirs with Christ. Or even if you look at the word that Paul uses to describe how we should cry out to God. He says Abba, Father.

There's only one other person in scripture that has used that kind of identification with God. Paul's referring to the way that Jesus himself would speak to the father. We now have that same relationship, that same status, that same fellowship with God. You see there's a likeness of the son which is brought up here. In a similar way, how the son came in the likeness of flesh to condemn the flesh, we now have been redeemed from that, made in the likeness of the son to be united with the father.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5 to be perfect as God, our father is perfect. Peter referring to Leviticus says, "Be holy as God is holy." See, we are like Christ in our whole person, We are a reflection of the father just as Christ is. We are representatives, a holy nation, a beacon of light into this world that declares the glory of the father. I know it sounds difficult, extremely intimidating. I know I fail, I know I have sin in my own life. How am I supposed to be like Christ?

Let me answer that by telling you how good our father is. As Pastor Shane brought up in verses one through four, God has an unconditional love. He loves his children unconditionally. Now see, there may be kindness poured out to all others, but there's a special relationship, a special desire and a special responsibility that he gives to himself by calling you his child.

James 4:5 says, "He yearns jealously over the Spirit that he has made to dwell in us." God is so concerned with our wellbeing, with our overall state, that James goes to the extent of saying that God is jealous over you. Now, normally we save what I'm about to say for the end of the sermon, but I think it's really appropriate to do it here. As we talk about being a child of God, Paul makes it clear that he says if, in verse 17, he's stating that not all people are children.

So if you are not a believer, if you have not repented of your sin, if you haven't submitted to Christ as Lord, as your savior, if you haven't come to the cross, sought forgiveness, redemption, restoration from your brokenness. I ask you to do that. I plead with you to seek God's face, to turn from worshiping the things of this world, the created things and turn to he who is creator. What we're talking about is the greatest joy, the most comforting truth, and the reason for hope. But this is only given to those of us who are in God's family and only those who are in God's family.

This is an incredibly deep fact of love, not only did God come and show us love by sacrificing himself for us, but he sacrificed himself for those of us who were his enemies. We were all his enemies, he sacrificed himself, then we are wiped clean, adopted, not only adopted, but now heirs to an inheritance. And he assures us of all of this by leading us, by adopting us, by testifying to us. Do you remember in Exodus when the Israelites were led out of Egypt, they were led by a pillar of fire and smoke?

They were brought from slavery and into Canaan, the land of inheritance through the promises made to Abraham. Likewise, we have an internal compass. That's the Holy Spirit. We also have external compasses through the word of God and through the Holy Spirit, working in other people. And this is the importance of community. This is why we have community groups at Mosaic. There are to do the one others that scripture talks about, to bear with one another, to keep each other accountable, to help each other walk down the narrow way.

The Spirit works to bring us from slavery and in sin. We walk towards the land of inheritance, the new Jerusalem, empowered and enabled through the Spirit. The Spirit leads us to draw closer to God. We see this when we delight in his word, when we desire to know more of God, to love him more, to be in fellowship, to be in step with him, to serve his children, to partner in us. Hebrew puts it, bringing many sons to glory.

Are you being led closer to the father and to Christ? Does your longing for eternity in fellowship with them deepen with each passing day, with each passing season in your life? Can you look back on your life and see the Spirit bring about the obedience of your faith? If you are a believer, the answer is yes. If you are a child of God, the only answer is yes, that's the point of this passage. It's to stir you up with the knowledge that you are a child of God, that he's leading you by his Spirit, that you are covered by his son, that you will share in the inheritance that the father has promise. That's the point.

Now there's no condemnation for you because you are hidden in the son, in the son's likeness, you should want to do the things that please God. See, we believers desire the things of heaven because we are children of our father who is in heaven. Like father like son. And all of this should lead us to cry out Abba, Father. This is a declaration of rejoicing at our adoption, of rejoicing at the inheritance that has been promised.

See, we were one slaves, but now we're children. The Roman church knows exactly what Paul's saying when he says slavery to fear. See, the Roman slave system was threefold, whips, hooks, and the cross. They would've seen, they would've heard, they would've experienced the punishment and the fear of slaves. And Paul is saying that without Christ, you are slaves to fear. A fear of God's wrath, a fear of the impending doom of judgment before the law, the same fear that Adam felt in the garden, a sinful man and the presence of a holy God.

Believers are no longer slaves to fear, we're no longer condemned to face God's wrath because Christ has born that for us. We're now welcomed into God's family and we can personally call God our father. You can call him father and he will listen, that in itself should be proof enough of your adoption. The apostle goes on further and he says that God's Spirit in our own spirit testify to this adoption. Let me list out how this is played out.

Firstly, the word, the written word that we have is inspired by the Holy Spirit. And it tells us of our adoption, it tells us of God's love for us. Secondly, the Holy Spirit testifies and affirms that the authenticity of that word is true. The Spirit tells you that what it wrote is true. Thirdly, the Holy Spirit ministers to our spirits, our souls, that we are God's children. In fact, if we look back on our own life, we should be able to testify that we are his. We can look back and see how God has orchestrated our life, how God has walked before us, how he is currently leading us.

Look at the Psalms, it always talks about you are faithfulness because I've seen your faithfulness. Psalm 37 says, "I have been young and now I'm old yet, I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. He's ever lending generously and his children become a blessing." So since we are children of God, we are therefore heirs. And this also is another name that Paul gives to us, heirs of God, the word heir alludes to receiving an inheritance. And this is the hope that we hold.

And this hope as Paul says in Romans 5, doesn't put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The Holy Spirit is the seal of our inheritance. Not only is it the seal, but God himself has guaranteed it because he's an unchanging God. He is immutable in his nature. Paul says to Titus, "For the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began."

Or even if you look in the sixth chapter of Hebrews, the writer speaks to the inheritance as so assured because God is unchanging. And because he who does not lie has promised two unchangeable things that give us strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope that is set before us. And here we see the third element of salvation, glorification. For now we see through a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. But this is a time to come when we are perfect as God is perfect in the resurrected body like Christ.

This is where the completion of the salvific work is seen. Christ doesn't, sorry, Christianity doesn't promise full resolution in our life now, there is some, right? That's why we're called children, that's why this Spirit helps us, that's why this Spirit leads us, but the full resolution of our belief is in this hope. In what's to come, in this inheritance from God. He has promised this inheritance to his children and because he has promised it, a child cannot be robbed of it.

Look at what Peter says in his first epistle, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. So here you have after being justified, a promise of inheritance, which is kept in heaven until the right time. And in the meantime, God is guarding you through faith for the fullness of salvation to take effect.

After you are justified, God has promised your glorification, and through that time, he will sanctify you to reach that point. As we've covered, not everybody receives this, only a child. So the question a person could ask themselves is, am I a child of God? But as this passage in Romans is not about questioning of faith, as I mentioned before, this is about the assurance of your salvation. The more correct and deeper truth to understand is this.

Since you are a child of God, if indeed you are, you have been given assure and unchanging hope. So there's no need for fear, there's no need for anxiety. In fact, we should be reminding ourselves of Romans 8:38 and 39, it says, "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, no rulers, nor things present, nor things come, nor powers, height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Nothing will be able to separate us.

But that doesn't mean there won't be pain. It doesn't mean there won't be suffering. See, we are called heirs and therefore we will face suffering. Look at verse 17, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. There's a reason that Paul introduces the command to not fall back into slavery of fear. Suffering shouldn't frighten us. In fact, suffering is a characteristic of your life.

Christ said, "Pick up your cross, follow me." And we look to Christ, the one who suffered the man of sorrows. And since we are sons in the likeness of the son, in the likeness of Christ, so our lives should also mirror him in living righteously. And when you live this way, you will suffer. And if we like him suffer for the sake of righteousness, because we have the identity as children of God, then we like him will be resurrected and we will be glorified.

John 15 says this, "If the world hates, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me."

We are a colony of heaven, living in a hell dominated world. We are children of God, living in a world that is ruled by the prince of the power of the air. But the mindset of a Christian should be that of peace that surpasses all understanding. And the peace of God, this is the full assurance of our salvation, the full assurance of our adoption, the full assurance that God promises to his children. And he leads us to say that we can do all things in Christ who strengthens us.

It's by this strength, working through the Spirit that we mortified, that we slay. We put to death, our sinful nature, the deeds of the flesh. God is working in us all things to bring about the obedience of faith in us, to bring many sons to glory. Hebrews 12 says, "It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

So through all this suffering, we feel the pangs of childbirth. I can still remember how much of a struggle labor was for my wife, all 22 hours of labor, all 12 hours of intense labor. I was there. I saw the progression of nine months, the burdens and the struggles of this baby that was being knit in the womb. But I also remember the joy of seeing his face Friday morning, my wife and I knew that all of the suffering, all of the pain, most of which she had to do was worth it because of this little face.

And that's the same way we're told to think of glorification, we endure the pain and the suffering now, because what is coming from it is so much better. And it's endurance that characterizes our sanctification. Jesus tells us in Matthew 10, you will be hated by all for my names sake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. Our inheritance should calm all anxiety, it should calm all fear, it should answer most, if not all our questions on how we should live, on who we are. It should comfort us to receive discipline, to receive chastisement because it is proof that we are the children of God.

You see these verses are written to strengthen, to encourage the Christian that suffering is producing in you the end goal of your hope. And we look forward to the true land, the true promised land, just like the biblical heroes of old, who all sought the kingdom whose foundation was designed and build by God himself. 1st Peter says, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him though. You do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." So therefore you children of our father in heaven, heirs of God, heirs with Christ, you are led to slay the deeds and desires of your flesh, abide in the good shepherd, in his leading, whether he leads you through valleys of shadow and death or to green pastures.

For you are guided to the end goal of the inheritance which he has promised, to a kingdom that has foundations that are built and designed by God. Yes, there will be pain. Yes, there will be suffering, but our God is a good God who can deliver us from temptation. He is a light which darkness cannot overcome, a mighty fortress which cannot be broken. So rest in him, be assured of your identity now as a child of God and in the inheritance which he has promised that will come. By that assurance may you being led by the Spirit, put to death sin now, and every day until you are reunited with your father.

Let's pray. Father how gracious and merciful you are, to make us your children, to give us the inheritance of heirs because of the work of Christ, to provide us a home in which to live with you for eternity. God we are in your debt forever. Help us be the people that you call us to be, help us be a holy nation, the imitators of Christ, the reflection of our father. God break our heart for what breaks yours, give us the vision to see where we are failing. Give us the assurance to know that we are more than conquerors through Christ.

And that through the leading of your Spirit, it is both necessary and possible to slay our sin, to mortify the deeds of our flesh. You O God are the author and the finisher of our faith, and it's in your hands. Your unchanging, your unwavering hands that we place our trust, that we place our faith, that we place our lives in order to guide us ever closer to your throne. Abba, Father, help us live in a man worthy of being called a child of God. We pray this in the name of the son in whom we are heir in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

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Good morning, church, and welcome. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I am the teens director here, and it is an honor and it is a privilege to worship with all of you this morning. It is also an added bonus honor and privilege to be able to deliver God's word to all of us today, myself included. If you have been with us, you know that we have been going through the Book of Romans. But for anyone who hasn't been with us, just to catch you up real quick, we are in Romans and today we will be in chapter eight versus five through 11. Paul sets the thesis of the Book of Romans in chapter one as to encourage us into faithful obedience. Last week, Pastor Shane touched on the first few verses of chapter eight, where there's sort of a mini thesis for this chapter.

The thesis is that we are now not under condemnation, praise God, because Christ fulfilled all of the requirements that God required of us. That is the idea that Paul sets in our minds to start. And then the rest of chapter eight, he is building upon that idea. He is building and building and building to the ultimate crescendo that Pastor Shane, I love this quote, has called the party passage, excuse me. The end of chapter eight, if you know those verses, they are some of the most famous in the book. It is a joy. It is a party. It is one of the most great texts to celebrate in the book of the Bible. Today, Paul is trying to set the foundation for that celebration. Have you ever been to a party, a birthday party, for someone you don't know? It's kind of awkward. It's nice. You have a good time, but like, oh yeah, happy birthday.

Then compare that to a party for someone that you actually know deeply and you care about and you love. That is a party. You get to celebrate. You get to rejoice. Before we can get to the rejoicing celebration at the end of chapter eight, Paul is saying, "I'm going to remind you why. I'm going to remind you what the celebration is all about." That is the text that we are in today. Will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word? Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you and we praise you that you have sent your son Jesus to fulfill all the requirements of the law that we could not, to save us from our sin and to bring us into your kingdom. Lord, we thank you that you have blessed us with your Holy Spirit to change our hearts, to sanctify us, to make us more like you.

Lord, help us always daily in all things be submitting to your Spirit, help us to grow in our love for you and our willingness and desire and action and living in the Spirit. Lord, all good things come from you and we praise you for the opportunity to live for you. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. Today, we are in Romans 8:5-11. If you have your Bibles, you could follow along there or you could follow along on the screen in front of you. Here it is, Romans 8:5, it says, "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." This is the reading of God's holy and authoritative infallible word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We will be spending our time in three points today, because I like structure, but three points. The first point, side with the Spirit, the second point, submit to the Spirit, and the third point, live in the Spirit.

The first point, side with the Spirit. This is just verse five, Romans 8:5, again, it says, "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit." The first thing I want to point out in that we really need to understand in order to understand the context of the rest of this text is that Paul uses a very specific word in this verse that we translate as set the mind on. Whereas the rest of the text, Paul uses a different word, because Paul is trying to bring about different emphasis, the different points in those verses. In this verse, the word is forneo, and the idea is to espouse yourself to someone's cause. It's a weird sentence, but it's the idea of marriage and war in one.

One of the things I've learned being at a very international church, a church where the pastor does speaks in other language, is that sometimes the English language has limitations. Sometimes all languages have limitations, but some languages have words that there's just no equal equivalent to in the English language. I would say that this is one of them, because the idea is something. It's not both like war and marriage. It's the commonality, the thrust. What is the same between these two things? It's not that marriage is war. No. Cut that out. Some people thought that was the point. No, it's not the point. The commonality between marriage and war is that the sides are clear. Think about war, especially in biblical times, right? How did you know who was on your side in war?

Well, here's a guy standing next to me. You've got a sword. I've got a sword. You're not trying to kill me. You're going in the same direction as me, so I guess we must be on the same side. It was obvious. If they were to start coming at me and attacking me, well, it's pretty obvious they're on the other side. It's obvious. Marriage, it's obvious. I've been married in three days it'll be four years. Praise God for that. When I am here, I don't look around and be like, "I know I'm married, but which one of you is it again?" No. I know who my wife is. She's not here in this service, so I don't have to... I made her feel awkward in the first service for being here, but I know who she is. There's no doubt. There's no confusion about who my wife is. It's clear. It's black and white.

Similarly, if anybody comes into our relationship and supports our marriage, "Oh, they're on our side. They are with us." And if, God forbid, anybody comes in and tries to tear apart our marriage, I'm going to go to war with them because they are not on our side. They are not with us. Again, the idea of war and marriage here is that it's clear black and white sides. What are the sides? It's the Spirit, and it's the flesh. Those are the two sides. It's clear. There's no in between. There's no gray area. This is the same word that Jesus uses to talk to Peter. In Matthew 16, Jesus tells the disciples, "I'm going to go and die." Peter says, "No, Jesus, you're not going to go and die," and Jesus says to him in verse 23, But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance[a] to me.

For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." Literally it's, "You are not on the side of man. You are not on the side of God, Peter. So get behind me, Satan." It also needs to be clear that this is an identity statement. This is not sometimes we live like this, sometimes we don't. It's an identity. It's who we are. This is what allows Jesus to call Peter Satan, right? Jesus isn't confused. To be clear, Jesus knows who Satan is and he's not like, "Oh, sorry, Peter. I just got confused for a second. I thought that you were Satan. My bad." No, it's an identity issue. The way that Peter was living proved his identity was sided with the flesh, was sided with Satan. It's the same thrust in our text. In verse five it says, "Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh."

The word for live is the word for existing. It's to be. It's you are. Literally it's those who are flesh side with the flesh, those who are Spirit side with the Spirit. It's an identity statement. This identity we need to understand can categorize each and every one of us here today and each and every person who has ever lived. You don't like to categorize people, but there are two sides to this. Either you are in the flesh, or you are in the Spirit. Where are you today? Which side have you aligned yourself with? Have you married to the cause of? If you are in the Spirit, how you know that you are on the side of the Spirit is that Christ is in you and that you are in Christ. This is Paul's favorite phrasing. Over a hundred times in the epistles, he talks about us being in Christ and Christ being in us, because the idea is total and complete surrender to Christ.

That he is our covering. He is our protector. He is our shelter. He is all around us, but also he is in us, meaning he gets to change everything about us. He gets to see all of it. There's nothing that is hidden from him. It is complete and total surrender to Christ. When Christ... We are told that he blesses us, his children, who have surrendered to him with his Holy Spirit. It is when we have the Spirit within us that we know we are in this side of the Spirit. Now, what about the side of the flesh? What determines that? If you have not completely and totally surrendered your life to Christ, you are on the side of the flesh. Those are the two options. There is no in between. Again, if you're here today and you're not a Christian and you're saying, "I have not surrendered my life to Christ," you are in the kingdom of the flesh.

I want to say praise God that you're here. I'm thankful that you are here, and I'm thankful that you are listening to what I have to say, because it's not my words, it's God's words. I want you to know you don't have to stay on the side of the flesh. You don't have to stay in the kingdom of the flesh. You see, the thing is I used to be on the side of the flesh. Every single human being who has ever lived was formerly sided with the flesh. But it is because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that he came in and died on the cross for our sins. God literally sent his own son into the midst of the battlefield, into the opposing kingdom to come and conquer them, and he did so by dying to save us. You can side with the Spirit. You can join in the kingdom of God. Paul did this. Paul is writing very personally.

He used to be Saul. Saul was killing Christians, but he wasn't just like, "Oh, this seems like a fun thing to do." No, he was passionate. He was like, "This is what God wants of me. This is my purpose. This is my goal. I am fighting the good fight." And then he changed. What made him change? He had an encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, where he realized he was fighting on the wrong side this whole time. He thought he was right. He was wrong. He knew he needed to change sides and fight for God's kingdom, and he has. That's what he's doing. That's why he's writing this letter. Another way we could say it is we can all be a Colin Anson's. Does anybody know who Colin Anson is? Nobody for our service knew who he is either. I didn't know who he was until I started preparing for the sermon.

But Colin Anson was formerly known as Claus Ascher. If you couldn't tell, that's a German name. Claus' father was a soldier in World War I for the German army and Claus loved his father. He loved Germany and historians have described him as, I find this hysterical, as Aryan as it gets, blonde hair, blue eyes, tall, good looking. He is everything that the Aryans were looking for. He was raised in Germany with a father who was a patriot, loved Germany, fought for Germany. He naturally wanted to follow his father's footsteps. He wanted to go to war for his country. Thing was, Colin wasn't old enough to enlist yet. While he was waiting to become of age, Hitler came in and took power and started ruling over Germany. And then Colin turned 18. He is able to enlist and he enlisted.

He enlisted in the army of Great Britain. Why Great Britain? Well, because Colin recognized he was on the wrong side. He recognized he was fighting for the wrong kingdom, that that was not where he was meant to be. When asked specifically why he enlisted with Great Britain, this is what Colin said. He said, "The war had broken out and we felt it was our affair as much as anyone else's. We were very aware of the generosity and compassion of Britain. We owed a debt to this country for saving our lives." Friends, this is the gospel. This is the gospel that we were in the kingdom of the flesh. We were on the wrong side. We see the other side that is fighting against us, the kingdom of God, and we see the goodness. We see the generosity. We see the compassion of God on us.

We say, "God, you've saved my life. You've sent your son against who save us. I owe you this debt. I'm not only being a turncoat. I'm leaving my own country to join yours, but I'm also fighting for your cause now." Colin was enlisted. He was a soldier. He fought in the war. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, I'm here to tell you, look at the goodness and compassion of God who loved you enough to send his son for you to save you. He is willing. He has set you free from this kingdom. Except that my favorite verse that talks about this idea comes from the Book of Joshua. It's a verse that is hung in our home. It used to be the first thing that you would see as soon as you walked into our home, but now there's nowhere to hang that, so it's in a different spot, but it's still there.

In Joshua 24:14-15, it says, "Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in the land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." This is our call. My challenge to you today, choose this day whom you will serve. If you are in the kingdom of the Spirit, praise God, commit to serving him. If you are in the kingdom of the flesh, I urge you to commit to Christ to change, to run to the good, glorious king and submit your life to him. Do not submit to the gods of the land we dwell in, right?

There are lots of gods vying for our affection and submission in the world around us. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. This was Joshua's statement, and this is my statement. Me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We have made this commitment. We all, as Christians, need to make this commitment. We will serve the Lord because we are sided with his Spirit. We know what he has done. Again, as Pastor Shane talked about last week, we know the sacrifice Christ made for us, that he saves us. He brings us out. We can now live for him. Now, we are called to submit to the Spirit. It is once we are sided with him that we want to do what the Spirit wants us to do, right? This is verse six through eight.

Verses six through eight in our text that says, "For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Here, again, Paul is using a different word that we translate for setting the mind on. The idea is the faculty of fixing one's mind on something. It's the ability, the intent of focusing solely on one thing. Naturally, if those who are in the flesh set their mind on the flesh, it is death. Why is it death? Because it is in opposition to God. It is opposed to the life-giving God of the universe, so naturally it leads to death. But to set the mind on the Spirit, to focus on the gospel and the goodness of God on his Spirit, on all that he has done for us is life and peace.

Why? Because God is a God who gives life and gives peace. One of the things that we need to work on as Christians and all of us regardless is, do we train our minds? Do we think about the thoughts we're having and decide if they're good or bad, and then correct them and then work on it? This is actually really important. It's vital because it's part of the greatest commandment in scripture. Someone asked Jesus, "What is the greatest commandment?" This comes from Matthew 22:36-37. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" Sometimes we are tempted to only take this holistically. We should take it holistically. The idea is that every single part of us needs to surrender and love God. Everything. There's nothing safe from him.

But it's also specific for a reason. He doesn't just say, "Oh, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, love God." He doesn't say, "Just with everything you have, love God." He is specific for a reason. He says specifically your heart and your soul and your mind. The heart and soul, that's a whole other sermon. We could get into that for a long period of time. But we have to surrender our soul, our identity, our being, who we are to God. Our heart, our desires need to be surrendered to him and to love him with them, but also our mind and all of it. Every single part of it. Every thought we have, we need to submit to the Spirit. This can reveal itself in a few ways. The first question is, did you know that we need to even submit logic to the Spirit? If you're like me, you're saying, "Whoa! Hold on. God is a God of logic."

Amen. Praise God. He is a God of logic. However, his logic is greater than our logic. Thinking about Jesus calling Peter Satan, I have to tell you something. Peter was the most logical disciple in the room that day in terms of earthly logic, right? Jesus, you said you're Messiah coming to save us, and then you tell us you're going to die. Jesus, I don't know if you know, but you can't save us if you're dead. That's logic, but that's earthly logic. The reason why Jesus says to get behind him, that he's in a hindrance, that he's in the way is because he's not following the logic of God, God's logic. God knew that Jesus needed to go to the cross to die. That is how we are saved. Nothing else. When we have thoughts and we're reasoning through things, do we bring God into that conversation?

Do we ask God, is this true? Is this right? Is this logical? Do we have positions or stances that we hold onto that we have come to that conclusion simply by earthly logic? Are we willing to go to God and say, "What do you say about this topic instead?" Whatever topic it is, it doesn't matter. This is what we have to be doing with everything. Every position we hold, every stance we take needs to be from the Spirit, from God, from his word, not from our own human logic. Another question, do you knowingly have any areas in your mind that you do not submit to God's law? Are there things that God says to do or not do? They're like, "Meh, I'm going to skip that one. I'm going to not pay attention to that one. I don't like that one." An easy way to see if we have this in our hearts is to fill in the blanks to these questions.

If God did blank, I couldn't believe in him, or I couldn't believe in a godlike blank. You fill in those blanks with whatever you want, whatever you've heard. Do we have those types of statements? I know I have. I know I've had many conversations with people about this as well. But as I've grown in my faith, I've tried to out Christian that idea, If you know what I mean. I tried to Jesus-juke and be like, "Well, I know scripture says God won't lie, so I can never believe in a God that would lie. Because I know the one true God isn't like that." I could say that safely. I got to tell you something, my heart was not submitting to God when I said that. Why? Because the whole point about God is that he is transcendent. He is greater than us. He is above us. We have no control to dictate anything about him.

Even if it is true about him, I don't get to say, "God, I'd only believe in you if you are like you are," because then I am trying to usurp authority over God and say, "I have some control of you in some area of my life." I chose an area where I wasn't submitting to God. Is there any area like that in our lives where maybe even we've tried to like out Christian and be like, "Oh, I know God is like this and not like that, so I'll say I can't believe in God." Well, it's showing that our heart's desire is to usurp God, to put ourselves over him. When I think about this, I think of the clearest example in my mind is Abraham, right? How many of us would say, "I would never believe in a God who would tell me to kill my own son?" God did that. He told Abraham to do it, and then he saved him.

He stopped him. He didn't kill his son. He provided deliverance and salvation, because, again, God's logic is greater than our logic. God's ways are greater than our ways, but it seemed like that might be something safe to say, right? I couldn't believe in God who did that, but he did and Abraham still believed. Abraham did not doubt. Abraham trusted. And not just in commands and in laws, but are there just anything in scripture at all that we pick and choose? I don't like that text. It's a theological ideal I don't want to deal with. That one was in the Old Testament. We're not in the Old Testament anymore. Oh, that one was written by Paul. I don't like Paul. We've been in Paul a lot. I'm sorry. But these are things that I have all heard, but we don't get to pick parts of scripture to listen to or not listen to.

We have to submit fully to it. Why? Because God is greater than us. He is God. Two chapters ago about God's law, Paul said God's law is good because it is spiritual. God's law, the commandments, his words in scripture are good because it is spiritual. It is what breathes life in us. Again, Spirit leads to life is what our text says in verse six. The idea is, yeah, everything God says, God does, who God is, is what brings us life. It's only when we submit fully to him, we can fully enjoy that life. If we have any areas in our mind we are holding back on, we will not fully enjoy that life that we have been blessed with. This is something we need to do proactively and not reactively. What I mean is it's not like, "Oh, I didn't realize there was a debate about this topic. Let me try and think, or, oh, I didn't realize this was an area of my life I wasn't submitting to God. Let me do it now."

Please do that. Submit to God in those moments when those revelations come, but we also need to proactively be submitting to the Spirit. Every single day we need to be asking God to change our hearts, change who we are, so that we are submitting to him in our thoughts especially. I love how 1 Peter... Peter, again, the one that chooses called Satan after he's been redeemed, talks about it this way. In 1 Peter 1:13 he says, "Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'"

The conclusion is be holy in all your conduct, in the way you live. How do we get there? It starts preparing your mind for action and being sober minded. How do we do that? We set our hope fully on the grace that will be to you at the revelation of Christ. What this is talking about is the same thing in our text, setting your mind on the Spirit. We focus our minds on the gospel. In everything we do, we think, how does the gospel speak to this? When life is hard, am I looking to Christ? Am I looking to the gospel? Am I looking to the love of God, or am I looking to myself? We're preparing, right? Proactive every day. Again, we're continuing the theme of war and marriage here. Marriage, do you just like, "Oh cool. There's a person. Let's get married." No. You prepare for marriage.

You got to work on stuff. I had to change stuff. My wife had... We all have to work on ourselves to prepare ourselves for marriage. Going to war, do you think soldiers only submit to their commanding officers once the battle starts? I have not been in war. I've not been in any form of service, but I guarantee you can ask anybody who has and they will tell you it's trained in them very, very early on that you submit to your commanding officer, even during training, every single day. No questions asked. That is your job. In the same way, how foolish would we be? If we only started preparing our minds once difficulties arose? How silly would that be? We are called to prepare our minds ahead of time, to prepare ourselves for action, for what we are called to do and being sober minded.

What does it mean, being sober minded? It's the idea that once you're in the battle, you're clearheaded. You know what to do, because you've trained for it. You don't get thrown into the battlement like, "I've not been prepared for this at all. What am I going to do, God? I guess, I don't know. I don't know." No. We are told in scripture what to do. God encourages us. He leads us in the Spirit. When we're preparing ourselves daily, even when we aren't faced with difficulties and temptations, when we get into those moments, we're able to say, "Oh, I know what to do here. I go to God. I go to him in prayer. I seek out community," whatever it is in that situation. We can know what it is when we prepare our minds ahead of time, when we are focused on the gospel and we are focused on the grace that is to come to us.

And that is what allows us to live in the Spirit. Yes, it is the Spirit first transforming us, bringing us into the kingdom of the Spirit through the works of Christ. Then we work on sanctifying our minds and our thoughts, and then we can sanctify our life, our actions. Again, I should be crystal clear about this in wording. The Spirit is the one who brings change, but we can submit to the Spirit to let the Spirit bring that change in us. Point three, live in the Spirit. This is verses nine through 11 where it says, "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

Excuse me. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." Quick theological point to make here. In verse nine, he uses the word if. We've been talking about it's clear. It's black and white. There are two sides. There's no debating. There's no, is Paul starting to question. He says, "If the Spirit is in you." No, he's not questioning. This is a conditional statement. He's saying if the Spirit is in you, you are in the Spirit. That's how it works. But also he's not giving a false sense of security. What do I mean by this? In Romans 1:10, we find out that Paul has never met the Christians at the church in Rome. He doesn't know them. He doesn't know them personally.

Paul knows that this letter is going to be read aloud to the church as a whole, and Paul does not want anyone in the congregation to have false assurance that they are in the side with the Spirit if they are actually with the flesh. He's not going to have it proclaimed, "You are all in the Spirit. Praise God." Well, he doesn't know. In the same way that today I started to clarify, there's Spirit and there's flesh. Some of us are on one side, some of us on the other. I would never stand up here and say, "Praise God, you're all in the Spirit," because I don't know. I don't know. We don't want to give anybody false senses of security because then you get complacent and then you don't see the need. I don't want you to have a false sense of security if you are in the flesh, because I want you to know, again, that the life in the Spirit is so much greater and I want you to join the kingdom of God.

It is glorious. Then in verse 10, a very interesting phrase that stood out to me, "But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness." It's a very interesting phrase, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. This broke my mind a little bit. I thought it would be the opposite. I thought it would be that the Spirit is life, which leads to righteousness. It's the Spiritual life that leads to righteousness. But no, it actually says the opposite. It's righteousness that leads to the Spirit of life. How is that possible? What was it talking about? Well, first, we need to understand what righteousness is. Righteousness is complete and total alignment with the will of God. It is that faithful obedience in all things to the will of God.

If God is life giver, complete alignment with his will leads to life. That makes sense. But what about sinful people? What about when we sin? Well, praise be to God that, again, last week, Shane talked about that it was Jesus who fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law. It is the Spirit that applies the righteousness of Christ to us. So that when we si, God the Father doesn't look at us and say, "Oh, you made a mistake. Condemn to death." No, it is that God looks at us and sees the righteousness of Christ and says, "There is life. I give you life. I breathe life into you." That is why it's righteousness that leads to life. It's not our righteousness, it's the righteousness of Christ. Similarly, Christ was perfect, right? This is why he was able to save us. He lived a life of perfect faithful obedience.

That's why he was able to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law, and so is the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we don't think about that. We only think about Jesus as being perfect, but the Holy Spirit is perfect too. The Holy Spirit is in complete total alignment with the will of God, and it's the Spirit within us that we are given that allows us to become aligned with God's will and to live in life in the Spirit. In verse 11, it's talking about this idea of our mortal bodies being brought to life. This has a dual meaning. It's a dual purpose here. First and foremost, the idea is that there's going to come a day where we will all die. The Spirit of God is powerful enough to raise that dead body to life for eternity in heaven with God, for eternal glory. Death itself cannot stop the power of the Spirit from doing what it has set out to do.

But the other idea is that our mortal bodies that we still have now can be brought to life. What do I mean by that? It's not that I'm like, "Oh great, Holy Spirit, have me lose 20 pounds. Good. That's better life. I feel better about myself. Great. The Holy Spirit has brought my dead body to life. Praise." No, it's not what it's talking about. What it's talking about is the most sinful areas of our life. You know those parts that you don't let anybody else know about? The parts just rotten flesh, disgusting and gross. The Spirit is powerful enough to even bring that to life. There is no sin to great that the Spirit cannot raise to life within our mortal bodies. This is why we need the Spirit to change us. We can't do it on our own. The Spirit is the one that leads to this. Again, we've been talking about Spirit, flesh, Spirit, flesh.

I realize this in the first service, I'm doing it again. Now, I'm not pointing to this side for spear and this side for flesh for any other reason. Nothing against you guys. It's just... Anyway, but so how does living in the Spirit relate to those who are in the Spirit, and how does living in the Spirit relate to those who are in the flesh? There are two categories. The way we live with one another if we are in the Spirit or the other people are in the flesh is different. It is different. In Colossians 3, we get to see what we are called to live like as Christians with other Christians, as people on the side of the Spirit with others on the side of the Spirit. Colossians 3:12-17 says this, "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." I love this text. I read it at a friend's wedding. It's great. It is talking about the church though, but it's talking about not just a church service, it's talking about the life of Christians, what we live like as Christians. When we look at this list, where are we not living in the Spirit?

Where are we not submitting to the... Maybe we have to go back to the mind and say, "Oh, I haven't submitted my thoughts to God on this, so therefore, my life isn't changing." But where do we need to submit? Compassionate hearts, do we have compassionate hearts for each other? When we see someone who is hurting, who is broken, do we actually care about them? Are we actually moved to do something to care for them? Patience, do we have patience with one another, bearing with one another even when we have a complaint against each other? This is a big one, and I'm calling it out specifically because it's actually very important. Christ himself says a house divided against itself cannot stand. Christians, if we are divided against ourselves, we will not stand.

We will not. We need to be patient bearing with one another and forgiving each other as Christ forgave us. When a brother or sister in the church sins against you, do you forgive them or do you write them off and say, "Ah, I'm not dealing with that person anymore?" Do you leave them? Do you abandon them? Again, in the war and marriage analogy, that's not how those things work. Praise God, that's not how marriage works, right? My wife can't just be like, "Hmm, I got to complain against you. Bye." Praise God. But praise God that I'm also called to lovingly, sacrificially love her and change and not cause her to have complaints against me, but that's not how it works. In war, can you imagine being sent into the battlefield with someone, going to war together and being like, "I don't like you anymore. Bye. Peace."

How horrific is that? How much must we hate that person to do that? And then we are called to forgive. We are called to reconcile. We are called to bear with one another, to be compassionate to one another. It is vital for the life of the church. Do we let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts? Do we look at our own hearts and be like, "Oh, that's a peaceful place. I want to spend all day there." I don't know anybody in Boston who thinks that way like, "Yeah, my heart's completely at peace all the time." Well, that's why it says we need to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, not just make your heart peaceful, but let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts because Christ is the one who provides peace. It's the Spirit that says leads to life and peace. Do we do that? Do we let Christ's peace rule us?

Are we thankful? I like this one too. It's just one sentence, but it's three words in English. And be thankful. Are we thankful? Do we recognize all the things that we have, our gift from God. The only reason why we're alive and able to enjoy anything that is happening in this world is because God allows us to be alive. Do we thank him? Do we complain more than we are thankful? Do we complain at all? We shouldn't be complaining because we have nothing to complain about. Yes, I understand life can be hard sometimes and there are things that upset us, but God is greater than those things that we should be thankful to him. When we sing praises, when we sing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, are we thankful then to? Praise God, both services, people were clapping after some of the songs.

Awesome. A sign of thankfulness to God. Praise him for it. But that's not what determines it. In our hearts, are we actually recognizing that we are in God's presence, singing to him thankful that we are even able to worship him because he saved us from the kingdom of the flesh into the kingdom of the Spirit? Last week with the teens in the evenings, we talked about worship and we talked about how we are called to worship in joyfulness and thanksgiving. You got to do both. It doesn't mean you're always happy, but it means you're joyful because we know that God is here. We are actually reality singing to him. In case there's anything that you're thinking about in terms of actions and the way we live with one another, that you're like, "Whew! Thankfully, that's not in that list. Thankfully, Tyler didn't bring that up."

Well, Paul's got us covered. Verse 17, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, again and again, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Giving thanks is really important. But in anything we do, word or deed, is it in alignment with Christ? Here's a way to be thinking about it. Do we recognize that everything we say and do directly reflects who Christ is to everyone else? Think about something you've done or said and been like, "If people saw Jesus do that, what would they think?" I'm a '90s kid. Sorry, but we had the most amazing thing in the world back then. They were called WWJD bracelets. I think some of you know what I'm talking... No, okay. I mean, they're not perfect. They're not great. But the whole concept was what would Jesus do?

To ask yourself before doing anything, is this something Jesus would do, or what would Jesus do in this situation? There's some truth to that. That's what this text is talking about. I'm not saying we need to bring them back. I'm not saying we're not supposed to bring them back either. '90s are coming back. But everything we do is a reflection of Christ. Do we recognize that? And then we are called to live differently with those who are not in Christ, not in the Spirit. Well, how are we called to live in the Spirit? When we are with those who are not in the Spirit, when we are with those who live in the flesh? We have one purpose. We have one purpose. This purpose can take many different forms or look in different ways, but we have one purpose and Christ Jesus is very explicit about it.

In Acts 1:8, he says this, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." As Christians, our purpose in this world when we are not just congregating with other believers is to always be witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Wherever we go, whoever we are with, that is our sole purpose. Jesus says that's the purpose he sent the Spirit for in us, that we have the power of the Spirit to do it. Now, what about non-Christian family? What about non-Christian friends? What does that mean for them? Praise God. Love your non-Christian friends. Love your non-Christian family. You should have friends who aren't Christians, and you should genuinely care about them.

This isn't a facade to be like, "Oh, I'm subverting them to get them to hear the gospel." No. You need to actually care about people who aren't Christians. Why? Because we were there. Again, we were in the kingdom of the flesh. We know what it is like and want better for them. We want the ultimate good. We want the goodness of God for them. We love them. We are witnesses to the gospel to them in word, not just deed. Also in deed, but also in word. We are called to be explicit with our language, to be my witnesses in Jerusalem. Witnesses is not... You don't just go to a place to be a witness and then start doing something. If you're called to be a witness in court, you don't just like start caring for people that they call you in contempt of court. You have to say things.

But this doesn't mean that every time we're with people who aren't Christians, we're like, "So are you a Christian yet? Do you believe in God yet?" No. No. But are we able to know them, to care about them well enough to see how the gospel actually applies to them specifically. To say, "I understand what you're going through in your life right now and here's how Jesus transforms that. It makes it so much better, so much greater. Here is the love and generosity of God for you right now." Whatever we do wherever we are, whether we're with Christians, not with Christians, we need to submit to the Spirit and we need to live for him. Totally, in everything we do, we want all of our actions to be wholly and acceptable to God. Let's live for him. Amen.

All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you and thank you that you have sent your son to save us out of this kingdom of flesh. That we are now into your kingdom of the Spirit and that we can live in the Spirit. Lord, we thank you for the blessing that it is to have your Spirit. Lord, transform our minds, renew our minds, make our minds in complete and total alignment with you. Help us to live with one another in harmony in a way that proclaims the gospel to those who see it and help us to be witnesses of your kingdom, to be witnesses wherever we go, because we know your kingdom is good. We know your kingdom is life and peace. Lord, give us the boldness to be that witness. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

God, first of all, we just thank you for the kids of Mosaic, and just what a tremendous blessing that they are. God, we pray for them, we pray for their families. We pray that You would bless the kids' summer nights this year and everybody that's working so hard to put that together. Lord, we thank You for all the brothers and sisters in Christ that are not only working on that, but are down in Mini Mosaic every week just being a blessing and service to our children. God, we thank You for these kids, but we thank You also that You have made us Your kids, that You have made us Your heavenly father through Your son, Jesus Christ. You have adopted us into Your family. God, I just pray that You would help us to grasp what good news that truly is for us, that our salvation is not contingent upon anything that we have done or need to do, but fully upon what You have done for us in Christ.

And that Lord, just as we did nothing to contribute to our conception or physical birth, we can do nothing to save ourselves, but it is Your spirit alone who regenerates hearts and causes us to be born again. We enter Your household by sheer grace through faith in Your son Jesus Christ and we thank You for this amazing grace. We pray also Lord, that Your grace taught us would not be in vain, that You have done a great work for us and we pray now that You do a great work in us, so that by the power of your Holy Spirit, You could do a great work through us for the sake of Your mission, Your kingdom, and Your glory. Lord, we thank You for this time. We pray that You just speak to us today through this amazing passage of scripture that we have. We pray all this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

All right. Well, today is an exciting day. I think first of all summer is officially here and so you might see me breaking a sweat up here today, but that's not really why I'm excited. I'm excited because we finally have made our way to Romans Chapter Eight. If you were here at the beginning of the series of Romans, we talked about how the Bible, holy scripture, is without comparison, the most important, the most influential book in human history. Nothing else even comes close. You cannot begin to understand the world as it is today if you have not read the Bible. But within the Bible, we talked about how the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, is arguably most influential letter within the most influential book.

Today, as we come to Romans Chapter Eight, if you are familiar with the Book of Romans, you know that within the Book of Romans, this is a halfway point, it's the summit, it's the peak, it is the crowning jewel of Paul's letter. It is arguably the most influential chapter, within the most influential letter, within the most influential book, that has ever been written. This chapter has been called the inner sanctuary within the cathedral of the Christian faith.

Have you ever had a really exciting story to tell, and you just can't wait to get to the point of it, but you know that you can't do that because if you just jumped straight to the point that the people that you're telling this to, they're not going to grasp the full weightiness of just how great of a point that you're trying to make? A few weeks ago, my son Owen is 10 years old, he just finished up the baseball season this past week. And a few weeks ago during baseball, Owen got a base hit. That's the point of the story. But if that's all I tell you, you haven't even begun to grasp the point.

And so let me set this up. A few weeks ago, Owen's team began the playoffs. It's a double elimination tournament and they lost their first game. What that meant is they went into the loser's bracket and if they lost one more time, their season would be over. And so in the second game of the playoffs, they're losing the entire game. It's the bottom of the last inning, there are two outs, but there are runners on second and third. The team had been down the whole game. They made a little bit of a comeback in the last inning, but victory was just within grasp, but not quite there, and Owen is up to bat and he has three balls and two strikes, full count. This next pitch is going to determine everything. If he strikes out, the inning is over, the game is over, the season is over, they finish last place and he becomes that poor kid that struck out in the last inning and blew the game for everyone. The pressure was insane.

Now, within that context, you understand the weightiness, the gravity of my words, when I say Owen got a base hit and he hit in, drove in the winning runs to win that game. Actually his team, after that, they came back and they made their way all the way up to the championship game and they beat the defending team in the first game 26 to seven, and then they lost the second game, which ruins the story. But you get the point. You can't just jump straight to the point, sometimes you need some context. And what Paul has been doing in his letter to the Romans is you can sense his excitement as he gets to Romans Chapter Eight, as he gets to the big idea, to the big point, but he's taken his time for the last seven chapters setting up the context so that we can really feel how great, how good, this good news really is.

In the first couple of chapters, he presents, he lays out the human problem that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that the wages of sin is death. He builds this argument, this case that proves that we all actually know that. Deep down in our hearts and our souls we know that we are not as we ought to be, and that we are deserving of judgment.

Then for a couple chapters, he presents the divine solution, that even though we have all sinned and that the wages of sin is death, that we can be justified freely by grace through Jesus Christ, because Christ has made propitiation for our sins on the cross. But then right as he gets there, he takes this unexpected detour, and for a couple of chapters Paul begins to answer the objections that he is anticipating from his critics. He does this in order to show definitively how bad our problem really is. That it's not just that we're sinful, it's that we are sinful beyond all measure, and that even something as good and perfect and holy as the law of God, this is Romans Chapter Seven, even the law is powerless to save us. The law cannot make us good. It can show us what is good, but all it can really do for us is show us how far from good we really are.

Paul brings us back down deep into the pit, right up to the brink of utter hopelessness and despair. At the end of Romans Chapter Seven, he just says, "Wretched man that I am. Who can deliver me from this body of death?" What hope could we possibly have to overcome the presence and the power and the penalty of our sin, of our depravity, that we are all guilty, we are all without excuse, we have no defense, we are not worthy of anything but judgment, and judgment is coming and deep down we all know it.

Then all of a sudden in Romans Chapter Seven, Verse 25, Paul makes this sudden shift, and it's like in a symphony, he begins this crescendo in verse 25 and he says, "But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and then he launches into Chapter Eight of our text today with this triumphant proclamation that, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." How can he say that? That's what we're going to be looking at in our text today.

If you would please look at Romans Chapter Eight, we're going to be looking at verses one through four together this morning. This is Romans Eight and beginning in Verse One. The apostle Paul says this, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done, with the law, weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." This is the reading of God's holy word for us today.

As we look at this text, I have three questions that I want you to ask yourself this morning. First of all, what has God done for you? Do you know what God has done for you? Second, what is God doing in you? And then thirdly, what could God do through you? The first question that we need to ask, it's not what must we do for God in order to justify ourselves or be saved? It's what has God done for us? We all know this, but this is what sets Christianity apart from every other worldview, every other philosophy, every other religion, is this idea of grace.

Going back to the beginning of Romans, Paul begins Romans Chapter One, and he tells us that, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." This is good news, in a strange way. It's bad news for us. It's good news because what this means is that God is good and because God is good, God is just, and in order for God to be just, then He must condemn sin. But now that's bad news for us because we are sinners.

Why is Paul so excited in Romans Chapter Eight? Well, we get a clue to that a little bit later on when he gets to Romans Chapter Three. He says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith." And why did He do that? He says, "This was to show God's righteousness," because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just, and the justifier of those, of the one who has faith in Jesus.

This is the miracle of the gospel, that through Christ God is both just and justifier, that God upholds His justice by properly condemning sin on the cross, proving Himself to be just, but He also in upholding His justice is upholding His mercy as well, by taking that condemnation upon Himself, proving to also be the justifier of those who have faith in Christ. And this is what God has done for us. And the question is why would God do that? Why would He sacrifice so much to justify us who are so unworthy?

1 John Four, the Apostle John in Verse Nine, says, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His own Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

What is it that makes you a Christian? Are you a Christian because you love God? If you think that loving God is what makes you a Christian, scripture says you might not be a Christian. That God doesn't love you because you're loving. He doesn't love you because you're lovely. Your love for God, yeah, that may show that you are a Christian, but you are not a Christian because you love God. The only reason you are a Christian is because God has loved you. That God first loved you. He chose you. He adopted you as His own. And so does that mean that God's love, sometimes we hear this phrase God's unconditional love, is God's love unconditional? No, not exactly. God's love is not universal. It's not unconditional. It is actually completely conditional, but the good news is that it's not conditional upon us. It's conditional upon the character of God the Father. It's conditional upon the sacrifice of God the Son, that God is love. We do not define the love. Love is defined by the character of God. And He has manifest His love by sending His Son to come, to seek, and to save us who were lost.

And so back to our passage, Paul says at the very beginning, he just kind of bursts into this excitement of, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." In Greek, what he actually says, "Is no therefore now condemnation," which doesn't make a whole lot of sense in English. But if you understand the way that Greek sentences are structured, the point is he is trying to powerfully emphasize the no, the noneness of our condemnation, which stands in total contrast to the fullness of the condemnation that we actually deserve.

We talked about this earlier, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's Romans 3:23. That the wages of that sin is death. That's Romans 6:23. And so how can Paul say now that there's no condemnation? Well, he goes on in Verse Three and he tells us, "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending His own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." That where there was no hope, where there was no way, God made a way. He made a way to justly condemn sin in Christ on the cross, while at the same time mercifully justifying sinners. And this is the gospel.

He says that God the Father sent God the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And notice that word likeness there. Jesus did not come in sinful flesh. Jesus never sinned. Jesus was fully God, and yet he was fully man. He took on flesh. He was incarnate. But like Adam before the fall, Jesus did not have a sin nature. And so what that means is that Jesus faced all the limitations of a human body. He faced all the temptations that we experienced in a fallen world, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, He lived every moment of His life from the cradle to the grave without sin. He loved the Lord His God with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength continually and loved His neighbor as Himself perfectly. And so being fully man, Jesus had to be fully man, because what this meant was that He could stand as a worthy substitute in humanity's place. He was one of us. He could represent us. But being fully divine, He could also stand as a worthy sacrifice, capable of actually paying that debt and in doing so, He actually defeats Satan, sin, and death itself.

So Verse Four says that by sending Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, that this is the reason that God sent Christ, this is the reason He came, was to deal with our sin. God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus in order that the righteous requirement of the law may actually be fulfilled in us, that Jesus took our condemnation and exchanged it for His justification, that God the Father declares Jesus guilty so that we could be declared perfectly righteous. That all the penalty that our sin deserved was placed on Christ. It was imputed to Him at the cross and there, and all of His righteousness is imputed to us, all the glory that His righteousness deserved is given to us by grace, through faith. That the curse of our lawbreaking fell on Him so that the blessing of His law keeping could be given to us.

And so before we begin to consider what God wants to do in us or through us we need to just sit in this and be immersed, be overwhelmed, by what God has done for us. That God has done what even the law weakened by our flesh could not do. He's saved us from the penalty of our sin. And He has now hidden our lives in Christ. That's the language that Paul uses in Ephesian, that your life in Christ, you are hidden in Christ. And so think of it like this. We're going to talk a bit about sanctification. Sanctification is the power of Christ's life in you. Justification is the position of your life hidden in Christ. That if you are in Christ, that right now, when God the Father looks at you, He sees Christ's perfection, that all of your sins past, present, future, they were nailed to the cross. It's done. It's finished. They're forgiven, forgotten, cast to the bottom of the sea. Scripture says removed as far as the east is from the west.

That all of our debt was transferred to Christ on the cross and He paid it in full with His blood. And now by grace God credits Jesus righteousness to us and it is sitting on our ledger, that you are in Christ and Christ is in you. And so now do you begin to understand why the Apostle Paul is so excited? Do you remember who this guy was like? This is Paul, the persecutor of Jesus Christ, the persecutor of the church, the murderer of Christians, the blasphemer, that this man, now in Christ, has been given the full assurance of the Father's eternal unfailing love. The full assurance that God the Father is never going to rub his sin in his face again.

And it's not just that Paul got a second chance. We're not talking about a blank slate where you can go and try to do better next time. What we're talking about is actually Paul's given Jesus' slate. It's like imagine Jesus is the big brother. Paul's the little brother. Paul's the class clown. He's failing out of every subject in school. Jesus is the is the valedictorian and on the way home to Dad, to show their report cards, Jesus takes them, He swaps the names. Paul gets to go home and show this perfect record to the Father and experience the perfect pleasure of the Father. Not because of what he's done, but because of what His brother Christ has done for him. And you begin to get, get a sense of what has Paul so excited in this chapter.

Psalm 103, 11 and 12 says that, "As high as the heavens are above the earth so great as His steadfast love to those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from us." This is why we sometimes sing Amazing Grace or we sing the song Scandalous Grace, that this is amazing, this is scandalous. It seems almost too good to be true. And really the reason that Paul had taken that detour around Chapter Six and Seven is to answer the objections of those who were claiming that, "Yeah, this actually is too good to be true, that you can't preach this, that you can't go around telling people this message of grace, this message of complete forgiveness, that there's no condemnation. Because if you go around talking about this amazing grace, well then aren't you just taking away people's motivation to not sin? Aren't you just going to encourage them to sin more?" And Paul says, "No. If that's what you think, then you've still yet to understand grace."

And that brings us to the second question today, that God's grace doesn't set us free in order to sin or for sin. God's grace sets us free from sin. And so Paul goes on and he says, Romans back to Romans 8:1, "There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death." That grace, it takes us out of this impersonal realm of religion and law and it brings us into the personal realm of relationship and love. And this is pretty easy for us to understand if we think about it in human terms. Like if I sin against my wife and I go and I beg her for forgiveness and she forgives me, I don't think, "That was so easy. I'm going to go do that again because now I know she's just going to forgive me. And so I can just keep doing."

No. I think, "Wow, I didn't deserve that forgiveness and I never want to hurt her like that again. I never want to do that again." That forgiveness and that grace actually motivate me to not sin again. Why? Because we're in a relationship, because we love one another, and this is what the gospel does. It brings us into this relationship with God the Father.

I said this earlier, but justification is the position of your life in Christ and sanctification is the power of Christ's life in you, that the reason there is no condemnation for us is because our lives are hidden in Christ. But now the reason that we can fight the good fight of faith and put our sin to death is because we have the power of Christ living in us.

And so if you remember last week we were in Chapter Seven and Chapter Seven is, it's kind of a lot to wrap your mind around, but we talked about how the big idea that Paul is getting here is he's trying to illustrate that as good and as holy as the law was, the chapter is really showing us that it was weak and it was incapable of saving us from our sin. And if Chapter Seven, Paul wrote that to show us the weakness of the law, then Chapter Eight, he wrote us to show us the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. And so in Chapter Seven, you see law, law, law, over and over and over, and here in Chapter Eight, you see he's just talking about the spirit, the spirit, the spirit.

And the first thing that we need to understand here, Paul talks about the law of the spirit of life compared to the law of sin and death. In the Book of Romans, Paul uses the word law in two different ways. And so sometimes when he uses the word law, he's referring to God's law, the Mosaic law, the 10 Commandments. Other times he's using the word law in a more general sense. It's like a governing principle. It's like a power. Like we would think of the law of gravity. And so that is the way that he's actually using it in these verses, that the law of the spirit of life, the law of the sin and death, in the flesh, the law of sin and death, this was the governing power, principle, in our life. That before Christ, sin had this, it was like the gravitational pull of the sun and our lives revolved around sin and we were slaves to that orbit. There's nothing that we could do to escape the power of sin's gravity on our lives.

And so when I picture what Paul is describing here, it's as if Christ has come and He has just ripped us out of that orbit around sin. He's broken the power of sin's gravity on our lives and He's now placed us in a new orbit, that we have this new governing principle, this power that he calls the law or the power of the spirit of life. That we were once under the power of sin that led to death, but now in Christ, our lives revolve around the spirit who gives abundant and eternal life.

Now here's the tension that we live in as Christians. We've been ripped out of one orbit, we've been placed into this other orbit. Now does that mean that after you come to Christ that you're never going to feel the pull of temptation again? Does that mean that after you come to Christ that you're never going to sin again? No, of course we know that. But so then just as your life will no longer revolve around sin, it doesn't mean that you're never going to experience sin again. 1 John 1:8 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous."

We talked about this a little bit last week, that we are never going to be perfect and without sin on this side of eternity. That until Jesus comes back and gives us our resurrected, glorified bodies, that sin is going to continue to be this constant threat and presence in our lives, that none of us are ever going to in this life, none of us are ever going to come close to fulfilling the greatest commandment, which is the love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind and all of your strength. I can't even imagine doing that perfectly for a few seconds, let alone a lifetime. And the second commandment, which is to perfectly love your neighbor as yourself. We're never going to be sinless, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. That's the big idea. Pastor Jan said this last week that you will never be sinless, but as a Christian, you should be sinning less, that there is a real change, a real difference, a real distinction, between your life and the flesh before Christ and your life in the spirit in Christ.

And that difference is you now for the first time have the power to say no to sin, to fight back against your sin, and to put the flesh to death. That before, you were powerless, that sin was your master. You were its slave. Your mind was set on it, your life revolved around it. But when Christ became your master, He set you free. And in setting you free, He deals a death blow to sin. And so on the one hand, sin is not dead, but it is dying and it's power over you should be growing less and less as you progress in your sanctification. And so sin is no longer your master, but it is still very much your adversary. This is why we still need to be on constant alert. Peter tells us that our enemy is He's roaming around like a roaring line seeking someone to devour. God told Cain in Genesis 4:7, He said, "Cain, sin is crouching at your door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it"

And that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to rule over our sin. We're told that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. If we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. So in Romans 7:4, Paul asked the question, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" And then in Romans Eight, he tells us. Who will do this? God sent Christ to deliver us from the penalty of our sin, but also that Christ sent the Holy Spirit to deliver us from the power of sin in our lives and we need to fight in that power to rule over sin.

And so the practical question right now for all of us is what is your life revolving around? What is your mind set on? We're going to talk about, Tyler is going to talk a little bit more about this next week when we get to the next passage, but in Romans 8, five and six, Paul says that those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. What is your mindset? What is your mind set on? And the question is what are the practical rhythms that you are placing in your life right now in order to set and to reset your mind over and over on the things of the spirit?

Now you're here right now. That's a pretty good start, right? Gathering for worship with the church, with the communion of the saints. This should be a habit. This should be a rhythm of our lives. And not only that, we show up here on once a week and worship together. But when you do, do you have your mind set on it? Are you thinking about it? Are you looking forward to worship all week? Are you preparing yourself to come and to be present and to be focused and to be attentive, to actually sing God's praise and to apply your mind to His word during worship. We need to do that. Daily, just reading God's word, abiding in God's word, being constant in prayer. It's another habit we need to have to set our mind on the spirit. Serving the body of Christ. Having fellowship with the believers. Are you committed to a community group? Are you dedicated and are you consistent in your participation with other believers and their lives? These are all very practical things, but they're practical things we need to do because the Holy Spirit uses these practical things in very profound ways to sanctify us in our fight against sin.

Now, I want to take a moment to just talk about something else that is going on in Romans Chapter Eight. As we think about these things, most of us at one time or another have probably had a concern, a question, come and linger in our mind. And that is if all these things are true, if we are saved, if we are in Christ, if we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we are adopted into the family of God the Father, if we have truly been set free from the law of sin and death, then why do we still experience sin and death?

As a Christian, do you still face temptation? Yeah. As a Christian, do you still sometimes sin? Yeah. As Christians, we still suffer. As Christians, we still die. And I believe that these concerns, these questions, are actually the reason that Paul is writing this chapter. He's anticipating these thoughts because if all of this is true, then we're going to ask then why is the Christian life so hard? And Paul is writing to a people who have suffered and they know how hard it is. Paul himself is a man who knows how hard. He had suffered so much as a Christian for his faith. But if you look at Romans Chapter Eight and you just sit down and just read the entire thing and just kind of zoom out on it, you see Paul begins the chapter with this promise, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And then he ends the chapter with another promise that there's also no separation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that nothing in heaven on earth can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. That Romans Eight, what he's doing is he's giving hope, he's giving comfort, he's giving assurance to Christians and to us that the trials and the temptations that we face in this life, these are not a sign that we're still condemned. They're not a sign that we're not saved. They're not a sign that God has forsaken us or left us. And they are not a sign that God is not in control. That this pain that we experience as Christians in this life, these are not the pangs of death that we're experiencing. These are the pings of birth. And that's what he says towards the middle of Chapter Eight, that this pain is real, but we need to understand that there is a purpose in this pain that is bringing about something so good that the pain is soon going to be totally forgotten.

That's the hope that Paul wants to give us and he wants us to hold onto as we read Romans Chapter Eight, because, yeah, we are saints, but we're also sinners. We have eternal life, and yet we see Christians still die. We are more than conquerors, and yet we still face suffering and persecution. And if God has not chosen to just kind of teleport us off this earth and give us our glorified bodies as soon as we get saved, then it's because He has work for us to do here until Christ returns, that His good purposes for us in this world are not yet complete. And so that brings us to the last question we need to ask ourselves today. If that is true and if God has you here for a purpose, for a reason, then what will God do through you? What does God desire to do through you? Have you stopped to just imagine what God could do in your life?

One of the things that I didn't mention earlier when I told the story about Owen's baseball team is that one of the reasons that moment was so tense, and one of the reasons that the outcome was such a big deal, is that for the first half of the season he had not gotten a single hit, I don't think. He was really struggling to hit the ball this year. This was the first year that he was doing kid pitch instead of coaches pitch, so the kids are pitching the whole time. And what that means is all the batters, they need to develop a new skill. And that skill is how do you bat against a pitcher who's not just, he's not just going to throw consistent strikes over the plate, some of these pitches are going to be all over the place. Actually, there were a few games where I think the pitchers were hitting the batters more than the batters were hitting the ball.

And so, it's a new skill you got to develop, is how do you choose your pitches and how do you know when to swing, when not to, but he was struggling with this. And what it meant was he was striking out most of his times at bat. About halfway through the season, though, something changed. There was a turning point. Owen's coach rented some batting cages and for just several hours, there was just intense, focused, practice over and over and over with hitting the ball. And when he came out of that practice and went back out into the field, he started hitting the ball really consistently for the rest of the year. And practice is important. Practice makes perfect. There is a work that needs to be done in us, but what good would all of that have practice have been for him if he had never gone back out and applied those new skills on the field in a real game?

And one of the temptations that we face as Christians is that a lot of times we'd rather practice than play the game. That when the coach calls us in, we would rather sit the bench, and it's a lot more comfortable to study the Bible theoretically in a simulated environment than it is to live it out in real life with real people and real problems. And this is one of the reasons that we intentionally want to try to keep things simple here at Mosaic. We talk about love Jesus simple, that really at Mosaic, we just focus on really three main things and we make them a priority.

We worship together. That is a priority. We need to make it a priority. Every week we gather for worship together. We serve together. It's another important priority, that Jesus Christ did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. That He was a servant and we need to be servants. And then thirdly, we gather in homes and have community groups together. That is another priority. But beyond that, we really don't want to pack people's schedule full with a whole bunch of like churchy stuff. Like one hand, we know how busy people's lives are in the city already, but we don't want to just cram and just have people where all they're ever doing is going from seminar to class to study to one thing after another, because all those can be very good things, and necessary things at times, but you can't win championships if you never leave the batting cage. That's the point that I'm trying to make, that we all need enough margin in our lives to actually go out and do something on the field. And this city is a field. This is our mission field.

If you remember, earlier in Romans, really the big idea of Romans is this idea that justification comes by grace through faith. And Paul, the way that he proves this case is by pointing all the way back to the example of Abraham, that this is how God had always intended it to be, that we are justified not by our works, but by grace through faith. But do you remember what God said to Abraham the very first time He speaks to him, when He calls him? This is Genesis Chapter 12, One through Three. It says, "Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go from your country and from your kindred in your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you, all the families on earth shall be blessed.'"

Romans Chapter Eight can really be read as a list of the blessings that we have in Christ. That in Christ we have the blessing of justification. In Christ, we have the blessing of adoption into the family of God. In Christ we have the blessing of sanctification and the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. That in Christ we have the blessed hope of glorification that Christ is going to return and make all things new. But God's grace toward us, God's blessings toward us, and God has been incredibly gracious toward us, but his blessings toward us should not be in vain. That like Abraham, there is a greater purpose in all of these blessings than just the way that they bless us individually. That God has blessed us in Christ in order to make us a blessing to all the nations, as he said to Abraham.

And the nations are in this room. The nations are right outside our door. And so what that means is on the one hand we cannot give up this inner battle of the work that Christ is doing in us. We need to fight against sin. We need to grow in sanctification. But we also cannot forget we have an outward mission to the world, to share the gospel of what Christ has done for us, to testify to the reality of what Christ is doing in us and to allow Christ to work through us by making disciples of all the nations.

We say this in our membership class a lot, but if you haven't taken the class for a while, if you've been a member for a while, just a reminder, if you are a Christian living in Boston, Massachusetts, then the chances are when you go to school, when you go to work, when you see your neighbors, chances are that you are the only Christian that they personally know living in this city. You may be the only person they know who has the answers to the meaning of life. Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? How should we live?

You may be the only person they know who is filled with the Holy Spirit of God, that you have been set free by the law of the spirit of life from the law of sin and death. You can show them what that looks like. To live a life in the power of the Holy Spirit, without guilt, without shame, with no condemnation, to the love sacrificially, to forgive people quickly from the heart, and to extend people grace in a graceless world, to tell them why you have hope, why you have peace, why you have joy, and why you are different. You may be the only person who can be the hands and the feet and the words of Christ to them that can come and say, "Come and see what God has done for you. Come and see what God wants to do in you and come and imagine what God could do through you."

Later on in Romans Chapter 10, the Apostle Paul tells us that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Then he asks some questions. How will they call on him, in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching, and how are they to preach unless they are sent. As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news.

As a Christian you need to know that you have been saved in order to be sent, in order to be that blessing. And so, as we close today, just a couple of things, as you prepare to go out and live your lives this week, first of all, I just want you to remember that it is by grace alone, through faith alone, that you are in Christ. That you are loved, you are chosen. There is no condemnation for you. There is no accusation that the enemy can bring against you. That there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That you are in Christ. And approach this week with that mindset, that you are in Christ. But also approach this with your mind set on the spirit, with the mindset that as much as you are in Christ, that Christ is in you. And if Christ is in you, then what might He desire to do through you in this coming week, in this coming season, in this life?

And then, finally, if you're here today and you are not a Christian, and you want to experience what this means, that there can be no condemnation for you? And the way you do that, you just simply repent, turn and put your faith in Jesus Christ, call on the name of the Lord, as the Apostle Paul said, and you will be saved. You can do that today, as we close in prayer. So let's pray and we'll continue and worship.

God, we thank you for this good news. We thank You for saving us. We thank You for sanctifying us, for adopting us into Your family, for giving us a future and a hope and an eternal inheritance through Christ Jesus. God, we pray that the good work that You began in us, both individually and as a church, that You would carry on to completion until the day that Christ returns. And Lord, I pray that if there is anyone here today that has not been justified by Your grace, that You would save them, that You would give them faith and that they would put their faith in Christ and what He's done for them, that Your spirit would fill them and begin a good work in them, that their lives would become a testimony to Your grace, and Your power would work mightily through them. For the sake of Your name and glory, we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life. And we remember your holy scriptures that say that children are a blessing from you, they're a heritage from the Lord. And we thank you for baby Audrey. We thank you for her life. And we pray a special prayer of anointing and blessing upon her. And we pray that you strengthen Joyce and Pastor Andy in the season. We pray for Clara and Drew as well. Bless their family. We thank you for a beautiful, beautiful little girl. And we also pray Lord that you bless our time, the holy scriptures. We thank you for the scriptures. We thank you, Lord that despite our law breaking, our rebellion against you, you didn't leave us in our sins. And while we were still sinners, you sent your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you lived a life that was wholly motivated by love toward God and people, love for God and people.

And Lord, we thank you that you fulfilled the law perfectly. You never coveted once. We thank you for that. Not just example, but we thank you for your substitutionary atonement on the cross for us, bearing the penalty for our law breaking, the curse for our law breaking. And we thank you, Jesus, that you didn't stay dead, but you rose on the third day. You ascended and you're seated the right hand of God, interceding for us even now. And we pray, Jesus, send us the Holy Spirit. We pray, Holy Spirit, take these words from the holy scriptures and reveal them to us, illuminate them to us, enlighten them to us and use them to convict us of sin and draw us to righteousness.

We pray for justification for those who are not yet Christians, we pray that you convert them, regenerate them, draw them to yourself, make them your children. And I pray for those of us who are Christians, convict us of sin as well and show us where we need to progress in sanctification, in pursuing obedience of faith. We pray that you bless our time, the holy scriptures, and we thank you for them. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through Romans today. We're in chapter seven verses seven through 13. The title of the sermon is Sinful Beyond Measure. And what St. Paul said in the very beginning, he said, look, God entrusted me with the gospel. And the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, for whomever would believe. But we don't really understand our need for the gospel until we understand the law, until we understand our condemnation under the law, how much we've broken the law. And he's made clear that the law of God, the moral code, the 10 Commandments is neither the problem nor really the solution to the ultimate problem that plagues all of us. And that ultimate problem is the sin within our hearts.

There are two tremendously naive perspectives on the world. These are two world views that are espoused all around. Every single one of us, we know there's something wrong with humanity. We know there's something wrong with us. And one of the views is, hey, let's just get rid of God's law because God's law isn't making us feel good. There's intuitive goodness, that people are basically good. And what's really in the way is the prohibitions of the Bible, the prohibitions of the church. We can figure out what's good and evil on our own. We can be good without God. We can figure out our own morality. Let's get rid of the law in scripture that makes us not feel so good about ourselves. Let's get rid of it completely.

The second worldview is that we can recreate our own law. We don't need God's law. We can have our own law. We can figure out how to progress. We can figure out how to get rid of all the problems of humanity through education. But not one of these ultimately wrestles with the heinous power of sin. If we get rid of God's law, we still don't get rid of sin because God's law is written on our hearts. We have developed a reputation in the city that we are a church that talks about sin a lot. We talk about sin all the time. I basically preach the same sermon every Sunday. I get up and I tell you, you are all wicked sinners and so am I. We're all sinners. We are all under condemnation and we need to repent of our sin. And a lot of people say, let's not talk about sin. Let's just talk about love.

But St. Paul talks about sin because understanding our sin, how sinful we are, gets us to still point where we beg for God's grace and mercy. And once we receive God's grace and mercy, then we experience love like we've never experienced. So if you get rid of talking about sin, you're actually getting rid of talking about love. St. Paul talks about sin all the time, seven chapters in sin, sin, sin, and grace, sin, sin, sin. Why? Because he views his job as a soul doctor. He diagnoses the problem. And he's honest about the problem of our condition, he's so honest about it because there is medicine available. He needs to convince us to understand how much we need the medicine. Then he says, yes, there is medicine. And that's called grace.

St. Paul, he understood the dire condition because he himself was a sinner, so he talked about his own sin all the time. He actually called himself a chief of sinners. He's like number one, sinner. And the reason why he felt fine doing that, and wasn't downtrodden about it was because if you understand, you're the chief of sinners, you can also say, I am the chief of being loved by God. And when you're the chief of being loved by God, your heart erupts with love for God and love for people because scripture teaches the one who understands, he's forgiven much. The one who understands that she is forgiven much loves much. And that's to set up our time in Roman 7:7 through 13.

Would you look at the text with me? What then shall we say that the law is sin? By no means. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive, apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means it was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

We'll look at three devastating effects of the law in relation to sin from the text, three points to frame up our time. First, the law reveals sin. The law provokes sin, and the law condemns sin. First, the law reveals sin. Verse seven. He asked the question, what then shall we say that the law is sinful by no means? Why is he asking this question? Because in the earlier text, he did say that the law comes and the law arouses our sin. When something happens in human nature, we're so rebellious. When God says, don't do this or do this, we're like, who are you to tell me what to do or we're not to do. And we actually want to commit that sin even more in our unregenerated state. So he's like, but the problem's not in the law, he says. Certainly not, the law isn't sinful. If desires to sin are aroused by the law, and if the law actually fosters and promotes sin in a sense, then yes, the goodness of the law is called into question.

The opponents of Paul were mostly Jewish opponents who grew up there nourished and nurtured in the law of God. And when Paul says, we're not under the law, but we're under grace. All of a sudden, there's red flags in their hearts. And they say, if you tell people we're not under law, we're actually telling them that they were free to sin and Saint Paul says, no. When you understand that you're under grace, you understand that you're free to obey God, not free to sin. There's no problem with the law. The problem is with our own sin. And just because the law stirs up our sin, it stirs up our sinful passions, it stirs up hostile feelings toward God, that doesn't mean there's a problem with the law. That means there's a problem with us. The law isn't evil or sinful. Our hearts are.

The law isn't corrupt. Our sinful hearts are. The law is righteous, even if our response to it is sin. And he says, yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. He says, in a sense, God reveals his character through the law. And also, the law is a mirror that reveals our character. The law on the one hand flows from God's perfect radiance and perfection and his glory. On the other hand, Samira, that reveals just how sinful we are. The law isn't sinful, but it does reveal our sin. And it does take the Holy Spirit, when we hear how sinful we are. When we hear of the commandments that we've transgressed and when the Holy Spirit takes that message and applies it to our heart, that's what changes us. That's what regenerates our heart. That's the power of the gospel. This is why we have to talk about sin, because talking about sin gets people to a place where they can actually hear, okay, what's next.

The Holy Spirit takes that convicted heart, melts it, pours the Holy Spirit and grace and transforms the person. The less you know about God, the less you're burdened about his law. The less you're aware of your sin and the more you know about God, the more you know about his law, the more acutely conscious you are of just how much you've sinned and the severity of your sin. Paul here brings in an illustration. We're talking about moral law. We're talking about commandments. Can you give us a specific one? And he says, okay, I'll tell you how the law reveals my sin. "If it wasn't for the law revealing my sin, I wouldn't know just how sinful I am." He says, "For I would not have known what it is to covet, if the law had not said, you shall not covet." Well, what's wrong with coveting? What's wrong with seeing something that someone else has and wanting the same thing? Is it okay to aspire to that? Is it okay to have ambition to have something similar?

Yes, of course. But coveting is desiring that which is forbidden. It's someone else's and you want what belongs to someone else, what doesn't belong to you. Coveting. And scripture says that coveting is a sin. Did you know that? See, apart from the law, we do have a subjective understanding that, yeah, it probably isn't good to be covetous or envious of someone or jealous of some. We know that's not a positive thing, but no one in our culture says, that is sin. That is wickedness. The closest I think we get, there's no one in the media telling us this. There's no politicians telling us that covetousness is actually a root of many of your problems and dissatisfaction in life. No one in business tells you this. They tell you that you got to get the new iPhone. You got to get the new iPhone. You'll never be happy unless you get the new iPhone. That business is made on that.

So we're not taught that. The closest we get to people saying don't covet it is teaching kids to share in school. That's the closest it gets. But St. Paul says it is, it's a commandment. Thou shall not covet. And the sin of covetousness, a particularly apt illustration, because it gets to the heart of the issue. It gets to the heart of sin, the inner root of sin, the inner root of man's rebellion and sinfulness because it addresses desire before behavior.

A lot of people think that the commandments are just about don't do bad things. It's about conditioning our behavior, regulating our behavior. No, Jesus said, look, before you talk about behavior, you got to talk about heart because the heart of the matter is the heart. It was far easier in the first century for the Jews of Paul's time to say, I can imagine that I haven't broken most of the commands. I haven't committed adultery. I haven't stolen. But the honest man knows, the honest person knows that every single one of us has coveted. Exodus 20 verse 17. This is commandment number 10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's, your neighbor's. That's what the emphasis is. You want someone else's life. There's a deep dissatisfaction with your own life and then you see someone else's life, and you're like, I want that. Envy is wanting someone else's life.

In the movie, the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. So Robert Ford wants to kill Jesse James, because he is jealous of his fame. Finally, Robert Ford finds Jesse James, sneaks up on him, and then they have a conversation. And then Jesse James says, look, I can't figure out. He says, "Do you want to be like me or do you want to be me?" That's what he's talking about. This is covetousness, coveting that which does not belong to you. And the law is written on our hearts, so we know deep inside when we do something wrong, but then the preaching of the law comes or the reading of the law comes and you're like, oh, this is what God's law is. And then it takes the subjective experience in the heart and it codifies it, it makes it objective. And you say, oh, this is wrong. God says that this is evil.

Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought that coveting someone else's lot in life is actually sin, transgressing God's law? And we do this all the time. Look at someone else's life. By the way, if you live in Brookline, if you live in this area and you know real estate, how expensive it is, coveting someone else's house. That's the thing. And you know why God knew. God knew that you would live in Brookline, Massachusetts, or in this area. And God knew the real estate markets. And they like do not hunt, do not covet your neighbor. And it comes before anything else. Don't covet your neighbors house. That's the first one that's mentioned. By the way, I've stopped watching HGTV. I can't do it anymore, too much sin. Look at all those parking spots, multiple parking spots. They just come with the, I can't do it.

The phrase, must be nice. Anytime you use the phrase, must be nice. Must be nice to live in that neighborhood. Must be nice to have that house. Must be nice to have that much money, that vehicle. Must be nice to have that spouse. Must be nice to be single. Must be nice to have kids. Must be nice not to have kids. Must be nice to be a man. Must be nice to be a woman. Must be nice to have a fast metabolism. Must be nice to be beautiful, tall, short, athletic, smart. Must be nice to be someone else. We all feel that dissatisfaction. The great famous quote from Augustine, "Our hearts are restless until they find it rests you." Our hearts are restless. And this restless, this dissatisfaction with our lot in life, with what God has given us or what God has not given us. It's toxic. It stems from pride because you feel entitled. You should have something better than what God has given you.

And ultimately it is idolatry because what you're saying is, God, you're not a good God. You're not doing your job well. I could do your job better than you. I'd rather worship a different God. And ultimately, it's not loving toward God or toward people, because if you're questioning God's doing of his job, you're not loving him. And then also you're not loving your neighbor when you can't rejoice for the blessings that they've been given. Scripture tells us, rejoice with those who rejoice. First Corinthians 13:4 says, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy.

So this commandment is a commandment that every single one of us is broken. By the way, this is a tremendous way of sharing gospel with anybody. No matter what age, no matter where they come from, everyone knows this part of human experience. This is how I teach my daughters. I have four daughters. My youngest is four. And when they can't share their stuff and they're like, ah, she's got that dress. I want that dress. Or her room's bigger than mine. I'm like you are coveting. You're a little sinner. You're all sinners. You need to repent of your sin. We all covet. We all sin. And this is where St. Paul starts. Level playing field. He said, I coveted. The great apostle, the second most influential person that ever lived after Jesus Christ. He said, if it wasn't for the law, I wouldn't have even known how covetous my heart is. So the law, no, it's not sinful. It's the sin inside that actually takes the law and does sinful things with it.

Like what? Well, this is point 2. The law provokes sin. He talked about this in the earlier paragraph that the law arouses our sins, sin within, hears the law thou shall not. And all our sinful heart wants to do is the exact opposite of what God tells us. So verse eight, but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness for apart from the law, sin lies dead. He says, apart from the law coming, I didn't understand just how sinful my heart is, but when I heard thou shall not covet, all my sinful heart wants to do is covet even more. And he says, sin, seizing an opportunity, the Greek term is used of a military base.

It's a starting point or a base of operation for an expedition. It's a springboard for advance, further advance. And he says, sin establishes within us this base camp. And St. Paul uses this picturesque term to depict this ongoing military conflict in our soul. And he says, it happens when the law is preached to us. When we hear it, sin springs to life, kindles in us a desire to do the opposite of what the law compels us to do. It exacerbates our sin. It provokes us.

Ever since Adam and Eve, human beings have always been enticed by that which is forbidden. The forbidden fruit. God says, don't do this, and that's all they could think about. So instead of restraining my sin, the law arouses my sin. Our sin response to God's law is stirred up and the sin somehow exploits the law. First Corinthians 15:56 says, the sting of death is sin. And the power of sin is the law. The power of sin is the law. The law comes and sin within us, wants to rebel against the law as hard as we possibly can. Indicates a dormant sinfulness that springs into life whenever we hear what God's will is. The serpent doesn't tempt Adam and Eve until after God gives the commandment in Genesis 2:17. Thou shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan comes in in chapter three. It was only once the commandment had been given that Satan had a specific objective to attack. It produced in me all kinds of covetousness, he says.

The word covetousness just means desire for that which isn't yours, which is forbidden. Forbidden by whom? Forbidden by God. And it's an evil desire that gives birth to evil action. So in a sense, desires are as damnable before God as our deeds. Desires are as damnable as our deeds if the desires contradict God's will. So we're not just sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. And James 1:14 through 15, but each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when is fully grown, brings forth death. Where, apart from the law, sin lies dead. The law comes, sin is awakened in the presence of the law and the law exposes and magnifies this.

What do I mean that sin, that the law provokes our sin? Well, I can give many examples, but because we're in Boston, Massachusetts in the month of June, I'll have a very specific example. So last week, I did mention that I'm not a fan of the pride flag being flown in my four-year old daughter's preschool room. I don't want them even knowing about sexuality for years to come. And then I come home and I get email that someone gave us a Google maps review, and it was a one-star review. And the person didn't like that comment. Like, oh, the church should be welcoming to absolutely everybody. Well, we are. We're welcoming to everybody. We welcome everybody and we're equal opportunity offenders of everybody. Doesn't matter what your sin, you're welcome here. Come with your sin. And we're going to tell you, you're all wicked sinners. You are all not wicked in the good sense, but you are all wicked, wicked sinners. You need to repent. Everybody's welcome to come hear that message.

But the reason I bring that up is because the command, thou shall not commit adultery, that's where that commandment comes from. And what that commandment says, it regulates sexuality. That sex is only allowed between a man and a woman that are in a covenant relationship of marriage and that covenant relationship for all of life. So what our culture has done is taking that, oh, that shall not come in adultery. Oh, that's the only place that God allows for sexual relations. We're going to do everything else. And we're just going to keep adding. There's a new updated flag every year, every year there's an update and they add letters. And it's just every single way imaginable to do the opposite of what God says. That's what our rebellious culture does. And we are called as a people to celebrate the sin, which we do not. And because if we celebrate the sin, then you never get to a place where you actually get grace and where you actually experience the love of God.

So the law reveals our sin. It provokes our sin and it does condemn our sin. Verse nine. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. So there was a sense where Paul was apart from the law. When was that? Most likely it was before he turned 13 because in Jewish culture, you become a man at 13. You become a woman at 12, which is actually tremendous. My oldest is 13, I've been telling her since she was 12. I was like, you're a woman. You are a woman. And she's like, what does that mean? I was like, you know that babysitting job you got, yeah, you made money. You're a woman, but you're going to have to pay rent. No, we didn't get there. But you are responsible under God's law, you are responsible as a 12-year old girl, as a 13-year old boy, you're under the law. You are responsible for your own soul.

Is that what he's talking about? I think that's part of what he's talking about. But he says when the commandment came, so for Paul, yes, he was responsible under the law at 13, but he was also conditioned in this culture of the fair sect he was part of. He was conditioned to fulfill the law from the letter, not the spirit. So for example, in Philippians 3:5 through six, he's got a spiritual autobiography. And he says, "I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin and Hebrew of Hebrews as to the law of Pharisee, as the zeal persecutor of the church, as the righteousness, under the law, blameless.

What's he saying? He's saying, I thought I had fulfilled the law. I thought I hadn't broken one commandment. I thought I was absolutely blameless. So did the commandment come to him yet? No, because he didn't understand the fullness of the commandment, that God demands a love from the heart toward God, toward people, that God doesn't want you to just fulfill the letter of law. But the intent of the law, the spirit of the law when the commandment came, when the law came home to me. When I finally realized what was required of me, I was made to face the fact that far from being a law keeper, I was inveterate law breaker.

And this is what happens to every person that becomes a Christian. Like, yeah, you hear about the commandments. Yeah, you hear that you sinned against God. Yeah, you hear that. God is holy and that we're sinful and there's an eternal gulf between us, a chasm between us. Yeah, we're separated from it. We hear it. And then you hear it, and all of a sudden it comes home. The commandment comes home and you realize, I have transgressed against the holy God. At any moment that I die, I will spend eternity apart from God. It comes home. It wasn't just someone sinful out there, it's theoretical. When you realize I have sinned against the holy God, I am in need of grace. I am in need of mercy. And that's what brings you to repentance. That's what Paul is talking about. He tried to fulfill the law apart from faith, and obviously anything done apart from faith is sin.

So in Galatians 3:23, he says, now before faith came. So there was a time when he was trying to fulfill the law, but he didn't have faith, so he wasn't pursuing obedience of faith. He wasn't pursuing loving God from the heart and obedience to the commandments. Now, before the faith came, we were held captive under law, in prison until the coming faith would be revealed. He says, when the commandment came, the subjective experiences, conscience was ratified by the objective law that was spoken. So he realized he was guilty before the law. Apart from the work of the holy spirit to convict us of sin. Using law, people think they're fine before God. And then the Holy Spirit comes when the law is proclaimed and quickens our conscious and makes us alive to the law. And we feel for the first time, the weight of our guilt. That's what he's saying.

Verse 10, the very commandment that promised life, proved to be death to me, for sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through killed me. So commandment does promise life. God says, obey the commandments and you shall live. If you break the commandments, you shall die. He says it promised life, but proved to be death. Why? Because sin seizes this opportunity through the commandment, deceives me and through it killed me. Sin deceives. That's why we sin. In the moment of temptation, sin is promising us things. What does sin promise? Sin promises us the same thing that the serpent promised Eve. Sin promises us happiness apart from God. This deep soul satisfaction that we long for, sin says, you're going to find it when you follow me, when you act on the sin. That's why sin is so attractive.

Why would we be inclined to steal what belongs to another? Why would we bear false witness against our neighbor? Why would we lust? Why would we covet? Because the temptation comes with this promise of bliss. I want things to change. Sin has promised me happiness now. If I follow sin, maybe I'll be happy. And we begin to believe that the path to happiness is to act against the law, to act in accordance with our passions. That's why sin is attractive. It does bring pleasure, even if temporary, but pleasure doesn't automatically or necessarily bring happiness. If pleasure, equated to happiness, then drug addicts would be the most happy people alive. We know pleasure does not equate to happiness, but sin promises the same thing every time. Sin and you'll feel better. The pleasure will make you feel a little happier than you do now.

Genesis 3:4 through five. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Hey, not only is this going to make you happy, not only is this going to satisfy you at the deepest level, this is the satisfaction you're longing for, but sin also deceives by saying that God will not bring about the promised consequences for the breaking of the law. You're not going to surely die. Well, did they die? Yeah, they died spiritually the day they sinned. And then they also ultimately died physically. Of course, they died. If God promises that there will be consequences for sin, there always are consequences for sin. Unless you taste the forbidden fruit, he's saying you won't be happy. Meaning God is withholding happiness from you. Meaning God is not good. God is not loving. His law is created to keep you from happiness. That's what Satan says. That's how he lies. That's how sin lies.

Verses six through seven of Genesis three. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired, to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. And then the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin clothes. It was a delight to the eyes. In the Hebrew, nehmad, which means beautiful or desirable. It's this desire that's internal, a drive, a lust that includes anything that is forbidden by God. And this is how sin deceives us. Have you been deceived by sin? Yeah. We all have been deceived by sin.

St. Paul says he has been deceived by sin, but it wasn't the law's problem. Verse 12, he says the law is holy. So the law is holy. The commandment is holy and righteous and good. He says the law is holy and just and good. So meaning when the law forbids something or the law commands something and says that this is the way to holiness, what God is actually saying, this is the best thing for you because, and not many people say this, but this is true. The way to happiness is holiness. The way to happiness is holiness. As you study church history, and as you talk to saints who've been in the faith for a long time, they'll tell you that the most satisfying moments in life are when you experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Well, the Holy Spirit in the name, Holy Spirit is the word holy. You cannot experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit if you're not pursuing holiness. If you're pursuing sin, you are grieving the Holy Spirit and actually moving yourself away from where happiness is found. He says the law is holy. It's just, it's good. So Satan comes in and says, no, no, no, this law isn't good. It's not good to have your desires restrained. It's not good to deny yourself things that everyone else is doing. But he says, no, that's false. Those are lies. And you need to counter all those lies with the truth of God's word. The law was designed by God to bring life. And we in turn, turn that occasion for death. Verse 13. Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means, it was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

You're saying that the law of God was given to us so that we understand just how sinful we are. We need to recognize sin for what it is, just how heinous it is. And God's will is no longer hidden from us or tucked away in the recesses of our hearts. His will has been published for all to see. And any violation of his commandment is sin. The law reveals our sin. The law provokes our sin. It does condemn. The law says that we're all guilty as charged. We are under condemnation. And in that state, if you die, you spend eternity apart from God in hell. So it gets us to this place where you say, well, what hope is there for us? What hope is there? We have coveted.

Paul, you coveted. You are the chief of sinners. Paul, where did you find hope? Where did you find forgiveness, where do you find mercy? And he says, well, I'm glad you asked. That's the whole point. The whole point is to get us to a place where we realize just how sinful we are. And St. Paul would say, I thought I was fine apart from Jesus Christ. And then Jesus met me on the road to Damascus, and I saw his radiance and his glory and his holiness and his righteousness. And I realized just how far I am from him. And St. Paul, then for three days, didn't eat or drink. And all he did was repent. And he was repenting of a sin and his self-righteousness. Where can we find hope for forgiveness of our sins? Only in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came and he lived a perfect life. He never coveted once. He never lusted once. He never committed sin, not in deed or in heart or in desire.

And Jesus Christ fights sin all of his life though he was tempted over and over. He was tempted by Satan, we read in Matthew four. And then Jesus Christ goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, and it hits him that he is about to absorb the wrath of God for every single sin that was ever committed though he had never committed a sin. So the shame and the guilt that we feel the very first time that we commit a sin, all of that, he was experiencing on the cross as he's going through excruciating physical pain. But the worst of which was the spiritual anguish where you realize is the wrath of God being poured out on him. Jesus dies on the cross. He's buried, raised on the third day. He's ascended. And the gospel is that if we repent of our sin, whatever our sins are, if we repent of all our sins, Jesus Christ forgives us. We're united with him, buried with in baptism, raised with him in newness of life and Jesus's perfect law keeping is reckoned to us and his death pays for the guilt of our sins.

Now, what happens to the law for the Christian? So the law came to reveal our sin. Yes, we're sinners. It provokes our sin. We want to sin more. It condemns us. And then the grace comes in, covers all of that. Now we're no longer sinners, so what role does the commandments and the law of God play? Well now, the law is given to us as a rule for life, and we're filled with such gratitude for our forgiveness that we want to honor God in obedience of faith. And the more we realize that we've been forgiven, the more we're filled with love for God. And this is why I want to conclude with Luke 7:36 through 50, a wonderful story that communicates that the more you've been forgiven, the more you love.

This is Luke 7:36 through 50.

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment. And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair on her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would've known who and what sort of woman this is who's touching him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." And he answered, "Say it, teacher." "A certain money lender had two debtors, one owed 500 denari and the other 50. When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both. Now, which of them will love him more?"

Simon answered, "The one, I suppose, for whom he canceled the larger debt." And he said to him, "You've judged rightly." Then turning toward the woman. He said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss. But from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But he was forgiven little, loves little." But he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." Than those who are at table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this, who even forgives sins?" And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."

Friends, do you know how much you've been forgiving? Have you been forgiven a little or have you been forgiven much? If you are not yet a Christian, we today welcome you to repent of your sins and accept the forgiveness that God offers to each one of us, to be forgiven much so that we then in turn love God much. And Christians, meditate on this. Meditate on the fact that we have transgressed a great law, holy law, good and just law. There's been condemnation for us because of the law breaking, but because of Jesus Christ, there's no more condemnation for any of us. That's how much we've been forgiven an infinite debt. And in response, how are we to love? We're to love with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel. And we thank you for the gift of grace. Yes, Lord, we have coveted. And yes, Lord, we've lusted. Yes, Lord, there's been anger and hatred in our hearts, both toward people and toward you. And we ask you to forgive us of our rebellion. And I pray that you make us a people that don't try to change your law, and don't try to jettison your law, but make us a people who love your law, delight in your law. Not because through it, we can earn salvation, no, but because Jesus Christ fulfilled it completely. And Jesus, through this law, you tell us how we can live a life of holiness. And when we do so, you fill our hearts with a satisfaction that nothing else in this world can provide. Lord, if anyone is not yet a Christian, I pray today, save them, regenerate them. And I pray right now, tune our hearts to worship you and sing praises to your holy name. And we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Heavenly father, we thank you that you have created us and though we rebelled against your will, choosing our own, attempting to supersede your will with our own, we rebelled against you and you didn't leave us in our sins and trespasses. While we are yes, sinners, you sent your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, you fulfilled the law perfectly from the heart, empowered by the spirit from the heart you fulfilled it perfectly and then you gave your life as a sacrifice on the cross. Today, we remember your sufferings on our behalf. We thank you for your shed blood, your broken body that leads to our healing and the washing of our souls. And we pray Lord that you send us the holy spirit to make us the people that our obedient from the heart not because we're just afraid of punishment but because we fear and love you and seek to delight you and please you and make us some people that seek to serve you in the new way of the spirit and bless our time and the holy scriptures now and nourish our souls. We long for it, we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through Romans, in Romans 7:1-6. Today, the title of the sermon is New Way of the Spirit. And one of the things that we need to make clear is everything that God says, everything that God does is because he wants the best for us. We want the best for you, this is why we preach God's holy word and God's best for you is his will. Another way of thinking of God's law because when you think of law, it's often negative. God's law is God's will, this is why Jesus Christ taught us to pray the following, "Our father who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," so we are to... In the beginning Jesus says, "This is how you pray. Pray God may your will be done in my life, your will in heaven may that be the same as your will for my life here on earth."

Do you mean this when you pray it, do you long for God's will to be done in your life completely? And you say, "Whoa, hold on. What's God's will? God's will, anything that God wills that's what I want?" If there's any hesitation that's called sin where our will fights God's will, that tension in the middle is sin. What's in the way of you living out God's best for you is sin. And the best for you is freedom from sin. This is why Jesus came not just to forgive us the penalty for sin but to remove even the power and ultimately, the presence of sin, the liberation from enslavement to sin, to self, it's not just a freedom from sin but a freedom to obey God, that's the best. So how do we get our will and God's will to be one will in our life? Only by the power of the holy spirit.

In Christ, you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God. We have died to sin and we have died even to the law itself and this is what we'll be talking about today. Would you look at the text with me in Roman 7:1-6. "Or do you not know brothers for I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives but if her husband dies, she's released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband's still alive. But if her husband dies, she's free from that law and if she marries another man, she's not an adulterous. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God."

"For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law. We're at work in our members to bear fruit for death but now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code or the letter of the law." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points to frame up our time.

First, you can't fine a dead person. Second, to whom do you belong? And third, serve in the new way of the spirit. Just to set the context if you missed any of the sermons, by the way they're all online, it's been a tremendous series thus far. Today, we're in seven, one through six which is actually, a continuation of the argument in chapter six, 15 through 23. Originally, we're in St. Paul wrote the text there weren't these chapter verse breaks, he just wrote it as one letter so sometimes the chapter verse breaks are helpful. Here, they are not because it makes it seem like he's starting with a new point. He's not, he's just carrying the argument along in six 15 through 23, Paul rejected the notion that believers are permitted to sin since we're no longer in the law, this is what he said, "We're under grace, we're not under law. And immediately the objection is, "Whoa, hold on. If you tell people they're under grace and not under law, they're just going to sin as much as possible which leads to antinomianism, life conscientiousness, you just live any way that you want."

And Paul says, "No. If that's how you think, you have never been born again, you haven't been regenerated, you haven't been justified because if you are justified by grace through faith, you want to be sanctified, you want to delight in the Lord." Seven, one through six, carries this argument one step further and he contends that sin is something that Christians have died to. And sin is actually, what people under the law struggle with because Paul's Jewish opponents contended that freedom from the law opens the door towards sin. And then Paul turns the tables on them and he says, "Hold on. It's actually, the people who insist on the law as the way that we are made right with God. These are the people who are actually, in bondage to sin if they're really honest, because they're not fulfilling the law from the heart because they can't, they don't have the ability to only those who have died with Christ and the law and possessed the holy spirit have the ability to bear fruit for God."

So point number one, is you can't fine a dead person and here we get that from verse one, "Or do you not know brothers from speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives." That's the main point of the text and then he illustrates it and then he applies it in verses four through six. But here he says the law is binding for a person that's alive.

Any law, the moral law, the 10 commandments of God is binding to us while we're alive and any kind of the law of the land, it's binding to us when we're alive. For example, if you're driving 150 miles an hour in Store Road Drive, you'd have to be at night because you're lucky to go 25 on Store Road Drive. But just hypothetically, speaking you've gone on 150 miles an hour on Store Road Drive. You broke every single law that there is and you die, you crash, you're dead. And then the cops show up, the cops don't pull you out or whatever's left of you from the car and they do not fine you for going so fast because you're already dead. You're not bound by the law if you are dead, that's what he's saying. He turns his conversation here to believers and he starts teaching believers theology because he assumes that if you've been listening to the letter of Romans this long, thus far you got here, he just assumes you're already Christian.

He's already taught that we're all sinners, God created us to worship him, image forth his holiness. We've sinned and he explains that we're sinners, we're rebels, we're degenerates, we're wicked, we're selfish, we're pathetically self-absorbed. Pleasure is our God, truth is our enemy and we as a society hate truth so much that we'll call anything truth except truth itself. Anything can be true as long as you don't say the Bible is true, as long as you don't say that Jesus Christ is the only way, as long as you don't say that's true, everything else is fine. I was invited by a friend to the Harvard Faculty Club this week for this round table discussion and they have these every once in a while where they invite professors from MIT, from Harvard, Northeastern, BU and then they invite some clergy to come as well.

And it's all funded by the Templeton Foundation, it's actually, their attempt at proselytizing or evangelizing, sharing the gospel with these professors and the idea is if we invite them and they get saved, well, maybe we can reach Harvard. So okay, I go to this thing and there's a spiritual guru that comes up and he shares about his spiritual experience. And all of it is subjective, all of it, its visions and things that he does and I'm listening to it. After a while, I got tired of listening to him, a guy at my table fell asleep and then finally he's done. And then the food begins and everyone's happy because it's free food and it's open bar and everyone's just chilling. So I sit down and the lady next to me is a professor from Northeast University and I was like, "What do you do?"

She's like, "Oh, I teach Economics," and then she's like, "What do you do?" And I was like, "I'm a pastor of a local congregation," as soon as I said that she just turned and she put on her mask and that was the end of the conversation. And the lady next to me on the other side, so I'm like, "I have no choice so I'm going to continue the round table," we're supposed to have a discussion. And then this lady next to me is a professor of Russian History from Harvard and I was like, "Oh, we have something to talk about." So all of a sudden we're talking about Russian history and we're talking about the war in Ukraine. She was like, "How do you feel about that?" And we're talking about that then the facilitator says, "Let's talk about what this guy said about visions and this is how we think about spirituality." And this is what she said very nicely, "Isn't it wonderful that each of us can bring our own perspective of the truth and that everyone's truth is equally true."

And I was like, "Am I going there?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'm going there," and I was like, "Yeah, it is wonderful unless the person's truths are all lies and made up." And she didn't like that and then she turned away from me as well. And I was like, "Aren't we supposed to have dialogue so you can talk about any kind of truth?" This guy just got up and I think he just made up half his stuff because he was just rambling. He didn't even know he was supposed to go 45 minutes he's like, "Oh, 45 minutes." Yeah, it's wonderful if your truths have nothing to do with my life and me submitting myself to the truth. We know that God alone is truth, God alone is true. God defines what's true and what's a lie and he does this with his self-authenticating word.

When you read the word of God and you read it with an open mind and an open heart and if you read it prayerfully and you say, "Lord, is this your word?" What God does with his spirit is he authenticates, he confirms, "Yes, this is the word." Because as soon as we read God's word, we study God's moral law and we're open about it, what happens is the law written on our heart is confirmed, "Oh yes, this resonates. Oh yes, this is actually, truth that I have been attempting to suppress all of my life." God's word reveals God's law and once we know it does resonate because it's written on our hearts. For example, and I get this example from our text, he's talking about marriage and adultery. We in our society know adultery is wrong. Everyone knows this but we live in a culture that encourages people to be trained up in adultery even from a young age. If we even cared about civilization, we would know the building blocks for civilization are healthy families.

And if we do care about marital fidelity and marriages, we would encourage young people to remain celibate until marriage and instead we're teaching kids things that their sweet little innocent hearts are not ready for. And I know because my girls are in the public school system and my youngest is in pre-K and with pride month, they have all the flags up. And all the parents are like, "Isn't this wonderful?" And I'm like, "No, it's not wonderful. I don't want my kids to know... She's four, I don't want," that's why fewer people are actually, getting married in our culture because you think about lifelong fidelity to one person that's impossible yet we all long for it.

So St. Paul would say, "Now that we've established that we're all sinners," and he does one, just one command and you can take any other command, "And thou shall not covet," we all transgress that, we're all sinners. He's established that, we've all transgressed the law. What do we do now? The law is binding upon us, God's law is upon each one of us. So how do we get freed from this law? You have two options. Number one, you can disregard God's law as if it doesn't exist, you can do whatever you want but the more you disregard it and the more you actually, sin against it, what happens is the law does punish you and it does through guilt and shame. You break God's law, God's law begins to break you that's how we've been designed.

The other side is other than disregard, you say, "You know what? I'm going to be a good person. I will attempt to be holy. I'm going to fulfill God's law," and as soon as you start doing it, you realize that's impossible. So we need a third option and this is where the beauty of the gospel comes in. That the law giver who demands absolute obedience, realizes that we can't do it. So God sends his one and only son, Jesus Christ, Jesus fulfills the law perfectly in absolute obedience. He takes God's will and God's will becomes his will and he's holy and righteous in everything he does. And then he offers his life as a sacrifice, a substitutionary atonement, a propitiation for our sins, absorbing the wrath of God that we deserve, the curse that we deserve for our law breaking. He absorbs upon himself, he dies, he rises, he reigns and he calls us to repent of our sins and submit to Jesus Christ and as soon as we do, we're justified by grace through faith.

Now we're in Christ and with Christ we've died to our former life of sin so now we are dead to sin. Christians had the power to not sin because of the holy spirit. And along with being dead to sin, we're also dead to the law. He says we can be free from sin because we're free from the law. The law is no longer binding on you. You're no longer enslaved to the law and he gives us this illustration of verse two about marriage, before we get there... What he's saying is each one of us were born bound to law, married to the law. Now that we're free to law, we've died to the law. You're free to remarry. Remarry whom? Jesus Christ. This is the power of our relationship with God.

It's a covenant relationship as strong and if not stronger than marriage itself and now you don't have a law telling you from the outside, "Do this, don't do this. This is God's will, this isn't God's will." It's a lot deeper, you now have the law of God written on your heart and you have the love of God pulsating your heart, the love of Christ telling you, why would you ever cheat on Jesus Christ? Why would you walk away from this great of a savior? So that was the principle verse one, that we are bound to the law unless we're dead and then verse two, he gives an illustration for marriage, here it says, "A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage." So he continues this explanation of our relationship to the law with analogy from marriage, to explain what it means to die to the law, he uses this illustration.

Illustration comes from marriage at the marriage ceremony, we take our vows, we promise to honor, cherish, love one another till death do us part and until we are separated by death. If one partner in the marriage covenant should die, all the obligations upon the remaining partner are now set aside. He says, "For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives," the married woman, the Greek word is huppahandras which literally, means a woman under a man because this is biblical marriage, it's headship. The husband's the head of the wife. This is why scripture says "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." I thought morning service all the wives were like, "Yeah, you've got to love me as Christ loved the church. Yeah, get him." And then the next verse says, "and wives submit to your husbands as it's the Lord and everything it's headship.

And he says the woman that is under the man, if, if the man dies, then she is free. Discharged from the law concerning the husband, which creates new opportunity of freedom for her by law, married, women's bound to husband as long as he is alive. Once he dies, she's freed from the covenant and from the law of marriage itself the contrast is clear, the law binds her but his death frees her, more over her release is complete. The law of God does provide for divorce under some circumstances but that's not what Paul is talking about here. A married woman can't lawfully marry another man but a widow can because a widow is completely free in the eyes of God to be married again. The first marriage has no continuing claim on her, that's why Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:14, "So I would have younger widows married, bear children, manage their households and give the adversary no occasion for slander. The law binds, regulates as long as the partner is alive."

So he says think of your relationship to the law in the same way, you were bound by the law, when Jesus died you believe in him, you died with him and by your death with him in his death, you're released from the obligation of the law. Set free for another relationship, another way of life and that's relationship with Christ Romans 7:3 he continues, "Accordingly, she will be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband is alive but if her husband dies she is free from that law. And if she marries another man, she's not an adulterous." So to continue the point to make it clear he calls attention to the difference between her situation if the husband were alive, if the husband is alive and she becomes involved with another man lives with another, he says or gives herself to another that's adultery. And his emphasis here is on the fact that the law still binds the married woman to her husband but the husband's death releases her.

Now, what does this have to do with us? What's the difference for us? And that brings us to point two, to whom do you belong? He says, "If you died to the law you no longer belong to the law. You no longer experience the condemning effects of the law." So then to whom do you belong? This is Romans 7:4, "Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God." So our spouse has not died, the law didn't die to us but we have died to the law. We have died with Christ therefore the law has no more dominion over us. We died in Christ and then Christ is the one who fulfilled the law so we're in him so we fulfill the law in the sense that we're justified. The law has not been removed but Christ has died for us. We no longer carry the burdens of law, the law no longer hangs over our necks like a sword condemning us.

That's why in chapter eight, verse one, he says, "Therefore, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ." So the very second that you believe in Jesus Christ, you repent of your sins. You are justified your declared innocent forever, for all of eternity. Your sin is imputed to Christ on the cross, Christ righteousness is imputed to you. Which sin only, the sins that we committed before trusting in Christ? No, all of the sins.

Once you trust in Jesus Christ, there will never be any condemnation for you ever, all of your sin past, present and future are nailed to the cross. Martin Luther, the great reformer who actually, went to the Catholic church and he said, "We have lost the point of Christianity. We're teaching people that they are made right with God by keeping the law, observing the law." And Luther at this point was a doctor of theology, he'd been a Christian for decades and he was still wrestling with sin. And he realized that if we were made right with God because of our righteousness, he would never be made right with God because he studied God's law all day, every day and he realized that he's guilty. So Luther emphasized the gospel, we're justified by grace through faith. He taught this in Wittenberg, he just preached the Bible.

And one of his favorite things to do was to go get haircuts because he's a monk. So he has to get a very particular haircut, the one you've got to get balled off top. So he developed a tremendous relationship with his barber and his barber was named Peter Beskendorf and he called him Peter, the master barber. And Peter, the master barber came to faith through Luther's ministry and then he asked Luther, "Hey, can you teach me how to pray?" And Luther went home and wrote him a 40 page pamphlet teaching him how to pray in which he just went through the Lord's prayer phrase by phrase. He's like, "This is how you pray. Just meditate in the phrases, 'Our father,' It's not just your father, it's our father." So you've got to be in community. He's a father, he cares for you. Our father, he's intimate, that relationship. Our father who is in heaven, so it's a transcendent relationship, God is above you. Our father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name and your name be holy so you just went through that thing.

So this guy started praying, started growing in his relationship and then something occurred. This guy was a solid believer but then one night he got drunk and in a rage killed his son-in-law, he killed his daughter's husband. He was guilty of the crime, a man slaughter, he didn't deny it. No one disputed any of the facts and actually, took Luther's intervention to keep this guy from getting executed. Instead, he was exiled from Wittenberg but Luther never stopped believing that there was no condemnation for Peter, the master barber. Actually, he told him he's like, "Do you still believe in Jesus Christ?" He said, "Yeah." "Do you still trust in Christ?" "Yeah." "Have you repented your sin?" He said, "Yes." He said, "Then there's no condemnation for you." And we see what a mighty thing our liberation from law is when we contemplate such a result that even a man who committed murder, a Christian who killed another man, a member of his own family, his own daughter's husband because he's in Christ because he died to the law, Christ died for him that he is still justified. Now, how does that make you feel?

I know if I were not preaching this text and I was just sitting here I'd be like, "I'm not sure if I like this message." Especially when my kids were sitting here I'm like, "No, give them law. They need more law. Honor your father and your mother, give them law. I want them at home extra obedient." And this is really the tension in our hearts. It's like, "Okay, grace. If we really understand that we're under grace, what does that mean, for whom is grace? And is there anything that we can do to ever lose the grace?" And Paul says, "No. Once you're in Christ, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Now, you can understand why people are like, "No, you are teaching antinomianism that there is no law so you can live any way that you want."

And Paul says, "No, I'm teaching grace so that people when they understand grace, that their hearts are captured by grace, it changes your heart. It changes your affection, your desires and then you don't obey God to not just get punished. You obey God because you want to." Galatians 3:10-14, "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of life and do them. Now, it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for its written curse is everyone who is hanged on a tree. So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith."

He said, Christ died on the cross. He took the curse of the law upon himself so we're free. Christians are free from the curse of the law. We are free from earning salvation through the law. However, the law continues to reveal to us what's pleasing to God. He continues in verse four, "Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God." So that you may belong to another, he's saying anyone who thinks that they can sin any way they want to live, any way they want they still think that they belong to themselves, they still think that they are autonomous and independent.

He said, "No, if you are justified, if you are bought with the blood of Jesus Christ, you are not your own." You're not your own twice over, you're not your own because you've been created by God. And you're not your own because you've been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. It's a brand new identity. I am not my own, I belong to Christ, I am saved by grace through faith. Of course, I will do everything I possibly can to be righteous before God. I'm not my own for what purpose? In order that we may bear fruit for God. What kind of fruit is he talking about? He's talking about the outward works so once Christ changes our heart, this is regeneration and he fills our heart with the holy spirit now, we want to do what is honorable before the Lord. Galatians 5:16-26. The contrast between the works of the flesh and the works of the spirit, the fruit of the flesh, the fruit of the spirit.

"But I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of flesh for the desires of flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warned you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the law with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step of the spirit let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another."

This is brand new. It's completely brand new way of relating to God. Every other religion gives you rules and gives you a way to follow God, "Here's the pathway, here's the pillars, here's the rules. Obey them and you are accepted into the kingdom of God if not you are punished and then exiled forever." And then Christ comes and says, "You can't do it." Christ does it for us and then he pays the penalty for our sin and he says, "Trust in me," and when we trust in him, his sacrifice gets counted on our behalf and we're filled with the holy spirit. And now because of the holy spirit we want to obey God to serve...

And this is point three, serve in the new way of the spirit. Verse five, "For while we are living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law. We're at work in our members to bear fruit for death." He's saying this is in the past tense while we were living in the flesh, "Our sinful passions aroused by law. We're at work and our members to bear fruit for death," living in the flesh, that phrase translated in other places, "For when we were controlled by the sinful nature," we just did what our nature led us to do. And we, with the sinful nature live in a sinful world and the sinful world exacerbates our sinful nature. 1 John 2:15-17, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires but whoever does the will of God abides forever."

You're saying if we are in Christ, we're characterized by the fact that we are dead to both sin and the law. But if we are in the flesh, we're characterized by the certain behavior that is exacerbated, he says by the law. So if you're in Christ, Paul assumes you're no longer living in the flesh, you're no longer controlled by the sinful passions and the doctrine sanctification, it doesn't say, "Just change your life, you'll become a better person." That's like saying to a bad tree, stop bearing bad fruit. No, it says, "Come to the Lord through the gospel, you can get regenerated, become a new tree, bearing new fruit." What in the world does it mean that the law aroused our sinful passions? If you go back to verse five, what does it mean that the law because of the law, our sinful fashions are aroused by the law. Why would God give us a law that leads us into sin?

Why would God give us a law that arouses our sin? Well, this is actually, one of the intentions of the law is to reveal to us just how sinful we are. That apart from the spirit, the law inflames our hearts to sin. We're sinful and one purpose for which God gave a law is to expose and excite. There's something rebellious within us that when you tell us, "Thou shall not eat of a certain tree," that's all you can think about even if you don't really like fruit. Thou shall not eat that tree, you're like, "Ah, give me that tree, give me that fruit." By rebels, we thrive in rebellion. Why do we relish doing things that cause us harm, that are self destructive? Why do we do things that as soon as we know that God forbids it, that's all we can think about? That people destroy themselves before they submit to God and the law brings to mind God's will but it provokes our own rebelling. Tell a young person that, "You can't do a certain thing," and then all of a sudden they become intensely interested in that one thing.

How often are we seeing children, teenagers disobey for no reason other than they just want to disobey. It's disobedience for disobedience’s sake and it's not just children. Adults are just like that, we just mask it better. So he says, "Yes, this is a challenge," don't just preach the law and some churches just do this. They just preach the law, "Don't do this." And all the young people, that's all they want to do and then you lose the young people, you lose the youth, you lose that generation. You've got to preach the law with the gospel together. The law by itself inflames sin, just preaching the law excites, exacerbates our sinful nature and then the law is powerless to help us fight the sin. This is why Paul and the Judaizers or the religious Jews of the day they fought because the Judaizers are like, "No, the law is how we are protected from sinning."

And Paul says, "No, actually, the reverse is true. The law sets you on a course of inevitable hypocrisy. You can't, you won't obey the commandments. You pretend to do it and then all of a sudden obedience is redefined superficial terms." And that's why the entire rabbinical system was such a pretense. People are just pretending to obey but their hearts were never in it. And it's not just in synagogues or rabbinical trainings but this is in churches too. If you just preach the law, you just preach the law, you don't preach grace then people turn into hypocrites. Preaching law must also, always be followed by preaching the gospel because it's only the holy spirit working through the gospel that creates us a desire and a power to obey. So he continues verse six, "But now we are released from the law." It's as if we were encaged by the law, he says, "You're released having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code."

He says, but now you were in the flesh, you were controlled by sinful passions. The law, all it did was exacerbate sin but now that you're released from the law, you've died to it. Now, you have the ability to serve in a new way. I think about this all the time as a pastor, as a father, I think about my kids because my kids are getting older. I think about my kids, that they are spending more time outside the home than with us. They're with friends, they're with the soccer teammates, they're in school. And how do you teach them to be godly when they're not in the house? How do you teach them to do the right thing when mom and dad aren't looking? Well, the only way that you can do this effectively... And it's the same with pastoring, most of you I do not see you during the week.

I pray for you but I don't see you. Most of the decisions that you make in terms of obeying the Lord, following the Lord or not following the Lord it's just you and the Lord. So why in the world would allow people, would make people obey when no one's looking? It's a complete transformation of the heart, where God fills your heart with love for him and love for his word and love for his will. He does that by the power of the holy spirit where God says, "I'm not just going to give them the word, I'm going to write the word on their hearts and I'm going to give them the power of the holy spirit within to do what I call for them to do.

Ezekiel 36:24-32, "I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land and I will sprinkle clean water on you. And you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols and I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I shall be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. And I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations."

"And then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good. And you will loathe yourselves for all your inequities and your abomination. It is not for your sake that I will act declares the Lord, God. Let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel." It's through Jesus Christ that the law, the mastery of the law is broken and now we don't do God's will just because he might punish us for it. We do God's will because he has given us the power to do it where his will and our will come together. He causes us to walk in his ways. The holy spirit has taken up residence in us and has given us a new nature. And then he summons that new nature into expression as we live our lives day by day in following him. It's only the holy spirit that can give us the power to do the will of God.

The change must come from above and from the inside out. When we trust in Jesus Christ, when we welcome the holy spirit and we seek to obey God, the father. If you're not a Christian today, we welcome you to become a Christian. All you have to do is repent of all your sin and you say, "Lord, forgive me for my sin. Forgive me of my rebellion. Forgive me of my law breaking. Forgive me of all of it. Lord, I need grace. Lord, forgive me. I want to be yours, I want to belong to you. I want to obey you in everything that I do send me the holy spirit," and the Lord does. And you'll see incredible transformation, you'll wake up with desires you've never had. You want to commune with the Lord, you want to obey him, you want to study his word, you want to be with God's people. It's all a work of the holy spirit.

If you're a Christian, you're struggling with some sins, if there's sins in your life that you have not repented of, we call you today. Repent of those sins, trust in Jesus Christ. Take the power of the holy spirit and commit to following him the rest of your days. Jesus, we thank you for the gift of a new heart and a new life and a new way of serving you in the power of the spirit. Where we have a power that's not our own and energy that's not our own, a wisdom that's not our own, desires and affections that are not our own they're foreign to us. But we pray give us more love for you. A deeper desire to honor you and delight you and to fear you and to please you. We thank you that we are now not under law but under grace and because we're under grace, we have an even greater desire to live in accordance to your law because of the great cost by which we were saved. The cost of the son of God himself who died for us.

Lord, fill each one of us with the spirit in ways that we have never been led and filled with the spirit before. And continue to make us a people who live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ so everything we do, we do because we are yours, because we belong to you, because we have a brand new identity, because we are the children of God. We thank you for the gift of grace, the gift of adoption to your family and we thank you, holy spirit, that you allow us to serve you. What a great privilege that is and continue to take the labors of our hands and multiply them a thousand fold for your glory and our joy and we pray all this in Christ name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly father, we thank you for the blessing it is to gather. We thank you for this church. We thank you Holy Spirit for knitting our souls together. And one voice, we have the privilege to worship you to glorify you. And as we glorify you, as we grow in glorifying you, meditating on your glory on how much higher you are than anything in the created order. Our faith and our hope are strengthened and we thank you for that.

We thank you for the holy scriptures. You did not leave us without a word from you. You are a God who communicates to us. We thank you for the incredible book of Romans. It's so rich and so deep, and the implications are so transformative. We thank you that despite our sin, Jesus Christ came and he died for us. Jesus, you died for us when we were yet sinners rebelling against you, running from you, blaspheming your holy name.

We wanted nothing to do with you. You came, you lived the perfect life of love and worship toward God and cared toward people so much so that you gave yourself as a sacrifice. In obedience to God the father, you gave the ultimate sacrifice, yourself, your life. And you bled on that cross and you suffered. You died and you were entombed. You didn't stay dead and we thank you for that.

We thank you that because of your resurrection, you are now just and the justifier, that by grace through faith, when we repent our sins and trust in you, it's as if we had never sinned. I pray today, set our gaze upon the path of sanctification that you call us to each one of us. And I pray that you empower us by the Holy Spirit and encourages from the holy scriptures today.

And we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Book of Romans. Today in Romans 6:15 through 23. The title of the sermon is The Paradox of Freedom. We've talked about, and this was chapter 5 and then the beginning of chapter 6, St. Paul has been transitioning from talking about justification by grace through faith, to sanctification. Justification by grace through faith is when you repent of your sin and you trust in Jesus Christ.

It's just as if you had never sinned. From God's perspective, you are sinless. You are holy. God's gift of righteousness, Christ's righteousness imputed to you, and now begins the process of sanctification. All those freely and instantaneously justified through faith begin the process of sanctification. How through the same act of faith, by continuing to believe, by continuing to repent and believe on a daily basis, that's how we are sanctified. The word means to become more holy, more set apart, more righteous, sanctity.

We get the word sanctity from agios in the Greek, holy. Sin for the Christian therefore should be out of character. Sin should be uncharacteristic. When sin happens in your life, you say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not me. That's not who I am. That's not my new identity in Christ." And if you think you're a Christian, but you have never meditated on sanctification, if this isn't even a category for you in your life, then you're probably not a Christian. And today, we're going to help you become a Christian and show you how important it is to follow Christ in this path.

Yes, we do battle indwelling sin. We battle with it daily. While we were in Adam, we didn't battle sin. It was just normal. We were on team sin. Now, we are on team Jesus. It's a winning team over sin. That's what it means when scripture says we are more than conquerors. That's what the text is about today. We're in Roman 6:15 through 23. Would you look at the text with me?

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law, but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that you were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching, to which you were committed. And having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness. I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations for just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time, from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

This is the reading of God's holy inherent and fallible authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time this morning. First, set free from slavery to sin, set free for slavery to God, and set free for sanctification. First, set free from slavery to sin.

The context is we are in Christ. Pastor Andy did a tremendous job last Sunday explaining what that means to be in Christ, that we've been crucified with Christ, buried and entombed with Christ and raised from the dead with Christ in newness of life. And this is symbolized with baptism. We have baptism today after the second service. It's symbolized with baptism. What is baptism? Baptism is a sign. It's a sign, outward sign of an inward reality that you died with Christ. You died to sin and you were raised with Christ to walk with him in the newness of life.

So we've been set free from sins, horrible consequences. That's death. From sins, shameful guilt, that's condemnation. From sins, desperate tyranny, which is slavery to the flesh. Therefore, we must reckon. And you see this phrase over, and over, and over in Romans 18 plus times. He said, "You have to reckon this. You have to count this. You have to consider yourself dead to sin."

God considers you righteous, therefore you have to consider yourself righteous and dead to sin. Practically speaking, how does this look? There has to be a vehement, a vehement, vociferous, digging deep into my GRE words. Inside of you, there has to be a militant reaction against sin. When the temptation rears it's ugly head, you have to say to the sin like to a terrible old girlfriend or boyfriend, ex, you broke up. They weren't good to you, cheated on you. That person keeps calling and you have to say, "You are dead to me." Sin, not to the person. "You're dead to me. You're dead to me. You're dead to me. Your number is blocked. I never want to see you sin. You rear its ugly head. You're dead to me. You're dead to me."

That has to be the posture of, "We're broken up forever. Sin, you do not entice me. You do not lure me. You do not attract me." The stream of thought begins in Roman 6:12 through 14. And Pastor Andy handled this masterfully last week. But it begins of verse 12. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God is instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace.

He says before we come to Christ, sin does have a dominion over us. It has an authority. It has a power over us. He says, "But that power is broken through Christ." Just a aside here, but it's an important aside, it's about this concept of free will. And I have to set this up because we're going to get to Romans 9 through 11. I cannot wait. I'm excited for Romans 9 through 11. But this idea that we are born with a free will, of free moral will. This idea is not biblical. This idea is actually very pagan.

The idea the free will is every time we have a moral option before us to sin or not to sin, to do good or to do evil, that we have the power to say yes or no and the will is basically a state of indifference. Well, this idea isn't biblical at all. It's actually anti-biblical. Indeed we do have a will. What's the will? It's the power of volition. We have the capacity to make choices according to towards our desires. But the problem is our desires want nothing to do with God. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not want to think about God. We don't want to worship God. We don't want to obey God. We have no affection stored God at all.

By nature, we are only wicked continually. By nature, we have no inclination towards things of God. So this idea of I can choose Jesus anytime I want. I can follow Jesus anytime I want. Not unless Jesus Christ saves you. Not unless Jesus Christ regenerates your heart. Before Christ sin does reign in our moral body making you obey. Non-Christians are not walking around thinking how they can be moral obedient to God. They're not thinking about how they can study the scriptures to find out eternal life.

You want nothing to do with God. And at best, maybe just lip service. If you haven't studied this concept of free will, I would commend to you Martin Luther's the Bondage Of the Will. Masterful. It's a Christian classic. He responds to Erasmus of Rotterdam in which he explains, "Look, we're born sinners. Scriptures, clearly, Ephesians 2, and you were dead in your sins and trespassers. We have not the capacity to worship God to do his will.

And also Jonathan Edwards wrote The Freedom of the Will. Also masterful work. "Unless you're born again," Jesus told Nicodemus, "you can't enter the kingdom of God. But once you are regenerated, sin no longer holds your will in bondage. Once you become a Christian, you can say no to sin. You have that power given to you by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's why in verse 12, he says, "Don't let sin reign in your body. You have the power, Christian to say no. Sin, you are not king. You are not desperate. You are not fewer. You are not in charge of me. I will say no to you."

Don't let sin make you obey it's passions. Verse 13, don't present your members to sin. Present yourself to God. Verse 14, don't let sin have dominion over you. Sin is mastered no more. Sin no longer owns you. Sin no longer has authority over you. Stop taking orders from sin. Don't go where sin might be attractive to you. Literally block sin out. That's what he's saying. As Christians obviously, we still sin, but we don't have to. I was never taught this. I was never taught this. I was taught Jesus is always there for you when you sin. Come to him for forgiveness.

Oh, clean slate. Now, okay, go and attempt not to sin. But when you sin, we all know you're going to sin. Come back. There wasn't... Which is actually a very defeated spirit. If you wake up and you're like, "Yeah, I'm a sinner, so I'm going to sin today," you're going to live categorically different than if you wake up and you say, "I am a saint, I am a saint. I am saint and I will reign over sin. I will not let sin reign over me."

Today, as Christians, we still sin. But hypothetically, Christians, the moment you get saved, the moment you get justified, the moment you trust in Jesus Christ, you were repent of your sin. Hypothetically, from that moment, you could live a life of absolute holiness. Sit with that for a little bit that from... Oh, wait. You've already sinned from the moment that you got justified.

Let's start from today. Starting today, dear Christian, you can live a life of absolute holiness, righteousness, perfection, hypothetically. Obviously, we sin, but you could. So every time you're faced with this temptation, God gives you the power of the Holy Spirit if we simply cooperate.

Okay, a couple terms I got to give you if you haven't heard these. Monergism and synergism, monergistic and synergistic, our regeneration, our justification is monergistic meaning it's the work of one person. Our justification, our regeneration, it's the work of God, only of God. You did nothing to justify yourself. You did nothing to be born again in the same way that you did nothing to be born physically. You did nothing to be born spiritually, it's monergistic. God elects before the foundation of the world. God predestines. God draws. God writes your name in the book of life before you were even born.

Justification is monergistic. But from the moment that you are reborn, the Christian life becomes synergistic. It's a joint effort. It's you and God. Now, you are paddling together. You're in the rowboat of life. And unless you're pulling your side, you're just going to be going around in circles. Or if you think it's only up to you, you'll also be going around in circles.

Philippians 2:12 through 13. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do you see that tension? Do you see that cooperation? You are to work out your salvation. I'm to work out my salvation. It's my responsibility to work out my salvation. It's your responsibility to work out your salvation. But then he said, "But it's God who works in you. You work out what God works in both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So God is the one that actually activates the will. And the word for work here is he gives energy for the work for his good pleasure." So work out what God works, and you diligently use the means of grace. The means of grace of holy scripture, studying the scriptures.

Feed your soul, dear Christian, in the form of studying a scripture every day, praying to God. Corporate worship. When the saints gather together, there is more Holy Spirit in the room. I have the Holy Spirit. You have the Holy Spirit. When we get together, the Holy Spirit is moving. That's a means of grace. Community groups. That's another means of grace. During the week, you meet brothers and sisters and you share life together. You share your burdens. You pray for one another. That's a means of grace. As diligently as you care for your body, and many of you do, and that's tremendous.

The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. We are to care for our bodies. I had so much spinach last night. I had extra spinach. Whenever my girls don't finish much spinach, whatever's left over, that's what I have for dinner. That's when you know your dad, whatever's left over, that's what you got. You care for your body. You want the vitamins. You want the nutrients. You want to care for your heart. You do a little cardio. You work out. You care for yourself. In the same way that you care for your body, you have to care for your soul, if not more important.

Feed the new man. Feed that new soul. Starve the old man. Starve the flesh. You can't reign in life if sin is reigning in you. So this is what he talked about in chapter 5. He says, "We are called by grace, by God's grace. We're called to reign in life." So in a sense where, we're children of God, but we're also kings and queens. We are to take authority, dominion over the kingdoms of our lives in submission to Jesus Christ.

So in a sense, we're slaves to God, but when we're slaves to God, we're also kings reigning over sin. He says, "If sin is reigning in you, it's because you let it reign." Every part of your body, all your members are personified here. It's instruments as tools, either for righteousness or unrighteousness. A lot of people think Christianity is just spiritual. That has nothing to do with life. Like, "Oh, your faith. All right, all right. That's what you believe. It's out there. It's very personalized." Nothing to do with the way that you physically live. And we push back at that. That's a false idea. It has everything to do with how we live.

Romans 12:1 through 2, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies, not just your souls, your bodies as live as a living sacrifice, wholly and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." Every day you wake up and you say, "God, I am yours. Jesus, I'm yours. I am on the altar. My body is on the altar as a sacrifice." That's through worship. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Full body. Holistic submission, your mind. Lord, my mind is yours. Help me take captive every single thought that is a virus against my walk with you. Submission of the mind, submission of the mouth, of the voice, tongue, legs, arms, hands, fingertips, everything in submission to God.

Roman 6:14, he continues, "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace." And this is what you need to understand in context. He's not saying that this is license to sin. "Oh, we're under grace." I heard this so many times. You meet with someone and you're like, "Hey, man or sister, you're living in sin. Here's the scriptures. We should repent." And he says, "We're not under the law. We're under grace."

No, no, no. Hold on. You can't just rip a verse out of context. What's he talking about? Paul has already explained the law condemns us. So before Christ, we are all under the dreadful burden of the law. The law reveals our disobedience that we can't be saved by obedience to law. We're all debtors to law. But once in Christ, we are no longer in the condition of being crushed by the weight of the law.

Now, we're under grace and the law operates differently depending on which realm you're in. We talk about that in chapter 5. And Adam, the law condemns us and reveals our sin. It has no power to affect change. In Christ, you're saved by grace. Now the law is transformed by this whacking stick of burden, condemnation, repent, repent, repent. Once you do repent, the law becomes this path that God gives us as a rule for life.

God says, "Here's the guardrails for the fullness of life, a life in which you are going to flourish. Not just temporarily, but for all of eternity shows us the way of life is freedom from sin. So no grace doesn't nullify the law. It transforms what the purpose of the law in our lives. So Romans 3:31, he says, "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?" By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law."

Romans 7:12, that next chapter. "So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." Romans 7:14. "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am over the flesh sold under sin." So we're not under the principle of law as a means of salvation. We don't look at the 10 commandments and say, "Fulfill the 10 commandments and then God will allow you to go to heaven." That's not how Christianity works. God gives us 10 commandments and he says, "Try doing it." And as soon as you try doing it, you're like, "Yep, I can't do it."

And he's like, "Good. Now, you get the point. Repent of your sin. You need Jesus Christ. Once you're in Christ, you get the power of the Holy Spirit to now live according to God's will." Which is the law. We're justified by grace through faith. We're under grace, which doesn't mean we're free to sin. It actually means now we're free to obey. We have the ability to obey God, and its obedience from the heart. And it's all by grace. Our justification is by grace. And so is our sanctification.

Roman 6:15. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the law, but under grace. By no means. So Paul has been a pastor long enough. He knows. He knows this is always the objection. Whenever you tell people, you can't earn your salvation. There's nothing you can do to merit your way into heaven, it's only by grace. And they're like, "But that doesn't work." You can't just tell people that you can repent of your sins anytime and all of your sins are forgiven. Now, there's no motivation to live a righteous life.

No, no, no, that can't be how it works. This is what Paul continues to say, he says, "But if that's how you think, you don't understand grace." He says, "By no means. May it never be. God forbid." Verse 16. "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey either of sin, which leads to death or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?"

So to fully understand this verse, you need to understand the culture of that time and indentured servitude. When modern readers hear the word slave or slavery, we think of the slave trade in the west and recent centuries, which was essentially kidnapping, stealing people, bringing them across the ocean, then selling them at the auction block to other people.

In the ancient world, slavery was primarily voluntary servitude. So if someone couldn't pay their debts or couldn't provide for their family, didn't have a place to live, did not have work to provide. This person would offer their services to fulfill the debt and they would live in the master's house and they would fulfill the will of the master indentured servitude. And it was estimated that Rome at that time, when Paul was writing, that one third, at least one third of the population of Rome were in this kind of indentured servitude as slaves.

And initially they were made to wear this distinctive style of clothing, so people could say, "Okay. You're a slave. You're not a slave." And then the Romans figured out, "Oh, that's actually a bad move because it's communicating to the slaves just how powerful they could be if they united and worked together of their numerical strength." So then they said, "No, no, no. You have to address like everyone else."

And many free men had once been slaves and likely more than half of the Roman church at that time had been enslaved. So they intuitively understood this metaphor that when your master tells you something to do, you are to obey your master and you can't serve to masters. So Paul here is saying in, "Adam, we were slaves to sin, which leads to death, but in Christ we're slaves to a master who redeems us, who loves us, who turns aside God's wrath from us by his own obedience. We worship a master who himself enslaved himself, took on the form of a servant. This is the greatest master that has ever lived. This is a master that did everything to serve us, Christ."

God becomes a doulos, becomes the slave to take on the penalty that we deserve. He fulfills the will of God completely. And Paul is saying by repentance, by obeying in him, we're liberated from sin and from death, which formally held us in bondage. Do you ever feel like you are enslaved to sin? Are there sins now in your life that you're like, "I can't even imagine having freedom from the sin"? I can't even imagine what freedom would feel like, what it would taste like.

Well, today I'm calling you to believe that you can have victory over that particular sin. Whatever sin the Lord is bringing to mind now. And in your Christian walk... One of the things I like doing my free time is watching fights. I like fights. I like boxing. I like MMA. I told my wife second career, if this doesn't work out, I think I'm going to be an MMA fighter just in case.

So one of the things I like to see is the records of these guys. Because some of the guys in the boxing world, they're like, "I am undefeated. I'm 99 and 0." And then you look at their opponents and you're like, "They were all trumps. They were all trumps." I've been to matches like this and I've seen how these guys pad their numbers. It's basically like a professional gets in there and they're like, "Okay, who wants to fight him?"

But in the Christian life, we should have a column of wins over sin. You should be able to look back at your life and you say, "You know what? Two years ago, I struggled with envy. I struggled with insatiable desire for social media. I struggled with..." whatever the sin is. "I struggled with pride." And pride is the last enemy. We'll get to pride. Because actually as you grow in the Christian faith, you should be able to look at your resume of wins and be like, "That was pretty good." And then the Holy Spirit comes in and you're like, "Sinner, you wicked sinner, now here's your thorn in the flesh, so you don't get proud."

But that should be our goal is to like to graduate away from lesser sins to greater sins. How do you do it? You do it by coming to Jesus saying, "Jesus, set me free. Jesus give me the power to remain free." John 8:31 through 36. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." And they answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

So obeying sin leads to death. Obeying God leads to righteousness. And the master we obey shows whose slave we really are. Point two is set free from slavery to God. Verse 17. But thanks be to God that you who are once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you are committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

Remember the monergistic, synergistic thing I said? Here it's synergistic, but who gets all the glory? God, of course. He says thanks be to whom? To God that you who were on slaves have become obedient. So you are doing the obedience, but you give glory to God because it's God who gives you the power. He gives you the desire to do it. Thanks be to God.

Paul pours forth a burst of Thanksgiving having considered the greatness of what God has done for him. Our goal should be to become slaves of righteousness. And what kind of slaves of righteousness? How are we to obey? He says from the heart, from the heart. And this is the paradox of freedom that you are enslaved to Jesus Christ.

And by the way, sometimes it does feel like slavery. I'm not going to stand up here and say, once you follow Jesus Christ, it's just hunky-dory. It's easy. It is smooth sailing. It's not. It's work. It's a lot of hard work, but it's transformative work. He says, "But this is from the heart. From the heart you want to obey." You want to fulfill everything that God has called you to do. You want to do God's will. This is the difference between religion and a relationship.

Religion, you're like, "I got to do this thing, so I don't go to hell. I got to do this thing so that I get blessed. I go do this thing because God said so." And he says obedience is from heart. Oh, it's not I have to do this, I get to by the power of the Holy Spirit serve this God that loves me and he's given me a new heart that's free to obey God.

Galatians 5:1. For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yolk of slavery. So the freedom Christ offers isn't autonomous self-direction. But if deliverance from the enslaving powers of sin that prevent us from becoming everything God intended us to be. This is why our children's ministry and our youth ministry is so important. It's so important. I don't know why things work this way, but they do. It's like when you're a teenager, when you're in high school, when you're in college, you basically set up your spiritual trajectory.

In the ministry here at Mosaic, I've been in the city 13 years. Mosaic is 11. Very few people have come to faith in their 80s, 90s. We've had a few and it's like, "Oh, praise God." Because once you get on this path of, this is what I believe, this is my worldview, and then you just get really busy in life in your job and your career. And then you don't really study, so you don't really... It's when you're a teenager, the spiritual formation is so important. When you're a child, when you're a teenager, when you're in high school, when you're in college spiritual formation... Because you're figuring out how am I to live? What are the decisions I should be making? What should I be addicting myself to? Good things or bad things? Things that will make me prosper and flourish or things that will be destructive for me.

The sooner you get on this path of like, "Oh, this is the way I am to go. This is how I can become the best version of myself." And then you just go. And there's also hope for everyone who at any time you come to the Lord, you can sin, sin, sin, and then the Lord saves you, regenerates you, justifies you, gives you the Holy Spirit. And then transformation all of a sudden. But he says, "This is the path for our flourishing. It's following God's law."

Every other religion is a religion of law and human merit. Christianity and stark contrast is a religion of freedom. That's why we mistakenly think that freedom is the absence of all restrictions. Like, "Freedom, yeah." I remember when I got my license, my first car was an Audi 80. It was tremendous. It was a stick shift. I didn't know how to drive stick shifts. I learned that day when I bought it to drive it home and I thought, "It's freedom, freedom. I have freedom." I finally have freedom.

I had overbearing immigrant parents and I'm like, "Finally, got my own car." I thought I was free until I got pulled over and I got my first speeding ticket and I realized, "Oh, hold on. Oh, no, no, no, no. There's restrictions to the freedom. And if you do not drive within those restrictions, you are actually going to lose your freedom." Freedom isn't the absence of restrictions. Freedom is the presence of restrictions that we were designed for. This is why we shouldn't get mad and we should be like, "Oh, the law of God."

The Psalmist says, I delight in the law of God. I love the law of God because he knows that it's the law of God that brings blessing in life. When a Christian is like, "This is too hard. I can't follow the Lord. This is too hard. It's too restricting. I need freedom. I need freedom. I need freedom away from God, away from his commandments, away from the church. I just need a breather. I need freedom."

That's like a fish saying, "You know what? I am restricted by this water. This water is not for me anymore. I'm tired of swimming in water. I'm going to walk." I've got five fish in my house and I've been studying fish for a while. That would be ludicrous of the fish to jump out and say, "I want freedom from this tank." And that's what a lot of people do when they want freedom from God. It's freedom from the environment in which you flourish. It's like a train. A train is most free when it's restricted to rails and humans are most free when we're running on oxygen, so our souls are most free when we're restricted to and by God.

We are most free when we are in submission of God's authority, when we humbly submit to God who submitted himself to the law and the punishment for our law breaking. True freedom is found in submission to the God who submitted himself in order to free us.

So for us, for Christians, we're set free from sin for sanctification, for obedience to God, and we should be happy with the fact that we are enslaved to God, because this is where we flourish.

Matthew 6:33. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added onto you. He said, "These are the priorities for the Christians. Seek God's kingdom and righteousness and God will take care of the rest of our needs. This is that priority. Matthew 5:20. "For I tell, unless your righteousness," Jesus said, "exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

So he says Christians are to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees. If we don't, we're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven. So he's not saying we enter the kingdom of heaven through our righteousness, but he says, if you have entered the kingdom of heaven, you will pursue righteousness. So if faith is real, the fruit of faith is righteousness. It's obedience from the heart.

I've always found that verse. Very interesting. What does it mean that our righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees? Because if you follow the Pharisees in many ways, they were very righteous. They weren't righteous from the heart, but they did a lot of things that were very righteous that we could learn from them. Let's look at them. Let's look at the Pharisees real quick. Who were the Pharisees? They rose up against the secularism of the Jews of that day.

They're like, "You're not Jewish enough. You're not obedient to God's law enough." So they start their own movement of conservatives and they sought to restore covenant purity in Israel. They were called the set apart ones and they consider themselves set apart for the singular pursuit of righteousness. But they did it hypocritically. They didn't do it from the heart.

But we can still learn from their righteousness. Matthew 23:23 through 24. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel."

So the problem with them, Jesus is like, "You did the lesser parts of the law, tithing, but you missed the more important parts of the law, justice, mercy faithfulness."

You should have done the other stuff. It's good. You should be tithing. Don't forget the weightier matters of the law. Here, I just want to emphasize that this was part of their righteousness. They understood that 10% of their income that the Lord gives them, they are to give back to the Lord for kingdom building purposes. So in terms of our righteousness, Christians, does your righteousness exceed that of the Pharisees in terms of tithing?

And I say that because statistically less than 3% of Christians in the United States, tithe give 10% of their income to the Lord. The rest rob God of what he calls us to give for the building of his kingdom. So this is a tremendous opportunity for me to plug our building campaign because we still are praying for the Lord to provide us with resources, to build or purchase a ministry center.

We've located a tremendous property. And if the Lord would lead you to give, you can go to our website and there's the Mosaic Build and give to build the kingdom of Lord here. So our right to succeed, including with our finances. Luke 18:11 through 22, another example we can learn from the Pharisees. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give tithes of all that I get."

Obviously, he's a hypocrite and self-righteous for thinking that he's better than this other guy, and that other guy, the tax collector, repented of his sins and he walked away justified. And when this guy didn't, so they had a heart issue, the Pharisees did, but they still had a righteousness in that. This guy tithes. He's said, "I tithe." And he says, "I fast twice a week. I fast twice a week." And the expectation for Christians, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He's not saying if you fast, he says, when you fast. That's an expectation. We are to discipline our bodies even from food, for the purpose of drawing near to the Lord and spending more time in prayer. Something to learn from the Pharisees.

John 5:39 through 40 that Jesus says to the Pharisees, "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is day that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." Their problem here in the text, they didn't come to the Lord. The scriptures were clear that the Messiah is Jesus Christ and Jesus proved it to them. But here we can learn, at least they did study the holy scriptures. They searched the scriptures. And we can learn from that.

Matthew 23:15, "Woe to you, scribe and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves." So he calls him children of hell. He calls them hypocrites. But here, I just want to emphasize, they shouldn't have converted people to hypocrisy that they were doing, but at least they cared about evangelism. That's what the word proselyte means. A proselyte is a convert.

They travel across sea and land. That's how important evangelism was to them. We can learn from that. That's part of the righteousness that the Lord calls us to. The great commission is given to all of us to go and make disciples of all nations.

So Jesus said, "Unless our righteous succeeds that of the Pharisees, we won't enter the kingdom of heaven. Obedience is an expectation for every Christian. It's not a popular word today in many circles. It's never even used this word. But if you study church history, you see that when the church thrived, when there was revival in the church, when people were quickened by the Holy Spirit drawn near to the Lord, they cared about obedience.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has a tremendous word called The Cost of Discipleship in which he talks about cheap grace. And he says, "Cheap grace is the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom it departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin, which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. Baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate. Such grace is costly because it cause us to follow, and it is grace because it cause us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it cost a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. True grace sets us free from sin and sets us free for God. And we're set free for sanctification, which is growing in proximity to God, growing in closeness to the Lord.

The holier you become, the closer you get to the Lord. Roman 6:19 through 20. I'm speaking human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness. So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Since some people don't easily grasp spiritual things, Paul used the graphic metaphor of making his point to slavery that we are to be just as wholehearted and obeying God as we used to be to sin. Think about your life before meeting Christ, dear Christian. Think about how your life revolved around sin. And you look at young people around the city and it's like their lives revolve around sin. The sin of pursuing wealth. Just to pursue wealth because of greed, because you're in love with money. The sin of pursuing pleasure, despite any kind of... Without even thinking about morality. Seeking freedom to sin you and then all of your finances and time, and the way that you orchestrate where you live and who your friends are, it's all based around sin.

And for the Christian, once you become a Christian that needs to shift. Now, the sin of your life is Jesus Christ and you should have a singular pursuit of righteousness and center your whole life around that. Prior to regeneration, people give themselves wholeheartedly to sin. Now, we are to equally wholeheartedly give ourselves to righteousness. When we are under slavery to the dominion of sin, we're completely free from righteousness. And to be free from righteousness is the same thing as being given over to sin.

This is the paradox of freedom. Satan promises us freedom, but gives us only slavery to sin. Jesus Christ promises us a yolk. He promises us slavery, but gives us incredible freedom over the soul. It's like your heart just opens up. Your soul opens up. There's no guilt. There's no shame. There's no regret.

You're just focused on the Lord, focused on love, the ultimate paradox of the Christian life to be free from sin is to be a slave to righteousness. Now, we are free to pursue righteousness, to present our members as slaves, to righteousness leading to sanctification. Roman 6:21. "But what fruit were you getting at that time, from the things in which you were not ashamed? For the end of those things is death." What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?

I was speaking with a college student. I won't say when. I was speaking with a college student and the college student said, "You know what? I live for the weekend. That's all I live for. Nothing else in my life gives me pleasure. I hate Monday through Friday until 4:00 PM." I said, "Why 4:00 PM?" He said, "It's happy hour somewhere." Just living for the weekend. He said, "But then the rest of the week, I am just miserable. I hate my life. I hate my work. There's just no satisfaction, no joy, nothing." And then you look back and you're like, "What did I reap from living like that, from living for myself, from living for sin? What did I reap? What do I have now from all of that? But when you have the Holy Spirit and your vision is clear and you look back at your life and you think of the sins you committed. It's incredibly shameful." That's what he says.

He said in verse 1 and 2, "But now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." Said enslave to God. Not only do you get satisfaction and joy and you get the presence of God, but you get the satisfaction that your life is actually incredibly meaningful. What you do is fruit that you're producing fruit, that leads to sanctification, to sanctify you.

But in the end also eternal life for you and then building of the kingdom. Roman 6:23 for the wage of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Wages of sin is death. So if you are not yet a Christian, if you are here today and you're just not sure. You're not sure. I'll just ask you. Do you care about holiness? Because that's really the test. If you have been justified, then you care about sanctification. You care about obedience to God.

If you don't care about obedience to God, you're probably not a Christian. So I call you today to do the following. When we pray, when we worship appeal to God in your heart, in your heart and the depth of your heart appeal to God and say, "God, forgive me for my sins. Forgive me for living for myself, living as if you don't matter as if you don't exist for living as if I were dead to you and you were dead to me." I repent of that sin. Lord, I repent of that sin. I trust in Jesus Christ that Jesus Christ died on the cross, that Jesus Christ on the cross, he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Meaning God the father in some sense says to God the son, "You're dead to me. You're dead to me. Son, you're dead to me." Because Jesus Christ took our sin upon himself to save us.

So repent of your sin, trust in Jesus Christ. And from that moment on, you will see the Holy Spirit is going to grow a desire for sanctification in you. The wage of sin is death. It's eternal death in a place called hell, a place of eternal damnation, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite things to do is to go to the reservoir, the Cleveland Circle Reservoir in the evening to watch the sunset. I like that. There's lots of benches. There's always at least one bench I can find to sit there. I like to stare into the sun. I was told that that's not healthy. So in the vicinity of the sun, I stare and I pray and I pray.

I was kind of bummed out this week that one day, and I drove to the reservoir. I just sat down. I'm praying. I'm like, "Lord, I don't know." There was a spiritual sadness of him battling. I met with a pastor friend of mine and he said, "Welcome." He said, "It's an occupational hazard." That's what he told me and he laughed and that made me feel better.

So I'm sitting there and I'm like, "Lord, just send me some good news." I need some good news. I even left my phone up because I'm like, "Whenever I pray, sometimes the Lord specifically sends me a phone call or text like someone is going to encourage me." And I'm like, "Lord, Lord, Lord." And nothing, just nothing. Just nobody. I'm like, "Lord." And then out of nowhere I hear a voice and the voice says, "Jesus Christ died for your sins." And I was like, "Who's that?" And I realized it was me. I was just talking to me. It was my voice because I learned from the Psalmist that you were to encourage yourself.

The Psalmist says, "Why are you downcast, O my soul?" Why are you downcast? This is the greatest news in the history of the universe. What other news do we need other than Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins because of his great love for me, he washes away my shame, my sin, my regret, all of that.

Honestly, I just started laughing. I'm like, "Oh, I just Pastor Jan'd myself. It worked. It worked. I got a big smile on my face and I went home and it was tremendous." And the essence of Christian theology is grace and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude." We get power for sanctification from justification. We are saved by grace through faith. That's how we get justified. But then sanctification happens when we just think and we meditate on the sufferings of Jesus Christ in our behalf. That's what it took to justify us. And as you do, your faith increases and your sanctification increases as well.

A close to this, 1 Samuel 15:22, Samuel says to King Saul, he says, "Has the Lord has great delight and burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams.

So obedience, God cares more about obedience than the sacrifices that we bring to him. But we can't even obey God unless we meditate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ sacrificed himself because he was in total obedience to God the father. In Gethsemane, he said, "Lord, if there's any other way, let this cup pass for me, but not my will but yours be done."

So as we meditate on Christ obedience, as we meditate on his sacrifice, the Lord strengthens our own resolve to be obedient to the Lord. If God is speaking to you about any area of your life, dear Christian, where you are in disobedience, today is the day of repentance and today is the day of resolve. To say to sin, "You are dead to me, because I am alive to Christ."

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this time in the holy scriptures. We thank you for the meditation on the gospel. And we thank you, Lord, that we can live a life of righteousness, a life of sanctification. And even when we don't do it perfectly, we can always come to you and repent and find grace and pray for anyone who doesn't yet know you today, draw them to yourself, regenerate their hearts, save them and give each one of us an extra dose of the Holy Spirit to work out our salvation, to do it with fear and trembling. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transript:

Today, we are continuing in our series in the Book of Romans. We are in chapter 6. We're going to read verses 1 through 14. Let me pray and I will read the text... I'll read the text and then pray. And then we'll see the Word that the Lord has for us today. Romans 6:1-14... Oh, sorry. Clicked on the wrong document there. There we are. All right, Roman 6:1-14. All right.

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

"We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For zone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you that just by a simple matter of faith, of deep trust, deep belief, deep hope in your Word in the gospel, we can have forgiveness from sins. We can be forgiven from the penalty that is due to us for our sin against you, a holy God. Holy Spirit, we praise you that salvation is a matter by grace through faith, but Lord, we praise you further that upon reception of that grace, we're not called to continue to earn your love. We're not called to just strive further and further through works. We're called to be sustained by you, by faith in you. Lord, show us today how we can be changed by faith, by trusting in your Word that by that newness comes with just clinging to who we are through our faith, through our union with Jesus Christ. We pray Holy Spirit, show us the truths that you want us to take home today. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

We're in a difficult season right now. The brokenness of the world is becoming more apparent every day. Russia, Ukraine, refugee and humanitarian crises, pre-official ruling Roe v. Wade battles, COVID infections, COVID closures, travel, weddings, still being canceled because of COVID, inflation, Brookline teachers strike. These are the topics that we can escape today. Our energy levels and compassion capacities have the same empty status as our gas tanks. While I consider just every day through all this, I consider myself blessed to be breathing, blessed to have the knowledge that can be saved by grace through faith in Jesus. I was feeling the weight of all of this, this week, as I was processing these challenges with brothers and sisters who have dealt with these more personally, thinking about how challenges have hit my life. I've been thinking about what should we do? What should Christians do? What should we do as individuals in the church?

We're in this Book of Romans in week 16. We're just in chapter 6 of this book with 16 chapters. And just I was tempted to ask is this the right thing to do every Sunday? Is preaching the Word, proclaiming the whole counsel of God the way forward? Maybe we should be talking more topically about how Christians can stand firm right now in the midst of the challenges, in the midst of the animosity that is directed towards them. Talk more specifically about how to stand our ground, prepare for persecution and face tumultuous periods of life.

But in my preparation this week, I was just reading the introduction of Romans in my ESV Study Bible and found great comfort. With all those thoughts in my mind, as a reminder that the Apostle Paul wrote this book during the reign of the Emperor Nero. And Nero was an evil vial man. He was emperor, he was king. He could do whatever he wanted and he hated Christians. Nero publicly shamed and tortured Christians. Nero blamed issues of society on Christians. One of the worst things he did was to use Christians as street lamps. Placed them on stakes and put oil on them and light them up for they were the problem in society. And according to church history, it was actually under the reign of Nero that the Apostle Paul, eventually, who wrote our text from today was put to death.

And so in this reign of Nero, when society was just constantly affected by war, by disease, by slavery, by sexual slavery, by battles for power, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church of Rome. Through all this stuff, he wrote about the gospel. The theme line of the Book of Romans that you just hear me say all the time if you spend time with me is Romans 1:16-17, "For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"

I'm comforted despite the weight of this season, two plus years of it, to fall in the example of Paul. When we face times of war, trouble, fear, anxiety, persecution, confusion, we press on towards the goal of the upward cause of the glory of God. We the church talk about the faith that we have in Jesus Christ and the power of that faith to change lives. While the world and man goes through its cycles, we do what brings honor and praise and glory to God. And we keep the focus on what really as our text today says, makes men new. That's one of the challenges that we are faced today. Why is man still in this situation? Why are these fights happening? Why has not men ascended above these trials? And the answer that we acknowledge is, he still is tainted by sin. All of his faculties are tainted by sin and there's forgiveness for that in the gospel.

But here in chapter 6, after Paul spelled out that salvation is by grace through faith, by a matter of faith, Christians can be forgiven from the penalty of sin. And Romans 3:21 through the end of chapter 5, which we finished last week, he's talking about how the gospel changes people. What makes people new? That's a question they're wrestling with back then. That's a question we're wrestling with today. So chapter 2, it's all about the gospel's ability, not just to offer forgiveness of sin, but to change men and women, make new men and women.

So as we begin this text, reflecting upon the reading, you may have noticed that it sounds like Paul, at the beginning of this passage, he's in the middle of a conversation. He is. He's in the middle of a thought that we covered last week. Roman's 5:20 says, "But where sin increased grace abounded all the more." What he's saying here is that where sin is on the move in the hearts of individuals, in society, in the world, there's a corresponding work of God's grace that is also on the move. And it's not that these two powers, sin and grace are actually at war with one another, fighting one another where the two switch a seed of power occasionally, or over time they balance each other out, but that God's grace of abounds. To abound means to grow more plentiful. Grace doesn't just meet sin, it abounds. It goes beyond sin. Where sin increase, grace abounds all the more.

And so what Paul's going to talk about in chapter 6 is our relationship to sin. For those of us who are saved in Jesus, by grace, what is our new relationship with sin? And so before we're saved by grace, Apostle Paul provides in Ephesians 2:1-3, he provides a statement on our condition man's condition. Born in sin before one is truly saved through faith in Christ. He says, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

We were dead in our trespasses, enslaved to the passions of the flesh. They were our master. We didn't have the ability to say no to our flesh and passions prior to Christ. Paul says this was our previous relationship to our sinful nature, but God made us alive together with Christ. So how do things change? Let's look at verse 1.

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue and sin that Grace may abound? This is his engagement with the end of chapter 5. What he's doing here after elaborating on the great doctrine of justification by grace through faith for a couple of chapters and ending chapter 5 with the statement: "Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more." Paul's pausing to deal with a question that naturalize when people hear that we're saved simply by grace through faith in Christ. Not because of anything we do. So he's thinking if our good works add nothing to our justification before God, our righteousness is not our own as Paul's spelled out very clearly. Then why in the world do we need to do good works at all? Why fight sin? Why fight temptation? Why the need? Why not just give in? If we've been set free by the demands of the law, why can't we just live free doing anything we want? Won't God's grace abound all the more? Won't he just forgive us?

It's hard to know if Paul actually engaged this question with the Roman church or in his ministry, or if it's a rhetorical question, just saying, I know that people could logically follow the previous chapters to this line of thought, but it certainly has come up in church history. One of the most famous examples of this is a monk, Grigori Rasputin, in the early 1900s. He basically assume this mentality of if I sin all the more, God's grace will abound all the more. And he became so influential in Russian culture with his... just for the way that he stuck out, that he misled the whole Russian royal dynasty to the point that he led Russia into just debauchery. He broke up the royal family, which led to the eventual Bolshevik Revolution. And Russia is still struggling with moral issues today at a profound level, as all countries are, but just one example.

But what Paul's dealing with is this issue. For some of you who are in a season where you're just reveling in the grace that God has extended to you, you can't really fathom this question. Are we to continue in sin where grace may abound? Where you are right now you think you'll never want to break God's command. Anyone for whom the experience of God grace is fresh and present knows that this thinking is horrible. It's evil. It's vile. How could somebody who knows God's grace think like this? However, just to drive at home to connect you to the passage, I wonder if some of you, for whom your love of the gospel is at a low point have had moments where you've thought, "I'm just going to indulge a little bit. Give myself a break. God's ransomed me. He's rescued me from great depravity, great pride in my past. What if I just delve into sin a little bit here? God will forgive me if I turn quickly." Paul, today, he's exposing how such thinking is an abuse of grace.

So Paul's going to respond to this question and show how the relationship between Christian and sin changes profoundly. And the result will be, as we go forward, that believers who know God's grace cannot continue to live a life of sin. They're dead to it. So verse 2 says, Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? "By no means!" He quickly denies that we should continue to live in sin. And he responds with another question, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" How can we who have died to sin continue to live in it. He's asking how can those who have died to sin live in sin? And the proper question to ask when we read this is, "Hmm. When? When did we die to sin?" I think this is the engagement with a lot of people raised in the church in past decades. Paul just makes a statement we've died to sin without explaining where it's coming from or what it means. He says it's a big fact without a background or backstory, but he said, we've died to sin.

And so when did we die to sin? What does that mean? So that's what he continues saying. When did we die to sin? Verse 3, he answers that. "Do you not know..." What don't we know? "That all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death." He asked, "Do you not know?" And here's a question, did you know that? Did you know most of the people here in this room were baptized, many of you as believers, not just infants? Did you know that you died to sin when you were baptized? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Honestly, I was saved at Mosaic, born again by the spirit of God in August 2011 at Mosaic after being in the church my whole life. And I liked church. I didn't see myself as a sinner in need of God's grace until that point. But honestly was already at Mosaic, listening to Mosaic preaching for five years, in my second year of seminary after I understood that I died to sin. I remember Dr. Gamble taking us through a systematic theology class, opening this chapter, Roman 6, as I understood the implications of this for the first time.

So when Paul asked this question, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? When you said you have died to sin, did you know that? I can answer no, I didn't know that. And you see, I thought by believing Jesus, I was just forgiven of my sin in just kind of a nebulous sense. And that was good news to me. That was great news. That should be great news to all of you, but I never really thought about the specific ways that Christ's death connected to my sin and how it affected my relationship to my sin going forward. I was really thankful for forgiveness. I got baptized. I was baptized as an infant. I was convicted that I needed to get baptized as a believer, as we teach here in Mosaic (but are friendly to child Baptist). But to find out that I was baptized into death was eyeopening.

And so today when Paul's getting us to think about this topic of death to sin, baptism into Christ death, to continue understanding where he was going, I have to open up verse 4, "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life."

So to understand what I'm saying, to understand what Paul's saying, we have to talk about this term, baptism. We have to have a better understanding of it. To begin with I want to ask the question, when were you baptized into Christ? As I ask that question now, some of you are like thinking, "I was not baptized into Christ." Some of you are thinking, "I was baptized as an infant, an adolescent, an adult." You're thinking about your water baptism, but that's not what Paul's referring to here. For most of the church, we tend to think about the act of baptism more than the meaning, but the simple word for baptism here in this text that opens up all these verses is to be immersed, baptizo, to be immersed. To be baptized is to be immersed.

The Bible talks about several baptisms/immersions. Water baptism, baptism of the spirit or by the spirit, and even baptism into suffering, but generally it means immersion. So when Paul is talking about baptism here in our text, he's talking about the actual spirituality of being immersed into Christ through faith that is portrayed when Christians are baptized in water. What I didn't quite understand before I was baptized as a believer was that baptism is an outward portrayal of an inward spiritual reality that has taken place in my heart. It's an outward picture of an inward spirituality that takes place in the heart of a person who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ. And because of this, to be very clear, it's not the water baptism that saves people, it's the actual reality. Being immersed into the person of Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, having union with him in these acts that saves people. By faith, the Holy Spirit applies Christ death, burial, resurrection to us. Water baptism is a portrayal of a greater reality.

So the church, we immerse people into water, and yes, we do this at Mosaic as often as possible downstairs in a horse feeding trough. The water ranges from about 58 degrees Fahrenheit to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If you want to get baptized, you should do it now in the summer, because it's not fun in the winter, though it's more memorable when it's cold. The church immerses people into water to portray the fact that they've been immersed into their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by faith because of their belief in his death, burial, and resurrection.

So on verses 3 and 4, Paul, he's telling us that when we're baptized, we're immersed into Jesus by faith and we're baptized into various things. So we're joined with him in one, his death; two, his burial; three, his resurrection. We see this in these verses. So when we bring people in the water at Mosaic, it's a display of their life before Christ.

The first thing that we do is we lower them down into the water. This is a portrayal as this text tells us that they have joined Christ with his death. Then step two, we lower them and we make sure that they're all the way under the water. Sometimes at Mosaic, you see some people keep their hands up. We don't want that. At burial, they throw the dirt all over the body. Why do we want that whole body beneath there? It's to show that this death was final, this death was complete. And you're only down there for a second. So let the pastor get your hands below water. Don't hold onto the sides. And three, we raise people up, back out of the water and that depicts the spirituality of the fact that they've been raised with Jesus into new resurrected life. And so baptism, it's a beautiful, outward picture of this inward spirituality that has taken place of people's death to sin and resurrection to new life.

So understanding the spiritual realities that have taken place prior to one's baptism. These are places. We're not saying that putting someone in the water saves people. Can you imagine if that was the case? Can you imagine what the church would be doing? I think we'd be running around like cowboys, riding horses, just lassoing people, fighting them to dip them in the water. If that's what saves you, that's what we would be doing. And that sounds hard, but a lot of fun, but that's not the case. Baptism is primarily this depiction of a great spiritual reality. It's something we do in obedience to Christ. It's something that we can do to encourage other people, but it's much more than these things. It's a response to what Christ has done for us. It's a proclamation of what Christ has done in us, forever changing our relationship to sin and its power over us.

Paul says we've died to sin, but why does he talk about this resurrection part? Is he talking about the great day in the future when the remains of your body will be raised and soul and body will be united free from the influence of sin? No, he's talking about a resurrection that we, that you can have in Jesus today, May 22nd, 2022. That's a great day to remember your salvation. 22, '22. A resurrection life, a new life, a new nature that you can embrace, enjoy and revel in and walk in today. That's what Paul says is offered to us when we by faith, receive Jesus as our Lord and savior. A death to the old self, a complete death and a resurrection to new life. To spell this out, let's read verse 4 and 5.

"We were buried therefore with him by baptism, immersion into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might..." Raise one day? No. "We might walk in newness of life. For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." Paul, he's talking about our new relation to sin. Before baptism, immersion into Christ, you were dead in sins power. After immersion, you are dead to its power. You're no longer under sins dominion and helpless to its longings. You can walk in a new way in life today. You can walk free in accordance to God's purposes, principles, plans, and heart.

I have to emphasize this because a lot of people just, they come into Christianity again with this nebulous understanding of forgiveness, but they lack this true belief that they are dead to the power of their sin. And they stay fighting the same problems in their life for years and years and years, never experiencing freedom, never experiencing true newness that comes with salvation in Jesus Christ, being weakened disciples for his glory, being weakened ministers of the gospel. So we meditate on this. And so everything I said adds up to one statement. When we are saved by grace through faith, we're not just saved by the penalty of our sin, by the power of our sin. Do you believe that?

There's a lot of people who just believe in this nebulous forgiveness and what it typically amounts to without understanding that they're dead to sin. It's they're just trying to fight and pursue holiness, growth in Christ in their own power. They're trying to take on a task that only God can do by their selves. They're essentially trying to grow through their own power, which is limited. And when you do that, how you find that fast. Some of you in Boston are really smart, really strong, really physically fit, really stubborn, and you can get far on your own power. But if you continue in that, you're going to find you don't have strength to grow on your own. This approach, it leads to cycles and cycles of sin and repentance, sin and repentance. Taking two steps forward, one step back, and you're taking one step forward. And because it was so tiring to go forward one step in your own strength, while you were recovering from the exhaustion of working forward, you take two steps backward.

What Paul's getting at in these verses is that grace is what gives a Christian life, and it's God's grace that enables to live the Christian life. It's God's grace that gives us power to say no to sin and yes to God. Grace changes people. This is really bad news to really good people. What do I mean by that? This is bad news for people that think it's too easy, it's too simplistic to trust in God, to give people grace for both salvation and growth and holiness for change in their life. These people who think that extending grace without requiring specific adherences to a law creates lawless people. These people who do not understand grace, the people who ask the question in verse 1, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? That's who Paul is dealing with. He's dealing with Judaizers, Jews who are saying it can't just be salvation by grace through faith. It can't just be that sanctification is a matter of grace. There's got to be works added.

Christians who don't understand this, they're the ones who are going to ask the church in times of trouble and trial to change its message to something that is more directly irrelevant at the surface level. They're going to doubt the church if it proceeds with primarily preaching the Word on Sunday. They're going to try to strong arm their preferences on structures, teaching tradition into the church, because they don't believe that grace changes people. Do you believe that grace can change you?

Before baptism, immersion into Christ, you were dead in sins power. After immersion, you are dead to its power. In verses 6 and 7, he drives this point home more clearly. "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin." Paul compares our previous relationship to sin as slavery. Slaves don't have choice. Slaves don't tell the master what to do. The master tells them what they should do. They simply obey their master. We in our sinful state before Christ had no choice, but to obey the flesh. But now with Christ, that slavery is broken. Why? Because the slave is dead. For a slave, one way to be free is to die. So in a Christian, the old man has to die in order that we might be able to live in the newness, the freedom of resurrected life.

So just as death releases a slave from their servitude, by joining with Christ, being immersed, it says that we are set free from the slavery relationship to sin that dominated our lives. And so next week, Paul develops this more, this connection to slavery. So I want to continue verses 8 through 10.

"Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that, Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God." So Jesus can't die again. That's what he's saying here. He can't die again because death, the penalty for sin has been defeated. In the same way when we enter into Christ death, we enter into his victory over sin. And we have the power to stand in authority over sin, going forward with our lives. As long as we walk forward with him, we have that resurrection power to conquer our sin.

And so Paul continues. He's saying a lot of what he said already, but verse 11 here is probably the most important thing to take home. This is Paul's take home point of this section of Scripture, Romans 6:1-14. After everything I said, "So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ." The means to freedom from the power of sin over your life is considering yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. I'm going to say it in a few ways. In order to let grace take hold of your life, to change, to experience true freedom from the power of sin, not just the penalty of sin, exercise faith and believe that you've entered into the death of Christ and that sin no longer has control over your life. I'm just going to keep going. If you want the freedom from sin, you want newness of life, you want resurrection life today, you must become what you are. You must become in day-to-day living what you are in Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, this is a quote from Jay Adams, pastor, theologian, "The high calling of the Christian, conferred upon him in Christ by which he is to reconcile himself dead to sin but alive to God, is itself a powerful motivation to holy living. Putting on the uniform is itself a potent factor that the Holy Spirit uses to bring about change."

I know that some of you are having day-to-day struggles with sin. I have them myself every day. And this sounds like the most dissatisfying advice. He's saying walk in this new identity, but one, heed it, meditate on it, chew on it. This is what the Bible says. Paul says, "Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus."

And two, think about the power of the uniforms that you've put on in your life. Think about the callings that you have accepted in life. Think about the empowerment that you might have felt as an athlete or soldier when you put on the uniform the first time, you were the logo or the crest of the team or your unit. Think about the doctor, white coat ceremony in all other forms in the health field. Think about the gowns that people around us through graduation season, in these past weeks, clogging up all the parking. When you see them and you're stuck in traffic, think about what that gown means in their lives. Think about how placing on any garments for any honorable or charitable calls act powerfully to alter one's life. Think about being a husband or wife saying those vows. I'm doing a ton of premarital counseling, doing a lot of weddings in these coming months. Think about becoming a parent. We have babies, praise God, being born all the time in Mosaic right now.

Receiving the uniform or the garments or the title, it doesn't just affect how we engage in our respective field. But when we cherish it, we cherish the uniform, the calling, taking it on alters how we view ourselves in every other area of life.

In college, my college soccer coach, as much as I struggled with my bad older guy, he really had a powerful tactic. Every time we got on the bus for an away game, we had our polo jerseys with our soccer patch on our chest. And he said, "Remember, you represent not just yourself, but the team when we go travel. When we're in restaurants together, you represent us. When we're in bathrooms at rest stops, you represent us. When you're on the field in the heat of battle, you represent us. When you're in the classroom, you represent us." And it was a powerful tactic and it inspired us to some championships. We took great pride in that. This is how Paul reflect on taking the badges, taking on the uniforms, taking on the callings of your life and the power that it brought, not just to that area, but every area of life. This is how Paul wants to view our lives in terms of the grace of Jesus Christ when we think about our immersion into him, in his death, burial and resurrection.

When we grasp just what it means that who we are, we have the chance at a new identity, a new life, it should affect every area of our life. With this understanding of Christian life sanctification, it's one, this process it's by grace we are saved. We're justified once we truly receive Christ as our Lord and savior by faith, believe that he went to the cross and he bore the wrath that we deserved on the cross. And by faith, God applies the punishment that I deserve to him and his righteous record to me. By faith, we are justified. The judge hits the gavel. We can never be declared guilty again. That's justification. But what Paul's teaching us here is that sanctification, it's one of growing up, it's a process. It's one of growing up into who we already are in Jesus Christ, in the power of the spirit.

And so it's not satisfying advice. It's not a quick, easy fix that's going to improve your life. It's not a self-help strategy to just go home and fight that sin that you know you're going to be attempted with. That you're saying, "No, this does not satisfy. This will not help." But this is just all over Scripture.

1 Peter 2:1-3. "So put away all malice..." This is Peter, one of the other early disciples. "So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good." And other translations throughout history have said gracious. If you've tasted his grace, grow up into your salvation.

Ephesians 2:8-10, the Apostle Paul wrote, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." He saved us. We're called to walk in our new identity into good works, good deeds for his glory.

Ephesians 4:1 Paul says, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." Paul, the most effective disciple, the most effective apostle in history, the most influential man in history, probably aside from Jesus Christ, this is the way that he told his spiritual children to grow up. This is how he told them change would come, victory over sin would truly come. And this is why he had enemies. This is why he takes a whole chapter of Romans. He continues on with his people debating this means of sanctification by grace of living within your identity, walking in it.

People said, "You're telling me the path to resurrected living, holy living, Christ likeness comes by faith that you have died through Jesus Christ." The freedom of tearing of sin comes from faith and believing who you are. Not from additional works. "It just seems too simple. It's too easy." People would say. And Paul would engage them, "When you came to Christ, you literally joined with him in his death and replaced your faith in the fact of that reality. You'll begin to see it manifests itself in an increasing basis.

And so some people are thinking that this is too passive. Work out your new identity, consider who you are. It's too spiritual. It's unrealistic. It's like taking a wishful approach like Disney. Like when you wish upon a star, I heard a pastor connect to this point at one point. It's this belief that you're just saved and you just let God change you. That's not it at all. Paul knows your questions. He knows your challenges. It's not wishful thinking. You really have to just battle to remind yourself of who you are in Christ.

There's a song, it's by Bethel Music, which we don't really support their church's teachings, but there's a song, "I'm no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God," and it's husband and wife singers. And the wife, she's just singing this, "I am a child of God," it's like she's growling it. And we sometimes, we have to, when we're facing difficulties, we're facing sin, facing temptation, feels like it has power over us. We need to pause and remind ourselves we are a child of God. A blood-bought child for whom death is dead. And in the Holy Spirit's power, we can have victory. So many Christians struggle because they just don't have faith that they can have victory. They've failed, they've stumbled and sinned over and over again, but you can have victory. And the most important thing is actually believing that.

And Paul, to show that this is not just a wishful thinking, versus 12 to 13, here's how he tells us to walk out our faith. This is practical application of this, walking out your faith that's considering yourselves dead to sin. "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." He's saying nothing short of a whole reorientation of your practical life will go along with faith. With the faith that he's calling us to exhibit. The faith to believe that we have truly died to controlling the power of sin. Present yourselves to God.

A lot of Christians are struggling because when they were saved, they did a partial recalibration of their life. They did not open their lives. They liked the idea of a savior, but they didn't like the idea of a Lord who they were called to submit to in every area of their life. But that's what we are called to do. We have this ability to look upon God and receive his love. And in turn we're supposed to... We have this new orientation where we can look at him and we have to reorient our whole lives. Many Christian, they're too afraid to follow God's Holy Spirit. Many people receive callings, many people receive nudges, many people know how to stand when their work department is not being honest.

Many people know how to respond with a righteous response and the moment looks like when someone sins against them. Many Christians know what faithfulness looks like when they're alone at night in front of a computer, but they choose not to do that. If you really believe the Holy Spirit is working in you, helping you grow in this holiness, call upon him, ask him for help. Remember who you are in Jesus Christ. Work out that identity.

Now, Paul says you've been set free from the slavery, now walk in it, work it out. And when you do this, this is the last verse, you will not be ashamed. This is what he ends with, "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." And there's all these different kinds of interpretations of is this a command? But no, it's not a command. It's a promise. When you exercise faith and believe that you've entered into the death of Christ, the burial of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, that sin no longer has control over your life, you will experience grace upon grace. The newness of salvation will be there and there will be joy as you see God's grace, God's glory just spreading into every area of your life. And other people will see that in you.

And so this life, it's not permanent. It's just a sojourn. It's just a pilgrimage. We, in the sight of God, have already been placed in a spiritual sense in the heavenly sanctuary. And growth, change, Christ likeness comes when we own up to that identity. And that's Ephesians 2:4-7. "But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." That's present because of our immersion into Jesus Christ. We in a spiritual sense before the eyes of God are already raised up and seated with him in the heavenly places. "So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Jesus Christ."

As we cling to that identity, we will receive his mercy and grace and abundance as we go forward in life. We just have to believe that. Do you believe it? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the simplicity of the gospel. We thank you that it is not a matter just having peace with you and having growth in you. It's not a matter of following more rules. It's not a matter of striving. It's not a matter of doing stuff in our own strength. But Lord, we praise you that it's a matter of faith that you will follow through on your Word, on your promises to us. So Lord, we pray as we root ourselves deeper in our identities in Jesus Christ this week, we pray, let the reality of our new nature just manifest itself more and more. Show us by your spirit, what it looks like to reorient our lives, all of our beings to who we are in you today. Help us to repent, help us to not quench the spirit when he calls us to take up great offices, when he points out sin that is affecting our freedom. Lord, let us humbly submit to you your ways and promises. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

The title of the sermon is Reign of Grace in Life. A few questions to start things off. Why are people the way they are? You ever ask that question? Why are we the way we are? Why is everyone so selfish? Why is it that everyone condemns others for things that we do ourselves? Why is it that everyone violates the very standards of behavior we hold up as good and right? Why is the most universal experience of humans an uneasy conscience? We know we've done things that we shouldn't have done, and we have not done the things that we should have done. Why have we never been able to educate sin out of the human heart? Why haven't we been able to punish sin out of the human heart? Why haven't we been able to cancel sin from the human heart? Why have all of our efforts to address human problems by the government, it all leaves us with the same sinful humanity and just more problems.

Why is it at nowhere at any time ever in world history, a sinless people has existed?? Why is evil so easy to fall into, but true goodness is so difficult to rise to? Why is our desire so strong for unchastity, fornication, adultery, and why is chastity so difficult? Why is it that with all of our technological advances, we haven't been able to curb moral degradation, we've only exacerbated because people have more opportunity to sin? Why is it universally and historically a case that the best people in the world morally speaking are the most conscious of their failures and acknowledge they're bent toward what is unworthy, unloving, dishonest, and pure? And why is that already in infancy, we can see clearly the pride, envy, selfishness of human life beginning to appear?

Well, we find all of the answers to all those questions in Romans 5:12 through 21. Would you look at the text with me? "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible authoritative word may He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. We'll look at ruin, rescue, and reign. First, ruin starting at verse 12. Therefore. The therefore alerts us that Paul is making a brand new point. It's flowing from his prior discussion. Last week, we talking about reconciliation, that we are reconciled with God because of the work of Jesus Christ. Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sin. He's talking about two undeniable, indisputable facts of life, sin and death. They're universal. Universality of sin, universality of death. We can't deny these. Everywhere we look, we see evidence upon evidence upon evidence of these two. And we're victims of the twin evils of sin and death.

Tanya and I, when we were in seminary in North Carolina, working through the MDiv. The seminary was next to a cemetery and we would go on nice romantic strolls in the evening at the cemetery. There was a little pond there, and I spent all day studying the holy scriptures. And then every evening it was just a reminder, I'm going to die. We're all going to die. It puts things into perspective. So death spread to all men because all sinned, all sin, that's past tense. So Adam's sin in some sense becomes our sin and our guilt. We are sinners by choice because we are sinners by nature. We're born sinners. We sin because of our nature. This is the doctrine of total depravity that every single one of our faculties in some sense is corrupt to the core. And we've inherited this corruption.

So how does this inform parenting? Well, children are born as little sinners and unless you parent and disciple and teach them and correct them and rebuke, and exhort, that nature is going to take over. This text is about the fall of the entire human race through Adam. The penalty for sin is death and death reign from Adam to Moses. So in a sense, everybody in the world somehow broke the law in Adam, we're guilty for Adam's act of rebellion. Adam's sin brought condemnation upon the entire human race. We are related to Adam through one man's sin and death came into the world. This is the doctrine of original sin. Blaise Pascal said the doctrine of original sin is beyond our ability to explain, but without it, you can't explain anything.

What's the difference between original sin and actual sin? Actual sin is when we do something that transgreses God's law. And that requires a conscious awareness that there is right and wrong and a conscious awareness of actual violation. This is why children are not held accountable for their sin until the age of accountability. Paul talks about that later. But when a baby's born, there's a period of time, conceived, born, there's a period of time between birth and accountability before the baby actually commits a sin. But then why do people still die? Before the infant even sinned, why do infants sometimes die? Why do babies die in infancy if death is the penalty for sin, but the baby hasn't sinned. Well, he continues in verse 13.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those sinning, those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. Now to understand what he's saying in verse 13, you've got to go back to chapter four, verse 15, where he says for the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. So here he delineates, separates, sin and transgression. Verse 13, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. So there was sin before the law was given. After the law was given, now there's transgression of the law, but the sin was present before the law.

Paul says the sin was present pervasive in the world from the time of Adam until the time of Moses, even though the specific commandments of law of Moses with their corresponding penalties hadn't been revealed yet. So how can it be if there was no law until the time of Moses? Why did people die? The same with the question with infants? Well, death reigned from Adam to Moses, he says, because of the imputation of Adam's sin to us. God gave Adam a covenant of works. I put you in the garden to work it and keep it, to have dominion over it, to protect the garden. God told Adam, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do anything, everything else, but do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good ne evil. That was the covenant of works.

And Adam and Eve, in their created perfect nature, they had the ability to not sin. They also had the ability to sin. They could have lived eternally or they could have died, and they did because of disobedience. So now we have to deal with an objection. And I waited long enough until this objection. This objection rises in every single human heart. The objection is this. How can God blame me for Adam's sin? I didn't do it. I wasn't there. I don't even like apples that much. How is that fair? I was born this way. I am just following my nature. How can God hold me responsible for a sin nature? I didn't choose any of this. Also, doesn't the Bible itself teach that man isn't punished for his father's sins? Yes, it does teach that, though obviously the rules that apply to civil government and jurisprudence don't necessarily apply it to the divine government.

The answer is just, we send an Adam. That's the answer to that scripture. Gives. How can God hold people responsible for what Adam did when we weren't in the garden? The classical reformed theology, the category that's given to describe how all of this fits together is federalism.

Adam was the federal head of the human race. He was the biological head, everything started with him, but he was also a representative. Adam, his name means mankind, and he was the representative of mankind. And Adam's actions didn't just impact Adam, but they impacted everyone he represented and God appointed him to act for himself and his progeny. And still that doesn't satisfy, that answer, but I didn't choose Adam as my representative. I didn't get a vote. I didn't get a vote. God didn't ask. Well, you also didn't choose your parents. I didn't choose my parents. You didn't choose your grandparents. It's simply a fact of life that a great deal of what determines our lives is the consequence of the people that we are connected to. Is there a bird in here?

Yes.

That's awesome.

Praise God. That's fun. That's fun. We all know this, no man is an island. It's an inescapable fact of human existence, that parents have a tremendous impact on their children and child inherit so much from their parents, both good and bad. This is why scripture so often emphasizes parents walking faithfully with the Lord as the primary means by which children are discipled. Children listen kind of to their parents, but they're more likely to do what their parents do. And if parents follow Jesus Christ, children are more likely to follow as well. Remember the story of Aiken, the whole household was destroyed because of Aiken's sin. And remember the deliverance of Rahab. Her whole household was saved from destruction because of her faith. Remember Israel's deliverance from the Philistines because of David. One day, he couldn't stand God being defamed by Goliath. 40 days and 40 nights, Goliath came out and just cussed God out, the God of Israel, Yahweh, and David had enough and David went and fought him. And David's victory was the victory of all the people as an imputed victory.

Nations fall, and their population suffer, sometimes terribly, because of foolish rulers, just like children's lives are ruined because of the dereliction of their parents. So much of what determines the course of our lives we had nothing to do with. I'm fully aware I am very much the person I am in many ways, because of the work of my parents. The Lord is teaching us something.

Matthew six. Don't be anxious. Look at the birds. They're just showing off. In many cases, these things were determined for us before we were ever even entering the world. It's like that with so much of our lives. It is what it is, that's what the text says. Like it or not, it's just the truth. This is the doctrine of imputation. We sin in Adam because Adam sinned and Adam's sin is imputed to all of us. It's reckoned. It's transferred to everyone in the human race. And honestly, the only satisfying answer I've found for myself regarding original sin and how is this fair, the only answer I found is, if we can't be held responsible for Adam's act of rebellion, if we don't like that imputation, then we can't be imputed the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

The sin is imputed to us to get us to a place of hopelessness and helplessness. And then Jesus shows up and says, repent, believe in me, and my righteousness is gifted to you, not because of anything that you've done. So if you push back on Adam's sin being imputed to you, then you don't get Christ's righteousness imputed to you. You can't have it both ways. Second point is rescue, and this is verse 15. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ abounded for many. The sin of Adam brought death and the death is a decaying degenerative force, but Christ brings in grace, which has a dynamic power to bring in life and restore that which has been destroyed.

Jesus Christ fulfills the covenant of works, which the first Adam disobeyed. Christ's perfect obedience is now imputed to all those he represents under the covenant of grace, just by a gift. It's a free gift. And all we have to do is receive it. If someone right now gave you a check for a trillion dollars, and you can do whatever you want with this. No stipulations. That gift would be a drop in the ocean of the gift that God that gives us in Christ. Doesn't even come close. It's a free gift. It's a free gift. It's free. What did you do to earn the gift of grace and righteous? Nothing, nothing at all.

This is the only way I can understand birthday gifts because birthday gifts should not be given to the child. They did nothing. Every single birthday of a child, everyone should bring gifts for mom and dad. That's what should happen, because they did all the work. But the gift is free. Not because the child did anything, it's just a free gift. This is what he's saying. It's grace, just receive it. Both Adam and Jesus are alike in certain ways. There's parallels. That's what he's doing here. Obviously, Jesus is far superior to Adam, but in both they're federal heads. In the sense, they're both fathers. Adam is the father of humanity, of everybody. And Jesus is the father of a new humanity. And each man determines the outcome of the lives of those who belong to him.

If you study theology, there's a theology called covenant theology. And a lot of people think covenant theology is just all the covenants that God ever made. But basically covenant theology is just that there's two main covenants. There's a covenant God made with Adam, which is a covenant of works. And there's a covenant that God made with his son, Jesus Christ. In each case, the one man stands and acts as a representative of the race. This was never the case with Abraham. Abraham's faith was not given to his descendants, the descendants had to believe themselves. It wasn't true of David. David, his faithfulness as a king was not given just by virtue of them being connected to the other Kings. But the contrast is clear here that Adam's one act of sin, as bad as it was, is inferior to God's act of grace. Christ's obedience trump's Adam's disobedience.

There is two teams, Team Adam and Team Jesus. Scripture talks about this in many ways. This kingdom of light, kingdom of darkness, that apart from Jesus Christ, we're naturally children of Satan. And then when we're reborn, adopting to the family of God, we're children of God, but it's either ... There we go. Just everyone, just repent. Just everybody repent, trust in Jesus Christ. That's what the bird is trying to tell everybody.

Verse 16, the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. So thanks to Adam, we get condemnation. Thanks to Jesus, we get justification. And that brings us to point three is reign in verse 17. For if, because of one man's trespass death reigned through the one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. There's a huge contrast here that the gift is gracious. From justification in verse 16, Paul turns his attention to reigning in life. And this is really what I want to focus on for a little bit. Adam's sin, and because Adam sinned now, every single one of us, we inherit a sin nature.

Adam died, and because Adam died, death is now just part of life. But Jesus Christ comes and he submits perfectly to God. The king of Kings submits perfectly to the law of Moses, the law of God, the moral code. And because he does all of this, we can be saved from the dominion of sin and death, from the power of sin and death. And we receive the abundance of grace, the free gift of righteous, just by faith. To do what? Look at verse 17 closely with me, the second part. Much more will those, who's the those, that's believers in Christ. Much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness. Do what in life? Reign. Reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Reign in life. What does it mean to reign? What does it mean to reign?

R-E-I-G-N not like reigns on a horse. That's R-E-I-N. R-E-I-G-N. That's reign. Reigning how? Reigning as a king. Reigning as queens. When, where certainly in the future, scripture says that we will rule with Christ, that we will judge even angels. Scripture teaches that we are a kingdom of priests proclaiming the excellencies of Christ, that we're prophets, priests, and kings. Prophets proclaiming Christ, priests, we're priesthood. We're also kings in some sense, but scripture doesn't say that here in this text that we will reign just in the future, that's part of it. But he says, we start reigning in life here now in the realm of reality. So what does the text mean when it says that we will reign in life? Well, reigning, what does reigning do? Reigning as kings in the realm of life, meaning God is given us a dominion and authority. And where do kings and queens rule? In their domain, sphere of influence.

I've actually tried. I started doing this at home. I started calling my wife queen just to see if it works. Works wonders. It works wonders. Good morning, queen. Oh, wow. Good morning, king. Ooh, that feels good. My wife and I, we were talking about this and she's like, yeah, I call our girls princesses all the time. But it's our job to make sure that they don't grow up to be drama queens. Queens in submission to the Lord. What does it mean? It means that we have spheres of influence and we are to reign in those spheres of influence. First, you got to reign over yourself, that God does give you an authority over yourself when you are in submission of Jesus Christ.

So here's how it works. And we're going to talk about this in chapter six next week. In chapter six, when he talks about the fact that we have a power over sin. We have a sin nature, but because of Jesus Christ, we are freed from the domain of sin, the power of sin in our flesh over us. Meaning we have the authority to tell sin, no. Do you live like that? Do you really believe that you can tell sin no? That you can stop whatever sin that you are enslaved to, you can stop it by saying no to it.

Sin comes, rears his ugly head and you have a choice to make prior to this. And the temptation comes, you have a choice to make. Am I going to give in? And the way that you fight the chaos, inside the chaos of our lives, of our bodies, of our souls, of our lives is by submitting every part of your life to Jesus Christ. The more you submit to Jesus Christ, the more power you have over yourself. And our culture's kind of waking up to this, that, yeah, we need to take responsibility for ourselves.

This was Jordan Peterson with the 12 Rules For Life. He has a chapter on making your bed. He's like, you want to change the world, just make your bed. And what he's getting at is, there's chaos in our lives and we think we're going to solve all the problems out there, but we haven't created order in our lives. He says we can reign in life by submitting to Jesus Christ by following him, by reading God's word and saying, look is my life in submission to the word of God. And when I do submit, that's how I reign over myself, reign in life by physically submitting to him. If any of this sounds strange to you, if you're like, I have been going to church for a long time, and I've never heard of anyone talking about reigning in life, of having dominion over ourselves, dominion over our souls, dominion over our bodies, dominion over our finances, dominion over our time, dominion over how our relationships are going, dominion over marriage, family, children.

If any of this sounds strange, perhaps it's because you have been fed a watered down gospel that says that grace is only for forgiveness, that you just need to come to Jesus' grace when you sin and Jesus forgives you. And then you just go on your with your life. That's not how grace is presented in the holy scripture. St. Paul has been drumming this obedience of faith, obedience of faith, obedience of faith. The grace isn't given to us just for forgiveness, it's given to us for transformation. So if there's areas in your life that you are dissatisfied with, patterns of life, habits, rhythms, if you're enslaved, if there's addictions, you can find freedom in Jesus Christ. Addictions from whatever, from substance abuse, from pornography, from social media, from your phone, from whatever, you could be absolutely freed by submitting to Jesus Christ and then reigning over your sin.

This is a responsibility. The righteousness is given to us. We are righteous in Christ. We are given this salvation through justification by grace, through faith. And then God says what? Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, that there are things that we have to do to fight sin, to reign over sin, reign over addiction, reign over anxiety, reign over sorrow, reign over doubts, reign over apathy, reign over sloth. Adam lost the garden because he didn't work it and keep it. By the way, Adam's blamed for Eve's sin. Adam is responsible for Eve's sin. That's why this whole chapter isn't about Eve.

This whole chapter is about Adam. That's why when Adam and Eve sinned, God came to look for whom? Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? So men, you are to lead yourself to follow Jesus Christ. If you're married, it is your responsibility, it is your responsibility to guard your wife from the whispers of the evil ones. Adam should have protected the garden from the serpent. He should have killed the serpent. He didn't. And then Jesus Christ came and he did smash the head of Satan. Jesus did reign and he gives us grace and righteousness to reign in life.

Verse 18. Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. Since Christ surpasses Adam, the sin of Adam is overcome by the righteousness of Christ. The curse of Adam is overturned by the grace of Christ and Christ bestows a life that swallows up death. So one act of righteousness, he says, leads to justification in life for all men. What does he mean by all men? Does he mean everyone's going to get saved no matter what? No. He's referring to the many in verse 15. And the many that receive righteousness in verse 17 and the same phrase is used in verse 19, for it's by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. Who's the many? That's everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ. Everyone who repents of sin and trusts in Christ. The many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

Adam and his disobedience, what was longing for? What did Satan tempt him with? What did Satan tempt Eve with? He tempted them with a godless life, a godless universe where God was not God and God wasn't in charge. Adam was grasping for equality with God. You don't have to listen to God. But Christ comes and he obeys and he obeys perfectly. Philippians 2:5 through 11, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So that at name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father. So on the one hand, we see the greatness of our ruin through our Adam solidarity. But if we are in Christ, our Christ solidarity far exceeds our ruin and results in our rescue and ultimately means that we can reign in life.

Verse 20. Now the law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So he says one purpose of the law, why was the law given, is to demonstrate to humans just how sinful we are, to reveal to the human conscious, our hopelessness apart from the grace of God. The impossibility of sinners being made righteous by their own effort, and that we need a righteousness from God. The law came to increase the trespass.

The crucial function of the law is to turn our original sin, that we're sinners by nature, into actual transgressions. This is why when we study the law, and it's so important to study law, it just reveals to us how sinful we are. Apart from the knowledge of the law, we know there's something wrong with us. We know that there's a selfishness, a bend towards selfishness. We know that there's a bend toward corruption. We know we do things that we shouldn't do even by our own standards. And then we study the law of God. The first four commandments, even if we skip those, no one naturally has loved God with all of their heart, soul, strength, and mind. No one's done that. No one does that.

But then you look at the other commandments, commandment number 10 thou shall not envy. Oh, that's a sin? I just thought it was an ambition. No. Envy is a sin. To be envious of another person's lot in life, that's sin. Thou shall not commit adultery. Oh, that's a sin. And then Jesus is like, even if you commit adultery in your heart, you've lusted, that's a sin. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not murder. And Jesus said, whoever even hates a person in their heart has already committed murder. So what the law does is it just reveals how sinful we are. We're guilty in Adam, sinful by nature. The law then confronts us with specific will of God. Don't steal, don't lie, don't covet, don't commit adultery. And the law turns sinful nature into specific acts of transgression. And in this sense, the law makes little Adams of each one of us.

I don't know if you're mad at Adam. Sometimes I get mad at Adam. If you just look at the world, you look at sin, you look at corruption, you look at the death and decay and the suffering, and you're like, Adam, you had one job. You had one job, just build a fence or something, something. Build something around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's it. Just pretend it's not even there. But there is something in every single one of us where, when we are told, don't do it, it's kind of all we can think about. You see this with little kids. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't. Don't, don't even touch the cupcake. Don't touch it. Cupcake's gone. And had you said, eat the cupcake, do not touch the broccoli. Don't touch the broccoli. Don't touch the broc. I'd be tempted by the broccoli. I would.

I see this in my own relationship with my wife. I think if my wife told me, Hey, you have to be a carnivore. That's all you can eat. All you can eat is meat. I would be sneaking in salads. I'd get some hummus and carrots going. There's something in us where it's like, you tell me something to do, not going to do it. That's what happened with Adam. That's what happens with every single one of us. And what the law does is it brings sin to light of day. That's why it's so important to read the culture and be like, these messages from the culture, they're false. This is how I disciple my daughters. No, it's false to tell a child, do you feel that you're a boy or girl?

I don't care how you feel. None of that matters. Are you straight? Are you gay? Are you bi? Feelings are not infallible. And in our culture, the culture does say, follow your heart. What do you feel? And the feelings rule us. Feelings are the only infallible truth left. Whereas scripture says, look, the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately sick. And sometimes you need to tell your heart, no. Sometimes you have to rule over your own desires and say, that desire is not from God. Let's shut it down. And how do you shut it down? You stop thinking about it.

The battlefield for the soul is the mind. You start thinking about something else. You start thinking about the truth of God's word, thinking about God. The law can only condemn us. It gives us no enabling power to help us fulfill its demands. Galatians 3:19 through 24 is helpful. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. And it was put in place through angels, by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not, for if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture, imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we may be justified by faith. Here, I just want to focus on this phrase. The scripture imprisoned everything under sin. Scriptures imprisoned everything under sin. So it's like, we're locked in a prison of our sin. The scripture is the prison. It locks us in. If you like it or not, it's true. That God's word is infallible and it does lock us. And this is why people want to push God's word out of their lives. We want to push God's word out of our schools, out of the public sphere. Get Christianity out, out, out, out, out. Because if you get rid of Christianity, you get rid of God's word. You get rid of the 10 commandments. You got rid of the law, now you can refashion morality any way that you want.

Scripture says, no, no you're locked in the prison. And when you try to break out of the prison of God's scripture, it's like the scripture is in the watch tower with a spotlight on you and a sniper sniping at your sin. Sin, sin, sin, sin. And your conscience just doesn't let you live. And this is why people struggle with depression and substance abuse, you're trying to shut your conscience down. But Jesus comes in into that prison and he covers us with his righteousness. Just covers us completely. It's as if the spotlight only sees the glorious righteousness of Jesus Christ. So when we are breaking free from this prison of sin covered in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, it's like the spotlight and the sniper, they don't see us and we're out. And that's how you get out of enslavement to sin by receiving this gift of Christ's righteousness.

Verse 20 and 21. Now the law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. He's saying the sin that's revealed by the law, it increases and abounds and abounds and abounds. And then God sends his son, Jesus Christ, who fulfills the law, completely fulfills the work of the covenant of works. He's the only one that did that, obeyed God perfectly, and then goes to a cross to present himself as a substitutionary sacrifice to atone for our sins. And he is the propitiation for our sins, absorbing the wrath of God for our lawbreaking, our condemnation. All of that is poured out on Christ on the cross. And then he dies and he's raised to life.

He puts his life down. He picks it up. And that right there is proof that God accepts his sacrifice and that Jesus Christ has vanquished the power of sin and death. And he extends grace to us. A grace, that super abounds. It's a grace that abounded all the more, increased all the more. It's scarcely translatable, you can say super increased or super abounded, but the picture is just an unending overflowing grace that knows no bounds. Grace is always more abundant than sin. Charles Spurgeon has a wonderful sermon on this called Grace Abounding Over Abounding Sin, that God has more grace than we have sin. The super abounding grace is intended to reign triumphantly over death and sin in hell.

So the good news for each one of us is no matter how great your sin in quantity or depth, God's grace super abounds to you.

My daughter Milana, she's four. Every evening she prays the following. She says, Lord, may our church grow bigger and deeper, bigga and deepa. She's not good with R's yet. We are to grow in this understanding of grace ourselves, in both depth and breadth of God's grace, that no one is beyond the grace of God. And this abounding grace is what reigns. Grace, also, he says, in the same way that death reigned over everything, may grace also reign through righteousness leading to eternal life. Grace is not just for forgiveness of sins, but for this reigning. Grace reigns in our life.

Does grace reign in your life? Are you a person that is in complete submission to the grace of God? Does grace reign in your life? Is it lording in your life? Part of why, in English, the word reign doesn't really make sense because we haven't had kings in a while, which doesn't make any sense. King George the third was the last one and it didn't work out for him. We don't like kings. We like anything reigning over us. But we should want grace to reign over us, that grace is king in our lives. That grace is king in our spheres of influence, that grace reigns through righteousness. Paul, isn't just talking about the presence of sin, he's talking about its reign. The sin had a reign, but grace can take over that reign by dethroning sin.

So in closing, what are we to do? We are to receive God's grace. If you haven't received God's grace yet, you can do that today. Lord, forgive me for all of my sins. There are many. Lord, I receive your grace. And Lord, I also repent that the many times I've received your grace, I've received it in vain. It's not been a power that has transformed. Lord, I repent of that as well, so that we can be people that are strengthened by grace, empowered by grace. Like St. Paul said, he said, I am what I am by the grace of God. But the grace of God in me was not in vain. Instead he says, I worked harder than all of them. That's all of the other apostles. He said, I worked harder than all of them. But it wasn't me, it was the grace of God in me.

This is why I love, I love new converts. I love them. When someone just comes from the world from a sinful lifestyle, just broken and beat up by sin, they understand grace in a way like many of us have forgotten. When you're walking with the Lord for quite some time, and you're walking faithfully, you begin to look at grace. They're like, yeah, that's for beginners. That's like how you enter Christianity. Okay, all right. That's like the booster rockets on the main rocket. Good for you. From here on out, it's just hard work. You just got to suck it up. White knuckle it and just be faithful. That's not how it works. The way that you continue in your life on a daily basis is, you revel in the grace of God, receive God's grace. Once you do, make sure that grace reigns through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And this is the question I would like you to meditate on this week. Does grace reign through righteousness in your life? Does grace reign through righteousness in your life? Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time of the holy scriptures. And we thank you Lord for the gift of grace, the free gift of righteousness. And I pray, Lord, that it does transform us. I pray that you give us power to reign in life. Whatever things in our lives are just out of control, wherever we are enslaved to sin and wherever pride and ego and selfishness, self-absorption is reigning, I pray, Lord, trounce all that with the power of the grace, the cross of Jesus Christ, that we are saved by the blood of the lamb and that we can be victorious over Satan's sin and because the work of Christ, even over death itself. And we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life. And I pray, Lord, help us be a church that puts love of life into practice. Help us be a people that love babies, children, support families. Mothers are vital, not just valuable. And help us be a counterculture here in Boston, where we love children more than we love pets or plants. And Lord, we do thank you that we are having conversation about abortion now in our country. We thank you that Roe v. Wade might potentially be overturned. I never thought I'd see that in my lifetime, but, Lord, thank you for that. We pray it does get overturned. We pray that abortion just stops, just pray the need for it is removed. We pray for a great awakening in this nation where people do fear you, they submit to Christ and they accept his grace and they follow the moral law, which would prevent so much bloodshed. And we do pray now, Lord, that you bless our time the Holy Scriptures or at least, Spirit, we welcome you. We ask for your presence. That's what we need to keep going. Pray that you bless our souls today. We pray that you encourage ourselves with the gifts that come by justification through faith what a gift that is. But with that gift, we have many other gifts, we have access to the throne room of God, the Holy of Holies. And that's where our souls long to be now, Lord. We pray God the Father, that you, by the power of the Spirit, take us there, transcend us into your presence. Whatever our worries, anxieties, burdens, remove it all. Whatever sins are in the way of the Holy Spirit coursing through this room, I pray remove those sins, remove shame, guilt, all of it. Help us focus on you through the scriptures. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. We're in a sermon series through the book of Romans, where in 5:1 through 11 today, the title of the sermon is Peace with God. We've been talking about the fact that when you repent of your sin and trust yourself to Jesus Christ, believe God, that all of your sins are forgiven. You're justified by grace through faith as if you've never sinned. It happens in a moment. The very second you give yourself to Lord, you are forgiven, your debts, trespasses are forgiven. And when we talk about debts, we're not talking about monetary debts, we're talking about moral debt. Jesus Christ didn't pay finances to save us. He absorbed the wrath of God for our moral law breaking. I'll tell you the difference between a monetary debt and a moral debt. Monetary debt, I'll just give you an example from ice cream trucks because ice cream trucks, I have a love-hate relationship with them. Because I love the fact that there's ice cream, I hate the fact that they practice predatory tactics. They go to the park. They go to the soccer practices. They wait when kids come home from school. School is ending they're right outside. So imagine I am with one of my daughters buying ice cream, it's overpriced, always overpriced, inflation, and a little boy in front of me, the ice cream is $5, he only has $4. He wants the ice cream, he's missing $1. And every kind hearted human being is going to say, let me pay the debt, let me pay the difference between what he owes and what he has. It's a monetary debt. A moral debt is different. If the little boy has no money and he's like, you know what, forget this, I really want my ice cream, and breaks into the ice cream truck and steals an ice cream and runs. And then the Brookline police, they find him and they bring him back to the ice cream truck guy, and ice cream truck guy has to make a decision. What are you going to do? You're going to press charges against this little kid? And I'm there and I'm like, I'm going to buy this ice cream. Let me pay the debt. And the ice cream truck doesn't have to accept the payment. It's a moral debt now. It just gives you an example of the difference. Well, we've broken the moral law of God which flows from the character of God, so it's a personal offense against God. Therefore we need someone to not just pay the debt, but actually live a perfect moral life on our behalf. And that's what Jesus Christ did. And that's why when we repent of our sins, we're justified by grace through faith. Because not just of his death, but of his life and then also his intercession now for us. And the other thing I just want to mention about justification by grace through faith, it's a gift, but it's a gift that keeps on giving. My daughter Elizabeth, her 11th birthday recently, end of March, she was given a family gift. We do gift from our family, but then our extended family gets together. And one of my sister got her a massive bag, and in it was just gift after gift, after gift, after gift. And I was doing a video and it was a minute plus and I was like, all right, that's enough. I'm never going to watch this anyway. But because I'm in the moment, I'm present, and it's a gift that just keeps on giving. That's what justification by grace through faith is. And this is our text today, he pulls out gift after gift, after gift, from this text today, with Romans 5:1 through 11. Would you look at the texts with me? Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Five points to frame up our time, each one of them is a gift that flows from the ultimate gift of justification by faith. First, peace with God, access to God, hope in God, joy in suffering, and God's love poured out. First, peace with God, Romans 5:1, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been justified by faith, eres tense, something has already taken place in the past, it doesn't need to happen again. And it's been accomplished, it is finished. That's what he's talking about. That when you repent of your sin, believe in Jesus Christ, that's it. You're justified by grace through faith, all of your sins. No matter what you've done, no matter what you will do, all of your sins are forgiven. Therefore communicates this tremendous truth that you can be justified right now. At this very second, if you're not a Christian, if you turn from your sin, repent before God, heartfelt, contrite, humble repentance, and trust yourself to Jesus Christ that he is my only hope. Immediately, there's no trial period, there's no 30 days try on Christianity, see if it works out for you. If you're good enough, God keeps it, the justification by faith. If you messed up within 30 days, that's it. No, no, no, no, no. The very second that you believe, you're either justified or not. Do you trust in Jesus Christ? If not, what are you waiting for? What's keeping you from today being justified by grace through faith? Repent of sin and turn to Christ. If yes, if you have been justified, you're declared just. It is finished. Therefore we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the agent of peace. He's the prince of peace. He's the peacemaker. He's the means by which we get that peace. He's the channel. He's the medium by which the peace is given. If you study world history, you remember, the jubilation in the world, global jubilation when World War II ended. There was peace. Paul isn't talking about the end of war between people, he's talking about the end of the worst of all wars possible, the war between us and God on a cosmic level, of cosmic proportions because there's an enmity between us and God. There's hostility. Because by nature, we regard God as an enemy. We don't really want God. Some people pretend they're religious. Some people pretend they're indifferent to God. They're not indifferent. Hearts are hard toward God, recalcitrant, stubborn. Hearts don't pulsate with love toward God. And our natural thinking, if we're honest, we don't want God to tell us what to do. Who is God to tell me what to do? We want to be independent, autonomous. We want to be gods of our own lives. We're at war with God. Okay, I get it. We're at war with God. But surely, God isn't at war with us, right? Surely, God is the God of patience and love and kindness and mercy and grace. Well, scripture is absolutely clear, God is at war with us. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven for all ungodliness and unrighteousness, against people who suppress the truth of God, that he's put in our hearts. We suppress it with our sin. God is soul, you can't bear to look at iniquity. So therefore we need to be reconciled with God because we're estranged from God. And this is why the work of Jesus Christ is so important. It is the work of mediation. That the God man, Jesus Christ stands in the chasm between God and man. He's the mediator. He brings these strange parties together. He comes into hostile world estranged from God, loves God, loves people does it perfectly, the only one to do it perfectly. And we killed him. That's the hostility. You want proof of the hostility, our hostility against God? We killed him. Hours before Jesus' crucifixion, he gathers his frightened disciples in the upper room, before the Lord's Supper. He knows he's about to die. He's got nothing to give to them, of worldly possessions. He's got nothing to bequeath to them. What does he give them? Gives them something infinitely better, he gives them peace. John 14:27, peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. What stands in the way of peace versus our hostility? It's our sin. That's what stands in the way of peace. We need a peace with God. That's what Jesus Christ offers, a peace with God. And once you get the peace with God, you can enjoy the peace of God. And it's a peace that counters our fear. Jesus says, don't let your hearts be afraid. It counters our troubled souls. Don't let your hearts be troubled. He says, I am leaving my peace with you. And the only way that we can access that peace experience, that peace, and peace that transcends all understanding, it's not on a physical level, it's on the spiritual. It's on soul level. The only way we can experience that peace, peace of God, is if we have peace with God. So many people don't understand, the world don't understand life because they think the body is all there is, the material is all there is. And when you're going through pain and when going through trouble, you think, oh, all I need is just ... I need a pill, I need to go to the doctor, I need something to make me feel better. The whole time, not realizing it a soul pain. It's pain at the level of the soul and only a soul doctor can help, and that's Jesus Christ. Only peace with God can settle the soul and Christ is our peace. The objective fact of peace with God makes it possible to have the subjective peace of God. Philippians 4:4 through 7, rejoice in the Lord when? Always. That's a commandment, always. Again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Do you know this peace? When everything around you feels like it's falling apart, it doesn't make sense to have peace. You need something that transcends understanding. It's a soul level peace. That's what Jesus Christ offers, by justification through faith. The second gift that we get that flows out of justification through faith is access to God. Verse 2, through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Access. If someone famous gives you their phone number and they're like, hey, text me anytime, call me anytime. All of a sudden, you have access to them. It's the same concept, but we have access to the God of the universe. The greatest blessing in the Garden of Eden was paradise. The greatest blessing about it, the thing that made it paradise was unlimited access to God. I mean, you could just go for a stroll with God. "Hey, God, you want to go for a prayer walk?" Just going to have a conversation. Anytime they can enter the unlimited access, the beautiful presence of God, immediate presence of God, but they sinned. They lost God's presence and they suffered a spiritual death, and they were expelled from the garden. They were expelled from the very presence of God. And God puts an angel with a flaming sword at the entrance. That's it, it's blocked. You can't enter the presence of God, you're banished. And God chooses Abraham and gives him the gift of faith, counts him as righteous through him, promises that I'm going to make you a great nation and through you, bless the nations of the world. And through him, the Messiah would come. And in this, God was creating people for himself, a remnant for himself. And then Israel comes from Abraham, and Israel is in captivity for 400 years and slaved in Egypt. God brings them out through his servant, Moses, and God brings his presence with them. And he gives them the plan of the tabernacle that manifested the presence of God, the God is in their midst. And at the core of the tabernacle in the center of the camp was the Holy of Holies. This is where the immediate presence of God was. And then the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant and a chest on which was the mercy seat. And in the chest was a copy of the Decalogue, the 10 Commandments, the manna from the wilderness, and Aaron's rod that had blossomed. And on top of the mercy seat was a blood of the offering that was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement. From the whole nation of Israel, all of them, only one person, the high priest only once a year was allowed into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God. Everyone else had to stand in the holy place or the outer core. You can't come close to God because he's holy, and he will have to kill you for your sin if you come that close. And even the high priest, before he went in, he had to prepare himself, prayer, fasting, repentance, consecration. And then he would go in with fear and trembling. They'll tie a rope to his ankle as he walks in, with bells, just in case he dies in the presence of a holy God. And they've learned this from experience. Oh, the high priest died, you hear the bells, and then they pull them out by his leg. Why? Because God is holy. And one of the most intricately designed parts of the tabernacle that was the curtain or the veil, later became the veil in the temple, that separate the holy place from the Holy of Holies. And the veil was thick. It was a thick drape, it couldn't be broken. And it was to communicate, but there's a barrier between us and God. And it wasn't until Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived that perfect life, and then goes to a cross on Golgotha. He's been crucified. He's bearing the penalty for our sins. Cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God's wrath is boring down on his soul going through literal hell. And then when his life was blotted out, the sun was blotted out in the middle of the day, became pitch black as night and earthquake and the veil was ripped like paper. Matthew 27:51 through 54, and behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!" Jesus Christ on that cross, you know what he took for us? Yes, he absorbed the wrath of God. Yes, he paid debt for us. He took the age of sword, the sword, the flaming sword that was there to ban us, to keep us from the presence of God. Jesus Christ took that sword himself through his heart, dies of a broken heart in order to give us access to God. The wall of separation was destroyed because of the mediator, Jesus Christ. And after Jesus rose, he ascended to heaven, he entered the heavenly Holy of Holies. And right now, Jesus Christ is making intercession. He's interceding for us before the Father for our current sin. The greatest human experiences, the overwhelming sense of being in the presence of God because you get a taste of heaven, you taste the presence of the divine glory that Christ has opened for us. Along with access to God, we have a hope in God, and this is second part of Verse 2. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Sometimes in the Christian walk, all you need to do is keep standing, just stand. Oftentimes, we think, all right, spiritual warfare, I got to charge the gates of hell, let's go. And then you read Ephesians 6, in Ephesians 6, he's talking about spiritual warfare. And he says, stand firm in the Lord and in the strength of his might. And over and over, stand, stand, stand, stand, stand. Meaning just stand. Before sin, get up, just keep standing, keep standing. It's like in a boxing match. And I think perhaps this is what St. Paul was alluding to, because he often uses sports metaphors. I don't know if he enjoyed sports. I think he did. And by the way, all the beatings he went through, he had to be in shape to do that. I think he liked boxing. And boxing in one round, you can get knocked down twice. But if you get up before the bell, you're good, you're good. So in life, you can get knocked down, just get up. Even if you get knocked out, if you get knocked out. All right. We'll give you 30 seconds on ... Ay. We'll give you a minute. We'll give you ... Just get up. Stand. Stand in the grace. And when we stand in that grace, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. What is this hope? It's a gift that God gives to every single justified person. With normal hope, we talked about this last week, there's no assurance that this thing that you hope for will happen. I hope the economy gets better. I hope someone else gets elected. I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope. It's wishful thinking for the most part or desire. But God's gift of hope is different. The metaphor used for hope in Hebrews is that hope is an anchor for our soul. Meaning, our soul without hope does not have stability. We're tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. He says this hope is an assured hope, that when we hope in God, it's true. It will happen. God will come through. What's the difference between faith and hope? I don't know if you've ever thought about that. What's the difference between faith and hope? Faith looks to what has already taken place. The historic work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we look back, we believe in it. We trust ourselves to Christ and we're saved, and we believe God. We believe his word, but it's all things that happen in the past. Hope is merely faith looking forward. This is all happened. I believe that's true and I know that what God has promised will happen. I hope in God, in the glory of God. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. The word for rejoice here is different word than just usually rejoicing. And joy is the word for boasting. We boast in the glory of God. We glory in the glory of God. There's a celebration. There's an ecstasy beyond normal levels of joy. When you experience the glory of God and you focus on the glory of God, the Greek word for glory is doxa, we get the word doxology. We love seeing the doxology at the end of the services. We're glorifying God because he's worthy of the glory. The Hebrew word for glory is kabod, which means a heaviness, a weakness. Meaning there's nothing light or insignificant about God. There's a gravitas to God. When someone says something profound, what do we say? We say, oof. That's heavy. Everything God says is heavy, because God is heavy. And a lot of our problems in life is we take ourselves too seriously, and God not seriously enough. Everything God says is heavy and we're to take his word. The word says, this is the one to whom I will look, the one who was humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. God said it, I tremble at it. The purpose of worship is to describe glory to God, honor, revere him, fear him, adore him in the excellence of his being. Sometimes when you talk about glory, it's abstract. What does it mean glory with ... Because we don't really use that word. And glory, what are we talking about? Michael Jordan has glory, he's the greatest of all time, Tom Brady. We talk about in sports like, that's a glorious person, glory days, if you're a high school athlete or things like that. What's he talking? He's talking about a glory that is part of the Godhead. Jesus Christ once actually revealed his glory to the disciples. This is on the Mount of Transfiguration. Matthew 17, after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as snow. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah." I always laugh at that part, because Peter's kind of a moron. In that, he doesn't really have filters. He just says whatever comes to mind. He sees God's glory. He sees the glory of Jesus Christ. He feels it. I'm in the presence of God, I never want to leave. How can we stay here forever? I got an idea, Jesus. I'll make some tents. I'll make some tents. Let's just live up here. This is awesome. By the way, the craziest part of this is the guy was married. It is three tents, all right. Moses and John, hey, you guys bunk. I made the tents. Jacob and Elijah and Jesus, come here, come here. Come here. He doesn't want to leave, because he's experiencing the glory of God. If you study church history, you study the saints. The saints will tell you there are times where God, he does reveal his immediate presence in a way that just satisfies the soul like nothing else. And I've experienced that several times in life. I have key moments and I'm like, yup, God is in the room. And I want to change a thing. And I just want this to keep going for all of eternity. But then you got work to do, responsibilities, and God's like, all right, enjoy. I encouraged you. Now do what I said, and then God speaks. Peter said to Jesus, he was still speaking when behold, a bright cloud overshadow them and a voice from the cloud said, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased, listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came up and touched them saying, rise and have no fear. When they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one, but Jesus only. What I get from that is Peter felt tremendous in basking in the glory of God. But then God the Father speaks. He's like, hey, man, you also got to do the stuff I've said. I said it because a lot of people chase the presence of God, feelings about God, and it's awesome. And they don't really think about, am I doing what God said? We want more of the Holy Spirit, and then God's like, yeah, but I spoke and I gave you my will. Look at the Holy Scriptures. Rejoice in the glory of God. The fourth gift that we get from justification by faith is joy and suffering. Verse 3, not only that, that's the we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance. The clear connection here is, if you want to rejoice in the glory of God, you need to understand that there will be suffering. That if you want to experience more of God, it comes by way of suffering. If you want to level up, spiritually speaking, and you're honest about it and you put the work in, there is suffering that comes. And we are called to ... As much as we rejoice in the glory of God, we are to rejoice in our sufferings. Now here, I need a little caveat. Sometimes when I master a text and I get up here and I present the text to you, it can come off as if I've mastered the concept. This concept, I have not mastered. I am a novice when it comes to rejoicing and suffering. Because when I suffer, I, well, the last thing in the world, want to do is rejoice. I want to fight people. I want to just sit and just be despondent, just ... Or I truncate it, meaning I pretend there's nothing wrong and I just keep going. We all suffer, says our suffering. Doesn't say your suffering. He's including himself in this, our suffering. We all suffer. We have, we do, we will. We all have seasons like this, valley of the shadow of death seasons, where discouragement lurks around every corner, emails, texts, a phone call, conversation. Seasons where prayer is no longer just a contemplative luxury, it's the only way you stay alive. Seasons like that, rejoice in suffering, enjoy affliction and tribulation. Is that what he's saying? Like a stoic grin and bear. What he's saying is justification by grace, it changes your perspective on everything in life because your eternity is guaranteed. Once you've been justified, you trust that God is good and God is loving and God is sovereign. And that there is a purpose in your pain, if God is allowing you to go through a season of pain. Whatever the suffering is, could be physical suffering, because of health ailments, it could be God's discipline because of consequences of our sin. It could be demonic oppression, it could be challenges in relationship. Whatever the suffering he say, once we are justified, even our pain can be occasion for joy. Suffering isn't inherently joyful. It's not inherently pleasant. It's not pleasurable. You don't get the joy from the suffering. You get the joy despite the suffering. Why? Because we found the greatest treasure that there is. The great pearl of great price, no matter how much pain we go through, all of this pain can be engulfed with the joy. You have God. You're at peace with God, we have this great treasure. Also, my wife is from Ukraine, and I say that as context for the following, whenever I go through suffering, honestly, it sounds savage, but this is super helpful. My wife just says, at least you are not in hell. And you know what? She's right. She's right. I'm not in hell. Actually, your worst suffering is the closest to hell, dear Christian, that you'll ever get. You'll get through it's just a day, it's just a week, it's just a month, it's just 100 year. Who cares? If in comparison to all of eternity, and I say that because hell is the worst kind of suffering. It's called torment. Revelation 14:9 through 11, and another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever, they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name." From the perspective of heaven, dear saint, if you look back at your darkest seasons, you will say it was nothing compared to what God saved me from. How do you suffer without your spirit breaking, without falling into despair, without abandoning hope? You do it by the power of the Holy Spirit with the eternal perspective, but also with focus on the fruit that suffering yields. This is where Paul focuses our attention. Suffering increases your pain tolerance. That's Verse 4, it produces endurance, and endurance produces character. So suffering produces endurance, meaning what is endurance? Endurance, you keep going when everything is painful. Every athlete knows this, every musician knows this. Anyone who's done anything of significance, which is really ... You know there are moments where you just want to quit and just keep going, endurance. Suffering increases your spiritual pain tolerance, physical pain tolerance, and it puts muscle on your soul. It teaches you to keep going when you just want to give up. Endurance then produces character. An easy life does nothing to produce character. One of my goals in life, one of my job as a father, is to make my daughter's life hard. That's one of my jobs. Just suck it up. Life is hard. We work out together. We lift weights, deadlifts. We're doing deadlifts. Millana does deadlifts. I want them strong. I want the ... Yes, adversity. This world is hard. You got to be strong. He says, the word character, the word character is the word for tested. It's the difference between a soldier who is in bootcamp, excited about the ... I'm in the military. You just started boot camp. And a hardened battle veteran, a combat veteran, they come back and they don't even talk. You just look at the person, you look at their face and you've seen some stuff. It's character. It's built when we have no choice but to keep going. Why can you keep going? Because of the hope that's produced by the character. Verse 5, and hope does not put us to shame. There's a hope that God gives us, and then that hope deepens with suffering, with endurance, with character, and there's more hope. Once you get through that season, your hope is built up. And it doesn't put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Hope doesn't put us to shame because hope in Christ is the only hope ultimately, that will not embarrass us, that will not disappoint us. Life disappoints us, people disappoints us, circumstances disappoint us, but God never will. If you put your ultimate trust than anything else, you're destined for shame and embarrassment. Hope in Christ is the only one that won't. And point five, the gift that he hear ends with and elaborates on is that God's love is poured into our hearts. That's Verse 5, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. He's not talking about our love for God. It's like when we meditate on God and then all of a sudden, in our hearts, there's a love that wells up. That's not what he's ... He's talking about a love that God pours into your heart lavishly. It's an outpouring of divine love, where God just takes himself in his fullness. God is love. God's Spirit is in your heart, you're sealed with the Holy Spirit. The more Holy Spirit you have, the more of the love of God that you have. And if you have the love of God, you can get through any amount of suffering, even if the world hates you and Jesus loves you, you've got everything you need. Why can we have all these gifts? Who bought them for us, who purchased them for us was Jesus Christ. Verse 6, for while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. The Apostle Paul here grounds God's love in the atonement, that Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. That's who we are. We are not godly in and of ourselves in a natural state. We have nothing to do with God. Because of the original sin, a lot of people think original sin is just the sin that Adam and Eve committed, that lead to the fall. Original Sin isn't just that. It includes all of the consequences of that sin, the corruption upon the entire human race. And because of that sin, all the progeny of Adam and Eve were born spiritually dead. That's a spiritual death, the moral corruption. We're not just spiritually ill, meaning we need a little medicine from God. No, we are spiritually dead if you didn't do and you were dead in your sins and trespass. We need a spiritual resurrection. There's nothing a dead person can do. Dead. Spiritually, scripture says that we are dead. There's a moral inability. We don't want God. We don't want to do his will. We don't think about God. There's a moral deadness. And he says, at the right time. Because of this moral deadness, it has to be a work of God that even initiates interest in God. John 6:44 says, no one can come to me, the words of Jesus. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. Just think through that. No one can come to God, unless God draws them first. God is the one that initiates salvation. You do not. Even if you have any interest in God, even if you have any desire of the things of God, to read scripture, to be with Christian, even any of that. And I said it because there are unbelievers that come to Mosaic. They just come and they ... You're welcome. I welcome all the unbelievers. Welcome. And then we just tell them, you can't save yourself, unless God the Father, by the power of spirit, draws you to Jesus Christ the cross of grace. We are dead in our sins. Christ died for us, the ungodly while we're still weak, we're lacking any kind of spiritual vitality. We have no strength in and of ourselves to affect our salvation. He says, at the right time, Christ died, in the fullness of time, according to God's plan. Jesus Christ really did come in history. Luke 2:1 through 2, in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Historic figures, all can be verified, this is true. Jesus was born at the exact date in the exact place the father decreed. When you read the gospels, the narratives of the death of Jesus Christ, you see political machinations. You see power grabs, you see Kaiafas, and you see Pilate, and you see Herod, all conspiring, the Sanhedrin gets involved. They bribe Judas to betray his rabbi. And you think everything's just out of control, where's God? God is orchestrating the whole thing. He's sovereign over the whole thing. Every detail is under his sovereign control. Christ's death and suffering all had the purpose to save the ungodly. Here, we got to pause and say, did God sent Jesus Christ? Did Jesus die for all of the ungodly people? Well, everyone that goes to heaven was, at one point, ungodly. Jesus died for the people that go to heaven. But Jesus didn't die for everyone's sin. Jesus doesn't pay for everyone's sin. If that were the case, then there would be no one in hell, which isn't true. Jesus died for the sheep of his fold, for the elect. Before the foundation of the world, God predestined those who are to be saved. John 6:39, and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. If God determined to save everybody in the world, everybody would be saved. Everybody in the world is not saved. Everyone that has ever existed will not be saved, therefore God doesn't save everybody. God has not decreed from all eternity to save everybody. Therefore, dear Christian, rejoice in the unspeakable grace of God that he has poured out on you. Before the foundation of the world, he chose you. He chose to create you, he chose to recreate you, he chose to regenerate you, he chose to make you his own. That's what we mean when we talk about the grace of God. Verse 7, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. Here, there's a difference between a righteous person a good person. Apparently, Paul thinks the good person is better than a righteous person, because the righteous person does the right things according to the moral law. You just do the right things. But there's a difference between the righteous person and the good person. The good person does the right things, but also for the right reasons. You have a heart that's motivated by love, love for God and love for people, a good person. One will scarcely die even for a good person. Are there people in your life that you would die for? Trying to make a list the other day. People I'm like, all right, I'll take a bullet. It also depends what kind of death. Are there any people in your life that you would be crucified for? That you would take a crucifixion for? Well, Jesus didn't take the crucifixion for righteous people and he didn't take crucifixion for good people. By the way, Jesus could have just wiped everyone out and be like, you know what, I'm done with this. Before they nailed him to the cross, I'm like, all right, I did the scorching, I'm done. Just kill everybody, just pow! Everyone's dead. And then he starts over. He could have done that. It would have been faster and cheaper. It wouldn't have cost him his own blood. But, no, he died for the ungodly. He dies for us while we were still sinners. That's verse 8, for God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died on the cross knowing all of the sins that you would commit, all of them. Because he took all of them upon himself, all of them. And he was still willing to do it. That's how he proves his love. He moves from ungodly to us here in the text. But God shows his love for us. He's talking about Christians. God manifests his love for the elect through the death of his son, Verse 9, since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. The death of Jesus Christ, when Jesus died on the cross, he didn't just die to save us from sin or from Satan. Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from God. Jesus died on the cross to save us from the wrath of God. Verse 10, for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. While we are enemies, hating God, and even if you say, I don't hate God, I don't hate God, I just never think about it. He's out there doing thing. I don't hate him, not an enemy of God. But if you're indifferent to the Lord God Almighty, your creator and your sustainer, the giver of common grace to all, what is that except hatred? It's like telling your mom, hey, Mom, I don't hate you. I just don't celebrate Mother's Day. It's a fake holiday. Hallmark made it up. But it's worse than that. It's like, mom, I don't hate you, I just never want to talk to you. Never want to talk to me? I gave you life. Indifferent are God. That is the hatred. And God offers us reconciliation through Christ's death. But here, the emphasis is on his life now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? What's he talking about his life? How so? How is Christ's life connected to our justification, our salvation? Well, Christ's life of perfect obedience to the law that was imputed to us, that's the righteousness, justification by grace through faith. God's righteousness is then impunity. But in a sense also, Jesus Christ's life changes us because he's sitting at the right hand of God the Father right now interceding for us. Because he lives, we live. This is John 14:19, yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. He currently lives. He's currently interceding for us because he's a great mediator, who not only died for us, but was also raised from the dead and continues to make intercession. And then in Verse 11, more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. The only way that you can rejoice in suffering is to rejoice in God. That's the only way, the only way, we just enjoy God, the presence of God, the person of God. And we do that through the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we rejoice in Christ through Christ, we meditate upon Christ's sufferings on the cross. And St. Paul actually said, he said, I wish to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. Because when we suffer, all of a sudden, we meditate on the sufferings of Christ like never before. And as we meditate on the sufferings of Christ like never before, all of a sudden, we realize, oh my, my suffering as bad and as hard as difficult as it is. Oh my, it's nothing compared to the suffering of Christ on my behalf. He did that for me. And the result is unspeakable joy. No matter what, unspeakable joy. By the way, one comment about joy for summary. And I think it's mostly American culture, Americans just expect everyone to wear all of their emotions on their face all the time. Which that doesn't work in other cultures, nor is it expected. If you go to a Slavic culture and walk around with a smile all the time, everyone would think you're an idiot. This is true. They're going to look at you like, why are you smiling? I say that to say, I have a resting face. That does not necessarily communicate joy. But the joy is deeper. It's on the soul level. It's not just the physical. It's not like you're going to put a mask on and pretend your joy. In your soul, you know you're at peace with God, you have access to the Holy of Holies. There's an iron clad hope that God gives, which allows you to experience joy and suffering. Job 13:15, though he slay me, I will hope in him. Though he slay me, I will hope in Him. And then he says, yet I will argue my ways to his face. That wasn't wise. Because then at the end of the vote, God shows up and he's like, all right, gird up your loins [inaudible 00:48:43]. He's like, Job's like, yeah, I'm going to shut my mouth. What is he thinking in the whole book? But all he needed was the presence of God. That's all he wanted. That's all he wanted and that's all he needed. And he got it, and he got God and everything changed. No affliction so dire, no sorrow so deep, no pain so excruciating is worthy to be compared to the glory of being reconciled with God. I'll close with a hymn. A mind at perfect peace with God; O what a word is this! A sinner reconciled through blood; this indeed peace. By nature and by practice far, how very far from God; Yet now by grace brought nigh to Him, through faith in Jesus' blood. So nigh, so very nigh to God, I cannot nearer be; for in the person of His Son I am as near as He. So dear, so very dear to God, more dear I cannot be; the love wherewith He loves the Son, such is His love to me. Why should I ever anxious be, since such a God is mine? He watches over night and day, and tells me "Mine is thine." Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your sacrifice on the cross. We thank you for the fact that you absorbed that sword, that fiery sword that kept us from the presence of God. A sword went through your heart as you lost the presence of God on the cross, the presence of the Father. And now you give us that presence by faith, we can be justified by grace through faith. Lord, I pray for anyone who is suffering now, I pray that you give a supernatural joy, a joy that transcends all understanding and a peace that supersedes all understanding. And continue, Lord, minister us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we now worship you. And I pray that you give us grace and move our hearts and stir us to worship from the depths of our soul. And we pray all this in the name of Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Heavenly father, we glorify you. We focus our full attention upon you right now. Help us remove any distractions, any worries, any anxiety and help us focus only on you. We glorify you often in our lives. You're just too small because we aren't glorifying you. We're glorifying things ourselves. We pray, remove all of that and help us focus on Jesus Christ on his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection. And because of all of everything he's done, we have access to the presence of God with a righteousness that is not our own. That's the prerequisite to be in the family of God to have a righteousness that is perfect.

We thank you that when we repent of sin, believe in you, Jesus, you give us that righteousness as a gift. And we thank you, Holy Spirit that you are with us today. And I pray Holy Spirit, minister to us, minister to our souls. If there's any heartache or heartbreak, I pray today. Send healing and help us revel in this truth and help us go deeper into it. What does it mean that I'm justified by grace through faith? Holy Spirit ignite our hearts to then live out this incredible, incredible calling and identity. And we pray, all this in Christ holy name. Amen.

So I'm walking down the street today on the way to church and I'm in the zone. If you know me, when I'm in the zone, I don't really notice anything else. I'm in the zone. And then these two ladies are walking in my direction and one of the ladies points at me and says, "That guy is definitely going to church."

I broke lots of categories. I've seen the nice lady from the park. My wife knows her and she knows our daughters. And then she's with her friend. She's like, "That guy is a priest." And says, "You're a priest. Right?" And I was like, "Close enough. Priest, rabbi, pastor, whatever." I'm just telling people about God. And then her friend goes, "Where's your church?" And I said, "Mosaic Boston, right there on Beacon Street." She said, "Can I come?" I was like, "Of course you can come."

And then I realized a lot of people don't go to church because no one's invited them. So it's just a reminder that we should be inviting people into the house of prayer. Today, the title of sermon is believing against hope in Romans 4:13 through 25. How are we saved by grace through faith? That's the only way we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

But often we put too much of emphasis on our own faith because faith is how you grow in knowledge of God. We want our faith strength about how do you strengthen your faith? That's the question before us. Especially when everything is hopeless. I'll start with the quote by BB Warfield, tremendous theologian. He says, "The saving power of faith, resides thus not in itself, but in the almighty savior on whom it rests. It is not strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but that Christ saves through faith." Christ saves through faith.

Faith is the instrument by which God saves us and by which we enter into a saving relationship with him. But faith is not our own. Saving faith is not our own. Saving faith is a gift from God. You can't muster saving faith. You can only ask. And when you ask, receive it with humility and exercise that faith. If we could muster our faith, if we're going to even muster an ounce of faith on our own, then we would still get credit a little bit for our salvation.

But this is the beauty of Christianity. There is nothing. There is nothing that you can take credit for when it comes to being safe. Salvation is all grace. 100%. You can do absolutely nothing to save yourself. So that gets us into a position of incredible helplessness and hopelessness. I can't do a thing to save myself. And now we have ears to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. We can hear about grace.

The context Paul has made clear, whenever any anyone got saved, or get saved, or will get saved, it's only by justification through faith. And he points to the example of Abraham. We talked about that last week. That Abraham, before he offered up Isaac on the altar, even before he obeyed God with circumcision, before all of that, God made him a promise that you will be blessed and I will send you a son.

God made that promise. And Abraham believed the promise. And Genesis 15 says, "God counted righteousness to Abraham. Mercy did not eclipse justice. God saves us by satisfying his divine justice on the cross." So the today we're Romans 4:13 through 25. Would you look at the text with me. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.

For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. Not only to the adherent of the law, but also to one who shares the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. As it is written, I've made you the father of many nations. And the presence of the God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations as he had been told, "So shall you offspring be." He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the bareness of Sarah's womb. No distress made him waiver earning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but four ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. And usually at this point in the sermon, I say those three points, the frame of our time together are one, two, three. I have no points today. The reason why I do the points is number one. So you don't think I'm making stuff up on the fly. That actually did work during the week, which I do because I met a guy this week. He's like, "Oh, you're a pastor. So you only work one day a week." I said, "Actually, only 45 minutes. That's it." And he laughed, I laughed. We all laughed. I went home and cried.

And then also I do the points, so you can track in your mind how much more do I need to pay attention? Like how much more brain energy. Just follow the verses. We're going to frame up our time with the verses, versus 13 through 25. Verse 13, would you look at the text. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

So God made a promise to Abraham that he would be the heir of the world, and that promise wasn't just given to him, it was given to his progeny, his heirs, everyone that came after him. And earlier in the text, he said, "Everyone who believes Abraham is our father." He continues that same stream of thought here. So God goes to Abraham and he promises, "You're going to be the heir of the world." Heir of what? Heir of everything.

What is an heir. An heir is someone who inherits something incredible. So if your grandfather, great uncle died and he was wealthy and he was generous, he includes you in the will. And then you get inheritance. I come from a family of immigrants. My parents came here with $700 in their pocket. My grandfather, who was the only grandparent I had when we immigrated, he came here with nothing. So he saved up over the course of years. And when he died, he had $6,000 in his bank and he wrote out a will. And he is like, "This is what I want you to do with the $6,000. I want you to make an album with pictures of me and my family. And I want you to give one of those albums to every single member of the family."

That's a treasured inheritance I got from my grandfather. But if you grew up here and your family has been here for generations, perhaps there's inheritance coming. And that's exciting. We get excited about inheritance. But God promises Abraham and not just money. He promised him that you will inherit or your heirs will inherit everything. Obviously, the only true and proper heir of God the father is God the son. Jesus alone is worthy to inherit the kingdom that God has promised. But through the gift of faith, the righteousness that is imputed by faith, the righteousness of Christ, we're adopted into the family of God. And because we're adopted into the family of God, we're now sons and daughters of God the father with Jesus Christ as our older brother.

So thanks to this adoption. Apart from this adoption, we're spiritual orphans. And not just spiritual orphans, we're not children of God, the father. Apart from Jesus Christ, you need to know this is important. Apart from Jesus Christ, you're not a child of God. Jesus makes it clear in the gospel of John that apart from faith in Christ, you are a child of Satan. So we need to believe in Jesus Christ, get the prerequisite righteousness to be adopted into the family of God the father. And when we are adopted, we become co-heirs of the world with Christ.

Verse 5 of Matthew 5, this is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus Christ said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. With the coming of the Messiah, the promise of a land in Canaan, God promised to Abraham, "You're going to get land in Canaan. That's the promised land." Jesus Christ comes and he said, "The meek shall inherit the earth.Canaan So the promise has been universalized to the entire earth and thus, the notion held by contemporary dispensationalist.

Do you know what those are? Any Christian that has a lot of charts that loves charts, probably dispensationalist. Just out of nowhere they get a chart and they can timeline, and they can tell you when Jesus is coming back, et cetera, et cetera. The contemporary dispensation, they believe that Israel, because modern day Israel was established that that is the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to Abraham which isn't true.

As we shall see, when we get to Romans 9 through 11, the return of the Jews to their Homeland, while in amazing act of God's providence, and perhaps it's related to the conversion that will come of Israel before the end of the age. But the land promise has nothing to do whatsoever with the promise given to Abraham when God made a covenant with him.

So Paul follows the lead of the prophets. He follows the lead of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and he universalizes the promise to extend to the ends of the earth. Way, way beyond the original boundaries of the promised land, the Nile and Euphrates.

So what does it mean that Christians, followers of God will inherit the earth. And here we want details. We want all the details, Lord. Give me some details. What kind of land am I getting an inheritance? Lord, can I have some waterfront property, in a very warm location? If you don't like the ocean, Lord, can I have some mountains? I've been living in the city for 13 years. I'm like, Lord, can I just have a parking spot?

And when I inherit, whatever, can I just get a park? But we don't get details. It should be enough that God promises that when you believe in Jesus is great, you will live forever in the presence of God and you will inherit the world.

My daughters when they were younger, I'd say, "Get in the car. We're going on a trip." And no questions, no questions ever, they're like, "Let's go. Let's go." And now that they're older, they're like, "I need a detailed itinerary. I need to know if this trip is worth it." This past week, our family got invited to go... My friend is a minister at Brown University, Athletes in Action, and they were doing a senior sendoff where he's like, "Can you come give them a charge?" And I gave them a charge. I said, "You're going to need to tremble before God's word." It was tremendous.

I brought my daughters. I was like, "Little ladies, let's go. I want you to meet these college athlete, men and women. They're scholars. They're athletes. They're Christians. They work hard. They love the Lord. They've got a tremendous pain tolerance. They're doing great." And then my girls are like, "Well, who's going to be there? What kind of food are we going to have? Will there be any children? "And Milana is like, "Will there be any toys?" Because apparently when you're four and you go to someone else's house, all the toys are brand new. They're all brand new.

And that's what we want. I'm like, "We're going to have fun. We're going to be together. We're going to make it..." And it was good. Details don't matter as much with the Lord. I promised you eternal life. I promised you an inheritance. The more important question isn't the details of the inheritance, the more important question is can I lose my inheritance or can I get more of the inheritance?

Well, first, no, you can't lose the inheritance because the inheritance doesn't depend on your performance. The inheritance that God is offering isn't based on your perfection., It's based on the direction of your life. Are you following Jesus Christ? The moment you repent of your sins and you turn to Jesus Christ, you're justified by grace through faith.

Now you are son, a daughter of God. You will get an inheritance. You can't lose that inheritance, but you can get more of that inheritance. And this is 1 Corinthians 3, one of the classic sermons ever preached at Mosaic. It's in the app. Pastor Andy Davis preached a sermon called how much heaven do you want? I go back to that sermon all the time. One of the most powerful. He's like, how much do you want? How much heaven do you want to inherit? And he talks about the capacity to experience the presence of God. That's expanded here in this life and the next life.

Once that capacity expands, you get to experience more of God. So yes, it's only by faith that we're save. It's only by faith that we get an inheritance, but that faith needs to be authenticated with obedience or else it's not true faith. I say the direction of life, because I think of Christianity like this because Jesus Christ talked about this in the Sermon of the Mount. He said, "Look, the way that leads to destruction is broad, and there's a lot of people going down that path. But the way that leads to life is narrow. It's straight and narrow."

So it's like you're going through life, going through life, going from broadened path. And the God just stops you. He stops you. He elects you. He saves you. He gives you the gift of faith, gift of repentance. All of a sudden you're sealed with the Holy Spirit and he turns you around. And that's what repentance is, a change of mind, change of heart, change of direction. And then he puts you on the straight and narrow and he says, "Follow me."

He locks you into this path. Another way to think about it is I think about it like a rollercoaster. Like you were on a roller coaster going to hell. You were on that. And then God takes you off that ride. It's terrible. It feels like fun, but you're on hell. And then he puts you on the ride going straight to heaven. You sit down. He locks you in with grace. You can't get out. The teaching of grace and salvation. You can't get out.

And if you want to get out, you should tell me, and then I'll point you to Hebrew 6 and Hebrews 10, which is like, "No, no, you don't want to get out." It locks you in. And on the rollercoaster, sometimes there are highs and you're like, "Christianity is the best. Jesus is coming back soon. People are getting saved. And then sometimes, the rollercoaster goes down and you're like, "Jesus, could you please come back? Got it ready. Ready to go." It's up and down. But the obedience needs to authenticate the faith.

So Abraham gets saved by grace through faith. That's Genesis 15 and then comes the sign of the covenant, the sign of circumcision. And then in Genesis 22, he calls Abraham to sacrifice his son on the altar. We talked about that last week and then the angel of the Lord stops him and he says, "Now, I know that you fear the Lord." And then the angel continues the verse 15 of Genesis 22. And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, "By myself, I have sworn." Why? Because there's nothing higher by which God can swear than by himself.

"By myself I have sworn," declares the Lord, "because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that's in the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." I thought it was by grace through faith? Yeah, it is by grace. That's how it starts. That's how you get justified. But then begins the hard work of sanctification of following God on a daily basis. And then God said, "Okay, you believed it was grace and now your faith is authenticated with your obedience." And Paul will elaborate more on this later in the letter. But for now, he wants to emphasize the heirs of Abraham and his seed do not receive the promise inheritance through the law. It's not through performance, but through faith. And it's not through performance because Abraham lived.

God made that promise 430 years before the 10 commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Galatians 3:17 through 18. This is what I mean, the law, which came 430 years afterward does not know a covenant previously ratified by God. So as to make the promise void for if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. God promises Abraham and inheritance before the law. So it was all by faith. Abraham believes that he was justified by faith.

And Paul's point is of course he wasn't justified by works. There was no law yet. In Galatians 2:16, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified. He continues in verse 14 for if it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, plural, faith is null. And the promise is void.

The way you're saying is you can't earn your inheritance by keeping the law. That's not how inheritance works. Why do you get inheritance from anybody? You didn't earn the inheritance. Someone else worked for years to get whatever the stuff that you're inheriting. You're only gifted it because you're part of the family or you were treated like family. So how do you become part of the family of God to make sure that you get this inheritance by keeping the law? No, of course not.

Only by grasping onto the promise. God, you promised. God, you promised me that when I repented my sins and I believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior, you promise me that all my sins are forgiven. I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. I will live for eternity in the presence of God, and I get an inheritance. And God has given us this promise. All we have to do is believe in the promise.

You mean there's nothing I can do to make myself righteous before God? No. Even if today you got this incredible resolve and you say, "You know what? I have sinned. I've sinned. And I feel a weight of my sin. All right, from here on out, the church inspired me today. From here on out, I will live a sinless life. No more sin. I will love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind. I will love my neighbor as myself. I will do it."

See, the loving God part, it's easy because he is perfect. But then you go home and you're like, "I got to love God. I Got to love my neighbor. Got to love God. Got to love my neighbor." And then all of a sudden you realize, "Yeah, I have neighbors on every single side of me." And then they turn on their music and you're like, "I got to keep loving them." And then they start cooking and you're, "What's that smell?" And then you open the window because of the cooking, and then a smell of skunk begins to waft in. My daughter think it's a skunk because that's why I keep telling her. I was like, "That's skunk. There's a lot of skunks in Boston." They're just stories full of skunks all around us.

You just got to keep low. You got to keep low then after you're like, "Yeah, I'll start tomorrow. I'll start tomorrow." Every good diet starts on a Monday. Every righteous path starts tomorrow. No, you can't. Even if you try, you can't, you can't, you can't. Why? Because the law brings wrath. That's verse 15. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. The law brings wrath. What does it mean? He means that the law does not affect salvation.

It can't save you. It does not affect justification or forgiveness. If you trust in your keeping of the law in your performance, all you're doing is keeping up wrath for the day of judgment. But there is a law and we've all transgressed that law. If God didn't tell us how to live, we could live anywhere we want. We'd be autonomous. We'd be absolutely independent. We can define reality as we want to define reality. And that's how most Americans live. And that's why the wrath of God is being poured out.

Even on this country, we're not free. There is a law. People think we're free. Dostoevsky said, "If there is no God, then all things are permissible." That's how most people live. I'm a law to myself. I'm a God of my own life. I'm lure to myself until things get hard, and then people start crying out to God. And once you start thinking about God, you're like, "Oh, maybe he does have obligations upon me that are written on my heart."

There's no way. There's nothing we can do to justify for our sins. One of the things I've been noticing now that I'm a soccer dad, we have three practices and three games every week. It's a 20-hour commitment by the way. But my girls are tremendous at it. One of my girls scored three goals yesterday. She wasn't even trying. She wasn't even trying. Coach called her secret weapon. He said, "Protect the secret weapon." But one of the things I noticed with the parents, they're really good parents. They're really nice people. Really nice.

I love meeting them. Really nice people. Just tremendous, tremendous people. And I invited this one guy to church and then he's like, "You're a pastor?" Oh, that's the guy that said, "You only work a day a week." So I invited him to church and he's like, "They let you be a pastor?" I was like, "For now. You should come." Such a good dad. Just a good dad. Had a little birthday party for his daughters and he invited all the kids cup. Just good. How can I tell this guy he's on his way to hell?

I realized be being a good parent is not virtuous. That doesn't add any virtue. You're just doing the bare minimum. It's just expected of you that you're going to be a good parent. Just because you're human, it's not virtuous to be a good parent. No, the standard is so much higher. The standard is perfection. The standard is absolute untainted love. There is a law and we've transgressed that law. We've transgressed it with sins of commission. That's doing bad things. And sins of omission. That's not doing the good things that we know we're supposed to do. We failed to do them.

We have debts accruing against us in God's economy. So we do pray to forgive us our debts. "Lord, forgive us our trespass and our transgressions. Lord, please forgive me because I know I deserve your wrath." And the wrath he's talking as punitive wrath. It's not corrective wrath. There's a difference. In Hebrews 12, there is a corrective wrath. God the father loves his children and when his children disobey, he does discipline us. That's Hebrews 12. And here he's talking about punitive wrath that God takes our law breaking personally.

Because God is the law giver. When we sin, we're not sinning against some abstract norm or piece of legislation some people somewhere. Now, we're sitting against the law giver himself who is good and loving. And that's why you gave the law, and he wrote the law on our hearts. It's for our good. It's for human universal flourishing. So when we break that law, we break God's heart. And when we break God's heart, what we deserve in response is wrath. It's a personal affront against God every time we sin. That's why sin is so egregious. It's a personal attack against a great God, a holy God. A God who's been nothing but good and loving to us.

And then the only time that he became a human, we mocked him and ridiculed him, scorned him and crucified him instead of glorifying him. Romans 4:16. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. Not only to the adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all.

He says, "That's why it depends on faith." In the reformation there's the five solas. Sola fide, that's one of them. That's only by faith we're saved. Sola gratia, only by grace. Solus Christus, only by the work of Christ. Our justification is by grace through faith only because of Christ. But why is it by justification by faith? Because it rests on the promise of grace. Since you didn't earn it, your salvation, you can't lose it.

That's why he uses the word guarantee. Guaranteed to all his offspring. So if God saves you, that's a gift. And if you didn't earn it, if you receive the gift, you can't lose it. When God adopt someone into his family, you're adopted forever. God is a good father who never loses a child. Once saved, always saved because you're always persevering. You're always following. And look, this is what scripture teaches. And I grew up in a church that did not teach this. They were very Armenian.

In that, they're like, "You know what? You never know." You ask anyone and they're like, "Hey, are you going to heaven today if you die?" And they're like, "I hope so." And that was kind of like the culture of the church where it's like... Before communion Sunday, I used to dread communion Sunday, because they're like, "If you sin this week, you don't take part in communion."

I was like, "Sin this week? I sin this morning. I sin on the way to church. I love everyone like 100%. No, they're sin, they're sin, they're sin." That's the sanctification part. No, but the justification part, that's all the work of Christ. Therefore, we're saved for all eternity. The doctrine of assurance, of salvation, you can be sure. So this is a very important question. Today, are you sure that you are going to spend eternity with God? Are you sure? Do you have that assurance right now?

Are you 100% sure? And if there any hesitation in your mind, you need to go back to the doctor and justification by grace through faith. I am not saved because of my performance. I'm saved because of Christ's performance. I believe in Christ therefore I'm justified by grace through faith. You can be sure. You should be sure.

And then of course we're called to make our election sure, but our salvation doesn't depend on our obedience of the law. Because our righteousness depends on faith, rest on grace is guaranteed to everyone who follows in the footsteps of faith of Abraham. Everyone who shares in this faith that righteousness, alien righteous, not ours can be imputed, gifted to us because of Christ.

Verse 17, "As it is written, I've made you the father of many nations in the presence of the God in whom he believed. Who gives life to the dead and calls into existence to things that do not exist." Abraham here is called the father of many nation. So he is not just the father of Isaac. He's not just the father of his progeny. He's not just the father of the Jews. Abraham here is considered the father of anyone who trusts in the same promise that he embraced that there's a righteousness that can be counted to us from God.

We're the seed of Abraham by faith in Christ. Abraham believed God. Abraham believed God and he got God's presence. That's what it says in verse 17. And the presence of God in whom he believed. So he got a promise from God and he got the presence of God. And that's the only thing he had to sustain him for 25 years. 25 years, from the day God promised him, "Hey, I'm going to give you a son." For 25 years he woke up, nothing. Woke up, nothing. God reaffirmed a few times. Nothing, nothing, nothing. But he believed, and he believed that God is a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

God is a creator. He's the only creator. He's the creator who creates ex nihilo, something out of nothing. No one else can do that. Not even Satan. Satan can't create a thing. Satan counterfeits and he ruins everything else that God creates. So it's convenient that God can create something out of nothing, life out of death because of verse 18. In hope, he believed against hope. In hope, Abraham believed against hope that he should be the father of many nations as he had been told, so shall your offspring be.

So there's two hopes here and then there's a faith. In hope, he believed against hope. What's the hope that he's believing against? That's just normal hope. This is what normal people feel like that you wake up and you're like, "I could be negative or I could be positive. All right, I should be positive. I could be a pessimist or I could be an optimist. I want to be a glass half full kind of person, so I'm going to be an optimist today."

It's natural. You muster it up, this hope and you... People say this all the time. I trust everything will work out. I think everything will work out for the good. And usually they say that because they look past at their track record in their life and they're like, "You know what, things have always kind of worked out, so I think they kind of work out." But if you study investment, you know that past results don't guarantee future performance.

Everything could be great and everything could have been working out, and then you just die. Oh, it didn't work out. So there's normal hope and then there's a hope that goes beyond, a transcended hope. That's hope and faith together in hope he believed. And he believed against all of the evidence. All of the evidence that he is accruing about his circumstances. This point to the fact that God lied.

And then he goes back to the promise of God, and he looks beyond his circumstances. This is why in prayer, it's so helpful to close your eyes. And by the way, in worship, it's so helpful to close your eyes. That's why you should memorize the worship songs. Every newsletter I sent out at the bottom of the newsletter is a list of all of the worship songs for Sunday. I'm telling you, worship could be so much more powerful if everyone just closed their eyes and sang the song as memorized.

By the way, you can anytime just sing and you just glorify God. You can close your eyes. You can't see your circumstances. You just focus on God and then all of a sudden you're like, "My circumstances, aren't that important? My circumstances are not sovereign." God is sovereign. "My circumstances even when they're hopeless, even when they're helpless, they're not God."

And I trust in the God for whom nothing is impossible. Do you believe that? Do you believe that for God, nothing is impossible. Nothing. And if you do, that changes everything. What is the hope that Abraham was beyond? He was beyond that humanly speaking, God's promise could have. If God came to Abraham when Abraham was in his 20s and like, "Hey man, you're going to have a kid." He's like, "You know what? I could see that. I could see that, Sarah. Yeah, we're still young." God comes to Abraham when he's 75. He's like, "You're going to have a kid." He's like, "Are you sure?" And he goes and tells his wife, Sarah, she's like, "I'm 65. We're going to have a kid?"

And they believed, and then God waits another 25 years. So then Sarah is 90. Abraham is 100 and God is like, "Yep, you're going to have a kid". And then Abraham and Sarah hears... And Sarah, all she can do is she just laughs because the absurdity of it. She's like, "I'm 90. I'm going to have a kid at 90? That's crazy." She's like, "Abraham, you're in a wheelchair. What are you going to have a stroller? This is nuts. This is crazy. We're not going to..." Circumstances, no reason for hope. He's hopeless. He's helpless. But he continues to trust in God when humanly speaking hope had reached a limit. It hope he believed against hope. And this is the true faith, vibrant faith. A faith that saves.

And the same way that Abraham was helpless, and the same way that his wife's womb, there was no life in it. And that same way, our souls are in need of resurrection. Our hearts are in need of resurrection. This is what the connection between Paul and Abraham. So what is true hope? What is this true faith? Well, it consists of three parts. First, you need the information. If you are going to get saved by grace through faith, what's the information about God that I need to know? You learn the information. God is holy. We have transgressed his law. There's a chasm between us. We are on our way to hell.

Jesus Christ, the son of God, second person of the Trinity comes lives a perfect life, no sin, and then takes that moral record to the cross, pays our debt, absorbs the wrath of God for our transgression. He absorbs the curse that we deserve to extend to us the blessing that he earned. And then he dies. And because of resurrection from the dead, everything that he did and everything he taught is obviously true. God accepts his sacrifice. Now by grace through faith, we can be saved. That's the info.

After the info, you need to ask, is it true? Is this true? Is it verifiable? And it is verifiable. These are all historic things that happened. Jesus Christ's historical figure. He had disciples. People knew him. 500 people saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It transformed world history like no event. We literally stopped time and all of a sudden started recounting. Your birthday is measured from his birthday. Obviously it's true. Now the question is, info is it true? Do I commit?

Do I commit? Can I entrust myself to Jesus Christ? We're justified by faith and trusting in Christ alone for our salvation. Abraham didn't just believe in God. Even Satan believes in God. No, he entrusted himself to God. He knew the person of God. He knew that God doesn't lie. Faith isn't blind. It's just a different kind of sight. And he saw that this was true with the eyes of a soul.

Faith isn't absurd. It's not foolishness. It's not baseless. Faith is ultimately trusting what is preeminently trustworthy and that's God in hope he believed against hope. Is it reasonable to believe in situations like this? No. Look at your situation. That's not reasonable to believe. You ever feel like that in your Christian walk? Is it reasonable to keep following Jesus? Especially when things get hard, especially when you suffer. Is it reasonable?

For all intents and purposes Abraham's body was as good as dead. That's what it says in verse 19. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old or when he considered the bareness of Sarah's womb. Looked at himself, looked at his wife. All he saw was hopeless and he had to close his eyes and looked beyond. How could I possibly believe even the promise? Well, because of the promise giver. The promise giver is the promise keeper. Because he's God and God can't lie. It's against his nature.

The only hopeless thing is the idea that the promise would not come to pass. And in Romans 4:20, I love this verse so much. No unbelief made him waiver. Concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. Fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. When doubt came, Abraham fought off the doubt with the promises of God. And not just with the promises of God, but the presence of God. How did he do that? How did he strengthen his faith?

Tremendous question. How do you strengthen your faith? Through Bible study, helpful and necessary. Studying theology, helpful and necessary. Time and prayer, helpful and necessary. Worshiping God on your own, helpful and necessary. That's not what it says. He did not strengthen his faith by focusing on his faith because when you're focusing on your faith, you're focusing on yourself. And when you're focusing on yourself...

That could be discouraging, especially when life is hard. No, that's not what he did. He didn't do any of that. When he felt most hopeless and most helpless, it says that he gave glory to God. He gave glory to God. "God, I glorify you for everything that you are and everything that you have done in the past and everything you will do in the future. God, I glorify you."

You know what that means? That means you recognize God for who he is. He's the great God of the universe. You glorify him. And also the word assumes that there is a magnification that happens, where as you're glorifying God, he gets so much bigger. Your problems get so much smaller and that's why your faith grows. Glorify God when you're happy, but also glorify God when you're sad. That's what really grows faith. It's easy to glorify God when everything's tremendous. Isn't it? That's why I think in these churches where the pastors have their own airplanes, it's just kind of easier to believe and it's easier to preach because the guy is like, "Of course God loves me. Look at my plane. Does it anyone want to go for a trip. I'm going to Cancun on a mission trip this weekend." Of course, God loves me. Why wouldn't you want to become a Christian? You can be tremendous like me. Look at me. Look at my plane.

That doesn't grow my faith. I mean, God gave me a plane. You know what grows my faith, when everything is terrible. Like humanly speaking. And when you're suffering. And when there is a despondent, a sadness of the soul and you can still say, "Praise be to God. Glory to God." That right there will grow your faith like nothing else. And this is absolutely biblical. This is a story of Job. He had nothing because he lost everything. God allows Satan to take his children and to take his wealth and to take his health.

In Job 1:20 through 21, then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return?" The Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Does your theology allow for a verse like this? It has to. We all experience seasons like this. If not, you will. And then finally, he still had his health and then he lost his children, lost his wealth and then Satan is like, "Can I take his health?" And God is like, "Okay."

And Job 2:9 through 10. Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil?" In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. Can you say, "God, I glorify you" when you're experiencing evil? Well, that's the only way to have a faith that really saves and to exercise that faith.

Romans 8:26 through 30, "Likewise the spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Have you ever prayed like that? Where you're in prayer and you're praying, and you're praying, you're out of words, but you know prayer isn't over. And all you can do is just groan. And you say to Holy Spirit, "Pray for me. Jesus, pray for me." As the Holy Spirit just begins to groan with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called. And those whom he called he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified in the past tense. It's all in the past tense.

He justified, that's past tense. Sanctifies us. And then he's like glorification, this is in heaven. When we get the new body, completely no sin, no imperfections, just absolutely healthy. He's like, "Your glorification is so sure it's in the past tense." Faith grows just like Jesus said it would. If you have faith as tiny as the grain of a mustard seed, you can move mountains because it's not about the faith. It's about the object of your faith.

That's why St. Paul wants to move. Yes, you're saved by grace through faith. You have faith in Christ, in Christ. All the focus is on Christ. And then with that faith, he exercised and Abraham believed and he obeyed, and he was strengthened in his faith, and he gave glory to God.

Isaiah 46:38 says, "A voice says cry and I said, 'What shall I cry?' All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass Withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. God has given us his promises. We can trust in them. And he also offers us his presence and his presence by the power of the spirit is what in encourages and edifies, helps us persevere.

Romans 4:22 through 25. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. There's so much in what he said. Jesus died for our trespasses, but he was raised for our justification.

Because Christ was raised, he conquered this triumphal sign that Christ's death removes the curse of sin because his resurrection undoes the final consequences of sin, which is death. Christ's resurrection marks the dawn of the new creation because his resurrection reverses the curse.

Yeah, we still die, but not really as Christians because it's just a transition. We will live forever with Christ. Abraham, by the way, didn't have the resurrection. He didn't have the Bible. He didn't have the Torah. He didn't have the Old testament. He didn't have the Hebrew scripture. He didn't have the prophets. He didn't have anything. And he also didn't have Christ. He didn't have the teaching of Christ. The life of Christ, the eyewitnesses who saw Christ. And he didn't know that Christ came back from the dead.

All he had was faith in the God who imputed righteousness. But he did believe intuitively in the resurrection. Hebrews 11:17 through 19. "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offing be named. He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back." He's like, "Even if I make the ultimate sacrifice of sacrificing my son because God told me to, God can always raise him from the day he believed in a God who has that power."

Last week, I did this thought experiment to talk about the scandal of grace. Justification of my grace through faith. The moment you believe in Christ, repent in your sin, and you're saved. And I asked the question, I said, "Who is the most evil man in the world that if we just sniped this guy, everything would get better." And most everyone agreed it was Putin. And then I was like, "What if Putin repents of his sin and trust in Jesus Christ? And it's true, it's genuine repentance. Could you call him brother?"

A brother sent me a real example of something similar. So in 1946, there was a pastor from Missouri named, Henry Gerecke of the Lutheran Synod. He was an army chaplain. He served in the army. One of his sons died. Another one of his sons was injured. And then afterwards, after fighting, he was transitioned to army chaplain. He was sent to minister in the Nuremberg prisons during the trials. And he asked the army, "Hey, can I write about this?" And the army told him, "You got to wait five years." And then he wrote about this in an article called, "I Walked to the Gallows with Nazi Chiefs".

It appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in September 1st, 1951. He says, "It was the duty of the chaplain of Nuremberg prison to offer Christian comfort to Hitler's gang. Now, after five years under a bond of silence, I can tell my story of how many repented before the hangman's trap fell." In the beginning, he kind of explains what he wants to say and then he tells a story. He says, "I particularly want to emphasize that when stripped of all they had held important."

So this is Nazi brass. This is the SS, like the top of the top he's ministering to. He said, "I particularly want to emphasize that when stripped of all that they had held important, and when offered the eternal verities, most of the 21 defendants were able to come to their moral senses and repent." This is what happened in Nuremberg prison. More than half of the Nazis there before going to the gallows or their long imprisonment and spawned out, ask God for forgiveness of their sins against him and against humanity.

They did so in a spirit that convinced me that their repentance was genuine. I've had many years of experience as a prison chaplain do not believe I'm easily diluted by phony reformations at the 11th hour. And then he talks about when he was sent there, he had excuses. The Nazis took one of his sons. And then he finally said the following. He said, "The next few days, I prayed harder than I've ever had in my life. And slowly the men at Nuremberg became to me, just lost souls, whom I was being asked to help. If, as never before, I could hate the sin, but love the sinner, I'll go," he said.

Early in the morning on October 16th, 1946, an hour past midnight, the first Nazi war criminal to be hanged at Nuremberg began his final walk to the scaffold. Accompanying him was the US Army chaplain who had been his spiritual counselor for the past year. After the prisoner climbed the steps and stood on the trap door, he was asked for his last words. I placed all my confidence in the lamb who made atonement for my sins. May God have mercy on my soul. And then turning to the chaplain, he added, "I'll see you again."

With that, a hood was pulled over his face. The rope fixed around his neck and he dropped through the trap door into eternity. The prisoner was Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister in one of the highest profile Nazis to stand trial before the International Military Tribunal. That's all it takes to cry out, "Lord have mercy on my soul." Have mercy on my soul. If you're not yet a Christian, you're welcome today. We plead with you.

Don't put it off. Today, pray this prayer. Cry out to God to save your soul. Put your trust in Jesus Christ. And the gift of faith will be given to you. The gift of repentance, the gift of justification, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of a guaranteed inheritance in heaven. It's a scandal of grace. Believe it and receive it.

That said we're going to transition to holy communion. We celebrate holy communion once a month at Mosaic for whom is holy communion for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you are not a Christian, you're not sure where you are in your faith, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service instead meditate on the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if you do repent and trust in Jesus today, you're welcome to partake.

And if you are a Christian, this is for repentant Christians. If there's any sin in your life that you haven't yet repented of, we welcome you to do that. And if you don't refrain, if you do, you're welcome to partake. If you haven't receive the bread and the cup, the elements, please raise your hand. And one of the ushers will give you one as I pray.

Heavenly father, we thank you for grace. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You've suffered, Lord and today we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now and focus our attention on the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Take off the top layer. Take the bread. And then the second layer. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus Christ took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat and do this in remembrance of me."

Then proceed to take the cup. He said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me."

Lord God, we glorify you. And Holy Spirit, lead us in glorifying God. Help us as we sing now as we worship. Help us cast off all our burdens, all our anxiety, all of our stress, cast it off from us to you and help us focus on you, on your greatness, on your majesty, on your preeminence, on your holiness, on your righteousness, on the perfection of your plans and your sovereignty.

Now, help us sing with everything we got because you are worthy of all worship, of all praise, of all glory. And we pray all this in the name of the father, of the son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you that because of Jesus Christ, the person, the work of Christ, his life, death, burial, and resurrection, we can approach your throne, the throne room of grace, and we can do it boldly, courageously. Not because we are righteous in and of ourselves, but because we have been given a righteousness that is not our own. It's been reckoned to us, counted to us. We thank you for that. Jesus, we, in your throne room, we humble ourselves. We don't deserve to be in your presence, but we glorify you. We're so thankful for your presence. We pray, Holy Spirit, now come minister to us from your holy scriptures and help us meditate on the beauty of justification by grace through faith.

There's nothing that we can do to reconcile ourselves with you. The wall of hostility that's in between. There's nothing we can do dismantle it, so it's only by grace that we come to you. And it's only by grace that we remain in your presence, so Lord, forgive us of any sin and pride, selfishness, self-absorption, law breaking. We repent of all that and we ask that you purify our hearts. And your word promises that blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. We want to see you with the eyes of our souls. We pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The title of this sermon is Justified By Faith. We're in Romans four, one through 12, continuing our servant series. The question before us is, do you understand grace? Do you understand God's grace? If not, you don't understand what it means to have a relationship with God. And one of the ways that you know, if you understand grace, practically is, do you view your walk with God in terms of I have to, or I get to. This morning when you woke up and you're like, ah, church today. Do you say, ah, I have to go to church again? Did it come with a feeling of drudgery? The sermon's going to be too long again. Or did it come with the sense of delight? The sermon is going to be so long, praise God. Praise God, I get to listen to God's word. I get to worship God. I get to serve God. I get to take up my cross daily and follow Jesus Christ.

Well, the reason why you can say that is because of grace. We didn't deserve to be justified. We did not deserve righteousness. We don't deserve the presence of God. We deserve eternal damnation. Everything else on top is icing on the cake. Praise God. A lot of people view the Christian faith as if I keep the commandments, I do a great job of following God then I am accept, then I am blessed, then I'm honored. Then God will give me the things that I want. If I keep his commandments, then I love God. And then he loves me. But that's not how it works. John 14, 15. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. It all starts with love. It's a heart full of love toward God. That's the energy. That's what propels us forward.

And where do we get that fuel? We get it from the gospel. When you run out of fuel and you will, you do. Do you ever run out of fuel? You ever feel like you're running on empty spiritually? I feel like that all the time. And then you have to go to the cross and you say, "Lord, please fill me up. Fill up the gas tank of my spiritual resources. Fill my heart with love." And when he does, then that gives you the energy to be obedient to the Lord.

The last few weeks, we've established that we're all guilty before a holy God. Our only hope is not just to be forgiven, but it's to be justified. When you're forgiven, God says not guilty. When you're justified, God says you're innocent as if you had never sinned. And there's absolutely no way for us to be justified and for God to remain just other than the cross of Jesus Christ. There's absolutely no way anyone, even in the Old Testament, the godliest of saints, there's no way that they can be righteous before God, not even through keeping the law. Was Moses in a relationship with God because of his obedience to God? Well, that's not where it started. It started with God choosing him by grace. How about the prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, were they in a relationship with God because of their moral performance? No. God chose them and poured out his love on them. They were justified by faith and God. And not even Father Abraham was justified by works. He was justified by faith apart from works. Romans 3:28. That's the stream of thought. That's where it begins before we enter our text.

For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. This is only way to have a relationship with God. Apart from justification, by grace, through faith. This is the doctrine of justification. Sola fide. If you study the Reformation, there were the five solas. One of them is sola fide, only by faith, by faith alone. You say, "Was Abraham a Protestant?" No. You say, "I thought Abraham was a Jew." Those are all man-made categories. Abraham was a pagan and God chose him and said, "I am going to bless you." And Abraham, all he did was believe and God attributes accounts, reckons righteousness to him. That's our text today, Romans four, one through 12.

Would you look at the text with me? "What then shall we say was gained by Abraham our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works as wages or not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and who sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, but also for the uncircumcised?

We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. And to make him the father of the circumcised who not merely circumcised, but also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised."

This is the reading of God's holy and inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. What a text before us. The context is that Paul has given us the theology of justification by grace through faith. He does that in the end of chapter two, beginning of chapter three, the whole thing, chapter three. Now he turns to historical example of like, this is the theology, now let me show you a real person that all of us know, and he points to Abraham who was known to the Jews as the father of the faithful. And by the way, Abraham is considered one of the most honored people to have ever lived in all of human history.

The Jews point to him as the father of the faith, the Muslims point to him as the father of their faith, Christians point to him as the father of their faith. Salvation for Abraham, how did it come? That's the question before Paul today. A lot of people think that salvation in the Old Testament occurred by keeping the law. If you kept the law good enough and when you didn't good enough, then maybe an animal sacrifice, but it was all works. Works was the way that you saved yourself. That's what a lot of people think today, that the Old Testament, that was bad cop, Father God. That's the God that punishes people. That's the God that just throws stones from heaven. Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone. That's the old. And then Jesus comes and he's the good cop. He's the good dad.

God's the same. Abraham was not saved because of his moral performance. He was saved because he believed God and righteousness was counted to him. He looked forward to the promise of the Redeemer, the Messiah will come and he will pay the penalty for sin. The lamb of God takes away all the sin of the world. They, the Old Testament saints, looked forward. We look back. They look forward at the promise of the Redeemer. We trust in the work of Christ. A lot of people think the Old Testament is a separate book. The New Testament is a new book for, partially because old and new, that's why I say Hebrew scriptures and New Testament, but it's one book book. It's one continuum. It's one God. It's one people saved by grace through faith. Paul destroys this whole idea that there's a separation of bifurcation by pointing to Abraham, that Abraham himself was justified by grace.

Romans 4:1 through 2, that's our text. "What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh." But he's saying, we're Jewish. Paul was Jewish and biological descendants of their forefather, Abraham, through DNA. For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before. And I love what Paul does here in this tremendous teaching point. He's saying Abraham did a lot of incredible things, but not one thing he can point to that he did and say, I am proud of that thing I did because that's what ingratiated me into God's favor. No, the very moment you point to something in your theology and say, "You know what, I did that", that's the very moment that you can discern that your theology is manmade, because true faith, pure faith humbles us in a way that nothing else does.

And this is a temptation for Christians who have been walking with the Lord for a while. You've gone through spiritual battles. You have spiritual accomplishments on your resume. You've led people to the Lord. You've done great things. You've been faithful for a long time. There is a temptation to say, "Yeah, I did that. I did that." The very moment you do that, you lose grace. Grace is a gift from the Lord, is to humble us completely. So Christians, be careful with pride. If God shows you salvation, it's not because of anything great in you. A lot of people think, "Oh yeah, yeah, God saved me because he knew I was going to be a great pick, a trade pick. I was going to be a great, I was going to do some great. God knew."

First Corinthians literally says that if God chose you, it's because you're a loser. We're just a bunch of losers, we're losers. We're moral failures, just spiritually bankrupt. And that's good for us to stay there. Verse three. "For what does the scripture say?" That's the most important question. The scripture says, "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due." So Abraham believed God, he didn't do anything yet. In Genesis 15, he believed God. And it was counted to him. It was credited to him as righteousness.

Do you ever have a negative balance in your Venmo? It doesn't feel good. Does not feel good, if you use Zelle. Sorry, I don't. You know what does feel good? Getting a Venmo payment that you were not expecting. And the bigger the amount, the better it feels. And that should cha-ching sound is one of the most satisfying things. I keep my sound on my phone just in case, just in case. Well, Abraham had a huge negative balance in his spiritual Venmo. He was a pagan worshiping idols, [inaudible 00:13:28]. God picks him. Guy who has no faith background. God picks him and counts, accounts, credits to him a righteousness that is not his own. Question, when your pay hits the account, doesn't matter when you get paid, biweekly, end of the month, when your pay hits the account, how do you feel? Do you consider this a wage or a gift?

Well, it depends on how hard you worked. If you worked really hard that month, and then you look at your pay and you're like, I was working way too hard. I was working way too hard. I got to chill out. That wage is not enough. If you did nothing that month, if you did not a thing, not a single thing, you pretended to work, work from home. You pretended to work and then the payment hits your account. I wouldn't know this, this is hypothetical. It feels so good. You're like, "I can't believe they're still paying me. I did nothing all week. I did nothing all month. I can't believe it. It's a gift. It's all grace." Well, that's how we should view everything from God, Christians. Everything, everything, everything, every day, every, every good gift comes from the Father above, so when you get paid, you should look at it and you're like, that's a gift. Praise God.

I try to tell the IRS that. Everything's from the Lord so it's not taxable if it's a gift. But I haven't gotten anywhere with that. What did Abraham do when God justified him? He did nothing. It doesn't say, Abraham obeyed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Before he obeyed, he believed. And faith is not works. The objection here is, that's not fair. What do you mean, we can get an alien righteousness imputed to us? Like I'm not just saying not guilty, I'm saying your slate is just completely wiped clean. You're righteous when you believe in Jesus Christ. And anyone who's been in the faith for a long time, there is a temptation after a while that when you see someone who's been living a sinful life and then they repent of their sin, and they're justified by grace through faith, there is something inside that irks you, and you say, that's not fair. I have been slaving away for years being faithful to the Lord and this person just repented and all their sins are forgiven. There's no penance? There's nothing? All of your sins are forgiven? Yeah.

Who is the most evil person alive? Like if we could snip one person and everything changes, who would that be? Does a name come to mind? Well, it depends on what your political persuasions are, but let's say it's Putin. Let's say, or Bill Gates, if you don't like. Well, what if Vladimir Putin today comes into, today's Easter in Russia, in Estonia, the Orthodox tradition. What if he goes to church today? What if he listens to my sermon? He says, "Oh, all of my sins can be forgiven? All I need to do is repent and believe in Jesus Christ? And then he repents and he believes and follows him the rest of his days. Is it fair for God to just forgive him? Is that fair? No, it's not fair. It's grace. It's so much better than the fair. If you want fair, then you have to pay for your own sins for all eternity in hell. That's fair. Well, if you want grace for yourself, then grace has to be available for other people as well. That's how grace works. This is what St. Paul is getting at.

In verse three is a citation from Genesis 15, where God appears to Abraham and tells him that he will bless Abraham greatly. This is Genesis 15:1. "After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. And Abram said, oh Lord God, what will you give me for I continued childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus." What he saying is, God's like, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to give you so much favor. And Abraham's like, God, I already have money, I have livestock. I have cattle. I have money. I have gold. What are you going to give a man who has everything? Well, Abraham didn't have everything. He didn't have a son. He didn't have progeny. And he said, God, I'm childless. I continue childless.

Verse three. "And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring. And a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars, if you were able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. He believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness." By the way, this is a stupendous promise. Abraham, you're an octogenarian. He's probably in his eighties at this point, close to that. You don't have a son. I promised that I will make a great nation out of you. And through you, I will bless all the nations as a promise of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And Abraham say, I don't have a son. And God takes them outside. He said, "Look at all the stars. You're going to have more children than the stars in the heavens." How many is that?

And Abraham believes, fully believes. There was absolutely no doubt. He even asked God, "God, how will I know?" Verse seven. "He said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" I shall possess it. He believes. How will I know that I shall possess it? He believes. God puts Abraham to sleep and gives him a tremendous theophany, which is a vision of God. And God swears by the highest thing by which he can swear, promises by the highest thing that he can promise by. He promises by himself, he swears by himself and Abraham believed, and it was counted, reckoned to him as righteous. On what grounds? On future faithfulness? Is that what God was saying? You're going to be faithful in the future.

He wasn't faithful in the future. He sinned time and time again. Cowered before people, lied to kings that his wife was his sister. No, he was counted righteous because God chose to count his faith as enough to make him righteous. People have made this text, Romans 14, problematic by pitting it against James two. So our text says that you're justified by grace through faith. And then James two seemingly argues for the opposite, that we're not justified by faith, we're justified by work. That's the superficial reading. So I'm going to read it and then we'll engage and we'll show that there is no contradiction, but they are saying basically the same thing from different perspectives.

Verse 14 of James two. "What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking a daily food and one of you says to them go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." I like James. He was a half brother of Jesus Christ and he was a pastor in Jerusalem for a long time. I like James because he gets straight to the point. You think you have saving faith? You're telling me, you love God. You don't even love people who are in need. So no, you don't love God, and no, you don't have saving faith if your heart isn't moved to help people and their practical needs. That's what he's getting at.

Verse 18. "But someone will say you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shutter." What a savage. He says, demons are tremendous theologians. They know everything there is to know about God. Satan is the greatest theologian. He knows the Bible better than any one of us. They believe and they shudder. Well, what's the difference between a demon and a Christian? The difference is love for God. Doesn't matter how much you know about God. If you don't love God, then you're not a child of God.

Verse 20. "Do you want to be shown you foolish person," Savage. "that faith apart from works is useless. Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son, Isaac, on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him, his right and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." A lot of people point to the text and they say, there it is. That's the smoking gun against the doctrine, justification by grace through faith.

Verse 24. James two. "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." That's a clear repudiation, right? That's a clear contradiction in the holy scriptures. And what makes things even more interesting is both Paul and James use the same historical figure, Abraham. And they use the same Greek word for righteousness in Romans and James. Are these texts contradicting each other? No. They can't be because both books are written by the Holy Spirit. First, we need to establish authorial intent. What did James mean? What does the author mean? Which is an important question whenever you study the Bible. Don't study the Bible just to say, what does it mean to me? Whenever you read the Bible and you say, what does it mean to me, your putting yourself in a position of authority. No, no, no, no. That's not how you read holy scripture. You read holy scripture, study under it. Intrepidation that the God of the universe would choose to speak to us through the text.

What's the authorial intent? Well, thankfully James comes out and tells us the question that he's trying to answer. Verse 14, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works. Can that faith save him? What he's saying is if your faith does not change your life, then you did not have true saving faith. Because to believe in Jesus Christ is not just intellectual ascent of like, yeah, I'm going to believe some facts about God. In my mind, I know these things about God, therefore I am a Christian. If your faith, if your Christianity only stays in your mind and does not penetrate your heart and stir your heart, you're not a Christian. You're not a follower of God.

Does God care about the facts of our faith? Yes. We take doctrine seriously. We read holy scripture, we study it. What does the word say? In fact, God cares about the facts of our faith. God also cares about the feelings of our faith. God cares that our hearts are stirred with love for him and for people. He wants our hearts full of zeal for him, so that we live in a manner worthy of knowing God. And if you don't, then your facts are woefully ineffective in saving you from God's wrath.

Verse 19. "You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder." They believe they wouldn't submit. You believe tremendous. Do you love God? The full phrase the reformers used is, justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Because what it means to believe in Jesus means to recognize him as a holy God. And you realize that you have sinned against him. And to really believe in him is to repent of your sin. And repentance means that there's a change of life. It's a change of mind that leads to a change of heart that leads to a change of direction in life. And the moment you exercise true saving faith, you change. You become a brand new person, a new creation in Christ. You're filled with the Holy Spirit. Everything changes.

You know, I can tell if someone's a Christian just by looking them in the eye in public sometimes. I was on the TV the other day, and I saw this little old lady, I could tell by looking at her that she was a believer. You can just tell. There's a different person. There's a peace. There's a calm. There's a joy. No longer, you're a Christian. If you're faithful, there's a suffering. A lot of people profess faith. They don't possess the faith because it doesn't change them. Works must flow from our faith, but they're never the grounds for justification. They're confirmation of justification. I remember when my daughter Sophia was born. I was 26 when I had a kid. Wow. That's nuts, and awesome. And I remember I was deathly afraid of infant sudden death syndrome. I was like, you're telling me there's a thing where a baby just dies and you don't know why? They're like, yeah. That's not good.

So at night I would wake up and I'd go up to her crib and I would listen. And to see if she's alive, what did I look for for proof? Did I go to her birth certificate and say, oh yeah, she's alive. Here's proof. No. What did I look for? Is she breathing? Is there heartbeat? Well, that's what James is saying. Works is the heartbeat. Works is the breath. Christian, do you have works? That's the sign of life. That's not the origin of life. The origin of spiritual life is justification by grace through faith. The proof of saving faith is a life of obedience to the Lord. Would Paul have a problem with what James is talking about? No, they're completely on the same page.

A lot of people say, Paul, all he preached was justification by grace through faith. And that leads to licentiousness where people just take cheap grace. And they're like, all right, I can be forgiven anytime I sin, so I'm just going to keep on sinning and just come back for Jesus for forgiveness every once in a while. Paul starts off Romans with his thesis. He's the guy who preached grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, justification by grace through faith. But in Romans 1:5, his thesis is, this is why I'm writing to, and this is why Jesus chosen him. Through whom we have received, through Jesus, we've received grace and apostleship. To bring about what? The obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. He said, we receive grace so that you receive grace. We receive grace to be obedient to God. That's the apostleship. And we extend grace to you. What's the purpose of that grace? So that you live a life of obedience.

This is First Corinthians 15:10. One of my favorite verses where St. Paul is like, I am what I am by the grace of God. I love that part. A lot of people stop there. I am what I am by the grace of God. And then he continues. He like, but the grace of God was not in vain in me. It wasn't empty because that I worked harder than all of them. He's talking about the other apostles. Just kind of a savage thing to say, because those apostles worked really hard. And Paul's like, I worked harder than all of them. Wasn't me, it was the grace of God in me. Starts with grace, ends with grace. I am what I am. Grace [inaudible 00:30:30]. He received the grace to be obedient to the Lord. That's the point. If you receive grace, it's to be obedient to the Lord.

James and Paul both point to Abraham, but at different times in Abraham's life. Which is important, because if you're walking with the Lord on a daily basis, time goes by and you're in a completely different spot spiritually. Like if today you walk with the Lord and tomorrow you walk with the Lord and the next day you walk with the Lord, if you come back next week, you should be in a different spot spiritually. And the more you do that, the more you string these wins together, just faithfully daily following the Lord, a month goes by, six months goes by. You should be a categorically different spiritual being, human being, filled with the spirit in a completely different.

Your character should be different. Your hopes, your dream, your passions, different purposes, asking for God's will in a way that you've never asked for God's will. Not just praying for stuff. A lot of people just pray for stuff. God send me this. God send me that. God help me pay my rent. God help me get a job. God help me get a girlfriend. God help me. God help me. God's like, can we talk? Can we talk, like you and me? Can we talk? What's on your heart? Can you just ask what my hopes are for you, not just give me what your hopes are for you? That's what happened with Abraham. Paul points to Abraham. Genesis 15. This was before Isaac was born. And all Abraham could do was trust God. All he had was God's word. That's all he had. You know, he trusts God. And then James points to Abraham in Genesis 22. This was well after Isaac was already born.

Abraham had raised Isaac, fathered him, cared for the infant that Isaac was, loved this little boy. Taught him how to walk. Probably taught him to ride a camel, I don't know. Taught him to work. Just poured out his love on this kid. And then God comes to him when Isaac is already, theologians tell he was probably a teenager, and God says, take your son, your only son whom you love with your whole heart, the son of the promise, he says, and I want you to sacrifice him. And Abraham does not argue with God. He does not say, God, how could you, how dare you? Who are you to tell me to sacrifice my beloved son?

And Abraham goes on a three-day journey with his son, night and day, just traveling to Mount Moriah. Climbs the mountain, finally gets to the top, ties up his son. Picks up a knife and he's about to slaughter him and God sends an angel of the Lord who stops him. And the angel of the Lord says, Abram, now we know that you fear God. He didn't just believe in God. He feared God so much so that he was willing to obey God to the point of sacrificing his most treasured possession. And then God sends a ram that's caught in the thicket in the thorns and that's who was sacrificed. And that's a prototype of Jesus Christ. Crown of thorns. Jesus Christ, the lamb of God takes away sin in the world.

So how did his faith grow from Genesis 15 and Genesis 22? Just daily walking with the Lord. And that started that journey, that space, that spiritual journey started by just believing God day one. God, I believe. And it was it to him as righteousness. Verse four of Romans four. "Now to him who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." Paul, wait, what? What did you just call Abraham, the father of our faith?

Verse five. God who justifies the, what? Let's say that word together. Justifies the ungodly. You called Abraham ungodly? If Abraham is ungodly, what hope is there for any one of us? That's the point. There is no hope. There was no hope for Abraham apart from Jesus Christ. There's no hope for any one of us apart from Jesus. We're ungodly. And the word here in the original is wicked. Someone who was wicked in the sense that they violate the first four commandments. The first table of the law. First commandment, thou shall have no other the gods before me. Abraham had other gods before him. Guilty. That shall not make any idols. He made idols. Who were the Chaldeans? They're all idol worshipers. Thou shall not use my name in vain. He used God's name in vain. The Sabbath, obviously wasn't even a category for him. Broke all four commandments, did not love God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind, ungodly, wicked. And God counts him as righteous just because he believed God. He believed God's word. And God's like, all right, you're righteous, you're in. You're in. That's all it takes.

And this is what separates Christianity from every single other religion, because this is pure religion. Pure religion means it's from God completely with no manmade categories, fallen lenses of interpretation. You know that when there's a manmade category in a religion or a worldview or a faith, when people start thinking things or teaching things like this, like if you do more good than bad, then you'll go to heaven. That's the premise on which every single other religions based on. If you're more good than bad, then God will forgive you of your other stuff and you go to heaven. This is American religion. Most American religions have you ever, I've been listening to country music lately. It's very soothing.

Country music has a lot to do with Christianity. They talk about Christianity all the time. They talk about church on your porches or drinking beers, watching the sunshine, sunset, sunrise. That's all I need. That's God for me. God will forgive me. God is love. Man, I don't have to do anything for God. I can live any way I want. That's not Christianity. We don't teach that you can earn your salvation. If we did teach that our building campaign would be so much more effective. Raising money for a building would be so easy. You guys are all sinners. You're all sinners. We found a way for you to atone for your sin. For a gift of any amount to our ministry, your sins shall be atoned for. We forgive. We forgive. We'll set up a little confessional booth. You can share all your, oh, that one. Nope. That's $50,000. There's no way. That's some wickedness, you know? No, no, not even Jesus can save you.

This is how the Catholic church before the reformations, this is how they built all their beautiful buildings in the Vatican, et cetera, et cetera. They literally had a saying that because of purgatory, like when your loved one dies and they go to purgatory, because you're not sure where they went. They went to hell. But they created this category called purgatory where like, nah, just in case, just in case. And they had this saying that when a coin in the coffers rings, a soul from purgatory springs. Catchy. Raised them billions in today's USD.

This is like, why do you think there's names everywhere? Be like, make a donation, put your name in stained glass. Make donation big enough, we can give you a hall downstairs named after you. No, atone for your sins. No, you can't atone for your sins. Only Jesus Christ can atone for your sins. Abraham did not work, but believed in him who justifies the ungodly and his faith was all it took for him to be counted as righteous. And that same could be done for us. It was done for Abraham. And then Paul points to David. In verse six, just as David also speaks of the blessing. It's the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart for works. "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and who sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin."

He's talking about David after his egregious sin, commits adultery with another man's wife and then creates a way where Uriah, Bathsheba's husband dies in the field of battle orchestrated by David. And then he's confronted by the prophet, Nathan who calls him out and David knows full well what it feels like to have God's displeasure wrath, disfavor boring down on your soul. That happened for a year. He tried to pretend like it wasn't there, but it was. The wasting away, the inward groaning, his strength sapped like on a hot summer day. And then David writes Psalm 32 about repentance and about the greatest blessing that there is. He speaks of the blessing. What a blessing this is, the one who God counts righteousness apart from works by forgetting sins, forgetting lawless deeds, covering sins.

Scripture said is that the omniscient God of the universe who knows everything and never forgets a thing, the moment we repent, it says he casts our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. How far is that? God chooses to forget our sin, chooses to forget our sin. Just forget it. Just forgotten. He chooses to forget our sin. Doesn't bring it up again. Satan does. Satan's the accuser. God chooses not to bring it up. What does scripture talk about when it talks about blessing? What does it mean to be blessed by God? A lot of English translations, they take the beatitudes and they take the Greek word Makarios, which means blessed, blessed to the pure in heart for they shall see God. Well, a lot of people, they say, oh, Makarios means happy. Happy are those who weep and mourn, for righteous. What? What? Happy? You know the word, happy's not in the Bible? I've been meditating on that this week, because the world promises happiness. And I look at the Bible, I'm like, It's not there.

There are things that make me happy. I have a slice of pizza, I'm happy. Two slices of pizza, really happy. Three slices of pizza, four slices of pizza, no more happiness. I just feel sad. Just, what did I do? Fitness, fitting this whole pizza in my mouth. Scripture promises joy. And the way that you get joy is from the presence of God. And you get more of the presence of God by fighting sin, which includes suffering. So you're telling me that the weight of the path of joy is suffering. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ. For the joy that was set before him, he took up the cross.

No happiness, but blessedness. Blessedness is proximity to the presence of God. One of my favorite benedictions is Numbers 6:24 through 26. This is Aaron, the great high priest, praying a prayer of blessing over God's people. And he says, "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And the Lord, lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." This is parallelism. Each stanza as saying the same thing in different words. The Lord bless you. It's parallel to, the Lord make his face shine upon you. So it's blessing when God's face of delight is turned toward you. The idea is reinforced with the third line, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you. Why, why? Why? Because blessedness is always in terms of your proximity to the presence of God. That's the greatest thing you can experience.

The greatest blessing is the presence of God. That's what heaven is. Heaven is just the presence of God. There's nothing in the way of the presence of God. Adam and Eve rejoiced when God came in the cool of the day, they being in his presence and the light of his countenance. And then when they sinned, they were banished, exiled from what? The garden? From the presence of God, from blessing so all they had left was curse. To be cursed by God is to have God turn his back on you. His grace and peace removed from you. So to be blessed by God, to be welcomed into his presence. And how can we get this blessing? Only if our sins are removed from us. Blessed are those, verse seven, whose lawless deeds, that's breaking God's law. Lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Covered with what? Covered with what? Covered with the blood of Jesus Christ who bore our sins upon himself. Covered with grace. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

This is the greatest blessing that there is. This is the greatest blessing that we have to offer you. That the very second you come to the Lord and you trust in his word, that all of your sins will be forgiven if you repent and follow Christ, you have a righteousness that's not your own. All of your sins are forgiven past, present, and future everything. Your eternity is secure. This is the greatest blessing. And for whom is this blessing available? Verse nine, is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised, where we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. So the question is, did God attribute righteousness to Abraham because of Abraham's faithful act of obedience and circumcision? A lot of people get this right and they say Abraham was circumcised. He was not circumcised. There was nothing passive about his circumcision. God comes knowing the guy's 99 years old. He says, you're going to circumcise yourself.

Commendable? Yes. Courageous? Oh yeah. Noteworthy? Definitely. Enough to justify him before God? No, not even that. Abraham believed God's word of promise and it was counted to him as righteous. The circumcision doesn't justify anyone before God. Baptism doesn't justify anyone before God. The sole instrument of justification is faith. And here he says, circumcision is a sign and it's also a seal. And that's what baptism is as well for us. Circumcision was a sign of the old covenant and a baptism is a sign of the new covenant. Both are signs, both are seals. Verse 11. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. He's saying that circumcision was a sign. It points to something else. It points to, supposed to point to inward reality that your heart has been circumcised by God, your heart that's covered with sin and hardness, disillusionment, cynicism, and God circumcises all of that, makes your heart tender, and now you're saved. That's the sign. Baptism is similar. It's an outward reality of something that happens inside. This is why we practice baptism at Mosaic. I get up and I say the same thing right before baptism. I say, baptism does not save you. You're saved by grace through faith. But baptism's an outward sign of an inward reality, it's like a wedding ring. It's like a wedding ring. Does my wedding ring make me married? I have two wedding rings, one wife, two wedding rings because in Russia, they wear it on the right hand. It's a sign that we're married. Praise God. Outward sign, inward reality.

And the same way, it's a seal. And this is fascinating because the New Testament Greek word for seal goes back to the signet ring of a king. When the king writes a letter or decree and he takes wax and he puts at the bottom, that's the signature. And he puts his signet ring in, this is a message from the king. Well, what's our seal, Christians? We are sealed with the Holy Spirit. We have the blessing of God's presence every day. When you repent of your sin, God is with you. He fills you by the power of his spirit. This is why it's so important to pursue righteousness, daily righteous, practical righteousness, positional righteousness that's given to us. But practical present righteousness of pursuing God, because the closer you get to God, the more power of the Holy Spirit you get.

We're not save. We're also sealed. Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of righteousness of faith. Verse 12 is the kicker. And to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abram had before he was circumcised. Walked in the footsteps. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, before they sinned against God, they used to take daily walks with the Lord. You ever take a prayer walk? I love prayer walks. Imagine taking a prayer walk and God's right there. That's what they did every morning. They walked with God. The Hebrew word was Halakah, walked with God. And then they were banished because they stopped walking with God. And then scripture says that Enoch, Enoch walked with God and he was no more. Walked with God. God found a righteous person that walked with him.

Noah walked with God. The prophets walked with God. Then Jesus Christ comes, the great Messiah. And what does Jesus Christ say? Hey disciples, what do you say? Follow me, follow me. What does follow me mean? That means on a daily basis, you walk with God. Halakah. you walk with God. Wherever he goes, you just follow and you walk. Let's go, Lord. I'm moving. We're moving forward following the Lord, in the footsteps of the faith.

In conclusion, Jesus Christ paid it all. Paid it all, suffered all. Finished. It's finished. He's won. I'm meditating on the phrase, it's finished. On the cross, Jesus Christ, before he dies, before he breathes his last, he said, it's finished. What's finished? What's finished? And then it says that the curtain that separated people from the Holy of Holies in the temple, thick veil, it was torn from top to bottom as if God, just licked his hand, just tears it up.

What happened? Now we have access into the presence of the Holy of Holies because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. I don't know where you are in your faith, but today I challenge you, take a step closer to the Lord, just one step closer. Wherever there is a place of disobedience, one step closer. If you're not even sure that you are a Christian, if you're not sure that you are a child of God, today, all you have to do as, we're going to worship now. We're going to pray. In your heart of hearts, pray out, cry out to God. God, save me. God, have mercy. God, give me grace. God, I believe in you. I trust in you. And then God will give you the greatest blessing that there is. Your sins are covered, forgiven, no more are they counted against you and Christ's righteousness is counted to you.

I'll close with Titus 2:11 through 14. We'll pray and then we'll worship. "For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people." And what does the grace do? Training us. Grace trains us. It's not just fuel, but also trains us. To do what? "To renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things, exhort, rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Amen." Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this blessed, blessed word. And we thank you for the greatest blessing that there is, which is the blessing of your presence. Holy Spirit, we welcome you right now. As we worship you, I pray, let us worship you from our heart of hearts with everything that we have because you're worthy of worship. We thank you Jesus for grace. And I pray that you make us a people that take the grace and that we do not take it in vain, it does transform us. And I pray that it trains us to become powerful men and women of God doing incredible things for your name's sake, for the sake of your kingdom. And we pray all this in the beautiful and powerful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. I don't know if you've heard, but Christ is risen. Christ is risen. Christ is risen. Praise God. I'm Jan, one of the pastors, and we're going to preach the word today, because there's power in the word of God. Would you pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a great God and a holy God, blazing holiness. Not one of us can stand in your presence apart from the shielding of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you lived a perfect life. Impeccable, no sin, perfect life of love toward God and love toward neighbor itself. And you loved us to the end, of going to a cross, bearing, excruciating physical anguish, and that was just the surface level of the pain as you bore the wrath of God on our behalf. We thank you, Jesus, that you didn't stay dead. Praise God. We thank you that you came back from the dead, and in the death of Christ, you dealt death a death blow.

We praise you for that, and we thank you that you are the Great Conqueror, the Great Victor over Satan, sin, and death. And that when we trust in you by grace through faith, we are in you, shielded, protected. Your shield of favor covers us. We thank you for that. And I pray, Holy Spirit, you are with us, you are heavy in the room. I pray today for those who feel dead inside, for those who have experienced death of relationships or death of marriage. I pray today bring your resurrection power from the inside out, speak life to dry bones so that they come alive. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

My dear wife, Tanya, told me that in a suit I look like a funeral home director, which is appropriate because the title of sermon is Your End is Near, and we're all going to die. How much money do you have? You know the bottom line. You think about it all the time. Order magnitude. How much time do you have left? We have no idea. I don't have to be a mystic or a profit to know that every single one of us, our end is near, and on Good Friday we establish the fact that we're all sinners and we're guilty before a righteous and holy God. Ivan Turgenev said the following. He's a Russian poet writer. He says, "I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like, but I do know what the heart of a good man is like, and it's terrible." It's just terrible. The physical life is not all there is. We know that there's something that transcends the material life, that's God. So, the question before us is, how can a just, holy, righteous God accept unrighteous, sinful, unjust people?

How can we be saved from the looming just punishment that's coming? Is there a way to get mercy? Mercy is when you say, "God, have mercy on me. Please forgive me of my sins." Not guilty. There's no punishment. All of your sins are forgiven. You're free to go home. You're free to live your life. Is that just why Jesus Christ died? To forgive us our sins and give us mercy? No, it's not just why he died. If you pause there, you only have half the gospel, and half the gospel is no gospel. Jesus Christ didn't just die to give you mercy. Jesus also died to give you grace. Well, what's the difference between mercy and grace?

Mercy is when you are not given the punishment you deserve. Grace is when you are given something on top. Grace is when you get what you don't deserve. You're declared just. You're justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Just as if I'd not sinned. Justification by grace through faith. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about grace, and every single one of us needs grace. God's unmerited favor. Roman's 3:21-31. Would you look at the text with me, either in your Bible or in your app or on the screen? By the way, we're in the Sermon Series through Romans. And if this is your first time, it's been one of the most powerful sermon series ever at this church. You can get it in the app. You can get all the sermons online, on the website. Today, we're in Romans 3:21-31.

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it - the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and false short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

"Then what becomes of our boasting? It's excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God has one - who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law."

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our lives. St. Paul begins this stream of thought in verse 20. "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." We talked about this last week that God gave the 10 commandments. It's a moral law. It's written on every single one of our hearts. We know that it's true. And every single one of us, we've broken the commandments. Therefore, we are guilty. We can't be justified through obedience because no one's been obedient except for Jesus Christ. So, the question before us is, how are sinners justified? Martin Luther, the great reformer in the 16th century, he coined this phrase. By the way, he said that this text, this is the greatest text explaining the gospel, because if you don't understand this text, you most likely do not understand the gospel. He coined the phrase called "Simul justus et peccator," in Latin.

'Simul,' we get the word 'simultaneously' from it. 'Justus,' 'just,' 'simultaneously just.' 'Et,' E-T, 'and.' 'Peccator' means sinner. We get the word 'impeccable.' That's someone without sin. That's why I don't like the word 'impeccable,' because only Jesus is impeccable. Not your car. And we're sinners. But, we can be simultaneously just. How? That's the question before us. Thanks to Jesus Christ, life, death, and resurrection, we can be judiciously declared just by God while still sinners. This is the very heart of the gospel. That you are a wicked sinner, that's the bad news. You're so much worse than you ever even thought. Just ask your mom. You're terrible. We are all sinners, just terrible, but we don't have to clean ourselves up before we come to God.

You don't have to clean up your sin before you come to God. You don't have to be righteous in order to be accepted by God. You need to come to God the way you are. Just the way you are. Come just as you are to Jesus Christ and say, "Jesus, you promised I can be justified even as a sinner. You promised. I name and claim your word. I believe your word. I can be just, I can be declared just because of Jesus Christ."

Romans 3:21. "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it." Righteousness of God, apart from the law? Paul, what are you talking about? You just made the case that the law, the law, the law, it's still enforced. We need to obey the law. And then, you're telling us that we can't do it. We can't make ourselves righteous. We need a righteousness apart from the law. Whose righteousness is that? It's the righteousness of God. It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the only person who lived a life good enough to get into heaven. No one else comes even close. Not even Mother Teresa. Nobody comes close. No one can get into heaven on their own merit, on their own work. This isn't a Christian idea, as the verse tells us. It wasn't something made up by Jesus Christ. It wasn't something made up by the Apostle Paul or any of the other apostles. He said that it was in the Law and the Prophets, the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it. He's talking about the Hebrew scriptures. He's talking about the Jewish sacred scriptures, that the doctrine of justification by grace through faith from the reformation. He's saying it was in the Hebrew Bible the whole time. It was in the Torah the whole time. He's like, "Yeah."

When God comes to Abraham, a pagan, and says, "You're mine. I choose to pour my life and my love out on you. You are mine." And Abraham believed. That's all it took. And this is Genesis 15:6. "And he believed the Lord, and he, the Lord, counted it to him as righteousness." Was Abraham righteous the rest of his life? No, he made mistake after mistake, but this is the beauty of why you can bounce back when you sinned. You can repent and immediately receive grace from God and you can keep going. The righteous person falls down seven times and keeps getting up because of this.

By the way, you can't have any relationship unless you understand grace. You can't understand any relationship, in particular, marriage. I've been thinking of marriage a lot recently, because it's springtime in Boston, the best time of the year, and there's a lot of weddings happening at Mosaic. Praise God, praise God. And by the way, if you're single, today's a tremendous time to meet a godly person. To all the single people, there's going to be a mixer in the foyer or on the steps afterwards. Just be bold. The righteous are as courageous as lions. Ask someone out for a coffee at Tatte. Go to brunch.

I've been rethinking how I am doing marital counseling and how I'm going to weddings upcoming. I don't want to say, "Are you going to love each other?" I don't want to say that because to love each other means that you are going to bear with this person's sin until death do you part. That's what we should be saying. "Do you, groom, take the bride with all of her baggage and carry-ons and you're going to carry them the rest of your life?" "Are you going to take his sin too?" And when you sin against each other, you give each other grace and you repent, but you start by repenting to the Lord. The law was given as a standard by which we will be held accountable. It was given to drive us to God and say, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

And this is why the blood sacrifices are so important in the Old Testament, because it was a reminder to every single person every single time it was done that we cannot be made righteous by our works because our works have never enough. So, how do I get the righteousness of God? How can I be declared righteous? That's verse 22. "The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." All you need is faith in Christ. But, here I've got to pause, because we have to define what faith is. Let's talk about faith in Jesus Christ for a bit. Saving faith. Who is Jesus Christ? He's the second person of the Trinity, he's fully God, he's fully man. And Jesus Christ is the word, the word of God incarnate.

John 1:1-5. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Jesus Christ is the word. He is the light, and he shines this light into darkness, but we hate the light because the light exposes our sin. It's impossible to sin with the lights on, the light of God. The light, when you're in darkness and you're sinning, the lights come on and it's unpleasant. It's blinding. It's disorienting. You're shocked. People in Boston live in darkness, people in the whole world live in darkness. We're like hormone-disoriented middle schoolers.

I'm thinking seventh and eighth grade at a school dance in the gym. Lights are off. You're having a good time. Just learned to dance. There're girls. And then, the gym teacher turns the lights on at 8:00 PM, tells everyone to go home. Oh no, you're crestfallen. The light comes into darkness. Unbelief is the darkness. It's the core division in our country, in our society, in our workplaces, in our homes. Faith was and is the core of Western civilization. It shaped the modern world, and you can see that faith in unbelief division. You can see it playing out in every single major debate and argument that we see in the world. Popular society has done everything it possibly can to banish Jesus, just getting rid of Jesus Christ from everything. Every single public space, you're trying to squeeze Jesus out completely. And how's that going for us? How's the reconstruction of a better morality working for us? It's not.

We're living in darkness, and in darkness, you don't know what's true. We search for truth. Can we find truth without Jesus Christ? No, of course not. We deny the truth, and it's led to a whole manner of wickedness and perversion in our world. Moral corruption, and blindness, and lawlessness. Calling evil good and good evil. This is the darkness, and in the darkness, you can't tell which way is up or out. Disbelief is the darkness, and it leads to destruction and confusion, because all we have gone astray like sheep. We search for truth, is that search genuine? Because, when we find the truth, it's inconvenient, because now we have to orient our lives around the truth if we're going to be honest.

Pontius Pilate searched for truth, genuinely or rhetorically, when he asked what is truth before letting the mob decide the answer to that question. John 18:37-40. "Then Pilate said to him, 'So you are king?' Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world - to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.' Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?' After he said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, 'I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?' They cried out again, 'Not this man, but Barabbas!' Now Barabbas was a robber."

Pilate says, "What is truth?" And then, he says, "I see nothing wrong with this man. That's my truth," and then the mob comes at him and he cowers like a coward to the mob. He doesn't even stand... You want to know the truth? You don't even stand for your own truth. Because when the mob comes after you, it takes courage to stand in the truth. By the way, this is why some of you, perhaps, are not as open about your faith as you should be. You're afraid of what people might think. You're afraid of the loss. You're afraid of not being liked. Jesus Christ said, "I'm the way and the truth and the life." His life and words speak the truth he's meaning itself. Picture Jesus has a bridge between the physical world and the immaterial meaning of the world. We live in the material world, but it's not all there is. We know that. We know that there are things that transcend the material. We all know that, but Jesus Christ is the only one that can speak meaning into this world, makes sense of things.

Yesterday was my sister's birthday, and her second favorite place in the world... Her first favorite place in the world is Mosaic, because this is a house of prayer for all nations. Her second favorite in the world is Gillette stadium. So, yesterday we went to Gillette stadium. I took three of my daughters and we drove to Gillette stadium and we had some Five Guys. It was delicious, grabbed some ice cream. And then, we went to the Hall of Fame, the Patriots Hall of Fame. I saw this painting of Bill Belichick, and it moved me. That's the only way I can explain it. It moved me. It stirred my heart. I'm standing... Bill... It's just ugly. It's so ugly, like he's just pissed at you. He's like cussing you out without even saying anything with just his face. He's got the hoodie and he's just... And I'm staring at it and it's just moving me. I'm like...

It's just a canvas with some paint. That's all it is. It looks nice, but why does art move us? Why does beauty move us? Because, it transcends the material. Truth transcends the material. Goodness transcends the material. And you take Jesus out, you banish him from society, well, that's why we can't make sense of any- that's why we have no idea what's true anymore. I stopped watching the news. I got no news. I'm off of social media. I go on Instagram because my sisters post my nieces and nephews. That's nice. I don't want to know anymore news. It's all terrible all the time, so I look to the word of God, which is truth. Michael Gazzaniga in The Consciousness Instinct, he's one of the leading experts in the human mind, and he says the metaphor is built into human consciousness. Human consciousness has an instinct for creating symbols to represent experiences to ourselves.

In school, we were taught that simile is a comparison using 'like' or 'as.' Metaphor, which is so important to the human consciousness, doesn't use 'like' or 'as.' It uses 'is.' Jesus is the truth. He is the symbol of truth in a fallen world. But more than just a symbol, he is truth. Everything Jesus did was wholly true. He really historically lived. He really historically died, and he really historically physically came back from the dead. That's true. Now, because that's true, we can draw meaning from it. And the meaning is this, this is how wicked we are. The one time God decided to come into the universe to break through, break in, the immaterial becomes material, divine becomes human, the only time he did that, we killed him.

And it wasn't just because back then they were more sinful than we are now. Yes, they were sinful. The Roman leaders killed him because they were Roman leaders and there was too much to lose if they were to allow him to speak the truth. The religious leaders killed him because they were religious leaders, because they were going to lose too much if he were true. The people killed him because he proclaimed the truth about their sin. If Jesus Christ came back today to the world, we would do the same exact thing. We would kill him. Sinful people would figure out a way to kill him, and probably make it look like a suicide. Why? Because, he exposes sin. He exposes the truth. He knows every single one of our dark secrets. He can speak it out loud. That's a dangerous, dangerous person. That's why they killed him. It still is the same way. It would happen all the same this very day.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ? That's what we're talking about. Saving faith, and I don't mean, do you believe that Jesus Christ really lived as a human being? I don't mean, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God? And I don't mean, do you believe that everything Jesus taught is true? What I do mean is, have you submitted every single aspect of your life to Jesus Christ, who is king? Is Jesus Christ on the throne of your heart and your life, not just on the throne in heaven? I'm not saying you do it perfectly, but I am saying that you strive to do it perfectly. A true Christian strives to be perfect as your Heavenly father is perfect, as Jesus has told us in the Sermon on the Mount.

A lot of modern American Christians have been inoculated from true saving faith with a vaccine of cheap grace. "Oh, you're a sinner? Come, here's your first shot of forgiveness. Now go, live anyway you want, and come back for boosters." No. True faith in Christ is knowing him and doing the hard work of reorienting every single aspect of your life around the truth of Jesus Christ and his word. Some of you have been baptized, maybe members of churches, but one day you'll stand before Christ and hear Matthew 7:21. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'" words of Christ, "will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then I would declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

Saving faith is when you realize that you have not kept the law, the 10 commandments, you've broken them, and then you turn to Christ and say, "Christ, I need to be forgiven and also I need your righteousness," and by grace through faith, he gives it to you. And then, you do everything you possibly can to do the will of God and follow the way of God as you read in the word of God. So, back to Gillette stadium. My daughter, Milana, she's four. She didn't take a nap yesterday because she was so excited to go to Gillette stadium. And as soon as I got there, I saw my sister. I was like, "We're going to have a meltdown at 5:00 PM." And it was 5:47, she's got a meltdown. We're walking back to the vehicle. She got a meltdown because her sister, Ekaterina, who's seven, went to spend the night at her cousin's house, and Milana started weeping. And I told her, "Baby, you just broken the commandment. Number 10. Thou shalt not covet your sister's sleepover. You wicked little sinner. You are to repent."

Instead of repenting, she took a nap. Didn't get to the repentance. We've broken the law, Jesus has fulfilled the law, paid the penalty for our breaking the law. We believe in him, his righteousness gets counted to us, judicially, legally, and then we are to set out to live a life of obedience. That's true saving faith. That's Romans 1:5, that he wrote everything he wrote, Paul wrote everything he wrote for the obedience of faith.

Matthew 7:24-27. "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

Andrew Klavan in The Truth and Beauty writes the following. "If you do not believe that life is more than life, it would be sadness to do anything but seize the day and live from pleasure to treasure. Better to kowtow tell to the money man and make your pile. Better to kill an inconvenient unborn child and live unfettered. Better to silence your opponents and seize their fortune than to live in mutual freedom. Better to ditch your promises to your spouse and have a sweet new affair. Better to trade your integrity for success and its trappings. Better to keep your head down and your mouth shut in times of danger. To choose instead the tragedy of love is to proclaim with your whole life that this kingdom of heaven within you is a kingdom that never ends. When your cross looms in front of you, it won't be enough to act as if there were a God. You will have to believe, or you will crater."

That's saving faith. Saving faith is when we place our trust in Jesus Christ, his righteousness, and not our own, because we don't have enough, we'll never have enough to meet the holy demands of God. And when you trust in Jesus Christ, God judicially transfers the righteousness of Jesus to you. Our sins transferred to Christ, his righteousness is transferred to us. He takes off our sinful rags and he clothe us in his robe of righteousness.

A few years ago, I went to buy a shirt at T.J.Maxx, a preaching shirt. It was white. I never do the fitting room, it's a waste the time. And I walk by faith, not by sight. So, I bought the shirt and I go home. I put it on and my wife's like, "What's that written on the back?" And I didn't even see. And it was like embroidered, gangster calligraphy. I don't know. And it said "King of Kings." I had to go preach and I was like, "Well, I don't have a shirt so let's do some theology." It's kind of arrogant to wear a shirt like this. I can pretend it doesn't say anything on the back, but people are observant. And then, I realized that this is what happens in the double exchange. He who knew no sin, Jesus, becomes our sin, our dirty rags are transferred to him. And then, his righteousness, we become his righteousness, so he clothe us in his robe of righteousness.

Let's change the way you live. If you know that you are saved, that you are a Christian, that you are robed in the righteousness of Jesus, it changes the way you live. You walk around with a righteousness that is not your own and you want to do everything you possibly can to not dishonor it with sin. Romans 3:22-24. "For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

We have all sinned. We've all missed, this is what sin means. It means you missed the mark. Hamartia. You missed the mark. The problem... What's the mark? The mark is the glory of God. God created us in his image so that we image forth his glory. We are created to live for God's glory, God's honor, God's reputation, not our own. And you know that you are a child of God, a follower of Jesus Christ, when God's glory is more important to you than your own, or God's reputation, God's honor is more important to you than your own. Here I've got to pause and ask the following. Dear Christian, are you paralyzed by the idol of being liked? That's why you're so nice to people and you're only nice to people. It's good to be nice to people, but once in a while, you have to speak truth in love because you love them, but you have to speak truth and that truth might come as a rude awakening like this.

"Dear friend, I love you so much. I want the best for you. I want you to meet God. And what's in the way? Your sin, your selfishness, your self absorption, your virtue signaling, your sin. You've broken the law. Oh, you don't believe me? Let's look through the 10 commandments. Oh, you don't even know them? Then, you definitely broken them. But Jesus Christ, God incarnate, came, lived, paid the price for your sin, died, rose from the dead. And all you have to do is place your faith and trust in him and then commit the rest of your life to him. And that is the only hope for you to be saved from the wrath of God for all of eternity, from hell, for all of eternity. So, receive the gift."

That's not impolite. That's not rude, because you want the best thing for the person. Grace is a gift. What's the best gift you've ever received? If you're married, you better say it's your spouse. You have to, you have to, you have to. My wife and I have been married, coming up on sweet 16, praise God. We love going Ukraine, but we can't go there. Might go to Colorado. Grace is a gift. It's the greatest gift God gives, because if you receive grace, you get God. This one is infinity times better than any other gift. Verse 24. "And are justified by the grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins."

Propitiation, do you know that word? Well, we learn stuff at church here at Mosaic because we love the word of God so we learned stuff. And if you can figure out how to order coffee at Starbucks, you can learn theology. Propitiation means to satisfy the demands of justice. In the biblical terms, is to satisfy the demands of God's wrath, the penalty for law breaking is God's wrath. When holy scripture talks about being saved, we're not saved from just Satan. We're saved by God from God. We're saved by God, Jesus Christ, from the Father's wrath on us. We're saved by God from God for God. And Christ is the substitute who took upon himself the wrath that we deserve by his blood to be received by faith. And God will only pass over your sins of Jesus has paved for them.

Jesus Christ didn't die in the cross for everyone's sins. Did you know that? Not everyone's sins. Not everyone sins. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the elect, whom he had chose. I don't know who the elect are, so whenever anyone listens to my sermons, I just assume everyone's elect. You should just assume you're elect and repent your sins and follow Jesus. But if you reject Jesus Christ, know your sins are not paid for. You will pay for your own sins for all eternity. So, repent, receive the gift of justification by grace through faith. Romans 3:26. "It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

The gospel isn't just pardon of sin because God can't just forgive sin. If God could just forgive sin, Jesus Christ wouldn't have to die in the cross. God is just and he does not forget his holiness when he forgives us. He's not just some congenial old guy in the clouds, lonely and wants us to spend eternity with him. No. God is holy and he never negotiates his holiness. He demands and requires that sin be punished. So, how can a just God forgive us? Well, the justice of God and his love and mercy, they mean for God's wrath is poured out on his son. His son is on that cross because he loves us and gave himself for us, and he absorbs the wrath of God. So, God remains just and the justifier. Repent, receive the gift of justification by grace through faith, and then what? Well then, humbly follow Jesus Christ daily.

Romans 3:27. "Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith." There is not one thing that you have added to your salvation if you're saved other than your sin. That's the only thing. You did nothing to be justified by God. You did nothing. That why it's called grace. It's a gift. You did nothing. You can't do a thing. What do we have to be proud of? Nothing. That's why Christians and followers of God should be the most humble of people. "I am nothing. I am wicked sinner. I'm saved by grace through faith." But, we're also the most confident. We should be. Because, your identity is secure in Jesus Christ. You are a child of God by grace through faith, and the righteous shall be as bold as lions. So, stay humble. Do God's will.

Verse 28. "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one - who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law." He talked about the Jewish people in the text on last Sunday, and now here he says, look, God is one. There's not a God of the Jews and a God of the Muslims and a God of the Buddhist and the God of the Christians and the Catholics and the Orthodox. There's only one God. And if you do not have the Son, you do not have the Father. And if you do not have the Son or the Father, you do not have the spirit of God, because God is one. That's what he say.

What does he do with the law? Do we get rid of the law? Do we overthrow it? No, by no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Faith doesn't overthrow the law. We don't get rid of the 10 commandments. Faith actually reestablishes the law. Do you know the 10 commandments are still enforced on every single one of us? That's why Jesus Christ, when he summarized what the law is and he pointed the 10 commandments and he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself." That's how you summarized the 10 commandments, but the 10 commandments are still enforced. Read the oracles of God, that's what the Bible calls the Bible. Study, understand, believe, and obey.

Matthew 5:17-20. "Do not think that I've come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not in iota, not a dot, will pass away from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Do you want to be great in the kingdom of heaven? Follow the Lord. And again, community with other followers of Jesus Christ. We need each other. We need each other to fight the good fight of faith, together to fight sin. And I'm not just talking about Christian friends. A lot of people come to Mosaic saying, "I have no friends. Give me friends." And I'm like, "That's why no one wants to be friends with you. You're desperate. I can smell it." We need brothers and sisters. We need spiritual family that will help us grow as followers of Christ. So, join the church as a coveted member, commit, and allow yourself to be held accountable, officially accountable, and share the gospel. The tremendous news that we can be justified by grace through faith in Christ, and share the gospel with your family, friends, neighbors.

If you are not concerned about their eternal souls and their faith, are you even saved? And we have a responsibility to proclaim the truth in a world that hates it and insists that we all have our own truth. Jesus Christ didn't just come to save you from the wrath of God. He also came to give you life, true life, and the fullness of life. Imagine living life without guilt, without shame. Imagine living life with a clean conscience. I slept the soundest I've ever slept in my whole life last night, which is a miracle because before Easter I always get nervous and I'm like, "I'm out of emotions, no more." And then, I woke up today, it was like the most tremendous sleep in my life. And then, a verse came to mind and it says, "God gives sleep to whom he loves." I was like, "Thank you, Lord. You love me. Praise God. Can we do it again tomorrow?"

Imagine living a life where the spirit of God courses through you. Imagine living a life of eternal meaning, purpose, significance. Is this life easy? No, it's not. I'm actually 25. This life is not easy. This is the hardest thing you will ever do, but you get God, and God is with you. And the spirit of God is with you. And that's all that matters. Jesus lived, Jesus died, Jesus came back from the dead to show us the way, to tell us the truth, and to give us life. And also, don't forget, love. Everything he did, he did because he was motivated by love for God and love for people. The last supper, right before he gets on his knees and washes the dirty feet of his disciples, it said having loved his own who were in the world. He loved them to the end. That's true love.

The love of this world does not love to the end because the love of this world is in love. It chews you up and spits you out when it's done with you. The love of this world is transactional. You're used for what you're good for. And when the time comes, you're done, you're canceled. There's no grace. There's no forgiveness. There's just perpetual confession and reparation. That's our culture. There's no grace, because there's no Christ. His story was a life that was beset on all sides by pain and suffering. He's a man of sorrows, emotional, mental, spiritual suffering. He was tired, hungry, misunderstood, mistreated, even by his friends and family. Betrayed, denied by those closest to him. But, he was obedient to the will of the Father.

And because he was obedient to the will of the Father, that's why he died. It wasn't just the physical pain that killed Jesus Christ. Jesus died because the Father withdrew his love. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Instead of love, all he got in the cross was wrath and hatred. Our Lord, though he died on the cross, did not die of the cross. He died of a broken heart, suffering for you. I'll never forget a sermon by Pastor Andy Davis who texted me right after I said this in my first sermon. He texted me. He's like, "Huh? Spirit of God, baby." Pastor Andy Davis, one of my mentor. I remember a sermon on Colossians where it says, the text is, "In Christ, all things hold together," and he said, "On the cross, Jesus Christ was keeping the nails together." The nails that were nailed through his hands and his feet, he was keeping them together. And he was keeping the cross together. He was keeping Golgotha together, he was keeping it all together, because he's God and God is love. So, Christ is love.

Love is what keeps everything together, and love is the heart of the gospel. It's the greatest story ever told. It's the most tremendous news. That's what the gospel is. When you placed your trust in this man, Jesus Christ, who is God, God who chose to come down into the filth, into the dirt, into just the heartbreak of life, the human existence, and he died a criminal's death on a cross, the very moment you trust in him, your sins are all forgiven. You're loved. You're welcomed into the family of God. You're no longer spiritual orphan. You're adopted, and you are free and you will be transformed to bring that story of love into the lives of every person you'll ever encounter in this world, through your life, through your words, through your deeds, sharing Jesus' life and story.

This is meaning, this is fulfillment. This is Jesus. That's truth. That's beauty. That's life. So yes, your end is near, but thanks be to God, your eternity is secure. When you die, you are just in heaven for all of eternity by the grace of God, because he will love you to the end and you can't even squirm out of his grasp. He's already proven his love for you, by living, by dying, and by rising from the dead. He is risen. He is risen. He is risen. Now live like it. And love like it. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the Great Conqueror. Our Lord, our Savior, our King, our Substitute, our Propitiation, our Shepherd, the word of God, the light of God. You are the truth. Lord, we repent that often we've rejected the truth. It's too inconvenient. We've rejected the light because we like our sins. We repent of all this Lord and we pray. Cleanse our mind and our heart. Purify our souls. Fill us with the Holy Spirit, and make us a people fervent for you, living for your glory, sharing your gospel, building your kingdom. And we pray all this in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ, your son. Jesus, we thank you that you did not leave us in our sins, but you came to seek and to save that which is lost, those who are lost and that's us. Jesus, you are our good older brother. You came to find us when we ran from... You pursued us like the hound of heaven. And for those of us who have been found by you, I pray that you give us more unction and power of the Holy Spirit to pursue you with everything we have and to help others who are still lost to meet you. And Lord for those who are yet your children, are not yet adopted into your family, we pray by the power of the Holy Spirit, today convert them, regenerate and adopt them to your family by giving the gift of repentance, humility, and the gift of submission to the king of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ. Bless our time, the holy scriptures and we pray in your name, the name of Jesus. Amen.

Title of sermon is knowledge of sin. You are not ready for Easter Sunday until you grapple with Good Friday, because every Christian and their mom celebrate Easter. It's true. A lot of people show up to church just because that's what their mom wants. And there was no true resurrection day without a bloody death, a bloody death that we all deserve because we are all guilty. I'll never forget, Kyle Rittenhouse's reaction in the courtroom as he's awaiting the verdict and he hears "Not guilty." And he just broke down weeping uncontrollably, inconsolably. In the court of public opinion, he was vilified, obviously guilty, "Kill him now, no need for a trial." But there was also a video footage, the man Kyle killed was chasing Kyle and Kyle falls on the ground, turns around and sees the man pull out a gun, so Kyle defends himself.

Well, we are the opposite of Kyle. In the court of public opinion today, every single person alive, just by virtue of you being alive, you're declared innocent. You're declared a good person, a virtuous person even. But the court of public opinion has no force. It has no power. The power is in the court of God. God is the judge and God judges, according to his law, and not man's law. Are you good or evil, obedient or defiant, innocent or guilty? What's the verdict? Today, we are on Romans 3:9-20, as we continue our sermon series through Romans, would you look at the text with me? "What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." This is the reading of God's holy inherent infallible. Authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

This Good Friday, we'll just walk through the text, verse nine. "What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For, we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin," he says we are all under sin, is your heart beating? You are under sin, under the crushing weight of it. Sin isn't superficial. We're not talking about mistakes or foibles. It's not surface level. It's not tangential to our lives. Sin is a heavy weight bearing down on us, full throttle, like 10,000 pounds on a barbell on your back and you didn't even know it was there. On top of that, we have a whole burden of guilt as a result of our sin. "Guilty," we're on trial for the murder of the son of God and the verdict is "Guilty." We're all guilty.

God is the judge, he is ruling and we're guilty. The 10 commandments, they hang over our next, like the blade of a guillotine and it's about to drop. And God will say the word when it's time and the time will come for each of us, it's inevitable. How do we know we're under a sin? Do you need stats? Do I need to give you real life examples? No, I do not. Do I need to share my own precise sins? There are many of how I've come to realize the weight of my own sin. No, you don't need to hear from my experience. You don't need to know the sins I've wrestled with and the demons I've wrangled. All you need to know is the pure word of God. How can we know we're under sin? Because God says so, God's word tells us that we are all sinners.

God said so, God spoke. God's word is true and final. I don't need to make a case. I don't need to persuade you. I don't need to compel you. God says it, that settles it. Do you believe God's word? Do you believe God? If you don't, this is your greatest sin. You don't trust God, you don't take him at his word. Repent of your arrogant, willful, stubborn, stiff necked unbelief. Romans 14:23 says the following, "For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." Whatever. So friends do believe in the word of God without question, without doubts, the pure unadulterated word of God. Do you have that faith? If not, you're under sin, you're under the greatest sin. You are under the unpardonable sin. Lot of Christians ask "What is the unpardonable sin? What is the sin that God will never forgive?" Well, it's standing over a clear work of the Holy Spirit and standing over in judgment and saying "That is not from God."

Study the context of Matthew 12, Matthew 12, Jesus Christ cast out a demon from a gentleman. And the Pharisees say that Jesus cast out the de demon by the power of Satan. Jesus says the following, verse 31, "Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy for me will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." Who wrote the holy scriptures? It was the Holy Spirit. He chose people, anointed people, inspired people to write the holy scriptures. And if you don't believe the holy scriptures, you need to repent of your or unbelief, or else, you will not be forgiven ever, either in this age or in the age to come, Jesus said.

The greatest sin is not believing that you are a great sinner. So look in the mirror of the holy scriptures. What does it show you? It exposes your sin. Look to God's word, as it is written. And the apostle here turns to the Hebrew scriptures and amalgamation of the text. Most from the Psalms, some from the prophet Isaiah, versus 10 through 18 are all from the sacred scriptures, one charge after another one indictment after another, verse 10, "as it is written," that's the case.

How do we know that we are sinners? "As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one." You're alive, thanks be to God. Therefore you are God's. He created you. He breathed life into you. He knit you together in your mother's womb. He created you in his image to represent him, to represent his holiness, his love, his beauty, his righteousness, and yet you rejected him, you rebelled against him. I was walking with my daughters to church today, and my pink shirt that my wife got me from my birthday. And I love my wife, so I like the shirt. She said "Too many dark of colors you've got." I'm walking with my daughters and then all of a sudden, I see everyone's face turn to this dog that is sprinting across the street. Because people in Boston, they really care for their dogs.

And then after a while everyone's worried, "Who's dog is this?" Then you see this poor guy just sprinting as fast as he can after the dog. Well that's each one of us. In our nature, we are sprinting away from our owner and therefore we in God's court cannot stand. And these are the charges brought against you and me that we are sinners. You might have done some righteous things, but good works can't change a wicked heart, a hard heart, a stone heart, based on what standard are we guilty on the standard that matters. The only one God's holiness. God is holy, blazingly holy. And not one sin can stand in his present, not one sinner. You know what heaven is? Heaven is just the fullness of the presence of God for all of attorney, the pure presence of God. Do you want to be in the presence of God for all of attorney?

Could you even stand it? I know many of you can't, of course not. Many of you can't even sit in a room quietly by yourself and just think and meditate on God. You can't even drive in silence because in the silence, God's spirit begins to convict you of sin and self righteousness. With questions like "Where did I come from? And where am I going? And what is the meaning and the purpose of life? What is my identity? What am I going to do with all the shame and the guilt that I am burdened with?" And God says be still and know that I am God.

Verse 11, "No one understands; no one seeks for God, because no one is righteous." So no one can understand a righteous God, if you have no desire to be righteous, if you have no desire to be holy or obedient, well, how can you understand a being who is perfectly righteous and perfect and holy? How many hours a day do you focus your mind on God and only God, the things of God? Do you hunger and thirst for the word of God, for the deep things of God? By choosing sin over God and over his will, you dehumanize yourself.

You become less of a human being. You devolve into an animal driven by your physical passions, cravings and appetites. And when this happens, of course, you won't see God, you have no power to, because you're a slave to sin, locked inside a jail cell of your own creation, and you flush the only key down the toilet. No one in his or her natural state seeks after God. You consider yourself as a spiritual seeker. A lot of people do. A lot of people say things like "I'm not very religious, but I'm spiritual. I'm a seeker. I'm looking for God. I'm open to finding God." And I always say, "Are you? Are you really? Of course not. And that's why you haven't found him yet." Perpetual seeking, never finding the absolutely most dishonest position to be in. And lots of people say they see God, but they don't see God.

They see God's blessings or protection from his curses. This is you, you don't love God. You love the benefits. You just want to be friends with benefits with God. Well, sometimes there's no benefits. Sometimes it's just spiritual warfare and struggle and trial and temptation. When things get difficult or when God doesn't meet your demands, you grow bitter at God, cold distance and you walk away. Why? Because you weren't seeking God, because if you were really truly seeking God, you would find him because he promised drawn near to me and I'll draw near to you. And if you find him his presence and his Holy Spirit, you realize that's all you ever needed. That's the peace you've been seeking your whole life, the Shalom that comes only by the power of the Holy Spirit. Fact of the matter is no one seeks God, actually your journey to seek after God only begins the day you meet Jesus Christ.

Saul, before he became Paul was on the path to Damascus to go persecute and kill Christians. Was he seeking God? He was not. But Jesus Christ met him. He found him and he finds us, the lost, and Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. Christ found him, Christ found me, Christ names and claims us and then we're his. And he can do the same for you, but you got to stop running. You got to stop fleeing, stop fighting. Indeed we're all seekers, but apart from the spirit of God converting us, giving us the gift of repentance, which is a gift, giving us a supernatural love for God, we seek everything other than God. We seek purpose, happiness, relief from guilt, removal from shame, peace. Well, all of these things can only be found in Jesus Christ, ultimately.

There's no security apart from the King of Kings. There's no peace apart from the prince of peace. There's no truth direction, fullness of life, apart from Jesus Christ, who is the way the truth and the life. He comes to give life and life to the full. Once Jesus has found you got to start following him. You got to start seeking and pursuing him with every fiber of your being. This is what Jesus said, "Hey, you want the physical needs of your life taking care of? Seek first." He says. The kingdom of God and his righteousness, the righteousness of God and everything else you'll be added on to you. Verse 12, "All have turned aside; together they become worthless; no one does good, not even one." Turned aside from what? From God's will, from God's way, as is clearly depicted in God's word. The earliest Christians, the earliest followers of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, they weren't called Christians until... In Antioch, it was a derogatory term.

To be called. A Christian was a curse word, kind of like today in Boston. It was like that in Antioch. They were called followers of the way, followers of Jesus Christ. Why? Because John 14:6, Jesus said the following, "I am the way." "I'm the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." And you can debate this ad nauseam, but there's no way around this truth that Jesus Christ is the only way to God. There are no other ways. All the other competing religions, philosophies, worldviews, they're all lives from the pit of hell, inspired by Satan, not the Holy Spirit. "Together, they've become worthless." Unprofitable, feudal, pointless. Where does your value come from? Your esteem, your worth. Where from? Your education? Is that where you get your value? How good that name is, the prestige attached to the name of your school?

Relationships? Wealth, family, friends, looks? Is that where you get your value? All of this is worthless, if death takes it all away, and death does take it all away. It's foolish to live for material temporary things when we're going to and spend eternity somewhere. Worthless from whose perspective? From God's of course. If you remain in your sin, fleeing from God, not seeking him, you are worthless in God's eyes and God's love will be lost on you. Yes, God loves everybody so much that he gave his one and only begotten son that whosoever believes him should not perish, but have eternal life. But if you reject that love and there is no love left for you, you only get wrath. "No one does good, not even one." And you say, "Well, wait, wait. Not even one? Not even one good person?" No, not one God. Doesn't judge us by the work of our hands or human standards or another person's standard.

Who decides what's good, what's evil? God alone. And there's no morality apart from God. The case can't be made for a true ironclad foundation of a morality apart from the existence of God. How does God decide if something we do is good? Well, first God weighs our actions and how they correspond hourly to the 10 commandments. Second, God evaluates our inward motivation. Why did you do what you did? Why did you do the good thing, give money to the good cause, why'd you do that? Did you do the good out of love for God? Did you do it for his glory? Did you do it for his honor? No, of course not. Not one of us has done one thing that was 100% motivated by love for God, with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. So no, no one is good. Not even one. In Matthew, 19:16-22, there's a rich young guy that comes to Jesus Christ.

I always think of the young college students driving Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Bugattis, and they're always in Allston. I don't know why, they're always in Allston. They're always in the Blanchard's parking lot. I don't know why that's where they are. So one of these guys gets out of his Buggati as he sees Jesus Christ walking down the street and says "Behold, a man came up to him, saying, 'teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?'" he knows he's missing eternal life. He's not sure about it. So he is like, what's the one thing? Where do I write a check, Jesus? And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There's only one who is good." That's God, "If you would enter life, keep the commandments. And he said to him, 'Which ones?' And Jesus said, 'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

The young man said to him, 'All these I have kept, what am I still lack?'" Jesus could have at this moment said, "Oh wow, I've never met anyone as good as you, would you join my bossy of rag tag disciples? You are so virtuous. You are a great guy." Jesus said to him, "'If you would be perfect," because that's the standard to get into heaven, "go sell what you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." Jesus points to this man's heart. And he says, you have a god above the God of the universe, and your god is money, in money you trust. And that's why he leaves the only one who can point him to eternal life and give him eternal life, and he goes and follows his money. I've noticed that the younger you are, the better of a person you think you are. I have to know that middle schoolers are like the best people alive.

And then high schoolers and then college freshmen, oh my, they are saints. They are just angels from above. And then you live a little and life happens to you, and you actually read God's word, which tells us that you are a degenerate. Sin starts in the heart, but makes its way out through our body parts. That's verse 13, "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips." It's an open and grave, he says, meaning out of a dead heart comes death via words.

Matthew 23:27-28, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." They use their tongues to deceive. Scripture says we're all liars. By nature, we hate truth. We love truth, only when it advances our self-interest. It says "The venom of asps is under their lips." The adder or asps is one of the deadliest reptiles in the world. Its bite is not just painful, but it's lethal. And our tongues, he says are sacs of venom, we are like vipers. Have you ever hurt someone with your words?

Yeah. All of us have. Have you ever been hurt by someone's words? Yes, we've all had, we've all been hurt. Not by speaking truth and love, but by speaking lies in hate or even truth in hate. Verse 14, "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." I've been here, I've repented, I've received grace, have you? One thing about curses here and cursing in general, is it okay to ever curse someone? A human being? No. God? No. Can we at least curse Satan? Can you say to Satan, God damn you? Can you say that?

If you are wrestling with that question, you've probably never wrestled with Satan. Many of you have never wrestled Satan because you've been busy flirting with him or dancing with him.

In Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelium, this is the gospel before the gospels, God pronounces to Satan, to the serpent, he said "The son of the woman is going to come, the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, he will crush your head and you will bruise his heel," meaning Jesus Christ, on the... Remember The Passion of the Christ? Remember that movie, Passion of the Christ and Jesus in Gethsemane? I love that movie, Mel Gibson, back in the day. Passion of the Christ, Jesus Christ in Gethsemane there's a snake that comes. Like Jesus is praying, he's sweating bullets, he's sweating blood, his capillaries bursting in his face. But by the way, how strenuously do you have to be praying? Jesus was praying like that.

And all of a sudden snake comes and he stomps on it. And that's one of the most satisfying scenes I've ever seen in the movie. Because that's what happens on the cross. As Jesus Christ is on Golgotha, calvary, which means skull, the place of the skull, that Jesus Christ, as he's hanging on the cross, and as he says, "It is finished," he dies. And then he goes into the pit of hell to continue proclaiming the tremendous news and lead a train of captives free. But Jesus Christ in that moment, he dealt Satan a death blow to the head. Yeah, he was bruised

Sometimes, when you struggle with demons, when you struggle with sin, you do get bruised. But make sure you keep struggling to overcome it, to beat it. Isaiah 6:1-8, a timely text, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. And above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covers feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: 'Woe was me! For I am lost: for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, Lord of hosts!' Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

And he touched my mouth and said: 'Behold, this has touch your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for.' And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who shall go for us?' Then I said, 'Here I am, send me.'" The apostle Paul moves from throat to mouth, to lips, to tongue to the feet. Verse 50, "Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known." Once we're used to killing people with our words, assassinating reputations, killing them in reality isn't much of a leap, in their paths are ruin and misery, the way of peace they have not known. When war broke out in Ukraine, I heard this a lot early on, I still keep hearing this, I was at my daughter's soccer practice the other day, Thursday.

Now I'm the official chaperone. I was nominated for the job because have a vehicle. They can see a lot of people. So now I'm a soccer dad and I'm just chilling there for an hour, just shooting the breeze at the locals and met this gentleman. And he's like, "Hey, when the war started, I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. I thought we were pass this. I thought we were educated out of war, out of bloodshed. I thought we had progressed." Well, I wasn't surprised, because I know the word. And the word says in verse 18, "There's no fear of God before their eyes."

The world is as evil as it is, because there's so little fear of God. A lot of people want to talk about the love of God, the love of God, the love of God. Yeah, but you don't really love God until you fear him, revered him, until you're in awe of him. Unfortunately, the people furthest from God have the least fear of God. We're naturally irreverent people. We desperate lack a sense of awe. We don't have a natural desire to honor God glorify him, praise him, but God should scare us to death.

The fact that we are guilty before the creator should scare us to death, and if you've repented of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ, this shouldn't alleviate your fear. The cross should not alleviate your fear of God, the cross should deepen your fear of God. When you look at the son of God, dying on the cross, crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That should put the fear of God in you. Oh, God does forsake people?

Yeah. So much so that the son was forsaken by the father on the cross. What kind of father is that? That's a father whose heart breaks for you. But he's also a God of justice. Therefore, he sends his son Jesus Christ to fulfill the law. And then Jesus Christ goes to a cross to bear the curse for law breaking, scripture says, curse does anyone who hangs on the tree. And that was the tree, the cross. San Corinthians 5 says "He who knew no sin," that's Jesus, he never sinned, "became sin," meaning every single one of our sins was placed on Jesus Christ, if you are in Christ, on our behalf.

So it wasn't that Jesus just died and you should feel bad for the physical pain? No. Jesus, he took the full cup of God's wrath, the whole thing, and that darkness that comes with being abandoned by God. So that we might have the righteousness of Christ given to us, counted to us so that we might become the righteousness of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We're in a city of a lot of really intelligent people, a lot of very educated people, a lot of very smart people. I tell my daughters, who go to the public school system, I say, "Oh, doesn't matter how smart your teachers are. If they do not fear God, they do not have wisdom.

They are fools. So you got to filter everything that they tell you through that. It's all folly. So we are to repent, believe, fear and love God." Verse 19, "Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God." Everything's so clear. A lot of people, you're intimidated by even opening the Bible. You're like, "Ah, I'm not a biblical scholar. I didn't go to seminary. I can't read this." You can, it's all very simple. God is King and he is judge. And as King, he issues the law. That's the 10 commandments. And it's still enforce for all of us, for each of us. And once God's verdict comes down, your only reasonable response is silence.

Shut your mouth. That's what the text says that every mouth may be stopped. That means shut your mouth in the presence of God, you have been found guilty, case close, sentenced issued, eternity in hell banished. And each one of us will be held accountable to God. We will be weighed in the balance and found wanting empty of righteousness. Verse 20 "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." The law was issued, we're all under it, we've all broken it, we are under sin. Guilty is charged. And no one will be justified by keeping the law because no one has. The law teaches us that we're just sinful. So what do we do? We do the only thing we can do, we cry out for mercy. God have mercy on me, a sinner.

God have mercy on me, a sinner. Matthew 27:15-26, "Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd. Any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, 'Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas or Jesus who was called Christ?' For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife," Pilate's wife, "sent word to him, 'Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream. Now the chief priest and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroyed Jesus. The governor again said to them, 'Which of the two do you want me to release for you?'

And they said, 'Barabbas.' Pilate said to them, 'Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?' They all said, 'Let him be crucified.' And he said, 'Why? What evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Let him be crucified.' So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water, washed his hands before the crowd, saying, 'I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.' And all the people answered, 'His blood be on us and our children!' Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified."

Guilty prisoner, Jesus Christ is set free.... The guilty prisoner Barabbas is set free. The innocence son of God is crucified. And no Pilate, not the purest holy water can ever wash the stain of guilt. The blood stain off your hands. You are not, Pilate, innocent of this man's blood. I am not innocent of this man's blood. My sin crucified Jesus Christ, because I'm in Christ. And if you're in Christ, your sin crucified Jesus Christ. If you're not in Christ, you will pay the penalty for your sin yourself.

Receive the gift of forgiveness. He is our propitiation, our substitutionary attorney, our savior. He is our Lord. He is our King and he is our God. Christian, if Jesus died for your sins, he died for your sins. Why do you keep living in them?

Why haven't you left your sins at the foot of the cross, all of them, all of them? If not, you're quenching the power of the Holy Spirit and you're keeping yourself from the fruit of the spear, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self control. Nail your sins to the cross of Christ and leave them there. And believe the words of Christ, when he says "You should know the truth," the truth is the gospel. The truth that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, that he was buried, that he rose on the third day. Believed that this is true and live in the freedom of the liberation from sin. Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Before we sing and worship from the bottom of our hearts. And then during the third song, we're going to partake in communion. I'll come up and I'll explain. I'll pray over holy communion. But for whom is communion, communion is for anyone who looks to the cross of Jesus Christ and says, "That's my Lord. And that's my savior. And he died on the cross for my sins. That's my savior. And that's my King." If you repent of your sins, you submit to him, you give your life over to him and you are a Christian, you're welcome to partake. If you're living in sin that you have not repented of, you're not living in submission to the Lord. Therefore, do not partake in holy communion. Instead, repent and meditate. If you do repent, you are welcome to take communion.

In conclusion, verse 20 ends the very depressing part of Romans, for now. There's going to be more depressing parts. But this one's pretty depressing because it shows us that we are all wicked sinners. And then verse 21 begins with one of my favorite words in the Bible. Three letters, B U T. "But." That one word is the difference between heaven and hell. It's the difference between hope and hopelessness. It's the difference between purpose and nihilism. It's the difference between love and hate. It's the difference between bad news and good news. It's the difference between guilty and not guilty when it will matter most, the day of judgment. And that's Romans 2:21-26. I'll read, I'll pray, we'll worship, I'll come back up, we'll have communion. And then I said, communion, in Good Friday, in past year, we told everyone, "You got to leave quietly. Don't talk to anybody."

That's depressing. You should talk to some people, have some fellowship, give people hugs. It's spring and the best time of the year in Boston is coming. Romans 2:21-26, "But now, but now righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there's no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sin. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Amen. Let's pray, Lord God, we thank you for Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you came in submission of God, the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you fulfilled your ministry.

You didn't want to go to that cross. You wrestled in the garden Gethsemane and you prayed. You prayed, you prayed, "Lord, Lord father, let this cup pass for me, but now my will, but yours be done." And Jesus, we thank you that you submitted to the father's will when he didn't want to forgive us for those times when we didn't submit to the will of the father. Thank you for your obedience. And thank you that obedience counts to us when we place our trust in you. And thank you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live a life of holiness and righteousness, pursuing God, seeking after God on a daily basis. Bless our time and holy worship right now, fill our hearts with the Holy Spirit and let us sing from the bottom of our hearts to worship and honor and glorify the King of Kings and the Lord of Lord's, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have brought us today into your house, the Father's House, the house of prayer for all nations. And I pray, Heavenly Father, focus our attention on Jesus Christ, God Incarnate. We thank you, Jesus, that you came and you lived a perfect moral life. You fulfilled the law. You didn't come to abolish it. You fulfilled it. And then you went to a cross to die for our breaking of the law. And we thank you that you didn't stay dead, but you rose from the dead. And you told your disciples, "Don't do anything until you get the Holy Spirit." And then you sent the Holy Spirit. And, Holy Spirit, it was you that stirred hearts. In the same way that you stirred hearts in the Day of Pentecost, so I pray that you stir our hearts like never before.

Living in the city is hard, Lord. The demonic oppression is sometimes unbearable. So we ask for a breather. Lord, I do. I ask for eight days, it's my birthday, so I can ask whatever I want. I ask for a reprieve, a Sabbath from the demonic warfare for eight days, starting today, because it's my birthday. And help us this week live in the power of the Holy Spirit, as we minister to our neighbors, as we share the Gospel, as we invite people to Easter and Good Friday, our neighbors, our friends, people that we talk to about the weather, politics, the Red Sox. Pray that we have the boldness to speak about what matters, which is eternity. And we pray that Good Friday and Easter Sunday, that you save hundreds, hundreds of souls through this ministry. We pray all these in Jesus' name. Amen.

The title of the sermon is A Tremendous Advantage. We're in Romans 3:1-8. Today, we continue our sermon series through Romans. Just a quick update, I'm still alive by God's grace. So thank you for your prayers and anyone that's been worried about me. Thank you so much. I am planning on taking time off this summer. I've never taken more than two weeks off, like vacation time, and we haven't taken a family vacation in years. So, this summer, I am taking significant time off and time away, because I got to get out of this city. I love this city, a love-hate relationship. I love this city, but I'm going to get away this summer. So, thank you for that.

I also just want to thank the faithful brothers and sisters who've walked with me in this season, in particular, Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy and our particular staff. Our staff, we went to Cheesecake Factory to celebrate Pastor Andy's birthday this week, and because Cheesecake Factory has everything for everyone. And when we came out, always I'm the first one in, I'm the first one out, and then I just turned around. I was like, "Our staff are the Avengers. Our staff are the spiritual Avengers." So just be nice to them, and their time is limited too. But be nice to them. That's my birthday present.

Okay. Romans. Let's not forget the goal of Romans. Paul wrote this. This is his thesis. This is the purpose. This is Romans 1:5. This is why he wrote the book. "Through whom we have received," through Jesus Christ we've received, "grace and apostleship to bring about the..." Say the next phrase with me, "obedience of faith." Let's say it again. Obedience of faith. "Obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." So Paul is saying, "I'm writing this to stir your faith. And when your faith is truly stirred, you want to obey God." That's what he's trying to do. For whom is this Gospel? It's for all nations. It's for all people.

Sometimes we forget that we're all just people, like we'd be with titles and just labels. We forget we're people. I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy. I'm just a dude. I love Jesus a lot. And I study God's word. I'm just a guy. You're just a person. People have been asking about vision. Has the vision of Mosaic shifted? It has not. It's crystallized. The... Pastor Andy forced me on a little break, respite, to catch my breath last week. He picked me up in his Honda Odyssey. And do not call it a minivan. There's nothing mini about that van. And, he picks me up and he's like, "We're going to Providence." I was like, "Why are we going to Providence?" He's like, so... I needed a reminder of what God called me to. Sometimes you forget.

And God did not call me. I remember when I was in college, God did not call me to plant the church, just FYI. God called me to preach God's word. That's what I love above everything else. This is what gives me life is preaching God's word. And, the reason why I planted a church was because I was 26 and this is the reasoning. I was like, "No one is going to hire a 26 year old with zero ministry experience, and let him preach every Sunday." And I realized that the only way I can really get to preach every, because that's how you get good at doing something. You got to do 10,000 hours, right? Preach a thousand sermons.

So I planted a church for the sole purpose of preaching God's word, so that people love Jesus. That's my only concern. That's why I get bogged down with church growth stuff and building campaign and all that. I'm like, "I don't want to do any of that." That's not for me. All I want to do is preach God's word. And whoever will listen, I'm going to preach God's word and I'm going to pray for you. That's what I'm doing the rest of my days. So, if you want a church building for Mosaic, you get it. I'm not doing it. And if you guys want an orphanage for Ukrainian orphans, I'm not doing it either. I'm going to preach the word. I'm going to pray. And I'm going to have fun. Because I met with a pastor this week and he is like, "Bro, you're not having fun. I can tell." So, he gave me a prophetic word and he's like, "You got to have fun." So, that's what I'm planning on doing.

So, the point is, the vision is, love Jesus. Simple. It's just that simple. You love Jesus. I love Jesus. We all love Jesus. And then let's help people love Jesus. What kind of people? All people. All people. Everyone's welcome. People ask all the time, "Hey, what kind of church is Mosaic?" That's the wrong question. And I stop people there. I'm like, "That's the wrong question." "What kind of denomination is Mosaic?" "Whoa, wrong question." I've been asked this question way too often and I've found it's always intended as a swerving maneuver, where people understand, "Oh, you're going to talk about spiritual things. I don't want to talk about spiritual things. I don't want to talk about God. So, what denomination are you? Oh, you guys are Christian. I'm Jewish." "Oh, you guys are Christian. I'm Catholic." "Oh, you guys are evangelical. Yeah, I'm too liberal for that. Sorry. That's not for me." These are manmade categories intended to divide people. All nations, all nations, all people. Mosaic is a house of prayer for all nations.

Every time you walk into the Temple Ohabei Shalom, at the very top, it says, house of prayer for whom? What's the full verse? It's the house of prayer for whom? It's for all nations. Isaiah 56:7, "For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." So do you want to pray? Then welcome. Do you want to know God? Then welcome. Do you need grace? Then welcome. We all need grace. Where can grace be found? Only in Jesus Christ. Your Jewish identity isn't your ultimate identity. Your Catholic identity isn't your ultimate identity. Your liberal identity isn't your ultimate identity. Your ultimate identity is you're a human being created in the image of God, with an eternal soul. And you are a moral being, and you have broken the commandments of God. Therefore, you are guilty before God who is Holy, and you will be judged. And Jesus Christ is the only hope for receiving grace and forgiveness and reconciliation, to be adopted in the family of God.

My wife told me, "If there's mic issues, don't say it's the demonic." So if we have mic issues, we'll do the handheld. Yeah.

We are all by ourselves. We're spiritual orphans. These last few weeks, I'm like, "Orphans. We got to take care of orphans." And then I look around the city, I'm like, "Everyone's a spiritual orphan." Statistically speaking, most people haven't grown up with a true father that loves them. And spiritually speaking, if you are not a child, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, you're not a child of God. You're a human being, but you are not adopted into the family of God the Father, unless you repent of your sins and turn to Christ. And then the Father adopts you into the family of God. God is Father. And whom does God delight in? In Jesus Christ. And when you delight in Jesus Christ, love Jesus Christ, you receive the Holy Spirit. And then you pray to God the Father in Jesus' name. That's the introduction of Romans 3:1-8.

I'll show you how I got everything I just said from the text. Romans 3:1-8. No bookmark. Let's see if Pastor Jan knows his Bible. Yes, he does.

"Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, 'That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.' But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? I speak in a human way. By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? Why not do evil that good may come? And as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just." This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths on our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time together. First, we'll look at The Jewish Advantage, it God's Holy Word. Second, The Jewish Advantage: God's Holy Law. And third, The Jewish Advantage: God's Holy Gospel.

First, The Jewish Advantage: God's Holy Word. The context is, St. Paul has been rebuking Jews for hypocrisy. The Jewish people had had a special relationship with God in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Scriptures, so much so they were considered God's chosen people. And despite a very special blessing, calling, relationship with God, they were living the same godless lives, as pagans who did not have God's word. The Jews were entrusted with the law of God, the glory of Israel. They were the only people on the planet given the clear manifestation of the moral law of God in the 10 Commandments, the Decalogue. I'm going to point to this all the time now, just to remind you, obedience of faith, that the law still matters.

God doesn't measure a person's spirituality or faith through their DNA or through their observation of religious traditions, but according to obedience of faith. And a lot of Christians do not believe the way you're supposed to believe, because you are not faithful. You don't have the faith you're supposed to have because you're not faithful to the law of God. And this is why a lot of Christians do not have the Holy Spirit, because you have not put yourself in a position of obedience and then realize, "I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't fulfill the law. I can't do it."

And that's when you cry out and you say, "God, I need your power. I need your spirit. I can't do it. I am helpless on my own. I need your power to do what you called me to do." This is why a lot of Christians... Christianity is boring to you. The Bible is boring, because you don't have the holy Spirit. You've been quenching it with your sin, because you think that Christianity is just, "Nah, I'm going to come to Jesus whenever I need my sins forgiven." You live a degenerate life all week, just degenerate.

I'm working on the preaching. I've been told I've been doing too much teaching, so I'm working on the preaching. Just bear with me. I know it. I know it. I'm talking to Brookline. I'm preaching above you, okay? But, but if the shoe fits, man.

We live in a city of virtue signaling, of moral degenerates. Love, love, love, love, love is all around, like the word love, and no one knows what it means. Because you, dear Brookline, Boston, I'm talking specifically younger people, you've been raised on porn. That's... Porn is just in you. It's in you. It's in you. It's in you. It's in you. And, it has a heart in your hearts. And your heart needs to be circumcised. That's what St. Paul is saying.

So it doesn't matter if you go to church, like if you're Catholic and you get the... Mark Wahlberg does this thing where he gets the black cross on Ash Wednesday, I think. It doesn't matter if you do the traditions. If you're Catholic, if you're Jewish, if you're Christian, if you're a church member, if you've been baptized, none of that matters if you're not obedient to God and his word. And it doesn't matter what your DNA is. It doesn't matter if you grew up Jewish. It doesn't matter if, genetically, you have Christians or followers of God in your family. Because God isn't going to judge you on the faith of someone else. So don't put your faith in my faith in Jesus. Put your faith in Jesus. I'm just a guy. I'm just pointing everyone to Jesus Christ. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. So if a Jew does not have the spirit of God in their heart, their Jewish heritage will do nothing for their soul and their eternal destiny. The same goes for Christians and Catholic. It doesn't matter if you were outwardly baptized as a baby.

Two weeks ago, I went to a Russian Orthodox Church, because Pastor Andy said I can do anything I want on Sunday and I don't have to come. I was like, "Tremendous." So I went to a Russian Orthodox Church in Roslindale. And it was awesome, because no one knew me. So no one talked to me. And, they don't let you move. And if you know me, that's painful for me. I can't stand in one spot. So I literally stood there for two hours. It's two hours of standing. It's like a standing plank for two hours. I was in better shape after that. And there's kneeling and standing and it... And I just prayed. There was chanting and stuff, and switching languages back and forth, a little Russian, a little English. There was incense. They didn't preach the word. And I was like, yeah. I was like, "Who are we praying to? No one knows the word."

And then... I had my eyes closed and I'm praying. I've been studying Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and like he prayed so intensely that capillaries in his face burst and he sweated blood. And I was like, "How intensely do you have to pray?" Have you ever prayed so hard that you sweat? Have you prayed so hard that you had to change your t-shirts every half hour? I have, this past week, the last two weeks. And then I turn around, this huge guy next to me. I'm kind of a big guy. This guy is massive. He's like 6'5, 300, just yoked, just scary looking. People think I'm scary. This guy is massive. And I look at him, I'm like, "I know you."

Because I'd seen him. His name's... I know his name. And I look at him. I was like, "I know you. You're my neighbor." Because I seen him across the street. And he's like, "Yeah, I don't live there. That's where my girlfriend lives. One of them." And then Tanya told me that, on Valentine's Day, he brought her a lot of flowers and stuff and balloons. That's nice. And then he goes and buys the little candle and puts it in the thing. And then just walks out. That man does not have the Spirit of God. It doesn't matter if you go to a church service and you do the stuff. If you don't obey the commandments, if you have no desire to obey the commandments, you don't have the Spirit of God. Therefore, you're dead spiritually.

This is what Paul said in Romans 2:28-29. "For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart." How? "By the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God." Prior to preaching the Gospel, Paul examines our condition under the law. The verdict is, we're all guilty. And most people are so hardened by their sin, they don't even consider that God has moral commandments that he imposes on us. Most people judge their goodness by comparing themselves to others, not measuring their moral performance according to the 10 commandments, the foundation for the rest of the law and the holiness code.

2 Corinthians 10:12. "Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding." That's what a lot of religious people do. They just, "Yeah, I'm better than that guy. Better than that guy." This is literally what the Pharisee did. The Pharisee goes into the temple and he is like, "Lord, thank you I'm not like that loser. I fast twice a week, which is kind of big deal. I give 10% of my income, tremendous." And then the wicked tax collector is like, "Lord, I got nothing. I'm a moral failure. I got nothing. All I can do is beg for grace." And Jesus said that guy went home justified.

As Paul puts in Galatians, "The law is a schoolmaster that drives us into the arms of Jesus Christ. Keeping the law doesn't save anyone, because no one has kept the law except for Jesus Christ. The law helps us feel the weight of our need for the Gospel. Christ is the only one, by the power of the Holy Spirit, who can circumcise our hardened hearts and turn us into lovers of God and people." And loving God and people is the point of the whole thing. It's the point. I think we complicate religion all the time. We complicate faith all the time. Just complicate it. That's why I love Jesus. It's simple, is so important. And the simplicity is like, let's simplify the complexity of the word. Because once you simplify the complexity, you realize it all distills down to love, loving God and loving people.

This is what Jesus did in Matthew 22:34-40. "When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together." The Sadducees didn't believe that God was God. They don't believe in the power of God. And the Pharisees didn't either. "And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?' And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Some of you are tremendous at loving God with your hands. Some of you are tremendous at loving God with your mind. Not enough of you love God with your heart. Because when you love God with all your heart, you think about him all the time. You want to know him. You want to know his word. You want to worship him. You want to obey him. Because if you love God, you fear him. There's a reverence that comes over you when you love God. And I can tell when people have that reverence and when they don't. When you don't have a fear of God in you, you don't love your neighbor as yourself. If you don't love God with all your heart, but you only love him with all your mind, you become a Pharisee, and you start judging people according to the letter of the law and not according to the spirit of it. And the only way that you can live according to the spirit of the law is if you have the spirit of God.

Romans 3:1. "Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?" Well, circumcision was a sign of the covenant. It's a sign of both blessing and warning of curse. And the promise depicted in circumcision is that, through faith in the promise, the promise given to Abraham, "That through your seed, you will be a blessing to many nations." This is the vision that God put into Abraham's heart, that Jewish people, Abraham wasn't even a Jew. God made Abraham a Jew. And he said, "Abraham, through you, I'm going to bless all the nations." The whole vision for the Jewish people was to be a blessing for all nations. This is why I never get why Jewish people aren't evangelizing me. If you really believe your own word, you should be trying to evangelize me. And I'm waiting for the day that a Jew actually tries to do that. Because I'm going to say, "Tremendous. Let's have a Bible study. Where are we going first? Isaiah 53? Tremendous."

Actually, one thing I was praying about was to have a buil... Yeah, I'll just share it. I can share my prayers, right? I was praying about challenging Temple Ohabei Shalom to a Bible study. And the winner gets the building. That's what I was praying. Because they don't know the word. That's where I'm going. So the circumcision. The promise depicted in circumcision is that, through faith in the promise, God will save his people through the shedding of blood. Circumcision, very graphic, foreskin needs to be cut off. There's shedding of blood. Every time circumcision happens, it was a depiction that blood was going to be shed, and the coming seed, the Messiah, is the mediator between God and man. Circumcision is also a sign of the curse, to all who take the sign, but do not believe the promise that God will send the Messiah. And it's a graphic depiction of an unbeliever being cut off from the people of God. So either you believe in the promise and you receive the blessing, or you reject the promise and you receive a curse.

If getting circumcised, keeping the outward requirements of the law, does not guarantee someone a relationship with God and entrance into heaven, then what's the advantage? That's the line of thought. Is there value in being Jewish, in circumcision? If Paul wrote today, he'd include baptism. Is there value in baptism? Church attendance, church membership. These are all good things, but they don't guarantee salvation from the deserved wrath of God for our law-breaking. So when people become members, covenant members, of Mosaic, we take that very seriously. And our job as elders, Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy and myself, our job is to discern if the person is really a child of God. They have the Holy Spirit, if they've been saved by grace through faith, because we believe that a regenerated church membership is important. But I know people slip through the cracks.

There are people that grew up in the church and they know the right things to say, the right things to write, how to say in a way that's convincing. And they've said it so many times, they've convinced themselves that they're believers. And then we ask them one question, "Do you love Jesus Christ? And tell us how much you love Jesus Christ." If you don't love of Jesus Christ, none of that stuff matters. Even making a verbal profession of faith in Jesus Christ doesn't guarantee salvation, since many people honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him. Since Paul has seemingly downplayed circumcision, the attentive reader is expecting him to say, "No, there's no advantage to being Jewish. There's no advantage to circumcision." That's not what he says. Is there an advantage to being Jewish?

Verse two, he says, "Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." What a great phrase. I love that phrase, because no one knows what it means. What's oracles of God? I don't know. It sounds awesome. Literally, in the Greek, it's the very words of God. The very words of God. God entrusted, first, to begin with. In the Greek, it's protos, same word that's used in Matthew 6:33, "Seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else shall be added on to you." It's a text about priorities. So here he says, "To begin with," or first, "the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God first. That's the advantage. They were given the word of God. It's a tremendous advantage.

However, it's only an advantage if you read it, if you study it, if you meditate it, if you believe it and if you do it. The word of God, the sharpest sword, cuts through our debased minds and our hardened hearts, pierces our wretched souls, and brings us to Christ. By the way, the word Bible isn't in the Bible, so the word Bible isn't even biblical. I get what they're saying. If I had a publishing house, I would publish Bibles that say Oracles of God, because that's what it is, the very word of God. 2 Timothy 3:16-17. "All Scripture is breathed out by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." The Jews were entrusted with the very words of God, the oracles of God. Did they steward the word of God well? No. No.

I grew up with a lot of Jews. My friends in high school were all Jews. And then in college, all my best friends were Jews. I lived in Jewish fraternity. It was called AEPi. And they all smoked weed all the time, so it was AEHigh. Everyone's high. By walking up to second floor, to my dorm room, I was like phheeeww, I got secondhand something. They don't know their word. I've been thinking about how to share the Gospel of Jews for a long time. They don't know their word. Jewish people, you don't know your own word. Oh, the Catholics don't know their own word either. Russian Orthodox don't know their own word. Southern Baptists do not know their own word. They don't. They do not. I went to seminary with these guys. They don't know the Bible. A lot of the Southern Baptist, I went to Southern Baptist Seminary, a lot of them view ministry as a career, because it's a job with no heavy lifting. And then, they encounter demonic attack one time, and then they're out. Because that's the heavy lifting of the job. No, they don't know the word.

Most Jewish people have never read their own holy Scriptures, just even the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. Not to mention, they haven't read the sequel. That's what my roommate in college, he was Jewish. He's like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm not reading the sequel." That's what he calls the New Testament. And my response to it is, "Why not? Aren't you Jewish? Wouldn't you want to read the Scriptures about the most important and influential Jew who ever lived? Wouldn't you want to know what his plan was to redeem the world? Why wouldn't you read it? Just for personal education, just read it. I dare you." And then for us, we've been entrusted with the oracles of God, Christians, do you steward the oracles of God well? Do you stand humbly under God's word? Do you stand in trepidation before God's word? Do you strive to know the Scriptures, believe them and do them? Take advantage of the tremendous advantage that God has entrusted you with.

Second, The Jewish Advantage is God's Holy Law. Do you keep the commandments? 1 Corinthians 7:17-19. "Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone, at the time of his call, already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone, at the time of his call, uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but..." Let's read that last part together, what counts, what matters, "But keeping the commandments of God." It's just that simple. The commandments of God.

Paul's mission was to bring about the obedience of faith. Obedience of faith, to what? To God's will. Well, what is God's will? God's will is revealed, God's will for every single one of us human beings is revealed to the Jews with the 10 commandments. What commandments? The 10 commandments. And I'm going to read them in Exodus 20:1-21. It's that important. "And God spoke all these words, saying," God, he led Israel out of captivity, so now they're in freedom. And he says, "'Now that you're free, let me give you 10 laws to help you stay free.'" So the commandments aren't to enslave us or restrict us. They are to give us life, freedom, liberty of ... So he says, "I'm the Lord your God." There's a relationship. "I'm your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. I've saved you."

Now listen, number one, "You shall have no other gods before me." Have you fulfilled this commandment? Have you ever, even once in your life, had a god before God? Of course, you have. Of course, you have. Guilty. So we're zero for one. Me too, zero for one.

Number two, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for the Lord your God, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." You shall not make for yourself a carved image of anything. Catholics, you've got carved images of Jesus Christ on the cross. Everywhere. Just everywhere. You broke the commandment. Every time I drive by a Catholic church, I'm like, "Broke the commandment." You broke the commandment. You broke the commandment. Zero for two.

Verse seven. "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, who takes his name in vain." Oh my. We've all broken it. "Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph." I hear that all the time. "Jesus." as a curse word. You don't say that with Muhammad. "Allah?" But you do with Jesus Christ. Zero for three.

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor," some of you need to read that part, because you don't work the way you should. You're supposed to work six days. Six days, you shall work. The weekend, that's not in the Bible. It's not in the Bible. "Six days you shall work, and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." Our Sabbath is on a Sunday, because Jesus came back from the dead, the resurrection. I love how in Russian, the word Sunday is [foreign language 00:38:04] which means resurrection. Every Sunday is the resurrection day. Do you keep the Sabbath?

Do you keep the Sabbath holy, where you do not work, you devote a full day to God? And I'm talking to parents too. Parents, parents, parents of middle schoolers and high schoolers. Do you lead your children in breaking the commandment? And this is a commandment I've broken. I haven't Sabbathed in like three years, because COVID, remember? And then COVID ended, Ukrainian war started. I have been repenting this week. I've wept. My wife said, "Can you make sure you don't cry today?" Because I've been... I'm 39. Can I be emotional please? 39. I got four daughters. I've been managing a lot of emotions in my house. Not my own. I have broken this commandment. I have repented. By the way, do you guys know I'm a sinner? St. Paul said that he is the chief of what? Sinners. So, I'm the CSO now at Mosaic. That's the title I gave myself. I still haven't cleared it with the pastors yet. I'm the CSO. I'm the chief sinning officer. But I also have to be the chief repenting officer. You got to repent. Sabbath.

Verse 12. "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you." Do you know how many kids break this commandment all the time? Because I know my kids, my daughters' friends, I know them. They do not honor their parents. They talk trash about their parents. Like I got to teach them respect on my play. I'm like, "Whoa. Hold on. It's your mom and dad, you got to honor them. You're going to honor your father and your mother."

"You shall not murder." That's obvious.

"You shall not commit adultery." Jesus said, "Whoever even looks lustfully upon another person has already committed adultery in their hearts." Guilty.

"You shall not steal," and, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." I know some of you have committed that sin this week. False witness. That's why gossip is so lethal. Gossip is demonic, when you talk about someone behind, you talk trash about someone behind their back. Matthew 18 says, "If someone sinned against you, you go and you speak to them to their face." Even if they look really scary, it doesn't matter. You say it to their face.

"And you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." I love how he starts with the house before the wife. It's particularly relevant in Brookline. Do not covet. Don't covet. That's a sin. "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male servant, female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything else that is your neighbor's." How'd you do on that test? I'm talking about, not even your whole life. Like this week, how'd you do on that test? You get a 10? 20? 30? 40? If you got a hundred, you're a liar. We're all guilty.

"Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes and lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, 'You speak to us, and we will listen. Do not let God speak to us, lest we die.' Moses said to the people, 'Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him be before you, that you may not sin.' The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was." Oh, this is too weighty, Moses. We don't want to hear from God. We want to hear from you, because we're afraid of God that he might kill us because we've sinned." Yeah, good. Moses says, "Good, good, good, good, good. Don't fear. That's a bad fear, paralyzing fear, that keeps you away from God. Come close to God. And now fear in a good, healthy, reverend way."

And it starts with the humility that we've broken the commandments of God. No one's kept the law perfectly, because to keep it perfectly, you need to keep it from the heart. Just possessing the law and the circumcision will not exempt you from the judgment of God. And this is point three of The Jewish Advantage is God's Holy Gospel. Verse three. "What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?" What if Jews do not believe the oracles of God? What if they are not faithful to God's holy word? Does their disbelief nullify the faithfulness of God? Of course not. If Jews are covenant breakers, that does not make God a covenant breaker. God has faithfully kept his part of the covenant. And in sending his son, Jesus Christ, to the cross, God provides a way for covenant breakers to be forgiven and for a relationship between you and God restored.

Verse four. "By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, 'That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.'" Basically, Paul was saying this, "Do you have to believe in God's word for it to be true?" And this is Karl Barth. This is a Barthean understanding of holy scripture, that God's word, scripture, becomes God's word, when people believe that it's God's word. Well, Karl Barth, with all due respect, you're wrong. God's word is true, regardless of if you believe it. It doesn't matter. It's still true. Just like gravity.

God's word is truth, regardless of your faith, because God is true, so everything he speaks is truth. And everyone is a liar. This is true. Have you lied? Be honest. So you're a liar. I've lied. We should all repent of that and beg for God's grace. Why? Because everything God says is true, because God is true. There aren't many things God can't do, but lying is one of the things God can't do. God can't lie. Everything he says is true. God says, anyone who breaks even one of the 10 commandments deserves eternal damnation, unless you repent and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

And here, Paul cites a passage from Psalm 51. This is King David's greatest Psalm of repentance, which he wrote after being confronted by the Prophet Nathan for committing adultery and murder. Now, I challenge you to study the whole Psalm. Psalm 51, study this week. It's a Psalm of repentance, and this will prepare your heart for Good Friday, for Easter. Psalm 51, the first four verses, to give us context. "To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone into Bathsheba." Verse one. "Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment."

In a sense, David's words in verse four are hyperbolic. Yes, he had sinned against his wives, his children, Bathsheba, her husband, Uriah. He's sinned against all his subjects in Israel. He's sinned against everyone who viewed him as a great moral exemplar. Of course, David knew all of this. But he's speaking in the ultimate sense. The most wicked aspect of our sin is what it does to God, what it does to God's holiness, his majesty, his glory. We see how deeply David repents when he says, "So that you may be..." He says, "God, please forgive me, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment." Justified in your words and blameless in your judgment? Well, hold on. God said, "Whoever breaks my law deserves death." So, David, what are you appealing to? What are you appealing to? And you want something to happen where God remains just.

How can God give you mercy and remain just, justified in his words, blameless in his judgment? If you want God to be blameless in his judgment, he needs to kill you right now on the spot. But you're appealing to mercy. David knows he deserves God's full wrath. He's not rationalizing his sin. He's not minimizing his guilt. He's not turning to self-justification. David turns to his only real option. He throws himself at the mercy of God, begs God to deal with him according to his mercy, not according to his justice. But he knows something needs to happen, where... If God doesn't judge me, he's not just anymore. How can God forgive? So David begs God to deal with him according to his justice, according to his tender, loving kindness. This is our only hope before God. But how? How?

Verse five. "But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? I speak in a human way. By no means! For then how could God judge the world?" Our sin and unrighteousness indirectly testifies to the righteousness of God. Because our sin doesn't change the law of God. All our sin does is show how great and glorious God's holy law is. So Paul says, "Look, if our own righteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?" And he's dealing with an argument that's just absolutely crazy.

And the argument goes like this. "Well, if my sin forces God to be gracious, and when I sin, God gives me grace, then should I make it my job to sin more, so that I get more grace and then God gets more glory?" That's what he's getting at. And it's absolutely absurd to even think like that. It's absurd to even ask the question of, "Hey, isn't sinning a good thing?" It's absolutely asinine to think that our sin brings glory to God. God literally sent his son to die on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin. And we're just going to continue flippantly living in sin? That's absurd.

Most modern Jews and Christians have attempted to delete any mention of God's wrath from their public teaching. Listen to any sermons of any liberal churches around us, or even synagogues, or Catholic churches. How often do they talk about the wrath of God? They do not. Therefore, the tremendous news of God's grace is lost on them. But wrath is coming and you will either face the judgment of God on your own, or with Jesus Christ having absorbed it for you on the cross. Also, everyone, deep inside, believes in the judgment of God. We know it. We know it. We just want judgment for Hitler and Putin, like the only ones. No, judgment's coming for every single one of us. The same sin that lurks in their heart, lurks in ours as well. So God is righteous, therefore, he is wrathful. God's wrath does not diminish his righteousness, but confirms it.

Verse seven. "But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?" This will be the argument of every self-righteous person in hell. People like Judas, who traded Christ for earthly pleasures. Judas' cry on the last day will be the following. And I got this from R.C. Sproul, who is amazing. He's in heaven. Well, you should really get into R.C. Sproul. I think our church would really benefit if people listened to R.C. Sproul. This is what he writes. He's like, this is what Judas is probably going to say in hell, "Hey, guy, why are you picking on me? The best thing that ever happened to the world was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. If it were not for me, you would have no atonement. You people should be thanking me that I fulfilled the Scripture and delivered him into the hands of the Gentiles. Why am I being judged as a sinner?"

And Paul concludes in verse eight. "And why not do evil that good may come? As some people slanderously charge us with saying their condemnation is true." The slander against Paul was, "Hey, Paul, you're just telling people that, no matter what they did, they can just ask for forgiveness and God forgives them?" Paul's like, "Yeah." And then, the objection is, "Well, then they're not going to be good people. They're just going to be evil people." And Paul's like, "What? Didn't you just hear what I said about the circumcision of the heart?" No. Grace is what changes your heart. Grace circumcises your heart, takes the foreskin of sin off of your heart. And then, you have a heart that wants to love God. And then if you love God, you're like, "God, what do you want me to do?"

By the way, that's why a lot of you are living boring Christian lives. You haven't really asked, "Hey, God, what do you want me to do?" "Hey, God, what do you want me to do? What is your will for my..." I know a lot of you haven't answered God's call. God has placed calls in your life, and that you know exactly what God's calling you to do, but loans and job, and "I want to live in a comfortable house." Ask it. If you really love God, ask God, "What do you want me to do?"

By preaching salvation from God's wrath, by grace through repentance and faith, Paul was accused of abolishing the law of God. Paul's not abolishing the word of God. He's saying "10 commandments. 10 commandments." We've all broken them. Jesus fulfilled it. Receive grace. Uncircumcised heart, get circumcised. You get filled with the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God, what does it do? It moves you to obey the commandments.

And proper following of the law requires internal transformation. This is Jeremiah. This is in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jeremiah 31:31-34. "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more."

Parallel passage in Ezekiel 36:24-29. "I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the spirit of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from your uncleanness. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you."

The agency of the spirit is required for the acceptable observance of God's law. Therefore, being a Jewish person, or even religiously Jewish, and even trying to obey the law, you're not doing it, because you don't have the Spirit of God within you. And, dear Christians, if you don't have the Spirit of God within you, that's the reason why you don't care about the 10 commandments. I'm bringing the 10 commandments back. Ray Comfort, remember that guy? He used to share the Gospel to people on the streets of LA, by just going up to them and be like, "Hey, man, you break any commandments this week?" And people are like, "What are commandments?" And he's like, "Oh, no one even knows the commandment." And then his other thing was, "Hey, how many beers can you list?" And everyone's like, "Heineken, Coors Light, Bud Light, Miller, some IPA." They just go on these. And he's like, "You know more beers than commandments. Well, that's your problem." We're in the Temple Ohabei Shalom. I get the decalogue behind me. I'm just going to remind people of this commandments.

Start of Holy Week, Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem, to the Jewish people, as a Jew. Now when they drew to Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, Mountain of Olives. Then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you'll find a donkey tied. And a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once." This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on donkey, on a colt, the foal..."

Foal? Foul? I'm a city boy.

On a donkey. "The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowds spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, 'Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!' And when he had entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, 'Who is this?' And the crowds said, 'This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.'" These people will welcome Jesus as their Messiah, on Palm Sunday. And then Jesus was crucified on Good Friday. It was all words. It was all words.

It was all words. They didn't love him, before they crucified him. And he allowed them to crucify him. Because he loves the Jews. To the Jew first. And he loves us. And also to the Gentiles. He loves us. And on the cross, Jesus Christ died. He did not deserve to die. He was not guilty. You ever get punished for something you didn't even do. If you have brothers or sisters, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're a loving brother and sister, you take it. You take it. "Yeah, it was my fault. It was my fault." That's Gospel. That's Gospel siblings.

Here's the Gospel. He, Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin on the cross, so that we might become the righteousness of God. We are all moral failures. Jesus Christ came to take the test for us. My oldest daughter, Sophia, she likes going for walks. We've been going for walks lately. We went for a walk, and I was like, "Tell me about your week." She's like, "Ah." And then she talked for like an hour straight. Fast, she's a fast talker. I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." So she was telling me, in class, this week, they had a pop group quiz, where one person takes the pop quiz for the whole class. And this week it was Sophia's turn. And, she hated it, obviously, because it's hard to do the work for everybody. But they got a hundred. Praise God. That's a minuscule reflection of the tremendous news of Jesus Christ. We are all failures. God does not grade on a curve. So God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to take the test for us.

He took the 10 commandment test for us. For 33 years, he did not sin once. Not once. Loved God perfectly. Loved people perfectly. And all that I really need to... Let Jesus take the test for you, because you're a failure. You're a terrible student of God's law. So am I. We're all failures. Can we just agree on that? You're all losers. Me too. We're all losers. We're all pathetic, degenerate, whatever word you want to use. Let Jesus take the test instead of you. He died too. So what do you need to do? This is like action step, action step. This is what you need to do. Write the name of Jesus Christ above your name on the test. Because the name of Jesus Christ is the name above all names. Write it above your name. If you're not a Christian today, fill out a connection. Put your name on, in all lower case. I don't even care if you give me your email, just so I can pray for you, in lower case, it's good for humility. And then in all caps, write Jesus Christ on top of it. Okay? Amen. Let's pray.

Lord God, oh wow, that's a lot of time. That's why we need one service now.

Lord, we thank you for the grace. We all need it to help us all receive it, and then extend it to others who also need it. In Jesus' name, amen.

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This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please mosaicboston.com.

God, we just ask right now that your Holy Spirit would come and clear away the worries and distractions of our week to focus on You, on Your word. Thank you for giving us Your Word to just cut through all the clutter, all the noise, and to show us reality for as it really is. And Lord, we pray that we would live our lives in wisdom, live our lives in proper response to this reality, and proper response to who You are to what You've done for us. And so we thank you, thank you for your patience, your kindness, your mercy toward us and we pray right now that You just speak to us through Your Word. Challenge us, where we need to be challenged, encourage where we need to be encouraged. Build us up to be the people you've called us to be and to bear the fruit that you want to see in our lives. Lord, we need you. We love you. We praise you. In Christ's name. Amen.

All right. So recently I hit a milestone as a man, one of those milestones that kind of forces you to admit that you're not as young and hip and cool as you used to be. I turned 40 this year. That's not what I'm talking about, though. That's part of it - I was actually excited about turning 40, maybe people will finally believe that I'm no longer a teenager. And so that was a good thing for me. What I'm talking about is, recently, our kids, we have two kids, Owen and Nora, they've started using slang, they started using lingo, phrases, references to pop culture that I don't know. And so I have to like go online and look up what they're talking about. A lot of times they don't know, either they just hear the stuff at school, and then they repeat it. And so a couple of months ago we had to look up the proper definition of the word “yeet”. I think we finally got that one. We're using it right now and our home and then after that, it was the word “suss”, they started calling things “suss”. And you, you're all young and hip and cool. And so you probably know what this is, but it's apparently short for suspicious. It comes from this video game “Among Us”. I think. And it's the idea is you're playing this game, you're playing it online with other people and you've got a team but on your team, you're trying to figure out who’s “suss,” acting suspicious because on your team, there's a certain number of people who are actually imposters, they're kind of like sabotaging the team and I bring this up, we're gonna be talking about impostors today. I wonder, “Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like an imposter? Where you felt like a poser, like a fake, like a fraud?”

I'm gonna share just an example from my own life. Some of you know this about me and college, I was in a pop-punk band and it was the early 2000s, so that's my excuse. And our band was you get like generously. You could say we were moderately successful. If I told you the name of her band, none of you would ever have heard of us, but we were successful enough that we got to play with a bunch of like the semi-famous bands that you probably have heard of, the bands that we looked up to. We played with “Yellow Card” and “Newfound Glory” and “Fallout Boy”, and if you just name like an early 2000s, like pop, punk emo band and there's a pretty good chance we either play a show with them or at least we got to meet them in some capacity. The thing was we were always just the opening act so we always kind of felt like posers, like impostors, like we got to feel like the coolness of hanging out with these other bands and playing the shows with them and getting the backstage passes and all that. But at these shows, nobody ever knew who we were. We were just opening band and if you if you've ever been to a concert you know like oh it's just nobody's paying attention to the opening band. They're just kind of there. And the best example of this, I was debating whether or not to share this story but I'm just gonna go for it: shortly after I joined the band, we played a show with this band called “Eve 6”. They were really big back in like the late 90s, and coming out of that show it kind of like set a lot of things into motion for us. And we started getting attention locally from the media. Like we're doing interviews and they're asking us to come into the radio stations and they're started playing some of our songs on the radio and a couple of weeks after that show, the local pop radio station asked us to come and make an appearance at this really huge outdoor concert that was happening in the parking lot of the mall. There are supposed to be like 10,000 people here. And you were probably wondering who was, it was like “Blink 182” or like, “Weezer” or “the Foo Fighters,” some really big, cool rock band like that. No, it was the “Jessica Simpson’s Dream Tracers” tour. Not really our scene, but… - I wish I was making this up, this really happened. She was doing a tour across America playing in the parking, lots of shopping malls and they're supposed to… Like I said, there's supposed to be thousands of people here and it wasn't really our thing and we kind of felt like sellouts, but we're like any publicity is good politically so we just go with it.

So we get there. They let us in early, we get the passes, we go and the radio station has this little booth set up, kind of adjacent to the stage. They want to just sit there, hang out and like meet people and sign autographs all night. And - my wife loves the story by the way - we get there and the gates open. And all the sudden we're, it's like, we're surrounded by bees. It's like a tidal wave of pink shimmery lip gloss just comes out of us, and all of a sudden these hundreds of bubbly, teeny boppers justice, Jessica Simpson’s fans like waiting to get an autograph. Here's the best part, it became quickly apparent to us that, among these hundreds of girls standing in line to get our autographs, we felt like pretty hot stuff, not a single one of them knew who we were. They all thought that we were, the boy band that was opening for Jessica Simpson. They saw a booth, they saw a line, they just got in line. They wanted me as we were the imposters. We and so, you know, what did you do? Well, we obviously, we just went with it and we just stood there for like an hour signing autographs, and not even our own name, because they didn't know who we were. So it's like: “oh, here you go, to Jennifer with love, X's and O's to my greatest fan,” and I signed like Ronald Reagan or Daffy Duck, or they Justin Timberlake, whatever. They didn't know the difference. They had no clue who we were. We were just there and I bring that, occasionally that can be like turn out to be like a funny situation. Usually in real life, not so much. It's usually a lot more serious. You're probably familiar with the concept of imposter syndrome. A lot of people struggle with this. It's described as a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments, and they live with the persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud, and you hear about this a lot with people in their careers, like they work themselves into a position where all the sudden they realize, they're not really qualified for the job that they're in. They work really hard to act like they got things together to convince people, that they're qualified but deep down, they know that they're in over their head and they're just waiting, it's only a matter of time before they find me out. Some people have this in their relationships. It's that feeling that, “if I really let you get to know the real me, you're not gonna want to be around me anymore. You're not gonna accept me. You're going to reject me.” And we all feel this way sometimes, and it's like the harder we work to keep up appearances, the more anxiety we feel about getting found out, about people finding out who we really are. And I bring this up because it's something that our text warns us about.

That's today that we're all prone to be posers. We're all prone to cover up and to hide who we really are. And it's one thing to do that at work. It's another thing to do that with people, but it becomes really dangerous when we try to do that with God, and Jesus had a word for this and it was a pretty strong word, we're going to look at it a little bit more detail later, but he called people hypocrites. In his conclusion to the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus says some very sobering words to his disciples, and in verse 17 he says this (Matthew 7:15-23) to “ “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

And He says some of the most frightening words in all Scripture. He says in verse 21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” I was like, “you can take a wither tree and you can try to hang some nice fruit on the branches. You can paint all of the rotten apples red, and you can fool a lot of people along the way and prop it up and make it look nice. But on the inside, it's still a diseased tree. Still dying, a diseased tree, it is a diseased tree. No matter how hard you might work to mask the symptoms, and if you were here last week, you remember, we talked about… well, we read this warning that there is this day coming where Paul says that the secret of men will be exposed and will be judged, and the warning is, “We might be fooling others. We might even be fooling ourselves, but we're not fooling God,” there may be impostors among this right now, there will be no imposters in the Kingdom of Heaven in eternity, Jesus said a bad free camp bear good fruit, a good free can't bear bad fruit. And the bad news is that every tree that does not bear good fruit is going to be cut down and thrown into the fire. Now, the good news, the Gospel, is that the Gospel is not good advice for how we can act good. The Gospel is not even good advice for how we can do good. The Gospel is good news. It's good news for how we can actually become good. Even though right now we're lost, we're dead in our sins, our tree is diseased and dying, Jesus can take that withered dying tree, and replant it making it new, and we can be born again. So that's gonna be talking about this morning.

If you have your Bibles, open up to Romans chapter 2. I'm gonna look at verse 17 through 29. We're gonna finish up the rest of chapter 2 today. And as we do, we're gonna look at three points.

-First, we're gonna talk about the root and fruit of a bad tree. -Second, the root and fruit of a good tree, and then -Third, we're gonna talk about God, the good and gracious gardener.

So if you have your Bibles you can follow along. Otherwise, the words will be up here on the screen. This is Roman's chapter 2 beginning of verse 17. “ But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law.” This is the punchline verse 28 “ For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” This is the reading of God's Word for us this morning.

Point number one, we're gonna be talking about the root and the fruit of the bad tree. In these opening chapters, Paul is kind of going back and forth addressing these two groups of people, the Jews and the Gentiles in Rome, and he's back to addressing the Jews today in today's text, and if it seems like he's being particularly harsh with them here, we need to remember a couple of things. First of all, Paul is obviously not talking about Jews in general, Jesus was Jewish, and all of his earliest disciples and all the members of the early church were originally Jewish. Paul was Jewish. I've made friends and I've met people here in Brookline who described themselves as “Jew-ish,” like, they're just kind of Jewish. Paul was not “Jew-ish,” Paul was the “Jew-est” of the Jews and he made no qualms, He said that explicitly in Philippians chapter 3 verse 4 says, “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the laws, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But, whatever gain I had accounted as lost for the sake of Christ.” And so Paul has some harsh words to write here, but we need to understand that as Paul writes to these Jews, he's writing to a people who are extremely dear to his heart. Because in a way, he is writing to his former self; before meeting Christ, Paul was Hebrew of Hebrews, he was zealous for God's Law, he was zealous for God. He was sincere, but he was sincerely wrong, and his wrongness was doing harm to the people around him and, ultimately, it was causing them to actually work against the God that he claimed he was serving. And so his appeal here is that he wants his readers, he wants these Jewish people to avoid making his same mistakes. When Paul in Acts chapter 26, Paul gives his testimony before King Agrippa, this is what he says. He says, in my “manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation in Jerusalem, it is known by all the Jews. They have known for a long time, if they're willing to testify that according to the strictest party of our religion, I have lived as a Pharisee,” and then in verse 9 he says, “‘I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language,[a] ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.’”

Paul’s warning to the Jews, it comes from a place of genuine concern, that he had been miraculously woken up, in his eyes he was given sight for the first time of all these things that he was blind up and he wants to wake them up as well, that the Messiah is here but they're missing it. Paul’s concern for them… it's so great that later on in chapter 9, he actually goes so far to say, this is what he says. In Romans chapter 9 verse 1, he says, “I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh,” Paul's heart was broken for the Jews because he sees what their missing, and he knows that at one time, he was chief among them. He was the imposter, he was the one on the outside. He looked at the part better than anybody else, but he'd come to realize that even so, his heart was still far from God.

We're going to take a look at the fruit that a bad tree, the results, the consequences of this in just a minute, but we need to start by asking like, “What's the root of the problem?” And I believe that Paul actually gives us the answer to this later on in the book of Romans, that the root of a bad tree is fear. Romans chapter 8 beginning of verse 1, he says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” And then in verse 15, he says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”” Apart from Christ, we are slaves to this law of sin and death. That's what verse 2 tells us, but in that condition, our lives are rooted in mired in the spirit of fear. Fear of what? A fear of man? Fears the opinions of others? Fear of judgment? Fear of punishment? It's the fear of being exposed for who we really are and then having to face the consequences of that reality. And I’ll ask you a question, have you ever bought a tool for a particular purpose and then have it break? Imagine, let's say you buy a mirror, maybe you don't think of a mirror as a tool but it's a thing that exists for a particular purpose. It has a job and a mirror's job is to reflect your image. If the mirror does its job, then its purpose and its existence is justified. Now, what happens if that mirror falls to the ground, it shatters into a million pieces? It's existence is no longer justified, so what do you do? You sweep it up and you throw it away. Now, God created us to reflect His glory, to bear His image. That was our purpose. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they weren't just breaking a rule. They were failing in this purpose. They became that broken mirror. Their existence was no longer justified. So what do they do? Romans 3:7 tells us that their eyes were both opened. They knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden and the cool of the day. And the man in his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. They hid from each other. They start sewing fig leaves together to cover their nakedness. They're afraid to be seen by one another for who they really are. They start working to cover that shame, cover that reality, and then they go on to hide from God as well. Now, going back to Romans 2. Paul says “You boast in the Law, you boast in your knowledge and you post in your circumcision. You think that these outward signs of obedience are going to justify your existence but they don't. You're still a broken mirror. You can't mask the problem. You can't just put yourself back together. Your good works are not enough to justify. You're just sewing leaves together, trying to cover your guilt,” and this is the warning.

Like maybe your good deeds are enough to make you feel a little less naked, a little less exposed, but they’re leaves and those leaves are gonna fade, those leaves have a shelf life. You might fool the people around you, you might fool yourself for a little while, but you're not fooling God. And what does God think of these leaves? What does God think of these self-righteous deeds? He tells us in Isaiah chapter 64 verse 6. He says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Our self-righteous deeds are like filthy garments. Other translations say filthy rags, like no matter how many leaves we sew together, the problem is that they're all eventually gonna fade and the truth is going to be exposed.

This passage is not just a warning to the Jews, it's a warning to us all, that a life that is rooted in fear is never going to produce the kind of righteousness that God desires. If we're leaving in that state, we're always we're either just going to be crushed by our guilt, in our shame, and try to run and try to hide or we're going to try to fight. We're going to try to prove our righteousness. We're going to try to cover our shame. We're going to end the process. We're going to grow proud. We're going to grow self-righteous. And Jesus tells a parable in Luke 18 about two men going down to the temple to pray and verse 10 says, “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Do you see the problem? The Pharisee was doing all the right things, but he is doing them with the wrong heart and he was doing them for the wrong reasons and in the process, he grew self-righteous and proud. And this is why the fruit of a bad tree is so deadly. Because on the outside, it actually, sometimes looks pretty good, but on the inside is poison, it's full of pride, anxiety, anger, hostility, hypocrisy. It looks good, that's what makes it so bad. Also, this is particularly true when we're doing this good in the name of God, verses 23, and 24 from our text today says “You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it's written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you,” that when we allow ourselves to live our lives rooted driven by fear we hurt ourselves we hurt the people around us but also we can hurt the reputation of God, of Christ because eventually people are gonna see our hypocrisy and they're gonna conclude, “Well, their God must be an imposter as well.” This point number one, we see the bad trees are rooted in fear. They bear the fruit of the flesh in pride, anger, anxiety, lust, idolatry, covetousness, greed, self-righteousness, but ultimately death.

So if you want to see good fruit, we need to go and dig down to the roots and this brings us to point number two talking about the root in the fruit of the good tree. Paul in Romans 2:28 gets to his big idea. This is what he says, “ For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” If the root of a bad tree is fear, I think what Paul showed us earlier in Romans chapter 8, is that the root of a good tree is love, is the love of God the Father, he says in verse 15, he's like, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” Now, just to be clear. The fear of God is a good thing. This is Proverbs, 9:10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom is the knowledge of the Holy One, it is insight. Fear of God is good. We should fear the Lord, to fear of the Lord is what sets us free ultimately from the fear of man because when we fear God we don't have to fear anything else. And I think this is what Paul is talking about in verse 29 when he says, “his praise is not for man”. The person’s circumcised from the heart. He is not in fear of man. He's not trying to impress the people around him. He's not worried about what they think. His praise comes from God. He's doing it from a genuine heart of love and response to the love he's received from God. And so fear of the Lord is good.

Secondly, though, a proper fear of the Lord is a fear that doesn't cause us to run away from God and hide and power. It's a fear that causes us to run to God for cover, because we know he's merciful, and we know that he alone is our cover, our protector, our shield, our safety, our justification. He's the one who takes our filthy rags and then clothes us in the righteousness of his son Jesus Christ. I think this is why the apostle Paul in John, 1 John, he says in verse 18, 1st John 4:18, “There's no fear in love, but perfect love cast out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.” That being a good tree doesn't begin with something we need to do for God. It begins with us being rooted in this reality of the love of the Father, that we love because He first loved us. And so, if we want to fill our lives up with that good fruit, we need to be deeply rooted in that good soil, and Paul talks about this in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 14. He says that, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Good, true trees rooted in the love of the Father, they’re filled with all of the fullness of God, bearing the fruit that God desires.

One of the mega themes that we're gonna see throughout the book of Romans is that Paul keeps going back and forth, drawing this contrast between the life, lived in the flesh and the life lived in the Spirit, between the life lived in the fear of the Law of sin and death and the life lived in the freedom of being a son and a daughter of God. And what makes this hard, and the reason that this requires our attention is because these two things, the life in the Spirit and the life of the flesh, on the surface, sometimes they don't look all that different; that a bad tree doing good works in the flesh sometimes it can look very similar to a person who's walking in the Spirit. In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus warns His disciples about this. And he's talking again about the Pharisees in verse one. He says, “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat,” and this is this is interesting. He says, “so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice…” But then in verse five, he says, “ 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others.” And then he turns to the Pharisees and he gives some of the most like intense rebuke that we see in all of Scripture. “ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

And then Matthew 12, Jesus tells a parable that helps, at least it helps me understand the danger of what's going on here. Matthew 12 verse 43. He tells the story, “43 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” Now, the problem with the Gentiles that Paul writes to is that they were just wicked sinners. They were just overrun with immorality, drunkenness, debauchery, and they needed to repent, and they needed to flee from sin, and they needed to get all of that junk out of their life.

But the warning here is that, once you do that, even if you clean, all of that junk out of your life, if you don't replace that, occupy that space with true repentance with faith in Christ as your justification with the power of the Holy Spirit, with a fellowship of other believers who are going to care for you and see your blind spots and hold you accountable, you're gonna be worse off than you were before.You’re still a sinner, and now you're a proud, self-righteous sinner who thinks his house is in order when, in reality, it's still a mess. The idea here's like, “Yes, these outward works in the law are good. They're just not a good indication of what's really going on in a person's heart because these outward things are easy to fake, they're easy to fabricate, you can tie them, you can keep the Sabbath and you can go to church every week. Jesus said you can cry out to me: “Lord, Lord, didn't I prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and perform miracles in your name? You can do all of that and your heart can still be far from God” It’s not that these outward signs are bad. They're just not the fruit that we need to look for. So what are the indications that a person's life really is rooted in the love of the Father? The Scripture tells us. It's not the works of the law. It's the fruit of the spirit.

Galatians, 5:18 says, “ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” And so, the question is, do you see that fruit present and growing in your lives? And not only that, but do others see that as well? Because here's the thing. The fruit of the Spirit are not things that we do, right? These outward actions. The fruit of the spirit are qualities that you have and they're usually only observable in your relationships and in your interactions with other people. And so, what that means is, we need people in our lives who can see the things that we can, who can see our blind spots. Sin often blinds us. There are a lot of these passages we've read that talk about the blinding effect that this has, and I say this and this is why we take community so important, so seriously at Mosaic. It is why we take membership seriously, this is why we take community groups seriously. If you're not in a community group, this is the application. Like that needs to be a priority for you as soon as possible.

You need to get some people around you, who cannot just see your blind spots, but they're gonna have your back; who can look into your life and say, “Yeah, I see joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, faith. I see these things in your life and I see you growing in them,” or “I don't, and I'm concerned for you. And I let's talk about this pray about that. Let's work on that together.”

2 Peter puts it like this in chapter 1, Peter writes in verse 5 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Make every effort to make your calling and election sure, so that on that day that Christ returns you don't hear, “Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. I never knew you.”

But receive this warm welcome, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come enter into the joy of your master.”

That's the goal. That's what we all want to hear. That's my hope that we would make this calling and election sure, that we would take assessment of our lives so that we can face that day with confidence and joy and hope and peace. And so if you're here today and you don't have that, you're not sure, you're tired of the straight, you’re tired of hiding from God, you're tired of living in fear that you're gonna be exposed in the anxiety, the pride, the self-righteousness, the anger, the fear.

This is the good news. You might be a really bad tree, but God is a very good gardener. Through his son, Jesus Christ, He wants to replant your life and it might take some pruning, it might be painful. He might have to cut a lot of junk out. He might have to uproot a lot of things in your life, but he can do it. And this brings us to point number three, God, the good and the gracious gardener. When you look at the Scripture, the meta narrative of Scripture, the overarching story, it begins and ends in a garden. Scripture begins in the Garden of Eden where we see two people. Adam and Eve, in perfectly relationship to God and to one another. No guilt, no shame, living in the presence of God in paradise. If you read Revelation chapter 21 and in chapter 22, the Bible ends in a garden as well. But this time we see the tree of life. It's there, it's at the center. But now this garden is surrounded by a great and a glorious city, the city full of a multitude of people greater than anyone can count, people from every tribe and tongue and nation gathered together before the throne of God once again in paradise. Once again, living without guilt, without shame, at peace with God. It's a beautiful picture that God was a gardener in the beginning. God is a gardener in the end, but the idea I want to express right now is God is a gardener right now as well. And I can't remember when Pastor Jan shared, if this is a sermon or if it was a membership meeting or something, but he talked about the story of Jesus', resurrection when Mary goes to the tomb and she finds it empty and she begins to weep and she hears this voice saying, “Woman, why are you weeping? What are you doing” She says, “Well I'm looking for the body of my Lord, they've taken and I don't know where it is,” and John tells us, John chapter 20 that man that Mary was talking to is Jesus, but that she didn't recognize him because she thought he was the gardener of the graveyard. And then John also in chapter 20, he, two times, reminds us he takes time to specifically point out the fact that this happened on the first day of the week. And the truth is Jesus was not the gardener of the graveyard but he was the gardener of new creation. And just as he began the work of creation on the first day that on this first day, he was beginning the work of new creation. That he had conquered say and sin and death to reverse the curse of the garden of Eden to undo death and in His resurrection, become the first fruits of that new creation so that He could give new life to us as well.

Jesus told, from the very beginning, He told Nicodemus, John chapter 3, “Truly, truly I say to you: unless you're born again, you can't see the kingdom of God.” It's not just about changing your behavior. You need to become a new creation. 1 Peter 1 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” and Luke chapter 13, Jesus tells a parable of a gardener, and in the parable, this is what he says, “And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down,’” and like our passage today, this parable, it contains both a warning along with a promise of hope. The warning is simply this: that a day is coming, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven verse 19 where “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” That day is coming. The promise of hope is that day is not here. God is a good gardener. He's being patient. He is tending his garden. And he is sending out his servants to preach the Gospel, to plant, to water, to bring in the harvest, giving people time to repent. In this state that we're in right now, we're living in this tension between urgency and patience that the day is drawing near. And there's an urgency to respond to the Gospel when you hear it, there's an urgency to go forth into preach the Gospel and bring this good news to the ends of the earth. At and at the same time we're called to be patient, that the Lord is patient like a farmer like a gardener. 2 Peter 3:8 says, “ But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

And then James, the brother of Jesus, in chapter five, James 5 verse 7, says, “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”

We're going to celebrate communion today in just a moment. Before we do, I want to just read from John chapter 15 where Jesus Christ, teaching his disciples, really sums up everything that we've talked about today. This is what he tells them. John 15 verse 1 says, ““I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” And a greater love has none than this: that a man laid down his life for his friends, and that is what we're taking time during this time to communion to reflect on. To reflect on the price that Jesus Christ paid to make us, who were enemies and hostile towards God, friends, beloved, adopted, brought into the family, grafted into that family tree through his death, through his resurrection through his substitutionary atonement for our sins.

If you didn't grab one of these on the way in, just feel free to raise your hand. The ushers will come in and pass them around to anyone who didn't get one. When we celebrate communion as the two elements, they represent this reality, right? The bread represents Christ's body that was beaten and broken for us so that we could be healed and made new. The cup represents his blood that was poured, out to cleanse. Our sin to wash us, to clean us, to pay our debt, to reconcile us to the Father, so that we could be grafted into that family tree, attached like a branch to the vine to bear the fruit that he is called us to bear. So, communion is a celebration of fellowship with one another and with God, and Scripture warns us to not partake of communion in an unworthy manner, that this is not for hypocrites. And so if that's you, you're here today and you're you've been hard-hearted living and open and unrepentant, well, first, I'll just say, now's the time to repent, come to God, ask for forgiveness, and he will be faithful and just to forgive you. You may partake of communion with us, if not, I would say refrain from this. If you're here today, though, and you are abiding in Christ and you've examined your heart and with joy, we would celebrate this moment with you and invite you to partake of communion with us. Before we do, just going to take a moment of silence where we can just pause, reflect and pray, and then I'll come back up here and lead us through and we'll take communion together. So, just take a moment right now. Where you are, just spend some time in prayer.

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God, we thank you for these words that we just sang. Not just that we can sing them but that we can know that they are true. We see death and decay all around us. We need resurrection in our world, in our country, in our church, in our hearts, Lord. Jesus Christ, you are our living hope, you are the resurrection and the life. We just marvel at what a great and awesome and merciful God that you are. So Lord, we pray for those who are suffering. And we pray for those who are lost, that we are reminded then for many of us, this is the closest to hell that we will ever be. And yet, for some, this is the closest to heaven they could ever hope for. But you Lord have made a way to change that through your Son, through the gospel.

So we just cry out for peace but we also out for revival, Lord. That we want to see you raise the dead, bring new life to those who are lost and dead in their sins, Lord. And we know that you can do it, you've done it and we praise you for that. God, right now I just ask for grace as we preach your word this morning, we pray that you would speak to us through this amazing text written by the Apostle Paul and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. So if you are just joining us, we have been working our way through the Book of Romans. We're in chapter 2 and I'm going to be just looking at a small passage today. It's a small passage but it has a really big idea and that's one of those ideas you just kind of have to chew on. And it's a simple idea, it's simple but the implications of it are massive, they're huge. And the big idea is just simply this, that things are not as they ought to be. Now that statement isn't very shocking or profound, most of us would say, "Yeah, obviously things are not as they ought to be." I mean, how many of us, when we turn on the news, we think, "Wow. Things are so great, I can't even imagine them getting any better." Where you turn on the news and you think, "Wow, ..." I'm moving my mic pack. So cringe, this is worse than that episode of the Ringer... What's going on here? I'm going to move this down. There we go.

Obviously, things are not as they ought to be. And Paul's big idea, the case that he's been trying to make for these first couple of chapters is just simply that, that creation is not blessed, it is cursed, that people are under God's wrath, that the world is not filled with the glory of God as it ought to be, it is filled with sin and death and decay. And it's not just that, that is it's that we all know it intuitively, we just know. We know this is true and yet we deny it, we suppress it and at the same time we don't want to face the truth so we suppress the truth because as much as we know that things are not as they ought to be, we also know that we ourselves are not as we ought to be and that scares us.

And so we ignore it, we deny it, we rationalize it away and just try to pretend that this is normal. Quick example from this week, Thursday morning, I was having one of those days where I just couldn't wake up, right? You get out of bed and you're not fully awake, you're not really asleep, eyes are just kind of halfway open. Groggy, that's the word for it. I was groggy. And I get up, every morning we make the kids breakfast, I don't eat breakfast, I'm one of those intermittent fasting type people. So I make breakfast, we sit down and Kelly and the kids, they eat breakfast and as they're eating, I read scripture, we read through books of the Bible together. So they eat, I read and then we pray together.

And then it's time to like, "Okay, hurry up. You've got to go get dressed, we've got to get ready for school." And so the kids run off, they get ready, go to get dressed and as they're getting dressed, I usually pack their bags. So every day they take a lunch, they take a water bottle and they take a snack to school with them. I pack them up a little snack in one of those Ziploc bags. And so I did that. I packed their bags, we walk them to school, we both work from home so we walk back home and go about our day. Later that day, I go into the kitchen, I open the pantry and I see laying there on the shelf is our son Owen's snack in his Ziploc bag. I was so out of it, I packed it up and then I just set it down and left it there and didn't put it in his bag.

And I felt terrible, he's probably hangry, we're going to get a call from the principal, he's going to get in trouble and I felt terrible. But there's nothing really I could do about it so I just went back to work, forgot about it, put it out of my mind. Anyways, later that night we're sitting at dinner, we're talking, we're eating and all of a sudden Owen pipes up and he says, "Oh, hey dad, I wanted to say thank you so much for that boatload of Oreos you gave me and my snack today." I was like, "Wait, back that boat up. What are you talking about?" Here's the backstory. Tuesday night, we had community group, my wife and our daughter, Nora baked a cake and they crumbled Oreos all over the top and they took the rest of them, and there was a lot of them, and they put him in one of those big oversize Ziploc bags... You know where this is going?

So that day 20, 25 of them, I don't know, it was this big and it was packed full. He opens up his backpack at snack time and he eats them all. Actually he said he saved a couple for lunch because he started to get a stomach ache, he couldn't quite power through those last few. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, "What were you thinking?" We don't do sugar in our house very much and I was like, "What would make you think that I would intentionally give you a massive bag of Oreos for your snack?" He's like, "I know, right? It didn't seem right but I jus ate them anyway." And the point is, things are not as they ought to be, we just go with it. This is us. That truth is obvious but it's also inconvenient. And so we know things are wrong, we do them anyway, we just go with it, we go with the flow and that's the problem.

But the bigger problem is that the consequences of our wrongness and of the wrongness around us is a lot bigger than the consequences of a 10 year old eating 25 Oreos in one sitting. That had some pretty big consequences as well, I'm sure. But as truly as there are laws of gravity and physics governing the tangible things around us, there are laws of truth and justice and morality governing our hearts and souls and we all know it intuitively. We also know that we are in violation of those laws. We don't want to face the reality of those laws, we don't want to face the reality that we know that what goes up must come down. So instead of facing the truth, we suppress the truth because deep down we're terrified of the truth. We know what's gone up, our sin, our iniquity, our rebellion and we know what is coming down is judgment.

If you have your Bibles open up to Romans, Chapter Two, we're going to be looking at verses 11 through 16 today. And the three points that we're going to be talking about during the sermon is number one, we need to face the reality of the law and its giver. Number two, we need to face the reality of our guilt and shame. And then three, we need to face the reality of our judge and our defender. So if you have your Bibles, Romans Chapter Two, starting in Verse 11, the words are also going to be up here on the screen.

The Apostle Paul writes this, "For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law by nature do with the requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

This is the reading of God's word for us this morning. Point number one is that we need to face the reality of the law and its givers. So real quick, Paul's train of thought here is that number one, there is a divine and impartial judge. Number two, everyone knows what is right. Number three, no one has done what is right. And number four, therefore we are all going to stand justly condemned and without excuse, that's his basic argument. But within this argument lies the proof that this argument is true. The Jews knew it was true and even he says the Gentiles who did not have the law, that's everyone else, they know it is true as well.

And so first of all, Paul was writing to Jews in Rome. And the Jews knew the reality of the law and its giver personally, right? Because their entire history as a people had been wrapped up in this God who had clearly and miraculously revealed him self to them. Now you see that all throughout all the Old Testament, that Israel's God revealed himself as the God of truth and grace, law and order, justice and mercy. That Israel's God is the one who had delivered them out of slavery in Egypt with undeniable signs and wonders. He gave them his word, he gave them his law, he had written it on tablets of stone and brought them into the Promised Land. The Jews knew the law and the Jews knew the giver of the law personally.

And the problem was they didn't keep the law or obey the giver, they didn't love the Lord, their God with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength, they didn't love their neighbor as their self. And so Paul says in the second half of Verse 12 that, "All who have sinned under the law," that's the Jewish people, "Will be judged by the law. For it is not just the hearers of the law who are righteous before God but the doers of the law who will be justified." That the Jews, they knew the reality of the law, they knew God the giver of the law, the problem was that, that law couldn't save them because they couldn't keep it. All they could do was reveal how guilty they were, reveal how desperately they needed mercy from God.

And so Paul was writing to Jews but at the same time, Paul was writing to Gentiles in Rome. And the Gentiles, they did not have the law, they didn't have the history, the culture, they didn't have the miracles, they didn't have the personal relationship, the first hand encounters with God that the Jewish people had. And so the question that some might wonder then is, "Okay, on account of their ignorance, is God just going to let them off the hook? How can God judge them according to a law that they don't have, that they don't know?"

And this is where things get really trippy and deep. The Gentiles did not have the advantage of having the law written in tablets of stone but Paul says, "Hold on. That's true. But their actions prove that they'll along with every other human being on the planet actually have the work of that law written on their hearts." That everyone, even if a person never reads the Hebrew scriptures, never hears the 10 Commandments, is never told of Israel's God, they still have the work of that law written on their hearts, their actions, their consciences, they bear witness to what the law requires, that deep down they all know how they ought to live but they don't. And so Paul says of the Gentiles in Verse 14, "For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they don't have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears a witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them."

If you've never read CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, read it. Get it, read it, that's your homework, chew on it, it's a dense book, you've got to take the time to process through what he's writing. But Lewis takes the theology of Romans 2:15, this idea that the law is written on every human heart. He takes that theology and he presents a case, a full fledged, philosophical apologetic for why this is just undeniably true. I was trying to think of a good illustration to give here and I couldn't think of anything better than just say what he says in his book. And so I'm just going to read a couple paragraphs, you can go read the rest of it on your own. But the premise is just this, God's moral law is written on our hearts, everyone intuitively knows it and we prove this every time we instinctively appeal to it.

And so this is what Lewis writes in his first chapter of Mere Christianity he says, "Everyone has heard people quarreling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say because they say things like this. 'Well, how would you like it if anyone did the same to you?' 'That's my seat, I was there first.' 'Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm.' 'Why should you shove in first?' 'Hey, give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine.' 'Come on, you promised.' People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated and children as well as grownups."

"Now what interests me about all of these remarks is that the man who makes diem is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies, 'Well, to hell with your standard.' Nearly always he tries to make out that what has been doing does not really go against the standard or that if it does there's some special excuse. He pretends there's some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat for should not keep it or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise."

"It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of law or rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you want to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals but they cannot quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you had some sort of agreement as to what right and wrong are just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer has committed to foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football."

And so the big idea is that there is this law, we all know it, we all appeal to it but more than that, we didn't make it, this is not something we came up with ourselves, it transcends us. It's a law that transcends individuals and cultures and time, that it's not just true for you or true for me, it's just simply true, transcendently true. And if this is true, we get to ask if there's this transcendent truth, where did that come from? If there's a transcendent moral law, there has to be a transcendent moral law giver. This is why Psalm 14 Verse One, the Psalmist writes that, "It is the fool who says in his heart that there is no God." That it is irrational to deny the reality of a moral God if we just sit down and think about it. If we're afraid to face that reality, if we're afraid to face the of the law and its giver, it's not because the idea is untrue, it's because the idea is uncomfortable. That facing the reality of God, that forces us to face the uncomfortable reality of our own guilt and shame.

And that brings us to point number two, that we're all guilty. Verse 12, he says, "For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law and those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. But it's not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God but the doers of the law who will be justified." And there's none who have done, who have perfectly upheld the law. People in general, they don't object to the idea of a good and just God, we understand that without that existence would be hell. We want justice, we want God to be good and bring justice to stop evil, we want those things and we instinctively cry out for justice every time we are personally wronged.

See the problem people have is not with that so much as we want God to be just, we just don't want him to be just towards us. We want justice for others but deep down we know that we're deserving of judgment ourselves. Lewis mentioned this briefly in the passage but have you ever noticed, then you get caught in moral violation, violation of this law that we're talking about, that the impulse is not to deny the law, the impulse is to pass the blame. And this began at the very beginning with Adam and Eve in the garden, right? God comes to Adam and calls Adam to give an account and Adam didn't say, "Well, yeah. But God your rules weren't fair." No, he says, "Yeah, but it wasn't my fault. It was that woman that you gave me, it was her fault and you gave her to me so it's kind of your fault. But it's definitely not my fault."

And we do this, right? "Yeah, I lied but everybody lies." "Yeah, I stole but not as much as that person over there." "Yeah, I'm bad but you're no better." "Yeah, I did X, Y and Z but I'm only human." I see how foolish that is, in what human courtroom would that defense stand up? "Okay judge, let me just say, I totally murdered that guy. Yep. My bad. I'm only human. Also, it's just one guy, he was kind of annoying, it's not like I'm Hitler." Why do we always go there? Where do we get this idea that the best standard for judgment should be comparing ourselves to the worst person in history, right? The measuring stick of morality is not Hitler's wickedness, the measuring stick of morality is God's holiness.

And we acknowledge that. We see that no one even comes close to measuring up. We all fall short. Take a moment here to brag about some glory days, remember Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite? "Back in '82, I could throw a pig skin a quarter of a mile. I bet I could throw a football over the mountains." That's where we're going to go right now. Back in '82, I was born in '82, but back in '98, believe this or don't, I could dunk a volleyball. On a good day, with no one guarding me, at the right angle, give me a few tries, I could even dunk a girl's basketball. I could never quite dunk a men's basketball. The reason this is a big deal, I'm five foot seven and a half. That was a big deal for me for those couple years that I could accomplish it.

I was always living in the shadow of Spud Webb, remember him? He was five foot seven and not a half and he won the '86 NBA Dunk Competition, that was always looming over my head. And then you had Muggsy Bogues, he was five foot three in the NBA and he could dunk. But at least for me, small town, Midwest Dutch boy, that was a big deal. I could dunk a girl's basketball, I could dunk a volleyball, I could jump. We're all jumping and some of us can jump higher than others. And we're looking this way and we're looking that way and we're thinking, "Hey, as long as I can jump higher than some of these other chumps around me, then I'm must be doing okay." We measure ourself against the standard of our peers and then we feel justified so long as we're at least somewhat average.

And I know some of you and I know that you can jump and from a human perspective, your vertical is impressive but from God's perspective, looking down on earth, he's not impressed with any of our attempts to jump up to the heavens. I'm not talking about adding a few inches or even a few feet to our vertical jump, even the best of us, even those of us who can dunk a girl's basketball at five foot seven and a half, it's like, "Yeah, you've got light years to go before you hit the mark." Romans 3:23 says, "For there's no distinction for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." See the standard is not to see who can just do the least amount of evil, the goal is not even to see who can do the most amount of good, the goal is perfection, the goal is holiness, the goal is the glory of God. This is what we were created for and anything less falls short.

And now I know what some of you might be thinking, you might be thinking like, "I can't believe that, that standard is just too high." And I get that. And so for the sake of the argument, then I would just ask you to ask yourself, if that is not the standard, then what is the standard? We know there's a standard. If you're going to be a law to yourself, as Paul talks about the Gentiles being a law to themself, are you even able to measure up to your own expectations of yourself or to the people around you for that matter? If you believe that honesty is better than deception, have you ever told a lie? If you believe that fidelity is better than betrayal, have you ever broken a promise? Have you ever let down your friends, your family, your spouse? If you believe that love is better than hate, have you ever been angry with a person in your heart? Can you really say that you are as you believe that you ought to be, without guilt and without shame? There's none of us who can.

Just to put it into perspective, what if I told you... I sent this meme out in the newsletter yesterday? What if I told you that Morpheus never actually says the words, "What if I told you," in The Matrix? That's not the point but the point is this, what if I told you that all of your life you've been hooked up to The Matrix or the metaverse? How about that? And what if I told you that our good old friend Mark Zuckerberg, he has been secretly recording every moment of your life, your actions, what you do in private, your thoughts, your inner dialogue, all of it? I know this sermon's going to get shadowbanned under Facebook for this but whatever. And what if I told you that we've got your life on tape right now, up here on the screens, we're all going to pop some popcorn and we're going to just at least watch the highlight reel of all of the darkest moments of your life together?

Could one confidently say, "Go ahead. I've got nothing to hide, I'm not ashamed, I am guiltless, I am fully as I ought to be." Or would you say, "Why on earth did I ever open a Facebook account?" We know. And we're not going to watch the tape of your life, don't worry, but Jesus has and he's seen it all. I'm going to hit pause and we're going to come back to that in just a moment because there's something else here that I want to deal with in this text. Because sometimes you maybe have heard, some people will use this text to suggest that Paul is teaching that people who have never heard the gospel can still be saved by their good deeds by keeping the law that is written on their hearts. And that might sound comforting at first, it's actually the opposite of what Paul is teaching here.

What Paul is saying is that even those who never hear the gospel, never read the Bible, they have the law of God written on their hearts but instead of keeping it, they break it, none can keep it and so all of us, whether Jews Gentiles alike, we're all guilty, we're all without excuse. That's the big idea. Now, can a sovereign God intervene and save a person? Yeah. That happened with the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. He wasn't sitting in a church service, God just beamed him and said, "You're mine, I'm saving you, get up and go, I'm going to tell you what to do." And we've had, it's not common but we've had people come to Mosaic, they're like, "I grew up Muslim and Jesus came to me in a dream and said, you need to become a Christian and go to church." And they listened and they obeyed, they got baptized, they got saved.

God can do that. Yeah. But scripture shows us that, that is the exception, that is not the rule. The rule, the application and where we're going to see Paul go with this train of thought as we move through the book is that the gospel is the power of God to salvation, that the name of Jesus Christ, there is no other name given under heaven by which men must be saved and so therefore there is an urgency to preach the gospel to anyone, to everyone who will listen and to take this message to the ends of the Earth. That's the application. Now, the reason that some might want to twist this text to say otherwise is because on the surface that doesn't seem fair, right? From a human perspective, it doesn't seem fair that some would never get the chance to hear the gospel.

Now here's the problem. Where did we get this idea that the gospel was fair if the gospel is not fair? It is not fair that the holy, innocent, pure, spotless lamb of God, Jesus Christ would suffer and die for the wicked, depraved, sinful, rebellious enemies of God, that is not fair. So questioning the fairness of salvation is not where you want to start. Of course, it's not fair and praise God it's not fair, if it was fair that would mean that we all just go straight to hell right now, that would be fair. The question we should ask is not, why doesn't God just save everyone? The question we should ask is, why would God choose to save anyone at all and do so at such a tremendous cost to himself? He had to sacrifice everything that which he most loved and cherished in order to save us. And it wasn't because of anything good in us that deserved it, it was only because of him. It was because of his divine goodness, patience, kindness, mercy, compassion and love.

And so this theme will probably come up some more as we work through Romans, we'll be it into it more detailed as we go. But for now we just see that the big idea is this, that everyone has the law written on their hearts and so therefore we are all guilty and without excuse because none of us have kept that law, none of us have measured up to that mark, none of us has lived up to that standard. Except for one person and that person was Jesus Christ, that God the law giver took on flesh, entered human history to become the law keeper so he could stand in the place of us who were the law breakers.

And this brings us to the final point that we must face the reality of the law and its giver, we must face the reality of our guilt and our shame but the only way that we can do this with any sense of confidence and hope is by facing the reality of our judge and our defender and that's Jesus Christ. And so let me just start by saying Jesus is coming soon, maybe in our lifetime, but if not, I mean, the most any of us have is 70 years or so, soon we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And this should either be our greatest source of hope and joy in this life or our greatest source of misery and terror because you will either stand before the judge alone and without defense or you will stand there with Jesus Christ, who is your defense.

And Jesus will judge the world in righteousness and praise God for that because without that heaven would become hell. The promise of Christ's return is the promise that even though things are not as they ought to be right now, a day is coming when that will no longer be true. The promise of Christ's return is that a day is coming when everything that is done in secret will be brought into the light. And it doesn't matter who you are, man, woman, Jew, Gentile, rich, poor, slave, free, you will give an account and when the judge sits on his throne, he will show no partiality. That's where Paul began. That Jesus will judge the world in his righteousness but he will also defend the church with his righteousness as well. And now whether that is true for you personally, then it depends on what you do with Jesus Christ right now. And before we talk about what you need to do with Jesus right now, I want to remind you about what Jesus did for us back then.

And Paul writing to the church in Ephesus in the first chapter of Ephesians. He says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."

Before the creation of the world and God saw everything that would to ever be, not just the metaverse, the entire universe, all of human history, he saw it all. And Jesus watched the movie of your life, past, present, future, every word, every thought, every action he saw it all. He saw the avatar, the facade, the shell of your outer life, he saw beyond your attempts to cover your guilt and your shame and he peered deep into the darkness of your soul. He watched that movie and as the credits began to roll, he stood up and he said, "I still love you and I have chosen you and you are my beloved. And though you have not been faithful and you fully deserve to die, I will not leave you or forsake you. I will make you mine."

And Jesus looked at his bride, the church and he said, "I will take the nails of her iniquity into my own hands and feet. I will carry her sorrows and wash away her tears. I will be raised up on her cross to publicly bear the nakedness of her shame. I will pay her debt with my blood. I will take her punishment with my body. I will go through hell to give her heaven. I will die and she will live. I will bear her sin so that she can wear my righteousness. I will be wrapped in the linens of her death and buried in her tomb so that she can be born anew of my spirit and wrapped in the love of my father. And I will rise from the grave and ascend to the hand of my father and prepare a place for her where she will never be separated from my love and where everything will always be exactly as it ought to be."

That is the hope of the gospel and what have we done to deserve this? Absolutely nothing. What do we do to receive this? We simply repent, turn from our sin, our idolatry, from constantly trying to justify ourselves, surrender and believe. Find our justification in the Lord Jesus Christ, trust him with everything and know that he will be our judge but he can also be our defender. Cry out to God, put your faith in Christ and the promise of scripture is that you will be saved. I'm going to close by reading a couple passages from scripture and then we're going to respond and worship together.

Hebrew 4:14 says this, "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. And let us confidence drawn near a throne of grace that we may receive the mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

And Romans 5:1-2 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God."

If you would like to learn more about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ or if you've made a decision to surrender your life to him today, we would love to talk with you and pray with you. Please come up, talk to us after the service. If you mark on your connection card, we'll follow up with you this week but we would love to follow up and just pray with you and just celebrate that decision. Right now, I'm going to pray and then we're going to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and worship him together. Let's pray.

Father I ask that you would just stir our hearts to be just speechless and amazed by your mercy. God, give us a vision of your glory, of your majesty that allows us to grasp the glimpse, the depth of our depravity, not to crush us but to open our eyes to the gravity of the sacrifice that you made, of the blessing that has been offered to us through your son, Jesus Christ. God, teach us to live in a manner worthy of this good news, humble, joyful, confident, bold and always grateful for who you are and for all that you have done for us. God, I pray that your gospel would not return void but that even now that if there are any here today who walked in as strangers and enemies of God, that they would walk out in a newness of life, adopted by your grace, regenerated by your holy spirit, united with your son and help them to find their place in the body of your church. We thank you for Jesus, we pray all of this in his beautiful and powerful name and we worship you now together. Amen.

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Today I am taking up, I think this is our seventh week, in the book of Romans. This is the book that is called the fifth gospel. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John talking about the life of Christ. But this is often called Paul's gospel. The Apostle Paul, the most influential man in world history, apart from Jesus Christ, this is how he framed the gospel to the church in Rome around AD 50, year 50. And we are taking it up. We are currently in a section where Paul says the gospel is the power of God and to salvation for the Jew first and also the Greek. And immediately he steps into the gospel as the power of God and to salvation, but he steps into a section about wrath. Romans 1:18 through 3:20, he's heavy on wrath that all men, for their unrighteousness, for their sin, cannot stand before God apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And therefore, they're under God's wrath. It's a heavy section, but we can learn today that, going to the depth, ultimately makes the light shine much brighter.

Let me read from Romans chapter two versus six through 10. That's Romans chapter two versus six through 10, and hear the word of our Lord. He will render to each one, according to his works. To those who by patients and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. This is the inner and fallible fully authoritative word of God. May he write these truths upon our heart. And if before I go in, we had a lot of mic trouble in first service. I have a backup mic right behind me. Thank you in advance for your patience if we have to deal with that. Let's pray.

Heavenly father as one of the songs that we just sung said, "Jesus is the desire of every nation." Going beyond that, he's the desire of every heart. But many nations and many people do not admit that or acknowledge that. And Lord, even those of us who know Jesus as our Lord and savior, our desires for him, for his rule and reign, for his grace to penetrate the depths of our sin and brokenness is too weak. Lord, we confess today that we are numbed. We are lukewarm. We are deaf and blind to your word often. It's not because of your doing, it's because of our own doing. And we pray right now that as we open up your word, as we engage some of the greatest themes that there are to life and eternity, that you would awake in our hearts, that you would soften them, that you would ignite a fire in us that last for eternity as we pursue growth and glory in Jesus Christ. Holy spirit just bless our time together, in Jesus name I pray. Amen.

Our text today is a mine field. It begins with, he will render to each one according to his works. If anyone's been in the church for any amount of time, short amount of time, this verse here, it just will trigger, you know that that is going to trigger half the minds in here to think, is this a presentation on the millennial old topic of works versus faith as the means for our salvation. What most pastors do, how they handle the text is typically a pretty dry technical conversation or presentation where they offer a lot of dozens of proof text to say which side they land on. Ultimately, I think that this passage has a lot more than just contributions on that topic. And really most people don't leave sanctified or encouraged in their faith through such conversation. I don't want to leave here with my I head exploding. I don't want you to leave here or your head exploding. I'm going to take up a different theme. Furthermore, my dad actually worked on mine sweeping ships for much of his career.

The thing that I learned most through his boring engineering lingo over the years was, the best way to avoid mine is to go around them. That's the best way to prevent yourself from getting blown up. And then let a minesweeper come in and do the detailed work. Pastor Jan, he waited 12 or 13 years to get to Romans. And then his text next week really engages this works verse a faith topic. You're welcome Pastor Jan, I mean, chapters two, three, four just really continue on this topic. We're going to get plenty of that. What I want to stick with today is just what is very clear on the surface of this passage. I have two points to make, let the gravity of the gospel into your life and live in the glory of it. Let the gravity of the gospel into your life and live in the glory of it. To begin, let the gravity of the gospel into your life.

Of the many things that our text for today teaches, it says many, one area that's very clear and extremely important and one that everyone in this room can understand is what it says about the stake of judgment. It's clear that the text says, when your life on this earth ends and this present age of God's creation ends, God will give you either eternal life or wrath and fury. He'll give you either eternal life or wrath and fury. You'll receive either glory and honor and immortality and peace, or you'll receive tribulation and distress. Heaven or hell awaits you. Awaits each one of us, as the text talks about. These are weighty topics. When your life on this earth ends, God will give you either eternal life or wrath and fury. You'll receive either glory and honor and immortality and peace, or you'll receive tribulation and distress. Heaven or hell awaits each one of us.

You know what I want to do when I come to church? I want to come out and jam a band like we just did. This is week three or four on wrath. I know it's heavy. And I know some of you are saying, "I don't really want to engage this right now. I'm not ready at this point in the morning. The tea was late. I got here late. My heart's not settled. Let's ease into something a little lighter." But one of the points I want to make is that there's never time to address this, to address these topics, heaven, hell, life, death, glory, judgment, wrath, immortality. These are categories that just aren't a part of our culture today. And there's little preparation that we have in the world around us to really engage these topics. Here's a few things. We live in a day where self and the self immediate needs are at the forefront of everybody's thought. I don't need to back that. That's true. We rarely have to think beyond the moment.

We have on demand everything, food, entertainment, rides, apps, Amazon Prime, so that we can basically get any item that we want delivered to our door within 24 hours. We live in a day where depth and wisdom is not rewarded or popular. It's all about flash. It's all about image. It's all about what gives somebody a momentary rise. People who read books are not that highly regarded. Depth is not really thought of very highly. I see this with my son in his kindergarten class already. He's five and a half. And you already see the children who are just really just charismatic, personality wise, really beautiful, just really engaging that they have a following. Then the little girl with the curly hair who you can tell is really contemplative, she's not getting as much attention. She's not as appreciated. Like death, wisdom, contemplation of the big topics of life are not commended. We live in a day where we content to use mindfulness and therapy only to find treatments of issues that are deep and foundational.

We accept just treatment, whatever distraction, comfort chemical numbs us or temporarily makes us forget the greatest problems we face and the biggest questions that we have. That's what we take. We accept that. Our dreams are filled with us at the center of them. God is not a part of them. The nation, the community, they are not a part of just our future, when we envision where we're going. Lots of young people don't envision having a family coming out of their college and young adulthood. Sin is not called sin. We just don't have a category for it in our country. We're constantly encouraged to push guilt and shame that is from sin, our own sin, our own doing upon those who have ill treated us in the past. Lastly, we pay other people to handle our dead. We send people away to die to nursing homes. For most of history, there were professional wellers and people who were professional at processing grief, helping families through such periods.

And we're not to grieve as those without hope. And those who go too far with it, but we just don't deal with illness. We don't deal with death. We don't face it. You look at a situation like today with Ukraine, you look at COVID, those first couple of weeks, people just don't really know how to fathom these moments. The first couple weeks of quarantine I'm talking about, when people were actually really scared that they were going to die. A lot of people just didn't know how to talk about it. The categories of life, death, heaven, hell, we've been distracted away from addressing them. Satan is genius has done that, and we don't really know how to process them. We don't really know when we're faced with the weight of them. It just paralyzes us. We just literally get paralyzed or we do whatever we can to busy ourselves to stay away from them. In our culture, we do everything we can to avoid the fact that death is coming and that judgment is coming.

But even in churches, the weight of these topics, the weight of these verses today, it's not felt. Even in churches there's often an atmosphere that God and salvation have only to do with my presenting, relational, financial and mental wellbeing needs. God is only relevant in those moments of victory or when we just need them bad in the pinch. We're content to let the power of the gospel only penetrate those issues that are on the surface for fear of the inconvenience that led in that penetrate further would cause the kind of upheaval that the gospel would cause, should we let it? Jesus said, "You must leave mother and brother and sister and father to follow me faithfully." None of us like to hear that. And just what that looks like in other areas, Christians who look after the needs of others or believe that the gospel, the why in the church, there's also the situation where Christians who actually believe that the gospel is the primary need of every soul in creation, and can help mankind overcome the greatest problems in the world are few.

And I just want to clarify, mankind and the just joy and health of America, that is not what we seek first and foremost as Christians. It's not the church just should be a blessing, we should seek to glorify God before we bring just peace and Shalom to the land around us. When we pursue that glory, that's when our power can transcend and go beyond these doors. But the people who really believe in the power of the gospel, to really change people's hearts in eternity and then hear with the world and their engagement with the world are few. And in my role, we have this young church and I'm still pretty young. But one of the conversation that I have often with new Christians in their late teens or early twenties, they come here, they're converted, their hearts are on fire. They're repenting of sin, and their eyes are opened for the first time in their life of just the situation of the world of life, death, heaven, hell, the church. When their eyes are finally opened, they see, how come so few Christians have passion to share the gospel.

We don't believe in the gravity of the gospel, the way the depth that it can penetrate into the hearts and lives of the people around us. And the practice of the church that most illustrates that we don't really understand the gravity of the gospel is found in the way that we share the gospel. How do we share the gospel most often today. We say, come to Christ and experience love, joy, peace, and hope that you've never experienced. We say, come to Christ, build your identity on the rock of Jesus Christ. And those are faithful gospel presentations. Those are the presentations that we share exclusively, we're kind of providing a romanticized version of Christianity. When do you ever hear someone go direction of, come to Christ to honor the God who in the splendor of his majesty and holiness is a consuming fire. He will consume anything that is touched by sin. We rarely say, repent of your sin and believe in Jesus so that you can spend eternity in heaven and hell. Everybody in modern Boston, we don't share the gospel with these terms that have gravity.

These terms that we see in this passage today. Flee the wrath and fury of God. And I'm not saying you have to go and do this to everybody this week or hold the sign out in public. Sometimes that is appropriate. Everyone in modern Boston, just pausing here on this point, everyone in modern Boston and Brookline hears about love, joy, peace, and hope all the time. And these terms have been hijacked and confused, yet that's what we use in our engagement. You want to make a gospel presentation that lingers on the conscience of somebody, make sure that you talk about life, death, heaven, hell, wrath, sin, repent, forgiveness, justice, holiness. These are the terms that the Apostle Paul used when he shared the gospel. This is what we're reading right now in Romans. And he says, "Do not be ashamed, for it has the power unto God for salvation." This is the book that lit the world on fire when Rome became just the center, just completely pagan place, pagan nation, just the masses were converted and Christianity spread.

And this is the book that is just telling us to be shameless in our sharing of the gospel. This is the book that just triggered the great awakening, the reformation. We shy away. The way that we share the gospel, we do it in such a way that we take the gravity out of it. For most Christians, as the gospel, it's only a substantial to the degree that it served them with their most recent struggle with depression, cancer, illness, or relational struggle. And that might sound impressive already but it is not. You see people who really look to the gospels as, it gave me deliverance for this situation. Instead of, it gave me deliverance for my sin in eternity. When life is really tested, when their faith is really challenged, when circumstances of their life are terrible, you see a lot of people drift away with that kind of supposed faith. What our passage shows us today is that the gospel is mainly and primarily about how to be right with God at the day of judgment.

The gospel is mainly and primarily about how to be right with God at the day of judgment. It's not primarily about good experiences, feelings and personal preferences for life being met here, but first and foremost, about safety at the judgment and glory beyond. As Christians, we need to let the weight of this statement stay at the forefront of our minds as we walk through life on this earth. When you think about your friends who you supposedly love, but you never share this message with, what could be a more important or urgent topic or weighty topic than your and their misery or glory for all of eternity. I once heard an atheist comedian say, "If I have a Christian friend and he does not share the gospel with me, how much does he really hate me to not share it with me?" We don't trust the gravity of the gospel, and we need to. We need to Let the gravity of the gospel come into our lives. Athletes and musicians know the power of keeping, just what their craft is all about at the forefront of their minds. They know the importance of constantly visualizing themselves receiving, in the midst of the battle, in the midst of the game, the fight, then visualizing receiving primarily, what do they visualize, receiving the trophy or metal with their team, with confetti flying around. Or they themselves performing with those of lights on them. They know that if they don't prepare with any other mindset, they probably won't get on the field or they'll get destroyed on the field, or they won't get on the stage. It'll just be a travesty. Tom Brady, he knows that he can't come out of retirement again just to throw the ball around for giggles. If he wants to come back, if he doesn't want his body to get destroyed, he has to just really come back with that mentality that he has had for 20 years or whatever saying, "I'm here to get that trophy from Roger Goodell, despite the awkwardness of us standing next to each other." Tom needs that mindset. We need that mindset. We need to let the gravity, what is most essential that the gospel delivers us from eternal wrath and fury at the forefront of our minds.

That is what is going to drive us to persevere. That is what is going to drive us to greater acts of faithfulness and service. And how do you do it? I want to just do just a different activity for mosaic. I want to help you. I want to tell you how to talk to yourself, talk others. Children, I hate to say this, but someday you are going to die. I hope that you get to live a long and joyful life, but there's a chance that you might be really young when you die. It happens to some people. When you die sooner, but hopefully later, you'll either enter eternal life with God or face God's anger forever. Fortunately, you don't have to fear death. God has given his son Jesus to die for sinners. He said that, everyone who believes in him will not go to hell, but have eternal life. I know you have a lot of fun and important things to do, but you need to care about death.

Keep listening to me today and ask your parents, especially your dad to teach you more about Jesus and how you can be in heaven forever. Teenagers, look up from your screen and take in God's creation around you. Take in what is truly good in it. Don't build your sense of significance around what other people think of you. Don't give the best of your energy and attention to TikTok videos or Snapchats that last a moment and disappear and lose relevance forever. If you do, you may find that your mind and heart are so influenced by the world that you'll have literally no sense of what is truly good and godly and pure when you say you're going to think about this when you're older. College students, most of you have a parent/benefactor who is literally committed to paying for every penny of your cost of living for several years, to think about the big topics of life and eternity. You will never have this kind of opportunity or the time to do it again.

Wake up every morning, go to the cafeteria when it opens at 6:00 or 6:30 AM, get your free food, read the word of God, memorize it, chew on it and pray, and then treat your classes like they're your 9:00 to 5:00 so that you can actually have a tent making skill in your ministry later. You think these are big commands, but they're not. You're an adult. Don't extend your adolescence. Don't blindly accept the skubala that your professors, that's a theological term, kind of like horse pucky. Don't accept the skubala that your professors are serving you in class. Engage all that you learn with the Bible. Don't be too proud to ask for questions and clarity and explanation when you prayerfully and honestly ask the big questions or stand on scripture when nobody else is. Trust that the Lord will be there with you. He'll give you wisdom to face that moment and to move forward. And then young married couples and singles in the prime of your life. And this is word for word. I got this from someone else, because it was just too good. Be aware of being swept into the all consuming demands of your careers, only to find yourselves gasping for some fun and entertainment on the weekend, finding your relief from worldly work and worldly fun. And waking perhaps someday to realize you have no taste for things of God. You have become a connoisseur of restaurants and videos and movies, sports and stocks and computers and a hundred transient things. And all the while, your sense of heaven and hell has died. Wake up before it's too late and tremble at these things today. And set your minds to think about the biggest issues in the universe, eternal life or wrath. All the young men and women with no hair or light or shades of hair in here today, don't deny that the end of your days could be approaching fast. And that brings concern to your soul. Don't wait for another day. Don't wait for retirement. Honestly, ask yourself if you are ready to face your maker. If you find that you are not, confess your sin and ask God to cloth you with the righteousness of Jesus.

Don't shy away from building the legacy of being the grandparent friend, aunt or uncle who only talks about Jesus. To the nonbeliever, I know you don't want to hear me talk to you in this semi awkward format. I say, listen to your conscience. When it tells you that you're not in the right before your maker, don't do all that you can to suppress it. At the rare moments when you're confronted by death, don't deny its repulsion. Don't deny that eternity is written on your heart and death conflicts with that. Flee from sin through death and fury for and run to your heavenly father who's waiting longing for you to come home because of Jesus sacrifice for you on the cross. You think these topics are too weighty to engage, but you're missing half the message of the gospel. Yes, they are heavy by worldly standards to engage. But the point of the gospel is that Jesus took the full weight of your sin on the cross. And the God-man was able to take that weight, take the penalty that you deserve, bear that wrath and he overcame it and rose from the dead.

And you can have freedom from the authority of that sin, this weight that you feel when you engage these topics, just by believing that Jesus did that for you. To all of USA, let gospel gravity into your life. You nerds who wish that I really did a technical discussion of verse six, let the gravity of the gospel into your life. Worship the Lord, not just with your mind and strength, but also with your heart and soul. In a city like Boston, we have a lot more of those people who want that technical discussion, but they don't want the gravitas, the weight of the gospel to hit them. It interrupts their efficiency. You need to allow space in your schedule. Allow space in your heart. I know it's a relatively simple point to emphasize. Let the gravity of the gospel into your life, especially for those who have been in the church for a long time. But it's particularly you who need to ponder about this. And before I go further, this is the meditation of my heart and mind in my prayer life.

most of my prayer life is saying, "Lord, I know that you are God. I know that I'm a sinner. I know that Jesus went to the cross for me. I know that he's delivered me from the penalty of your wrath forever. And that just by a simple matter of faith, trust in you, I get to go to heaven." But today, that does not move my heart. Lord, why, what has numbed my senses? What has numbed my soul today to the point that I am not moved by this. It's okay if this ends up becoming your daily prayer life. That's me 75% of the mornings. But I have to get up and engage that fight. I fight it. I push for it and I have to get that peace with God on a vertical level so that I can engage the world properly on a horizontal level. So I can truly love people and extend compassion to them in the name of Jesus.

But this topic, it's something that I engage with, that gravity of this message hit me. And if there's something wrong, it's not because God has changed. It's because something in my heart has changed. And this point, I really think this is the message of Romans 1:18 to 3:20, this whole section on wrath. 1:18 begins with, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all and godliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Romans 3:20 goes, "For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." What this whole section is saying, it's Paul beginning with gospel saying that you have to feel the depth of your status before God, apart from Jesus, in order to go into end of chapter three and four, to see how glorious his light is. To see how amazing and astonishing the gospel is that it's only by faith in Christ, that he took the wrath for you.

You have to enter these depths, you have to enter the gravity of the gospel to be able to see its glory. But furthermore, people of the church, especially those who have been here for a while, in the church for a while, this is just the message that you need to hear the gravity and let the gravity enter into your life. This is really important because, just throughout church history, throughout the Bible, it's really the saints who forgot this, that led them to doing heinous sin. Those who forgot how their life fits into God's big story of redemption, this is the downfall of many of them. Think of King David, a man after God's own heart who wrote some of the heaviest literature, the heaviest poetry in the history of the world. Think of Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. Prophetically, just engaging Christ excruciating pain on the cross 800 years before it actually happened. David who understood the gospel to that degree saw into God's heart. He forgot.

He forgot the gravity of it all. He forgot his role in God's history of redemption. He went out one day on his porch and started looking at women bathing. That led to great tragedy. Fortunately, he knew to turn and receive God's grace in the moment. But many times in church history, people fall asleep. In the New Testament, the occasion for writing many of the books that we have in the New Testament, it was when Christians forgot that the gospel of salvation in Jesus was primarily the good news that they needed for eternity. And what Paul's engaging in those moments is, because they forgot that, they just started engaging the church, trying to project their preferences, their longings, their desires for how the church functioned onto the church. So that those things took precedence over the gospel. And that's what we have in Romans. Yes, with Romans the whole book, he's kind of given them, "Hey, this is my gospel. I'm going to travel to you one day. I want to make sure we're on the same page here."

But he knew about this situation. It was a church that was filled with Jews and Gentiles. There was a lot of tension actually. The church was started by Jews, probably met in synagogues. The Jews were booted out of the city in AD 49 because of tensions between Jews and Gentiles about Christ. And then the church was taken over by Gentiles. And while the Jews were out of the city and as they crept back in, the Jews and Gentiles were battling over how the church should run. Should the Jewish calendar be observed, should the Gentiles? We're looking down upon the Jews for some of the things that stirred their conscience and vice versa. Paul is writing this book here to explain to them like, "Hey, if this is where your minds are, if this is how your faith, now that the honeymoon period has ended, if this is what fills your mind, you're missing the gravity of it all. And you need to repent and you need to just look at the basics of the gospel." And I'm going to begin with wrath very thoroughly for you. You're missing the gravity.

I worked for a church before mosaic one time. And there was an issue where, there was a battle over what knife to use to cut the communion bread. And that battle got so big. It had to travel up to the pastors. And churches wonder where is their power? Where is their authority? It's because they've lost the focus. They've lost sense of the gravity of the gospel. They wonder why their lamp stand has gone out. I've just sat here made you think about the gravity of it this whole time, but I do want to point to you, let the gravity of the gospel into your life, and when you do that, live in the glory of it. Those who are really in Jesus, as you let the gravity of the gospel into your life, you'll be brought to praise and glory and honor, as you ponder the immortality, the salvation, the glory that you have at the revelation of Jesus Christ. I emphasize, yes, the gospel is primarily about how to be right with God at the day of judgment, but live in the glory of it today.

Verse seven, it talks about, to those who by patience and well doing seek for glory and honor, and immortality, seek, that's an active connotation, seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. Verse 10, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. What Paul's talking about here is, show yourself elevation to be true. Eventually, Pastor Jan is going to get up on stage and tell you in a couple weeks, again, for the thousandth of time, that salvation is actually by grace through faith. It's not by works. We do need to think about this engagement here in detail. By salvation, by grace through faith, it's gifted to you and you only have to receive this message in faith to have eternal life. And you're called out of thanksgiving for what God has done to you, by patience and well doing seek for glory. By persistence and well doing. As an expression of your faith to prove it genuine, work it out in your life.

By taking on callings, doing good works for God's glory. These are primarily talking about eternal benefits, but we can desire to make them our own today in our life. And this is again, engaging the context Paul show that he wants the Romans to grow in glory in Romans 15:5-7. Chapter 14 and 15, Paul engages these tensions and these stupid debates that the Romans were having at the distraction of emphasizing the gospel in the community. He says, "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one other, in accord with Christ Jesus. That together you may, with one voice, glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. What's at stake he's saying, if you keep squabbling over these just minor shortsighted topics, is the glory of God. Paul wants the Romans to start fighting for God's glory in their lives, in the church today. He wants them to repent of this short sightedness, to repent of just going into the community of God and pursuing their own preferences that they be upheld.

He wants them to have vision for greater things in their life, to see God glorified. It's okay to read from these verses, I want that glory today. I want God's name to be glorified in the world, in every nation. I want every tribe to hear his word and glorify him. I want God's name to be glorified in my life, such that his righteousness is manifested more and more, as I step forward. I want God to grow in glory by seeing the fruit of the holy spirit increase in my life. I want to grow in the gifts that I have. I want more of the gifts. I want greater levels of sanctification. I want sin to have less impact on my life. I want God's glory to increase in my life. When on mission, I step out in weakness and see his power made manifest through my humble efforts. This glory of the doxa in the text and Greek, it's kind of the term that's used hundreds of times, you can't really get specific. Glory is an all encompassing. There's many facets of it, and we should pursue them all.

And most importantly, make sure that it's God's glory that we're persuing, not our own first and foremost. A lot of Christians and biblical circles don't want to talk in this way. I think we're afraid to just get a little too close to prosperity gospel. But we need to drop the kind of faul humility that says that we don't want God's glory to grow in our lives. The saints of history were people who wanted to experience God's glory more and see it spread in the world and their own hearts. Think of Moses, as he pleaded with God to see him and God let him eventually see his backside. King David, yes, he did have his stumbling, but David was called a man after God's own heart. David understood it. David knew that life wasn't about him, but about God and God fulfilling his redemptive purposes for man and whatever happened, all glory be to him.

And David wanted to see God's name so glorified that, at a big moment when the Ark of Israel just representing the presence, containing the presence of God, was on its way to Jerusalem, he essentially danced in his win and effort. His underwear, he thrust off all public forms that would bring him adoration to just show his excitement, to see God be glorified in this moment. Nehemiah, a man who was just in the cushiest job possible for Jew in exile as the wine taster of the king of Persia, a man who his heart was broken to just simply hear that God's holy city Jerusalem was left unprotected. The walls had come down. He left that job in order to honor and glorify God to go rebuild that wall with enemies all around him. These people, these men, and some women in scripture, think of Esther sacrificing in her life, putting her life on the line for God's glory. These people knew the gravity of the gospel. They knew the stakes that were before them and they saw to maximize God's glory in the way that they did everything in their life.

Who really model modeled this, the Apostle Paul, he said, the man with the greatest ministry apart from Jesus, in the line of Jesus. He said, "But whatever gain I had ... This is Philippians 3:7-16. "But whatever gain I had, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of known Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I've offered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection. And may share in his sufferings, becoming like him and his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I've already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Brothers, I do not consider that I've made it my own. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God and Christ Jesus. But those of us who are mature, think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained." Paul's saying, "Think like me." It's okay for a pastor or to say that. Think like me. In my family, I know I'm not anybody. I am a simple man. I've struggled with speech my whole life throughout elementary school. They sent me to speech therapy. I just didn't talk. I had a cousin in my class who did the talking for me. I was efficient. I didn't need to say anything. But I'm nobody. I know I'm not a world class public speaker. I know that I don't have the greatest technical skills, the greatest organizational skills, but I'm trying to live my life to maximize glory of God with what he's given me.

And with the resources that he has put at my disposal. If each and every one of us in the church imagine how much he would be glorified, that's the top thing that should be on our minds. And then imagine his grace, his love, his power pouring, his glory pouring through society. And I would say, I am just a simple man. And people's lives change when they engage with me. I think it's only because in my alone time, I fight for faithfulness. It's only because I'm trying to fight sin early and just call upon, "Lord, I need you right now in this. In my own personal fights and as I engage these fights that I'm called to do as a member of this church and in my job as a pastor." And people do change. You don't have to be a public speaker like Pastor Jan. Every one of us has the holy spirit of God working in us. And he promises to gift every single member of the church for the good and upbuilding and mission and power of the church.

If the gospel, you have the message, you have this message with gravity that can change people's lives for eternity forever. And even if you don't see that happening, all glory be to God. he's chosen to save some and not others. But when you step out in faithfulness, all glory be to him, and ultimately one day he will bring full justice when Jesus Christ returns. And when we focus on that faithfulness, that's when he is glorified. Do you think this life is too heavy? These topics of wrath, judgment, death, heaven, hell, sin, repentance, faith, are too much to graph, too much to chew on. If so, you're missing the key message of the gospel. Christ already took the weight that we feel when we engage these topics and see that we naturally, on our own accord, are subject to wrath and punishment and fury. We don't have to feel that burden. We can live in the light. We can live in freedom. We don't have to all become religious zealots with my message when I say pursue the glory of God.

There's freedom to this life. And particularly, that freedom that sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ, that's what frees people to become who they really are. That's what glorifies God. Let that gravity of the gospel into your life and live in the glory of it. And just trust that when you share it with others, that they can experience the same glory. If you do feel the weight of burden of all this and just struggling to persevere going forward, standing on this word of the world, I just want to close with 2nd Corinthians 4:16-18. We do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. That's the good stuff, God's glory growing within us. For this light momentary friction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient. But the things that are unseen are eternal.

Lets pray. Lord, we just come to you and we acknowledge that have looked to the things that are seen too much at the cost of not looking at the things that are unseen. Lord, we pray that your spirit would call us out of our slumber. Call us out of our apathy, call us out of just the sloth in which we live and give us great visions, a great vision for life and your glory. Life in eternity with you, but more specifically, while we're awaiting Jesus' return. Give us vision for how we can pursue your glory, greater in the world, that it would be maximized in the world and in us. Lord, show us the steps that we need to take to honor you. And Lord, when we step out in faith, when we share this message, that just the penalty of sin is death, wrath, fury, we pray that people would hear your voice.

That they would be stricken with fear. They would be confronted at the thought of your holiness. But then Lord, incline their hearts, use us to incline their hearts to turn to and look at Jesus to see that the penalty has already been paid. Lord I pray that we would be able to walk in the freedom of just newness that we have in Jesus Christ that will last forever. And we pray that you would use us to walk in that newness. While the world is routing away lord, we just pray, use us, in your process to make all things new again. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the blessing it is to gather as your people. We don't take this blessing for granted, we recognize that there are people in other parts of the country that do not have this blessing, they cannot gather and worship you. In particular, Lord, we think of the people in Ukraine and we pray for a miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit for peace there, and we also pray for a tremendous revival to come, for souls to be saved, for people to enter the kingdom of God. Also, we do pray for our church, we thank you, Holy Spirit, for stirring, we pray you continue to stir, continue to set our hearts on fire so that we don't just receive the blessings, but think about how we can extend the blessings to those who don't yet have them.

Bless our time, the Holy scriptures today, and as we meditate on your kindness, Lord, we thank you for it. And we thank you for the kindness of your blessings, and the kindness that sometimes you give us up to our sins in order to awaken us to our need for you. We thank you, Lord, for that. And all of your kindness is meant to lead us to repentance and obedience of faith. We pray that you bless our time, the Holy scriptures, we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

We're going through a sermon series in the epistle of Romans. Today, we're in Romans 2:1-5, the title of the sermon is God's kindness, just to catch you up on the train of thought, Saint Paul begins this train of thought in verse 16, 17, wherein he says, "Look, I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's power, it's power of God unto salvation for all who believe to the Jew first," he says, "And also to the Greek and the Gentile." He starts with the Jew first, because these are God's covenant people, Israel, they got all the blessings, they got so much revelation, and Saint Paul, his ministry was he'd go into cities and the first thing he would do is preach in synagogues.

He's not ashamed of the gospel, he's not ashamed before Jews, he's not ashamed before Gentiles, and he hears specifically, the hinge to understand the transition between Romans 2:1-5 and Romans 1:24-32. The hinge is the fact that God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. Sometimes, that kindness includes wrath, that God sends short term wrath in our life difficulties in our life to bring us to the point where we get on our knees and we cry out for God to help us. And then the same kindness, he says, God gives to the Jewish people, the kindness of his word, the kindness of the prophets, and he's like, "Look, Jewish people, you need the gospel as well." Something similar happens in the story of the prodigal son. So the story of the prodigal son is the Father has two sons and the youngest son comes to the father and he says, "You know what, dad? I wish you were dead. I would prefer that you were dead, I want my inheritance right now," and what's most remarkable... That text, the father gives it to him.

The Father gives into this demand, the son takes the money, and he goes, and he squanders it, and then he hits rock bottom, and Luke 15:17-19 says when he came to himself, when he came to his senses, when he came to his true self and his need for, when he came to his self, he said, "How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger? And I will rise and go to my Father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to call your son, treat me as one of your hired servants."

The son returns home, the father's waiting, he's waiting at the door every evening, every morning, he'd go to the door and he's waiting to see his son. He sees his son and it says the father ran, which is shocking because antiquity men, especially older men, patriarchs, they don't run, you don't run. You can sprint, sprinting is good for you, extended cardio, not so good for men, you can look up the science. So he runs, he embraces, he kisses him, he welcomes him, he puts a robe upon him, he puts a ring on his finger, he puts shoes on his feet, and he throws a party, and he kills a lamb, there's meat, and there's music, and there's dancing, and there's celebration.

And then the older brother, he's coming back from a long day's work, he's working in his father's fields. He comes back and he hears, "What's that sound?" And he finds out from servant, there's a party going on, and they explain to him what happened. And he's welcomed in, refuses to go in because he's so infuriated at his father's grace to the youngest son. The father now goes and pursues the older brother and he's like, "Hey, come in," and then here's the exchange, Luke 15:29-32, he answered his father, "Look, these many years I've... Prostitutes. You killed the fattened calf for him," and he said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this, your brother was dead and is alive, he has lost and is found."

Romans 1 addresses the younger brother, the unrighteous, the ones who God gave them up to their sins. Romans 2 addresses the older brothers who think they don't need grace, who think that they have been obedient, that they are good people. Paul pauses here and the hinge is, hey, everyone needs grace, everyone needs to repent and believe.

And that brings us to our text in Romans 2:1-5, would you look at the text with me? Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, ever, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness, and forbearance, and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."

This is the reading of God's only infallible word... Write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time, first, self-condemning self-righteousness, then we'll look at God's inescapable true judgment, and then third, the kindness of God's patience. Self-condemning self-righteousness, verse 1, therefore he connects this train of thought with everything he's been saying, he's been giving us a chronicle of sins that God gives people up to, and then he's pausing and says, "Therefore..." He's talking specifically to people that read that list and they're like, "Yeah, Paul, go get those sinners," and then he's like, "Oh, hold on, you think you're so righteous? You're judging those people according to who's standard? According to who's law? Have you lived up to the law yourself?" Therefore, he says, "You have no excuse."

There's a shift from a third person, he's been talking about they, and then he turns his attention to you, second person, to you directly. He talked about people who have no excuse because of natural revelation. Natural revelation is you look around creation, and Paul appealing, not just in the mind, but to the soul, knowledge deep inside, truth that we know deep inside, by looking at creation, there's so much evidence that God created everything. To believe that everything came from nothing takes more faith than to believe that God created everything. So he says in chapter one, "You're inexcusable because you've been rejecting God's revelation," and here, he's saying, "You're inexcusable because you have been rejecting God's supernatural revelation," and he's talking to the Jewish people who had God's law, and they had God's code of moral conduct.

Objection for this argument, Paul's just appealing to the soul, he's like, "You know," and the objection is, well, what if people don't know that God exists? What if people don't know that there's a moral law on their hearts? What if they just don't know the truth and because they don't know the truth, they can't even suppress the truth? And my response to that is, do you want proof that people know that God exists? Statistically speaking, very few people are even atheists, most people, you ask them, they'll say, "Well, I believe in God." Even the atheists, I know, I talked about this last week, they're angry about God, they're mad at God, so even they know God exists.

The fact that so many people do believe in God and do nothing with that knowledge proves this text is true. The fact that people don't devote more energy to figuring out, "Hey, where did everything come from? Hey, if Jesus came back from the dead, that's a big deal and everything changes. If the Bible is really God's word, maybe I should actually read it," very few people do that. People look for God with the same intensity as a criminal looks for a cop, we know if we find God, okay, now we're guilty. And this is what Paul is getting at, that we are without excuse. Have you seen the movie, Just Look Up? Is that the name of it? On Netflix. So the whole premise is the end of the world is coming, there's a big meteor coming right at the Earth and the whole message of the lady that found out that we're all going to die, the whole message is she's like, "Just look up, it's right there." That's how I feel about preaching the gospel, just look up to the Lord.

Part of the doom and gloom, I don't know if you noticed in the last couple of weeks, things have gotten darker in the world, and it doesn't seem like it's ending. We just assume there's going to be a ceasefire and we're all set, it looks like the darkness is going to continue, and there's two ways to respond to times like this in history. Number one is freak out, and then you're paralyzed, and you don't do anything, the other one is to capitalize on the situation, and I mean in terms of the church. Times like this are tremendous for the church. If the economy crashes, you're going to see so many people in church, the darker things get, the more desperate people become, people realize, "I am hopeless and I'm helpless, who's got hope?"

We got hope, we're literally in the business of hope. So what I'm saying is, this is a tremendous time for the church, and we need to be preparing ourselves to minister to all of the people that will be coming. I believe in it, I prophesy, name and claim, we're going to fill this baby up, this baby, Temple Ohabei Shalom, we're going to fill it up. And so a couple weeks ago, I got up and I was like, "I think God is stirring my heart to tell you, we need to pray to double the church," and the way the Lord works with me is he sends me signs and I look for signs, because I believe in God, and the sign I was looking for is February 22nd, 2022, all the twos, and I said, "We got to pray at 02:22 AM and 02:22 PM."

And I was on my mom and dad's house, we got on our knees, the whole family, we prayed for the Mosaic, praying, but this is the way that we should be operating, when you pray for something, then you got to step back, you get off your knees, and you're like, "Well, what am I going to do to make that happen?" Obviously, we need the Holy Spirit, but also there's things that we have to do, it's faith and works. And then pastor Shane, he reverse engineered if we do grow, how are we going to minister to everyone that God is going to bring? And we realized the bottleneck in our church is we don't have enough community groups. Community groups is really where you grow as a believer, this is where the discipleship happens, we have 27 now.

For us to double, given the transient, et cetera, and grow, we're praying about becoming a church of 3,000 because the day of Pentecost, the church had 3,000, and once you get to 3,000, you can spark a movement, and there's revival, and everything changes. So we want to get to 3,000 attenders to do that, we need a thousand members to do that, we need another a hundred community groups. Now, here's my prayer and appeal. If you are a man listening to my voice, I am appealing to you to become a community group leader. I am praying for a hundred Navy seal cadets, you're not yet a Navy seal, we're going to whip you into shape, and you're like, "Well, if I'm going to pray about becoming a community group leader, what do I need to do?"

First of all, you need to come to church, second of all, you need to learn your... If you're not a Christian, become a Christian, and then you can... Become a Christian, go to church, read your Bible, join a community group. And once you do that, learn from the community group leader, and then you realize how much work it is to serve people, how much work it is to know people, and love people, and care for people, et cetera, and then after a while, come to us, and we've got training that you'll go through.

And so if you are a man and you're like, "What's the emphasis on the men?" Usually, that question is from ladies, and just let me do what I'm called to do. And what I'm called to do is you get the men, if you get the men, you get everybody, so that's a word from the Lord for me. O man here, he's talking to Jewish people, it's a common form of dress and antiquity, he's not just talking to all of humanity, Paul is unashamed of preaching the gospel to absolutely everybody, in particular here, he's talking to people who think they don't need grace, and then Paul comes in and he's like, "Look, you guys are all hypocrites."

He's chastising his own kinsman according to the flesh, Israel, for what? For their judgemental attitude toward Gentiles. Instead of caring about Gentiles and trying to introduce Gentiles to God, they judged, and condemned, and specifically talking about hypocrisy, he says, "You condemn Gentilism, it practices the very same things." Does this text apply to us? If so, how? Yes, what's true of this, of Israel, was their judgemental spirit, that's what Paul was addressing. It's also true with a lot of Christians, the spirit of condemnation, the spirit of criticism, this applies to absolutely everybody.

He's not saying never judge, he's saying, do not judge if you are committing the sin yourself, that's what he's getting at. He's getting at this spirit of hypocrisy, applies to everyone, in particular, applies to teachers. One of the scariest verses in the Bible, for me and for anyone that preaches the gospel, is James 3:1, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that those who teach will be judged with greater strictness. I used to read that and say, "Oh, very few people should be teachers," that's not where the emphasis is. He's not saying people shouldn't teach the word of God, Jesus said, "Go make disciples," he's saying, "Do not teach the word of God if you are a hypocrite."

And I think that's the bottleneck issue of why we don't have enough community group leaders, because people understand the weight of responsibility, so I want to help you deal with that. The way that you deal with this tension is not by not teaching the gospel, but dealing with the sin within, and we get that from Matthew 7:1-6, Jesus says, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." A lot of people stop there, judge not, you shouldn't judge. You shouldn't judge in a hypocritical way.

And he continues, verse three, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's. Do not give dogs what is Holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs, unless they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you." So Jesus here is making a judgment call.

There are some people who treat the of God like an animal treats something precious, they don't have the spiritual taste buds for it, different sermon for a different day. But the emphasis here is, before you judge somebody, you got to check your own eye, and the way you do that is you look in the mirror. And this is a tremendous test of how you're doing spiritual, literally go up to a mirror today, and stare yourself in the eyes, and see if you can do that for an extended period of time without looking away, and see if there's any shame that wells up in your heart. And if there is, that's the power of the Holy Spirit convicting of sin, repent of sin, turn to him, and now you can help another, that's the emphasis here.

Speaking of judging and condemning, it's 2022, elections are coming up, and 2024 is coming up, I already, I'm like, oh, no. I say that because I lived through 2020, and I lived through 2016 as a pastor of church here, and I've got a nervous tick even just saying 2016. What I ask in this season is we just agree that we can have honest conversations about difficult subjects in love, in the context of love, without condemning, "I can't believe you believe that," that's the only way.

And I have one rule, no biting, that's my one rule, and you're like, "Where'd you get that rule from? The Bible? Do you got a verse?" I got a verse, Galatians 5:15, but if you bite and devour... Was that a problem there? Yeah, I would. If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Okay, right. Point two, that was only one verse. God's inescapable true judgment, Romans 2:2, we know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things, and here the emphasis in the text is the true judgment of God, that God is the only one that can judge truthfully because he knows everything.

And he uses the word, oida, here for know. This is very important because in the Greek, there's two different words for know, there's ginosko and there's oida. Ginosko is you know because you have accumulated information, you've learned, therefore you know. Oida is you intuitively know, you just know, sometimes you don't even know how you know, but you know. I remember when I met my wife, Tanya, it was a love at first sight, I just knew I'm going to marry her, she didn't know, she took a little persuading, it wasn't intuitive for her just yet. But sometimes, you just know. Here, he's saying you know, deep inside, human being, every single one of us, we know that there's a judgment coming, we know that the judgment of God rightfully falls of those who practice such thing.

Deep inside, we know that we have transgressed God's moral law that he's written out our hearts, our conscience testifies to that, and we know that there will be consequences. I remember when moved to the city in 2009 to start church, I had no idea what I was doing, my wife, Tanya, and Sophia was nine months, she's my oldest daughter. The way I tried to evangelize was I would walk around the streets and do spiritual surveys, I had a clipboard because anyone with a clipboard looks official, and I would go up to just random people on the street, bus stops are tremendous, tea stops are tremendous, because they're not going anywhere, and I would say, "Hey, can I have five minutes of your time? I'm doing a little research for a church. I'm doing a spiritual survey," and my first question was, is the world as it ought to be?

And then I would ask, are you the way you ought to be? And the emphasis on the word ought and not once the anyone... One time a girl said, "Yeah, the world is the way it ought to be," and I was like, pedophilia, that's my Trump card. The world is not the way it's supposed to be, so where does this idea come from? This idea of oughtness? That there's a moral duty, a law and blazing on the human conscience? Why should we do the right thing? Where did the idea of right and wrong, good and evil come from? And what's the point of doing the right thing if there won't be judgment coming? And the idea of oughtness assumes that justice is absolutely essential, that the judge must be perfect, he must be righteous, omniscient, knows everything, not overlooking any condemning detail, and omnipotent as the power to ensure vision is carried out.

And the idea of justice assumes and demands that there is life after death, basically we have to go some place where the ultimate verdict can be rendered. So all of that theology comes from, are you the way you ought to be? My wife told me, she said, "I don't know where to put this, but you got to put this in the sermon," so here you go. She said, "You got to, you got to tell then ask themselves, do you have any regrets in your life? Do you have any regrets?" And if you go down the path of regret, you realize yeah, we haven't been the way we ought to be. So back to the question, have you been the way you ought to be? If you say yes, your sin is self-righteousness, and also you just lied and you broke a commandment, so it's unrighteousness.

The answer is no, we're under the righteous condemnation of God. If you have not lived how you ought to have lived, you broke the law that is written on heart, and if there's a law, then there's a law giver, and if there's a law giver, then there's consequences of breaking that law. He continues to verse three, do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? So you do the same thing that you're condemning these people for, deep in your heart you know that there is no escape. If you're not a Christian, if you haven't submitted your life to Jesus Christ, I wonder what's your escape plan for the judgment of God. What's your escape plan? Most people, number one, it's like, "I just hope it's not true, therefore I'm not even going to think about it."

But for some reason, even if it's true, perhaps there's some loophole, perhaps we can figure it out with the Lord. You stand before God when you die and he asks, "Why should I let you into heaven?" What are you going to say? What's your go-to? Are you got to point to some great things you've done? For most people, if they're really honest, they think that if they say, "I've been a good person to God," that God will believe you. I dealt with this last week, where this narrative come from, that people are good people, that people are born good, and I thought it was a lie, a lie promulgated by PBS. That was mine, but Stephanie told me it was John Jack Russo and the enlightenment, that was the first guy.

Even if hypothetically, there are good people with no sin, and they probably live in a place that's nicer, I think of Arkansas. If you're from Arkansas, probably good people, no? I don't know. But I've been here for 12 years and I can tell you that argument is absolutely baseless. You just have to drive in Boston once, and you realize there's no good people. Take the T one time, even walk, a pedestrian, just walk around the city and you're like, "No, everyone needs Jesus," that's what he's saying. Hebrews 2:3, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord and was attested to us by those who heard. The loophole that everyone's looking for, right? You just say, "Okay, maybe God will forgive me," that loophole is here now, this is the ultimate cheat code for all of eternity.

The Gospel, repent of your sin now and God in his mercy forgives you. Tremendous, that's the whole point of everything that we do, it's the whole point of the Bible, so don't neglect it. And then for Christians I say, look, we too will have a judgment day, there's two judgments, the first judgment is we stand before God and that the question is, "What did you do with Jesus Christ? Did you accept or did you reject? If you accepted Christ, now you go to the second judgment," this is a judgment for Christians, and this is a judgment where God is going to ask, "What did you do with the time, the talent, the treasure, with everything I've given you? And this is 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder,"

So Paul thinks about ministry and life as building. "Like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." So you're saying the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that's a foundation for our lives when we become Christians, and then we need to build upon a foundation, the question is, what materials are we building with? Now, if anyone builds in the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day, that's the judgment day, we'll disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire."

The question is, dear Christian, what materials are you building with on the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Are you building with the best that you have? Are you building with gold? Are you building with precious materials? And here, this includes everything, but in particular, energy. I know my freshest energy is a couple hours in the morning, that's when my brain is the absolute freshest, that's why I give that time to the Lord, that's why today's so rough, Satan stolen hour from me.

Thoughts, love, passion, money, treasure, the question is, are you building a mansion in the kingdom or a shack and will stand before God and be judged? Point 3, the kindness of God's patience, it's verse four, do you presume on the riches of his kindness, and forbearance, and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? This is a rhetorical question, do you take the goodness of God lightly or do you take it for granted? Particularly, what he's talking about is you know you've sinned and God has not taken your life yet. The reason why he hasn't isn't that he's not going to judge, he will, the reason why he hasn't taken your life yet is to give you time to repent, that's the whole point, that's the emphasis on the patience, the forbearance.

One of the biggest lies that people believe on mass is that God is some congenial grandpa, Santa Claus figure, like, "Yeah, God will forgive me," and really, you ask them why and they're like, "Because God is good and he's loving," well, if God is good, then God is just, and if God is just, then he can't forgive, so there's got to be someone that pays the penalty for our sin. And that's Jesus Christ, and that's Romans 3, that God is the just and the justifier because Jesus Christ on the cross, he paid the penalty for our sin, he absorbed the condemnation of God.

And the reason why we're still alive today, if your heart is still beating, it's to bring you to repentance. God, here is rich, he says, "God is rich in kindness," he's rich in everything, but he's rich in kindness forbearance patience. You see this theme in Ephesians, particularly in the Philippians. Ephesians 1:7, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. Ephesians 2:7, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Verse eight, to me though, I'm the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ, and verse 16, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, and Philippians 4:19, and my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches and glory in Christ, Jesus.

God has these riches of grace, and kindness, and forgiveness, and he wants to give it to you, you have to ask, you have to come to God and you say, "God, help me. God, please give it to me." When Jesus Christ was crucified, there was also a criminal crucified on his left hand and a criminal crucified on his right hand, Luke 23:39-43, one of the criminals who were hanged railed at him saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us," you see that spirit of demanding? He's not asking for it, he's demanding it, like, "You have to do this for me," without really even understanding everything.

But the other rebuked him saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom," and he said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today, you will be with me in paradise," just got to ask, just ask, "Lord, please forgive me of my..." Was he baptized? Did he go to church? Did he know a scripture? I'm not saying that this is an excuse, a lot of people use this as an excuse to not do... I'm saying this is all it takes, you just ask because of Jesus Christ.

There were two men crucified with Jesus. One shows us that while our heart still beats, there's hope, as long as we don't presume upon God's grace. Both men are helpless, both started hopeless, one repented, the other did not, because he presumed upon God's grace. The word presume means despised, looked down on with contempt, aversion, implication that you consider the object of little value, like, "Yeah. Okay, the gospel. Yeah. Okay, Jesus died on the..."

It's the son of God, God himself died on a cross to save you. If you don't see the treasure of that, there's a spirit of presumption, that's what he's getting at. The reason why this is important is if you allow the spirit of presumption to grow in your heart, there is a point of no return where repentance, even if you're alive, will not be granted, because you won't be able to find it, that's Hebrews 12:17, for you know that afterward, when he saw desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent though he saw it with tears, the spirit of presumption, "Oh, I can put it off, God will forgive me when it's time."

Today is the day of repentance, what is repentance? A change of heart and a change of mind that leads to a change of life. So it's not just about coming to God and asking God, "Please forgive me," and then going to live any way you want, no, it's, "God, please forgive me and I'm yours," and now your life has changed. Acts 26:20, but declared first to those in Damascus, then Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds and keeping with their repentance." It's both, once you give your life to God through repentance, your life belongs to him. Matthew 3:8, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. That brings us to verse five, and because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."

This is one of the most terrifying verses in the Bible because there is this idea that wrath is being accumulated, this is an economic turn, you're accruing God's wrath the longer you put off repentance. And this text assumes that there are varying degrees of punishment in hell. When theologian wrote the sinner in hell would give everything, do anything he could to make one less the number of his sins during his lifetime, because he will be judged according to his deeds. Hell is a place where God manifests perfect justice and the punishment always fits the crime. In the same way that there's rewards that we can accumulate in heaven, there's punishment and wrath that people accumulate in hell, and it's growing daily for anyone who's not in Christ. A failure to repent will be fully reveal on judgment day with the full accumulation so we are to repent and believe.

I'm going to go back to Luke 15, texts like this that bum you out, I know, but it's good, that's part of my job. Bad news, I'm like, "Tremendous news." I want to go back to Luke 15, because in Luke 15, Jesus was criticized for loving sinners, he was criticized by the Pharisees for spending time with people who did not know Jesus Christ, who needed salvation. This is Luke 15:1-7, now, the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him. And the Pharisees and the Scribes...

That's the religious people, their literal job is to go help sinners meet God. But they start grumbling saying the man receives sinners and eats with them, so he told them this parable, "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me for I found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance."

And then in this context, he shares a story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. And in the story of the prodigal son, the prodigal son represents the Gentiles, that's one son, and the older brother represents the Pharisees here, the people who think they don't need forgiveness, that they don't need repentance. And the whole story, the point of the story is to get us to point where we ask, "Hey, what's wrong with the older brother?" For two reasons, you got to ask that question.

Number one, at the end of the story, he's not reconciled with the father, the younger one is, and the second reason why this is important is because the older brother was supposed to take care of the younger brother. Where's my brother's keeper? Yes, this story is very meaningful to me because I have a younger brother and he and I, we want to know, are you being a younger brother or an older brother now? We do that whole thing. The idea is we need to take responsibility for those who are outside the kingdom of God, feel it, in the same way that you should care for your own soul, we should care for the souls of people who aren't Christians, we have to, that's the point. So who's the older brother? And how can the younger brother be accepted back into the family? How do you do that?

Only because of the true older brother, the true older brother is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ takes responsibility for us, he's the one that comes into the quagmire of our sin as we're in the pigsty to provide a way for us to be saved. Look at Hebrews 2:10-12, for it's fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist and bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source, that is why he's not ashamed to call them brothers. Jesus calls us brothers? Yeah, Jesus is our older brother, that's the point of the text, saying, "I will tell of your name to my brothers, in the midst of congregation I will sing your praise," John Calvin writing another age of spiritual uncertainty and insecurity points to Jesus' brotherhood as the basis for our hope and assurance.

He says this, "There's a second Adam who comes to remedy all. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are bone of the bones of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and we have in him, a new and second creation. And there is no doubt at all that we are joined to God by means of him seeing he is our true brother, because we are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. For just as he is very God, so on the other hand, he is akin to us because he came down. In order that we might be glorified by means of him, and for that reason also, he's called our brother."

I see that Jesus Christ is my head, and that I belong to him, and that not only I am his, but also he is mine, so that his life belongs to me. Eternal salvation was bought for us so dearly by the blood of God's only son in order that in the end, we should be partakers of the effect and virtue that proceeds from it. The saying alone ought to break off distrust when we are in doubt and perplexity, whether or not God will accept us. For seeing that we have this record, that Jesus Christ is our brother, what more do we want? Some people look at Christianity, the cross of Jesus Christ, and you think, "I have sinned so much. I have done just wicked, evil things, so the cross is beyond me, the grace of God is beyond me. God would never forgive me."

Well, the cross is proof that God will, you just have to ask. Some people who suffer with the self-righteousness of the older brother, people think the cross is beneath them, "I don't need this." You do look at the cross of Jesus Christ, look what God was willing to do, look what God did, this is the only way we need salvation. The text in Luke 15, the paragraph that I didn't read in the beginning, I'm going to read now and then close with this, so the son, he arose and came to his father, and while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion, and ran, and embraced him, and kissed him. The son said to him, "Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son."

The Father said to his servants, "Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us eat and celebrate for this, my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found." And they began to celebrate on the text. If you're not a Christian, if you haven't run back to the Lord, repentance, he's waiting with arms wide open. The father's arms are open wide, because our older brother's arms were open wide on the cross.

And it wasn't the nails that kept him there, it was his love for us. So come and receive that grace, repent, receive obey, Jesus Christ, welcome home, and let's celebrate, that's what I'm saying. Life should be a celebration because heaven is a party, in Jesus name, Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful text, we thank you for the book of Romans, and we pray Lord that you continue to build us up in the faith, continue to use us, Lord, give us in our hearts, this feeling of responsibility for those in our lives who aren't yet Christians. To do everything we possibly can, just everything we possibly can to see them come to faith in Jesus Christ and repent of sins so that we can spend eternity together in the tremendous party in Jesus name, Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

At this time, I want to pray for the sermon. I'm also going to pray for the situation and we do ask that you continue to pray. Would you please pray with me. Heavenly father, we thank you that you, the great God of the universe, a holy God, a righteous God, that when we rebelled against you, you did not leave us in a hopeless situation. We know that the wages of sin is death. We deserve eternal damnation. We deserve your wrath. And even in life, when we reject you, you give us what we want and this judicial abandonment. You give us up to our sins. And even so Lord, you gave your son Jesus Christ. Jesus, you gave your life for rebels, for people that pursued sin instead of God, who worshiped and served creature, not creator. And we thank you, Jesus that on the cross, you bore the wrath of God in order to extend to us the gift of your righteousness, that when we repent of sin and turn to you, your righteousness is imputed to us.

We thank you for that. We pray that you bless our time, the holy scriptures, by the power of the holy spirit. And Lord, we, right now as a church, pray for the situation in Ukraine. We pray that you'll be near and close to those who are suffering, those who have lost. I pray comfort them. I pray do send a revival of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ there, and in Russia, and here, and all around the world. I pray that people realize just how dark of a situation this is. We pray for the churches on the ground and those who are ministering. I pray that you give them an extra dose of the holy spirit, power, energy. And I pray that you do send resources and we pray for peace. We pray against all the perpetrators of this war and we pray for your wrath to be poured out upon them or for them to be brought to repentance and seek peace.

And continue to use us, Lord. And we thank you for this connection, this missionary family, and I pray that you bless them and bless their efforts as well. And we do pray for everyone in the church who has family in Ukraine. I pray that you be extra near to them. Bless our time. The holy word. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Book of Romans. The title of sermon today is Given Up By God. And I'm going to start with the C.S, Lewis quote. CS Lewis in The Great Divorce, he writes this. "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened."

He gets to this idea of judicial abandonment that God gives people what they want. If people want sin more than God, God gives them up to that sin. And the penalty for that sin is more sin. Psalm 81:11-12, "But my people did not listen to my voice. Israel would not submit to me, so I gave them over to their stubborn and hearts to follow their own counsels." So these two categories of people, Lewis says, the first category is the people that say to God, "Thy will be done." This is how Jesus taught us to pray. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be they name, may your name be holy. Thy will be done. Thy will be done. That I will be done.

And then the other group of people is the ones to whom God will say. "Thy I will be done." Question, which category of people are you in right now? Right now? Do you say to God, "God, thy will be done in my life. Lord, I want to fulfill your will, whatever it is, whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice, whatever the pain. Jesus, I will follow you wherever you lead me. Jesus. I believe in you, not just with my mind or my heart or my lips, I believe in you with my whole life." Or do you care more about your will than God's?

Can God tell you no? Can God tell you no? And if God cannot tell you no, then you're in the second category of people. And if you're not sure, if you're like, "I don't know which category I'm in," well, do I have a text for you today that will help you discern which category you are in. And that's really the heart of this text. Do you worship creature or do you worship creator? Romans 1:24 through 32, would you please look at the text with me?

"Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men, likewise, gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done."

"They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them."

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. To get the flow of the argument, I'm going to start with verse 16 and read through verse 23 so that you see what Saint Paul is doing. Saint Paul, in verse 16, he says, "Our only hope is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ." That's verse 16. "For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, the tremendous news of God's grace. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek."

Now I want you to notice the parallelism here. "For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith." The righteousness here is the righteousness of God. It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It's imputed to us the very moment that we repent of our sins and turn to Christ. He says, there's righteousness available because we need it to protect us from what? And that's the next verse.

"For the wrath of God is revealed." See the parallelism, the same verb. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give to thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were dark in claiming to be wise. They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

He says the wrath of God is revealed in that. And he appeals to two things. First, he says by looking at creation, we know that God exists. You can suppress it as much as you want, but there's no explanation better than the one in holy scripture for all of creation. And then on top of that, he appeals to the heart. And Paul is a master communicator of the gospel. And he knows not to just to communicate to the mind. He knows how to communicate to the heart and to the soul.

And what he's getting at is, "Hey, human beings, us, each one of us, if you're honest with yourself, honest, if you're honest with yourself, your soul testified to the fact that God is. And his law is written upon your heart." Each one of us, we have a conscience. We know there's a difference between good and evil. Who gets to decide what the difference is between good and evil? It's the creator, God who created us, to whom we owe everything. We're not our own, so we're to give him thanks and honor him and worship him.

So that is the framework. He said, "Look, the good news of Jesus Christ, this is the power of God unto salvation." But to really understand how good the good news is, you got to understand how dire, how dark, how wicked our situation is. And verse 24, he begins, "Therefore." Like, "Based on everything I just said about the wrath of God, therefore God gave them up." And he gives us three God gave them ups. "Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity." Verse 26, "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions." Then verse 28, "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done."

The question to really understand this text, the question that you have to ask here in the very beginning is who's the they? Who's he talking about? Because you can easily misunderstand this text and say, "Oh, he's talking about those wicked people out there. And this has nothing to do with us." No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. By they, he's talking about every single human being who chooses to worship and serve creation instead of creator, the triune God. Anyone who has chosen their own will over God's, that's every single one of us, everyone who rejects the gospel, grace, forgiveness, submission, and obedience.

Three points to frame up our time. First, God gives people up in a lust of their hearts. Second, God gives people up to dishonorable passions. And third, God gives people up to a debased mind. First, God gives people up in lust of their hearts. Verse 24, "Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves." And the word gave up here means to surrender someone to an authority. And there's a power that he's talking about in particular. He's talking about the power of sin or lust in our hearts. If given up to that power that's within, it leads to all kinds of corruption.

And it's the same word that Paul uses when he talks about church discipline, that churches are to practice giving people up who are unrepentant in their sin. They confess faith in Jesus Christ, but their life doesn't match it, and they live in unrepentant sin. Paul talks about this First Corinthians 5:5. "You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." First Timothy 1:20, "Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme."

I don't know if you've noticed this. I notice everything that happens during the service, like the security guard going over there. Because for the sermon that I'm about to preach, like people get shot for this. Just FYI. There's all kinds of demonic. People hate this truth that's about to be proclaimed. The word for lust here is ἐπιθυμία. It's an inordinate, self-indulgent craving that displaces proper affection for God.

The word by itself is just neutral. It's just desire. You can have desire for good things and bad things. But the word here, in context, he's talking about lusts of the heart that are contrary to God's will. And it's in the heart. Before he gets to any actions, a lot of people think the sin is just committing actions against God, breaking commandments, et cetera. But it all begins with the heart. It's when we break commandments in the heart, when we break the commandments in the heart because we desire something more than God.

Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick who can understand it." The heart, he gets with the heart, the lusts that are out of control, and they then lead to impurity. That's the word he uses. And this has to do with the context of sexual sins. Roman 6:19 uses the word like that. "I'm speaking human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification."

So he starts with this deep desire on the inside. This is what Augusten said. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Our hearts have ... There's a vacuum inside, an insatiable appetite of the soul. And the world has created this narrative that you will find the good life, happiness, joy, pleasure, satisfaction in a life apart from God. And that never happens. So this lust just continues to grow. And I'll show you that in the text.

And then he says dishonoring of the body. This means to become characterized by shame. And there is a physical consequence. It starts with the heart and then leads to dishonoring their bodies, which has real physical consequences. The battlefield for every single person's soul is in the heart. And this is where Paul starts. This is what Jesus preached. He's like, "The Pharisees, you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me." And Jeremiah talks about the fact that in the new covenant, God is going to take our hearts of stone toward God. Our hearts naturally are cold toward God. They're hardened toward God. And then when the holy spirit takes over, regenerates us, the heart of stone is taken out and it's replaced with the heart of flesh that beats tenderly toward God.

But the battlefield is there. It's in the heart. It's in desires. What do I want? The decision for or against God occurs in the heart. Stubbornness toward God is shown in the heart. Jesus was asked on multiple occasions, "Hey, Jesus, what's the greatest commandment?" I know why people ask that because they're like, "That's a big book. Can you just distill it for me? Like, what's the point of the whole thing?" And Jesus didn't shy away from the question. And he's like, "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." And the second one is love your neighbor as yourself. But every time and the great commandment is given in the holy scripture, the word heart always comes first.

The battlefield for the soul is a battle for desires. And so we talk about obedience of faith. That faith is actually an act of the will, where the will it's like what do I want? Well, the will often is controlled by desires. The opposite of Christianity, as Peter Kreeft said, a philosopher at Boston College. He said the opposite of Christianity isn't atheism. The opposite of Christianity is idolatry because you can't not worship. God has designed us to worship. And by worship, I mean you give all of yourself to whatever you love most. We can't not worship. Worshiping, loving anyone or anything more than God is idolatry. And it always leads to personal degradation, societal degradation.

When we sin against God, we sin against ourselves, we sin against others. And God's full wrath is going to be a revealed on judgment day. But his partial wrath is already revealed in that he gives people up to their sin. And a lot of theologians, they use this bifurcation between the active wrath of God and then the passive wrath of God. So active wrath of God, Jesus is going to come back in the second coming. He's going to judge us, flaming sword coming out of his mouth. He's going to judge all of his enemies.

And a lot of people think active wrath of God is like Sodom and Gomorrah, where it's like something super, like something from nature comes, a hurricane or a tsunami that's an act. He's not saying there's passive and active wrath of God. He's saying there's complete wrath of God and partial wrath of God. And God is active in the partial wrath in that he does give people up to the sin. Revelation 22:11, "Let the evil doers still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy."

Why does God give people up or in to the lust of their hearts? Verse 25, "Because, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever more. Amen." Here, Paul gets to the essence of idolatry. It's worshiping and serving creature, so either yourself or another human being, creature. It could mean the world, the planet, the things of the world. So this is the essence. "And since we give up on the self-denying truth," and that's what the truth of God's word. It does call us to deny ourselves. "And we pursue self-gratifying lies, God gives us up to the consequences of those lies."

And part of that is the sin just grows. The appetite for sin just grow. The destruction just grows. The word for exchanged here means to put in place of another. And it's seemingly equivalent. People are like, "What's the big deal, God or creation? It's not that big of a deal, right?" It is. I don't know why more people aren't worried about this issue. They're like, "Does God exist? And where do I stand in relation to him?"

I was talking to a friend who has a friend working for the Department of Defense. And he told me if there's nuclear war, on the list is Cambridge, Massachusetts. He didn't tell me why. I'm like I live pretty close to Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I also might get shot for preaching this text. So the point is you just got to be ready. Every single one of us is going. I went to a prayer meeting last week in Rhode Island. And I prayed with a gentleman. I've known this gentleman for years. I knew grew up with his kids, prayed with him. We prayed for the situation in Ukraine. And then I found out this week he just died. Just died. This is the most pressing question for every single human being. Does God exist and where do I stand before him? If I die, and I stand before God, what happens?

And the truth of holy scripture says God's going to ask you one question. What did you do with my son, Jesus Christ? Did you repent and believe or did you reject him? Yeah, it matters whom we worship, worship and serve creature rather than creator. That's the heart of this issue. This is where he starts. Second Thessalonians 2:9 through 12. "The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore, God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

The combination of the words lust and purity, dishonoring of their bodies makes it clear that Paul here is talking about sexual morality. So to understand sexual morality, you got to understand what God's will is for sexuality. God's will is the only sexual activity that God blesses is between a man and a woman who have made a marriage covenant with each other until death do us part. And before God, with God, anything outside of this is a sin against God and another.

Even the thought, that's why he starts with the heart. That's why he's talking about lust. This is exactly what Jesus Christ did in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:27 through 30, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." He's talking to everybody, not just to men. He's talking to all of us. And when you look at another person with lustful intent, you've already committed the adultery.

So the adultery happens in the heart and leads to an action of the eye. And then Jesus says the following. "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go to hell." That came out of nowhere. Why are we talking about hell? You're talking about cutting off your arm, plucking out your eye.

Well, that's how serious this issue is because the hell fire starts within and it just grows. And it's insatiable. And when you keep sinning, it's like throwing gasoline, and it just grows and grows and grows. Is Jesus here literal? No, he's being hyperbolic obviously. But it shows that this is how serious Jesus took this issue. Yeah. So don't cut off your arm and pluck up your eye because it doesn't help. This guy in church history named Origin, castrated himself. He read this and he is like, "I'm having a problem with lust." And it didn't help. That's the point because it's a heart issue. It's a heart issue.

There's kids here, so I want to ... Sometimes I just want to say it. If you really want to know what I think, just talk to me after the service. And I just want to say that there's a connection here. I don't want to connect the dots for you, but like Jesus, like lust, eye, hand, lust, eye, hand. There's a connection here. It's when lust is in the heart and then the eyes and hand you act.

One of my favorite songs growing up was If I Ruled The World by Nas and Lauryn Hill. And I was listening to it last night. And man, if I ruled the world, what would I do? You know what? The first thing I would do, the absolute first thing I would do, I would ban all porn everywhere. All of it, just all of it. There's no justification whatsoever. There's no net positive for anybody in humanity. Just ban the whole thing. That's number one.

And as soon as it happens, I guarantee you're going to see so many more weddings. Just everyone's going to get married because you're like, "What else do I do with this drive that God has given me?" You're going to get a job, and an apartment, and a shirt with buttons, and some cologne, and a haircut. And you're going to pursue a woman, a real woman. And she talks back. So you've got to figure out what to do with that.

To spark a global reformation, I want to spark it from here. You know how I talk like this all the time. Imagine if people really lived like this, where they understood the power of sexuality. It makes human beings. 63 million abortions since Roe verse Wade. We're murdering babies, human beings. We're doing this worldwide. And that's Satan's plan. I don't know if you noticed. What did God say in the very beginning in the garden of Eden? Like, "You're naked and unashamed. You're married. All right. Be fruitful and multiply."

Then Bill Gates comes around. He's telling us he wants to depopulate the planet. And even Elon Musk knows this. He knows this is one of the biggest challenges before humanity now is the fertility rate. So that's part of my plan to take over the world. I just want everyone to get married and have a lot of babies. And you're like, where did that come? It's God's will. Come on. Do you have a verse? Yes. I got a verse. Malachi 2:15, "And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring." And you know what? I've done my part. I got four. I've done my part. I told Tanya when we got married, I was like, "We got to have at least 10. You got to have 10." And then we moved to Boston and that's expensive.

So the point is, if you are struggling with sexual sin in your life, the power of God unto salvation is the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. You look to the cross of Jesus Christ and you see what it cost God to forgive us our sins. It's the execution, the crucifixion of his son. You look to the cross, you see Christ bloodied up for our sin. You repent of that sin and go to war against your sin. Submit to Christ. Obey him.

And if you're like, "What else can I do?" Honestly, I'll tell you. This is so easy. In Mark 9, it says, "Some demons need to be cast out with prayer and fasting, prayer and fasting." I don't know why more Christians aren't talking about this. If you cannot eat for three days, for some reason, three is the magical number. If your self discipline goes through the roof and then you can say no to other things that pull you away from the Lord.

The question is, will you worship and serve God? And Saint Paul here talks about sexual license and idolatry because that always goes together. In ancient times, they had pagan temples where you would go give sacrifices with meat or whatever, and you would commit sexual sin. That happened then as a worship act. It happens now. This is why people get so emotionally charged about this topic. "Wow. I can't believe you just said that out loud." Because you are tipping their holy cow. That's what's going on. It's a worship issue.

Saint Paul here says that when people partake in sexual sin, it is a worship act. He continues in point two, "God gives people up to dishonorable passions." Verse 26, "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, the passions of strong feeling or emotions, lustful desire." And the natural here is very important, the word natural, because what's it talking about? It's talking about the created order. God created, designed the world in a certain way in accordance with the attributes and purposes, which are in proper view of one's origin. And the relations here is the state of intimate involvement. So Paul explains that the dishonorable passions are same gender sexual activity. And such behavior he says that is contrary to nature, means that it's contrary to the order that is manifest and created.

You look at creation, you just see how things are designed. Specifically, in this case, the order is clear in the function of sexual organs, designed by God for an expression of love between a man and a woman who are married for the procreation of children. When we sin against God, we sin against our nature, against our bodies, against God's intention for us. And here, Paul, he's not just talking about this as just a sin. He's not talking about this as a serious sin. He's talking about this as the clearest depiction of the depths of our depravity. That's what he's doing. He wants to show us just how dark humanity is. And we live in an age today where evil is called good and good is called evil.

He continues verse 27. "And men likewise give up natural relations with women who were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error." So now you see the progression. Start with the lust in the heart and dishonoring the body. And here, he says consumed, uses the word consumed, to be or become inflamed. It's something that's growing, consumed with passion. The shameless act here is an indecent and improper act, especially something that does bring disgrace.

And he says by doing so, they receive in themselves the due penalty for the sin. The way Paul understands God's justice is that God does give people what they deserve. That's what giving up to sins means. When people transgress God's law and law of nature, God gives them their due. And we pursue sin, particularly sexual sin, we become consumed with passion, and being consumed with passion is the due penalty, the error. We devolve into living for our basest desires.

Multiple conversations this week I've had with people who said, "I am so surprised that there's war in 2022. I thought we progressed past this." No, we haven't. Human nature does not progress apart from God. By the way, Paul got beheaded in Rome by the Roman machine, by the tyranny of the Roman empire. And one of the reasons why was because to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, he preached the bad news of just how sinful we are. And when you do that, and you name things that people celebrate, when you call that sin, and you say that God's wrath is coming on that sin, on any other sin, in particular here in Rome, it was glorified.

It wasn't just honored. It was glorified. And this was just part of the culture where grown men would have sexual relations with boys. That's part and parcel. They were groomed from a young age for this. Well, as you study the Roman empire, and you begin to look at the United States in 2022, where I have a fifth grader in public school, and she's given a reading list of books to read. And whoever reads the most books wins a competition. And half the books have to do with LGBTQ issues. With a fifth grader, what are we doing?

This is grooming. We're priming, little by little. That's what happened in the Roman empire. And that's why Paul got behead. God always took this sin particularly seriously. Leviticus, this was a capital offense. Leviticus 18:22. "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." Leviticus 20, verse 13. "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed abomination. They will surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them." That's from the Hebrew scriptures. So for millennia, Jewish people have believed that this is God's will. Sex is only between a man and a woman in marriage. Muslims have believed this for millennia. But it's the Christians that get attacked for it. Clear as day.

Point three, God gives people up to a debased mind. So the lust leads to the dishonoring of the body, which leads to a consumption of the sin, which leads to something happening with the mind where you cannot think clearly. This is Romans 1:28. "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done." They didn't see fit. They didn't thought it was even worth seeking God or acknowledging him, finding what God wants. And debased here means worthless, despicable, morally reprehensible.

And Saint Paul comes to the mind, and by the mind, he wants us to know that it starts with the heart. This is what I want. And then the mind begins to strategize how to get it. And then your mind is just overwhelmed. Your mind is occupied with this. And if your mind is even open to God's word, that's a sign that the holy spirit is already working miraculously in you. Verse 29, "They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips."

And then he just here continues this list, painting this picture of just how depraved humanity apart from God is. I don't know where the narrative that people are basically good, I don't know where that came from. I have theories. I think it's PBS. I think PBS just gets this into kids. We're not good people. You guys are pretty good because of your Sunday best. We're not good people if we're really honest. We're not good people, humanity. We're not basically good. World history, we're not basically good.

And this is what Paul is doing. Paul is painting this picture. Just darkest. "Look how we're filled," he says. The word fulfilling, it's the same word that's used when the disciples go fishing and the net was filled. It's the same concept that in the Old Testament, God says, "All right, now it's time, Israel, for you to bring God justice down on this people because the cup of my wrath is full." It's the same idea that if you pursue sin, God gives you up. He gives you up. He gives you up. He gives you up, and then you're living a miserable, unsatisfied, joyless life.

Unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, murder, strife, it's everything that Satan wants to do. Jesus said, "I've come that you may have life and have it to the full," whereas Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That's what he wants to do. God wants Shalom. He wants universal flourishing. Satan wants to destroy everything. Verse 30, "Slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless." Slanderer here is here is one who attacks the reputation of another. Haters of God characterized by intense antipathy toward God. So they don't believe in God, but they hate God.

I've never met an atheist who's neutral toward God. Just like I've never met a communist who's generous. I want everyone else to be generous. Let's start with you. "Haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, faithless, heartless ruthless." Verse 32, "Though they knew God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them." Not only when people have chosen sin, they're not just content with enjoying the sin. They also want to prove of it, celebrate it. And they want prove of other people sinning as well.

Since each and every one of our sins is a personal transgression against God, his law, his character, the penalty for sin is death. And instead of immediately repenting when we sin, knowing that God's wrath is coming for the sin, we want to justify it. And we want approval of it. Depressing text, isn't it? So depressing. This is my second time preaching. I am just bummed out right now. But this is where you got to start.

You got to start with the bad news of just this is reality. And this is what Paul ... I remember in camp. I remember we had this one speaker one time. As he would preach, he would like paint paintings. And this is what Paul is doing. It's like if he got up here and he's painting a painting, he would take a canvas, and he would just like every shade of dark, black, just blah, just to then paint a beautiful cross in the middle. That's what he's saying. He's saying apart from God, we are hopeless. On the cross, both the righteousness of God is revealed and his wrath is revealed. If you really want to understand God's wrath, to see what our sin deserves, look to the cross. That's God's wrath being poured out on his own son. So God gives us up to our sin, but he doesn't give up on us.

He gives his son, Jesus. For God so loved the world that he what? Gave. He gave his one. He gave his son for people who chose sin over God. Yeah. "That whosoever should believe in him, should not perish." That's God's wrath, "But have eternal life." So God's wrath is poured out on Jesus Christ on the cross. And Jesus is offering us his imputed righteousness. So when we repent and believe, our sins are forgiven. "He who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God." So what do we do with that? What do we do with the cross? What do we do with that? Well, if you're asking, has God given me up to my sins? If that's even a question, well, that's a great sign. That's a great sign that God is already stirring in your heart.

If you're asking is God abandoning me to my sin? Now you understand why God judges the way he does, why he punishes us here on earth to heal us, to awaken us to just how grave his wrath is. Run to God. Run to the God who gave his son to die for your sins. Galatians 2:20. "I've been crucified with Christ. No longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me."

Who wrote the Book of Romans? Paul. Paul did. Paul's name before he was Paul was Saul. Saul Wanted nothing to do with Jesus Christ. Saul hated Christ. He hated Christians. He wanted nothing to do with it. And what's fascinating is in this list, where he says this is wrath of God is coming down on all these people. And he uses the word insolent in verse 30. And insolent is a person who's characterized by their offensive, disrespectful acts, and is violent.

Well Saint Paul uses that same exact word to describe himself. In First Timothy 1:13, he says, "Though formally I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief." Paul puts himself into that list. And then he continues the concept give approval in verse 32, like to approve of sin. Saint Paul was at the site where Stephen, the first martyr, was executed. Paul was there. And it says in Acts 8:1 Saul approved of his execution. And when he shares his testimony acts 22:20, "When the blood of Stephen, your witness, was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him."

He paints this whole picture and he paints himself in it. And he says, I am a sinner. Every single one of us, we are sinners deserving the wrath of God. But God who merciful sends his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, on the cross, as he's bearing the wrath of God for us, cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus received that judicial abandonment that we deserve. That's what hell is, being abandoned by God, forsaken by God. Jesus drank the whole cup of God's wrath down to the last drop.

And Jesus was forsaken so that you wouldn't have to be, so that I wouldn't have to be. And this is the beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ, tremendous gospel of Jesus Christ. Repent of your sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Submit your life to him. All of your sins are forgiven. The righteousness of God is imputed to you. And now take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ. In the Garden of Gethsemane, did Jesus want to go to the cross? No. Garden of Gethsemane, capillaries are bursting in his face and he's sweating blood. Tyler gave us the technical term for that last week. He Mo something, that one.

He didn't want to do it. He says, "If there's any other way, father, if there's any other way, please." Then what does he say? "But not my will." Yours be done." That's repentance. That's repentance. God, thy will. Thy will. I know it's hard. I know it's a ... Thy will be done. Jesus fulfilled the will of the father, even though he knew what it would take to forgive us who didn't want to fulfill the will of God. And if you do repent and believe in Jesus Christ, now what we do, we devote our lives to fulfilling the will of God. This time, we're going to transition to celebrate holy communion while I explain what it is, and then pray. First let me explain. For whom is holy communion? Holy communion is for Christians who are in fellowship with Christ, who are in fellowship with God.

First of all, it's for Christians. Meaning if you're not a Christian, please do not partake in this part of the service. This is only for Christians, unless you become a Christian today by repenting of your sin and trusting in Jesus Christ. And then you welcome partake. And it's for Christians in fellowship with God. By fellowship I mean there is no known sin in your life that you have not repented of. So this is an opportunity before we partake in holy communion to meditate, to repent, to humble ourselves before God, and then partake.

As I read First Corinthians 11:23 through 32, if you haven't received a cup of the bread, please raise your hand. The ushers will give you one. First Corinthians 11:23 through 32. "For I received from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'"

"In the same way also, he took a cup after supper saying, 'This cup is in the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then. And so eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill. Some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged, but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.'"

If this is your first time with us, you take the top plastic Lid off, you take the bread, and then you take the silver piece off. I'm going to pray over holy communion. Oh, holy God. We thank you that you provide a way for us to be reconciled with you by sending your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you fulfilled the mission. Jesus, we thank you that you, for the joy that was set before you, you endured the cross. And that joy was to have us in relationship with you, reconciled with you. We repent of our sins, of our pride, of our selfishness, of pursuing our will over yours, of worshiping creature rather than the creator. We repent. And we trust in you, Jesus Christ, as our only savior. Jesus, we remember today your suffering on our behalf. If there's anyone here who's not yet a believer, I pray save them miraculously and draw them to repentance. And bless our time in holy communion. We praise in Jesus; name. Amen.

On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed. He took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body, broke for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." He then took the cup, and after he said, "This is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me."

Jesus, as we've received your grace and forgiveness of sins, I pray that you fill us by the power of the holy spirit to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to take up our cross daily, and pursue holiness, mortify sin, and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all who have ears to hear. Particularly in time like this, I pray, Lord, draw many to yourself, hundreds of thousands, millions of people to yourself. Send a global revival and use us in the process. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit MosaicBoston.com.

Good morning church, and welcome. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I am the teens director here at Mosaic Boston, and it is an honor and a privilege to be able to preach God's word to all of us today. If you haven't known, we've been going through the book of Romans. We are in the middle of our series on Romans and we are taking it nice and slow and digging in deep to this text. To try and see and understand the truths that God is revealing to us in it.

And one thing I want us to understand as we go into this text today is that Paul throughout the book of Romans is making an argument. Each verse, each thought is building upon the previous and leading into the next, making an argument. It's a continuous thought. And I bring that up to say, if you were here last week and heard pastor Jan's sermon on the previous verses, I want you to remember that. I want you to remember the idea that he preached on that was in the text of the power of the gospel for salvation. That is where Paul leaves off and launches into this text. If you haven't heard that sermon, I strongly encourage you to go back and listen to it right after. It'll make this make even more sense.

And the reason why I bring that up is I have the joy of preaching on the wrath of God today. Not many of us like to talk or think about the wrath of God, let alone want to stand up in front of people and stare them in the eyes while you tell them about God's wrath. It's not what we like to do. I remember my first day in Boston, I was looking at colleges, just visiting. And I was here with my parents and we were just walking around the city, having food, enjoying the sites and things like that. And there was a guy with a sign. You know the signs I'm talking about. The signs that say like "Repent for the wrath of God is at hand." Or like, "You are going to hell repent and believe." Things like that. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it had that sign.

And I was like, "Oh, praise God I'm not a fire and brimstone type preacher. I like to focus on the love and grace of God. Thank you." And last time I preached, I got to preach on the love of God. And I was so thankful and grateful for that. Because I love God's love. But today the text is about God's wrath. So we're going to deal with God's wrath, because it's in scripture and it's in the word and it's true. So with that, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word.

Heavenly father, we come to you humbled, submitting, knowing that we are unrighteous before you. Knowing that you are great and glorious and have provided salvation through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lord help us to submit our entire lives, to you to let the gospel permeate all of us, every area of our life to sanctify us, to change us, to make us more like you, and use us to bring and proclaim the gospel to those around us, into the world. Lord, we thank you. Praise you for who you are and your goodness and your love your mercy, and even your wrath, praise you in Jesus's name. Amen.

So today we are in Romans chapter one, verses 18 through 23, you can turn in your Bibles or you can follow along on the screens behind me, but it says "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God as plain to them, because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile and their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images, resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, and authoritative infallible word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

We will spend our time in three points, but the three points is really one point. It's all point it's even one sentence. So it should be nice and easy to remember. God's wrath is coming so stop suppressing the truth by honoring and thanking him. So first point, God's wrath is coming. This is verse 18. The first part of it, where it says for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

So before we address the elephant in the room of God's wrath, there's a small word that we need to deal with first. It's the word, for. If you've been in church or Christian culture for a long time, you've probably heard the phrase. If you see the word, therefore scripture, you have to ask, what is it there for? Similarly, if you see the word for at the beginning of a sentence or clause, you need to ask what in the world is it referencing that came before. It's a little less catchy, but the truth is still the same. And it's good, helpful advice.

We have to look at the previous verses and see what is Paul talking about? So if you will follow with me, we'll go to verse 15 of the same chapter where it says, "So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome for, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."

Paul used the word for a lot there again. He's stream of thought. He is making a point, it's all connected. You can't separate it. So what is being addressed. Says, "I am eager to preach the gospel." Why is Paul eager to preach the gospel? For he is not ashamed of it. Why is Paul not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation. How do we know it's the power of God for salvation? For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. We see and understand the gospel because in it we understand God is righteous, but we also understand that in his righteousness, he provided a sacrifice and penalty for our unrighteousness. And our response to that is living by faith.

It says the righteous shall live by faith. Now the natural next step question is why do the righteous live by faith? That's where our text picks up, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." What Paul is addressing is we are called as Christians to live in faithful obedience to God because we also know what the alternative is.

The alternative is the wrath of God for our unrighteousness. Now we can talk about what is wrath. Wrath is different than anger. Anger is just an emotion. It's you get mad about something, something you don't like. It's distasteful to you, hurts you, you get angry and you get mad. The definition for wrath in this context is the strong indignation of wrongdoing with a focus on retribution. So if you remember any part of that, I hope you remember that ending part. So it's with a focus on retribution. So unlike anger, that's just an emotion. Wrath is an emotion, strong indignation, strong hatred and distaste and anger against wrongdoing against sin. But it's also an action of bringing in retribution, bringing in payment for that wrongdoing. God's wrath is not just anger. It is requiring and bringing in payment for sin.

And one of the things we need to know about God's wrath is that it's not just blind rage, either. It's calculated, it's precise. He is using his wrath, his characteristic of wrath in perfect harmony with all of his other attributes. We like to focus and talk about how God is love. That is true, but God's love does not negate his wrath and God's wrath does not negate his love. And it's not that at certain points in time, God is acting in love. And at other points in time, God is acting in wrath. It's always all of it. He is always fully his attributes and this can be difficult to understand. But one of the texts that I find clearest demonstrating this idea comes from the book of Exodus. With the teens downstairs we've been going through the book of Exodus. We actually finished it last week.

And one of the most famous stories in the book of Exodus is the story of the golden calf. And this text comes in Exodus, chapter 32, wherein verse seven, it says, "And the Lord said to Moses "Go down for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods, oh Israel who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." And the Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people and behold it is a stiff necked people. Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them. And I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you.""

God had just led the people of Israel out of Egypt. He saved them from slavery and from oppression and he delivered them and they choose to worship something that they made. And say, this is what saved us rather than God. That's sin. That's unrighteousness. It's putting something else in the place of God and rightfully so, God's wrath burned against them.

And he says, let them... Sorry, "That my wrath may burn hot against them. And I may consume them." Why consume them while in Romans, it tells us, and throughout scripture it tells us that the penalty for sin, the retribution that is required for sin is death. That is the only payment for it.

And so God's wrath is anger at the wrongdoing, but it's also bringing in that payment. However, God's wrath does not negate his other attributes. God is still trustworthy and he is true. And he has promised Abraham that he would make a great name out of him. So how does God's wrath and God's trustworthiness, God's love, God's mercy work together in this moment. God relents, but there's still punishment in verse... The next chapter in verse three, it says "Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you unless I consume you on the way for you are a stiff necked people." God has mercy. He doesn't kill them. He spares them. But he also says, I'm not going to go with you, lest my wrath consume you because that is the only right response to sin.

So he has mercy, but there's still punishment. And then Moses prays to God, begs him and says, "Save them, forgive them. We ask that you forgive them." And God says, "I will forgive them. I will go with you. However, there will be a day. He says, I will blot them out of my book." He says, "Those who persist in unrighteousness, I will blot out." And so God's wrath didn't come requiring retribution in that moment, but he promised that it would come. So the natural question then is why are we all alive today? If we have sinned, if we have done wrong, the penalty is death. God requires retribution. Why are we even here? How are we alive? It's all God's mercy. Jonathan Edwards in his sermon, sinners in the hands of an angry God, if you haven't read it, I encourage you to read it.

It's free online in PDF form. It's a very convicting and challenging sermon, but it helps us understand the wrath of God. In this text, in this sermon, Jonathan Edward says this. "The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this. There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God. By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will restrain by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else, but God mere will had in the least degree or in any respect whatsoever any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment." Wat he's saying is the only reason why we don't all die immediately when we sin is because of the will of God. It's because it's God's will, it's God's plan, it's his mercy on us to give us a chance, to repent, to give us opportunities, to turn to him and repent of our sin.

But that doesn't negate the fact that penalty still needs to be paid. Retribution still will need to be paid at some point. This is why I again started this sermon talking about remember week sermon on the gospel, because that is what the gospel is. Is that Jesus Christ came and died on the cross to be that penalty for us, to pay that penalty of sin for us. In Romans chapter five, verse nine, it says, "Since therefore we have been justified by his blood much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. Through the gospel, we are saved. We are justified, we are declared righteous before God, but we are also saved or spared from his wrath. Praise God for that." But the reason for that is something that we need to think about. If you're like me, I like to get technical.

I like to get it like into the nitty gritty. How does Jesus dying forgive us. How does it pay the penalty for our sins? Well, first again, the penalty for sin is death. So that is why Jesus needed to die. But Jesus didn't only die he also took on himself, the fullness of the wrath of God. In the garden before his crucifixion, Jesus is praying and he is anxious and stressed and he starts sweating blood. This is actually a medical thing called hematidrosis. You can look it up.

It's where so much stress and anxiety comes upon you, that blood vessels in your forehead burst, and it starts sweating out of your pores. It's gruesome, but it's that much anxiety that Jesus was having in the garden. Why was Jesus so anxious? It's not because he knew he was going to be crucified. It's not by the way he knew he was going to die. It's because he knew he was bearing the wrath of God. How do we know this? He says, "Lord, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me." What is the cup? It's always talking about the cup of the wrath of God.

But he submitted anyway. He lived in obedience and faithfulness to the father because he loved us and knew he can save us from our sins. Isaiah 53 prophecy about this in verse four through six, it says, "Surely he, Jesus, has born our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his stripes, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all."

Praise God that there needs to be a penalty for sin. And that Jesus willingly took it. He did it. He died on the cross, bearing the fullness of the wrath of God for us. Let's run to him. Let's thank him. Let's live a life and full faithful obedience to him because he is worthy because he saves us and he spares us.

But if you choose not to accept this free gift of God, there still needs to be payment for sin. And if we don't let Jesus take that payment for us, we have to pay it ourselves. This is in Revelation, chapter 14 versus 10 through 11. It says he, the he that's talked about here is any buddy who rejects Christ, no other qualifications. Doesn't matter, race, ethnicity, nationality, political... Doesn't matter. Do you reject Christ?

"He also will drink the wine of God's wrath poured full strength into the cup of his anger. And he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. They have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives the mark of its name." That ending part, the beast and its image and its worshipers. What is that talking about? It's the antichrist. We often think of this in the graphic image that's depict did in Revelation, but the idea is anti-Christ, anyone who is in opposition to Christ, who rejects Christ will have to bear the fullness of the wrath of God Themselves.

And I was thinking about it. Why would anybody choose to do that? And one of the things I was thinking about is that we don't actually fear hell. Hell, doesn't scare us. We think about it as just like this red painting, where Satan lives with his pitchfork. And like, it's not fun, but it's fine. We view of it like a campfire where you stick your hand and you get a little bit burned, but it's not that bad. And it's also where all the fun happens, because that's where all the sin is and things like that.

That's not what hell is. I want to tell you, God is love. There's no love in hell. God is joy. The greatest parties that have ever been thrown in the history of the world are in the Bible, thrown by Jesus. If you want to have a good time and have a party, it's going to be in heaven. There's not going to be any party in hell. It's not what we think of. And also we think we can take it. We think we can handle it. Oh, it's not that bad. I was watching a YouTube video this week of a guy who was playing a game where he had to like answer questions about himself and see what it said about him. And it was complete and utter nonsense.

But one of the questions was if there's a hell, which there is, would you go there? And his response was, well, I don't believe in God. So I don't believe in hell. But if there was hypothetically a hell yeah, I'd probably go there, but I could take it, I've got tough skin. I want to tell you something. None of us can take the fullness of the wrath of God. None of us. We are not as strong as we think we are. How do I know this? I almost died this past week. First service, I said, no one knew this, but now first service knows it, but no one else here who hasn't heard the sermon yet knew this. Besides my wife. I almost died this week. How did I die? I didn't die phrase God. How did I almost die? Sorry. How did I almost die?

My wife was out to dinner on a business dinner. And so I was like, okay, she's out. She's been like being really good about being health conscious, trying to eat well. And so she hasn't been eating fried food, but I love fried food. But I feel a little bit guilty. So like I'll make it healthy. I'll have fried fish, fish and chips, fish and french fries. French fries, potato, super food. It's basically a health meal right there. And so it was a great time having fish and chips.

And I'm actively writing this sermon as I'm eating my dinner. And I have this vivid image burned in my mind of me grabbing three french fries. Someone after the service was like, you should only eat one french fry at a time. I was like, "Who does that?" I ate three and I put it in my mouth. And one of those three immediately went straight down my throat and then turned sideways and stopped. And I started choking and gagging and coughing. And all at first I could think of was, "I'm going to be a guy who gets killed by a french fry."

Who wants to be known as the guy who died to a french fry, I'd become famous. I would make the news, but it'd be idiot gets killed by a french fry. And then I start to think my wife is going to come home and see me dead on the floor with a french fry in my mouth. Be like "He got killed by a french fry. Why was I ever married to this guy? Like, what is he doing?" Then my next thought was, "She's not even here. No one can save me. There's nobody here to help helped me. I'm helpless. I'm vulnerable to a french fry."

And then praise God. I remember that he had a purpose for me still to continue living in preaching the sermon and Lord willing many more things. He will use me for afterwards. So I, in that moment, thanked God. I said, "Thank you that you have a purpose for my life. I know I'm not going to die now." And then I threw up the french fry. All this is to say, we aren't as tough as we think we are. We can be killed by french fries.

We cannot withstand the wrath of God in and of ourselves. We can't. Don't try. Don't even try. Turn to Jesus who has fully paid the penalty for you. Trust him, submit your life to him. Let him bear that penalty for you. Now, how do we go from being in God's wrath to being in his good graces. It starts by stopping suppressing the truth. We can't suppress the truth. This is verse 18, again, through verse 20, where it says "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to the because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."

And verse 19 starts again with the word for. So again, what is it referencing? It's explaining why the wrath of God is coming against those who suppress the truth. Well, we need to understand what that word suppress is. If you're like me, I think of the word suppress as like push down. The image I have in my mind is packing for a vacation where the weight limit is 50 pounds on planes. So you take the smaller suitcase, but you still shove everything in that you want, that would actually fit into the bigger suitcase. And you're trying to get it to fit in.

And so like you put everything in it, won't close. So like you jump on top of it with a knee and knee it down and you're sitting on it and you finally get it zipped up. That's what I picture when I think of suppressing. And that's not what's going on here. That's not what's happening at all. The word is more of an idea of restraint. It's the idea of a prisoner breaking free and you being like, oh no, we can't let this out. Let's put shackles on his wrist and anchor him to a wall. We don't want this thing to escape.

What this verse is saying is that our sin suppresses truth. It's not just truth in general, it's a specific truth. It's the gospel. That is what Paula is referring to. Our sin restrains and holds back the gospel.

The past few weeks pastor Jan has been talking about how he believes that God is wanting to do a great work, miracle in this city. And he wants to use this church and praise God, I agree. But he's also said that if we tolerate and we live in sin, it's holding God back from doing that. Where does he get that from? It's this verse. Our sin, our unrighteousness is suppressing the power of the gospel from being let out. We are restraining it. We are holding it back. Do we want to see God work mightily in this city and in our lives? Yes. Then live in righteousness, live in obedience, stop suppressing the gospel.

Now why is God's wrath coming against those who do suppress it? It says in verse 19, "For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them." This word plain is a word that is plain. It doesn't affect us in any way. It doesn't make us feel a certain way. But the idea of this word is it's obvious beyond a doubt, beyond a question. We get a reference to this word in Acts chapter four. And in the story, Peter and John just healed a man who was lame from birth. The whole city of Jerusalem knew that he was lame, couldn't walk. They heal him in the name of Jesus and he jumps up. It says he leaps up and walks out.

And then Peter and John are proclaiming that this is the work of Christ. This is the grace of God that has done this, repent and believe. And then the Pharisees come and arrest them and bring them and put them on trial. And after they hear what happened, they send them out. And this is where it picks up in acts chapter four, verse 15. It says, "But when they," the Pharisees, "Had commanded them," Peter and John, "To leave the council, they conferred with one another saying, what shall we do with these men for that a notable sign has been performed through them is evidence to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And we cannot deny it."

The same word is the word evident. It's so clear that when you see someone who their whole life couldn't walk, jumps up and walk. You're like, "Oh, That's clear. I can't deny that." And the Pharisees wanted to deny it. This doesn't help their cause. They were trying to suppress the preaching of the gospel. They were trying to prevent people from proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ. This doesn't help their cause. So they want to deny it. But they can't. They're like we know this guy, the whole city of Jerusalem knew this guy. He was in the gates begging and his whole life, he couldn't walk. Now he can, it's clear.

And that's the same way that God reveals himself to each and every one of us. It's plain. It's clear. It's undeniable. And this leads us into the question. One of the many pushbacks and many questions about Christianity is like, what about those who have never heard? What about those who live in a remote island or a remote part of the world where no missionary has ever been? Nobody has ever gone with the Bible and proclaimed the gospel. What about them? Well, what this text is saying is that God is revealing himself even to them.

And actively, it says because God has shown it to them. God is actively involved. God doesn't want anybody to not know who he is. He is actively showing it to them. One of the craziest stories that I love when I think about this is the story of the Paumarí tribe and the Amazon, Paumarí, if you haven't heard of them, you should look up this story. It's incredible. But there's this small tribe in the Amazon of the Paumarí who live up this river. That's like black with gun and dirt and debris. It's hard to get to. And then they live in a lake village.

And so there were people that decided they were going to be the first missionaries to go and preach the gospel to these people. So they gather their resources, their supplies, everything they need. And they go to get there. And they can't because of this river. And so they feel that God is calling them to sell everything that they had brought, all of the provisions, to get a boat ride, to get somebody who can make the journey for them up there. So they do. And it's the exact amount that they needed for a boat ride.

And so then with nothing but the clothes on their backs, they go up this river and they get to this village. And the people of the village welcome them joyfully. They throw a feast and a party for them. One of the elder women of the community comes to them and says, "Why are you here? What are you here for? What are you doing?" And they say, "Well, we want to share with you the story of Jesus, the son of God who loves you and wants to save you." And she says, "Good. We have houses built for you."

And they're like, "What?" And she said, "You don't know this, but we have radios. And a rogue radio wave came to us and we heard a sermon about a God who loves us and wants to save us. And we said, if this God is real, he'll clearly send people to help us. And so we built houses in preparation for you.'

Let's not limit the ways God can reach people. He is all powerful. He is all knowing, all loving. He can reach anybody he wants to, he can reveal himself to anybody he wants to with or without us. We should still be faithful in proclaiming the gospel. Let's not stop that. Later, Paul says, "How are they to hear if no one preaches?" So we still need to preach. But it also says in verse 20, "For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." This is saying is creation is crying out to reveal God to us. Creation is an example, is God showing us, "Look at how great I am." You can't deny God's existence when we look at creation, I challenge you to study the origins of science.

I challenge you. I talked about this briefly in the first service and then someone, a brother came up to me and gave me even more information, praised God for him. And reminded me that we came at a time when people were worshiping odds over every specific area. And then Christians came and said, no, there's one, God, who's over all things, but he's a God of order and of design. And so we can know God through the order of creation. When we look at creation, we can understand who God is. So the first scientists that ever existed were studying creation to see the proofs of God.

A small example of this, I don't know. Do you guys remember high school chemistry at all? Most of us probably blocked it out. But Boyle's law. I don't know if anyone remembers Boyle's law. I can't even tell you what it was about, but it's one of the fundamental principles in chemistry. In seminary, I was reading a book, a theological work by a guy named Boyle. And I was a like, who is this guy? What does he... I want to know more about him. This work is really good. And he is the guy who made Boyle's law that is named after him. Why is a theologian founding scientific laws? Well, because he knew that within it, he saw the greatness of the glory of God. He couldn't help, but look at creation in the world around him and be like this screams that God exists. The screams that God is here. And so we are without excuse.

God is revealing himself to us. We are given his gospel. And even those who don't hear, he is actively revealing himself to, and all of creation testifies to the existence of God. And it says, so we are without excuse if we reject him. And that phrase without excuse is not like you got caught off guard and you weren't prepared to give an answer. So you're like tongue tied. It's not that you gave an excuse, but it wasn't good enough. It's that there's not even an option for excuses. It's the idea that when we get to heaven and stand... Well, when we get to the judgment throne of God, we stand before him and he doesn't say, "Why didn't you believe?" And then be like, "Oh, okay. I understand that reasoning or, oh, that wasn't good enough reasoning." That's not what happens when we get before the judgment seat of God, he says, "Did you believe? Or did you not?" No.

No. Then you have to incur the wrath that we have is in bio disobeying God. Now, one of the main reasons why throughout history, we suppress this truth, even when it's so obvious to us is that we're arrogant and we're stubborn. I know I am arrogant and I am stubborn. You can ask my wife. But God calls us to stop being arrogant, and in the very next chapter in Romans chapter two, verse five, it says, "But because of your heart and I'm-penitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself. On the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed." I know many brothers and sisters in the church, not many. I do that to make everyone feel a little bit more anonymous. But there are some brothers and sisters in this church who I know that come every Sunday, that sings songs go to community group. And we're thankful that you do that. But that you don't call God Lord of your life, that you don't put him as king and ruler over your life.

And there's excuse and reason after reason. And what I want to challenge you with guys, soften your hearts. Stop fighting against the truth of the gospel. Let the gospel change your life. I didn't say this first service, but I was thinking about it. The church I grew up in there's a pastor named Ted Martins. I'm very thankful for him. He had a huge impact on my life, specifically in love for scripture and love for debating, love for arguing the truth of scripture. But he had an example that I loved and has stayed with me my whole life. Says the gospel is like a lion. Now imagine that there's a lion and a cage behind me and I'm standing here like back up against the cage.

You'd be like, "What are you doing? The lion's going to reach out and claw you. You're going to die. What are you doing?" And I'm saying, "No, no, I'm, I'm protecting the gospel. I'm protecting this lion." And he says, what we need to do is not stand and protect it. We need to let it out. We need to let the gospel come out and transform our lives. Change every single part of us. Come into the parts we don't want God to be in, reveal the truth of the gospel in us. And then we can stop suppressing the truth. Just let God work in you. Let him, he loves you. He sacrificed and gave up everything for you.

He incurred God's wrath for you. Let him change your life. Now again, I said, I am stubborn. So I know that hardheaded, stubborn people don't stop doing things just by saying, don't do it. Again you could ask my wife. And so how do we actively stop suppressing truth? How do we actively stop being stubborn. It's by honoring and thanking God. This is verses 21 through 23, where it says "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. They became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the images, resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

They're suppressing the truth because they did not honor God or give thanks to him. What do we mean when we say we need to honor God? What is honor? Honor is putting someone or something in the rightful place that they deserve. What does it means to honor God is to put him in his rightful place as king and ruler and Lord of our lives and Lord of all creation. That's what it means to honor God. So if you want to honor God, you first have to start by acknowledging God exists. Then you need to acknowledge that he is ruler. He is creator over all things, and you have to live in faithful obedience to him, let him change your life. And to give thanks to him. We don't do it begrudgingly. We don't do it because we have to.

We actually realize, oh, the gospel spared me from God's wrath. Praise him. I'm alive because the gospel, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God, you're a ruler of my life. Thank you. I'd be dead apart from you. You have something you want to command me to do and tell me to do all right, I'll do it. Because if I don't, I don't have any reason to live. I'm thankful that you allow me to live. So I'll do whatever it is that you tell me to do. Thank you. Thank you for life. Thank you for the ability to do anything. Thank you for creation that proclaims your goodness and your glory. Thank you.

And when we don't. It says that we become futile in our thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Were darkened is not the idea of putting on sunglasses or closing the blind so it gets a little bit darker. It's the idea of complete and utter darkness. We see this in Matthew 24, verse 29, where it says "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. And the stars will fall from heaven and powers of the heavens will be shaken."

It's the idea that there is no more manmade light. There's no sun, there's no moon. There's no more stars. Complete utter darkness. The darkness where your hand can be an inch in front of your face and you can't see it. That's what happens in our hearts when we reject God. It's not that God makes us darkened. It's that we reveal that our arts are dark as well. If you're here today, you're not a Christian. You're thinking, you're saying I have questions. I have doubts. I'm thinking about it. I'm on a journey.

I want to ask you a question. If, hypothetical, it's not hypothetical, but hypothetically, if there is an all powerful God. A God who created all things, a God who willingly suffered for you to save you and offered you a free gift of salvation and you choose to reject it. What kind of a decision is that? Is that a smart one? It's not. It's not. And it shows that our thinking is futile. The word futile means useless. Shows that if we can't trust God with the most important thing in life, our thinking is flawed. Because of sin all of us start this way. So how does our hearts change from a darkened heart to one of light. That loves the truth, gives glory to God and thanks him. What changes?

We need light. Revelation 22:4-5 says, "They will see his face," Jesus' face, "And his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more. They will need no light or lamp or son for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever." How do we get rid of the complete utter darkness in us? We let Jesus come in and change our lives.

We welcome Jesus into our life and say, "Jesus, I need you. You are light." And his light pierces all darkness, nothing will be hidden from him. He will expose all of it, help us, heal us, transform our lives, sanctify us when we let Jesus in. I beg of you, let Jesus into your heart. Let him transform your life. Verse 22, it similarly says "Claiming to be wise, they became fools." Again it's showing that when you say you're smart, but you reject God it shows how not smart you are.

And then verse 23, "And exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." The word exchanged means understandably, giving up. You can't exchange something you don't know you have. And what God is saying is I offered you really my glory eternity with God, praise him for it. But we gave it up. We gave up the immortal glory. The word immortal we think of as only not dying, but that's part of it. But the other part of it is it's imperishable. It's untaintable. It can't be diminished, withered or hurt or destroyed in any way. God's glory is immortal. And we gave it up for what?

For mortal, for perishable, for things that are on their way to death. And what was that? For man, for creeping things for... Sorry, for man and birds and animals and creeping things. This phrase at the end should immediately bring us back to Genesis 1, the story of creation, where these are the categories of the creatures God created on earth. And the idea here is that yes, throughout history, people have created images of these things. We read that in the beginning in Exodus. They created a calf, an animal. But it's also the idea of anything in creation. We exchanged the immortal glory of God for things in creation, for things God created, we worshiped creation over creator.

So the question is, what do we put in the place that God alone deserves from his creation? Doesn't have to be just animals and birds and creeping things. What in creation takes the place of God in our lives. What are the things that we say, "I'm not going to listen to God on that. I'm not going to budge." What are the things that we say, "I can't believe in a God like that." Or, "I don't need to go to church today because I have more important things to do."

I don't need to spend time with God and his word and praying to him because I'm just so busy. What are the things that we put in place of God in our lives? And what are we to do with them? We're to exchange them back, or to get rid of them. We're to give them up and say, "God, I don't want these things. I want you, I want your glory, I want your love, I want your grace, I want the gospel." Praise him for it. And if you're not a Christian, think of those same things and say, God, I don't care. Any of it. I'm changing my life. I'm submitting all of it to you.

With this, I'd like to close. And if you know anything about preaching, when someone says, I'd like to close you got to at least 10 minutes left, but I'll try and be a little bit shorter than that. I'd like to close with a quote from Jonathan Edwards' sermon again, sinners in the hands of an angry God that he brings up at the end.

Where he says, "And now you have an extraordinary opportunity a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open and stands in the door, calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners. A day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from the east, west, north, south many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in, are in now a happy state with their hearts filled with love to him who has love them and washed them from their sins and his own blood and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day, to see so many others feasting while you are pining and perishing. To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for so of heart and how for vexation of spirit. How can you rest one moment in such a condition. Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the people at Suffield where they are flocking from day to day to Christ."

Suffield is another place where the gospel was being preached and people were being saved. And his point is the people he's preaching to your souls are just as valuable. If you're here today, you're not a Christian, God values your soul. He loves you. He willingly died to save you. Why put all off committing your life to him? Why, when you see the rejoicing.

It says that wherein many flocking to him pressing into the kingdom of God and that we were not that long ago in the same state. There was a point in my life where I wasn't a Christian. I'm a Christian because God revealed his love to me because God showed the gospel to me. And I'm willingly submitting my life to him because he is worthy. And I could tell you, I rejoice. I praise him. I get to sing songs of praise to him. Again, the greatest parties are in heaven. God is great. I'm rejoicing. I want that rejoicing for you too. If you're not a Christian, let Jesus bear the wrath for you. Let him do it. Let the gospel transform your life. If you are a Christian, praise him, he has paid the penalty, has spared us from his wrath. Let's glorify him. Let's praise him. Let's honor him and rejoice. Let's pray.

Heavenly father, Lord, we love you. Help us to love you. Lord, help us to no longer suppress the gospel in our lives. Let the gospel run free and reign in our lives. Let it transform us. Sanctify us. Make us more like you. Lord, we thank you that Jesus has spared us from your wrath. Lord, we ask that everyone here who is on the path of incurring your wrath, that you soften their heart and change them. Help them to see your love and your grace for them and spare them. Lord, we thank you and praise you that you are good. You are holy. You are honorable and praiseworthy. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors, along pastor Shane and pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you, we do that through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly, you can redeem it at the welcome center for a gift and then we'll also send you another gift in the mail, just to say thank you for coming out. Today is a big Sunday at Mosaic, we have baptisms after this service, three baptisms. Praise God for that, we're excited. And then we have our first quarterly members meeting which is a potluck. Praise God. It's the first one in a long time and it's going to be delicious because you're bringing the food.

And if you're not a member and you're like, "ohhh..." You can become a member just not today and no, you can't come. Don't even go downstairs, don't be tempted. But there's a membership class on March 20th which is the first step to becoming a member. So you can, in lieu of coming today, register for that. It's 1:00 to 3:00 PM with lunch provided, please do register, send an email to admin@mosaicboston.com. We love membership at Mosaic. It's important, it's biblical. It's crucial for the body to grow in holiness and righteousness together as we hold each other accountable and spur each other on to good works. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly father, we thank you so much that you though you are the great holy God of the universe and yes, we deserve your eternal wrath at the great judgment. We deserve eternal damnation for rebelling against a holy and just God. And you the holy and just God, you figured out a way to remain just and to justify sinners through the wonderful, powerful, tremendous news of the gospel which is the power of God and to salvation. For those of us who are Christians and saved from the judgment that is to come, we thank you, Lord. We had nothing to do with that, it was all by grace through faith. And make us an unabashed unashamed body, just members of God who proclaimed the gospel boldly and courageously because we know how powerful it is and as we do so, Lord, save many people. We pray for revival in the city and beyond in New England and we pray that you spark it through revival in the church.

A revival where we love the gospel rooted in the gospel, proclaim the gospel and live in a manner worthy of the gospel as we live by faith because the righteous shall live by faith. We pray, holy God, be honored today, glorified through the proclamation of your word, through the hearing and listening and submission to your word. And empower us by the power of the holy spirit to share the gospel with anyone and everyone who would just listen. We pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen. We're in a sermon series through the book of Romans today, the sermon is on two verses. I was going to say just two verses but I'm not going to say that word just because these are some of the most powerful versus in all of scripture. They encapsulate in themselves the whole idea, the sweeping idea, the argument of the book of Romans and it also encapsulates Christianity in and of itself.

The question before us today is how does a person become a Christian? I've been wrestling with this question for 20 plus years and in Boston for 12 plus years. What in the world could take a regular modern New Englander in 2022 who's just pagan. And when I use the word pagan, it's not derogatory. It's just, you don't know Jesus yet. Just pagan, godless world view, living for themselves. Maybe considers themselves a good person, like, "I'm a good person. I'm just not the religious type or I don't believe in organized religion." Or, "Christianity is just one of the many ways to God." How do you go from that to becoming a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, repenting and believing God. And not just believing in God but believing God, obeying God, getting baptized, joining a community group, becoming a member, serving at Mosaic Boston and tithing.

What in the world could take a person from that? Where I want nothing to do with God to you're sharing the gospel with your pagan friends. What in the world would do it? And I particularly think about men, just Boston bros, just New England, Boston bros. They all get the same haircut, they're faded up on the sides. They all smoke Parliaments and go to the Dunkin' Donuts ones for extra sugar, extra cream. Just people like that, just salt of the earth, wearing Timberland to everything. You're wearing your favorite jerseys, Tom Brady Jersey and it's the new one. It's half Bucs, half Pats because you're a traitor just like he is and you're still heartbroken. So, a guy like that, works the job, lives for the weekend, no sexual ethics at all, sleeps around, hooks up, addicted to porn, just statistically speaking.

What would it take for a guy like that who's only religion is the Red Sox and he goes there for the communion at Fenway Park, you get a hot dog and a beer and that's your tithe because it's $80. What would it take for that guy to get, say, radically saved? Committing himself to Christ, committing himself to sexual purity? Finding a woman of God, pursuing her, loving her, submitting to Christ, marrying her, loving and leading her as Christ told us, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." What would it take for the guy like that to get a Bible and walk around with it? Because this is how I judge your spirituality, by the size of your Bible. Because if your Bible is less than five pounds, are you even saved? I'm not sure.

And then you work a job, you're faithful to your spouse, you raise some godly kids. You tie it to the church, you do everything you possibly can to build the kingdom of God. What would that take? What would it take for a young woman to go from feminism, anti patriarchy, and submit to a man named Jesus Christ? And then if she is to be pursued by a godly man and gets married and submits to her husband as the church submits to Christ and everything, what would it take for whole families to get converted and become Christians? What in the world could do that? What would it take? Well, it takes a powerful working of God, it takes the power of God. It takes a miracle, it's the only way. But what's our role, dear Christians? Our role, what must we do to unleash the power of God in this city?

What must we do? Well, what we must do is we must unashamedly proclaim the gospel. Shamelessly, unabashedly, we must believe the gospel, receive God's righteousness as Christs righteousness and live by faith to grow in righteousness. And those are the points but I'll repeat them as we look at these two verses that changed the world, Romans 1:16 and 17, would you look at the text with me? For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith, for faith, as it is written: “The righteous shall live by faith.” This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Four points. Number one, do not be ashamed of the gospel. Number two, believe the gospel. Number three, receive God's righteousness. And four, live by faith to grow in righteousness. First point, do not be ashamed of the gospel. The context for these verses begins with the stream of thought in verse 14 and 15 of chapter one, I am under obligation, Paul says both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish, so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. Paul's cradle, the motivation of his whole life, was Jesus paid it all. All to him, I owe. He knew because he was a student of the Hebrew scriptures, he knew what it would take for God to remain just and also justify people. He knew what it would take, he realized that it was Jesus Christ. He alone, it is finished. Jesus paid the whole price. So Paul, his whole life was driven by this indebtedness to God.

I have an obligation to God to preach the gospel. God call told me, God commissioned me. It's my job to preach the gospel and he also felt the obligation to people. Greeks and non-Greek, just everybody, he felt the obligation that these people are headed toward eternal damnation. The justice of God is coming, the second coming of Christ is coming. The moment that you die, you stand before God and if you rejected Christ, if you didn't believe in Christ as the only way of salvation, you'll spend eternity in hell apart from God. That's what motivated Paul, He's like, "I owe it to people. I love God. I'm preaching in gospel. I love people. I want to preach the gospel." Because that's what love is, you want the best thing for people. That's why Paul's so eager to preach the gospel. He says, he's passionate, he's zealous, to preach the gospel.

And that brings us to our text, verse 16, says for. I'm eager to preach at for because I'm not ashamed of the gospel. For context, Paul was murdered for preaching the gospel. That's how he died, he was executed, most likely beheaded. The founder of our faith was executed for proclaiming the truth to Pilate into the Sanhedrin. All of the apostles were executed for the faith except for the apostle Paul but basically he also was executed for the faith by being exiled to an island called Patmos. They were executed by a government for preaching the news that there's a Lord higher than Caesar. There's a kurios higher than Caesar. That there's only one way to God and then with that, they preached the biblical sexual ethic.

Sex is only between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. That there's only two genders and the pure unadulterated gospel is always scandalous, it always has been scandalous to the world. Satan hates it, demons hate it and people rebelling against God who are just enjoying their sin, they hate it. But despite the deadly resistance, despite the venomous hatred, despite the steely cold indifference, mocking, dishonor, scoffing, reproach, Paul was not ashamed of the gospel, he gloried in it, he honored the gospel. He boasted in the Lord and he knew Jesus' warning and Jesus warned his followers. Mark 8:38, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words... Look at these, these are important words. In this adulterous and sinful generation.

What's the connection there? The connection is people love their sin and to tell people about the good news, you first got to share the bad news. And people resist the bad news because people love their sin, they don't want to turn from their sin. No matter how great the implications of salvation are and this adulterous, sinful generation. Of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels. So you're a Christian, if Paul mentioned this and you got to ask, why is he bringing up shame? "Paul, we know you're not ashamed, you're the great apostle." Because even he struggled with the temptation, he struggled to shrink back.

Even the great Paul, so if he struggled with this temptation of being ashamed of the gospel, how much more so are we? Quick question, are you even in the slightest embarrassed by the gospel? Are you even in the slightest embarrassed by the teachings of Christianity? Are you in the slightest embarrassed of Jesus Christ? That you are a follower of Christ? And if so, why? And the only reason that comes up is you're afraid of the fear of man. You esteem people's opinion of you more than you esteem the opinion of God. It's a desire to be liked and respected by the world and all of that ultimately is just meaningless. The word for ashamed here is to be or become characterized by the feelings of shame, guilt, embarrassment, disgrace, remorse. To experience a painful feeling or sense of loss of status because of some particular event, it's a loss of status.

"I didn't like that. I might get up and leave and I want everyone to notice. Pastor Jan notices when Pastor Jan is preaching and people get up." And sometimes I know when they're going to the bathroom because they go that way and most of the time they just go right down the middle. They got pissed off and I'm going to continue my sermon because I'm not ashamed of the gospel, what are you going to do? We shouldn't be ashamed of the gospel. We should be ashamed of sin, we should be. We should be ashamed of continuing to live in sin. Roman 6:20-21, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness but what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Unfortunately in much of modern evangelicalism, it feels like Christians are ashamed of the gospel. It's like, "Yeah, the stuff in the old Testament, you don't really have to believe." "Yeah, God's holy but he's loving, just focus on that." "Yeah, God's not as bad as you think he is." And my personal pet peeve is, "Hey, just try Jesus. You got some problems in your life, just try Jesus. It's like sharing an ice cream flavor with someone there's mint and chocolate chip, there's Jesus. Just try Jesus." No, we don't preach try Jesus, we preach repent and believe in the gospel, it's the only hope. Paul wasn't ashamed in the gospel nor was he ashamed of the holy scriptures. Lots of Christians today are fine with the gospel and all of the attention is only on the gospel. That's all they talk about is the gospel. Repent and Jesus forgives you of all your sins and then you can live any way you want.

They're ashamed of the holy scriptures. But if you're ashamed of the holy scriptures, there is no gospel apart from the holy scriptures. It's part and parcel, it's the whole cannon, it's the whole council of God, all 66 books. It's all one seamless teaching doctrinally about God, about salvation. There is no power onto salvation apart from God and apart from the scriptures, there is no gospel. That's why Paul says here, I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed because this is power, that's why. And that's what a lot of churches do, that's what a lot of Christians do. They become ashamed, they shrink back from the gospel and they shrink back from the power source. A lot of churches, they milk things down, just milk toast, weak sauce, gospel, just not the gospel.

And I think for some reason, God has a special calling on this church. Because in the nation, we are in arguably the hardest place to start a church, arguably the hardest place to proclaim the holy scriptures of God. And the harder it gets, I don't know if you noticed, the more high octane, holy scripture, pure unadulterated gospel we give you. The darker everything gets out there, the longer my sermons get, the fewer verses I got, it's just gospel because that's where the power is. The power to change absolutely everything. Mosaic, I've been praying and I said this to my newsletter, I've been praying for us to grow in depth of understanding the gospel, loving the gospel. And I've been praying for us to grow in becoming unashamed of the gospel, just preach it to everybody.

Everybody, all your colleagues, just preach to the gospel. Just get to the point where you do get fired. Preach to your boss on the way out. HR, a little debrief, just preach the gospel and then start your own business so you can have freedom preach to gospel to everyone, just everyone. Everyone hates on a home service pros where they just put the gospel on their truck and they're like, "Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation." And, most of them, they're not Americans and they just don't care. They're just on a bash because everyone needs home service pros so you don't care what your plumber is going to say to you when he's saving your life so he just preaches the gospel. So, here's my specific prayer. I see the challenges long term of preaching the gospel here, I see it.

You see it with Canada, you see it with freezing bank accounts, you just see it. There is a law now in Canada where if I preach the sermon, I'm going to preach in two weeks about biblical sexuality, I would be arrested for preaching that sermon in Canada. You don't think that's coming here? This is why I'm preaching this sermon at the second service because my wife's not here. If that comes, I don't care. What I do care about is us having a space to meet to continue ministry when we get booted from our lease. That's why my real prayer is for us to share the gospel with our landlords because scripture says to the Jew first and also to the Greek, we just share the gospel to them and then we don't have to pay them rent and all of a sudden we're one church, man, that's how we spark revival.

So I have a specific prayer request. I am praying that we double this year. I'm praying that we, as a church, double this year, double in everything. Double the people attending, double people getting saved, double our community group attendants, double our community groups, double our membership, double our budget, double everything. And I think this is the year and you know why? Because it's 2022. And this Tuesday, which sometimes is pronounced two's day is 2/22 so you got a 2/22/22 and it's a Tuesday. So I think the stars are aligning. God's like, "I want the whole church to pray for us to double." I think so. Some people, when I say stuff like that, they're like, "I think he's nuts." I'm not nuts, I actually believe. And I read scripture and I see that they do stuff and I'm like, "I just want to do that."

That's why I started at church, that's why we moved... So this year, the Lord led me to fast. I don't know if you've noticed, some people are like, "Pastor Jan's been shrinking. Well, what happened to the guy?" I was on a fast. I felt like the Lord said on January 19th, you got to fast. You got to pray and fast. I'm talking about biblical fast, I'm not talking about fasting from Facebook and Netflix. That's not fasting, that's abstaining. I'm talking about fasting which is abstaining from foods for 20 days and it ended last Monday. So the first Romans sermon, I was 19 days no food. I had my Pellegrino’s for the electrolytes and I had water. The reason why is because I believed and I was praying, I had extra time, right?

If you're not eating or cooking or cleaning up, it's basically two extra hours a day. So I'd wake up every morning. I got two extra hours. For some reason, I live on Pleasant Street on my roof, I see the temple. Literally, I see the temple. I look and the Temple's right there, the dome. And I just pray over the dome, my prophecy, I get all charismatic and I just pray for God to... I was there this morning. I saw the sunlight come up and I'm like, "Yeah, the Lord's with us." So I'm saying all that, I believe that God is going to spark revival in this nation. And I believe God is going to do it here because historically, he always starts in Boston. And I believe it's going to start with us because I know the other churches in the city... I pray for them to grow too in the gospel. But for some reason, we are positioned, I know. So that's why I ask on Tuesday that you pray and also don't be ashamed of gospel, preach it.

Man, just preach it. Just everybody, every person you meet, just preach the gospel, just preach the gospel. You know why I say that? Because other parts of the nation, you study church growth and here's how most of it happens. It starts with a church that finds a guy who's really good looking and has a really good looking family and "All right, you're going to be the lead pastor." And it's very fashionable. He wears the skinny jeans, he wears expensive sneakers. He's got the watch. The watch game is nice, perfectly groomed beard, I don't know why. And he holds the mic and screams at people and you start a church. And all of a sudden people from other churches are showing up and you got transfer growth.

Well in Boston, there's no such thing as transfer growth because we're one of the biggest churches. So, you want to transfer? What do you want? Park Street closed down and everyone come here. I wouldn't be against it but... Just kidding. What I'm saying is the only way we're going to grow if we were really serious about it is conversion growth. Where people are pagans and they hear the gospel from someone in our church and they get saved, radically saved. So for each of you, your homework assignment for this year is to convert at least one pagan, at least one, that's how we double. If every single one of us converts a... And you're like, "Pastor Jan, do you believe in converting people?" Yeah, that's the whole point of me being up here. If you are not a Christian, I want to convert. I want to proselytize, I want to evangelize. That's my job, that's all of our jobs because we're not ashamed of the gospel. Don't be ashamed of the gospel. There's a lot of Christians that are like, "Yeah, but we're not like those Christians. We're not the fundamentalist." I got nothing wrong about fundamentalists. I like that word, it's got the word fun in it. It's got the word dam in it which is cool because it helps you explain the gospel. Like apart from Jesus, you are going to be damned for eternity and it's got the word mental in it where you have to use your brain to actually learn the truth of the gospel, fundamentalist. And also it depends what your fundamental is, what's our fundamental? It's the gospel so we're not ashamed of the gospel. "What is the gospel?" You ask if you're not a believer. Well, the gospel in a nutshell is euangelion, just means good news but I think the word good is too weak.

It's not even good news, it's not great news, it's tremendous news. It's the tremendous news that though we are in sin, we've transgressed the commandments of God, we've rebelled against the holy God, God, out of his great love for us sends his son, God incarnate, Jesus Christ who lives an absolute perfect life morally. Loves God with all of his heart, soul, strength and mind. Loves people as himself and then offers up his whole life as a sacrifice for our sin. On the cross, he atoned for our sin by paying the penalty for it. By absorbing the wrath of God that we deserve for our law break, that's why he cried out, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" He was forsaken by God on the cross because he took our sin upon himself. He went through hell on behalf of us. He's buried, resurrects on the third day and he's ascended at the right hand of God, reigning and ruling.

And when you repent and believe, that very second, all of your sins are forgiven. Every single one, every sin, every sin you will ever committed, you are forgiven and you become a child of God, your eternity is secure. You know how people say, "I just believe everything will work out." That's not true if you are not a Christian. It's not true. That's a lie. Everything will not work out for you if you rebel and if you reject Jesus Christ. You will spend eternity in hell so that's why my job is repent and believe. Please, just the whole city, just everybody. And share the gospel because how else are we going to fill Fenway Park? How are we going to do that for Easter one of these years? 2024, because I know that's going to be a crazy year so we should have a worship service in Fenway Park, that's my dream. I'll pray about that.

Point two, believe the gospel, right? It's not power unless you believe. Romans 1:16. I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The gospel doesn't unleash the power of God, the gospel is the power of God. The more we unleash the gospel, the more the power of God is unleashed. The word for power here is God's power, supernatural power, his strength, his force, his might. Power for what? It's power for salvation. The most absolute, most important thing, any person needs is salvation. And the word for salvation usually in American churches, it's just a watered down understanding of salvation. People are like, "I got saved." Or like, "I walked down the aisle. I checked off a box of a card, I guess I'm saved. God's forgiven me all my sins. I'm chilling."

Or like, "God saved me from an addiction or God saved me from a particular troubles." And usually what people mean is salvation from a temporal danger. That's not what Paul is talking about. The biblical doctrine of salvation is primarily eschatological, which just means end times. And what he means is judgment day is coming. God hates evil. God despise sin. He's angry about it. There's a wrath that he has and a lot of people are like, "I don't want to believe in God of Wrath." I do. There's so much evil and wickedness in this world, I pray for the second coming to come as quickly as possible. I do pray for that. I want God's wrath. I can't wait for God's wrath descend upon the world. That's because I'm a Christian and every Christian, if you are a Christian, if you have been saved from the wrath of God, we should be crying out, "Lord Jesus, come." The day of salvation, day of judgment, eschatologically speaking, is one and the same.

When Paul thinks about salvation, he thinks about this kind of salvation. Romans 5:9, since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from what? From the wrath of God. It's coming. So this salvation includes deliverance from a final judgment and it includes a restoration of the glory which we once lost. There will be a glorification part of salvation. There's justification, sanctification, glorification, I'll get into that in a second. But we'll when the judgment comes, if you are in Christ, Jesus isn't coming to judge you, Jesus is coming as your merciful savior to redeem you from the corruption of this world. He's going to usher in the new heavens and new earth and by doing so, he's going to restore our bodies.

So now our bodies will have no even ability to sin, glorified bodies, no sickness, no aging, just perfectly according to the image of God. You get that in Philippians 3:20 and 21, our citizenship is in heaven. From it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. So when Paul thinks about salvation, the doctrine is a threefold doctrine of salvation begins with justification. It continues as sanctification. It ends with glorification. Justification is, I have been saved. The very moment that you repent of your sins, all of your sins are forgiven. You are acquitted, not guilty.

Now begins sanctification, and the sanctification process is you growing in sanctus from Latin but it's holiness. If you're growing in righteousness, just a practical righteousness, God gives you the imputed righteousness of Christ and basically, you live, you grow into that close by daily repenting of sin. So you're not earning your salvation, you're working out your salvation as Philippians 1 says. And then when we die or when Christ returns is glorification so there's a past tense, a present possession and a battle and a final salvation. For whom is the gospel? He says for the Jew first and also to the Greek. For Paul to describe this in this phrase, he's talking about the totality of all humanity. Every human being is a sinner and every sinner needs the gospel.

It's not a different gospel for the Jew and for the Greek, it's the same gospel for everybody. And Jesus did start with the Jew first. Jesus Christ, I don't know if you know this, was Jewish. He was Jewish. Grew up in Jewish family, a Jewish little boy. Grew up going to the synagogue, grew up going to the temple. He knew the Hebrew scriptures and he was Jewish to fulfill all of the prophecies about the Messiah. Jesus came primarily to minister, to whom? To Jewish people. Jew first and also to the Greek. I find this verse very important and this is kind of how I understand things. I always look for God's fingerprints over our ministry and as he leads but don't you find a little serendipitous where we meet to worship Jesus Christ?

I got a Hebrew scriptures behind me and I've got a reminder every single Sunday, the 10 commandments. And you should look at that 10 commandments and be like, "Well, how many commandments did I break this week?" And then repent of that. My third daughter, this week broke five commandments. I know that because my wife literally listed them out to her. You stole, you lied, you dishonored your mother and your father and you did that because you're an idolater, that's number one and you didn't worship Yahweh as God. We're all sinners. We've all transgressed the law of God, Jewish people are not saved any other way. It doesn't matter if you're born Jewish. It doesn't matter how religious you are in following the old Testament, there's no way you can get saved. Take your 10 commandments, Jewish people, look at how many of them you have broken and then ask, "Well, how can there be atonement for my sin?" And a day of atonement is not enough, of a holiday.

There is no sacrificial system right now. Read the book of Hebrews, please. And I have a very soft spot in my heart for Jewish people because I grew up in kind of a Jewish town in Cranston, Rhode Island. A bunch of my friends growing up were Jewish. They were not Jewish, they were Jew-ish like Julian Edelman says. And then my roommate in college, freshman year, was Jewish and then he joined the Jewish fraternity called AEPi and I lived with him the second year. And the whole time, I'm trying to share the gospel just even in college, they don't know their own scriptures. Just read your own scriptures. They all point to Jesus Christ and then read the book of Hebrews and you see that all of us need Jesus Christ, it's the same gospel.

The word for believes here is very important because in our modern understanding of faith, it doesn't matter if what you believe in is true as long as you hold that belief sincerely. It doesn't matter if you believe in Jesus, doesn't matter if you believe in Buddha, it doesn't matter if you believe in the flying spaghetti monster. It doesn't matter if it's true, that's just your belief. Well, that's not how scripture uses the word faith or belief, pisteuo here, belief is to consider something to be true and therefore worthy of one's trust. God is the object of faith so therefore God says, believe in the gospel. Believe God because it's true. So what do we believe in Jesus Christ? We believe in the historic fact that there was a man named Jesus Christ, that he lived a perfect life, that he was empowered by the spirit, that he died a literal death, that he rose on the third day, a literal resurrection.

We believe all that. There were over 500 people that saw him resurrected and that's what explains the growth of the Christian movement so be careful of divorcing faith from truth. That's not saving faith, saving faith begins by saying, I believe God. I believe the gospel. I believe the holy scriptures. What's the connection between the gospel and faith? What releases the power from the gospel to get people to believe? What's that connection there? Well, I got to bring in Ephesians 2:1-5 to show you where people are apart from God. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which he once walked following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when you were dead in our trespass made us alive together with Christ, by grace, you have been saved.

And later on, he goes on by grace through faith, you have been saved. But what he's saying is apart from Jesus Christ, apart from the sovereign work of God to save people, people are spiritually dead. A spiritually dead person has no faith to offer God. A spiritually dead person wants nothing to do with God. So Jesus Christ intervenes, God intervenes, when the person is still in a state of spiritual deadness and God gives salvation. God acts upon the sinner while the sinner is still dead and unable to believe. Therefore, the message of the gospel is also the means through which God creates faith, that's why the gospel was power. When the gospel is proclaimed, God isn't saying, "Hey, spiritually dead person. You need to find some faith in yourself to believe in the gospel."

No, when the gospel is proclaimed, God uses the gospel to create faith, to summon the faith that's necessary for salvation to happen. God calls people through the gospel but people have to obey that call when they believe. Yes, the gospel summons faith and those who obey the call of God and believe are saved while those who are summoned and do not believe will indeed face the actual wrath of God and judgment. So those who reject the gospel, disobey God. I just broke your brain if you listened. And I'm going to try to fix it. This is the interplay between God's sovereignty and human responsibility. God is sovereign over salvation. We're dead, we can't do a thing but God calls us to repent and believe, huh? The only way this works is if you understand that faith is an act of the will.

Faith is an act of the will, you must decide to obey the gospel. You must decide to believe in God. You must decide to repent of your sin, that's on you. And once you do that, we tell you the only way you decide was because God gave you the power to decide. Now, worship him the rest of your life. Incredible humility. Your job is to obey the summons of repent and believe and your job is by the will to say, "Yes, I will believe in God." So this is really important because a lot of people, they just think faith is... I hear this all the time, "You grew up in the faith. God gave you the gift of faith. It couldn't work for a person like me." Well that's if you believe the faith is some magical thing from the outside. Faith is an act of the will. You are to obey the gospel. And when you obey the gospel, faith is created and that's a gift from God.

So yes, our responsibility is, we the gospel. God saves us and God gets all the glory. Romans 10:14-17 encapsulates this great. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent as is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news but they have not all obeyed the gospel for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ." People are to hear the gospel and what's the gospel that they're to hear? You have to obey the gospel, that's verse 16. It's right there.

So in our presentation of the gospel, we don't do the walk down the aisle. We don't do the fill out a card and I don't say accept Jesus into your heart. I just tell everybody, obey God, believe God. Obey the gospel of Jesus Christ. The emphasis there is on the will. You have to activate the will. You have to say, "Yes, I choose God." "Yes, I submit to God." "Yes, I yield to God." "Yes, I believe God." "Yes, I want to obey God." And as you do all of that, God justifies you by grace through faith and you're not saved because of the act of the will, you're saved because God is the one that activated the will. Where do you get the power to believe in the gospel? You get it from the gospel. The gospel is what creates and awakens faith.

The gospel is what gives the faith. Faith's not prior to the gospel and depending on the gospel, faith isn't our contribution to the gospel or salvation's a gift. So we have to receive the gift but yes, it starts with us activating the faith and that's all by grace as well. And I hear this all the time, people are like, "Preach the gospel." You want me to preach the gospel? I'm barely hanging on in my faith. Do you know how many problems I have? How much stress? How much work? Where do I get the power to preach the gospel? You get the power to preach the gospel from the gospel. So do you want to be more powerful spiritually? Love the gospel, believe in the gospel, meditate in the gospel, root yourself in the gospel, share the gospel and as you do, you get more powerful in sharing the gospel. That's why the gospel is at the heart of everything we do at Mosaic.

Why? It's the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes. And then third receive God's righteousness and this is verse 17. For in it, in the gospel, the righteous of God is revealed from faith, for faith. As it has written, the righteous shall live by faith. The word for righteousness here is the same word that's used in other places to talk about justification and it's used as the same word to talk about justice. So it's a status of legal rectitude that satisfies the moral requirements of God's character. And it includes sinners being put right, being put into an upright relationship with God and it includes that God remains just as he justifies the sinner. And this is a very important question, How can a just holy God forgive anybody? If you're standing before judge and you're clearly guilty and the judge is like, "Yeah, but I like you so not guilty." The judge is no longer just.

So how's the holy God remain just and holy and yet forgive sinners? How? Well this is what Martin Luther wrestled with because the Catholic church up until the 16th century, what they taught was it's workspace salvation. The only way that you can be saved is by making yourself righteous, by you living a good and moral life and to pay off the debts of your sin. And the reason Martin Luther, the great reformer, who was a monk and he was also a doctor of the law of God. And because he knew God's law so well, he knew that God isn't going to judge him according to his own standards or according to standards of the culture and God's not going to judge him according to other people's standard. No, God is going to judge him according to God's perfect standard.

So Luther, for years he wrestled with the fact. He's like, "How can I satisfy the law? I can't." And this is what he writes and put together a study guide that you can get online on the blog or it's in the newsletter in which there's a quote from his commentary. And he says that he hated this verse above any verse because he believed that the righteousness that God was talking about here is the righteousness that God demands from people for them to be saved and that's what the Catholic church taught. That's why in many parts of the world, that's what the Catholic still believes. And this is the difference between Christianity and every other religion, every single other religions workspace salvation's what you do to be made right before God.

And then Martin Luther dawned on him as he kept studying this he read Augustine and he realized that the righteousness here is not the righteousness that God demands from people, it's the righteousness that God provides for people. It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that's why Luther, when it finally dawned on him when he was awakened and saved, he realized it's an alien righteousness, not his righteousness, That we are saved by grace through faith because of the perfect righteous record of Jesus Christ. And that's why he says that this is from faith for faith. The more you exercise your faith, the stronger it gets but it begins with believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The righteous status for this righteousness is not just acquittal from guilt but it's also the fact that the one acquitted is also regarded as being in full conformity to the moral law.

So God doesn't just say not guilty, he also says holy. And that's what justification is, by grace through faith, yes, you're not guilty but God views you as righteous, views you as holy. That's the beauty of the gospel we're given in alien righteousness and this is all throughout the scriptures. I'll just give you a few here. Galatians 2:21, I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. So you can't fulfill the law to be pardoned by God. Romans 5:17 for if because of one man's righteousness, death reign through one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, man, Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:9, and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Or second Corinthians 5:21, but double imputation. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. The very second you believe, this is why the gospel is so powerful. Why I'm not ashamed the gospel, it's the power of God and salvation for everyone who believes. The righteousness of God has revealed from heaven. We forget, the very second you believe God, believe the gospel, repent of sin, turn to... All of your sins, forgiven. God views you as not guilty. You are the child of God. And this is where a lot of people just stop and we're not going to do that, we preach the word. A lot of people stop here and they're like, "Now I don't need to live a righteous life, right? I got a get out of hell of free card. I don't have to do any..."

No, that's not how it works. This is what Luther talked about. He's like "Simul justus et peccator" in Latin. He's like, "I'm justified, simultaneously justified," Simul justus... "I am still a sinner." And that's why Paul continues and this is point four that now that you've received the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ, now we are to grow into it. This is point four, live by faith to grow in righteousness. And this is verse 17, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. The righteous shall live by faith is from Habakkuk 2:4. And that verse is quoted three times in scripture here and it's quoted in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38. And in original context, Habakkuk the prophet is dismayed that God would allow his people to suffer at the hands of pagans.

And God comes to Habakkuk and says, you got to keep trusting the promise, keeping God, because the righteous shall live by faith. What unlocks life in your life? What creates flourishing of life in your life? It's the righteous living by faith. This is what true saving faith is. It's a faith that doesn't just save you from the penalty of sin. It saves you from sin, from patterns of sin and it creates in you a desire to be more righteous, true saving faith, changes your life. You believe God, you trust in his word so much that it becomes the most important thing to you. You get to the point where you realize God's word is more important than food. Where you want to study God's word, where you know that it gives you the paths of righteousness, it also gives the power to walk in paths of righteousness because the righteous shall live by faith. So you got to do everything you possibly can to strengthen your faith.

The very second you sin, you are a none believer. The reason why you sin, you just forgot to believe in that moment. In that moment, you forgot to believe how holy God is, how much God hates sin. What the penalty sin is, what God did to save you from sin. This is why the gospel is the power of God and salvation. You meditate the gospel in these moments of weaknesses and the temptation where you want to walk away from the Lord. You got to fight for faith and you do that by activating your will and saying, God, I'm going to believe and I know that you're going to bless me and I know that when I honor you, you honor me and this is what changes. So I say that to say this, If we're going to ask God for revival while we're playing around with sin, don't even ask God for revival, don't even do it because you don't believe it.

You don't believe it. Do you want the power of God unleashed in this church and in this city? It's going to come with God's holy spirit leading us in ways of righteousness. And if we are playing with sin, then do we even care about things of God? That's what I'm saying. And we're thwarting the power of God. Every single revival starts with a church that loves God's holiness, loves God's word, hungers and thirsts for... Jesus when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Satan comes and he's like, "Look, you have an eaten for 40 days, you're probably kind of hungry. Turn these stones into bread." And Jesus says this, "Man shall now live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

You know what Jesus there is saying? He's not just saying people should believe in God, people say that all the time. No, Jesus is saying to true Christians believe God, believe every word that God has spoken as R.C. Sproul put it. He said, this doesn't require a leap of faith or crucifixion of the intellect, it requires a crucifixion of pride because no one is more trustworthy than God. Matthew 5:6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Is that you? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Do you want live a life of righteous? Roman 6:13, do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

Matthew 6:33, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. And Hebrews 10:38 and this is important because this is the other time Habakkuk it's quoted, But my righteous one should live by faith if he shrinks back my soul has no pleasure. God is saying, if I've given you the righteousness of Jesus Christ, I've imputed it to you and if you shrink back, God has no pleasure in that. And if God has no pleasure in that, God is not going to release the power of the holy spirit through you. He's going to release his discipline and that's Hebrews 12. I say all this because I love you, I want the best thing for you and I want this church to grow and I want the gospel to be proclaimed in power.

So final, quick encapsulation of the gospel and you're like, "Can I get a cheat sheet verse for the gospel?" I'll give you a verse, John 3:16. You know that one? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God, he's the greatest lover. So loved, that's the degree. The world, that's the greatest company of people. That he gave, that's the greatest sacrificial act. His only begotten son, the greatest gift. That whosoever, the greatest opportunity. Believeth, the greatest simplicity. In him, the greatest attraction. Should not perish, the greatest promise. But the greatest difference, have the greatest certainty, ever lasting life, the greatest possession. If you're not a Christian today, obey God, believe God, believe in the gospel and Christians do so as well.

And I pray that we become a people who are not ashamed of the gospel. Just to everybody, preach the gospel to everybody. Everybody, even the mayor. Preach the gospel, just everybody. Why? Because Romans 1:16 and 17, I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith. For faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Let us pray. Heavenly father, we are so thankful for the gospel. The tremendous news that because of your great love for us, though we were sinners, you sent your son, Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, you are our Lord and I pray that you make us a people that follow you, that walk in steps of righteousness. Make us a people that are righteous because of Christ and pursue righteousness by living lives of faith. And we do pray for revival in this church. We pray for revival amongst the members. We pray for revival for Eddie and everyone who listens. And we pray for revival in this church. We pray for conversions. We pray for people to be regenerated. We pray for eternities to be transformed and we do all this to give you all of the glory and as we receive joy, we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors along Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy. Thank you so much for coming to worship. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card and the worship guide to fill it out legibly, just redeem it at the welcome center. They'll give you a gift and we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week as well. One quick announcement for the members of the church and for those who have been notified that you were becoming a member, we have our first quarterly members meeting next Sunday. It's at 1:00 PM. It's right after church. One. Yeah, 1:00 PM. It's a potluck. This is important. This is important. Are you even in the church, if you don't have the potluck?

If you are new, it's new for everyone. I forgot. Potluck is where you actually bring food and enough for you and enough to share. The goal is to have food left over to bring people, to bless people with the food. Chips don't count as a meal. Cupcakes don't count as a meal either. If you're like, I don't know what to cook. Rotisserie chicken, Whole Foods. That's what I say. They have other stuff too.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank you for the incredible Book of Romans, the Mount Everest, so to speak, of the epistles. We thank you for your choice servant, Paul, the apostle, who saw the resurrected Christ. Lord, we thank you for his zeal, for his love for you. We thank you for his desire to impart spiritual blessings to other Christians. And as we look at this incredible text in chapter one verses eight through 15, give us a vision as believers to become selfless, like the example of Paul, to care about others, to pray for others, to pray for the faith of others, to do everything we possibly can to strengthen their faith and to encourage them. Make us people who have a vision for ourselves to become seasoned, mature Christians, godly saints with years and decades of faithfulness from which we can draw upon and share and bless others. Bless our time with the holy word and make us a people who truly are strength by your spirit.

And as we are strengthened, may we strengthen others. Teach us to be a people who love the gospel, who worship you in the gospel, who receive the gospel, preach the gospel to ourselves, and then preach the gospel to other Christians, to remind ourselves of our identity, of our place in you, of our eternal blessing that is to come. Holy Spirit, we come to you and we ask, come to the service, prepare us, take this text, illuminate it, and let us receive it, not just with our minds, but burn it into our hearts and then activate our will to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We started a sermon series through the Book of Romans last week. One thing I want to point out from last week's text, and this is one of the beauties of swimming in the richness of a text like this is you study and preach and then I keep meditating. Then we have community group. My community meets on Tuesdays and we had this revelation that in verse one St. Paul introduces himself, and he says, Paul, a servant, or doulas, a slave of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. We had this meditation of, how do you learn about what God's call is, his specific will on your life? What he wants you to do, what your purpose is? Whom to marry? What kind of job to pursue, career to pursue, where to live. A lot of people want the specifics. God, what’s your specific will for my life? Well, the specific calling comes after the submission. This is important. Paul, before he talks about his calling, he talks about his submission of Christ, that he is a servant, a doulas.

He submitted his whole life and then God reveals the calling. If we are not obedient in submission to God in this revealed word, and then we come to him and we're God, can you reveal your will? He's like, once you submit to my revealed will, my explicit will, then you'll be ready to steward more. That's important. It brings us to the introduction. One of the greatest joys in life, my greatest joy in life is listening to the testimony of seasoned believers, mature believers. People who have been following the Lord faithfully for decades. Do you know people like this? We don't have enough people like this at Mosaic. I pray for people like this. I pray for seasoned saints in their forties and fifties and sixties. I pray for God to ... Amen. Hallelujah, praise God, praise. We have some representation.

I pray for more. I don't know of any other churches that ... I pray for this all the time. I pray that God sparks of movement of people that retire, that I say I want to retire to Boston. I know it's expensive. I know, I know, I know. Retire on the north shore. Just be close enough because there's people coming from all over the world to Boston. Young people coming here to train, get educations, university, college, grad school. They're tremendous at their one little niche in life, but they have zero life skills. We're praying for more seasoned believers. One of the things that I noticed, I've had conversations like this with seasoned believers. One of the things that you see after having hundreds of these conversations is the emphasis on the basics of Christianity, on reading scripture every day, on praying to the Lord. And not just praying for material needs, seasoned mature believers, they pray for spiritual needs not just for themselves, for others.

They pray for the faith of others. They have a desire to strengthen and encourage other states, and they have a love for gospel ministry, for sharing the gospel with those who are still far from the Lord. And in our text today, what we see is Paul, as a spiritual father, he hasn't met the Roman Christians yet, but he cares for them. He has a desire to see them, and he has a desire to come and minister to them, to encourage them, be mutually encouraged by their faith. As we look through the text, I pray that you catch a vision as well to live as a spiritual parent, where you begin to notice younger Christians and you seek to mentor them in the faith. We see the building blocks for that in Romans 1:8-15. Would you look at the text with me.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I want you to know, brothers, that I often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I'm under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome.

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, thank God for the courageous faith of saints. Second, strengthen and mutually encourage the saints and preach the gospel to reap a harvest of righteousness. First, thank God for the courageous faith of saints. That's verses eight through 10. Paul begins here, in the way that you have to begin everything, if you're going to do anything of kingdom consequence, he starts with prayer. At this point in every single one of his letters after he greets the church to whom he's writing or whoever's writing to, he gives a greeting, and usually in that greeting, he gives a prayer and he prays for the Christians to whom he's writing. The prayer is always about spiritual needs. He does this in every single letter, except for the letter to the Galatians, because the letter of the Galatians is a little unique because he is dealing with the church that is playing with Heresy.

At this point, instead of praying for them, he just says, I am shocked. I am surprised that you would so quickly turn to another gospel. You're deserting the gospel. It's different here with the Christians in Rome. Paul is thrilled that though he has not been in Rome, he hasn't done gospel ministry, he's heard that the Christian community in Rome is thriving and people all over the Mediterranean are hearing this report, that there are Christians in Rome. And first of all, he's so shocked by the fact that there are any Christians in Rome, he just pause. He says, I thank God that God saved some Christians. There's Christians who are pledging allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord, as κύριος, politically charged term, because Caesar wanted everyone to pledge allegiance to him as Lord, as κύριος. Here under Caesar's nose, so to speak, in his backyard, there's Christians pledging allegiance to a higher authority than to the government.

Paul is thrilled about that. In Romans 1:8, he says, first, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. The first thing I want to point out is that Paul has a personal relationship with God. He doesn't view Christianity as just a mere religion. He views it as a relationship. He says, I thank my God. I thank my God. It's personal pronoun, possessive pronoun. God is my God. Friends, can you say that? This is really a difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. Paul, doesn't say, I pray to the God of the universal, though that is true. He doesn't say I pray to the king of Kings, though that is true. He doesn't say I pray to the God of my fathers or the God of my grandparents. He said, no, I pray to my God. He's my Lord. He's my savior.

Do you have this personal relationship with God? You can go to him and you are on a personal basis. He knows your name. You know his name. Are you known by him? Does he know you? You say, well, how can I know that God is my God? Well, it begins with repentance. And repentance is where you lay down your I. To get to that, my God is my God, you got to lay down your I. You got to get to the point where you realize, oh, I'm not God. I'm not the God of my life. This was the temptation in the garden of Eden with Satan going to Eve and Adam, he's you can be your own gods. That's really the religion of the day. People say, oh, people aren't very religious.

No, no, no. People are more religious than they've ever been. The religion is just myself. I do whatever I want. I am God over my life. Well, that's what repentance is. Repentance, you get to the point where it's like that actually is insubordination to the God of the universe. Because of that, I am under condemnation and I need to repent. I need to submit to God, and through Christ, be forgiven, reconciled with God. Now God can be my God. Paul also knows that God is his God because of the work of Jesus Christ. He says, I thank my God through Jesus Christ. If Paul's so supremely aware of Christ's current and his actual intercessory work, that Jesus Christ right now is seated at the right hand of God, the Father, and he is interceding for us. When we come to God, we do not come to God on our own merits.

Paul doesn't do that. Paul could have come to God and be like, I thank my God and I come to him because I've done a lot of great things for him because I have followed him so faith ... He doesn't do that. He understands that the only merits on which he can come to God are the merits of Jesus Christ. We can't do a thing apart from God. We can't do a thing about ... Jesus Christ said, you can't do a thing apart for me. Once in a while, I'm reminded of this in silly ways. I have a 2007 Highlander and my Highlander doesn't have the little sensors on the side, like when there are cars, you shouldn't probably merge. But I had a rental like a week and a half ago, a Yukon and it was brand new. I just got used to not checking my blind spot because they had the little sensors and I'm oh, this is tremendous.

I'm driving down the road yesterday on Route 9 and I forgot, I'm not in my rental. I just forgot, as I'm merging to the next lane, I forgot that I should probably check my blind spot. In my blind spot, there was a massive truck right behind me, lays down the horn. I felt terrible. I'm oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God just prevented me from a terrible car accident. You can't do a thing apart from Christ. We can't even worship God apart from Christ. Hebrews 13:15. Through him, Jesus, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. When we worship God with our mouth, when we sing to God, we're offering a fruit of prayer, but it's only through Christ that that's even accepted.

Paul begins with prayer, but the prayer is specifically a prayer of Thanksgiving. If you study the prayers of Paul, he always, always doing this. Before he asks God for anything, he's thanking God for the blessings that he already sees. I would submit to you that this is a discipline that each one of us can cultivate more deeper, live a life of Thanksgiving. Do you want to grow in satisfaction? Do you want to grow in enjoying life? Do you want to grow in noticing God's good gifts? This, in the secular world, they call this presence, like to be present, it's a practice of mindfulness. Do we want to grow in joy and happiness? Well then grow in Thanksgiving. Start prayer with worshiping God and thanking God for who he is and what he's done for you. Paul, here, uses the thanks.

It's a very particular Greek word. There's several words for Thanksgiving, but here he uses eucharisteo, which is, we get the word Eucharist from it. It's Thanksgiving for God's sacrifice, for God's blessing. The word also assumes obligation. When we think of thanking someone, we don't usually think of obligation like, I'm obligated to. But when it comes to God, we are obligated to say thank you to God. Then he goes on in the next passage. He's this is the problem with all of humanity, everything that's wrong in the world is really because people will not thank God, will not glorify God for all of his abundant blessings. We are obligated to say thank you to God and that's where Paul starts. He starts with prayer and a prayer of Thanksgiving, in particular for the faith of these Christians. He says, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

he uses the word cosmos. What he means is, the then known world. When we think of world, we think the planet and we think everything everywhere. That's not how they thought about the word world. He says, your faith is proclaiming all the world. He's talking about the Mediterranean world. What he's surprised about is, hey, this church has a reputation for being faithful to God all around the Mediterranean world. People couldn't believe it. People when they heard, oh, there's Christians in Rome, of all places. Why were they so surprised? Because Rome was notorious for being the capital of the world's debauchery. This is where you go to sin. Then sin, egregiously. in this there's den of wickedness, there's Christians. There's Christians who are public about their personal relationship with God. That's how people learned about their faith because they were public about it.

A lot of people think personal relationships should be private. No, those are different words. A personal relationship with God should be public. People in our lives should know that we profess the name of Christ, that we follow Christ, that we love God. There's no such thing as a closeted Christian. We live in a world where people are very proud of their sin, very public about their sin. And my prayer is for Christians to be at least as public about their following Christ. Imagine if people are like, oh, the faith of Christians in Boston is proclaimed in all the world. And it's all already beginning. Chloe is our finance and admin person. She sends a power BI dashboard every once in a while so we see how many clicks on the website from other, from where.

People are tuning in from all over the world which is incredibly encouraging, because people come from all over the world. They come here, they're in the church and then they go to other places and they still keep up with the ministry here. In our membership, our current membership is 225 members. We have over 34 languages spoken in our current membership. That's how global, that's how diverse of a church this is to show how strategic of a place Boston is. That's how Paul thought about Rome. They were public about their faith. Here Paul says, your faith is proclaiming all the world. He uses the Greek word pistis, which is important because the semantic range of the word, faith or pistis, faith is just a small part of it. Faith is like the beginning of the word pistis. But it has to grow into something a lot greater, and that's faithfulness. True faith always grows into faithfulness and that's usually how the word is used.

If you look at Galatians five, is the fruit of the spirit. He says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. It's the same word as your faith is proclaimed. The idea, and we talk about this, that Paul is given the mission to bring about the obedience of faith. We talked about that last week. A faith without works is dead. When Paul thinks about, it's not just intellectual ascent as like I agree with the facts of the gospel. No, it's, is your life transformed by it? Does your life mirror that you believe in the gospel? True faith must be a response to God's faithfulness. God is faithful to us and the gospel. And my response to his faithfulness is a personal faithfulness of following him. Why does Paul thank God for the faith of Roman Christians?

He here is planting, he's building the foundation for the theology of election and salvation, justification, glorification that he's going to expressly speak on later. But here he just wants everyone to know, I'm thankful for your faith. The reason I'm thankful is because your faith is a gift. And you see that all throughout scripture. Philippians 1:29, for it has granted to you. It's been gifted to you, that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. What he's getting at is, you've been giving a double gift. The first part of the gift is to believe in Christ, that faith is a gift. Then also, it's a gift to suffer for the sake of Christ.

Ephesians 2:8, a similar theme. For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing this. This, that's the faith part, is not your own doing it. The antecedent to it is faith. Faith is the gift of God. Christians, we should be public about our personal relationship with Christ because of the gift of faith he's given us, but we should be publicly humble about it. Because a lot of people who are public in their faith are also very arrogant and jerks. We pray not to be like that. We want to be humble because our faith is a gift. It's a gift from God. How do you reconcile that with the fact that we said faith is an act of the will? It is an act of the will. It's the act of a will to receive the gift. God is giving the gift of faith.

It's available to everybody. You have to receive it. That's the act of the will is, yes, I want faith. Yeah, I want to believe in Christ. I want to believe in God and I'm going to submit my life to it. So it is an act of faith. Then as you exercise your faith in believing in God, then God tells you, yeah, I gave you grace to do that. He gets all the glory and we grow in humility. Paul here, he thanks God for the gift of the faith that he sees, hears of the Roman Christians. He says, your faith is known in all the world. Then in Roman 6:19, just to show you once more that when he thinks about faith, he thinks about faith that leads to obedience, uses the same phrase, except instead of faith uses the word obedience. For your obedience is known to all so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent, as to what is evil.

We, as members of Mosaic, and as followers of Christ, we should be thankful for one another's faith. But when you see a brother or sister growing in faith, and when you see them growing in faith, let's let them know, and you say, you know what? I thank God. I see God growing your faith. I thank God for that gift of faith. I thank God for the growth that I see. He continues in verse nine. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing, I mention you always in my prayers asking that somehow by God's will, I may now at last succeed in coming to you. A lot's going on here, but you see Paul's desire to be with them.

You also see Paul at peace with the fact that God has not yet opened the door for his desire to be fulfilled. He says, look, I want to come, but I'm going to wait for the opportunity to come from God, in God's way, in God's timing. Paul, when he wrote these words, he had no idea in what manner he would go to Rome and he went to Rome, he got to Rome, but he got to Rome in chains and he was enslaved to Caesar. God did answer that call, but you see that he's at peace here. In verse nine, he says, I serve of God with my spirit in the gospel of his Son. The word for serve here is a powerful word because it shows how far the American church has actually drifted from an understanding of true worship.

Jesus Christ, when he thought about worship and the Old Testament, New Testament, worship is so much more than what we have diffused. We think of worship as just singing songs to God. That's compartmentalized. Like this is my worship. I'm going to get my worship on. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to listen to some worship music in my car. When Paul thinks about worship, yes, that's included in singing Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. When he thinks about worship, he thinks about this word in the Greek, λατρεύω, which means serve and worship. To worship God, in Paul's mind is to serve God and to serve God is to worship God. He says in my spirit, starts in the heart, I am worshiping God, serving God in my own soul with the gospel. Then from an overflow of worshiping God for the gospel of a Son, I then minister out of the gospel.

Service to the Lord is part of being a faithful Christian and faithful worship to God. Then he says, it's the gospel of his Son. I serve with my spirit and the gospel of his Son. Here, this is possessive. The gospel belongs to whom? It belongs to God. It belongs to Jesus Christ. Paul didn't invent the gospel. God invented the gospel. Paul's authority doesn't stem from his own person. It comes from the authority that God has infused the gospel with and commissioned Paul to preach it. What's my authority? What's the authority of the leadership here at the church? All our authority is rooted in holy scripture. Everything we do, everything we preach, everything we say, we point you back to the holy scriptures and not ourselves. There is no authority. The authority comes from God.

It comes from his word. It comes from his gospel. The gospel though, the word for gospel is εὐαγγελίζω and comes from two parts. Eu means good or pleasant and angelous or angelion, we get the word angel from it, but it angel is just a messenger. Angelous is just the message. It's the message of what Christ did. And in ancient days, it was a military term. If a kingdom went to battle against another kingdom, you send your army. Then one in that town, everyone in the city, they want to know how's the battle going. What they would do is, they would send a runner to the battlefield. Once the runner has some news about how it's going on the battlefield, the runner would run back. This is the very first marathon runners. They would run back to the town to bring news about how it's going on the battlefield.

And the watchmen in the towers of the city, what they would do is, they'd watch for the person running. If they see the person running, and as soon as they see the person sprinting, if feet, the legs propel, like that's good news, this person is excited about whatever news he's bring. If the person is jogging, just lethargic, that's usually bad news and the watchman is yeah, I'm going to wait, let that guy share the bad news. But that's really what the word gospel means, it means great news. The great news has to do with the work of Jesus Christ. In scripture there is three ways that the gospel is used. If you're not familiar with Christianity, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, those are the gospels, but that's a form of literature. That's not what Paul is talking about here.

Then when Jesus Christ came, the word gospel meant the news about the coming of the king. Jesus Christ is the king. The kingdom of God is at hand. John, the baptizer would preach, repent and believe because the kingdom of God is at hand. That was the gospel message. Then after Christ death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, now, the gospel has to do with his life and his work. The gospel is about what he did in life in perfect obedience to God, the Father. And then in perfect obedience, he goes to the cross and dies in atoning death. He didn't just die for the faith, he died for our sins. He bears the penalty for our sins, atones for our sins. Then he is resurrected from the dead, ascended to heaven and he pours out the Holy Spirit upon his church.

That's the objective truth of the gospel. We proclaim that. We explain that. That's the objective truth, that it doesn't make any difference unless a person personally accepts it, subjectively accepts it. That I, yes, I am a sinner. Yes, Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins order to redeem me. That's when you begin to benefit from the gospel. Evangelical Christians, this is an important conversation. When people ask you, what Christian are you? What's your answer, especially in Boston? What Christian are you? They always want to know. I hope you're not one of those evangelical types. Because the word evangelical, it's a derogatory term right now. That's like a bad word. It's like those deplorables out there. Those are terrible, terrible people. You're evangelicals. So whenever anyone asks me, are you an evangelical Christian?

I always stop and I say, what do you mean by the word evangelical? Because no one knows, no one has any clue what the word evangelical means. Well now, so I don't use that word anymore. I'm just going to start using the word gospel. I'm a gospel Christian. Well, what is the word gospel? You say, the good news of Jesus Christ. That's the kind of Christian, that's who we are as believers. We're good news Christians. This is the message that we proclaim that anybody, any sinner anywhere, no matter what you've done, no matter where you are in life, at any moment, if you submit your life to Christ, you repent of your sin, that Jesus Christ forgives you of all your sin, now you are a child of God forever. Repent and believe. That's what Paul starts off with. Thanks God for the faith of the saints. The faith in what? The faith in the gospel.

Then he has the desire to come and strengthen them. This is point two. Strengthen and mutually encourage the saints. And this is verse 11. For I long to see you that may impart to you, some spiritual gift to strengthen you. That is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. He uses the most powerful Greek word he can to talk about desire. He says, I long, I long to come and be with you. It's the same word that's used in First Peter 2:2, like newborn infants long for the spiritual milk that, by it, may grow up into salvation. He says, as an infant longs for nourishing food, he said, I long to be with you. For what? For what purpose? He says, I want to impart something to you. I don't want to just get something for me.

I don't want to just be served by you. I want come and serve. This is, as you mature as a believer, this is how you begin to understand that other people need you. Other people need encouragement from you. It's not just you coming and taking, it's you coming and serving. As you grow in the faith, you long to impart something. How can I help you? My parents are my grandparents 10 times over. My dad is really owning the granddad role. He's getting better and better at it. One of the things he does now, anytime he goes to visit his grandkids, he's got pockets full of what? Candy. He loves coming to my place. I got four daughters. He gives them so much candy, huge sugar rush. Doesn't even tell them, brush your teeth right after.

Just leaves me to deal with the emotional fallout of their crashes. But he just wants to give them something. How can I bless you? How can I guide you? What can I share with you? This is what Paul wants. He's like, I want to come. I want to impart this. He uses the same word in First Thessalonians 2:8. being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you. That's the same word as impart. Share with you, not only gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. He said, I want to come. I want encourage you. I want to impart some spiritual blessing, spiritual gifts, he says. The word for spiritual is pnevmatikós. It comes from the Holy Spirit, characterized by the Holy Spirit.

He says, I want to come and I want you to experience more of the Holy Spirit. I want you to experience the greatest gifts that there are, and that's the gifts of God's presence. I want to do everything I possibly can to help you learn to walk in step with the spirit. That's the same word that's used in Ephesians 1:3. Blessed be the God and father, our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. The greatest blessings that God can offer you are never material. Therefore, our greatest prayer request should be not for material blessings, but for spiritual blessings, to get more of the Holy Spirit, more of the spiritual gifts that the Lord longs to give. The word for gift here is the word, in the Greek, it's charisma. It's used for particular gifts, like explained in Romans 12, we'll get into that.

That's gifts of prophecy, gifts of tongues, gifts of miracles, gifts of healing. This word includes all of that and includes just the basics of Christianity, like salvation. Roman 6:23. For the wages of sins is death. But the free gift is the word charisma. Charisma, charisma. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. The greatest gift that we can receive is salvation. Then the greatest gifts after that are strengthening in the Holy Spirit. he says, I want you to be strengthened, grounded, rooted, built up in the Holy Spirit. Then he says, I want you to be mutually encouraged. I want to encourage you. He said, I want you to encourage me. This shows incredible humility on the part of the great Apostle Paul. He says, I need encouragement as well.

There will never come a time, dear saints, that you grow out of a need for encouragement in the faith. There will never be a time where you're you know what, I am self-sufficient, I'm just going to encourage myself because once in a while, you need someone else to encourage you. No matter how strong you are in the faith, no matter how long you've been a Christian, every once in a while, you need someone to be like, you know what, how can I encourage you? Paul says, that's what I want. I want to come and I want you to be encouraged by me. I want to strengthen you. I want to be encouraged by you as well. Christians, do you long for Christian community like this? In a place like Boston, you have to long for it and you have to work for it.

Christian community does not happen by accident in a city like this. It just doesn't. It has to be a commitment. I personally, my favorite fellowship all week with my fellow believers is for us in staff meeting, incredible time of encouragement. Then with my CG. On Tuesdays, we have a wonderful time. We don't have any space. I've run out of chairs already a long time ago. People are like, how many people are in your CG? I was well, we start with six eternal souls. They're that's a lot. I'm like, that's just my family. The six eternal souls, that's a full couch. And then we have guests. Every time, every time I walk out of community group with just incredible peace in my heart, joy in my heart, incredible encouragement. And it's not nothing, we read scripture, we pray together. We talk through the text and we encourage one another.

Regarding the spiritual gifts here, we'll get into this. He includes, yes, includes salvation. Yes, includes just the blessings of being a Christian. But the gifts, the spiritual gifts also include the ones in First Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, the gifts of healing, gifts of miracles, speaking in tongues, prophecy, teaching. It's all included in that. The darker a place, the more you see of those spiritual gifts at work. As I was studying in this text this week, this is what I was praying for. You can pray with me if you'd I'm praying for more of that at this church. We've seen it, the evident work of God, where God shows up, and that is a miracle, and that is a healing. And you see prophetic visions and prophetic.

I'm praying for more of that. I'm praying for more of that. I'm praying for God's spirit to just pour out on Boston, just like he did in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Why not? Why not? Why not? That's what I'm praying for. I know it's scary. Everyone gets freaked out whenever you talk about any spiritual gifts and speaking in tongues and things like that. Whatever. That's what I'm praying for. It's in the Bible. Paul says, I want to come and bring it to you. That's what we go for. But this is what I want to say, it's the same thing that I started the sermon with. It's not until we start exercising the current spiritual gifts that God has given us, if we don't steward what we currently have, if we don't steward that well, we are in no position to ask for more.

Whatever gifts that God has given us, let's steward that well and then when God sees that we are good stewards of his good gifts, he's going to give us more. Here, I just want to talk about the basics real quick. First Peter 4:9 through 11, in which he talks about the gifts. He starts with hospitality. He says, show hospitality to one another without grumbling. Why, because hospitality's hard, and as each has received a gift. That's in the same thought. His thought is hospitality, that's a gift. Then he brings in other gifts, each has received a gift, use it to serve one another. Hospitality is a gift. Service is a gift. As good stewards of God's very grace, whoever speaks proclaiming the gospel, God's word, that's a gift, as one who speaks oracles of God. I like that.

Maybe I want to stop calling them sermons. It's my oracle of God, my Jan Vezikov. It's in the Bible. Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order then everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to him being glory and dominion forever and ever. That's just the basics. Showing hospitality to another, serving one another, speaking God's word to one another. Those are spiritual gifts that we can use to strengthen one another's faith. Then 3 is, preach the gospel to reap a harvest of righteousness. This is verse 13. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. He is talking about the Roman Christians as Gentiles, meaning non-Jewish believers.

The reason why he doesn't include Jewish believers here is because a few years before he writes this letter, Emperor Claudias actually banned Jews from Rome, including probably Christian Jews. Paul is writing predominantly here to Gentiles, and that's why he grounds everything he says in the holy scriptures because the holy scriptures aren't just for Jewish people, they're all for all Christians. He says, I want to come and reap some harvest among you. And God, all throughout the scriptures, uses agricultural metaphors, metaphors of farming in order to talk about spiritual fruit. Here, the harvest is the spiritual fruit produced by Christians by the power of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit. Then also, that includes souls, a harvest of souls. The first step to producing such a harvest of righteousness is abiding in Jesus Christ. He talks about this in John 15, Jesus said, I am the vine.

That's the image of, he's the vine we're the branches. You are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in him, he, it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing. We're not the ones that bear the fruit. Our job is to remain in Christ, walk in him and be in him, and be rooted in him. That's what abide meant in the Greek. Then as we're close to him in proximity, he bears the fruit through us. James 3:18, a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those is who make peace. St. Paul wants to come. He wants to cultivate the ground of the Christians and the hearts in Rome. As he does, he wants to bear a harvest of righteousness from them, then together, bear a harvest of souls from the unbelievers. Jesus' words in Matthew 9:37-38. He said, the harvest is plentiful. He says to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

I challenge you to pray this prayer. I challenge you this week to start praying, Lord, there's a harvest in Boston. Lord, I believe there's a great harvest in Boston. The only thing we're lacking is more laborers. I challenge you to pray that. Would you take up that challenge? And I'm going to tell you what's going to happen, the same thing that happened in Matthew 10. You take Matthew 9 and he says, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers. The very next verse Jesus says, go. So I challenge you to pray this. as you pray this, God's going to be like, oh yeah, yeah, good thing you asked, you're the laborer. I'm sending you. He has sent us to produce, to reap a harvest for him. How can you be more fruitful in your own life? How can you be more fruitful as a Christian?

Well, it takes discipline. Any athlete knows this. Any musician knows this. You know this. If you've accomplished anything, it takes sacrifice to accomplish anything. Same thing, spiritually. It takes work. Hebrews 12:11, a text where he talks about God the father disciplining his disobedient children who aren't disciplining themselves. He says this. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Discipline is, it's painful. It's always painful in the beginning, but through the discipline, there's a fruit of righteousness, a harvest of righteousness when, when it comes to training. When discipline, a lot of people have a negative understanding of discipline, he's not talking about discipline as in punishment. He's talking about discipline as in strengthening, like every athlete needs to have discipline in their life to discipline them.

I'm not punishing myself when I discipline myself in following Christ's spiritual discipline. It continues in verse 14. I am under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome. Brings in the Greeks here. The Greeks are supposed to be, in that day and age, they were the pinnacle of humanity. This is the pinnacle of progress, their language, their culture, et cetera. And he's talking about like ethnically, these people are Greeks. Then he talks about barbarians. It's not a derogatory term. Barbarian just meant a non-Greek. That's everybody else. Both to the wise and to the foolish. He's talking in worldly terms, the uneducated and educated. What he's saying is everybody needs the gospel. Everyone needs the gospel.

Every human being needs the gospel because we are all equal in our need for grace. He uses a very interesting term to explain his responsibility to preach the gospel. He says, I am under obligation. The word for obligation is a financial term. He says, I am in debt to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the foolish. I am in debt to God. I am obligated. I owe it to these people to preach the gospel. He's not talking about financial obligation. He's talking about this in a moral sense. This is how he viewed his faith. He viewed his faith in the sense that he understood what it cost God to save him. It cost God the sacrifice of his son. It was the blood of Jesus Christ that redeemed us from sin that through which we are purchased. Every person, every human being is in debt to God because God created us.

We're not our own. But Christians are in debt to God twice over because we're in debt for being created, and we're in debt to God for being recreated through the blood of Jesus Christ. In Romans 8:12 through 14. So then brothers, we are debtors. That's the same word that he uses under obligation. We're debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live for all who are led by the spirit of God or sons of God. What he's saying is, we're not in debt to the flesh. We're not enslaved to sin. Now we are in debt to the Holy Spirit. We're in debt to God and because we're in debt to God, we are obligated to proclaim the gospel, to preach gospel.

He says, I am eager. I'm more than willing to preach the gospel to you. He starts with Christians. There's two flows here. In verse nine and 10, he talks about serving in the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what he is talking about, he's worshiping God for the gospel. Then he's serving God with the gospel by preaching the gospel to believers. The gospel isn't just for unbelievers, the gospel is for believers as well. And then together, the believers, after they've preached the gospel to themselves, to each other strengthening, then they preach the gospel to others. Here, the practical lesson that we can draw to ourselves is, everybody's called to preach the gospel. When we think about preaching, you're probably thinking about like a pastor getting up and preaching a sermon. That's not what Paul's talking about. The word for preaches means to proclaim. It means to articulate the gospel.

Paul gives us the example that he himself thanks God for the gospel. He preaches the gospel to himself, and then he wants to preach the gospel to Christians and then we preach the gospel to non-Christians. And that's really the flow. If you want to get really good at evangelism, if you want to get really good at proclaiming the gospel, articulating the gospel, you know who you start with, start by preaching the gospel to whom? To yourself. This is really important. You see this all throughout the Psalms, because you don't know that no one talks to you more than you talk to yourself. The voice in your head is just always going. Are you like that, because I'm like that. There's at least one voice in my head all the time, at least one.

I'm talking to myself all the time, even as I'm preaching right now, I'm like, you know what? Super Bowl's today. I'm bummed out. Tom Brady's not playing. The Pats doesn't make it. I shouldn't be thinking about that right now. I should be preaching the sermon. Then I switch over. I'm going to start preaching the gospel to myself. Like Jan, you are a wicked sinner. That's where I start every time. You know how I go? I'm oh, you got to repent. I do that to myself, 10 times over, but I can scream at myself and I don't get freaked out because I know I'm doing it love. So I got to preach to my gospel. Every day I wake up, it's like spiritual amnesia, you forget you're a child of God. I preach to myself, when I get worried about whatever, just whatever. you're hey God is sovereign.

Predestined me before the foundation of the world to be a child of God. He saved me radically. Justified by grace through faith. Jesus Christ died for the sins of Jan Vezikov on the cross. When I sin, I accept the grace and I repent, turn from sin, follow Jesus and just preaching the gospel to yourself. If you do this on a daily basis, I'm telling you, you get stressed out, go spend some time in prayer and preach the gospel to yourself. Worries, burdens, anxiety, whatever it is, if there's sin in your life, preach the gospel to yourself. When there's temptation in your life, preach the gospel to yourself. Then once you get this, because you see this all throughout the Psalms, David, the Psalmist, he's like he's writing a Psalm and then all of a sudden he turns to himself and he's like, why are you downcast on my soul? He's talking to himself, like hope in God.

Stop hoping in your circumstances, hoping in yourself. Stop hoping and trusting in people, trust in God. Preach the gospel to yourself. Then we as believers, we have to remind ourselves of the gospel. You preach it to ourselves, and now we're in a position to be sharing the gospel and preaching the gospel to people in our lives who are not yet Christians. We need to approach gospel articulation to our non-believing friends with the perspective of its obligation. Paul says, I am obligated to do this. I owe it to people. Very turn these at stake. I owe it to my unbelieving friends and neighbors to articulate the gospel to them. I owe them that debt because I'm not my own. First Corinthians 9:16, for if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessities laid upon me, necessity. Woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel. That's for each one of us. Woe to us, if we do not preach the gospel, publicly, out loud, using words.

In conclusion, a shared testimony of a spiritual father named Augustine of Hippo. Augustine of Hippo was a church father in the fourth century AD. Just an incredible man of God, prolific. One of the greatest minds that have ever served the church. A theologian wrote confessions of Augustine. One of the more readable of his works. His testimony was, he grew up in a Christian family, wasn't raised by a dad. His mom, Monica, loved God and she would pray for him all the time. He was just incredibly talented, even as a child, really precocious, destined to become one of the greatest Latin fathers of the early church. He was born on a small farm in what's now Algeria. During his turbulent youth, he was enslaved to sexual sin, nothing new. He was enslaved to it in all his teens and his twenties. He studied literature and rhetoric and moved from Carthage to Rome, to Milan and then finally came under the preaching of Bishop Ambrose.

As he would go to church, God would just convict him of sin. Sunday after Sunday, after Sunday, convict him of sin. And he couldn't free himself from the shackles of sexual sin. It was during the summer of the year, 386, when he was 32, he went into a garden next to where he lived seeking solitude. He writes this in the confessions. He says in the tumult in my heart, it took me into the garden where no one could interfere with the burning struggle with myself in which I was engaged. I was twisting and turning my chains. I threw myself down somehow under a certain fig tree and let my tears flow freely. Suddenly, I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or girl saying and repeating over and over again, pick up and read, pick up and read.

I interpret as solely as divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I may find. By the book he was talking about the Book of Romans.. He said, so I hurried back to the place where I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up and I seized it and opened it. In silence, read the first passage on which my eye lit. He just opened the Book of Romans and he is whatever the first verse is, that's a word from God. The first verse that he read was Romans 13:13 through 14, where it says not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lust.

Then he says, I neither wish nor needed to read further at once with the last words of the sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled. He was converted, then he devoted himself to a life of prayer, strengthening the saints and preaching the gospel and lived a worthy life of service to God as a spiritual father. How to grow into a spiritual father, a mother. Three points. If you missed them, thank God for the courageous faith of saints to strengthen and mutually encourage the saints and then preach the gospel to reap a harvest of righteousness.

If you're not a Christian, or you're not sure of where you are in your faith, or if you can't say that God or Jesus is my savior, Jesus is my Lord, today we plead with you. We will call you to repent of sin, submit your life to Christ and follow him.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time in the holy scriptures. What a rich book, the Book of Romans is. We thank you, Lord, for this reminder. I thank you, Lord, through Jesus Christ for the faith of the saints of Mosaic Boston. I pray strength in their faith. Pour out spiritual gifts by the power of the spirit upon this church, not for our glory, but for yours and for many to know how great of a God you are, for many who are far from you to be able to say yes, thanks to Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior. God is my God. I pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Heavenly father, we gather, and we come to you in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. By the power of the holy spirit, we ask that you open up your holy scriptures to us as we begin to plum the depth of the riches of the treasure stores that is the Book of Romans. I pray give us receptive hearts and engaged minds. We pray give us a deeper, more robust understanding of the gospel. And more importantly, we pray help us know and love you deeper than ever before. Also, we pray that you make each one of us more effective servants of Jesus Christ. Make us more fruitful believers and a more fruitful church. And we pray during the sermon series, build your church and your kingdom in Boston and beyond. And we pray all this in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, amen.

We're beginning the Book of Romans today, which is kind of a big deal because I've been waiting for this day for a very long time. We preached through it kind of in 2016. We did a flyover. I did like three chapters first Sunday. And I talk really fast, but even that didn't help. So I think this is the first time we're going to go verse by verse through this book. It's going to take us probably a year. I don't know. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here till Jesus takes me home. And the reason why this book is ... Like every single introduction to every single commentary, to every single book on Romans, to every single sermon series, right here, right here is when the author, the pastor gets up and he's like, "This is the greatest book ever. This is the most impactful book ever."

It's true. It's true. I don't think I really need to do it, but it is. We would not have Western civilization if it were not for the Book of Romans. The Book of Romans is what sparked the Great Reformation. The Book of Romans is why we are not Catholics. The Book of Romans is why we believe in the Bible. This is the most powerful book in the New Testament. And I hate to do that because that's like saying like one of your kids is better than the other kids, but in some ways they're more differently gifted. Okay? You love all of them equally, but they're different. That's just a fact. The Book of Romans is the most impactful book of all the books in the Bible. And the Bible is the most influential book in all of world history.

And the Book of Romans, the whole thing is about the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the greatest news that could ever be, the greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level. The greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level was not the end of World War II. It was not a cease fire. The greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level is not a full cure to the greatest enemy, the greatest disease. It's not the banking system breaking down and all of our mortgages and student loans and credit card debt just gets wiped out. That would be some tremendous news.

The gospel's better, the gospel of Jesus Christ, because of the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, we have access to the presence of God. We can have all of our sins, our debts, our trespasses, everything wiped out. We are innocent before God. We have total immunity, total forgiveness, total reconciliation. And this changes absolutely everything. That's what this book is about. The Gospels are about the work of Jesus Christ. The Book of Acts is how to reach the world. The Book of Romans is given to us to rebuild the world. Here's the gospel. It changes everything. It's going to help you put your life in order. It's going to help you take the chaos of your personal life, your personal relationships, everything in your life, put it into order. And that changes absolutely everything.

We can be cured from the greatest disease, sin. We can be freed from the greatest enemy, death. We can overcome our second greatest enemy, Satan. We can become children of God. And it's all because of the work of Jesus Christ. We're justified by grace through faith. Now I have to stop and pause and I wonder. So Martin Luther, the great reformer. He's the guy who like looked at the Catholic church and he is like, "We're doing it wrong. We're just doing it wrong." And he got his 95 Theses. He nails it to the door in Wittenburg. We're doing it wrong.

And what he said was, "We're not saved by our works. We're not saved by fulfilling the law. There's nothing we can do to be justified before God. There's nothing we can do to have all our sins forgiven. We're justified by grace through faith." That's true. Praise God. I wonder if Martin Luther showed up in 2022, and I wonder if Martin Luther got a taste of some of the teaching in the churches in the United States. I wonder what he would say. I wonder if he would say something along the lines like, "Hey, Christians, I think it's time for a new reformation." The problem is we're so decentralized, there's nowhere really to nail the next 95 Theses. I don't know. Where would you put it? I don't know. I don't know. That's part of the problem with the American church.

I think what he would say is, "Hey, it is justification by grace through faith, but you still got to do the other stuff. You still have to know the Bible. You still have to obey God. You still have to follow God. You got to follow Jesus Christ." He said that literally in his first thesis of his first 95 Theses. The first one says, "When the Lord, Jesus Christ, said repent and believe, he meant that every single one of our days will be a day of repentance." We repent and believe as we follow Jesus Christ in obedience. If your faith in Christ does not produce transformation, sanctification, does not produce affections for Christ, does not produce a desire for holiness, a desire to mortify sin, a desire to share the gospel, if you do not, as a Christian, have a desire to serve God, then I submit to you you're probably not a Christian. If you are forgiven by God, you will become transformed into the image of the son of God.

There aren't different levels of Christians. There are in terms of rewards, and that's a different sermon. But in terms of just being a Christian, there aren't different levels. Like what it means to become a Christian is you become a follower of Jesus Christ. That's what the whole book is about. The justifying faith changes a person. It regenerates you. You now have a desire to follow the Lord. And I'm so thankful for this church. This church is full of believers who are a hungry for God's word, hungry.

I started putting out these sermon guides. I send it out with the newsletter every week. They're like between 7, and 9, and 10 pages. And people email me all the time. They're like, "This is so good." I also have typos in there that if you find one, then you let me know, you do get a chicken wing. And I also have jokes in there, every once in a while, to see who's listening, just once in a while.

So I think we're ready for the Book of Romans, Mosaic. Do you? Do you think so? I think we're ready. We'll go slowly for now. Today, we're in Romans 1, 1 through 7. Romans 1, 1 through 7. Would you look at the text with me? "Paul, a serving of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand, through his prophets, in the holy scriptures, concerning his son who was descended from David, according to the flesh, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection, from the dead Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be safe, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts."

Three points to frame up our time before holy communion, first, spiritual power increases in proportion to submission of Christ. Second, faith in proportion to humble knowledge of scripture. And third, God gives grace to bring about the obedience of faith. First, spiritual power increases in proportion to submission to Christ. Verse one, Paul, he begins with. Paul introduces himself a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. He introduces himself. This is what people do when they write a letter. Who is this guy, Paul? If you've been at Mosaic for a while, you know, you're familiar with him. We went through First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. We've gone through his of epistles.

Just to give you a little recap, he was born in Tarsus as Saul. So he was born in the Roman empire in a Roman city. So he was given Roman citizenship. So most likely he grew up in a very cosmopolitan city, people from all over the world. So he was multilingual. He knew Greek, Koine Greek, the language of the day. He knew Hebrew because he grew up in a Jewish family. He grew up going to synagogue. He knew Aramaic because you had to and to know parts of the Old Testament, and Book of Daniel in particular. And most likely, he knew Latin as well. So incredibly educated early on in life. People realized that he was precocious. He has a very keen mind. Of all the apostles, everybody knew who the smartest guy was. Everyone knew who was the most sophisticated theologically, philosophically. He's a genius.

Peter, who was the closest apostle of Jesus Christ, Peter, in his writings talking about the writings of Paul, he says, "And Paul," as he wrote in the other scriptures, he calls the writings of Paul a scripture. And he says some of the things that he writes are hard to understand. That's Peter himself. Peter's like, "I have to say, he talks about Jesus. He follows Jesus. I don't know what he's talking about. The predestination stuff, all that, I don't know." But that's Paul. Everyone knew he was a genius. He was on track to becoming one of the greatest probably rabbis. And he was a man of ambition, not just intellect. And his ambition was to get as high as he possibly could in the hierarchy that was the Jewish faith. So much so that he most likely had the Old Testament memorized. How do I know that he had the Old Testament memorized?

Because he writes at least 13 of the epistles, maybe 14 with Book of Hebrews. We're not sure. He doesn't attribute it to himself, but as he's writing, he's writing in prison. He's writing in house arrest. He's writing as he's traveling. He doesn't have his books with him. He writes one of his epistles. "Hey, could someone please bring my books? I don't have my books." So as he's writing the epistles of the New Testament, and he's quoting the Old Testament, he's quoting it from memory. He's a genius. He studied under Gamaliel, which is like I used to say Harvard. This is the Harvard of theology, but Harvard hasn't produced a noteworthy theologian in probably 200 years. So the highest theological school you can think of, that's Paul, like super ambitious. Like to modernize Paul, if Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro could have a child, that would be the apostle Paul. That's him. And so he's driven and he's taking over the world and he's doing it for, he believes, Judaism, which is religion of God.

And then he hears about Christians who follow this guy named Jesus Christ. It's the messiah. And then he died. He was crucified by the Romans and the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Jewish people altogether. And then Paul says, this is demonic. This is a heresy, starts persecuting Christians, starts killing Christians. He get it's papers from the church in Jerusalem to go to Damascus, to arrest more Christians on the road to Damascus. Jesus says enough is enough. You're mine. And he converts him. Paul had no choice in the matter. He had zero choice in the matter. Sometimes people ask me like, why are you a Christian? I'm like, because God made me a Christian. That's my only answer. God made me a Christian. God just told like you're mine. That's it. Did I get a vote? I got no votes. I got zero votes. God just said you're mine, called me to become a Christian.

That's kind of what happened with Saint Paul. He did not have a choice. He did not enlist. He got drafted. And he got drafted by the king. Now you are my apostle. So that's Paul. He still has the zeal. He has the knowledge of the Old Testament. He is called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Although he knows the Old Testament scriptures like no one else, but that's because the Gentiles too need the Old Testament scriptures. And he reasons with the Gentiles, not just from extra-biblical cultural resource, he goes to the scriptures. He goes to the prophecies. He's like, "Look, it was all planned. It was all predestined before the foundation of the world."

The question before us today is what made this guy so effective? How many people today do we think about, 2000 years after their life and death, do we think about on a daily basis? Well, Christians all around the world, this is millions of people, think about Saint Paul all the time. He's made an impact on the world. No matter what you think of the guy, we have a Saint Paul Street down the street. We have a Saint Paul Street. I can't believe Brookline still hasn't changed the name. I think it's coming. It's not going to be Saint Paul. It's going to be something else, but it's still there.

That's what I'm saying. He's made an impact on the world. What made this guy so powerful? Was it just his intellect? I don't think so. What is it his worldly powers, material, power, influence? No, it was his spiritual power. It was the spirit of God working in and through him. Yes, he was a chosen vessel. Yes, he was one of a kind. Yes, he was handpicked by Jesus. The resurrected Christ showed up to Paul, but can we learn something from his life to help us become more spiritually powerful?

I think this is what a lot of people are craving. We're craving this. Our generation is craving this spiritual power. People are seeking spiritual power. We know the material world is bereft of spiritual power that will actually change things and satisfy our souls. How can we grow in spiritual power? We can learn from Paul. As he introduces himself, he gives the first and most important identifier. The thing that distinguishes him, the thing that distinguishes his identity more than anything else, he says, Paul, and what does he call himself?

A servant of Christ Jesus, a servant of Christ Jesus. Now the word for servant here, I need to do a little work, is the Greek word, δοῦλος, not διάκονος. διάκονος means servant. δοῦλος does not mean servant. δοῦλος means slave. And when New Testament uses this word in other places, sometimes they translate it slave, and sometimes they translate it servant, which I have a problem with. If you are translating the Bible, you got to be consistent. If you pick servant, go with servant the whole time. If you pick a slave, go with slave the whole time. And I understand why. I've read all the papers, scholarly papers. I know why they chose the word that they did because of the cultural connotations, the cultural sensibilities that come with the word slave.

Now I ask you to put those cultural sensibilities aside when there's a very important biblical truth to know. That's number one. The other thing I want to say is like at what point do we say no to cultural sensibilities and say too bad? No offense, none taken. God's word is God's word. Like when the culture comes to us and says, you can't say the word father, God the father. We're against the patriarchy. Yeah, we don't want to use father. Can we use parent? God, the parent? No, you can't. How about God the son? Can we change God the son to like God the child? No, we can't. This is part of biblical truth. So cultural sensibilities, you can go mess with language out there. Do not mess with this. If you mess with this, like this is sacred. I will die for this. No, we are going to obey God's word and we are going to interpret it as it stands.

So the word here is δοῦλος and this is really important. And I say this is important because sometimes in New Testament, the decision's made one way or the other. But I'm going to give you one text where you got both and showing that Jesus Christ actually attributes this word to himself. He calls himself δοῦλος, slave. He calls himself that here. And he calls himself that in Philippians chapter two, where it says. "He, though being God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped and made himself human, taking the form of a servant." That's the word δοῦλος. So Matthew 20:25 through 28, "But Jesus Christ called to them and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles has lorded over them, and the great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant."

And that's the word διάκονος. We get the word deacon from it. This is a person that serves, as contrasted with verse 27, "Whoever would be first among you must be your slave." δοῦλος. "Even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, Jesus Christ said, 'Even as the son of man." Jesus came primarily as a slave. He came to serve us. He came to do the father's bidding. He wrestled with the father's bidding. In the Garden of Gethsemane he cries out, "God, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me." And then he says what a good slave would say. "It's not my will, but yours be done." So Jesus Christ died in humiliation as a slave, paying the penalty for our sins. He was buried, rose from the dead, and in 40 days, he ascended to the right hand of God.

Is Jesus Christ now a δοῦλος? Oh no, he's not. He was a δοῦλος. He was a slave. Now he's the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. What's the difference being servant and slave? I'll tell you the difference. A servant is hired. A slave is purchased. A slave is owned. A servant meets the obligations, gets paid, and then leaves. And unfortunately, that's how a lot of Christians view Christianity. "God, I will serve you as a servant a couple hours on Sunday, a couple hours in CG, couple hours in maybe devotions, as long as you pay me with my blessing. If you stop paying me with my blessing, I'm out. If you do something that I do not like, I'm out. If there's any suffering in my life, I'm out. If following you and not sinning is too hard, I'm out." That's a servant mentality.

A slave mentality is, "Hey, I was a slave to sin. I was a slave to Satan, and Jesus Christ ransomed me with his blood. He purchased me with his blood. No, I'm not my own. So all of my time, all of my talents, every single aspect, every ounce of my life and my energy, everything I have, it's the Lord's. Lord, what would you have me do?" Christian, this is at the core of your identity. Can you say this? Can you say this proudly? I am a slave of Jesus Christ. I'm a δοῦλος of Jesus Christ. And that's the only place, by the way, you can be free. It's counter-cultural, counterintuitive. Satan promises us freedom and only offers us enslavement.

Jesus Christ promises us a yoke. He said, "Come, come after me." He promises a cross. You're going to have to deny yourself on a daily basis. You're going to say no to yourself all the time. And in that relationship with Jesus Christ, you will find a freedom that you have never experienced before, a freedom of the soul. Jesus Christ gives you the barriers, the boundaries that you were designed to flourish in, in a relationship with him. It gives us the path to freedom.

Being enslaved to Christ is how you become the best, most powerful version of yourself. When enslaved to Christ, you aren't enslaved to anything or anyone else. You are worshiping the creator. You only fear the creator. You're not enslaved to any other person. You're not enslaved to things. Submit yourself to Christ, and he gives you the power to break through any enslavement, including any addiction. We live in a day and age where more people are addicted to more things than ever in the history of the world. More people died from the drug overdose last year in the United States than they did of COVID.

We're addicted. We're addicted to our phones. We're addicted to social media. We're addicted to entertainment. We're addicted to substances. We're addicted to food. Were addicted to people. We're addicted, addicted, addicted. We're enslaved. We're not free. We're not free. This is the most enslaved generation ever in the history. We are just enslaved. And Jesus Christ comes and he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father but through me." Yes, it's very narrow. It's very narrow. There's only one way to the path to life. There's only one gate. There's only one way, and it is narrow. And there's very few that find it. It's the only way that leads to life.

Look at Luke 17, the words of Jesus Christ. "Will any of you who has a servant slave plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field?" So the story is the master has some servants. The servants are working out in the field all day. It's hot. They're exhausted. They come back from the field and then Jesus says, "What do you think the master's going to say when he has come to the field? Come at once and recline at table." Is the master going to say, "Hey, I prepared dinner for you guys. Hey servants, hey slaves. I prepared some dinner. You want to sit down? You had a long day." No. "Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink. And afterward, you will eat and drink.' Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty?'"

Did you get that text? I love texts like this because this is savage Jesus. I read text, I'm like, yeah, savage. By the way, if you're new to Mosaic, this is how most churches preach the gospel. They're like, "Hey, Jesus came to serve you. Repent of your sins. And then you're a Christian. All right. Let's baptize you all right. Hopefully we'll see you again. Ever." Yeah, we don't do that. What we do here is we say, if you're a Christian, yeah, Jesus says you are to obey him, repent, and believe. If you didn't obey at some point, repent. He's got grace, but you still got to keep preventing. And then if you're not a believer, this is what we say. "Hey, you got to count the cost of becoming a Christian. And you also got to count the cost of not becoming a Christian."

You count the cost of becoming a Christian, and I'll say, this is how you become a Christian. You repent of your sins. You trust in Jesus Christ. You believe in him. You submit to him and you become a Christian today. All of your sins are forgiven. But you know what happens when you wake up tomorrow? You got to repent and believe again. And the day after that, yeah, you got to repent. You got to keep doing it. So if you become a Christian today, you got to become like you're a Christian every day for the rest of eternity. And it's hard. That's what we say.

So count the cost. We say that. And then count the cost of not becoming a Christian. Count the cost of not becoming Christian. There's only one way to eternal a life. There's only one way to forgiveness, and that's Jesus Christ. And the cost of not becoming Christian is if you die without Christ, apart from faith in Christ, you will spend eternity in hell, all of eternity, eternal conscious suffering. That's just how it works. That's how it works. So we ask that you repent. We say it's hard, but God gives you the holy spirit and God empowers us to live life as conquerors.

Paul is called to be an apostle. So he's a servant slave of Jesus Christ. And he's called to be an apostle. Apostle means an official representative, envoy, commissioned and taught directly by Jesus Christ. That's what it took to become the first apostles, the first 12, they had to see the resurrected Christ and they were taught directly by Jesus Christ. Paul says, "I was called. I'm called to be an apostle." So this is for every Christian who's in this deconstruction phase, which just means you are becoming an apostate and the deconstruction never leads to reconstruction with scriptures because you get rid of the ... Like all of those people, what they do, this is all the false teachers.

They say, we like Jesus. We don't like Paul. We like Jesus. This is Paul's opinion. We don't like Paul. And Jesus is nice. Paul's not. And I submit to you haven't read the teachings of Jesus or understand what he really believes in terms of the Old Testament he viewed it in all his holy scripture. But say Paul was commissioned by Jesus Christ. So to reject the writings of Paul is to reject the writings of Christ by the power of the holy spirit. So we're not apostles, but we are ambassadors of Christ. And this is really important. Paul knew his calling. Do you know yours? Yes, we're slaves of Jesus Christ, but do you know your particular calling? How would you fill that in? Called to be a what? Called to be a what? Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you have a calling that is greater than your job, a calling, a vocation.

What is that for you? And I would submit to you for as long as you live here, you are called to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ, here to this city. Second Corinthians 5, 17 through 21. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ, reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ. God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we," that means all Christians. "We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him, you might become the righteousness of God."

We're ambassadors. We're sent from the king. We're sent here. We're sent to do what as ministers of reconciliation to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, to call people to faith and repentance. Doesn't matter where you study, where you work, where you build, where you live, what you produce and where you vacation. Never forget that this is your identity. You are a slave of Jesus Christ to live a life in a hundred percent submission to him. And we are ambassadors to the city. And I say this because this is the only way we reach the city. If we're in this mentality of like, I come. I'm here to be served. Let me get fed real quick. Let me get my worship on. Let me get some prayer going. Let me do a little communion thing and I'm out. I'm going to continue living my life however I want. We're never going to impact the city.

If you don't have fire in your belly for Jesus Christ, you don't have fire for evangelism, then you're not an ambassador. You're just a bench warmer. Do you want more of the power of the holy spirit in your life? Well then you need to start thinking about what the holy spirit is thinking about. What's the holy spirit thinking about? Where is the mind of the holy spirit? The mind of the holy spirit is focused on the gospel. The holy spirit is all about the gospel and converting people, saving people. The word gospel, Ευαγγέλιο, is good news, glad tidings, appears 76 times in the New Testament, 60 times in the writing of Paul. This was the purpose of his life.

Second, faith throws in proportion to humble knowledge of scripture. Verse two, "Which he, God, promised beforehand." What did he promise? The gospel. "He promised the gospel through his prophets and the holy scriptures." This is crucial. And every Christian should know that there are prophecies in the Old Testament, that God had made promises centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, 1,700 years, a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

And these prophecies stand still. Like you can't get rid of them. And I know this because in seminary, I took this class where we were talking about the New Testament, use of the old Testament. And in it, as we're talking about prophecies, the Old Testament, the professor was like, "Yeah, there's prophecies, but they've been largely debunked." Debunked by whom? And this is the whole ... Like this back in the day, I didn't realize. I learned this with fact checkers the past two years. Fact checkers didn't really exist.

By the way I grew up in the 90s. It was tremendous. It never got better. Everything went downhill after I graduated high school, 2001, it went downhill. It was terrible. So if you came of age after that, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So the 90s were tremendous. And the whole fact check thing, that didn't exist until like other people started checking on what the mainstream media was saying. They're like, "That's not true. That's not true." And then all of a sudden, these fact checkers who were financed by the same people as mainstream media, all of a sudden, these fact checkers are like, "Yeah, that's largely false." No. The fact checkers, let me just say about theology. They've been doing this for centuries. And I finally realized that's the trick of Satan. And he does that with scripture. And the whole thing of like, "That's not true because we fact checked it and it's not true because we said it." That's all the argument is.

And then you look at the arguments, and all they do is they change the date that books are written. So Daniel, for example, they were like, "Yeah, Daniel wasn't written when it's in the seventh century, BC, when he said that he was written. It was actually written in the second century BC." And I was like, "Professor, why?" And they're like, because the prophecies are too accurate to have happened beforehand. Well, that's a preposition of disbelief and I reject that as lies from Satan. So prophecies are true. They're in scripture. And there's nothing you can do to them because the prophecies are written centuries before anything. They're there. You can say it's not true, but based on what? That's first of all. And then second of all, mathematically, it's airtight.

So here's a few of these prophecies that Saint Paul is looking at. And the reason why he's looking at is to show that holy scripture has a divine author. It's written by the Lord. And particular prophecies he's talking about, the prophecies about the Messiah that are coming. So prophecies in regard to his birth, I'm just going to give you a handful, "That he would be called Emmanuel. And that the Messiah would be born of a virgin." This is Isaiah 7:14, written 700 years before the birth of Christ. "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and she'll call his name Emmanuel." I didn't pick the self-fulfilling prophecies. There's some prophecies where it's like, Jesus is going to enter Jerusalem on a donkey. And you can look at that and be like, "Yeah, Jesus knew that ahead of time. That's why you got the donkey, not the horse."

I'm picking the prophecies that you cannot self ... You cannot be like, "I am going to be born of a virgin." You can't do that. There's nothing you can do that. It's in the Bible. "That he would be born in Bethlehem." This is Micah 5:2, "But you, oh Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the Klans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be a ruler in Israel, who's coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. That his birth lace would it suffer a massacre of infants." That's Jeremiah 31:15, and this is prophesying about what Herod would do and his attempt to kill Jesus. Satan always wants to kill babies. Jeremiah 31:15, "Thus says the Lord a voice is heard in Ramah, a lamentation, a bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more."

"The prophecy that he, the Messiah, would be the son of man, fully man and son of God," Isaiah 9:6. "For to us a child is born human. To us a son is given, son of man. And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God. Who is this child that's going to be called mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace? Prophecy that this one born of a Virgin from Bethlehem, this one who is the son of man and the son of God. This one would suffer for our sins." Isaiah 53, 4 through 6, the whole chapter, but 4 through 6, "Surely he has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows. Yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastising that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

A prophecy that he would die. He would be executed with a piercing through his hands and feet, and this Psalm was written 300 years before crucifixion was invented as capital punishment by the Persians. This is Psalm 22, verse one begins, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" What Jesus said on the cross. And the verse 16, "For dogs encompassed me. A company of evil doers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. For my clothing they cast lots."

And prophecy that this one who bore our sins would not remain dead." Psalm 16:10, "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption." Or prophecy that he would be seated at God's right hand, Psalm 110, verse one. "The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool for your feet, until I make your enemies a foot stool." If you just take eight of these prophecies, and the mathematicians have done the work, you can find it online. The chances of someone fulfilling just eight of these prophecies centuries after they are made. And this is the most conservative estimate. The chances of this are 1 in 10 to the power of 17. This is mathematically impossible for one person to do this, to fulfill all of this. And Saint Paul, he is the apostle to the Gentiles, and he wants the whole world to know the power of God's word, that God, whatever God promises comes to fruition, therefore, why would you not believe the word of God?

Romans 1:3, "Concerning his son, all these prophecies concerning his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh." The good news, it's all about Jesus Christ, is prophesied in the Old Testament. And by the way, I just gave you verses, if you look at the Old Testament as a whole, and if you see like the whole process of God choosing people, the whole process of God, giving animal sacrifice system, the whole priesthood system, the whole law, everything in the Old Testament, the Passover, the temple, everything in the old Testament, it all points to Jesus Christ. Good news is about Christ, a physical descendant of David. This is important to key identify that the long-promised Messiah, the coming king, is going to be a descendant of King David, Israel's greatest king.

Now Jesus Christ was the son of Mary. He was the adopted son of Joseph because Mary had Jesus by the power of the holy spirit. So Jesus descended from David, according to the flesh, through Mary. Verse four, "And was declared to be the son of God, and power according to the spirit of holiness. By his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord. He was declared to be the son of God." Was he the son of God before being declared the son of God? Yes. What he's getting at is that there were these two stages or two states of Jesus' ministry. The first one was in humiliation. Jesus Christ did come as a δοῦλος. He came as a slave and he came to serve us by dying for our sins. During his earthly ministry, Jesus served in meekness and loneliness and humility, in many ways hiddenness. When he showed and revealed his power, it was always a surprise to people. There was a hiddenness.

Well, after his resurrection, he was declared to be the son of God. Through his resurrection, we see his power and his glory. Jesus didn't begin to be the son of God at his resurrection, but he began his exalted reign on the throne, seated at the right hand of God, the father. Like this right here, this verse and this truth, this is the linchpin of Christianity. Everything hangs on this. Did Jesus Christ come back from the dead? If Jesus Christ came back from the dead, there's no excuse for anybody to reject him. None. Did Jesus Christ come back from the dead?

Well, of course he did. Of course, he did. How else do you explain Christianity? How do you explain the rise of the Christian church? How do you explain the fact that the church is the greatest human movement in all of world history? How do you explain all the good that came from Christianity? How do you explain all the lives being transformed on a daily basis? Jesus Christ came back from the dead. Paul saw him. The apostles saw him. And they were willing to go to the death for this truth.

Point three, God gives grace to bring about the obedience of faith. And that's verse five, "Through whom we have received grace." So God gives grace and apostleship. He gave apostleship to Paul to bring about what's the point? What's the purpose of everything that God gave you, Paul? To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. God gives Paul grace to be a Christian and grace to affect in the world, among the nations, obedience of faith. And basically, this is God's call to every single human being.

We are to surrender to Jesus Christ. We're to believe in him and obey. True faith obeys. True faith works. And by the way, to believe in Jesus Christ as lord and savior is actually the first act of obedience because Jesus commands that we are to repent and believe. Jesus commands, "Come to me, all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus commands it. So faith is an act of the will. A lot of people think faith is just in the mind, like when everything makes sense, when I have enough evidence, then I'm going to become a Christian. Or they think faith is a matter of the heart, of affections, when I love God enough.

Well, that's not what faith is. Faith is an act of the will. Just like true love. True love isn't a matter of sentiment or affections. True love, at the core, is an act of the will. I choose to love you. I choose to sacrifice for you. God, I choose to believe and submit my life to you. It's an act of the will. So if you are not a Christian, you're living in disobedience. And Jesus Christ is calling you to repent and believe and obey.

A lot of people misunderstand the word faith. A lot of people misunderstand the word faith. And I think it's because a lot of people just misunderstand the Bible and Romans. For some reason, I don't know who did this, but for some reason, someone decided to pit the Book of James against the Book of Romans. I think it was Luther early on. This is what Luther does. He was doing a thing. He's reforming the European church. He has a clear agenda. He's doing this. But he said Romans is all about justification by grace through faith. And he said James is all about works. It's all about works. It's all about works. It's all about works.

And I wish I could sit down with Luther. I will one day. We'll sit in heaven, we'll drink Wittenburg beer, and we'll talk theology. He'll be there. I will too because I'm predestined. And I will say this, "Hey, Martin Luther, verse five, and then chapter 16, I think it's verse 26." Obedience of faith, that's the whole point. That's the book end of the Book of Romans. It's not just faith that justifies and then you can live any way you want. It's obedience of faith. It's obedience of faith. He's like, "This is the whole purpose. This is the whole purpose of the book. This is my thesis statement." And by the way, I know how radical this is. I've done the research. I haven't seen many people talking like this about Romans.

So Mosaic, I guess it's on us to lead the reformation in the American church, to redefine the word faith. Faith isn't just what you think about a thing. It's not about what you think about God. It's not about what you believe about God. I don't care how good your systematic theology is. I don't care about your philosophy. Do you do it? Do you do the thing? Do you follow Jesus Christ? We're not saved by our works. We're saved by grace through faith. We repent when we fall and then Jesus picks us back up and we keep following. But you have to obey. You have to follow true faith. There's obedience of faith. And without this obedience of faith, without this growth, without this progressive godliness, without this holiness, there's no promise that you will see God.

If you say, "I prayed a prayer when I was a kid. I walked down the aisle. I got some feelings at some conference. That's why I'm a Christian." I don't want ... Are you a Christian? Did you follow Jesus this week? Are you pursuing holiness this week? Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." Romans 6:16, "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you're slaves of the one to whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness."

And then continues in Romans 1:6, "Including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ." Jesus Christ is the one that calls people to salvation. Christians do not choose Jesus Christ, not initially and not ultimately. God initiates our experience salvation process by calling us to Christ. And once drawn to Christ, we belong to him completely forever.

Are you called by Jesus Christ? If you're a Christian, this is your answer. "Yeah. I'm called by Jesus called me to himself. I'm his. I belong to ... I'm called to belong to ... I'm not my own." He continues the same theme. I am a slave. I'm not my own. And by the way, this language of calling, like I'm going to sprinkle it here. But as we continue, as we ramp up to chapter 8, chapter 9, 10, 11, 12, as we get into election and predestination, I'm just telling you right now, I'm going to preach the text as it says, feelings aside. I'll let the Lord deal with the feelings.

In Romans 1:7, "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and are called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." To all those in Boston, why is he writing to Rome? I'll tell you why he is writing to Rome. He knows that God called him to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations. And he's like, "All right, I'm just a guy. I don't have any resources. I'm not a billionaire. I don't have the connections. I don't have anything. I'm just going to ..." Okay. What would I do if God really called me to this? I'm going to go to the greatest city, Rome. I'm going to write to the greatest city, of the Christians in the greatest city. And I know if I reach the Christians there, and they really get the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then as people come and go from all over the world at this intersection, at these crossroads that are in Rome, all roads lead to Rome.

And Saint Paul knew that the greatest impact that he could have was reaching a place like Rome. This is why we're in Boston. For as long as you're here, like we minister here, and a lot of you will leave. New people will come. And I'm just going to be up here. I'm just going to be declaring the word of God. Verse 5 is just what it says, to affect the obedience of faith among all the nations. That's why we're here. This is of strategic importance. He writes to Rome, "Loved by God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Christians are loved by God."

He doesn't stop there, "Since God loves us, he wants the best for us, to be saints. And God wants us to be set apart from sin, wholly devoted to him in holiness." How? By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is not cheap grace. And I'm going to close here before communion by reading a few excerpts from the Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, some timely words.

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ's living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field. For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his good. It is the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye, which causes him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him."

Costly grace is the gospel, which must be so again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow. And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of his son. You were at a price. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God."

So we're going to transition to celebrating holy communion. Holy communion is for repented Christians. So if you are not a Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Instead, meditate on what you've heard. Or if you choose to become a Christian today, as an act of the will, you believe in Jesus Christ, submit your life to him, and repent of your sins, you're welcome to partake. If you are a Christian living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or better yet, repent of that sin and ask for the Lord's power in overcoming it here on out.

I'm going to read first Corinthians 11, 23 through 32. Then I'm going to pray a prayer of repentance and confession. I welcome you to pray with me. As I read. If you haven't received a cup with the bread, please raise your hand, and one of the ushers will give you one.

First Christians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then. So eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.""

"That's why many of you are weak and ill. Some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. When we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world." Let us pray.

Lord God, my father, the first and the last, the giver of life and every good gift, as your child, I want to live and pray in a way that pleases you. And I pray for the help of your spirit in order to learn to pray and to persist in praying until it becomes a duty that I love to perform. I pray that you will give me great joy in the time I spend in communion with you. I dare make requests of you, not because of any good in me, for without your mercy, there is no good in me.

I approach you boldly based only on the righteous work of my savior and brother Jesus Christ, your son, to whom you gave me before the foundation of the world, who showed compassion to me, even when I was an enemy, dedicated to pleasing only myself, full of self-righteous pride. I pray that you will search my heart and reveal my sin to me, make me abhor I sin, and make me sincerely repent and turn away from evil, to ask your forgiveness, and return to you.

Allow me to see your open arms, always willing, even eager to forgive and forget my transgressions and welcome my return to you. Sanctify me, Lord. According to your word and the timeframe you have appointed for me, allow me to see an increase in my obedience and devotion to you as long as it keeps me from becoming self-satisfied in any way. Make me content with what you give me and encourage me to love people when they are unlovable, as you love me. I pray all these things in the name of my savior, Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, who died in my place for all sinners given to him by the father. Bless our time of holy communion as a reminder of what Christ did on the cross on our behalf. Jesus, we thank you. Bless our time of holy communion. I pray this in the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word? Heavenly father, please remind us that it is not possible to be incidentally a Christian, just a bit. You demand to be first or nothing, and we are not to keep you in balance with the rest of our life, but to keep you first, primary at the center, preeminent. Lord, we thank you for being merciful and gracious, slow to anger, bounding, and steadfast love and faithfulness. Keeping your steadfast love for thousands, for giving inequity and transgression for sin, and thank you that you will by no means clear the guilty unless they repent and turn to Jesus Christ and I pray this for each one of us and I pray this in Christ's name, amen. I pray that 2 Corinthians has been as much of a blessing to you as it has for me.

Today, we're close closing our sermon series through 2 Corinthians. Next week we're starting our sermon series through Romans. So, I'm praying, I'm fasting. I'm preparing, I feel the weight of Romans. Romans is one of the most powerful books in all of the Bible and it's one of the most powerful books in world history. It has changed the world like very few books have, so we'll be starting that next week. The title of the sermon today, as we look at 2 Corinthians 13 is severe mercy, and the title of the sermon comes from Sheldon Vanauken's book, A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph, and the story's important because of how CS Lewis ministered to this couple and brought them to the faith, and then Sheldon wrote about it later, but it's a story of the love between Sheldon Vanauken, calls himself Van, and Jean Davis, Davy.

They fell in love at 19 years old. They were both pagans and that's what they called themselves. They knew nothing of God, everything they saw, beauty in the world, everything they saw that delighted the heart, the mind, the soul, everything they saw, they just attributed to the natural realm and they loved each other as no ordinary love. They wouldn't let it be so. They even created a shining barrier to protect their love from intruders, and then they get married and they went to college, and then after college they went to grad school in Oxford. In Oxford, they met CS Lewis and with CS Lewis they met a lot of very thoughtful Christians and they were converted and they discovered that Christianity isn't compatible with this exclusivity that they promised to each other. They loved each other with a great love, but they realized that God demands a greater love than that.

And, what happened is Davy started... So, Van's wife started growing her love and affection for the Lord and Van started to resent her faith. He said, "I did no, I thought, resent her for being a Christian. I resented her for acting like one, for going a church without me." He says it's practically unfaithfulness. So, while Van wrestles with his own faith, Davy contracts a virus, it destroys her liver. It led to a protracted illness, after some time she died. In the rest of the book, Van is wrestling with why would a loving God allow this to happen? Why would a loving God take his spouse? And, letters between him and CS Lewis helped him work through his faith, and in the letter, CS Lewis wrote the following. He said, "The root cause of your struggles is the fact that you've made love for a person, an idol. That's the root cause of everything, and it's killing your faith."

And Lewis wrote, "You have been treated a severe mercy." And by severe mercy, he means when God deals with us harshly, just on the face of it, you look at the facts, and you're like, "You know what, that was harsh," but God does it all the time. And, God does it in order to save you from a greater severity that is to come. It's a severe mercy. It's a severe love. God does this with Moses. No, Moses, you will not see the promised land. God does it with David, no David, you will not build the temple. He does it with Jonah, severe mercy to be caught in the fish. Peter, get behind me, Satan. Paul, God just stops him and says, "You're mine." Paul had no choice in the matter. You are becoming a Christian, severe mercy could be argued.

And Lewis wrote, "You have been brought to see that you were jealous of God. So from us, you've been led back to us and God, it remains to go onto God and us." And Vanauken writes toward the end, "That death, so full of suffering for us, both suffering that still overwhelmed my life was yet a severe mercy, a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love." This is the God of the Bible. If you don't understand that God often does send severe mercy for his children, for our sanctification, to strengthen us, to empower us, to cleanse us from sin, and to grow some maturity and fruitfulness, if you don't understand that, you don't understand the God of the Bible. It's everywhere. Romans 11:22, "Note then the kindness and severity of God. Severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you providing you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off."

Those are severe words. If you reject God, there is a point where that's it, you're done and we should fear that, and we should fear coming even close to that because God will bring severe mercy. So, today we're at 2 Corinthians 13. Would you look at the text with me? 2 Corinthians 13. "This is the third time I'm coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. I warned those who sinned before and all the others and I warn them now while absent as I did when present on my second visit that if I come again, I will not spare them. Since you seek proof that Craig is speaking in me, he's not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you for he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God, for we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you, we will live with him by the power of God."

"Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith test .yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you fail to meet the test. I hope you'll find out that we have not failed the test, but we pray to God that you may not do wrong. Not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right though we may seem to have failed. For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth, for we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for. For this reason, I write these things while I'm away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down."

"Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort. Comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss and all the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus and love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." Amen. This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We'll just walk through the text verse by verse, four points, the frame of our time. First, live by the power of God. Second, examine yourself, is Jesus in you? Three, do nothing against the truth, everything for the truth. And finally, the final greetings. So, number one is live by the power of God. Verse one, "This is the evidence..." Excuse me. "This is the third time I'm coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses."

Paul has written the second letter to Corinthians. He's done everything he possibly could from a pastoral perspective, inspired by the Holy Spirit. He has given them the Gospel. He's given the hard words of rebuke and warning, and now he's saying, "I'm coming and I pray that God's word will do its work and that it will lead you to repentance. If I come and the church is in order and everyone is living a repentant life in the church as members of the church, then we're going to have a wonderful time of fellowship. If not, we're going to have to put the church in order." And, here he begins to talk about church discipline, and if you don't understand church discipline and most likely it's because you haven't read the word or you've grown up in an American church, it's one or the other. Any other churches, any other colleges, they're like, "We get church discipline." Koreans get it, Russians get it, Slavs of the Ukrainians definitely get it.

American churches? No, you can't discipline me. I want to be on the roles. I don't want to attend church or give or serve, but just in case this does anything and get me into heaven, I'm in, sign me up. Those are most American churches. That's not us because we love the Bible, and we actually do what the Bible says. We read it and we do it, and the Bible talks about church membership. And one of the biggest... A lot of people are like, "Give me a verse for church membership." Church discipline, Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians five, it's everywhere. The fact that Christians are to hold one another accountable, that we are in a family, and in a family when someone's not doing well, the family gets together and the family chats. That's what church membership is. If a brother sins against you, go to him and if the brother repents, you've gained your brother.

And if the brother doesn't repent, now you got to bring the church in, and the whole point of church discipline is to bring a person back to a restored relationship with the Lord and with the brother and sisters with the church. That's what St. Paul here is talking about. So, if you're not a member of a church, most of you here are. If you're not a member of a church, that's the camera, you should join a church. It's in the Bible. I tell people, I don't think you're a faithful believer if you are not a member of a church. I don't. Who's keeping you accountable, your roommates? We need accountability, we need church. This is why we practice it. It's in the Holy Spirit. So, none of what's about to happen is going to make sense unless you understand that's a biblical category.

We have sermons galore online. Go to the membership section. We've explained all of this. We've built the theology for it. We've done the work. We just assume it's true. So, St. Paul says, "Look, I don't want to do the church discipline part. I've already done the discipline, which is the positive discipline of telling you the truth and hopefully you get yourself in line with the truth, and if not, you repent where you're not in line with the truth and then there's order in the church." The word for evidence here, he says, "Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." Here he's talking about the fact that in the Old Testament, if a charge is brought against a person in the community of faith, you have to have at least two or three witnesses, and it's not just witnesses who write something. Here the word for evidence is the word stoma and stoma just means mouth.

And, this is really important to understand that the charge has to be brought in person. If you have a charge against someone, you go to that person in-person and you speak to them. You look at them in the eyes and you tell them the truth and like, "Hey, you're sinning here. Here's the verse that you've transgressed. Here's the commandment that you've..." You've got to look them in the eyes. This is crucial because we live in a day and age where there's a lot of keyboard warriors and both keyboard on your computer and on your phone, just keyboard warriors, where it's like, "Church discipline off my phone." No, you got to go to the person and you got to talk to him. There's something that happens when look eye to eye, when you look someone in the eye, and when there's two or three people and you speak from your mouth, that's what's going on here.

And, any charges must be brought together, and the reason why Paul does this is because he's creating order in the church. An order has to be created in an orderly way, which a lot of people don't understand today. A lot of people look at the world out there and they're like, "Everything's wrong. We're going to fix it with more chaos." That doesn't work, that's not God's way. The way that God wants to fix chaos is through a very orderly way, and this is what the Lord does. The word for charge here is a word, like if you have a word against someone, don't speak it behind their back, speak it to them one on one, first of all, and then there's the two and three witnesses. Verse two, "I warned those who sinned before and all the others and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present in my second visit, that if I come again, I will not spare them."

All right, what does Paul mean here? I will not spare them. Whatever he means, it's got to be something that you want to be spared of. So, whatever he's talking about, this thing, I want to spare them. I've given them a warning, a warning, a warning, a warning, but there comes a time where if you persist in your unrepentant sin, you will not be spared. He speaks about this in 1 Corinthians 4:18-21. "Some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love in a spirit of gentleness?"

So, he's saying there's two weapons at his disposal, tools if you don't want to use the word weapon, gentleness, spirit of love and gentleness. That's the rule. That's the rule, that's how we are to pursue relationships with one another, and in particular, when it comes to a person in authority over another person, we as Christians, the general rule we operate from is this, gentleness, spirit of gentleness and love, but there's a rod here. What's he talking about with a rod? He's talking about corporal, physical punishment in the church. Most likely not, but whatever it is, it is contrasted to a spirit of gentleness. And in context, St. Paul talks about severity and not sparing, and he's talking about in the context of ecclesial authority. He is in apostle.

He is one of 12. He is an apostle, and he is in a role over the church that he has planted in authority and he says, "There's a spirit of gentleness and not gentle. There's a spirit of severity." And, Paul has warned time and again that there ecclesiastical consequences for unrepentant sin, and we call that being disfellowshipped or being excommunicated. So, a person becomes a member of the church and the person begins to live in unrepentant sin. What do we do? First, we just follow Matthew 18, go to them one on one. If the person repents, then that's it. Church discipline is only for unrepentant sin. If the person does not repent, then you get the elders of the church, now you got two or three, and then you call the person to repent this again, and you go through that, and the church is praying for the person. If the person does not repent at that point as the church, we say this person is not a member of this body. This person is not walking in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We cannot say that we see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in this person's life, and we believe that membership is only for regenerated believers and regenerated believers live a repentant lifestyle. St. Paul says, "I will not spare them." And, here the word for spare, pheidomai, it's used in the following context. Acts 20:29, "I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock."

So Paul says, "I need to spare you from something worse." If you are living in unrepentant sin, and we leave it as is, this leads to the destruction of the church from within. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. If, the church spares unrepentant sinners, they open themselves up to not being spared by Satan and his false teachers. Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" God did not spare his son Jesus Christ, not so that we can continue living in sin, and thanks be to Jesus. We go to heaven because he died on the cross for our sins. That's not how it works. God did not spare his one and only son to redeem you from sin, to save you from sin, to free you from sin, so that you walk in a life of freedom on a daily basis following the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, church discipline is crucial for the purity and the witness of the church and for the power of God to pour out in the church. And, I don't think enough people talk about this. In the Old Testament, it's clear. There's this clear pattern that when there's someone in the community of faith that's living in unrepentant sin, God withholds his power. Look up the of Achan, this guy in the Old Testament. God said, "I'm calling you people of Israel, kill everything. Do not take a thing." And, Achan decide to take some stuff for himself and hid it in the tent, and then the next time they go to battle people died because of this one guy's greed, and then the guy gets stoned, he and his whole family. It's in the Bible.

God hates sin. God has a blazing fury against sin, and I will tell you if you want to see the power of God in this church, and a lot of people ask, why aren't there more miracles today? Why isn't God doing more miracles and healing? He is, the question is, why isn't he doing more of it? Why isn't he doing more of it? Could it be because there are Christians in his church that are secretly living in sin and loving it. So, God calls us to repentance. This is a church discipline sermon. The discipline comes proactively, first of all. If you're living in sin, repent of it. Leave that sin, draw near to the Lord. 2 Peter 2:4, "For if God did not spare angels when they sin, but cast them into hell and committed them to change of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment."

So, it's better not to be spared from church discipline than to not be spared from hell. 2 Corinthians 13:3, "Since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me, he is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you." The charge against St. Paul was, "You're so weak. In person, you're just a weak dude." And St. Paul is like, "Well, because everything that I'm doing, it's not me, it's the Holy Spirit through me. It's the power of God through me." So they were like, "Where's your power? Where's your power? Where's your power?" And he's like, "Look at the church, look at the church, look at the church." And then here he's like, "Look, you think I'm weak? You don't think that Christ is speaking through me and in me? Just wait." That's that's his play. He says, "But watch God's powerful among you, watch."

And, here what St. Paul is doing, this is fascinating, he is saying to everyone who's raised their hand against St. Paul, the anointed of God, he's saying, "Be careful. Be careful raising charges against me and see if God doesn't show up in power and rebuke you himself." That's what he's saying. Well, the question that he's preempting, the criticism he's preempting was, "How do we know that Christ is speaking through you, Paul? Who are you to judge us? Who are you to judge our church?" And St. Paul says, "Okay, watch Jesus bring power." And when the people of God gather and the power of Christ is among them, 1 Corinthians 5:4, "When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, my spirit is present with the power of the Lord Jesus."

This is fascinating. Paul knows who he is. He knows his calling. He knows his integrity. He knows his resume, and when people criticize him, he didn't respond to the full force defense of himself, of his skillset, instead he lifted it up to God. He follows the pattern of Romans 12:19, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for is written, 'Vengeance is mine. I will repay,' says the Lord." Okay, you want power? Power will come.

2 Corinthians 13:4, "For he, Christ, was crucified in weakness, but lives in the power of God for we are weak in him, but in dealing with you, we will live with him by the power of God." This is very, very, very important. This is a crucial word for the church today, crucial. I just spent a week in a doctoral class at one of those powerful seminaries in the nation, at Westminster Seminary, and I had a professor. I shall not name him, but I've already let him know everything in my papers, my final papers because I'm at the point in my life where grades don't matter. What are you going to do? You're going to give me a B?

He said the following. He said, "Christians should aspire to weakness." To weakness? I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Christians should aspire to weakness in every aspect of their life. That's what the Bible teaches." I said, "That's literally not what the Bible teaches." I was like, "Why should we pursue weakness?" He said, "Because Jesus went to the cross in weakness." I was like, "Yeah, but he didn't stay there." He didn't like that part, my professor. He also didn't like the part where I asked him if he's a pacifist, which makes sense because if you're a pacifist you write that kind of theology. Thanks, Edgar. I love the guy. It's not true, man. It's not true. Jesus isn't on the cross, he's no longer weak. He did the weakness thing. He's no longer weak, he's no longer crucified. He lives, he reigns, he rules in power and in glory.

Yes, we are called the weakness in that we humble ourselves completely. Lord, I am nothing. I can do nothing apart from you, nothing. That's my weakness, and that's also my strength because now I walk in the power of God, for we are weak in him, but in dealing with you, we will live with him by the power of God. Therefore, Christian, it is your duty and you're calling to live with God in power on a daily basis. You wake up and you say, "God, fill me with power. Give me the power of the Holy Spirit. I am today more than a conqueror. You have won the ultimate war, you have, you have, you have, but there's a battle today. Lord Jesus, fill me with your power." That's our duty. Matthew, 22:29, Jesus answered them, "You are wrong," talking to the Pharisees, "Because you know neither of the scriptures nor the power of God." Know the scriptures, and by doing so, you will know the power of God. Obey the scriptures, you shall know the power of God, and only by the power of God's spirit can those who are dead in sins be regenerate, resurrected to a new life.

Paul is ready to exercise his power and authority to judge the unrepentant sinners in the church. One last word before I continue to point two, because we have the kids here today, and my kids are here, my daughters. They're tremendous, they're awesome. Let me just talk about love gentleness as the rule when you have authority. I'm a father, I have authority over my children. God gave me that authority, and then there's a severity part of raising children. There absolutely is, and if they did not know that there's a severity part in the repertoire of my love for them, they would not be as delightful as they are today. Have you met my daughters?

They are delightful. If people meet them, they're like, "How did you do that? How did you do that? Were they born that way?" I say, "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They were not born that way." They never are born that way. They're born as little degenerate sinners. They need to be parented, and the severity part, scripture does teach. So, I don't care if we're in Boston, I don't care if it's 2022. I'm just going to say it, because that's where I am in my ministry if you haven't noticed, yeah, I spank my kids, just a little bit, a little spanky-spanky on the tush. I don't call it corporal punishment it sounds too like, "What are you doing, corporal?" It sounds too corporate. It's just a little spank just in the tush, just a little bit when they're a baby, just on the diaper, they got the cushioning, just a little bit, so they know that it's in their repertoire. Baby, I love you. No, you shall not play with the knife.

What's more severe, let her play with the knife or a little on the tush? The flesh all of a sudden wakes up and like, "Yeah, you're right. I don't need that knife." It's true, there is in all of authority, the rule of gentleness, love, but there is a severe part everywhere. In your job, even if you have the nicest boss, he can also fire you at any point, so it's just there. That rod part is always there. That's what St. Paul is getting at. Number two is examine yourself, is Jesus in you? Here what St Paul is doing is turning the table on these false apostles, these false teachers who accused St. Paul of not even being a believer. You're not even a Christian. So St. Paul says, look, verse five, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you failed to meet the test."

The word for examine here is peirazó, and this is fascinating because word for exam or test is also the same word for tempt, peirazó. Sometimes it's used as Satan is the one that's tempting, sometimes it's used that God is the one that's testing. This is very important. Every time Satan sends a temptation, it's also a test from the Lord to see, are you going to pass the test? Are you going to reject the temptation? Are you going to get stronger? Are you going to learn something from this? And St. Paul here says, "Hey, examine yourselves, give yourself a test." So, watch yourself, in particular when the temptations come, am I in the faith? In particular when the tests from God come, but we ourselves are to test, test yourself to see whether you are in the faith.

How would you pass if you gave yourself a little pop test right now, a pop exam whether you are on the faith? The question is, am I a Christian? The question is, am I a Christian? Well, if you were giving yourself a test, what would the questions be? What would the questions be? This is a very, very important exercise. If you think that you are a Christian, give yourself a test. First of all, you've got to figure out what questions need to be on that test. St. Paul only gives one. He doesn't say, here's this confession of faith, I want you to memorize it and I want you to articulate it. He doesn't say, here's Bible verse that I want you to memorize them. He doesn't say, here's some good works to do a test whether you're in the faith. He doesn't say, give X amount of finances or money to an organization.

He doesn't do any of that. He says, test and examine yourself to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize this about yourself that Jesus Christ is in you? He's asking one question. St. Paul's, test, exam. Are you in the faith? All it says is, is Christ Jesus in you? Is Christ Jesus in you? That's the question before us. Can you answer, yes, Christ Jesus is in me? The son of God is in me by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ is in me. Is Jesus Christ in you? The super apostles have been demanding proof and St. Paul's like, "All right, the most important proof is, is Christ in you?" If Christ is in you, well, that's verifiable proof of the fact that Paul has authority from God. And, are you a Christian? If so, you should be able to confidently say, "Yeah, Jesus Christ is in me. He is in me."

I wake up and I have affections for Christ. I wake up and I want to do things for the Lord. I want to study the word. When things get hard, and when I sin, and there's temptations, all of a sudden my conscience just awakens me and says, this is wrong. Is Jesus Christ in you? Paul leaves this question up to the conscience that Jesus Christ is in the center. That's the exam. Do you live like Jesus Christ is in you? And, there should be fruit of the Holy Spirit and he says, "Unless indeed you fail to meet the test." And, that's too nice of a translation. He's like, "Oh, if Christ isn't in you, then you didn't meet the test." The word here in the Greek just means disqualified. If you do not pass this test, what hangs in the balance is not just GPA or just the letter grade, it's your eternity, your eternity, your soul hangs in the balance between heaven and hell for all of eternity.

So, make sure that you are not disqualified. Make sure that you meet the test. 2 Timothy 3:8, "The word is used just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith." Titus 1:16, "They professed to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good word." That's the same word. If Christ is in you, then you should be able to point the spiritual fruit produced by God through you. That wasn't me, that was the Lord. Follow the date of your life, examine yourself to see whether your faith is genuine.

And, then when you begin to examine yourself and that's Matthew seven, you start with yourself, that's the spec and the rod and all, when you begin to examine yourself, now you can begin to examine the teachers in the church. Revelation 2:12, "I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false." So, this is a very important exercise. Do test yourself, examine yourself, ask the question, am I in the faith? Is Christ Jesus in me?

It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian, by the way. It doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. I tell people I live like an Armenian, I might lose my salvation, I don't know. I sleep like a Calvinist. God's got me. It's all good. I study the Bible like a Baptist or a Presbyterian, I'm not sure yet. I pray like a Pentecostal, I worship as a charismatic and I do evangelism like a Jehovah's Witness. That's my that's my whole... But, we are to examine ourselves. We are to examine to see whether... Especially, church before holy communion, I don't think enough people talk about this. It's clear in scripture. When people trifle with holy communion, God sometimes kills them. That's a fact.

1 Corinthians 11:27, "Whoever therefore eats of bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why so many of you are weak and ill and some have died, but if we judge ourselves truly would not be judged, but then we are judged by the Lord. We are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world." And in that text later he says, "And that's why some of you are sick, and some of you have fallen asleep, and he's talking about death.

It's when believers living in sin, a seared conscience, approach the table as if God doesn't care about sin and they remember the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what it took for God to pardon us from sin. God does not take too kindly of that. That's where severity comes in and I've seen this happen. I've seen this happen in my life in ministry. I've seen Christians who just mess with sin, mess with sin and pretend that everything's fine in their Christian life, and all of a sudden, God just takes them.

So Christians, if you're wrestling with sin, wrestle it, but also win by the power of the spirit, whatever it takes. Put it to death, get accountability, share your struggles, repent of sin, turn to the Lord. Next time we partake in communion, come prepared. Verse six of 2 Corinthians 13, "I hope you'll find out that we have not failed the test." Paul says, "Examine yourself before you examine the Christian." Paul's been examined himself his whole life. So, he's not saying he's failed the test. Obviously he hasn't, he's done everything he possibly can to not disqualify himself from the race that is the Christian life and ministry. 2 Corinthians 13:7, "But we pray that God may not do wrong, not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed."

St. Paul says, "If the unrepentant sinners in the church repent and turn from sin, tremendous, Paul, can't wait to bring them back." He doesn't want to use his severe authority, but if they haven't, he says, "Then they have to take action." And, the lesson here is that St. Paul is willing to do the hard thing. He doesn't want to do this, he doesn't want this emotional toll, he doesn't want people to not like him, he doesn't want to say hard things. He wants to be buddy-buddy, fellowship, everything's great, but that's not loving sometimes, and sometimes you have to speak the truth and the lesson here is that spirit-filled leaders care more about what's best for the person they're leading, the person under their care, than how the person esteems them. Third is, do nothing against the truth, everything for the truth. Verse eight, "For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth." This is an incredible verse. This is this week's memory verse.

This is the one, this is the memory verse. In particular, in a day and age where there's so much fake news and lies, just lies, lies, lies, lies all around us, we should have people that care about truth. Truth from holy scripture and truth in the world, we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. Do you do anything against the truth? Is there anything you do that doesn't support the truth? And, it starts with our relationship with the Lord. Jesus is the truth, and if there's any place in your life that you are not following Jesus completely, then you are not walking in the truth. You're not abiding in the truth, and when Christians are living in sin, they're not living for the truth, but against truth and Paul is coming back to reestablish the truth. In verse nine he says, "For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for."

That's his whole goal. The word for restoration, it's a building term, it's a construction term. It's like if you get an old house and you got it and you restore it to its original beauty, that's what he's talking about. The restoration, now we care about the restoration of the believer. That's what St. Paul says. It has to do with a process of perfecting, maturing to make someone completely adequate for something, a cause to be fully qualified. 2 Timothy 3:7, the same word for restoration is used, "That the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Restored, perfection, complete, that's the same language. 2 Corinthians 13:10, "For this reason I write these things while I'm away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down."

He says, "I don't want to tear down. God's given me authority. I want to build you up, whatever is missing in your life. I don't want to come with severe or harsh authority." That's the same word that's used Titus 1:13, "This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith." So Paul says, it's there. I want you to know that it's in the repertoire. The severity of the authority is in the repertoire, just as long we're on the same page, so that when I come to you and gentleness, you actually appreciate it. That's what he's saying. So, how does this supply at Mosaic? Well, for most of you, if you already know me, the severity's there. It takes everything from me to not be severe sometimes because you got to do the hard work, this sinful anger is there. So, the severity is there, that's the point. The point is it's there.

Most of the time it's gentleness, but once in a while when someone is in a spiritual stupor... And by the way, this is how I respond if I'm in sin and someone's like, "Hey, Jan. I think you're sinning. Here's the text." I'm like, "I don't even think you really believe I'm sinning. Do you even believe? Can you just yell at me, please? Just yell at me, God." That's the way I operate. All the most influential people in my life are people that yelled at me, from my coaches to stern teachers and... But it's there, that's what St. Paul is saying. "I don't want to use it," he says, "I want to build you up." To build someone up means to assist them with the construction, the completion of their life, whatever is missing. The goal is always to build up, not to tear down.

And, God sometimes does tear down and he does inflict pain, he does bring severe mercy. Sometimes people ask me like, "Pastor Jan, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?" My response is so that people finally ask, "Hey, how could God be allowing this?" Good, we are finally talking about God. What did it take for you to finally start talking about God, a little pain and suffering. God often sends severity here, pain here, harshness here to wake us up and see as the Lord says, God's megaphone to a deaf world. Isaiah 19:22, "The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will have return to the Lord and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them." How often does this happen? God strikes, God brings pain, inflicts pain, so finally people cry out, "God, please heal us." And, he does.

And, ultimately he wants to heal us for eternity and that's through Jesus Christ. Point four is the final greeting and this is verses 11-14. Paul finishes the letter with a final charge consisting of five imperatives into promise. Beginning with verse 11, "Finally, brothers, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you." What a text. And then he says, "Greet one another with a holy kiss." All the saints greet you with a holy kiss. Now we got to do something with this because we live in a place where nobody wants to shake hands, holy handshake, no. The holy fist bump, can you do that, a holy elbow tap, a holy something? What's he talking about? What's going on here? Well, what's going on in the Greco-Roman world, you were not allowed to call anyone a brother or sister unless they were legally your brother and sister.

So, Christians in public could not be like, "Hey, brother," because then they'd get arrested and killed. So, what they did was they created this language of like, "We're going to show affection in public with a holy kiss that we're brother and sister, we're siblings." That's the history behind that. The thought behind this is that we as Christians, we are brothers and sisters. We are brothers and sisters. So, when people try to treat church as just some corporate gathering where you you come in, you hear a lecture and nobody talk to me please, and then you bounce, and just to do it again a month later, if that's the extent of your Christian life, then you don't understand one of the most beautiful things about Christianity, is the family aspect. And when you really love another Christian and you haven't seen them in a long time, there's something inside where you want to show affection physically and they back then, they did a holy kiss. Am I saying to bring it back?

I'm saying they did it. What I'm saying is they did it. What I'm also saying is it was holy. So, anyone that's a pervert and is like, "Ooh, bringing back a kiss." It was a holy kiss. I submit to you, let's start with deepening the relationship first, and then we'll get to showing the affection, okay? A lot of people are like... No, we just met. You haven't gone through the membership process yet. We just met, dude. So, we're working through that. 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." If you have this, you have everything. Jesus Christ, our Lord procured the grace, God, the father, in love sends his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the one that gives us the fellowship. He is the council of the comforter. He is the helper. He is the one that binds our souls together. We together have fellowship when we are bound by the Holy Spirit on the same mission and we are on the same ship, so to speak. In our membership meeting, we talk about the fact that church is a battleship, it's not a cruise ship. When you're on a battleship serving brothers and sisters, you experience the deepest level of fellowship that you will ever experience, thanks to the Holy Spirit.

We started with Sheldon Vanauken's book, A Severe Mercy. I'll just finish with a quote from there, "Though I wouldn't have admitted it, even to myself, I didn't want God aboard." This is when his wife became a fervent believer and he was wrestling with his own faith. He said, "I didn't want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted him approving from a considerable distance. I didn't want to be thinking of him. I wanted to be free like a gypsy. I wanted life itself, the color and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to, I didn't want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ." I wonder, are you ever tempted to treat God like this? Whenever you are, I just want you to remember that it's a good thing that God did not treat us like this, that God didn't just give us just a little bit, just to have a little bit of relation.

God, went all in because that's what it took to save us from our sin. There's an infinite chasm between us and God. Every sin, every transgression leads to eternal separation from God, and there's only one way for that separation to be bridged, for us to be reconciled with God, and that's through the severe decree of God the father. God the father gives a severe decree to his son Jesus Christ. Jesus, my son, my beloved son, whom I'm well pleased. I'm sending you on a mission to live that perfect life that not one of these people could have lived, and then to die a death atoning for the sins of all the elect. I'm calling you to be crucified, and that's not even the worst part. The most severe part is as Jesus is being crucified, physical anguish, he's experiencing the wrath of God being poured out on him.

Severity, that's God's harshness. It's also his mercy. That's the only way for us to be saved from our sin. Jesus on the cross submits to God the father. He dies, he's buried, he's resurrected, and now for you to become a Christian, for me to become a Christian, for us to have our sins forgiven, come to the Lord, submit to him, submit your life to him, submit to Jesus for your whole life. Not just a little bit, submit your whole life to Jesus Christ. If you're a Christian, submit your whole life to Jesus Christ. If the not, I am warning you, he will send severe mercy. I'm trying to prevent you from that. Why? Because that's how much he loves you. With that said, would you please pray with me?

Heavenly father, we thank you for this time and the holy word. We thank you for this rich text. Holy God, we repent of all sin. We turn from all sin, from folly, from pride, from self-righteousness, from self-sufficiency. We are nothing apart from you and we pray Holy Spirit, continue to empower us, each one of us. Continue to cleanse this church from any sin, continue to cleanse our membership from any sin, so that we can be a church that it is holy, zealous, on fire for you. And I pray through us, Holy Spirit, do mighty works here in this church and amongst this community, in this city, in this state, and beyond. And, we thank you for all of this in advance. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning and welcome again to Mosaic. If you're new, my name is Shane, one of the pastors here, and we're so glad to have you with us today. We would love to connect with you. As we mentioned earlier, if you'd like to connect with us, a great place to start is to fill out that little connection card in your worship guide. And if you turn that in at the Welcome Center out there, we've got a gift that we'd love to give to you to thank you for being with us today.

One quick announcement before we begin, there is a membership class happening today right after this service. So, if you are interested in membership, we would love to have you join us for that. Lunch will be provided that's going to be happening downstairs.

So, we're getting really close to the end of our sermon series, Prodigal Church. We've been going through Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. And for much of this letter, what we've seen is that Paul has been trying to win the heart, the soul of this prodigal church. That it seems in his absence that some false teachers have crept into the church and they were leading people astray.

These were not just wolves in sheep's clothing. These were shepherds... wolves in shepherd's clothing that they were presenting themselves as teachers, as authorities. In the church, Paul sarcastically refers to them as super-apostles, because in reality, they were satanic apostles that the enemy had sent in to divide and to conquer the flock.

And here near at the end of his letter, for the last couple of weeks, we've seen Paul is resorting to do something that he's been reluctant to do which is he begins to boast. He begins to defend his apostolic authority and present his case for why it is not only authentic but far superior to that of these false teachers, and his desire is not so much to defend himself as it is to defend this church that he loves.

That these false apostles, they've won over some of the people in this church by boasting in their strengths. They've been boasting in their wins, in their gifting. And so, Paul begins to boast as well, but instead he boasts in his losses. He boasts in his sufferings. He boasts in his sacrificial love, and he wants the church to learn. He needs us to learn that you cannot judge spiritual authority by outward appearances.

And these super-apostles, they were very eloquent. They were well-spoken, well-dressed. They were successful. They were influential. They were connected, highly educated. They had fans. They had money. They had charisma, but you can have all of those things and not even be a Christian. And so, don't be deceived that there are going to be plenty of people in this world, motivational speakers, spiritual gurus, leaders of false religions, who know how to draw big crowds to themselves, but this doesn't validate them as somebody truly worthy of being fouled.

And so, instead of boasting in his strengths, Paul chooses to boast in the things that, from the world's perspective appear to be weaknesses, but these weaknesses are windows. They're like curtains that are being drawn back in order to show that the true power and authority of this man was not coming from himself. That Paul's power and authority, it was the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in his life and in his ministry and this is what validated him as an apostle.

And so, what we've seen is, in many ways, to the world Paul appears to be almost pitiful, foolish. And yet to those who are being saved, Paul looks like a man who loves the church, who's willing to lay down his life, sacrifice everything for this church he loves. It shows us that he's a lot like Jesus Christ. And so, we're going to be talking about authority today.

Before we begin, we need to address something and that is this, how do you feel when you are told to submit? If I were to tell you, "Submit to my authority," most of us say, "Yeah, that doesn't make me feel very good." Why is that? Why is that our gut reaction is just bristle or to push back against that sentiment? Is authority inherently bad? Is submission inherently bad, or are these things inherently good?

There's a scene in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where the children are in Narnia. And if you remember, Narnia is this place that's under the watch of this evil witch and she's caused it to be a place that's described as being always winter but never Christmas. Rumors have begun to spread that Aslan who's the Christ figure of the book was on the move, and one of the signs of this is that in some places, the snow of winter is beginning to melt.

And at one point in their journey, the children are actually found by Father Christmas, and he gives them presents. To Peter, he gives a sword. To Susan, he gives a bow. He gives them these gifts, but this is what he tells them. He says, "These are your presents. And they are tools, not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well."

What's the difference between a tool and a toy? Toys are for pleasure, but tools are for a greater purpose. Toys are for our own amusement, but tools they're meant to build, to fix, to repair, to design, to create order out of chaos. So, what does this have to do with authority? Well, first of all, authority is a gift, and none of us have any legitimate authority in and of ourselves.

Do you remember when Jesus was standing before Pontius Pilate, and Pilate says to him, "Don't you know that I have the power to release you or the power to crucify you, the authority to crucify you?" And Jesus answered him in John 19:11, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above."

Authority is a gift from God, but it's not a toy. He doesn't give us authority to be used for our own pleasure, selfish ambition, or amusement. It's a tool. And as with any tool, even the very best of tools, it can be used improperly to cause harm, to cause destruction, but its intended purpose is to bring life and beauty, to create utility and value.

And think of it like this, authority is like a hammer. And yeah, you can beat people over the head with it but that's not what it's made for. It isn't designed to beat people up. It's designed to build... to beat people down. It's designed to build people up. It's designed to help create a world in which things are as they ought to be where humanity is flourishing under the good authority of God, the Father.

And so, Paul, throughout these letters, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, he's hammering this over and over that he wants the church to see and to acknowledge and to submit to his authority. He's hammering this not to beat them down. He's hammering it to build them up.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago in 2 Corinthians 10:8, he says, "Even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed." In our passage today in Chapter 12:19, he says, "Do you think we've been all along have been defending ourselves to you? It's in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved."

Today, we're going to be looking at 2 Corinthians 12. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up, we'll be looking at verses 11-21. And we're going to be talking about authority, we're going to try to glean some principles of what Christ-like authority looks like. Because we all need to learn to submit to authority, but we all need to learn how to wield authority as well.

Paul's primary focus in this text has to do with authority in the church, but all of us are going to be given opportunities to wield authority in one way or another throughout our lives. And so, therefore, we all need to be prepared to do that in a Christ-like manner and so as we talk about these things today.

This applies to pastors, to leaders in the church, but this also applies to husbands and wives, parents over their children, employers over their employees, managers over their teams, teachers over their students, officials over their citizens. I'd say this even applies to our own personal stewardship of the resources that God has entrusted under us, under our authority, our time, our talents, our treasures, the self-control, the discipline, that we exercise even over ourselves in order to put our own lives in order under the authority of Jesus Christ.

And so, it doesn't matter how big or small, I want you to try to think and identify, "Where has God given me authority? What are those spheres of influence and authority that God has given to me and how can I be faithful in those areas? How can I be more like Christ with those responsibilities?" Because Jesus said, "If you're faithful over little, I will put you over much."

So, three points for our sermon today is number one, a Christ-like authority is evidenced by the Spirit. And second Chris-like authority is expressed like a parent and third, Christ-like authority is foolish yet effective. So, if you have your Bibles, you can follow along. I'm going to pray for our sermon, and then we're going to just work through this passage one section at a time. So, if you would, let's spend some time in prayer.

God, you are a good father and we thank you for your good authority over our lives. Jesus, all authority in heaven and on earth is yours, and you have shown us the power and goodness that true authority has not by domineering us but by dying for us. God, give us the faith to joyfully submit to you, to the authorities that you have placed over us, and to ourselves wield whatever authority we have been given in a godly, in a Christ-like manner.

And we thank you for your word. I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would speak to us today through your word, and that by it we as your church would be strengthened, built up, and useful for you and for your kingdom and glory. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

Point number one, Christ-like authority is evidenced by the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 12, looking at the first couple of verses 11 and 12, Paul says this that, "I have been a fool. You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with the utmost patient, with signs and wonders and mighty works."

And here in the first couple of verses, we see two signs that validate Paul's authority over this church. And the first is something that is specific to Paul and to his apostolic ministry, and the second is more general and it applies to all of us as well. And so, first of all, Paul's apostolic authority was evidenced by signs of the Spirit. And this is why Paul, he really shouldn't have had to defend himself before this church. He says, actually, in verse 11 that, "I ought to have been commended by you because you've seen the evidence of the Spirit in my ministry firsthand."

Back in 1 Corinthians 9, he says, "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? And are you not my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I'm not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. And this is my defense to those who would examine me."

Now, the Corinthians had witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit in Paul's ministry firsthand and they owed their very existence as a church to it. When Paul first arrived in the city of Corinth, we see this in Acts 18. We're told in verse nine that many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, "Don't be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent for, I am with you, and no one will attack you or harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people." And he stayed there for a year and six months teaching the word of God among them.

After this, Paul goes a little bit further on to the city of Ephesus, and we're told that he continued there in Acts 19:10 that he continued there for two years, so that all the residents of Asia's entire region heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says, "Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not in ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

They had seen the Holy Spirit validate Paul in his ministry that he truly was a capital A apostle. And we need to understand this is something that was unique to the early church that there are no capital A apostles. Today, if you meet someone who claims to be one, they probably belong in that category of the super-apostles that Paul was refuting.

What this means is that leadership in the church today, it doesn't need to be validated by miraculous signs and wonders like the apostles, but Christ-like authority in the church today is evidenced by how authority submits and obeys the apostles, their example, their teaching, and the writings of the New Testament. That when the apostles in the early church were writing the New Testament, they weren't just recording their opinions. This was the Holy Spirit-inspired word of God.

And so, how does this apply to us? Well, first, for those in authority like myself as a pastor, any spiritual authority that I have over the church is thrown out the window the minute that I stand in defiance of Jesus Christ or stand in a place of judgment over God's word.

Second, if you go to a church where the pastor is claiming to be an apostle like Paul, claiming to speak new revelation that is equal in authority to Scripture, or where the pastor is rejecting the authority of God's word, you need to call that pastor to repentance and or you need to leave that church. That legitimate authority over the church needs to be under the authority of Jesus Christ, the living word, and under the authority of Holy Scripture, the written word.

So, Paul's apostolic authority was evidenced by signs, by wonders, by miracles of the Holy Spirit, and He had seen the risen Christ with his own eyes and was called by him to be an apostle. Second, Paul's Christ-like authority was evidenced by humble and confident submission to Christ. That true Christ-like authority is marked by submission to Christ's authority, and that this submission, it's a humility that leads to obedience that results in bold confidence. It's a humility that isn't harrowing. It's a confidence that isn't conceited.

And that might seem paradoxical but this is why Paul can say what he says in verse 11. He says, 2 Corinthians 12:11, the second half of the verse that, "I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles," that's a very bold and confident thing to say, "even though," he continues, "even though I am nothing." He's extremely humble as well. He goes on to say that, "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you and they were done so with the utmost patience." He's confident. He was humble.

In 1 Corinthians 15:9, he says, "I'm the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of the God that was with me."

It's confident humility. It's humble confidence, and it's hard to describe but you know it when you see it. You see it in Jesus Christ. You see it in the apostle Paul. You see it in godly leaders who are walking in the Spirit. And the thing is, when you see it, it's usually not quite what you would expect.

I'll just give you a quick example from my own life. Before we moved to Boston, my wife and I, this was actually almost 20 years ago, early on in our marriage, we volunteered at the youth group, the youth ministry of our former church. We were the young hip 20-somethings who led the worship team for this ministry of seven-year 80 high school students.

One day, this guy shows up and he wants to volunteer in the youth group. And right now, we realized we have a problem, because this guy was not young and cool. He was very old and very gray. We were in the Midwest. And if you know the Midwest, everybody has a super thick news anchor accent. This guy had a very thick Southern accent which really made him a stick out.

And then, on top of that, he was very overweight. He's a big guy and picture like a mixture between Santa Claus and Colonel Sanders. That's who we're dealing with. And he we found out he was actually a colonel, a retired colonel from the military. And the point is on the outside, he did not look like the kind of person that you would be looking for in a youth group volunteer. He wasn't hip, he wasn't cool, but he didn't care. So, he just starts showing up, he starts serving, starts hanging out, and he just starts engaging everybody.

He loved to eat. And so, he and his wife, they just started taking people out for lunch after church, teens, the leaders, didn't matter. Pretty much anybody that they came in contact with, he'd just say, "Hey, we're going to eat. I'm buying, and you are coming with me." And my wife and I, we were on the receiving end of this a couple of times.

So, you sit down to lunch with this guy. You order your food. And all of a sudden, 45 minutes go by and you feel like you just got mauled by Jesus. You feel like you just sparred with a lion, and he was so... it's hard to describe. He was tough, but he was super tender. He wasn't bringing up the teeth and the claws. He wasn't trying to be mean or intimidating, but he lets you feel his spiritual weight and strength.

And so, on the one hand, he was very humble. He just exudes this deep genuine love and concern and care for every person that he talked to. And when you're with him, his presence was very comforting. It was very encouraging, and you would drop your guard and then without even asking, he would just start digging into all the details of your life. "How's your devotion time? How's your prayer time? How's your marriage? Well, let's talk about those super-secret sins that you need to repent of."

And just with this incredible boldness and confidence, just starts asking all the awkward, hard questions. He was so bold, and he was so gentle at the same time. He just loves Jesus. He loved life. He loved people, and he's probably the most confident and at the same time the most humble man that I've ever met.

His name was Jim. Eventually, Jim moved down to Texas. And a few years after that, unfortunately, he passed away. And you would not believe just the outpouring of people not just from our own church but from all over the country like he was in the military, he moved around a lot. You would not believe how many lives had been impacted by the confident humility of this man.

Here's the thing. He was never given an official position of authority or leadership in the church but that didn't stop that Christ-like authority from just flowing out of it. It was commanding. It was powerful, and it was inspiring. On the other hand, it wasn't anything what you would expect to find if you were looking at outward appearances alone. It was clearly the power of the Holy Spirit in a man whose life was fully submitted to Christ.

These false apostles, they had been boasting and winning people over with their gifting, with their eloquence, with their outward appearances of worldly success and charisma, and none of those things are bad. They're just not, any of themselves, good evidence of the Holy Spirit's power. You can have all of those things, and you can even appear to be quite godly on the outside and still be way off the mark.

Paul put it like this in his first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 13:1, he says, "Listen, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind, does not envy or boast. It's not arrogant or rude. It doesn't insist in its own way. It's not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

If you remember the story of King Saul in the Old Testament, he was described as a man who stood head and shoulders above everyone else. He was big. He was strong. He was handsome. He looks like a king. David, on the other hand, was the least of his brothers, the youngest, the smallest, the runt, the one that was easiest to overlook. And yet, Saul was a fool, but David is described as a man after God's own heart. Soul's strength eventually failed the nation, but David's faith toppled giants.

And if you remember the Prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel, 16:7, he says this, he says, "Listen, the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." When you read the New Testament, you get the impression that Paul probably wasn't much to look at. If you saw him walk into the room, you might not think, "Oh, there's the guy that's going to change the world." You might not notice him much at all.

Historians have actually... an early Christian document that gives one of the only physical descriptions of Paul. This is not in the Bible, so don't take this as scriptural gospel truth, but it was probably handed down through some oral tradition. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Onesiphorus describes Paul like this, he says, "He was a man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked, full of friendliness. For now, he appeared like a man, and now he had the face of an angel."

On the outside, he's just a man. On the inside, he was a man after God's own heart, who loved this church, whose heart was in beat, in rhythm with the heart of the Father and He cared for this prodigal son, this prodigal church as if it were his own child. And that brings us to point number two that Christ-like authority is expressed like a parent.

2 Corinthians 12, continuing in verse 13, Paul writes, "For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong. Here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

If I love you more, am I to be loved less? But granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit. Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you? I urged Titus to go, and I sent the brother with him. Did Titus take advantage of you? Did we not act in the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps?"

Paul's authority over the church was parental. It was like that of a father over a son. And when you compare this to the false teachers, it shows us that Paul did something really important. That Paul avoided some of the biggest temptations that authority brings and that these false apostles had fallen for.

Satan hates God's authority. And so, it should be no surprise that he would aim to twist and distort and tempt people to misuse their authority and does this in a couple of ways. Satan tempts us to misuse our authority by exploiting people through flattery. Secondly, by abandoning people through abdication and thirdly, by domineering people through coercion, and Paul avoided all of these things.

First of all, Paul, he refused to exploit them through flattery. 2 Peter 2 warns that false prophets arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep."

Earlier in his letter, Paul described the super-apostles as peddlers of the gospel. They were driven by greed, and they were twisting the truth in order to exploit the church. Paul, on the other hand, did not come to take. He had come to give. He says, he's not after their money, he was after their hearts and after their souls.

2 Corinthians 12:14 says, "I'll not be a burden for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents but parents for their children, and I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?"

And Paul's playing some 4D chess here. On the one hand, he's rebuking them, but he's rebuking them by reminding them of how much he loves them, of how much he is willing to sacrifice for them that he loved them with this parental fatherly love.

What this meant was he was very patient. He was gentle. He was meek, and he was generous toward them. But it also meant that he refused to flatter them with false words. He wasn't just going to tell them what they wanted to hear. He loved them enough to speak the truth, to correct them, and when necessary even to rebuke and to discipline them.

What's interesting is we see Paul express this same fatherly sentiment to another church, in another letter to another church. This time it's to a church that was in pretty good standing however. They were walking in obedience and faithfulness to Paul and to his gospel.

And this is 1 Thessalonians 2:5-12, and look at the similarities here. He says, "For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember, brothers, our labors and toil. We worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we were proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory."

Because we nurtured you with the gentleness of a mother, and with the strength of a father, we pleaded with you. We exhorted you. We encouraged you. We charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God. It's the same heart for both of these churches, it's just these different circumstances. I think Paul would have much rather written to the Corinthians the same encouraging words that he wrote to the Thessalonians, but unfortunately the Corinthian church was in need of a lot more correction.

And this brings us to the second and third temptation of authority which is how do you respond when people aren't responding to your authority? And typically, what happens is two things. First, we're tempted to abandon them through abdication and third, to domineer them through coercion. And I'm not going to say too much about point number two, but there is this temptation that when people are resistant, when things get hard, that we just write them off, just walk away and abdicate our authority and responsibility, and Paul doesn't do that.

But the other temptation is to just flex the strong arm and to dominate your people into submission. It's like fight or flight kicks in. And the question is, how does Christ-like authority respond when people are insubordinate? When they need correction, or if they are rejecting your proper God-given authority?

And what we see is that Paul doesn't run away from the problem, but he doesn't come to them as a tyrant. He doesn't come to them as judge, jury and executioner. He comes to them first as a father, father whose heart is broken and aching for a wayward child. And again, this is in contrast to the false teachers, because we know that the false teachers were exploiting the church.

We also know they were domineering the church, and we saw this just a few weeks ago in Chapter 11. In 2 Corinthians 11:19, Paul says that, "You gladly bear with fools being wise yourselves. For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you," he's talking about these false teachers, "you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or even strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say we were too weak for that."

They'd been domineering the church. And Paul knew that there was sin in the church and he knows that it needs to be confronted, but he's not going to confront it by just rolling into town and smacking people around as tempting as that is to do sometimes. Paul understood that Christ doesn't call us to domineer people through threats, through violence, through coercion.

1 Peter 5:1-4 says, "I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

On the one hand, Paul doesn't want to domineer the church. On the other hand, he can't just remain passive and indifferent, that the sin that is at the root of all of this, it's tearing the church apart, and so something needs to be done. And so, he's preparing to visit them, to come to them again. But as he does, he's coming as a good father, as a father who loves them, but also as a father who's ready to discipline them if that's what they need, ready to exercise proper church discipline toward those who refuse to repent.

And we really see his heart in this matter in the last few verses of our passage today. Continuing on in Chapter 12:19-21 says, "Have you been thinking all along that we've been defending ourselves to you? It's in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved. For I fear that perhaps when I come I may not find you as I wish, and that you may not find me as you wish. That perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. I fear that when I come again my God may humble me before you, and I may have to mourn over many of those who sinned earlier and have not repented of their impurity, sexual immorality, sensuality, and the sensuality that they have practiced.

Paul's coming, and he's coming with a heart that's breaking. Because no father enjoys disciplining their children, and yet no loving father can neglect the discipline of their children either. He needs to be tough, but he desires to be tender. He needs to be gentle, but he also needs to be truthful. And we see this over and over again.

2 Corinthians 2, he wrote and said, "I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you." He instructed the Galatians in Chapter 6:1, "If anyone is caught in any transgression, that you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness."

He taught his disciple, Timothy, 2 Timothy 2:24, that the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. And God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escaped from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will."

That true love and discipline, they go together. That parental authority it is patient and it is gentle, but it's not apathetic or passive or indifferent. That it confronts sin precisely because it cares. Most people are familiar with the parable of the lost sheep, right? The shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in order to go and to search and to save the one?

Fewer people are familiar with Matthew 18, where Jesus gives the instructions for how to handle matters of church discipline. Very few people are familiar with the fact that those are actually the same passage but talking about the same thing. This is in Matthew 18:12-21.

"What do you think," Jesus says. "If a man has 100 sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So, it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."

And then, immediately after that, he begins going into the instructions for church discipline. "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And if he listens to you, you have gained your brother." He says, "If not, then you take two or three witnesses. If they still won't listen, you bring it before the whole church."

But you get the idea that before giving the instructions for how to do church discipline, Jesus gives us the heart of why to do church discipline. It's a shepherd's heart. Luke's gospel actually includes two more parables. He talks about the parable of the lost sheep, but then he tells the parable of the lost coin. And he concludes with the parable of the lost son, the prodigal son that this series is named for.

Paul is preparing to come as a father, and he's preparing to exercise church discipline if he needs to. He's doing that precisely because he loves this church so much. He understands that these people that are walking in unrepentant sin are in danger, that they need to be brought home.

A lot of people have a hard time with this. I'm talking about church discipline, talking about correcting, rebuking, things like this. It's hard because it doesn't feel good, but a good parent is never content to merely see their child feel good. A loving parent longs more than anything for their child to be good and to do good. And deep down, I think we all long for this kind of leadership. We all look for this kind of authority to be exercised over us as well.

I grew up in a church that was very good at the gentle, loving part. It was not so good at the speaking the truth in love part, the calling people to repentance and challenging them to grow apart. And so, on Wednesday nights, I would go to youth group as a teenager and from very well-meaning people, I would hear this message of, "You're special. You're great. God has a wonderful plan for your life," and I would walk away just confused. I'd feel self-righteous. I'd feel unchanged, unchallenged, and uninspired, which is boring as I didn't get it.

If I'm so great, then why do I need to go to church? If I'm so great, why do I need a savior? And almost every other night of the week, my best friend and I would go to taekwondo. And the instructor, just picture like a shorter, much louder version of Jean-Claude Van Damme. He was amazing, but he would lose his voice almost every night just shouting instructions at us, running us through these drills, and he wasn't afraid to really push us to the very limits and the challenges.

On our very first night there, he made me spar with him. And he kicked me in the face, and I'm not proud of this. This was the late '90s. At the time, I had just a few weeks before just gotten my eyebrow pierced. He kicked me right in the face, rips at half, and there's blood everywhere. He apologized.

But then he's like, "Okay. Go clean yourself up, and get back out here because we're not done." And he worked us hard. But very early on, he made it clear that he cared about us as well. He worked us hard because he saw potential in us even if we didn't see it in ourselves, and he expected us to live up to that potential.

Not just at the gym, at home, in our school. He was always asking us about our grades. "Are things going well at school? Are you staying out of trouble? Are you respecting your mom and dad?" And if he found out that we were slacking at school or we were getting in trouble at home, he would discipline us. We would be doing lunges and push-ups all night long, and he came to be this authority figure in my life that I really looked up to.

He was firm. He taught me respect and discipline, but he wasn't domineering or coercive. I always knew that he genuinely cared about me as a person, and he was trying to get the best out of me as his student and it inspired me. It made me want to rise up to whatever challenge that he put before us, and it helped us to accomplish a lot more than we thought that we could.

Now I shouldn't have had to go outside the church to find a good example of good authority to learn humility and confidence, respect, self-discipline, things like this. But by God's common grace, I found that and it did do some good in my life. Still, it would have been so much greater if his good authority had actually been a godly authority, not just one that taught me to follow him but one that taught me to follow Christ, to submit my life to the one who is truly worth following. That's really the chief end of what our authority is all about, to lead others to follow Jesus.

Christ-like authority, on the surface, it might seem backwards. But when you see it in action, even if it's imperfect, you begin to realize that it's inspiring. It's actually surprisingly powerful and effective. And this brings us to point number three that Christ-like authority is foolish, but it's also effective.

I had a friend who pretty early on in their career wound up with two bosses. It was like the movie Office Space, right, the TPS reports, all of that. And they had these two bosses and the two bosses were very different as people and in their leadership style. I'm going to call the first boss, give-a-second Boss Take. Take was all about getting stuff done, very impersonal.

"Here's your work. Get it done. Is it done? Okay, here's some work. Tell me when it's done." And you pretty much only heard from them if they needed something or if something was going wrong. And when things went well, they would take all the credit for themselves. If things were going poorly, they would pass all the blame on to others.

The other boss was Give, and Give was always investing in them, giving them advice, helping them plot out a career path, helping them build on their strengths, and pointing out their weaknesses so that they could work on those as well. And when things went well, they would share the credit with their team. If things went poorly, they would take responsibility themselves and then use that as opportunities to help their team develop and grow.

Now, which of these two bosses do you suppose produce the best results? I mean, you don't have to think about it very long. It should be pretty obvious that the best results actually came from the leader who served, from the one who gave, who sacrificed what seemed like hours of their precious time investing into the people under their authority.

When you have a boss that takes, you're only going to give. You're only going to put forth enough effort to keep them off your back or to make sure that you don't get fired. But when you have a boss that gives, you get excited to give yourself. You want to give your best. You want to work hard. You want to go the extra mile.

And it's authority. It might seem backwards, but it's surprisingly effective. It's powerful. This is the leadership that was modeled by Jesus Christ, and so it was imparted to his disciples. And it's really it sparked a movement that completely transformed the world.

The Empire, Rome, took the world by the power of the sword through coercion, and Jesus gave his life. He took the sword for the world, the Christianity won over the world through the power of the cross. On the one hand, 2,000 years later, one of those empires fell long ago and one is still standing and will never fall.

Coercion can change people's actions, but only the love of Christ can change people's hearts. Cohesion can overpower an enemy, but the gospel can make an enemy into an ally, into a brother, into a friend. So, Paul was not afraid to exercise this self-sacrificing Christ-like authority because he knew that it was powerful. He knew that this had the power to transform this prodigal church.

He knew that it had the power to transform the world, and he knew this because he'd already seen it transform something far more stubborn and rebellious. It had transformed his own prodigal heart. He talks about this in his letter to his disciples, Timothy. 1 Timothy 1, beginning of verse 12. He says this, "I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

He's called me under his authority even though formally, I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus."

He says, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of all ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

As we think about these things, my prayer for us today is that we would all come to have the humility of Paul, to know just how patient and merciful and gracious Jesus Christ has been toward us so that we live our lives in just gratitude and obedience to Him.

My prayer is also that we would come to have the confidence of Paul, to know that we have been called and we have been appointed into the service of the only God, of the king of all ages. That all authority in heaven on earth belongs to Jesus Christ, and he has sent us out in his name with his authority to preach the gospel and to make disciples of all the nations.

And my prayer for us today is that the power of God would be made perfect in our weaknesses so that we, individually and together, as a church would have more and more reason to boast not in ourselves but to boast in the Lord, but to boast in his power and all that he has done in and through us as a church.

I'm going to close today by reading the words that Paul wrote at the very beginning of his first letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 1, beginning in verse 18, Paul writes this, "For the world of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us we're being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand sign and Greek seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'"

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your good authority over our lives. We pray that you would humble our hearts to teach us to fully submit to you and to walk in the confidence of knowing that we've been sent in the name of the one to whom all authority and the heaven and earth belongs. God, we thank you for saving us, for appointing us into your service, for bringing us under your authority.

And we pray, Lord that you would keep us from the temptation that authority brings, that the authority we have would be used for your glory. Be faithful to you that in our faithfulness, it would produce a fruitfulness that we see your power at work. So that in our weakness, the power of Christ will be on full display. So, now to you, the king of all ages, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here, along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. I'm filling in today for Pastor Jan. Pray for him. He is off getting equipped for the sake of our congregation, doing some doctoral work this week. Pastor Shane's going to fill in next week for him.

If you are new to Mosaic, just want to plug right away before I forget, there's a lot of new faces here, or half faces, at least. We're pumped that you're here. The primary way to connect on a Sunday so that we know you're here, we know you want to get plugged in, is fill out a connection card. We have them in the worship guides in the lobby. You can grab one on the way out. If you fill one out, put it in and walk to the welcome center, hand it off, we will have a gift for you just for joining us, and if you give us your address, we will send you another gift just out of excitement that you're here worshiping with us. We want to get to know you. We want to connect you and pray for you if you have any concerns or needs.

Today, I just want to point out we are having one service, so that's why it's a little tighter here today. We normally have 9:15 and 11:15 service. The temple has a member of their congregation passed this week, they're having a funeral. We are expected to be out of the building by 11:00 AM, so we just have this one service, and if you can help with tear-down in the lobby afterwards, feel free to do so. Essentially, everything in the lobby goes down the stairs to the right, and if there's trash in the pews, please take it out, and also, you can recycle the pens and the papers just by putting them on the tables out there.

But today, we are continuing our study in the Book of 2 Corinthians. This is a series we're called Prodigal Church 2. We've been in here 16, I think this is the 17th week. We have two more weeks after this. This is a book with a lot of church doctrine, a lot of talk about just how the church would function. What is the role of a pastor? What is the role of a leader? What does that engagement between the community and the leader look like?

Paul, the greatest Christian of Jesus Christ, the most influential Christian in history, wrote most of the New Testament. He's engaging at this point in the book with teachers who have come into the Corinth Church and who are questioning his authority. They're boasting in the fact that they have experienced less suffering than him. But last week, he talks about it's his weakness, the actual fact that he suffered for the sake of the gospel that proves his authority. Furthermore, today, he's entering into a topic of spiritual experiences. In this day, the false teacher would've thought, "This is the trump card. We have this over Paul, these experiences that we were bragging about in the community." Paul, you see, he says these experiences really don't matter and he gives us lessons about power, authority, what that looks like as a leader, what that looks like for an average Christian in Jesus Christ.

Let me read today's sermon. It's going to be in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, and its primary focus is on God's power manifesting in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:1-10.

"I must go on boasting, for there is nothing to be gained by it. I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was called up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. I know that this was caught up into paradise. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. He heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this, man, I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.

"Even if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth, but I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me, so to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord out this, that it should leave me, but He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power as made perfect and weakness.' Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I'm content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for when I am weak, then I am strong."

This is the word of our Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You today that we get to worship You. Lord, You have purposes that You need to accomplish and I just admit right before You that I cannot do that in my own power. Holy Spirit, we pray. Come, do your work. Convict us where we need repentance. Poke us in the side. Give us a thorn if we need to be humbled. Lord, give us conviction to pursue You more faithfully in this season, in this year. Lord, let us leave here today with a desire to see Your power at work in us and with a greater appreciation of Your daily grace provided to us in our weakness. Holy Spirit, please guide us right now. Let us enjoy your presence. In Jesus' name, I pray.

Two weeks have passed in January, so it's time to ask the question, how are you doing with your New Year's resolution? Have you made it this far, January 16th? Did you even make it a day? Have you made it this far, two weeks in, but you're so exhausted from structuring your life for two weeks to maintain it that you're afraid you're going to trail off this week?

Me, this year, I formulated my New Year's resolution by thinking about Psalm 1: "Blessed is a man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his light is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither."

I want to be that tree whose leaf does not wither this year. I don't know about you, but if 2022 is going to be anything like 2020, 2021, I want to get through it without withering, and just, if the season's going to continue, I have a five-year-old, I've got an 18-month-old, we have a third baby on the way, I'm going to need something more than my own strength. I'm feeling fatigue. I'm just looking, God, where is the gas going to come from? Not enough coffee, not enough effort, not enough sleep, not added hours of the day could help me with what's ahead. Just where are you as you approach this year?

As I read this epic, well-known Scripture today, I can't emphasize can't help emphasize talking about power. Verse nine, the famous verse, "But You said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." Power. I don't know about you, but historically, in my prayer life, I tend to pray in the language of advent: Lord, let me know Your love more. Lord, give me hope that You are here with me in this moment. Lord, let Your peace feel me and satisfy me. Let my heart rejoice in Jesus Christ.

I haven't, throughout my life, talked much about power. I haven't asked for it. But if you're anything like me, we can't function like that. Power is a huge part of Christianity, right? We don't just believe in a God of kind sentiment, of comforting words, of interesting teachings. We believe in an all-powerful God. Jesus had the power to rise from the dead and conquer death once and for all for us that in Him, we might have salvation in eternal life. He has the power to forgive our sins and wash us clean and sanctify us.

"The gospel," Roman says, "is the power of God and to salvation to the Jew first and also the Greek." There's a power when God's word is proclaimed. One of my favorite depictions of God's power is the kind of power that goes with God's kingdom when it enters into a person. Matthew 9:16-17, "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth in an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled, then the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

What this is talking about is that when the kingdom of God Christ rule and reign enters into a person's heart by faith, it tears, it bubbles up, it bursts, it destroys all parts of the old man in a person that they might become new in Jesus. God's power, His rule, His desire is going to accomplish its effect. It's a matter of, will we let it or not? Will we fight it? How much will we fight it before submit and enjoy it and embrace it?

My other favorite depiction of Christ's power comes from the book of 2 Corinthians, too. Chapter two, actually. It's a passage that we've been saying for weeks. 2 Corinthians 2:14-17 says, "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere, for we Christians are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death to death, to the other, a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity as commissioned by God and the side of God we speak in Christ."

It's this idea of God always leads us in triumphal procession. It's this imagery of a glorious, powerful Christian life. What's this line, "triumphal procession," it goes back to the lavish parades and celebrations in ancient Rome that entered the city in the arches with the columns all around. The victorious generals arrived back after winning a battle, winning a war with their captives behind them. It's this image of celebration. When you watch the Super Bowl and you see Roger Goodell get booed and then hand the Super Bowl trophy off to the MVP of the winning team, the confetti's flying around. It's this imagery. Our life is one of triumphal procession.

What normally happens in a triumphal procession, the general takes those captives back, and at the end when they get into the city, they just slaughter them. But in Christianity, God is a sovereign victor. Christ is our general. He takes us back as captives into His city, and instead of slaughtering us, He forgives us, He redeems us, and He gives us a sword. He commissions us to work for His kingdom, for His cause. All the power of His authority is at our backing and that's the life that we get to live in Jesus Christ, a life of power. The sovereign Creator of the universe calls us, He saves us in Christ, and He enlists us.

Though I want to say this, there's power in that life, what's the power that we exhibit? For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved among those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death to death. He uses us as weak vessels, He calls us "jars of clay" later in Corinthians, to save people. When we go out in the Lord's power and preach His work, share His work, live out the gospel, He uses us to save people. It's an aroma of if that draws people in, God's soldier in.

But also, there is failure. It's not just one of success after success after success. When we preach the word, we share it, there will be a rejection. When we share God's word, it's a fragrance from death to death. It just doesn't smell of life to others, and so God's purpose, when we have success in sharing the gospel, when we have failure, His purpose still goes forward, and so it's just mind-boggling to think about this is just a little small glimpse into just the powerful life of a Christian. It's a life of great purpose.

I just ask, do you want a life of power? Do you want a life of purpose? That's what Paul brings us to today. He talks about just ways that we can experience God's power. I have three points today. To see God's power manifest in your life, remember the works of God, be realistic about God's discipline, let Christ's power rest on you. Remember the works of God. Before I read verses, I want to remind you that the author of our passage today, this is one of a guy who, before he was saved, he's one of the greatest persecutors of Christians. Jesus saves him and the Bible tells us that he went on to become just the writer of most of the New Testament. He walked thousands of miles, planting church after church and shepherding those communities and just incredible ministry, so his words are wisdom. He's a refined old man giving us the wisdom that he's attained over the years.

He says, "I must go on boasting, though there is nothing to be gained by it. I'll go into visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was called up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. I know that this man was caught up into paradise. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. He heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter."

We're just tapping, hitting the surface of this passage, but here is primarily what's going on. Paul, he's talking about a time when he has been taken up into heaven. There's this confusing language where he talks about it in the third person, but every commentator says, "This is Paul." He also says, "I don't know if I was in the body or out of my body." The thing that he's trying to say is that "God did this thing in my life. God showed up. This is the first key to have in God's power. Come into your of life, acknowledging God showed up," so you have to be able to say, at some point, God came and did something in your life. You have to be able to retell of God's works in your life if you want to experience His power. If perhaps you can't do it, perhaps you don't truly have God in your life.

Just throughout Scripture, there's this practice of recounting God's deeds, the prophets in days when it was just a barren harvest in their ministry, they recounted the wondrous deeds of God, His work in their life. Isaiah 63:7, "I recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that He has granted them according to His compassion, according to the abundance of His steadfast love." Psalm 77:11, it's all about recollection of God's power. It says, "I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I remember Your wonders of old. I will ponder all Your work and meditate on Your mighty deeds."

You see, I grew up in the church for 23 years. I attended 99% of the weeks, even through college. I liked the community. I made good friends. I liked to study Jesus as a nice guy with these interesting counter-cultural teachings, but I never really understood my sin, my need for a savior. At the age of 23 here at Mosaic, it was the first time that as I studied the Scriptures, as Pastor Jan preached them, this understanding of God as this holy, all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite, eternal, unchangeable Creator, I could not have peace with Him, and I realized that before Him, I was but a lowly sinner. That's where I saw my need. I can only have peace with God by the work of Jesus Christ, who has the perfect record that I do not have, but died on the cross for me.

You see, when you talk about God's power, it gives you hope for God's power. When you talk about God's power in the past, it gives you hope for God's power in your present. That's what the apostle Paul has shown us here, and so I ask, do you remember God's work in your life? Do you remember the hope that you experience the burden and guilt that was taken away when you first truly confessed your sins and received God's grace? What year did that happen? What day? Just what was your Bible-reading like in that season? Did you tear through chapter after chapter, book after book? Did you serve a lot? Did you go to every possible service that you could get to? I know some of you are in that right now.

I remember in that season for me, I was that guy in the front of the congregation in a much smaller room, about one-tenth the size of this, I was in the front row, right in Pastor Jan's face. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to be there. I wanted to hear it. I wanted to feel it. There wouldn't be anybody close to me, they'd be five rows back, and just talking about it now, it inspires hope in me. It reminds me, Lord, You moved in my life profoundly then. You gave me the power to repent of sin and truly have victory over it. You took away that guilt and shame that weighed me down for ages. I had pain and trial in that season, yet You sent people, You sent friends, You sent church community. You gave me the perspective that I needed and You can do it now. I can have Your power today.

How about you? Do you know God's power in the past? Does it excite you to think about it? Does it give you hope today that you can have that? Do you feel like it's awakening this desire, this movement in your life? Just one of the greatest enemies for Christians is just not feeling anything, and so Paul shows us recollect God's work. All of that vision, he says, "This was not me. I was taken up into heaven," and so think about those times when God, He grasped you, He seized you, He shook you. Let's read on.

"To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times, I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me."

What's happening? Paul talks about having one of the greatest experiences of any human being to walk the Earth, probably the greatest of anyone who is still alive, and he's in heaven and he comes down to real life. God gives him this poke, this thorn. It's like going on a February vacation through tropical destination or Florida in mid-February and then coming back to Boston. Is this not real life? Is this not what the Christian life feels like sometimes? You have these high moments where the spirit of God's just coursing through your veins. You have such clarity, such focus of mission and vision, and then you come down.

What happens to me in these his moments is I have a tendance to say, "Well, that's life. C'est la vie. Just got to take the good with the bad. If things can go wrong, they will go wrong." That's not how Paul responds. Paul is realistic about God's discipline. He doesn't just see this struggle, this torment that God exposes to him as something to just accept, to just ignore. Paul, in his wisdom, he's realistic about this. Paul, he says, "God did this. God is the one who is responsible for this. This isn't just how life goes. There is a purpose. There is a meaning. This was sent from my Creator, my Father," and so what God gives him, He gives him this, this pain, this prick, this thorn that he receives, and he gives God credit.

How many of you are just going up and down in your spiritual life and when the bad comes, you just ignore it, you shed it off, you don't view it as part of something that God could be bringing to your life for His purpose, for His redeeming purposes, for your growth? A lot of debate goes into what the thorn was. A lot of the theologians list out the options, but all of them say we can't fully know. What can we know? It was a pain. It was really irritating to Paul.

I think this time of year, like the little cracks, the cuts that you get on your fingertips by your fingernails, in the dry, cold weather, those are the worst. The thing about them is that this little tiny cut, this little tiny prick puts a damper on your whole day. My son had this huge one on his fingernail. The whole family was feeling pain for all of December while this thing was healing and opening up and closing. That's what this thorn was like. This thorn was a pain and Paul probably viewed it as it limited his ability to do ministry well.

But what's the purpose of this thorn? What's the purpose of God giving him that experience? It's to weaken Paul in order to humble him. The text makes it really clear that it's not to punish him, but to train him. This is the discipline of God, the Father. He's working out our sanctification, our growth and holiness so that we might be able to wield more of his power and his authority. Hebrews 12 talks about, five and six, "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him, for the Lord disciplines the one He loves and chastises every son whom He receives." This isn't God punishing him, it's God purifying him. It's not God torturing him, it's not God training him. This is not God torturing us, it's training us. We need, in order to experience His power, to wield His power, to be faithful stewards of it, we need to experience His discipline.

The only time that we can actually do such training is when we are at our weakness. Think about it. Are you open to lessons when things are going well? Do you have ears to listen to God when things are smooth sailing? Do you want to hear your elders, your parents when things are going well? No, of course not. This is one of the hardest parts of discipleship in the church. You have a lot of young people, and I'm still kind of young, but I'm a little older than a majority of our congregation, you have a lot of people asking for discipleship and you provide it and it doesn't look like what they want and they don't receive it. It's only when there's falls, when the foundations are being shaking, when we're weak and when our weakness is exposed, our strength appears to be limited, that we are in a position to learn, to hear from God, to hear from His people.

Thorns get our attention. When we can't shake them, when we can't in our own strength, just overcome them, we have nowhere else to go but down on our knees in prayer. God brings us to our knees intentionally to get our attention. The thorn forces us to relinquish every lofty thought, every high thinking that we have, form of thinking that we have about ourselves and our own strength. It brings us to the point of humility to ask for His help. Without this experience, we started thinking that we are strong, we're strong enough without God. We're here in positions of esteem. We have success in life and ministry apart from God. We can obtain power and wield it without Him, handle it without Him. That's what pride is. That's a sin. That's as filthy as any rebellious sin. We need to repent of that. God wants to keep us. He gives us these thorns because He wants to keep us from being conceded. He does everything He can to squeeze out, tear up, bubble out parts of our identity that lead us to think that we can get by without Him.

Now, we don't know what Paul's thorn was, but we do know that he talked to God about it, and he really wanted God to take it away. I just want to point out, Paul actually took it to God in prayer. I don't know about you, but sometimes when I am unhappy with the direction of things, when I know I've got this struggle, I've got this prick, I've got this thing that I think is holding me up from accomplishing what I want, I don't like to take it to God because I know what his response is going to be. I don't like to take it to other Christian people because they're going to tell me to consider God's daily grace, to consider his sovereign purposes in the moment. Paul does that. We should follow him in that. We should not look and seek pain. We should ask the Lord to remove it. But the Lord didn't take it away.

What is your thorn? What's that thing that you want God to take away? What's the thing that you're bringing to God in prayer and asking Him constantly to take away? Have you paused and say, "Lord, what are You teaching me through this? How are You humbling me through this? How am I growing through this? Lord, please show me, and please take it away," you can still keep asking.

Paul, he continues, but first night he said, "I asked God to take it away from me, but He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'" Paul teaches us that in the Christian life, power is found where we least expect it, right? It's like my son, we bought the children a little kitchen for Christmas. I found my wallet in the microwave of this little kitchen. We find the riches of this life, we find the power most often in the spaces where we wouldn't think to find it. That's Christianity. That's the heart of Christianity right there, the most painstaking, most excruciating moment in history, Christ, the Righteous One's death on the cross is the means for our salvation. The Lord uses Christ weakness that we might spend the eternal glory with Him and we get to experience the richness of His love and grace and mercy. Christianity, that's the way of Christ.

We might ask, why? Is there any other way that God could work? Why can't he teach just these lessons? Apparently, there's not. It's in weakness that you'll find that your power is limited. It's in weakness that Christ, we are forced to trust God more, to trust Christ more. When you get this, when you understand that Christ's power has daily grace for you. What's that mean? His daily provision. We're called to live one day at a time. Boston, a lot of type A, a lot of planners. You have to really accept this to have peace in the Christian life, to enjoy God's power. He's going to provide it for you one day at a time and it's going to satisfy. He's going to give you what you need. He's not going to call you to a trial or temptation that you cannot endure in His power, that you cannot steward faithfully.

In these moments of weakness, we're forced to look to Him. When you get this, you're prepared for anything. Like a madman, kind of like Paul, you do open your mind to step into positions of weakness for sin. "For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for when I am weak, then I am strong." As my children grow up, this is what I want them to get from my life. I know I'm not going to be the best example. I'm not going to be perfect. I'm going to model for them God's grace and just show them my daily need for it. But really, what I want them to see is that I took God for His word. He said, "Step out into weakness and let me act."

That's any preacher of the gospel. They're not up there in their own strength. If you ever suspect that, you confront them on it. Every time we share the gospel, we're not stepping out in our own power, we're stepping out in the power of our Creator, our Lord, the sovereign ruler of the universe. Actually, when we understand it, we should understand our need for thorns. We can face anything known that He is with us. He is working for us. No power of Satan, our flesh, the world can withstand His power, and so we can accept His ways. It's kind of, we think, "He's a madman." We think, "Why do good people suffer?" We can fight it and fall into bitterness, fall into frustration and anger, but His purposes, His power, His rule and reign, it's still going to play out, and His cause is going to go forward, so we can accept his ways or we can resist it. We experience true peace in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities when we take Him for His word, that He's there with us, and that His ways are better than our ways, and that His grace is sufficient.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You for Your wisdom. Lord, You construct our lives. You have garnered our salvation in just a way that we could not have imagined it through the death of Your only begotten Son with You for all of eternity. Before He took on flesh, You gave Him that we might have eternal life with You, that one day we might enter into paradise, that when You make the world and the heavens anew, we can experience a bliss similar to what Paul experienced.

Lord, as we await Jesus' return, let us be people who just humbly just walk in power. Give a strong remembrance of the moments that You moved and it was just like we were watching a movie. Lord, we pray. Let us see Your discipline with realism. Let us not turn aside from such moments, but look to You and see what You're teaching us, see the ways that we need to be humbled in such seasons, and Lord, just when we are at our wits, Lord, let Your grace be sufficient for us. Let the world see us stepping out in our weakness, let them see Your power first and foremost, working through us. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we're so glad you're here with us. I pray that you get connected. We do that officially through the connection card and the worship card if you fill out legibly. Just redeem it at the welcome center for a little gift. And then we'll also send you another gift in the mail. A couple housekeeping things. The 16th, next Sunday, we have a baptism seminar. If you have not been baptized as an adult and you'd like to know more, it's right after the service with lunch provided. And then on the 23rd, we have a membership class. We take membership seriously. Church is a family, membership is how we know that you are in the family that is Mosaic Boston. We also have a baptism today. My daughter, Melana, she's four, she's really excited about the baptism. She came up to me yesterday, I had no idea what she was talking about, she's like, "When's the next time you're going to dunk a person in the bathtub with their clothes on?" Had no idea what she was talking about. She said, "Baptism." I told her, "There's baptism tomorrow." She's like, "Yeah."

So, we have baptism after the second service. We'd love to have you join us. Also, every time it snows for the first time, I give a public service announcement about how to flourish in Boston in the winter. This is important. I don't see anyone else doing this, this is important. Here's what you need, three things to flourish in Boston in the winter. Number one, you need a nice pair of waterproof boots. Necessary, very necessary, with good grip on them, very important. Number two, you need a good winter coat, preferably with a coat that has a little fuzzy trim, which keeps the wind out. That's important. Number three, you got to take your vitamin D. You got to take your vitamin D. I don't know why, I have to say this. None of the government officials who are supposed to care about our health, for the past two and a half years, no one's talking about this. Take your vitamin D. There's not enough sunshine in Boston, take your vitamin D. And take care of your immune system. God gave you an immune system. Work out, eat good food not the processed junk. Okay, that's my public service announcement.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy Word? Heavenly Father, thank you for this incredible word that you have prepared for us from your servant, Paul. We thank you for his personal example of being willing to sacrifice everything, go through whatever suffering to get the message out, to get the message to your elect. I pray you use us in the same way. Make us a people who no matter what the sacrifice, no matter what the suffering, we're willing to go through it because there's nothing more important than building your kingdom, than helping people be transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of your beloved Son. And make us a people who are strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Strengthen us, strengthen us in every aspect of our life so when the time comes to sacrifice we have more to sacrifice and we can endure more suffering. We pray that you bless the preaching of the holy word, and I pray deep in our hearts, give us a true realization, the preeminence of Christ, that there's nothing greater than Christ. I pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33 today. We're continuing our Prodigal Church season two series. A few more sermons left in this series. The title of the sermon today is Through Many Tribulations. The early church understood that when you get saved, you get saved to a life of following Jesus Christ, and that life includes tribulations. Acts 14:21-22, this is where that text comes from, "When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying, 'Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.'"

As we look at what's going on in the world, one of the things that I'm praying about the Lord deepening in our body is a sense of discernment, to discern what's true and to discern what's evil, what's false, what's lies. And this is what St. Paul does in this letter, in the second part of the letter, he wants to deepen a discernment in the people of God to know, to know when they are being bamboozled. When we ask the question, "What in the world is going on?" you got to ask a few timeless, helpful questions, and this comes from ancient philosophers. The questions that come from Latin, cui bono? cui bono? Who benefits? Who's responsible for a certain event in any crime investigation or in politics, in any event? There's a high probability that it's the person standing to gain the most from it. Cui bono? Who benefits?

The second one is an extension of the first is, cui prodest, who profits? We know the term, "Follow the money." It was first used by Roman philosopher, Seneca the Younger in this play Madea, were Madea says to Jason, "Cui who gains by a crime committed it." And then que malo is who suffers? Used in conjunction with que bono and que prodest, you figure out who will benefit and who will suffer as a result of a certain action. And this one who suffers is crucial to discerning in particular the motivations of our leaders. Because Jesus Christ talked about leadership. He said, "Whoever wants to be the greatest among you has to be the greatest servant." Meaning whoever wants to lead the people has to be willing to suffer the most.

These are questions that are helpful of discerning a person's motivations. Why does a person do what they do? Why do you do what you do? What drives you? What motivates you? I'm not talking about hypothetically, theoretically. If you're a Christian, what motivates you, not what should motivate you? What does today, what does in the season of your life, what motivates you? If you're not a Christian, what motivates you? And will it matter in five years? Will it matter in 10 years, 20, 30? Will it matter from the perspective of eternity?

These are all things we're wrestling with here from 2 Corinthians, 11:16-33. Would you look at the text with me? "I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool so that I too may boast a little. What I am saying with this boastful confidence, I say not with the Lord's authority, but as a fool. Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast." By the way, Saint Paul makes a lot more sense if you imagine him as an Italian. It just makes so much more sense. "What I'm saying with this boastful confidence, I say not with the Lord's authority, but as a fool. Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves. For you bear if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that. But whatever anyone else dares to boast of, I'm speaking as a fool, I also dare to boast of that.

"Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one. I'm talking like a madman, with far greater laborers, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys; and danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea danger, from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is a daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I'm not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I'm not lying. At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands."

This is a reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative Word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, beware leaders who sacrificed other for self. I know it's beware of leaders, but be beware leaders sounds more ominous. Follow leaders who sacrifice self for Christ, and then emulate leaders who decrease so Christ increases. First, be aware leaders who sacrifice others for self. In the second part of the letter, Saint Paul is battling for the very soul of the Corinthian church. He's battling against false teachers. The people aren't Christians. He says earlier in the text that they're actually Satan's servants, doing everything they can to pull people away from Christ. They can't pull people away from Christ. Satan and these servants try to do everything to keep the people of God from faithfulness, which is the key to usefulness.

The lesson learned in this text, they don't just apply to spiritual leaders. These lessons that we draw from the text, they apply to all leaders, anyone who you follow, anyone who you listen to, anyone who you obey, anyone who influences how you live on a day to day, who influences the decisions we make. What he's saying here is, "Beware. Beware of blind obedience to authority just because they're authority figures." And the context, this 2 Corinthians 11:13-15, "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workman, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguised himself as an angel of life. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds."

See, the thing with Satan is he's in it for himself. He doesn't want to obey anyone. He doesn't want to take commands from God. Satan's servants, willing or unwilling, these same servants are in it for themselves just like Satan. What does Satan promise Eve and Adam at the very beginning? He promises them life without God. He says, "You'll be like God, meaning you can decide for yourself what's good and what's evil, what's right and what's wrong." These so-called super apostles came into the church after Paul left, and they started building a following boasting about their credentials, their worldly credentials. And St. Paul here answers those boasts. He answers those super false apostles. 2 Corinthians 11:16, "I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little."

What Paul is about to do is he's about to attack the very heart of the power of the false apostles. He's going to dismantle their authority with his own "foolish boasting". Because the problem was the Corinthian church had become enamored with the idol of sophistication. The false teacher said, "Hey, Paul's not here, let's build up the church." And these people who are educated probably in Old Testament scripture, probably have even doctorates from Jerusalem, they're looking for a job and they come in, "Oh, here's some religious people. Let's make this a job. Oh, let's reach some more people. Yeah, Paul's tactics, they don't work in reaching the masses. Let's soften the gospel. Let's not talk so much about sin. We're in Corinth. Let's not talk about gender. Let's not talk about sexual boundaries. Let's not talk about marriage is one man one woman. Let's not talk about any of that. Let's just talk about that God loves you and He has a tremendous plan for your life to live any way that you want," which is coincidentally the plan of Satan. "Let's not overly focus on scripture. Let's meet people where they are. Let's present the message in a more sophisticated way where it doesn't really touch people's lives but they walk away like they got some kind of spiritual teaching."

In Roman culture, they valued strength and success. So these false teachers boasted in their worldly wins, their credentials, their speaking fees, their influence, their following, their commendation and letters of recommendation. And Paul isn't about to boast in his wins, he's about to boast in his Ls, his losses. He's about to present a catalog of suffering. He uses the same rhetorical technique that his enemies used with one difference, he flips it on its head. He does the upside down of what they were doing just to show how foolish it is to say, "I've come to tell you about God, how great God is," and the whole time you're talking about how great you are.

2 Corinthians 11:17, "What I'm saying with this boastful confidence, I say not as the Lord would but as a fool." Now, this is a challenging verse, and this is really important to understand the question that's raised by godless, pagan, biblical scholars. They used this verse to build a case that Paul didn't write scripture. Therefore, we don't have to listen to Paul. Which is false. And we have another apostle who knew Jesus before Paul knew Jesus, Peter in 2 Peter 3:14-18 talking about Paul. "Therefore, beloved, since you were waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patients of our Lord at salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matter. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures."

What does he call the writings that Paul Graphe, he calls them scriptures. "You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the era of lawless people, lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now until the day of eternity. Amen." So this was scripture. So what does verse 17 mean when he says, "Look, I say not as the Lord would, but as a fool."? What he's revealing is this internal battle with the Holy Spirit. As he's writing, he knows that the Holy Spirit is flowing through him. He knows these words aren't his. He knows these ideas aren't his. He's just a vessel of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's writing through him. And the Holy Spirit gets to this verse and He's like, "Paul, this is what you're about to do. Write it." And Paul says, "No, Lord, I don't want to boast." And the Holy Spirit says, "Write it."

And it pained Paul to do this because he didn't see an example of this kind of boasting from Jesus Christ. Yet, God tells Paul to do it. Paul wanted to imitate Christ in everything. Twice in the epistles of Corinthians he says, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." But sometimes, to battle Satan's most effective strategies you must reveal how foolish these strategies are by employing the same technique just upside down. He doesn't want to fight them on their own terms, but he has to because God said so. Do we have an example of Jesus debating people in power? Yes, of course we do. But when it counted the most, Jesus Christ did not answer His accusers. 1 Peter 2:23, "When He was reviled, He had not reviled in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to Him who judges justly."

Jesus didn't defend Himself when He stood before Pilate or Caiphus, unjustly accused, on purpose. Why? Because He was here to fulfill a very particular mission, and that mission was to die for the sins of the whole world. It had to be this way. Paul, and us sometimes, are forced to honestly, reasonably, fairly defend ourselves sometimes for the preservation of the truth. When this happens, we're not happy about it. Paul's so humble, he has no desire to defend himself. He's not doing it for himself, he's doing it for the benefit of the Corinthian church. He's so reluctant to boast even in suffering because he hates it. He resents it. But he must do it to expose just how foolish these false teachers are.

Proverbs 26 is really helpful to discern what's going on in this text, verse four and five, "Answer not a fool according to his folly lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes." So which one is it? Do I answer the fool, or do I not answer the fool? There's a lot of fools around me. Am I answering the fools? And he says, "There's two ways of dealing with a fool. First, ignore, rise above the fray, refuse to condescend to the level. But second, sometimes you got to answer the fool according to his folly. But do it better than they did." And Paul, he'd much rather talk about Jesus. However, since the false teachers waged personal attacks, he defends his integrity while simultaneously undermining their influence. And also, through this, he shepherds the church and teaches them how to develop discernment. Verse 18, "Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. For you gladly bear with fools being wise yourselves."

Now here St. Paul brings in a little sarcasm because sarcasm often is powerful. He's a big shot, super apostles. He's boasting in the worldly accomplishments. Paul had more. But they didn't know God. And they didn't know the wisdom of God. They didn't know the gospel of God. We learned earlier in the text they were preaching a different Jesus with a different spirit, with a different gospel, thinking themselves to be wise. They were fools. They present themselves as philosophers and theologians, but they didn't know God. And then Paul brings in this phrase, "being wise yourself", this biting sarcasm. Sarcasm is basically saying the opposite of what's true. What he's saying is, "Well, aren't you something? Aren't you guys so smart? I left you guys, and you are so intelligent, you are so educated that you put up with these fools. The Corinthian church thinking themselves wise were acting foolishly, and Paul publicly calls out folly when necessary.

"You're saying you're so smart. You put up with fools while they exploit you and they plunder you." Verse 20, "For you bear if someone makes slaves of you or devours you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that." The sophists and itinerant philosophers and teachers of that day were known for taking advantage of people who were less informed, less educated. And what did they do? They had the same goal in mind as Satan does, they wanted to enslave people to man-made rules. "Here's my rules, follow them." To devour them financially, to extort, to exploit, to take advantage of them using not love but entrapment, using them not loving them. The phrase "put on airs" here is these are people who push themselves forward, lifting themselves up as they push everyone else down. "Strikes you in the face," he says. Is this just humiliation, where you strike someone in the face with verbal abuse? Or is this physical abuse?

Well, there are examples in the early church that these false teachers did abuse people physically. They brought that in from their understanding in Jerusalem. St. Paul later talks about the lashes that he got. He was physical abused, to dominate to humiliate. Cultish behavior. It's all typical behavior of Satan servants. They're like leaches, suck life out of the victim. This is tyranny. That's what he's addressing here. Jesus never taught us to accept that tyranny is anything other than sin. Yes, he taught us to turn the other cheek, but turn the other cheek has nothing to do with physical abuse. Turn the other cheek has to do with being willing to forgive a person who has abused you. So if you are being physically abused, it is not our duty to remain in a position where we are physically abused. Scripture teaches against that.

Paul never intended to make disciples of themselves, only disciples of Jesus. And the enemies of the gospel always seek to make disciples of themselves with the intention of enslaving. Verse 21, Paul says, "To my shame, I must say we were too weak for that." Too weak for what? He said, "We were too weak to take advantage of you." Obviously, he's saying, "We didn't take advantage of you on purpose. And these people are coming in, they take our kindness as a sign of weakness." He said, "Whatever anyone else dares to boast of, I'm speaking of as a fool. I also dare to boast of that." What he's saying is in effect, "These people took advantage of you. We could have if we wanted to. We didn't. I was too weak to enslave anyone," he was basically saying, "devour your resources and abuse you."

Scripture often talks about this understanding of spiritual authority as service not domination. 1 Peter 5:1-5, "So I exhort the elders among you, the pastors, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ," the apostle Peter says, "as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not dominating over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility under one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

Matthew 20:25-28, the words of Jesus Christ, "But Jesus called them to Him and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. "Beware leaders that sacrifice others for themselves," Jesus says. No, the true leaders, spiritual leaders, and any true leaders, these are foundational keys to leadership. You lead by service. You lead sacrifice. And this is point two, follow leaders who sacrifice self for Christ. And 2 Corinthians 11:22, "Are they Hebrews?" So Paul here now is giving us his resume. "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I."

The false teachers made a big deal of their authentic Jewish background, their pedigree. They knew the Hebrew language. So they were religious, they knew the Old Testaments scriptures. Israelites. They brought in the theocratic name of God. This is Israel. And they are offspring of Abraham that they would inherit the messianic king. Paul is a disciple of Gamaliel. He's a Pharisee of Pharisees. He played the same card just better. He had the right ethnic, religious, educational background. He gives us this in Philippians 3:3-11. "For we are the circumcision, we worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

He continues in 2 Corinthians 11:23, "Are they servants of Christ? I'm a better one. I'm talking like a madman," he knows this, this is nuts what he's doing, "with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, countless beatings, and often near death." You see that switch, you see what he's doing? "I am a great servant of Christ." And right here he could have talked about his greatness. He could have talked about how many people became Christians through his ministry, how many churches he planted, how many political figures he spoke truth to. He could have done all... how many miracles God's done through him? "No, because I'm a better servant of Christ, now let me tell you about how much I've sacrificed: greater labors, more imprisonments, countless beatings, and often near death."

Here, this isn't hyperbolic. He's giving us a true list of his sufferings. The Apostle Paul here elaborates on how much he has sacrificed for the name of Jesus Christ and the mission of Christ. The false teachers came in, they said, "You're following that guy? The hand of God is not on that guy. Obviously, God has cursed that guy, look how much pain He's gone through. If God blesses a person, if God's hand is upon a person, they're rich, and they're healthy, and they're good looking, and they never have any suffering. They never have suffering."

Saint Paul says, "No that's wrong." He didn't view suffering as a curse from God, he viewed suffering as an honor, as a blessing from the Lord. That's a gift from God. Also, Paul, he is a smart guy, and the deeper you study, the more you swim in the waters of Paul's writings, you realize just how intelligent he was and how the Holy spirit's using him. The false prophets came into the church for real profits. They didn't come to the church to help the people, they came to the church to make money. And they called Paul a hack who didn't charge a speaking fee because no one would pay even if he charged. That was the accusation. And Paul says, "You want my invoice? You want to know how much you cost me? I'll give you my invoice. I'll give it to you."

I've got lots of stories about my daughter. One of my daughters, I won't say, she gave me three coupons for Christmas for 15-minute massages. It was nice. It's nice. And I've got the gong thing, the T.J. Maxx version. And I got this little spikey thing that you go put in your head and you're like, "Whoa." And then she did it for 10 minutes yesterday. She's like, "You got 35 minutes left." Which is funny to me. Imagine if she was an infant and I was like, "All right, I changed your diaper once. You got two more changes left." Do you want my invoice of what it took to get you here? That's why he finds this so ludicrous. So as you read this, you got to ask what drove St. Paul to make these sacrifices.

Verse 24, "Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one." The 40 lashes was the maximum allowed by the law of Moses, and the Jewish authorities of that day said, "Let's do 39," using the rabbinical principle of fencing the law so that even if you miscount, you don't go over 40. So 39, 40 minus one. So 195 times he was whipped. Was it just leather straps? We're not told. When Jesus was whipped, it wasn't just leather straps. It was leather straps, a little pieces of sharp bone at the inner rock to tear his flesh off. 195 times. Most likely, his whole back was covered in lacerations. 2 Corinthians 11:25, "Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and the day I was a drift at sea."

The rods were the Roman form of beating. Paul was beaten both by the Jewish and Roman authorities. Though, he was a Roman citizen, he should have been legally protected from the physical beatings. But the local petty tyrants didn't always obey their own laws. And St. Paul did appeal to Caesar. He said, "What you're doing here is wrong." He did fight unwarranted tyranny. He spoke up against it. The beatings and lashings weren't just painful but meant to humiliate, to dishonor. Paul here boast on something that was extremely humiliating, but he doesn't mind doing it because he doesn't esteem the opinion of people that much, because he esteems the opinion of God infinitely more, is infinitely more precious. He continues, verse 26, "On frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, and danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, and danger from false brothers."

In the Roman empire, because of the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, they built tremendous roads, transportation infrastructure that sprawled all around the empire, and they had thousands of ships sailing. You could travel to most parts of the Roman empire, although accessible, the travel wasn't easy. St. Paul suffered much, especially because he had such a controversial message. Anywhere he went, he would just share the gospel. In 2 Corinthians 11:27, "In toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." Paul poured himself out in every single way imaginable on behalf of the gospel. He left nothing in his tank. He left everything on the field.

2 Corinthians 11:28, "Apart from other things, there's a daily pressure on me of my anxiety for the churches." He just described a catalog, a litany of suffering that any one single predicament of these that he mentioned, any one of them would cause most modern Christians to throw up their hands and quit in despair and say, "No, no, no, no, no, this is not worth it. This whole Christian thing isn't worth it. Right, you said that all I have to do is repent all my sins and I go to eternity. I did not sign up for a life of suffering." Well, that's because the American church has been preaching a half gospel for decades. "You come to Jesus, all your sins are forgiven." Yeah, you come to Jesus, all your sins are forgiven. That's awesome. But now you're a servant of God, and God gets to tell you what to do. God gets to call you wherever God wants to call you. God gets to create a plan for you because He's God. And the only thing that you are allowed to say, dear Christians, is "Yes, sir. Yes, sir, where would you send me, Lord? How much do you want me to sacrifice, Lord? I'm all in." None of this, "No, I'm just going to live a comfortable life." And do nothing.

Satan's servants has crept into the American church to make us flacid, just to do nothing for the Lord, nothing of consequence. Paul said, "Apart from all of this apart." You're like, "Yeah, I've been through some stuff." And the whole time he says, "I've had the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for the role the churches." Instead of despairing, Paul emerges victorious because he knew if God has allowed this suffering to happen in my life, He has a purpose for the suffering, to spread the gospel, to expand the kingdom of God. He suffered physically. He also suffered emotionally and spiritually. This is the concern for the church, for all the churches.

Pastors know this. Spiritual leaders know this. It's a spiritual anxiety. In Philippians 4, he says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, present your request to God." Don't be anxious about the wrong things. Do be anxious about the right things. We should be anxious about the health of our souls. We should be anxious about the health of the souls of our loved ones. We should experience the spiritual anxiety, this heartache for the souls of the people around us. And Paul did. He was concerned with both the church planting and church vibrancy, starting churches, but then growing them in healthy maturity.

Verse 29, "Who is weak, and I'm not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?" I spent all week trying to figure out what he means by the word weak. He calls himself weak here, and then in verse 30, we'll get to it. He just gave us a list of stuff that any half verse would kill most any one of us. He calls himself weak. Here he says, "Who is weak? And I'm not weak." Here he's talking about empathy. He says, "When people that he led to the Lord are weak in their faith, when they're suffering, he suffers." This is called empathy. When you feel the pain of other people, this is empathy. Is it weak to experience empathy? Is it weak to experience empathy? No, it's not. It takes an incredible strength to experience empathy, to empathize with another person in their suffering. And the more people under your care, the more strength you need to empathize with every single one of them. More strength you need to bear the weight of a beloved person's suffering. When people suffered, he suffered.

And the second phrase is, "Who is made to fall? And I'm not indignant." It literally reads, "Who is entrapped into sin, and I do not burn?" When people fell from the faith, when they sinned, Paul burned with indignation for their souls. I wonder as you read this list, do you have a resume or a catalog of suffering or sacrifice for the Lord? Every faithful Christian should. Like if need be, to make a list of how much you've suffered for the Lord. Because every Christian knows that because Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for me, He calls me to sacrifice myself for Him. You should have a catalog of suffering. You will have a catalog of suffering. If you continue to faithfully follow Jesus Christ and say yes to every single one of His commandments, you will grow this list, this resume. Every Christian will. In particular, in the time that we live. We need to be wide awake and know that persecution might be around the corner for Christians. It already is in many parts of the world. We need to be ready.

Three is, "Emulate leaders who decrease so Christ increases." This phrase comes from John the Baptist. John the baptized from John 3:30 says, "He must increase, I must decrease." John was losing his disciples to Jesus Christ. And one of his disciples said, "Aren't you worried that Jesus is going to have a bigger following then you? He's like, "No. I came to point everyone to Jesus Christ. I don't care about my following. I don't care about my platform. He must increase, I must decrease. 2 Corinthians 11:30, Paul says, "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness." Paul knew that when he is weakest Christ is strongest. When he is weakest, he can't but trust in the strength of Jesus Christ. He knew he couldn't do a thing for the Lord without the Lord's power. 2 Corinthians 3:5, "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God. Our power comes from God."

This verse I have to deal with just a little bit, because I've been wrestling all week, "What in the world does he mean by showing my weakness?" In particular, in the context, the guy got beaten how many lashes? 195. Three times beaten by rods, shipwrecked a night and a day in sea, cold, exposure. So how are you not dead, bro? That's my question. That's my question. How did you get out of this thing alive? That's my question. Obviously God. Obviously God. Obviously God. But scripture nowhere doesn't say, "Hey, hey, Christians, be strong in the Lord and the strength of His might and never do anything in your life to get stronger. Remain weak. Hey, Christians, remain weak spiritually, remain weak physically, remain weak financially, remain weak, remain weak, remain... " Do you see that in the Bible? That's nowhere in the Bible. So what does he mean by weakness?

Well, it's a spectrum, right? The weakness and strength is a spectrum, and every single person, they're in a different range on the spectrum. If you lift, which you should, every Christian should be as strong as you possibly can in health wise, immune system, it's good for you. You should lift. And when you have an off day in the gym, like that off day is different for different people. I've lifted with people and they're like, Yeah, I feel really sluggish today. I've been sick for like four weeks, and I barely got out of bed." And then they put on four plates on each side, the big ones.

The weakness is different for people. And the stronger you are, the stronger your weakness is. And, and this is important because in the context, what is Paul doing here? What did we start off with? He's engaging. He's doing battle with the false teachers, the servants of Satan. He's going to war with them, and he clearly wins. After this argument, he gets clear that he won. So he's using his weakness as a way to overcome his enemies. This is really important. It's really important because I do believe that there's an attack on the church today. The attack is coming from everywhere, and it's on all humans, but it's on the church in particular. The attack comes through a lie through the narrative that Christians should be weak by definition. "Oh, you're a Christian, you should be weak in every aspect of life." We should be weak physically, financially, socially, relationally, intellectually, educationally, spiritually. Weak, Christians should be weak.

Should Christians be weak?

No.

No. Is it okay for a Christian to be weak? Yes, it's okay. Sometimes it's children, it's baby Christians. Sometimes you're sick. Yes. This is why we, the stronger, are called to help the weaker. The stronger you are, the more you can help those who are weaker. But if you are weak and you have the ability to get stronger, should you get stronger? Of course. Right, this is as clear as day. I don't even know why I have to say this.

Also, don't judge a person's strength from your starting line, judge a person's strength from their starting line. You're like, "Oh, I don't know what your starting line is." Then get to know the person. But we are to grow stronger. And by the way, this attack to make people and people in the church weak, the attack is specifically targeting men. I don't know if you noticed this. Satan specifically targets men, and he specifically targets Christian men. The Christian men should be weak because Christian men don't do anything for the kingdom. What is weakness? Weakness is a lack of strength to protect yourself. That's all weakness is, it's a lack of strength. Is that what Paul means in 2 Corinthians 11:30 when he says, "If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness."? I don't think so.

What's he mean by weakness? How is he weak after just giving us a catalog of suffering that would kill any of us? Is it weakness to suffer so much? No, of course not. Well, this is what the world and the false prophets, this is what they would all say, that it's we weakness that you allowed yourself to suffer so much. That's what the world says. It's weakness that you put yourself in a position to be hurt. That's what the world says. Well, the world doesn't understand what true love is. Isn't it true strength to sacrifice yourself, to be willing to suffer for the one you love? Yeah. Choosing the way of suffering for the one you love, yeah. This is the way of the cross. This is choosing the way of the cross and walking in it daily. It takes the greatest amount of strength that today I'm going to deny myself. I'm not going to do what I want. I'm going to do what's best for my beloved.

Was Paul weak? No, he wasn't weak, he was meek. And there's a difference. He had the strength to choose to put himself in a vulnerable situation for the sake of others. It's not just a catalog of suffering but of sacrificed, and he sacrificed a lot. Just like Jesus Christ. Jesus standing before Pilate, was Jesus weak? No, He's not. He was meek. At that moment, He could have killed Pilate. He chose not to. "I could kill you, but I'm going to die for you instead." That's true power. In that case, He chose to lay aside His strength to take on the bigger enemy. By the way, this is how Paul started the whole argument, 2 Corinthians 10:1, he started the whole argument challenging the false teachers, he say, "I, Paul, myself entreat to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I'm away." He said, "I am entreating you by the meekness of Jesus Christ." Not the weakness of Jesus Christ. Weakness is having no strength, meekness is focusing your strength.

It's why Christians like from the outside Jesus did look weak. Many Christians from the outside, you do look weak. We look weak. But it's not weakness, it's strength under control. That's what meekness is. One of my favorite verses in all of scripture is Numbers 12:3, where it says, "Moses was very meek, more than all people who are in the face of the earth." Moses was very meek. I find that interesting because it's kind of parallel with what Paul is doing here. Who wrote the Book of Numbers? It was Moses. Moses was the most meek person. As he's writing, he's like, "Holy Spirit, you sure? He's like, "Yeah, yeah, write that."

Moses also killed a guy with his bare hands and buried the corpse in a desert. Was he weak? No, of course he wasn't weak. Weak people can't be meek by definition. If you have no strength to keep in check, then you can't even be meek. Meekness assumes strength. My message is we need more meek Christians and fewer weak Christians. So if you have the ability to get stronger, get stronger in every single aspect of your life, in particular men. Women, you guys are crushing it. Keep growing in strength. Keep growing in the Lord. Keep getting stronger. Men, you need to be leading the charge and growing in strength, because it is our job to provide and to protect and to build so when the time comes we're ready to sacrifice self to protect. And the more you have to give, the greater sacrifice you could make.

We're called to sacrifice self for others. Is it weakness to risk pain to self because you love one another? No, it's the greatest power. It's the greatest strength. That's why self-denial is a superpower. This is my message, I just pray that all of us gets stronger in every aspect of life. It starts with being stronger in the Lord and the strength of His might. But I've noticed that when people are strong in the Lord, every other aspect of their life just gets stronger. The closer you are to the Lord, the more filled to Spirit you are. Correlation causation, I'm not sure. Everything, you just get stronger relationally, stronger marriages, stronger parenting, stronger children, stronger finances, just stronger all around, stronger mental health, stronger physically. Because you understand when you work for the Lord, full tell all the time. You have to figure out how to get your energy up and to work as hard as you can, and so when persecution comes, you are hard to kill, just like St. Paul was. You can't kill the guy. And obviously, protected by the power of the Spirit, and then we're invincible until the day the Lord calls us home.

2 Corinthians 11:31, "The God and the Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I'm not lying." St. Paul here as he's finishing the chapter brings in an oath. He preempts the story that he's about to tell, and he brings in an oath to make sure that his detractors are listening. And then he starts his story. "At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me." So Paul concludes this catalog of suffering by describing one particularly humiliating experience in his life. He was a young, accomplished scholar under Gamaliel, a rising star in the religious world of the Roman Empire. He was a genius, and he was zealous, willing to do anything and everything for his God. So he took letters of recommendation and he's on the road to Damascus to go persecute Christians, to arrest them, and ultimately to execute them. And then on the way, Jesus Christ meets him on the road to Damascus, the resurrected Christ, and blinds him with His light. Paul gets saved.

Now this hunter of Christians becomes hunted by his own colleagues. The dissident has to be eliminated. St. Paul here talks about the time when he was in Damascus and he knew that his colleagues were here to kill him, and that he, by the help of Christians, he's lowered in a fish basket like a child to escape his former colleagues. In the next chapter, he's going to recount how he was lifted to the third heaven. He got to experience spiritually... Very few people have ever experienced. Before he recounts how he was lifted to the heavens, he recounts how he was lowered in a fish basket, like the lowest of the low in the middle of the night, just weak and vulnerable. And 2 Corinthians 11:33, "But I was let down on the basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands." Paul headed toward Damascus a Pharisee, and he leaves a humbled Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ.

He embraces his suffering for Christ. "This is my weakness," he says. "My weakness is that I love Jesus Christ so much that I'm willing to experience whatever suffering the Lord appoints for me. That's my weakness." His weakness was his love for God, which is actually his strength. And that's why it's upside down.

Is this your weakness, dear Christian, a love for God that overcomes everything? Or do you have a weakness for an idol instead? Well, then, you won't be effective. We're called to be like Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Isaiah 53, "He is the suffering servant." Our Messiah, the king of kings comes to die in a cross for our sins. He's humiliated, scorched, beaten, bruised, bleeding on the cross to procure our salvation. The only thing you have to do is be justified. Yes, it's true, it's true, it's true. Repent of your sins and follow Jesus Christ. Repent, follow Jesus. Repent, believe. Repent, believe. Repent of your sins. But just know that if God has appointed you a salvation, He has also appointed you to make sacrifices for Him, for His kingdom. And all we who faithfully follow Jesus Christ in this life, we will suffer. That's a promise. Or wants to lead a holy life will suffer.

We shouldn't seek suffering, but we also shouldn't be surprised when we do suffer. And we must resolve today to remain unflinchingly faithful in the faith of any adversity. I'll close with the words of Jesus Christ, Luke 9:23. "And He said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." Amen. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ. You called Him to live a life of holiness. You called Him to take on the ultimate enemies of Satan, sin, and death. And Jesus Christ, you wrestled in Gethsemane, and you cried out, "If there's any other way, let this cup of suffering pass from me." And there was no other way, and Jesus, you went to the cross, and you bore the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin. You bore our deaths and you took on the hell of Satan and demons. And did that so we would not have to. But then you also call us a life of following you, of taking up our cross daily, a cross of self-denial, of saying no to self, saying yes to your plan, saying yes to service and sacrifice. I pray that you strengthen us in that Holy Spirit. Empower us like you've never empowered us before, and use us to spark a revival in this region of the nation and beyond. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here along with pastor Shane and pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card and the worship guide if you fill it out legibly. Just toss it on the white box in the back or leave it at the welcome center. And if you give it to them at the welcome center, they'll give you a gift in return to say thanks for coming out. Also, we have two quick announcements. January 16th, 1:00 PM, we have a baptism seminar. So if you have not been baptized and you want to know more about what baptism is, please do attend the class. Let us know that you're coming, so we know how much food to order for lunch. And then also January 23rd, the following Sunday, we have a membership class right after the second service at 1:00 PM.

And the membership class is where we talk about the identity, the vision, the history of Mosaic. And we talk about what it means to be a member of a church, a committed covenant member, which every faithful Christian should be a member of a church somewhere. But since you're here, you should be a member here. With that said would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word. Heavenly Father, we thank you for a new year, a fresh start. We thank you that you have sustained us to this point. We thank you that you are a God who promises that when we cast our burdens upon you, our anxieties, our stress, our worries, you do sustain us. And you've sustained us till this moment. We thank you for that. We pray a special prayer of blessing upon this church, upon every member and attender. That you keep us close to you in this season. That you'll give us the resolve, the power of the holy spirit, a zeal to deepen our devotion to you. To fight the good fight of faith to be ever more devoted to Jesus Christ.

It's a new year, but nothing's really changed. Lord, you're still on the throne. You're still sovereign. Your plans are still coming to fruition on a daily basis. And Satan is still with his whole legion of demons, trying to thwart your plans and to take as many people with him, as many souls with him. So you've called us to this place to fight the good fight. To help transfer as many people from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved son, the kingdom of light. We pray Holy Spirit, that you today from the Holy Scriptures, encourage our hearts. Help us know that Satan is real, that the adversary is real. He's come to steal, kill, destroy. He's the accuser, he's the liar. And he does everything he can to thwart us from living lives of usefulness to you. So I pray Lord, make us faithful servants of the living God, men and women of the living God. Sons and daughters of the living God. Serving you faithfully. And bless our time, the Holy Scriptures right now. And we pray all this in Christ holy name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through 2 Corinthians that we're calling prodigal church season two. We have a few more sermons, a few more chapters. Lord willing we'll finish it this month, or if not the beginning of February. And then we'll start a new sermon series that'll take us through Easter. Welcome to 2022, Happy New Year everyone. Happy New Year. Thank you. Thank you. 2022. It's like 2021 plus one. It's like 2020 plus two. And I pray that it's not like 2020 2.0. I pray that. But even if it is, I say this because last year I was like, "2020 is over. It's 2021, everything's different." No it wasn't. So what I'm saying is Jesus is still king. Don't worry about it. It's all going to be good. Just stay faithful to the Lord. We hear things like, "New year, new me." It's not true. I'm still the same guy. You're the same person. Same me, same you, same world. We've been hearing a lot of talk along the lines of what in the world is going on? I'll tell you, you can never make true sense of what is going on unless you know a couple things. First of all, that God is real. He exists. And so does Satan. Satan exists. God exists. Angels exists. Satan exists. Demons exists. God has human servants, His children. Adopted children. Well Satan has human servants as well. And he uses them. Often they are unwitting, unintentional servants. And regardless of religious belief, worldview opinion, there's a great battle raging in the spiritual realm that has real consequences in the physical world. Satan is a supernatural enemy and his job objective is to lie, to accuse, to steal, to kill, to destroy. He has a true power. Although it is limited. It's still dangerous.

He's called the ruler of this world in John 12:31. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 says this, "In their case, in the case of those who don't follow Jesus Christ. In their case, the god of this world," small G, "has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Meaning it doesn't matter how intelligent you are and it doesn't matter how high your IQ. It doesn't matter how well educated you are. There's a part of your mind that is blinded by Satan until the very moment that you cry out to God and say, "God, please give me eyes to see that God is real." And when you repent of our sins. How does Satan operate? With a certain spiritual hypnosis. A mass formation psychosis, where everybody just is following this narrative that there is no God. Which is the most absurd thing to believe.

Though opposite of God, Satan, is nowhere near equal. He's not omniscient, he's not omnipresent, he's not omnipotent. So praise be to God that if you're a Christian, you are covered by the power of God. Two things to note here before we get into the text is if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, before you became a follower of Christ you were a follower of Satan. This is Ephesians 2:1-3. And you, he's talking to Christians, "You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world. Following the prince of the power of the air, Satan. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh. Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

And even if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you can still be tempted by Satan. You can still be influenced by Satan. He can still take the sins in your life and he can exacerbate them as if he takes his fingers, demonic finger and presses them in on your sin. That's why 1 Peter 5:8 says, "Be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour." He's not talking about unbelievers. He already owns them. He's talking about believers that Satan seeks to devour Christians to make them absolutely useless to the things of God. And even pastors, even elders can be caught in the snare of Satan. This is a warning to myself. I'm preaching to myself, pastor Shane and pastor Andy. Satan seeks to take us out. That's why ministry is such difficult anguishing work because of demonic warfare.

1 Timothy 3:7, "Moreover he, the pastor, must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into the snare of the devil." So even if you're a Christian, Satan will tempt, lie, accuse and seek to cool your devotion to Jesus Christ. Because the battle for the soul starts with the mind. Creeps into the heart and then takes over the body. Lies for the mind, misguided affections in the heart. And pleasure, misguided, wrongful, sinful pleasure in the body.

Today we're in 2 Corinthians 11: 1-15, I'll read the text and then we'll jump right in. "I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me. For I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure Virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super apostles. Even if I'm unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge. Indeed in every way we have made this plain to you in all things. Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied by need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do. And what I do, I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who like to claim that in their boasted mission, they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Seven points, and we'll talk about how to avoid serving Satan. First, don't be deceived by his cunning. Second, don't be let us stray from devotion to Christ. Three, don't proclaim another Jesus. Fourth, don't receive a different spirit. Fifth, don't accept a different gospel. Six, don't malign faithful ministers of the gospel. And seven, don't disguise yourself in righteousness.

How to avoid serving Satan point one, don't be deceived by his cunning. And this, he begins in verse 1. He says, "I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me." And by foolishness, what he's doing is he finished chapter 10 talking about how the false teachers, the super apostles as he calls them, they were boasting in their credentials. They were boasting in how much they know of scripture. They were boasting in their oratory skills. And St. Paul knows that the only way to really counter this attack, where they were trying to undermine Paul's ministry with their own boasting is he's going to boast, but he's not going to boast in his credentials though he could have. He studied under Gamaliel, which is better than getting a Harvard PhD in theology. He could have boasted in his knowledge of script.

He boasts in other things. He boasts in how the Lord has worked in his heart. So he is actually boasting in the Lord. He's boasting about the work that God did in his heart. So he begins verse 2 with a boast, "For I feel a divine jealousy for you, for the church in Corinth. Since I be betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure Virgin to Christ." Paul is about to boast and he's like, "All right, I'm going to boast. But I'm not going to boast about my educat.... I'm going to boast about my love for the church. I'm going to boast about my zeal, my jealousy for the church." What an interesting word to use. Because jealousy is a sin, right? Thou shalt not envy. That's a commandment. Don't do it. Don't envy. Meaning there's a sinful jealousy, a sinful envy, which is selfish. I want things for me.

And there's a godly, he calls a divine jealousy. For you, I want the best thing for you. And I want the best thing for God. And he views himself, not just as a pastor, as an apostle. He views himself as the father of a bride. He views the church as the bride of Jesus Christ. And he views Christians that became Christians under his ministry as those that he has betrothed to Jesus. He's saying, "You're engaged to Jesus Christ." And at the second coming that's when we're going to have the wedding feast where a bride of Christ, the church, us, will be married to Christ, we'll become one. So he views himself as the father of the bride. And his job is to present the church as a pure virgin to Christ. And he toils for the church's purity. Paul is ready to do anything to protect the church's purity.

And he sees that they're flirting with spiritual and faith, they're flirting with the Satan, with the devil. Flirting with Satan. I understand his heart here because I have four daughters. And my oldest is 13. And I look at them, I'm like, "Oh, I got a teenager in my house. That's crazy." But I view this. I dream of the wedding day of all four finally get out of the house. I'm just kidding, I love them. But I dream about that day, where it's like, all right, I'm going to walk each one down the aisle, and then I'm going to turn around and officiate the wedding. That's my dream. So my preparation right now for them as I disciple, as I raise, as I parent my daughters, is to prepare them as a bride of Christ. Clearly I want them to love Christ, to be devoted to Christ. And one day maybe a bride.

But St. Paul says, "You, the bride of Christ, you're flirting with a bad boyfriend. You're engaged to Jesus. And you're flirting with some demonic teaching." Verse three. "I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." Satan deceived Eve with his cunning, Eve was Adams wife. Adam did not protect Eve from the cunning of Satan. The cunning, what is the cunning? It's plausible lies. On the surface level they make sense until you start digging deeper and they're never consistent. He says, "Cunning. Satan is cunning." You know Satan is the second smartest being in the universe. And he became Satan only because he thought he was first. He a created being, created by God thought he was smarter than God.

And unfortunately he's a lot of people today. They just think they're smarter than God. They think they're smarter than God's holy scriptures. Oh, smart people don't believe in Satan. Well, if that's what you believe, you've already been deceived. Satan's smarter than you are. If you don't believe he exists, you've been deceived. If you don't believe he's smarter than you, you've been deceived. I used to have to make the case for the existence of Satan. And then 2020 happened and 2021 happened. I'm like, "All right, everyone knows there's evil out there. There's a cabal of demonic forces out there trying to destroy absolutely everything and everyone." If you don't believe that, the burden of proof is on you. You got to make the case for what... How do you explain all the evil in the world? All the lies, all of the coordinated deception in the world. How can you anticipate Satan's attacks if you don't think he's even real?

Genesis 3:1, look at Satan's attack as he comes to Eve. "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree and the garden? Did God actually say.'" Satan is so cunning he convinced Eve that God, the creator of everything, God the creator of Adam and Eve is a liar. That's his greatest lie. Is he hoodwinked people to believe that God is the one who's lying. In the Corinthian church Satan convinced the Corinthian Christians through the false teachers, that Paul was the cunning one. That Paul who planted the church, shared the gospel, these people became Christians because of his ministry. That Paul is the liar. And this, by the way is the same technique that he uses in places like Boston.

Satan did the same with the church in Boston historically speaking. He came in here, a place where the revival started. He convinced people that the church is the one propagating the lies. He convinced people that God is the liar. That holy scripture is a book of myths. Satan to Eve. He convinced that God's liar, Satan to Boston he convinced us that God is a lie. Not us, our neighbors. Did God actually speak through Paul? That's what the false teachers asked. Did Jesus really appear? Why would we listen to him? Don't listen to Paul. Listen to us.

Watch our YouTube channel. Don't forget to like and hit the subscribe button and comment below and share it with your friends. Subscribe to our newsletter, buy our books. Don't listen to them. Don't read this book, read our book. That's how it works. How do you prevent yourself from being deceived, from having your thoughts led astray by Satan? You have to know God's word. You have to know God's word. And here just a challenge. If you're not a Christian and you don't believe in Satan, I challenge you, read this whole thing. 1,189 chapters, read every single word. Four chapters a day, 20 minutes a day. You can get through within a year. Read this thing and see if Satan doesn't exist. And I will tell... I guarantee you, you will feel Satan's clammy hands pulling you away from even reading this book.

You will get up, Genesis you might make your way through. Exodus is fun. You'll get to Numbers and you're like... Skip Numbers, okay, you can skip Numbers. Just keep going. Just like, okay, just keep going. I'm telling you, there will be demonic warfare on you getting you to read anything else. For Christians you got to read the word. With my daughter we did a devotional on new year's, and this is what we said, "2022 read, listen, do. 2022 read, listen, do." You got to read the word. You got to listen to God's voice. And then you got to do what it says. Prayerfully read, listen to the holy spirit, obey God's word as if he had just shown up and told you, spoken to you. Timewise, my challenge to you dear Christians. For every hour that you watch Netflix, every single hour, you got to counter it with an hour of Bible reading.

And even if you're like, "That's not realistic." Why not? Why? Hold on. Why is that unrealistic? You can sit there and veg out. Watching these shows most likely written by pagans, godless pagans, just bringing a worldview into your living room, into your mind. That has nothing to do with... You got to counter. You got to counter. And even on busy days, this is what I'll say. On busy days, for as much time as you spend grooming yourself, showering, taking a bath, preparing yourself to go out in public, spend as much time washing yourself with the water of the word as Ephesians 5 says. I call it taking a Bible bath. Every day, just take Bible, just get into the word. If you don't have time, a Psalm, a Proverb, a chapter from the New Testament and watch how the Lord will transform your life. Second, don't be led astray from devotion to Christ. And this is really the key verse in verse three. Once Satan gets your mind, then he begins to attack your devotion. Your love for God. This is verse three, "But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts," he gets your thoughts, "will be led astray from sincere and pure devotion to Christ."

Deception in the mind always leads the loss of devotion to Christ in the heart, which ultimately leads to a desertion of Christ. I've never seen someone pulled away from Christ, from the Bible with lies like a book they read or a podcast that sowed doubt into their heart. I've never seen someone do that where they begin to believe the Bible less, but love Jesus more. I've never seen that in my whole life. Lies from Satan always pull your heart away from Jesus. Satan does everything in his power to keep people from getting saved, everything in his power. But once God does save a person, Satan immediately changes his strategy to pull Christians away from a sincere and pure devotion to Jesus Christ. Literally here in the Greek, the word for sincere is the word for simplicity from the simplicity and purity which is in Christ.

Another translation just combines the two and says from the simplicity that is in Christ. See following Jesus Christ there's a simplicity to it. That God exists. He sent us His word through His son Jesus Christ. Confirm everything through His life, His death, His burial, His resurrection. It's all true. And if you take God's word, if you repent of your sin, you follow Jesus Christ. You take God's word. You apply it to your life on a daily basis. Everything in your life begins to flourish. When you love God above all else, your marriage gets better. Your relationship with friends get better, with family gets better, parenting gets better. Everything gets better when your heart is connected to the heart of God. It's very simple. Satan complicates everything because Satan can't create. Satan can't create, he counterfeits and he complicates.

The further you get from God, the more complicated life gets. Maybe not initially, but after a while, everything just gets a lot more complicated. The true Christian life is always a simple life of loving Jesus Christ and loving people and honoring God. Thomas à Kempis says, "By two wings, man is lifted from the things of earth, simplicity and purity." What is the Christian life? It's sincere and pure devotion to Jesus Christ, a daily abiding with Christ. It's a companionship with Christ. That Christ is always with you. His presence is always accessible to you. It's a powerful word, fellowship. You can have fellowship with the God of the universe anywhere you are. 1 Corinthians 1:9, "God is faithful by whom you were called." Called into what? "Into the fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord." So dear Christian be on guard against anything and everything that pulls you away from this sincere and pure devotion to Jesus Christ.

The word tells us whatever you do, whether food or drink, do everything to the glory of God. Well, here's the test for how do you know that you're doing everything to the glory of God. That whatever you do to the glory of God deepens your devotion for Christ. Your love for Jesus Christ. Jesus is alive. He isn't just for Sunday mornings. He's for every single moment. To live is Christ and to die is, again, nothing matters more than this fellowship with Christ. If you don't like the direction your life is sailing, well, you got to write the fellowship of your life. The fellowship with Christ. And watch everything change.

Three is don't proclaim another Jesus. In verse four, "For if anyone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed." Why are so many church buildings in Boston empty? They're empty. They're empty of life because they're empty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we go to some of these buildings and we're like, "Hey, would you sell your building to us?" And they find out who we are and that we actually believe in the Bible, just like the people who started those churches believe in the Bible. And then they're like, "Nah, we'd rather sell to a real estate developer."

Christians got here in Boston, in New England, in the United States, we got here, churches got here because Christians readily put up with heresy. Usually what a lot of people don't understand is heresy isn't just outright denial of scripture. That's not how heresy begins. Heresy takes a doctrine of Christianity and it just mixes it with human philosophy. And it always has to do with the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was a tremendous moral teacher. Is that true? Yes. Jesus was only a moral teacher. That's not true. Jesus Christ came back from the dead spiritually speaking. Is that true? Yeah. But he also came back from the dead physically speaking. He literally came back from the dead. Denying that truth is to deny Christ. No heretical teaching ever presents a Jesus Christ that stands up, a historical Jesus of history and scripture. The Jesus who transformed the world like no one else.

In these heretical churches and these churches that reject Jesus, they never preach to Jesus that calls people to a repentance of sin. It's always, Jesus loves you. And He has a plan for you and just keep coming and everything's going to be fine. No, Jesus began his ministry literally with two words, He says, "Repent and believe, the kingdom of God is here. Repent and believe, repent." That's the first word that He ever utters as he begins his ministry. So when you listen to teachers, be they spiritual teachers, or actually any person in authority over you, be a professor, be it a government official, whoever it is, you always got to ask the following. Does this person love Jesus?

Does this person love the true Jesus Christ of Holy Scripture and of history? If so, there's fruit bearing with repentance that they are children of God. If they do not love Jesus Christ, these people are children of Satan. This is how I look at politicians. This is how I look at just anyone in authority. If you don't love Jesus Christ, you're a child of Satan. There's only two categories. Children of God, adopted into his family through repentance and faith. Or you're a child of Satan. It's a cold hard fact if you're a child of Satan. And the reason why we tell you this, and the reason why Jesus tells you this, is so that you don't stay a child of Satan. Because being a child of God is so much better here now and in the future.

This isn't my teaching this is teaching of Christ. In John 8:42-45, Jesus said to them, to the Pharisees who thought... They claim that God is their father. "If Gog were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I'm here. I came not of my own accord, but He sent me, why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil. And your will is to do your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me." The true Jesus Christ preaches things like this. To awaken people and call people to repentance so that they are transformed from being children of Satan to children of God. By God's grace.

Four is don't receive a different spirit. He continues here. For someone comes and proclaims another Jesus, then the one will be proclaimed. Or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received. The spirit here he's talking about is usually false teachers. They do come with a spiritual power. The fact that there is a spiritual power is not defining proof that this person is from God. Because Satan has demons as well and Satan can do all kinds of work, spiritual work, because Satan is in the spiritual realm as well. So 1 John tells us, "Hey, be careful. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world by this, the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, the one who was against Christ. Which you heard was coming now is in the world already." The spirit of the antichrist is in the world already. "Little children you are from God and have overcome them for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God and whoever knows God listens to us. Whether whoever is not from God does not listen to us by this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." Even if there is spiritual work in a church and in a denomination, what have you. You need to ask, "What do they believe about Jesus? Or what do they teach about Jesus Christ? Does it line up with Holy Scripture?

And then also you got to look at the fruit of the ministry. Only the Holy Spirit can bear fruit of the spirit and this is Galatians 5. You can tell that someone's filled with the Holy Spirit if they have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Five is don't accept a different gospel. So he says, "Don't proclaim another Jesus, receive a different spirit." And he continues, "Or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough." The gospel of Jesus Christ is that God created everything we rebelled against him. God didn't leave us in our sins, he sends Jesus Christ who lives the perfect life that we were supposed to live. Fulfills all of God's commandments on our behalf.

And then He is crucified. And on the cross, He doesn't just bear the physical anguish of crucifixion. He also bears the wrath of God and the onslaught of Satan. And He does all of that to bear the curse, pay the penalty for our sins. And then He dies and He's buried. On the third day He rises triumphantly in victory over Satan's sin and death. And the very second He does all that. So that at the very second that any human being asks for forgiveness, asks for pardon, asks for, "God, please forgive me of my sin." That's what we're repentance, that God please forgive me of ever everything I've done. At that very moment you're saved by grace through faith. And all of your sins are forgiven in past present and future. Your eternity is secure. You're sealed with the Holy Spirit and power to do his work.

What can you do to be saved? There's nothing you can do. There's no work. There's no gift that you can give. There's nothing you can do or say, all you can do is cry out to God. And this is where false teachers come in. They view this as an opportunity and they say, "No. You have to do something to get saved." And they begin to add works and manmade philosophy usually works this way. They add works to the gospel and they say, "Oh, hey, you're a Christian. Then why aren't you voting like us? Why aren't you marching with us? Why aren't you obeying like we are? Why aren't you a good person as defined by us?" My response is always, "Are you a Christian?" They said, "No, but I know what a good Christian should be." "Well, how do you know?" And usually they grow up and go into Catholic church or church once in a while.

Most people just think this is how you're made right with God. You just have to be a good person. And a lot of churches teach that. And then after a while, people are like, "Well, I am a good person." So they stop going to church. And that's why those churches that stop preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ lose the power of God because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for anyone who believes. Adding any work to the truth that salvation is free. It's by free grace through faith alone is demonic. Also one of the things that's going just a lot of people talking about this online and people are talking about the deconstruction of Christianity. I'm deconstructing my faith. I'm deconstructing the faith that was taught unto me and the Christianity that was taught. And then I'm going to reconstruct it.

What usually happens as I've been watching this little thing going on is they stop at the deconstruction. Okay, deconstruct my faith and then there's no devotion of Christ. And then you leave the faith. Usually what I say about for the most part, scripture says, "They went out from us because they were not of us." What scripture teaches is you can't do that if you're a real Christian. Once you become a child of God, God is a good father and he doesn't lose a child. Once you become a child of God, you can't deconstruct your being a child of God. I have four daughters. If one of my daughters, God forbid, if they ever come to me, I remember Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone. He divorced his parents after he became millionaire. He divorced his parents, terrible story.

If one of my daughter ever came to and said, "Okay, I'm divorcing myself from this family." God forbid. "I'm getting rid of the last name." I would say, "You can get rid of the last name, but you can't deconstruct your face. Because you look just like me." Every single one of them. You have a new nature as a Christian. You're a new creation. You can't deconstruct that nature. And that whole idea of deconstructing Christian it's demonic. And it's never, okay, I'm going to deconstruct the wrong parts of my faith by looking at scripture. That's not called deconstruct that's called reformation. We believe in that, not deconstruction. Galatians 1:6-9 Paul says, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel."

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. It's a powerful word. That's in the precatory prayer. Let this person be cursed. What are you saying is if someone comes to you and preaches a false gospel, even if it's an angel, you say to that angel, "God damn you. May you be accursed." As we have said before so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you receive, let him be accursed. And then point six is don't malign faithful ministers of the gospel. And here St. Paul, he speaks directly to these people who've been undermining his ministry.

Verse five, "Indeed I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super apostles." So these false teachers had to come in. St. Paul had already left the church in Corinth. And they said, "Okay, Paul left. He's an apostle. Well now where are the apostles? And we're actually better than Paul because we're better speakers than Paul with better credentials than Paul and our speaking fees are higher than Paul's. Which means that we're a lot better than he is." And St. Paul heard all of this and using sarcasm, his words drip with sarcasm here. He doesn't just call them apostle, he calls them super apostles. Because they irrigated themselves over him. Verse six, "Even if I'm unskilled in speaking, I'm not so in knowledge. Indeed in every way we have made this plain to you and all things."

They accused him of not having oratory skills according to Greco-Roman rhetoric. St. Paul, obviously he was trained in all of this, but he intentionally did not use the artificial synthetic stylized standards of Greco-Roman rhetoric because he didn't come to give a speech. He came to preach about the knowledge of God. That's what he said. "I might be unskilled in the speaking, not in knowledge because I know God and I know his word." And that's why he made this plain. That's what preaching is supposed to be. Preaching is supposed to be revelation, sharing of the knowledge of God. This is who God is. This is what God says. Spoken plainly, simply so people can understand. But on fire because you're devoted to Christ. Here at Mosaic, we as pastors and everyone that preaches, we take this seriously. We work hard to present the sermon, the word as skillfully as possible. But the power's not in the skilled dear friend, the power is not a skill. The power is in the Holy Spirit stirring your heart and stirring your devotion to the Lord.

I say this to myself. When I listen to a sermon, my job isn't to judge the skill level, my job is to receive the blessing that is the knowledge of God. And be on guard. Make sure there's no heresy, the content. My job is to focus on the content, not the skill. The skill... You work hard, but once in a while you wake up and you have four daughters and one of them gets sick or something. That stuff. Focus on the content. That's what St. Paul he here says. And these people came in and they begin to accuse St. Paul because they're servants of Satan. Sometimes Satan accuses with lies. Sometimes with the truth but more often with lies. These super apostles became proxy accusers.

And this is usually how it works. They heard something that he said, a point of disagreement, a point of confusion. They interpret as suspiciously as possible. No benefit of the doubt. Motives are questioned and speculations are issued. And these super apostles couldn't argue with Paul on the basis of scripture. So they begin to make personal attacks, ad hominem attacks on him. Verse seven, "Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge." St. Paul came and he preached the gospel for free. Why? Because he wanted to lower every single barrier for absolutely everyone to know the gospel. I want everyone to hear the gospel. I want everyone to know the gospel. This is why we don't charge admission at Mosaic. Some churches honestly do. They sell tickets.

We don't do any of that. If someone wants to give to the Lord and the Lord's work tremendous, but it's free. It's free because someone else paid for it. Paul did the same thing. He preached free of charge. And here's what the super apostles, the fake teachers, false teacher, they came in and they actually accused him that because he was speaking for free, that his message was subpar to their message. Because in the Greco-Roman world, the greatest speakers had the heftiest honorariums, the heftiest fees. Just like today, if you're a person of status and you're invited to speak at a conference or something like that, or at a school, at a college, at a company, there's an honorarium, there's a fee. And I remember I found out about this for the first time I was in college and they invited Bill Clinton to come speak.

And I'll never forget his speech. His speech was... His whole was no one's going to monopoly on the truth, which sounded nice at the time. And then upon reflection, I realized that he himself was trying to monopolize the truth. And in his attempt to monopolize the truth, he charged the school $200,000 to speak for 45 minutes. Those are speaking fees. And this is what the false teachers did. And they accused St. Paul of presenting a gospel that's really not worth paying for because he wasn't charging money. Obviously they were. And one of the lessons here is sometimes there's some people you just can't win with. If St. Paul came in and he charged for the speaking of the gospel, he'd be accused of profiteering. Oh, he's got the wrong motives. And he doesn't charge. And now they accuse him of being a hack.

If your whole goal in life is to please everybody, you'll never succeed and you always be a little saddened because unfortunately there's a category of people that are just haters. Haters going to hate. And it is what it is. And St. Paul knew that and he responds to them. Verse eight, "I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you." He didn't rob them, hyperbolic language meaning they gave money to the ministry of the church, of the gospel where they were. And then St. Paul came in and he said, "Hey, in Corinth there's a need, would you give there?" And they did give. "And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I will refrain from burdening you in any way as the truth of Christ is in me. This boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia and why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do."

I'll pause here for just a second. What he's saying here is wherever I go, I'm going to boast about the way God worked in Corinth through Paul. But then also about His love for the church. He's said, "I love the Corinth so much. I want so many people come to faith. I didn't take any money. I'm boasting in my love for the bride of Christ. I'm going to tell everyone. I know everyone that would listen so that they would be inspired to sacrifice in a similar way to love the church of Jesus Christ in a similar way." Because He says, "I love you. God knows I do." In the verse 12, "What am I doing, I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boast admission they work on the same terms as we do."

He's saying, "These super apostles who are questioning my motives, I'm preaching the gospel because I love God and I love people. They're preaching the gospel for money. Check their motives, follow the money and then you realize who's faithful to Lord and who's not." The super apostles are motivated to preach for self-gain. Paul was preaching for the gain of the Corinthians. Point seven is don't disguise yourself in righteousness. This is 2 Corinthians 11:13-15. This is where Paul takes his gloves off. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder for even Satan disguised himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. These self-made super apostles with no calling or authority from God." Paul says, "They weren't sent by God. They were sent by Satan. Satan disguises himself as an angel.

He disguises himself as an angel. An angel of light. And he works through human servants who also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. So two lessons here. Number one, be careful when someone comes to you and they look outwardly righteous. Don't be fooled by an outward righteousness unless it's confirmed from their life. That's number one. Number two, you, me, don't pretend to be more righteous than you really are. May this be the year where you and I, we're truly honest before God. Real before God. God, this is who I am. This is where I lack righteousness. True with your brothers and sisters. In your community groups and brothers and sisters you're walking with. "Pray for me, I am working on being more righteous in this area of my life." Don't masquerade. That's the easy way. But when you masquerade in righteousness and you do that over and over and over for a long time, after a while, you might become a servant of Satan.

Satan is scary. Satan comes not often as a roaring lion, not physically. He doesn't reveal himself. Because if he came as he truly is, we'd be grossed out. He's too ugly, grotesque, repulsive, nauseating. He never says, "Good morning, everyone. I'm Satan, and I'm here to ruin your life. I'm going to lie. Everything I'm going to say to you is a lie. I just want to kill you. And I want to steal your joy. I want to steal your satisfaction. I want to steal your health. And ultimately I want to take you to hell. There's a lake of fire and sulfur for all of eternity I want you to burn with me. I'm going anyway so I want more people to keep me company." He doesn't do that. He comes and he says, "Good morning. I'm your friend. I want the best for you. I want you to be so happy.

God doesn't want you to be as happy as I want you to be. God is the killjoy, I'm not. Don't follow his rules, they're burdensome. Forget the rules, follow me. I've got something so alluring, so exciting, so fulfilling. You can't afford to miss it." And then he pulls you into his kingdom and your life falls apart. And you end up an eternity apart from God. Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ came and He gave us a way to resist Satan by the power of the gospel through the holy spirit. James 4:7, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil." Meaning Satan is resistible. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded." Thanks to be Jesus Christ the great conqueror of Satan.

Colossians 2:13-15, "When you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him having forgiven us all our trespass by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with His legal demands. This He set side nailing to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Him. We await the second coming of Jesus Christ when He will have final and absolute victory over Satan and will throw them to the lake of fire and sulfur and there he'll be tormented day after day forever and ever. And in the meantime, we are to fight the good fight of faith for pure devotion to Jesus Christ." I challenge you to read Ephesians 6:10-18, meditate on that. Today and this week, Ephesians 6:10-18 memorize it, memorize it. Very easy. It's not even that big of a text. Ephesians 6:10-18 will equip you like nothing else to stand firm in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

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Audio Transcript:

If you haven't been with us the past three weeks, we're in our last week of advent. This is a season, it's a tradition, in the church where we celebrate Christ coming, advent means coming, and we celebrate that Christ came in the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, the first time as a baby born in Bethlehem. Simultaneously, we look ahead to Christ's second coming, where he will come not as a baby, but as a righteous judge and ruler. And so we've covered the themes of hope, love, and joy in recent weeks, and today we're going to close out this series just tapping into the theme of peace. We do not have Mini Mo today so I was put under contract to deliver a very short sermon today. There actually aren't that many children here in person and those online we're probably at 30% capacity or typical attendance right now. But my son is there with my wife so she's got me on the clock. But we're just going to have a nice sweet gospel sermon today.

We've gone through the season very topically. I don't think we've actually read the Christmas story in its entirety this year. I want to read a lot to begin from Matthew 1 verses 18 through the end of chapter 2. I want to just read through this story that is just at the center of history and just a crucial moment in the narrative of redemptive history for God's people. Matthew 1 verses 18 through 2:23. I'll cover this and then I'll go back and spend a lot of time in the genealogy of chapter 1 later on.

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit and her husband, Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her shame resolved to divorce her quietly."

"But as he considered these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not fear to Mary as your wife for that, which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.'"

"All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. 'Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.'"

"When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to his son and he called his name Jesus."

"Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in days of Herod the king, behold wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying, 'Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.'"

"When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and assembling all the chief priests, and scribes of the people he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, 'In Bethlehem of Judea for so it is written by the prophet, 'And you, Oh, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.'"

"Then inherited summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to Bethlehem saying, 'Go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.'"

After listening to the king, they went on their way and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them, until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed by their own country by another way."

"Now, when they departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.' And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt they called my son.'"

"Then Herod, when he saw that he'd been tricked by the wise men, became furious and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who are two years old or under, according to the time that had been ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled with spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be comforted because they are no more.'"

"But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and Egypt saying, 'Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead,' and he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee and he went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene." This is the word of our Lord.

I want to begin with a simple point as we reflect on what I just read and is that we are all wicked sinners. I read this section because of its graphic nature. Of the gospels, of the birth narratives, we have Matthew, Luke and John tap into the birth narrative of Christ and this is the most jarring. There's shock, heartache, broken dreams, deception, pursuit, anxiety, pains, corruption, murder. Matthew shows us more than any of the other gospel writers that Jesus entered a world that was broken, full of conflict, full of anxiety, full of despair. Nothing that the world had to offer could solve, could improve, man's moral condition. If you study the historical Herod, this man that we're talking about, he was one of the best administrators, best businessmen of the ancient world, though he was still a pawn of the Roman world, he was as good as it gets. He had no answers and he contributed much to the moral depravity of the day.

Matthew shows us everything that the world says Christmas is not. You hear a lot, "Christmas is a feeling. It's simply a time for family and home. It's sitting under Christmas tree opening presents, a time for peace and good will," and none of those are on display right here. Nothing but the depravity of man on full display. Christ, didn't enter into a picturesque Brookline mansion living room next to a spiral staircase with a fireplace and beautiful mantle. He was born in a stable wrapped in swaddling cloth. As Pastor Jan said the other night, "Swaddled in shame in this union, the scandalous situation, between the union of Joseph and Mary."

As soon as Mary gives birth, the family has to flee a mad king. Even in the church, there's a temptation to look at this season as a kind of faux form of peace, to kind of calm, a distraction from the darkness that we're facing within ourselves, facing with the men, the man around us, in the church, out of the church, we can carry these traditions, we can think of ways to just uniquely present these themes of advent in a new fashion. We can talk about moral lessons. Let's be generous like the wise men, let's be, let's submit to God like Joseph and Mary, but that's not what the Christmas story's about.

I'm just here to say people, praise God, that the Christmas story is not about this stuff. Praise God that after living in 2020 and 2021, we can see our desperate need for the Christmas story to be true. For more than ever we see a that the world we live in is not supreme to the ancient world presented in the text. All the answers that we have today offering problems don't seem to be providing peace. Any reasons that we might have had a couple of years ago to claim that our age is superior just has been cast away. Government, medicine, education, technology, wealth, food distribution, plumbing, running water, have not improved the moral condition of man. We see the world, we see people trying to build a righteousness on their own in vain. We see the ugliness of sin dominating our society, and it's easy to believe Romans 6:23 for the first time, really in decades, multiple generations going beyond gen Xers that all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. We are all wicked sinners.

The most important thing as we process this is that this season has helped us to understand that that sin is not just out there, just in the world, outside of the church, in the people next to you here. Maybe the people next to you on the couches, that sin is in each and every one of us.

I know that a lot of us today, we're scared of the circumstances that we're facing, by God's Providence, God's appointment. We're scared of just the craziness that we see around us, but really the scariest thing that lot of us are dealing with is how we're reacting ourselves. How many of you have learned about a new side of yourself in this season? When your opposition says something, you slander them, you call them moron, you cancel them. You essentially treat them as if they're inhuman, an act that scripture says, Christ tells us, is the same as committing murder in the heart. How many of you have just struggled with envy, seeing other people, the comforts they have to get through this season while you're trapped in some sort of hard situation, a hard job, a small apartment? How many of you have struggled with greed? Just buying more and more and more to satisfy yourselves? How many of you have struggled with overeating to distract yourself from the pain, the challenge, the anxiety?

It's shocking. We feel guilt, we feel shame. A lot of pastors, I searched the country, what are they saying? They're saying, "We've had it hard. We've had it hard." Yes, we have, but scripture tells us we need to be angry and do not sin. If anything can weigh more heavily on us than challenging circumstances, it's the weight of guilt and shame of our sin staying on our shoulders.

I just lead with this point that as 2021 comes to an end as part of this 20 month period, 22 month period, going back to March of 2020, we are wicked. We can't deny it. This story, praise God, we can look into this story and say, "These are the same circumstances that Jesus Christ came into." This same story was not just an abstract story. It's not a fable, a parable that we place our hopes into. It's a concrete story that we can place our hope in. This time of year, as we feel the gravity of the year we rest in the fact that Jesus did come.

What does that mean for us? My second point is simple. God offers peace to wicked sinners. As Matthew in chapter 1, he provides this genealogy, and I'm not going to go through all of the names for you, but he continues pointing out the wickedness of man and it's in there that we find our hope, we find our option for peace as we process just the guilt and shame that looms over us as individuals, looms over us collectively as a church, looms over us as a nation.

Really want to take some time, let me read verses 1 and 17, just to cover, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," that's how it begins. And then it ends, "And so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, from David to the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations."

These verses, they specifically show us that Jesus comes from the line of Abraham. Specifically, Abraham was told that he'd be a blessing to many people, the nations, and in Genesis 12, the first book of the Bible, 12 chapters in, and we have this text telling us that Jesus Christ is his heir. He is a descendant. He is the recipient of the promises. Furthermore, King David was told a thousand years before Christ's birth, that it would have an heir to the throne of Israel forever and so this genealogy shows us that Christ is the king in that line to David. This gives us evidence to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. This is the good news.

But as you dig into the genealogy, when you look at who's included in the genealogy start saying, "Why are these people in here? Why would these people be mentioned in the line of the king? These people are wicked. These people are sinners. They're the wrong race per the Old Testament's standards." It's really hard to just process. In the Old Testament times when Matthew wrote this, a genealogy would be especially a Hebrew's pride. If you were a kid back then at the playground, you would make sure that all of your buddies, all of your friends, knew the good names in your line.

It's hard for us to relate to this. Most of us can't go back one to three generations, but the way they did it was just the same. Let's keep the good stuff, let's hide the bad stuff, that crazy uncle, that crazy grandfather who lost all the family money. It's a lot like on LinkedIn we have the opportunity to present ourselves, show our connections, and what do we do? We present ourselves perfectly. But we see here just the line of Jesus Christ. You'd think if someone was conjuring this up, they would make it a little bit more publicly correct but we don't see that. Why would they do that? Because it's true. Let's notice just these people who by societal standards, moral standards of that time, should not have been in the genealogy.

First notice Matthew 5, it includes five women. You have Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Mary, and Bathsheba, directly. In a patriarchal society, you don't include women in the genealogy period to establish your ethos, your credibility to garner praise for someone. More shock in this list includes moral outsiders. There's verse 3, "And Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah, by Tamar and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram."

This Tamar. Tamar pretended to be a prostitute. She slept with her father-in-law, she gets pregnant. This is an incestuous relationship in the line of Jesus Christ. Why is it in the text? It happened. Rahab was another moral outsider. Before she got saved she was a prostitute in Jericho. The genealogy goes even further to say in verse six for King David, oh, and furthermore Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, they were Gentiles. Ruth from Moab, the other two from Canaan. Even further you think it starts to get looking better when king David's brought it up, but specifically it mentions with David, it mentions Uriah.

It says, "And David was a father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah." This is a king, but Matthew doesn't just leave it at that, at king David, he mentioned Uriah. Who's Uriah? The story goes that your Uriah was one of David's top men, top soldiers, most faithful guys, but David fell in love with Uriah's wife. David tries to get rid of Uriah. He tries to bring him home, to spend in time with her to cover up the pregnancy. Ultimately, Uriah, David sends him off to die at the battlefront. This is the king, the Messiah, the man after God's own heart, and Matthew mentions this sin.

Furthermore, a lot of these kings listened in verse 7 through 11 did some horrible things for Judah's religious worship of God. They were just bad people led the country, astray, the nation astray in their worship. Ahaz offered his child as a sacrifice to a foreign God.

As we look at this genealogy, we feel more deeply depravity of man, not just in our day, not just in Matthew's day, but throughout the history of the world. Why is it here? Because it's true. But it's here more to make the point that God is saying upon Christ's coming, "I'm taking ownership over my people." At advent, Jesus comes and he takes ownership over his people in all of their glory and all of their sin. When he is born, he accepts these sinners, these sinners outside of his bloodline. Though he never sinned himself, he takes the punishment for the guilt of their sin and covers their shame. He's making it clear, "Yes, I'm in the line of Abraham, I am in the line of David, but your pedigree, your spiritual, religious, racial, pedigree, Jew or Gentile. Does not matter. I welcome you into my family out of sheer grace." Flipping that it's saying, "No matter how good or religious you've been in your life, it's not enough to commend yourself to my line." Rahab the prostitute is in the line, but so is king David and the greatest and the least in Jesus line are not beyond the need for his grace, his unmerited favor to cover their sin.

John 1:12 to 13 says, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." This is the great news for all of us. This is the good news of the gospel, the good news in response to my first point, that we're all wicked sinners that God graciously offers peace to us in our sin. That's the Christmas story.

Jesus does come into the world, judging us right away. He's sent to communicate to people from God, "I want relationship with you. I want peace with you." The infinite breaks into the finite and he wants relationship. It's all by belief, believing in this message that Jesus Christ lived the life I could not live, died the death that I deserved, resurrected on the third day, ascended into heaven, where he is ruling all things in this life at the right hand of the father, until his appointed time to return. It's when we believe that we can have salvation from our sin. The guilt, the shame does not have to weigh on our shoulders. We can have peace with God, but furthermore, we can have peace with ourselves. When we see the ugliness that comes out in tension and conflict and isolation, when the pleasures of life are taken away, when we turn to him, we can always receive grace.

My question today, before you turn into this next year, those of you who are Christian, you've been walking in the Lord for a while, maybe this season did shock you, maybe you saw darkness, you saw the depravity in you that you had never seen before. You can always just bring it back to the Lord. We've all seen people flail around with guilt, with shame, of sin on their shoulders, and what does that lead to? It leads to them projecting that guilt, that shame onto other people, especially in the church. But no, take that to the Lord, receive His grace, see that He owns you, he loves you, he doesn't reject you.

Those of you who just don't know Christ, if you've never received him as the Christ, the Messiah, the king of your heart, and you have this weight and shame on your shoulders, I beg you receive his offer of peace. This is the good news that we preach all year. This is the good news that we need take into the new year. This is the good news that we need to preach into our hearts every day. It's in this that we find peace and it's from this position of peace. In scriptures, peace means eirene, comes from the verb eiro, to fill. The opposite is anxiety. The verb, it's to be broken up. It's in God that we can have fullness and from the position of fullness, we can go to Him, have peace in a vertical sense and look upon the situations around us, in our lives on a horizontal level. Look at the relationships, look at the greater societal problems, and approach them from a position of fullness. I encourage you today just to spend time in the coming week, be filled in the Lord, find joy in Him. See how loving He is that he sent Jesus Christ to come for us into this dark, wicked world, into the depravity, with Herod coming to chase him at his birth, into the depravity that continues into our day, and just rejoice. Enjoy Him, love Him, and find your peace.

Let's pray.

Lord, we just come to you, perhaps after an age where we've been reliant upon just the comforts, the pillars, the horses and chariots of this world. Lord, we repent of that. We pray please forgive us for not thinking that ultimate peace, ultimate forgiveness, joy, love is found in you, and hope, our hope is rooted in the promise of your return.

Heavenly father, we just pray, give us hearts of longing that more would be saved. Lord, give us daily reminders in this next year of just the abundance of your grace, the depths and length and height and breath of your love to us in Jesus Christ. Lord, when we look upon those in sin, let us not look upon in judgment, but look upon them in compassion in the same way that you looked upon us in Jesus Christ. Heavenly father, we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

We are in our advent series. This is our third week. This is the time of the year, a tradition of the church where we spend time pausing from typical activity. We like to rush through books here. We go through them very quickly from a broad lens, and pastor Jan takes us through like 25 verses each week and 45 minutes in a masterful way. This is a season of pausing, and we pause to reflect on the old, the essentials, the basics of our faith, that they might become new and we might be able to see the light of Christ in them afresh.

In this season, it's hard for me to adapt to that, just in those songs, you might have known there's a solemnity, there's a longing, that's a part of the services in this season and that's in intentional. We like to make it feel like a party, like the heavenly sanctuary here regularly. It's still a party, just a different kind of party. So the whole service has a bit of a different feel today, and one of the things about advent was that it was a stripping, a pruning period for the people of Israel, where the prophets did not speak between the Old Testament and around the time of Christ coming for 400 years.

And God stripped them of the prophets, the priests, the Kings, the temple was essentially in shambles, had seen its glory days and it was a time for the true believers to really just be forced to decide, "Am I following this God in darkness?" We just position ourselves here as people waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ, we've seen him come, we've seen his glory. He was the exact imprint of the nature of God when he came and now we're awaiting that day that he comes back. It's a whole different feel. Today I'm going to take up the topic of joy and it's very much a conversation of where we should not be looking for joy, but in the process we can then find where we can get it, find the source.

And so, I'm going to read from Ecclesiastes six versus one through 12, that's the whole chapter, and we will get started. This is the word of God. "There is an evil that I have seen under the sun and it lies heavy on mankind, a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions and honor so that he lacks nothing of all that he does desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity. It is a grievous evil. If a man fathers a 100 children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything. It finds rest rather than he, even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good. Do not all go to the one place. All the toil of man as for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool, and what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite, this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity and what is the advantage to man for who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow for who can tell man, what will be after him under the sun?" This is the word of our Lord. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father we come to you today just with a mixture of emotions. Lord, we live in this world yet we are not among this world, those of us here in Christ, Lord, we are waiting, our soul longs, all of creation longs for your return. But Lord, you call us to endure, you call us not just to walk in this life but to run. Lord, we pray through your word, just bring us to a greater position of joy and you let us be filled, let us be full so that we might take on the challenges, the callings, the trials, the triumphs, and march forward in them for your glory, that your name might be magnified.

Heavenly Father we ask you to strip away all those things, those idols, those distractions that are just keeping us from just loving you from enjoying you, from seeing you and all of your glory, and just appreciating just Christ coming and how he gives us access to you. Heavenly Father, just let your name be magnified. Let your spirit be among us, in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Now, I grew up playing a game called King of the Hill. It's a savage, savage game. So you basically, wherever you are, if you have a hill and a few children you play and basically the whole time you're literally just trying to run to the top.

Simultaneously, all the other children are trying to run to the top, they pool, they kick, they'll hit. They'll try to trick you to get to the top. And the objective of the game is to be that person at the top, be the king. The hard part is that once you're up there, you're battling, you're fighting to keep your place. And when you make it to the top, it just continues. The game doesn't really end until everybody quits or until someone's mom calls you in or until someone just establishes dominance at the top of the hill.

And the thing about this game is that when you live in a small community, once you establish dominance within a little circle, you conquer that hill. There's always another hill with a different group of kids, a different just larger hill, different challenge to take on. So, in kindergarten, once I establish my reign over Janine and Brian and Jeffrey and my babysitter Sharky's house, is a nice, like maybe six foot hill. The next challenge was the kids at my brother's soccer games, the other little siblings, it was just a constant like, "Where can I climb?" The ultimate place to play King of the Hill was at my local high schools, Friday night football games.

Under the lights, to the side of the bleachers while the game was going on, you'd have a few dozen, fourth and fifth graders just pummeling each other, just battling out, trying to pull each other's limbs off just to get that glory at the top of that hill, that feeling of, I've made it, I've done it. And could there be any better glory than that for a fourth or fifth grade boy? It was probably more entertaining than the football game to a lot of people considering that the team stunk, but we can chuckle, we can sear at the thought of this game. Those of you who know me might be like, "This explains a lot, Pastor Andy, that slow voice, that permanently concussed persona of yours, that basic personality and level of culture."

But more seriously in our culture, the reality is that at all ages, we're playing a game of King of the Hill in order to try to find our joy, that we're constantly looking at those above us with envy, and we look at what they have. We look at what they do, where they live, the car they drive, their spouse, their children, their lifestyle, their vacations, and we make idols out of it. And we can't be joyful with where we are. So we work, we strive harder to make it there. We're always working up, simultaneously we're always keeping an eye out for those below us. We get caught up in the game and we begin to think that we're positionally above them because of our strength, our wit, our cleverness, our hard-earned stamina, instead of God's grace.

We do all that we can to keep those people at bay, if anything, we'll connect with them. We'll forge an alliance to use them to get past who's in front of us only to break it immediately after. Sometimes we actually do make it to the top. You realize it's not that fun at the top. It's really hard to maintain that position with all of the attacks coming our way. And you know what? It might just be better if we vacate that spot at the top and just be paralyzed down at the bottom in a position worse often than we were before we started playing.

Other times at the top, we get there and we establish dominance and we're not fulfilled. So we go looking for another hill where there's greater competition, we can forge a greater sense of purpose, a hill that offers more satisfaction on the surface. So many of us try to keep pushing up without realizing that pushing upward, pushing upward is only setting ourselves up for a greater crash, a greater sense of discontentment and despair when we finally realize that it's all in vain.

The climb is always upward, it's always steeper once we engage in this game, we fail to see CEO after CEO, athlete after athlete, artists after artists, celebrity after celebrity, politicians, after they've made it to the peak, made it to the pinnacle of their field, they have a breakdown, they self destruct, they get divorced. They just plan a mission to space to really fill the emptiness in their hearts.

And furthermore, we're deaf and blind to those who have gotten there within their spheres. We're blind and deaf to the scriptures that tell us that the top does not actually satisfy. We don't believe that the money, the adrenaline and the pleasure of the perks they claim the honor don't actually satisfy. So, naively, ignorantly, stubbornly, cynically, we think that when we get to the top we'll handle it differently. We'll know we won't be disappointed. We won't just succumb to pride, we won't succumb to despair, we won't look for other hills to decline, we'll know when to stop, but that's pride, that's thinking we're different, we're special.

Altogether we play this endless game, practice is thinking we end up being exhausted, often end up being broke because there's typically a pay to play structure, and we lack for true joy, just when all of our efforts don't pan out, we're broken, when they do pan out and it doesn't fill us, we're still broken. So what are we to do in this game of King of the Hill? With our trace amounts of energy, where do we go to find true lasting joy? If there was ever a man who could tell us, who could speak into the joylessness, the vanity of playing King of the Hill, pursuing joy satisfaction in things that the world offers it's king Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes.

Who was he? Scripture tells us he was literally king of the mountain. Scripture doesn't say that phrase, but he was king of the mountain. He was David's chosen heir, king of Israel, God's chosen people at the strongest and richest point in their history. He literally was the king of the Temple Mount. It was his hereditary right to build the temple of God on a mountain. He had literally built the temple. He literally built the palace and had mountains and mountains of silver and gold. If he were alive today, he'd be everything that Kanye West proclaims about himself, like ultra famous, huge following, millions and millions of followers, but he'd also follow his 700 wives, 300 girlfriends and all their fashion tips and relational drama online.

Solomon would proclaim Jesus as King, but then do a lot of stuff that really makes you wonder, does he think he's king or Jesus is King, he'd have a lot of non-believers, a lot of believers following him because of his God-given gift of wisdom. His gift of verse, his cultural analysis. Scriptures tells us that foreign kings and dignitaries just paid tribute, literally just sent money to him to honor him. And they would travel hundreds of miles to just hear him speak. So we have in our scripture today from Solomon, perhaps the world's richest, wisest, most powerful and influential king in history, writing at the end of his life about the lessons that he learned.

And what does he say? Solomon in Ecclesiastes says, "Playing the world's game of King of the Hill in the pursuit of joy is a grievous evil of vanity." Verses one and two. "There is an evil that I've seen under the sun and it lies heavy on mankind. A man to whom God gives wealth, possessions and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity, a grievous evil." From his unique experience of having it all, Solomon points out the vanity of seeking joy in a lot of specific things.

So verse two, joy is found in wealth, possessions and honor, Solomon expresses. It's not found in these things. It says, you can have all these things in life, but a stranger enjoys them. What's the point of gathering all of them? What's the point of building it yourself up only to not know who it's going to go to next? Verse three, joy is not found in having children and family. "If a man fathers a 100 children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul was not satisfied with life's good things. And he also has no burial. I say that a stillborn child is better off than he."

Some of you just think if I had a child, that would make me whole. Long life will not give us joy. Verse six, even though he should live a thousand years, twice over you, enjoy no good. Do not all go to the one place. And so he's saying more time will not satisfy. How many of you live ... I like to the daydream about what if the day was 26 hours? What if there is 27 hours? Just those extra margins of time. How much more could I accomplish on a daily basis in a week? The sleep, the extra bits of work, the opportunity to work out, more time to meditate on scripture and pray, do my devotions, talk to my wife actually.

And he says that wouldn't deliver. You could have a thousand years twice over. Work will not give joy. "All the toil of man is for his mouth, his appetite is not satisfied." So what he's saying here is that, people often throw themselves into work for satisfaction. And in Boston, this is a big thing. We derive a lot of our sense of our identity, purpose, joy in this. It says, what does it result in? It results in more work. When you work, you want more things? Well, you desire more things? You pay for more things that only creates the need to work more. And all that is vanity. Furthermore, wisdom.

Verse eight, "For what advantage has the wise man over the fool?" And so he's tapping into, a lot of people go through, they pursue prosperity, they pursue wealth, they pursue relationships, they pursue children, long life, health, work. And when that doesn't work out, they start getting intellectual and pursue knowledge, pursue how to use it wisely, and he says this does not work. A lot of people who begin without the strongest upbringing in education. A lot of people who are maybe foreigners coming into a new land, just really trying to grasp the culture, just pour themselves into this, and it doesn't work, it doesn't satisfy.

Furthermore, friends, verse eight, "And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?" And so he's tapping into, there's a lot of people who really don't have much of everything that I've listed so far. And so what do they take comfort in? They take comfort and being able to relate to the common man, they take comfort and, "Hey, I don't have that much, but I can connect with people." Or those who are wealthy of means say, "I kind of come from a different place, but I'm going to find out how to actually just meet the common man and live with him." And Solomon, that may was his position, given his birth position. He says that does not work.

Lastly, verse nine, control. This is in the middle clause that in Hebrew, it says, "Those with the wandering of the appetite or eyes." There's another group of people that they look upon life, they hear this critique of how everything doesn't work. It doesn't satisfy, but these are people who say, "No. If I were in control, if I planned this, if I had it my way, if you followed me, it would work out." There's a cynical person that thinks, if I could have planned it, it would work. And Solomon says no, it's vanity, and it's a striving after the wind.

So, I want to clarify. Solomon's not saying that these specific things are inherently bad. More often, it's better to have these things. You can do great things for the Lord with wealth. You can do great things with children. It's great to have friends, great to have health long life, great to have work and wisdom. But when they become the pursuit of them becomes the ultimate means for our satisfaction. That's when we go wrong. And that's when we are positioning ourselves for the despair and disappointment.

I ask you do any of these fields stick out to you? I know this is basic Christianity. This is, don't make idols out of things that are not God, but really we need to check ourselves on this. In my life I say, I love my children, I love them more as Jesus, my wife, my children, but if my children prevent me from watching a Barcelona soccer game, and I'm angry all day, that entertainment, that endeavor, that thing that I think will fill me, it's controlling me, I'm practicing a form of functional idolatry. So what is it in your life? We have to check ourselves season to season, month to month, day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, our hearts are idol factories, and we misplace the proper love on the good things that God puts in our life. So what is it for you?

And really I'm trying to bring you to a point of bleakness. We should be brought to a point by Solomon by this text, by what I'm saying of, well, what's left in this life, in and of itself, what's left that will satisfy? And Solomon found this out the hard way, we can learn from him, but really there is nothing in and of itself. There's no person who can satisfy in and of themselves, who can meet our needs that only in ways that God can.

So Solomon brings us to this point of despair. And this is similar to the point of where was Israel during the intertestamental period? Israel had its glory days. It was really a 1000 years before Christ came between the time the temple was built to the time that Christ came, and just very slowly, the Lord stripped and stripped and stripped everything that they could make an idol of way to really prime the hearts to get people to want to have see Jesus come, see the true Messiah, receive him into their lives.

So, what is it for you? Do you feel this disparity, do you feel this disappointment in life as I present it to you, the vanity of pursuing ultimate joy in these things. That's kind of the point of this text, and it should lead you to ask, "How am I living? What do I need to ask the Lord to strip away? What is he blocking from me right now that I'm striving and striving, climbing and climbing to get that I need to just stop pursuing and turn and gaze upon him, gaze upon what he's already provided for me today?"

And there's an element of the text, it's morbid, it's not the most joyful passage. It talks about death a lot. It talks about having children and having no burial. It's worse than being a stillborn child who never even lived. When we pursue joy and things of the world, there's a restlessness that is created in us, that it's a burning unquenchable fire that in comparison, it's better to not exist at all than to experience that. A lot of you know this, a lot of people pursue joy in things that are not God himself and there's despair.

You're left to contemplate. "Okay, what does this mean for my life?" Death becomes a pretty good option. I ask you, if anyone's here today, what are you doing with that? Are you trying to medicate with just vain endeavor of, what's going to fix, be my next fix. What's going to be my next adrenaline rush to distract myself from this disappointment? Furthermore, just on the topic of funeral, Solomon asks, "In the quest of these things and the climb to attain these things that you think will satisfy you, when you pause and think about the way you're going about it, who's going to be at your funeral?"

This is just a pointed question, are you living in such a way that God doesn't matter, people don't matter? Just being of service to him in your life, providing a great witness don't matter? Who's going to be there at the end? And as Christians, we need to be really careful not to let the ministry replace our close friends. The people that we know that we can probably minister to the best, because we were raised similar to them, we look like them, we talk like them. We need to invest in them.

And now we're brought to this low point and Solomon does, and that's intentional, again, in advent, we need to feel the bleakness of this point. Israel for all of its history, turned everything good that God gave them into an idol. We need to make sure that we're not doing the same as we await Christ second coming. And so what can cure us of our lack of joy? Solomon suggests two things. First he says, that in order to find joy, we must recognize the limits of our own wisdom. That's in verse 10, 11.

"Whatever has come to be, has already been named. And it is known what man is and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words the more vanity and what is the advantage to man?" And so what he's appealing to is the creative order. He's preparing for your comebacks for our challenges of, "No, God, if only you gave me this, no, God, if you let me have my way here, I wouldn't be questioning you like this."

And he's saying, "Pause, think about God. He's the creator, you are the creature. He has infinite wisdom, you have finite wisdom. And when you submit, you give him the ability, let him be God of your life. You're submitting to his infinite eternal wisdom. You are not God, you don't know what's going to happen today, tomorrow, the rest of eternity. Your wisdom is limited. So when you face a circumstance in your life that you don't like today, don't lash out, pause and see, trust that God's decision, his design, his will is what is best for you."

Solomon's trying to bring us believers as followers. He is saying, how can you have joy? You can stop this process of constantly questioning God, let him be God of your life. So if God says to you, you want this thing, but you can't have it because that is not what is best for you. Are you going to receive him well, are you going to kick and scream? I'm the discipleship pastor here, I'm the counselor, and you see years, people hold on to bitterness because God didn't give them the relationship they wanted. God gave them struggles with conceiving children. God just didn't let that company, that endeavor pan out and they carry this bitterness, and they can never truly enjoy God because they're so mad at him.

What Solomon's saying is, the path to joy is to take the heart that God is God, his design, his will is good. When you submit yourself to that and try to have eyes for that in your life, that's a path to joy. So a lot of us, how do we experience that? A lot of us, we can look at our lives and be like, "God, in that season of life, I wanted that relationship more than anything, but praise God, you blocked it. That was all you. Thank you. I see your wisdom in that. God, I was trying to build my identity as an athlete, as an artist, as a businessman ... whatever it is for you, and you put up doors and God, thank you, I see now a little bit down the line that you needed to do that to get me to see you as God, to get me to love you as God.

You had to strip away these layers of my identity so only you remained, so that all I could look at, all that I could enjoy with all that I had was you. When you bring your faith to this level, this is really what we're talking about here is, Solomon brings us to the point that God says to Job, at the end of Job, God takes Job, another wealthy, honorable man of the ancient world, and God takes away his children, takes away his riches, takes away his honor in the community. And Job essentially discusses with his friends forever about it, all vanity, just argument that gets nowhere. And then God says, "Where were you when I created the world?"

There's an element where that's a brutal, brutal way that God engages with him. But when we pause and see that God is our creator, we are the created ones. The original intention of creation was that God was not a dictator who just created us and told us to do, told us to follow him. He wanted to walk in the garden with us. We were designed to interpret life with his revelation, his knowledge at all times. Think of Adam walking in the garden, naming the animals with him. And we understand him, he's a loving Father. He's sovereign, but his good.

So you can find joy, because when you look at him, when you start to see, "Wow, God, I see your wisdom in the way that you've opened doors for me, the way that you closed doors for me, the way you've stripped these idols out in my life." You start seeing into the heart of God, himself. You see his wisdom. You see that he is infinite, eternal unchanging, and his being wisdom, power, glory, justice, holiness, and truth. And you start to love him for that. That's something that the world can't take away. He's unchanging. And you can just go into the infinite qualities, the infinite glory, the infinite beauty of God's heart and get lost in it, and you'll never be dissatisfied.

And that's where Solomon's trying to bring us when he says, "Stop fighting, let him be God." And really the message of the Bible is that, God can just say, "I'm God, you're not, follow me because it is what is best for you." But he sends Jesus, so he can say, do all of that to say I'm sovereign, I'm God. But he sends Christ to show his goodness, to communicate his heart to us. We have sinned against him, Adam and Eve sinned against him in the garden and all of us since then have sinned against him. All of history points to Jesus is coming. It gives us assurance. God says, Man, you have a problem, you have sinned against me and my glory, majesty, sovereignty, I'm going to be the solution for you."

When we see his sovereignty, we see that all history brings us to Christ. We see his providence showing his goodness, and we begin to look at our own lives and we say, "He can work out this situation. This is not what I want. I might not blatantly profess praises for this hard mercy, this hard stance he's taken with me. But I see how he's used all of history for my good, for the opportunity to have peace, salvation, joy with him through Christ. Let me trust him in the moment."

And so Solomon shows us that our wisdom is limited, we need to trust God's wisdom. But then furthermore, he says that, in order to bring us to where we can find joy, he says, joy must come from the outside. Verse 12, "For who knows what is good for man while he lives a few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man, what will be after him under the sun?" And so these are rhetorical questions. This is what he answered in verse 10, the answer is God, man in and of himself does not know what is best for him. Man is not eternal, he doesn't know what's going to happen to him. Who decides what's best for him? God.

This is not something within ourselves. We have to let God's rule and reign come into our hearts. We have to receive him. And that's what Christmas celebrates. The source of our joy is not anything that we can find in the world in and of itself. There's a lot of good things that we can enjoy and that we can redeem through salvation in Christ. But the source of our joy is the person of Jesus Christ. We have joy because he broke into creation to be the means for peace with God. It was for the joy that was set before him, he came, he endured a humble life, primarily with the purpose of going to the cross for us, that he might be the sacrifice so that we can have peace with the Father.

Jesus leaves his heavenly dwelling, the heavenly Mount Zion, where he was worshiped by angels, descends his hill to come to us that our joy might be complete. While we're trying to climb up a hill, climb up a ladder, he comes down for our sake. He exchanges heaven to be born in a little shack, laid in a manger, spend the first 30 years of his life toiling as a carpenter. He never lived the glamorous earthly life with the house, the wife, the children, the prosperity, and many points he was homeless though. Though a heavenly choir attended his birth, he came here and he received insults and slander. He considered it a joy to be sent to the cross, to die for his enemies.

He didn't live without wrestling through these challenges, they were real, but he threw it all. He was the most joyful of men, and scripture tells, our joy can be complete with him. And that this connects back to our wisdom is incomplete, our joy is incomplete a part from the person of God. And so if anyone today, if you are identifying, I am building my identity, I am trying to find the deep soul satisfaction that I know only God can offer in something else, I beg you to repent, prevent yourself from the future pain, trust God with it. This basic Christianity, trust that he is better.

Some of you think you have good lives, stable lives, but I say, trust the Lord. He's going to deliver more than you can imagine. It's not going to be without struggle, it's not going to be without trial, and Christians we have to really grow in our ability, not just to appreciate what God brings us in salvation through Christ, not just love him for his grace, mercy that we see on the cross. We have to love God for who he is, only learning to love him in and of himself, just digging into his being, digging into his wisdom, digging into what it means that he's internal, infinite, that is where we'll have the sustenance to remain steadfast as we await his return. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we just praise you for just the joy that Christ had to come here to be the propitiation, be the atonement for our sin, for a part of his work, his life, death, and resurrection. We can't have peace with you. We can't have you. We pray, Lord, help us to just cherish the fact that we know that when you save us, you never leave us or forsake us. You provide the sustenance that we need, you arrange all the trials, the triumphs, the traumas, all to your glory and for our good.

And Lord, let us not be people who kick against your design, kick against your plan, but let us be people who have eyes to just see you, to love you, to enjoy you through whatever you have in store for us. Holy Spirit, I pray just if anybody is just clinging to just different aspects of this world, different materials, different experiences, different pleasures, Lord, help them, convince them that what you offer to them is better. What you offer in Jesus Christ, let them look into the heart, the person of Jesus Christ in whom the fullness of your Deity dwell, the word of God himself and let them be satisfied in you. I pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Let's jump right into our text. 1 John 4:7-12. It is short. It is sweet. It is powerful. God's word says, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loves us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love on another. No one has seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us." This is the reading of God's holy and authoritative and fallible word. May he write these eternal truths on our hearts.

I said it's about Christmas. I want to make sure you understand it's about Christmas. Not just because I said it because that's what this text is about. The main crux of this text is verse nine, where it says in this the love of God was made manifest among us. That God sent His only son into the world. So, God sending Jesus into the world is His way of manifesting His love to us. We need to understand what the word manifests mean. If you're like me, I picture a magical movie like Harry Potter or something where they just conjure something out of nothing and they manifested it. That's what I think of. That's not what scripture talks about when it talks about manifesting. When scripture talks about manifesting, it's talking about something that has always been there, but you didn't know it was there.

And now you know it's there. Where do I get this from? A couple verses real quickly. Mark 4:22. It says for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. So again, it's always been there but it's hidden, but it's hidden for the purpose of being revealed, of being manifest, of coming to light. Another example is 1 Peter 1:20. He being Jesus was for known before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for your sake, for the sake of you. So what it's saying is Jesus is eternal. Jesus has always been, but we haven't always seen Jesus. But He was sent into the world to be manifest, to be made known for our sake to benefit us in some way. And it was at God's timing that he did this and this is Christmas.

It is the moment when Jesus was made manifest to us. It is the moment when Jesus came into the world and made himself known to us. But, the purpose that Jesus was manifested for was so that God can manifest His love to us. So, this is about Christmas and I want us to know when we think of Christmas, we need to be thinking how is God manifesting? How is God showing us His love, a love that has always been there, a love that is eternal, but maybe we don't always see it. Maybe we don't always know it's there.

So if you take anything away from the sermon, I want you to take away that God's love is eternal. And even when you don't see it, it's there. And to make this one point, we'll have three points. So I said remember one thing ... remember three things of that one thing. But the first point we have is you are beloved. The second point we have is now love the beloved, and our third point is we need to un-warp our view of love. So point number one, you are beloved. Twice in this text, John says beloved and five times in the epistle of 1 John, he says beloved. He calls the church beloved, and in verses seven and eight and in our whole text, what I want to make clear is that the word for beloved and for love is the same, and word is agape. Now, maybe many of you have heard that there are different words in Greek for love.

If you haven't, there are four different words in Greek to explain love. One of them is agape. The others are phileo, which it's called brotherly love. That's where we get Philadelphia from, city of brotherly love, but it's not just brothers. It's not actually about siblings. It's about comradery, friendship. This is companion love. Then, there's eros, which is romantic love. This is what we think of in rom-coms and movies and things like that, this feeling, this emotion, romantic love. Then there's storge, which is familial love. So this is actual brotherly love between siblings or parental love between a father and a child or children to their parents.

And it's very important that we understand the difference because God does not say He is phileo. He does not say He is eros. He does not say He is storge. He says He is agape. So, what's the difference. Oftentimes I've heard agape defined as servant hearted love, as a love that is self sacrificial. It is serving others. That is true. That is a huge understatement of the importance of agape love. What it says in our text in verse eight is that God is agape, that He is love and that to know agape, we need to know God. And so, what it's saying is God's love is different than every type of love.

So we have to ask what is it that makes God different from us? If His love is different than our love, what makes Him different? And the word that summarizes all of the things between the difference of God and us as the word transcendent. Big word. Really what the word transcendent means is that God is the absolute greatest. The greatest there ever could be. There are no improvements that can be made, and not only is He the best, He is better than anything you can ever imagine. You can say, "This is the best I've experienced, but I can imagine something better," and God's still better than that.

And that's His type of love. God's type of love is the best. It is the purest. It is truest form of love you can ever experience, and it's even better than you can ever know. Even once you do experience it, it's still even greater. That's why I prayed Ephesians and why I pray it for me and for all of us, because it says that we will be filled with the fullness of God. I want us to know that there is a fullness of God and I want us to be filled with His love and that we can know there's still more even when we're full. But, because it is the same word for beloved and for God's love, He's telling us this is the type of love I have for you. It's not about you because it's about God. It's God's love. It's agape love. So when John says beloved, he's not saying, "Guys, I love you."

He does love them. When I come up here and I say, "I love you," I do love you. That's not what John is saying. He's saying, "God loves you. You are loved by God with the greatest type of love that there could ever be." That's your identity. This is who you are, and it's really important that we understand this as an identity thing because it helps us when times when we doubt it. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, maybe a friend invited you, family invited you, you just walked in, whatever it might be, I want you to know God is constantly pouring out His love, His agape, the greatest, the truest form of love you could ever experience. He is pouring it out on you now, and He wants you to know it. He wants you to see it. He wants you to know it's from Him, that He loves you.

He cares for you in an everlasting eternal transcendent type of way. And, if you're here today and you're a Christian and maybe you're doubting, maybe you're questioning. Maybe you're going through a hard time and it's causing you to doubt God. I want you to know your identity is still the beloved. I get this from our text where it says that God loved us, even when we didn't love him. But I also get it from the context. John is writing to a church. We don't know exactly which church, but it's likely the church in Ephesus because John doesn't have an introduction. He doesn't say, "Hi guys, I'm John. These are my credential." So the church knows him. They know who he is. And he writes it in a way that he loves them. It's clear that he loves them in his writing, so it's a church that's very familiar with him.

And John lived most of his life during his ministry in Ephesus, so it's likely the church in Ephesus. But, whatever church it is, there's a specific issue going on in this church that he wants to address. And we get this in chapter four, right before our text, in verses one through three where it says beloved. Again, he calls them beloved. It's really important. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this, you know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And, every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. The specific false teaching that this church he is writing to is dealing with, so they don't know that Jesus actually came in the flesh.

They're like, "Jesus would have done this for us. It's something He was willing to do. He could have done." It's an expression. It's a phrase that will teach us the type of love that God has, but it's not literal. And what John is saying is if you do not know Christmas as a reality, if you do not know that Jesus came in the flesh as a reality, you're going to question love. You're going to have a hard time with the foundation of love. But remember, John is writing to those people. He is writing to people that are questioning. He is writing to people that are doubting. He is writing to people that are having a hard time, and he still says, "Beloved, if you are doubting, if you are questioning, you have a hard time, you are still God's beloved. That doesn't change it."

This is your identity because it doesn't have to do with you, because it's about the God who has given it and said this is who you are. You are His beloved. I want you guys to know this. I don't just want you, I need you guys to know this. I need to know this for myself. We need to know that God loves us, and once we understand that, we understand that we need to love the beloved. The beloved is Jesus. It's God. In scripture, God, the father calls Jesus and he says this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. If we want to understand what it means for us to be beloved, we need to understand God, the father's love for Jesus Christ.

But the natural response to someone loving us in this way is to love them back. This is in verse 10. It says, "And, this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loves us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins." So even when we don't love God, even when we're passively not loving God and even when we're actively rejecting and not loving God, it says He still loved us. And that's great. That's good. But I want to know ... if you're like me, I want to know how does God love us in those times? What does it look like for God to love me when I'm rejecting Him? And the only text ... not the only text. The main text that speaks this to me is the book of Hosea. The whole book.

This is a little weird. Allie, my wife, wasn't in the first service so I could talk about her and she wasn't here. Now I have to look at her as I say this, but she hates when I bring this example up. She's grown on it, but she hates when I bring it up because it's a text about marriage. And so, she wants to make sure I'm not thinking about our marriage in this way, and I don't. But anyway, if you don't know the book of Hosea, it's an intense one. It's a different one than you might say most of scripture is, but if you know all of scripture than you know it's all the exact same anyway. But, the book of Hosea is about God going to a prophet named Hosea and saying, "You need to marry a woman." It's like, "Oh praise God, that's great."

He says, "It's not just any woman. A very specific woman." I'm pausing, because I'm looking around. In the first service, there were kids, so I didn't say the word. I don't see any kids. If there are, forgive me. He says, "You need to get yourself a wife of whoredom." Oh my God, why in the world would you say that? God, you use that word in scripture. Why would you tell someone to do that? And he says, "Because you need to understand, this is what it's the like when I love you." He says, "All of God's people are Gomer ..." is her name. And God wants Hosea to know what God feels when he loves us even when we reject Him, even when we don't love Him. And so in the text, Hosea marries Gomer. They have kids, and the whole time, she's cheating on him and going and running away and spending time ... We aren't told how long, but time that they're providing housing and food and clothing for her.

So, it's an extended period that she is with other men. And God says, "Here's how I deal with Israel, and here's how I want you to deal with her. Here's how I deal with my people." It says God gets angry at her. God gets mad that she is cheating on him. Then it says that He gets furious at the people she is cheating on him with, and so how does God love in that anger when we have rejected Him? This is Hosea 2:14-15. Therefore behold, God speaking says, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her, and there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Achor adore of hope. And there, she shall answer as in the days of her youth as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. Huh.

It's not what I expected. It's not the response I get when people are mad at me. It's not the response I give when I'm mad at people. Why does God love this way even when we reject him? I love it. It says He is going to allure her. He's talking about ... the her is Israel, it's His people. Eh wants to show us that he is worthy. He's like, "Come, let me love you. Come let me show that I am worthy, that I love you, I care for you." In the text it says that Israel, all the people are going after other people and things for satisfaction, for identity and for provision. It says that they're going to other people because they want love. The reason why Gomer is running after other people is she wants her identity of love in people.

She's going there and she's getting food and clothing and housing, and she's thinking it's these people who are giving it to her, and God says she doesn't know the whole time it's been me. She doesn't know that ... we don't know ... that God is the one who is always providing for us. When we have food, when we have clothes, when we have housing, when we have love, when we have care, God is providing it to you. He wants you to see it's from Him. And that's what it's doing here. This text might scare us a little bit because we live in a city and it says bring her out to the wilderness. We're like, "God, what are you going to do? That's terrifying." But, what it's saying is God is taking her out of the place where all the temptations are, where the life that she has always lived is where we have always been in the root ... our normal day. And, sometimes we need to get out of our routine to see God and to be with God.

This is why sometimes you do need to take a vacation. This is why sometimes you do need to just go out into nature and be alone with God. Because sometimes we just need a change of pace. We need a change of scenery to say, "God, I'm getting out of this every day. I'm getting out of the temptation. I'm getting out of all the things that are vying for my love and I just want to be with you, be in your presence." What does God do for His people when they are in his presence?

Here's my vineyards. Here's a whole valley. What does that mean. He's saying, "I provided everything for you. Here's the vineyard from which I provided all your food. And not only that, look, it's a whole valley. It's beautiful. It's majestic. It's glorious. Here's everything that I've been using to bless you with, to provide for you, to give to you to show you that I love you." And, it's only a door to hope. It's not the whole thing. It's just the doorway. You're cracking the door open and you're getting a glimpse into the riches of which God wants to bless us.

Please, I beg of you, know that God loves you fervently, gloriously, mightily, with all that He has. He's giving it to you and He is showing that He is worthy of us to love him back. It says that the response for His people for Israel when God does this is that she will answer in the days of her youth as of the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. What is this talking about? It's specifically talking about the exodus and we just have been going through exodus with the teens downstairs, and what is the response of the Israelites as soon as they get out of Egypt? This was last Sunday, not this Sunday because I'm seeing the teen's leaders here being like, "We know what we talked about today but what we talked about last week."

They sang an impromptu song. Moses just starts singing and Miriam's like, "That's great, Moses, but you need tambourines and dancing as well." And, they're just joyous and they're celebrating and praising God's salvation. I think of it as wedding day love. The type of love where you're passionate. You remember the first time you felt love and you're like, "This is incredible."

In my newsletter that I sent out this week ... If you didn't get it, I can send it to you ... I gave a little study guide, and at the end of the study guide, I gave a list of songs that God has been speaking to me through and that have been an encouragement to me to know God's love. In there, half of them are worship songs and half of them are not. I feel like I need to explain that a little bit because whenever someone who is preaching sends non-Christian songs, I feel like people are like, "What in the world is going on? What's happening here?" So, I want to explain it.

One of the songs in there that I put was This Will Be, or Everlasting Love, sung by Natalie Cole. I love this song because one, it's an everlasting type of love. Only God knows an everlasting love. I see a bunch of you singing it in your head. Praise God. But why I put that song in this list is because the whole beginning of the song is her singing about a guy saying you have loved me in an incredible way. You have cared for me, you have provided for me. This is the best feeling I've ever had. I've never known anything like this. And then, before she gets to the end of the song where she just repeats love over and over and over and over, before she gets there, the transition is she says, "I'm going to love you because you deserve it."

God wants us to know He deserves our love back. He has proven that He is worthy of our love. That's why I start with saying you are beloved, because I want you to know God loves you because He is trying to prove to you that He is worthy of your love back. And apart from knowing the love of God, that is the greatest joy we can ever have. The second one is having love reciprocated. I bring this up ... again, I say love is a very personal topic so I'm going to be very personal. I'm going to tell a lot of stories about my wife and I, and when I think about this idea, I think about our relationship.

We started dating September 28, 2016. I said that confidentially first service. She's nodding yes so I'm good. But before then, we were just friends and I had drove her home one day after church and I said, "Hey, I would love to take you out on a date." Her response shows you a lot about our relationship and why I married her was, "I need to pray about it." I was like, "You know what? That's great. I've been praying about this for months whether to ask you or not, and it's not fair of me to require that in this snap second decision, you have to answer yes or now, so you take the time you need to pray about it."

In my head, what I was trying to communicate was that when I was praying about it, before asking her, was that God gave me peace about asking her, gave me peace about saying if she says no, that's okay. I've got God. We're going to be good. If she says yes, it's okay, but don't be overwhelmingly excited because I still go God. That's all I need so I'm good. If we start dating and we break up, it's going to be okay. We both serve at teens, so the things going through our heads were what if we break up? Does one of us have to step down from teens? It would have to be me. She's much better at it than I am. So, I would have to step down so what is this going to look like?

We decided ... Well, I decided in my conversation with God that if we broke up, it'd be okay. We could be a good example of what a breakup looks like to the teens, and God knows we need that. We need good examples of that. But praise God that didn't happen with us. And then, the last one was if we go one and get married, then it'll be great. We can show the teens what God's love is like through that, so praise God. That's what I was thinking in my head and trying to communicate to her when I said it's okay, take your time to pray about it.

What I literally said was, "It's okay. I've prayed about it and God told me it's all going to work out." I can tell by your laughter you understand that that, to her, said we're going to get married. That's what she thought I said before we ever went on a first date. And, that's not what I meant at all. Women, if you have ever been in a relationship where a guy has done something similar to you, have grace on them. I am so sorry. Forgive them. We are just dumb. There's no other word to describe it. We're just dumb. So forgive them, please. Please.

And then, a month later ... It's insane to me that it was only one month later looking back at it and doing some reflection. It shows how insane of a human being I am. A month later I was praying about whether or not I loved her. To say, should I tell her I love her? We've only been dating for a month. We had known each other for a long time. I was praying and I was trying to know is this just an emotion? Is this just a feeling? Is this just affection or do I actually love her? I said in my mind, praying to God, I said, "Do I want to be with her no matter what? That's the question I need the answer to," because if I want to be with her no matter what, then we're good. We've only been dating for a month so there's a whole lot I still didn't know about her, and so how can I answer that question if I don't know so much about her?

My thought was if I assume the absolute worst about her in everything I don't know, would I still want to be with her? She hates when I say that, too, but it's true and praise God, it's been great. It's been fantastic. It's not been bad at all, but I wanted to be prepared if I found out the absolute worst about everything, would I still want to be with her? And that day I decided yes. Yes, I do. It doesn't matter what I find out. I want to be with her. I love her. So we had a date. I drove her home from that date. We get out of my car and I say, "Hey, I just want you to know, I love you."

And being the gracious gentleman that I am, I said to her, "Please, I beg of you do not say it back to me. I don't want you to say it. I want you to take your time, pray about it. Think about it, see if you actually do, and whenever you feel like it, then you can say it." I did give a full 30 to 45 second pause in between saying that just to see if she would be like, "I love you too," and she didn't so I was like, "All right, I guess I got to say it."

No, but that was the end of October. We were dating for only a month. And I told her I loved her. Two months later, praise God it was only that long, Christmas ... We were celebrating Christmas. She was going to be with her family. I was going to be with my family, so we were going to have our first extended period apart. And so, we exchanged gifts and cards and she hand wrote her card. She always hand wrote her cards and drew a little picture on the front, and I still have all of them. And I'm reading the card, and at the end of the card, it says, "I love you, Ally." Aw, not quite yet.

I smiled and I turned to her and I just looked at her. She's like, "Hey, did you see what it said?" Literally poking me, I think. I don't know. Like, "Did you read it? Did you see what it said?" And I said, "I saw what it said. I want to hear you say it. You could write things down, but if you say it, I'll know you mean it." And, and she said it and we were great. I was filled with joy. There was so much joy in my heart. Our date was done. She went inside. We said goodbye, and I drove home. At that time, I lived in hour away and I just blasted love songs. And, I was singing them at the top of my lungs. Everlasting Love was one of them. I was prophesying over our relationship. It's going to be an everlasting love.

No, I wasn't prophesying. But anyway, I was singing joyfully and I could tell you, I have not experienced that joy apart from the love of God. Because when someone loves you back, when for two months, I've been like, "I love you. I'm trying to show you that I'm worthy of you loving me back. I want you to know that this is real. This is not fake. I love you." And, she loved me back. Oh man, that's joy. That's what joy is.

How much more immensely, infinitely so when we return the love of God that has been from the beginning, that is an eternal love. It is literally an everlasting love. I said this in the first service, I used the word literally a lot because I'm trying to teach us what that word actually means. It means it's real. It's practical. We're not just using it lightly, but God's love has always been when we return it to Him, oh, the joy in His heart and oh the joy in our hearts. Amen. I want you to love the beloved, which is why you need to know that He loves you. You need to know you are beloved and then you can love Him back. And sometimes, we don't feel like it. Sometimes we forget. This is why another song I put in that list is September by Earth, Wind and Fire.

Great song, great song. I've been convinced that it is a Christmas song. You cannot change my mind. It is. I'm going to read some of the lyrics for you and listen. It starts off do you remember the 21st night of September? Love was changing the mind of pretenders. I love this song because I can sing it to God and I can sing it to my wife, because we started dating on the 28th of September. So instead of do you remember, I say, (singing)? Yeah, I'm pointing at her and she hates it and she's so embarrassed right now. And I sang in first service too, because that's what I do when I love someone. But anyway, I could sing this to God. And what it's saying is do you remember the first time you felt loved? Do you remember the first time you felt loved by God?

Last week, Pastor Shane said we needed to write down times we have seen God's faithfulness in our life so that when we are in despair, when we are doubting, we can look to them and remember and be hopeful for the future because of the faithfulness of God in our past. We need to do the same with His love. I don't always write things down, but I have them cataloged in my head. And I remember times in my life when God has expressed love on me. Do we remember the times when God has loved us? When He has had compassion on us, when He has comforted us? Remember them. Do you remember the first time? The second verse says, "Remember how we knew love was here to stay. Now December ..." This is why it's a Christmas song. It says December. I didn't make it up. Found the love we shared in September, only blue talk and love ... I don't know what that line means.

Remember. True love we share today. What it's saying is they were in love September, now it's December, they've forgotten about it, but they need to remind themselves. It says, "Remember the love in September." Remember the love of God that you had at first, and remember it here in December. Remember it at Christmas because Christmas is when God is manifesting His love to us, but also always remember it. Whenever you doubt and question, remember God's love. And it says that in December they found the love we shared in September. So in Christmas, in this month of December, rediscover the love you had for God at first. I want us all to do this. I need to do this. We all need to do this. Let's rediscover the love we had for God when we first knew He loved us. And then it says, "Remember, true love we share today."

And that line is basically saying we have to remember the true love we had at the beginning. We need to remind ourselves of it when we forget it, because that love is still as true today as it ever was then. So as you remind yourself of the love that you had for God at the first and He had for you at the first, remind yourself, rediscover that love and remind yourself it is true today. It is just as true. Why? Because God calls you beloved. It's your identity. It has nothing to do with you. It's about Him. And so, He is never changing, His love for you will not change, and so you are still beloved today. His love for you has not changed.

And once we start loving the beloved, when we start loving God back, we are now able to un-warp our view of love. This is from verse 12 where it says no one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. It says when God starts abiding in us, He's going to perfect love in us. Why does it need to be perfected? Because we all inherently have an understanding of what love is. You can ask anybody. They'll tell you what love is to them, but it's saying we all have a very messed up view of what love is and we need God to change it.

We need God to perfect it in us so that we can see what true love is because He is the source of true love. So what I did is I wrote down 10 ways where we warp God's love, where we warp love in general, and we're just going to go through them. So the first way we warp love is that love is sexualized. Love is about pleasure. It's about sex. My only note for this point is cut it out. If at any point in my sermon that has happened so far, that will happen in the future, you have thought about sex when I've been talking about love, cut it out. It's a clear sign that you are sexualizing love.

I told you this is a very personal sermon. My wife told me I was allowed to say anything I wanted to about her, which is a dangerous thing. And the day after she told me that, I was like, "Are you still sure I can do that?" And she said, Yes." She's trying to work on being open with things in her past, and one of the things in her past that has warped her view of love is that there has been sexual abuse in her past. Oh, it makes me angry. I'm crying right now. I cried first service at this point too, but I'm crying even more because I'm looking at her as I'm saying this, but it makes me angry because it has nothing to do with her, but it has to do with people who have had a warped sexualized view of love and this warping of love does harm, does real, real damage.

And I don't want anybody to experience that. And so, if this is part of your struggle, there's grace but cut it out. It's going to hurt people. And, if you have been hurt by a warped sexualized view of love, I want to tell you it doesn't change God's love for you. God still loves you. You are His beloved and nothing will ever change that. Do not let what has happened to you warp your view of God's love for you. You are His beloved. I need you to know it.

With that being said, the next way we warp love is we emotionalize it. And by this, I just mean that we make love just an emotion. Clearly, love is an emotion. There is an emotional aspect to love. I love my wife. I have an emotional response. I love God. I have an emotional response. I sing and I praise it into worship. I have tissues in my pocket because every single time I've preached this in practice, I've cried besides once when I just didn't tell the stories so that way I didn't cry. But every time I've told the stories, I've cried because love is an emotion. There is an emotion to it, but it's not just that. What happens when there's not an emotion anymore? What happens when we're really being Gomer to God and we're not stirring up an emotion of love, but we're stirring up an emotion of wrath in Him?

He doesn't stop loving us. He still loves us. He still calls us beloved. Love is not just an emotion. It's a decision sometimes, and agape love is a decision. God said, "I have committed to loving you before the foundation of the world." I knew I loved my wife when I said I commit to loving you. That commitment is just as true today as it was back then, and God's commitment to loving us is just as true today as it always has been for eternity. So, don't make love just an emotion. Know that it's real. It's tangible. It's something God has chosen to pour out on you no matter what.

The next way we warp love is that we make it self-centered saying this is how I feel loved. Where is that in this text? Nowhere. It's not there. What it says is God is love. Love is the identity of who God is. Love is God-centered. It is centered around Him. If you want to know what love is, what true agape love that will surpass every other type of love, just go to God. If you want to know today, I beg of you, cry out to God, pray to Him, ask Him to reveal this love to you because it's better than anything else you'll ever experience. It's true. And when God loves us, He pours out so much of His love that we just overflow and that love falls and pours out on other people. So even in this text where it says love one another three times ... It bookends the text. You need to love people. You got to. It's just in there. You have to. But even then, it's not about you. It's about God. It's not about them. It's about God. Because God is the source of the truest purest love, and He is pouring it out on us that we are overflowed that we want to share that type of love with other people. We need people to see it. We need people to know it because it's all about God.

The next way we warp love is we make it self-realized saying I know what love is by the way I love myself. In the ways I feel love, that's what I can identify love as. No. Love is God realized. It says if you do not know God, you do not love right. It's messed up, so we need to have a God realized love where we go to Him, ask Him, "Make us realize your love." I'm saying a lot of things over and over and over again because they're really important. We need to go to God if we want to know true love. Nothing I say up here is going to convince you if we don't go to God. The reason why I'm up here trying to convince you is because I've experienced the love of God, so I want you to know it.

The next way we warp the view of love is we make it self-validating. We say, "All I need is to love myself and then I can carry on. What I need to make it through this life is to love myself and to care for myself, and if I got myself, I'm good. I can carry on."

No. Revisit, re-listen to the whole point one. You are beloved. God is validating you. He is telling you, you are valued. You are cared for. He loves you. And, it's still not about you. It's about the greatness of His love. He does love you. You need to know it's about you in that sense that God loves you, but God wants to value you. He wants to validate you. He wants you to know you are worthy because He says you are, not because of anything else.

The next way we warp love is we say that it is earned. And this one, I think we all deal with but if I can be so bold, I will say I think this is one that particularly our sisters in the church deal with and struggle with. And I say that because this is one I know my wife deals with and struggles with because of the hurt that has happened in her past. There are times she doesn't feel like she has earned love, she has been deserving of love. And, God's love is not earned and it's an identity. God doesn't say you need to do X, Y, and Z before I will love you. He says you are my beloved. That's who you are. If you have a list of things where you say I need to change this, that and the other before God can love me or before any other person will love me, no. It's not earned.

God is freely giving it to you. Accept it. Know it to be true, know it as a reality. You're never going to earn it. None of us are worthy of it. It is grace alone that God gives it to us, but God doesn't want us to try and earn it either. He doesn't want us to be like, "Okay, God, I know it's a free gift, but let me work at it so that I can feel validated." No, God says it's free. Don't earn it. Just take it. It's a free gift. Accept it. But, there's a flip side to how we warp love by making it earned and that's saying, "I'm not going to love anybody until they've earned it."

We need to stop withholding love. We do. God didn't withhold love from us, so we cannot withhold love from each other. I see this in our world all the time, everywhere around us, and unfortunately I have seen it in our church as well. And so, dear Christian, stop withholding love from other people in this room. Stop withholding love from brothers and sisters in Christ. In your community groups, stop withholding love. Stop saying, "I'm not going to be vulnerable. I'm not going to be honest and loving of people until they've earned my trust." You need to start it, earn their trust. Be vulnerable, love them, care for them. In whatever ministries you serve in, love them. Love the people you are serving. Love the people you are serving with. Do not withhold love.

And I said this first service, and I want to be clear, the pastors didn't know I was going to say this and they didn't make me say it. Stop withholding love from your pastors. Stop saying, "I need my pastors to preach like this before I will love them." Stop saying, "I need these programs at our church before I will love them." Stop saying, "When we do this or that or whatever, or when I feel loved and they meet what I want in a church this way, then I'll love them." Stop it. They are beloved by God and you cannot do anything about it.

Sorry. So, stop withholding love from them. Stop withholding love from each other. It says, "Love one another," and the one another is talking about Christians. So we need to stop withholding love from one another, but it also says nobody, Christian or not, will understand who God is until they have seen love. So stop withholding love from your friends and families, even if they're not Christians, because if you want them to know who God is, if you want them to know what true love is, you've got to love them first.

And a few weeks ago, Pastor Yan in his sermon gave us homework. Full disclosure, I didn't do it. Well, technically now I did because I did it first service but I'm going to do it again later in this service. But, the homework that he gave us was to write out ways that we can defeat arguments that we see in people's lives against God. Whatever arguments there are to be against God, we should be ready to answer those questions. It's absolutely true. It's in scripture. It's just fact. But, I can tell you no one's going to listen to a word you have to say if you don't love them.

So amend, adapt your homework and make sure it starts by saying, "I am committing to loving them. I am making that decision now to love them. So that way they can get a glimpse of what the God love, the agape love, looks like. And then, maybe they'll listen. Maybe I will have earned their trust and proven I am worthy to be listened to."

The next way we warp love is we say it's unattainable. Sometimes this is because we feel like we haven't earned it, but I feel like a lot of times it's because we feel like I haven't experienced it yet. I haven't felt true love from my friends, from my family, from my church, from anyone else that I know. And if that's you today, oh, I want you to know you are loved. Love is not unattainable. It's the easiest thing to attain because God is already pouring it out on you. I'm going to keep saying it. It's already there. Just let your eyes be open to it. Just receive it, go to Him. If you want to attain true love, cry out to God, pray you to Him for it. He wants to give it to you.

And, I want you to know people are going to let you down. If you're hoping for fulfillment and love in people, you're going to be disappointed. And I can say that because I know it from experience. I think we all do. I've shared some of my story many times when I've been here and I'm going to continue to share it, because it's important and love is very personal. But for me, I was very depressed in middle school. That's why I work with teenagers because I know it can be hard. But I was very depressed in middle school to the point of being suicidal. I wanted to take my own life.

And what I needed to learn in that time was I needed to stop putting my hope in my friends because why I became depressed and suicidal was I was looking for love from my friends. I went to church. I've heard about God's love all the time. Great. I have parents who love me and care ... I knew they loved me. I wasn't looking to them for love. To my parents, I'm sorry. I was looking for love in my friends and they abandoned me. And when your hope is in friends and you no longer have friends to hope in, you're never going to have hope for love. It just makes sense. And so, I thought love was unattainable because the source in my hope was gone, and it wasn't until I was able to recognize I needed to stop that and put my source of hope for love in God that I could ever change. And, I'm going to get into how that change happened in a little bit.

The next way that we warp love is we say it's conceptualized. We make it conceptualized. That love is an idea. It's something we just want to spread across everybody. We just want everybody to have a concept of love. This one also makes me angry. This one makes me very angry because this is what I had done my whole life, and I see the damage it did to me and I don't want that for anybody else. I said I was depressed and suicidal in middle school, and what got me out of there is God sent a friend, a guy named Rich. And Rich came to me one day and he was like, "We should be friends." That was the exact day I had a plan to take my life. And I said to him, "You want to be friends? We don't got a long time." And he said, "Well, why is that?" And so I told him about my plan and he said, "No, no, it's okay. We're going to be friends. We're going to be friends."

And that was all I needed to hear in that moment. That was all that I needed to hear to keep me going, to continue on, to be alive. But my hope for love was still in him, still in someone, not in God. And for three years after that, I still battled with suicidal thoughts. I still battled with depression. And one night we were having a sleepover, we were hanging out having a good time and I was thinking, "I'm having a good time here, but I'm so depressed all the other times." And so, I cried out to God. I prayed to him and I said, "God, why would you let me feel this way? Why would you let this happen to me? I've gone to church my whole life. I've started a Bible study in a public school. I started a Bible study where we convict each other of sin with the high school guys in my school. I'm serving you. Why would you let me feel this way?"

And God said, "I need you to understand something." He said as clear as day, I'll never forget it. He said, "I am the one who sent Rich to save you. I am the one who sent him." He's like, "And in the real tangible way you experienced being saved from death, even more so I saved you when I sent my son, Jesus Christ to die for you." We need to stop conceptualizing the love and the death of Christ. It is real. It is tangible. That is the issue John is writing about here. It's not a new one. It's an old one. But when we don't believe Christmas is real, when we don't believe Jesus literally came, when we don't believe He literally physically died, it's going to warp our view of love. This is a very hard year for me. This past year, I have lost four people that were really close to me and I have been to four funerals this past year.

And that was very hard because it was unexpected, but also it had been six years since I'd been to a funeral. So, it was different. I've changed a lot in six years and it affected me differently. And when I was at those funerals, I was asking myself a question, why do I take death so seriously with my friends and family, but I don't do it with Christ? As I'm there at these funerals, I'm crying, I'm praying, I'm sad because I knew them, because I loved them, because they had an impact on my life and to lose them leaves a void. You feel it. But I know God, I know Jesus. He has had an impact on my life. He has affected me in a greater way than any person ever could. Why am I not broken up that my sin caused him to have to die for me, and by God's grace and God's power alone, Jesus didn't stay there. He has risen from the grave. He has defeated sin and death. Praise God for it.

And as I'm standing there at these funerals, I'm wondering and I'm thinking, man, there were people that stood over Jesus like this. There were people that were there, felt the same emotion I'm feeling now, and it was real to them. I need to make Jesus' death real. We all need to know Jesus' death and sacrifices, greatest act of love for us is real. It's practical.

And for some reason at funerals in particular, we conceptualize love the most because we're afraid to say what it really is. And this is the part where I do the homework that I didn't do for Yan. I was at my Uncle Tommy's funeral, very unexpected that he died, and at the funeral they said, "No, he's still here. You can just reach out and feel his presence. He loves you." Oh, that made me angry. At my Aunt Carol's funeral ... She had had cancer. Her immune system was done and then she got COVID and she passed away not too long ago. At her funeral, they said, "I don't know Carol," because of course, he don't, "But from the stories you have told us, it's clear that she was kind to people and she loved people. So because of this kindness, I am certain that she is in Heaven today. So, if you want to see her again, you need to be kind to people. You need to love people."

Oh, that made me angry. It took everything in me not to get up there and punch that priest in the face and say, "No, this is what love really is." It's God holding me back that I didn't do that. But instead I sat there and I prayed and I prayed and I said, "God, show your love to the people in this room. Help them to know you love them. You really love them. Show your love to them."

And so to my friends and to my family ... I'm talking to the cameras and I'm talking to all of you, but I'm talking to my family. To my friends and family that were at my Uncle Tommy's funeral, to Josh, Mar Rose, Thomas, Logan, Damien, Demetrius, I have hope, real hope that my uncle is in Heaven because my parents have been faithful witnesses of the gospel to him. They have proclaimed the gospel to him and he said he knows it. Whether he does or not is not for me to decide, it's for God to decide, but I have real hope that he is in Heaven. Not because of a feeling but because I know what the gospel is. And if you want to see Tommy again, I pray, I beg of you, pray to God, cry out to Him. Ask him to show you that you are loved, that He loves you so much that He sent His son Jesus into the world because He loves you, and Jesus died to save you from your sins so you can have eternity with God.

I love you guys so much. I want you to experience the greatest love that I have ever experienced and that there ever is. And to my friends and family who are at my Aunt Carol's funeral, I'm not naming you all by name because you know who you are and we'd be here for another three hours if I went through that side of the family. I want you to know same thing. I have real practical hope that my Aunt Carol is in heaven today because again, my parents were faithful in proclaiming the gospel to her, even when I wasn't, and she has heard it and she has said she agrees, and whether or not she does, I don't know.

It's not for me to decide. It's for God to decide, but I have real practical hope that she is in Heaven. And I want you guys to do the same, please. I love you. I want the best for you. I want you to know and experience the true saving love, glorious love of God. Ask Him for it. Ask Him to reveal it to you. He wants to. He's already pouring it out on you. He wants you to know it's there.

The next way we warp our view of love is we make it temporary. We say, "This is only here for now. You say you love me now, but what about later?" This is another one that I told my wife I was going to call her out, that I think she deals with this one, because she always asks ... she said I could say anything, so I'm going to. She asks me the question often, "Why do you love me?" I hate that question. I hate it. I used to answer it and say, "I love you because you are beautiful. You are my best friend. You challenge me to love God more. You challenge me to know God more. You know scripture better than even I do. I love you."

And, I thought that those were good answers. I thought those were answers that were putting my source of love in things that weren't about superficial things, like you love God more than you love me so I love you. And that's true. That is a fact, but that's not what she was asking in that moment. And I needed to learn what she was actually asking, because for her, those things are temporary. What if she doesn't feel like she is beautiful anymore? Tell her that's not an issue because she always is beautiful, she always will be beautiful. That is her identity. God says it so she is. There's nothing she can do about it. You're beautiful.

And to any women in the room, this is your identity. God says you are beautiful. You don't need to change it. God says it. It's your identity. So even when you don't feel like it, know you are. But she wasn't asking, "Am I beautiful?" She's like, "What if I'm not?" She still feels that way, again because of things that have happened in her past, she doesn't always feel beautiful and I need to work and grow in showing her that she is. She says, "I want objective truth. It's your opinion, your subjective." And I say, "My opinion's the only one that matters because I'm your husband."

And I say, "If anyone else thinks you're beautiful in a different way, I need to find them and I'm going to get them." No. But she wasn't asking about that. She was thinking what if I'm not beautiful? What if I'm not loving God more than you are? What if I'm not challenging you to grow in your relationship with God? What if I stop being your best friend? What about then? And what I need you to know, and what I need all of us to know, this is not a temporary love. God is eternal. God is everlasting. His love is eternal. It is from the beginning. It's not going to stop. My commitment to you, my wife, was once and I said it and I made it and nothing's going to change it. Nothing. I've committed to an everlasting type of love. God says the same thing to his bride, the church, to all of you, He has made an eternal covenant to love you. It's not going to stop. It's not temporary.

The last way we warp God's view of love is we make it limited. God's not limited by anything. God is an all powerful God, an all knowing God, a transcendent God. Nothing can limit Him, so nothing can limit His love for you. He gave up everything. He gave up all of His riches in heaven to come and to die and to save you. He didn't limit it. And that's why, again, I prayed Ephesians 3. I want us to be filled with the fullness. It's an unlimited love. I don't want us to just get a taste. If you don't have a taste, I want you to get a taste of the love of God, but I want you to receive the fullness of it, and then when you feel like you have the fullness of it, I want you to know there's even more. It's never ending. Don't limit God's love. Don't limit love that you have for others, either.

I have one last thing to say. I love you guys. I forgot to say this earlier, but when I get up here and I say, "Good morning, church," I started my sermon saying good morning church, and I saw my wife mimicking it in her head, and I saw all of my friends who know that laughing, because it's funny because I'm weird. I get it. But what I want you to know when I say that, I'm trying to tell you who you are. You are Christ's church. You are His bride.

I don't want to do this, but I might have to stop saying it because I might have to say what I'm trying to get at. You are beloved. That's who you are. I want you to know it, and the way I show my love for people is I cook for you. I make food. I love to cook. If I've ever made a meal for you it's because I love you. And every single Sunday, we open our house ... I didn't mention this first service. We live in Lynn, so it's a little bit of ways away, but every Sunday we open our house and I cook for people.

If you're here today and you're saying, "I like what you're saying, but I'm struggling." You're saying, "I don't know if I feel loved. It's nice what you say." Or, "I've been struggling with knowing I am loved. I want to know more about this agape type love," please come on over. Let me cook you a meal. I'm not going to give my address out right now, but if you want it, come on up. I already gave it to two people after the first service. You won't be alone. Please come on over. It's Lynn. It's far away. We'll find out rides. If we run out of food, we'll just empty everything in the freezer and in the pantry. It doesn't matter. I don't care. We'll order pizzas if need be. I don't want you to doubt that God loves you. I want you to know it. I want it to be real.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you. You are good. You are great. Most importantly, you are loving. You have given us, you have poured out, you have made manifest your love to us in this season of Christmas by sending Jesus to come and to live and to die for us. If we do not yet know your love, open our eyes, open our hearts to know your love. Your true love. Your greatest love. If we are doubting, if we are questioning, if we are hurt right now, comfort us, show us your love and help us to perfect our love. Help us to perfect the way we view your love, the way we love others. Help us to un-warp our love, because as we have a warped view of love, we proclaim to the world a warped view of you. We don't want that. Help us to have a right view of love so we can proclaim a right view of you to those who need it most. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

I have a problem. Every time I preach, the worship is so awesome. By the time I get up here, my voice is already shot. And so, thank you band and thank you Jesus for being worthy of such praise. If you're new, my name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we're so glad to have you with us. We mentioned this earlier, we would love to connect with you. We do that through the little connection card in your worship guide. You can fill that out and turn that in either at the little white box there at the back of the room or at the Welcome center. And we have a gift that we'd love to give to you to thank you for being with us this morning. As we begin, would you please join me in prayer over our sermon today?

Father, we thank you for Advent. We thank you for Christmas, for sending, for giving your son. And we thank you for putting this season into the rhythm of our year, this time where we can slow down and remember that Jesus Christ was born, that you didn't just make us and leave us. You actually wanted to be with us. You wanted a relationship with us. Even when we were unworthy, even when we were too sinful to be with you, you sent your only begotten son to come to be our manual, to be with us, to die for us, and to deliver us from the wrath that we deserve, to lead us back to you. And Father, we thank you for this unsurpassable gift of grace, from which true hope and love and joy and peace continually flow. And I pray that in this Advent season, we would receive those gifts with glad and grateful hearts. And that they would transform us from the inside out to be more like our Savior, more like your Son, Jesus Christ. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

Well, Happy Advent. It is hard to believe that we're already five days into our advent calendars. And I say, "calendars," plural, because this year we have two advent calendars in our home. Owen and Nora each get their own. I made a decision that this year, that the sadder of the world gets around us, the harder our family is going to celebrate Christmas together. So, we're going all out this year. We got a real tree, which is not usual for us. We went out to the tree farm. We picked, we just bought this massive Fraser fir, brought it home. And the first thing I put it up, I was like, "It wasn't big enough." Next year, we're getting an even bigger one. It's awesome though. Our apartment smells like a pine forest.

We have a fireplace, our landlord doesn't let us use it. I know most of you can relate to that, but we decked it out with wreath and the garland, all of that. And here's just a little pro tip. Cedar incense bricks. You can get them in Amazon, instantly makes your home smells like a campfire. Instantly fills the air with Christmas spirit. I'm really excited for Christmas. We had an awesome Christmas Members' Party last night, joyful, jolly Christmas party last night. Thank you again to all the volunteer who put that together. Next Sunday, Mini Mosaic is going to be up here singing a special Christmas song. You're definitely not going to want to miss that. But as we begin this Advent season, I want to just take a moment right now to reflect.

And here's the question that I want you to reflect on as we begin. What is Christmas to you? Visualize it in your mind, in your heart. What is the ideal Christmas look like? What comes to mind when you picture the perfect Christmas? For me, growing up, Christmas was combing through the JCPenney catalog, looking for that perfect piece of plastic mechanized, electronic joy to satisfy my greedy little heart on Christmas day. Christmas was hiking through the fields of a tree farm to find that perfect tree, coming home all sticky and covered in sap. Christmas was sledding with my friends. It was snow days, snowballs, and snowmen and snow forts in the church parking lot. Christmas was playing outside until you were frozen and wet, and then coming inside for some hot chocolate and some Super Mario Bros. 3 in my cousin's Nintendo. Christmas was lights and decorations. It was food and fellowship. It was Sunday school pageants at church. It was candlelight caroling. It was opening presents at grandma's house. Christmas was great.

And for many of us, Christmas is it's just that, it's something that was. And now, it comes and it goes, and it's maybe just not quite the same. Why is that? When did we stop looking forward to Christmas and settle for just looking back? What changed? Here's my diagnosis. Christmas didn't change. We changed. We grow up, life knocks us around. We get calloused by pain, we calloused by our own sin. We get scared. We get scarred. We get proud, and our childlike hearts get hard. They get cynical. And at some point, we all start taking ourselves a bit too seriously.

And here's the problem. Jesus Christ is born, but it's hard to joyfully run into a smelly, dirty stable when you're taking yourself too seriously. It's hard to bow down before a baby lying in a manger when you think that you're all grown up. It's hard to kneel before a child, unless you have the simple, pure, humble faith of a child yourself. The other day, my son, Owen, he randomly asked me a question. He says, "Hey, dad. Is Christmas getting too commercialized?" I'm like, "What are you talking, you're 10 years old. Too commercialized? What have you been watching?" They've been watching Charlie Brown Christmas.

When I first became a Christian, I used to rant about the commercialization of Christmas. "Ah, it's not about the parties and the presents and decorations. Christmas, it's just about Jesus. Jesus is the reason for the season. You can't spell Christmas without Christ." Now, the problem with that is it's true. When you take that too far and in your attempt to avoid becoming Santa, you turn into Scrooge. You turn into the Grinch. You become the Christmas curmudgeon. And so, you got the Santa over here on one side, and you have the Scrooge over here on the other. The Santas are all about the celebration, but there's no Jesus, and it is kind of a sad and empty party. And the Scrooges are all about the idea of Jesus, but it's a Jesus with no joy. And it's kind of a sad and empty party as well. They're both missing the point. It's like an awkward middle school dance. You got one side over here, one side here. How do you get these two parties to get over themselves and meet in the middle so that we can all start having a good time?

The answer is Jesus, but it's the real Jesus. Because, the Scrooges are right. Christmas is all about Jesus, but because it's all about Jesus, it's all about joy. It should be a season of great joy. So, sing and decorate and throw parties and give gifts and have fun. Luke 2:9, "The angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, 'Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ The Lord.'"

Christmas should be fun. Christmas should be a party. It is good news of great joys so we should make at a party, because let's face it, most of life is not a party. Most of life is pain. And Christmas isn't about sticking our heads in the clouds and pretending that the pain isn't real. It is about joyfully bowing our heads to the ground before the manger of our maker, because here lies the Christ, the one who was born to make everything better. And so, this Christmas, this is what I'm saying. If you're feeling a bit Scrooge-ish, and I'm preaching on myself here because I'm not the most naturally happy joyful person. Christmas is an invitation to be a kid again. Not to be childish, but to be childlike in a humble faith. If you're having a hard time with Christmas, I invite you to be born again, and then come with that childlike faith, come with wonder and adoration before the manger of the newborn king. What I'm saying is the life of the party is here. Hope has been born, and we have a reason to celebrate during this season.

If you have your Bible, open up to 1 Peter chapter one. We're going to be walking through verse three through 12. We're going to be focusing on God's gift of hope that was given on Christmas day. And I want to talk about the foundation of our hope. I want to talk about the substance of our hope. And then, finally, I want to talk about the power of our hope, as our three points for our sermon today.

This is 1 Peter chapter one, beginning in verse three. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

"Concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ in the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning. Point number one is the foundation of our hope. "What a time to be alive." We've heard that phrase lot over the last couple of years, not always in the most positive sense. But the point of these last four verses, I'm not going to spend a ton of time in these last four verses, we're going to spend most of our time in the beginning of the passage, but you get the point in these last couple of verses, that it is an amazing time for us to be alive.

We live at a privileged point in human history, that for thousands of years, God's people we're longing, we're waiting in anticipation for the Messiah to be born. They were eagerly looking forward into this mystery, wondering how it was that God was going to put all of these pieces of his plan for salvation together. And we now live at a place where we don't have to look for that anymore. We have the privilege of looking back. We're not hoping for hope to be revealed. We can build on the hope that has already come through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we're standing on this foundation. Peter says, "Even the angels long to see these things." The hope has come, the foundation has been laid and nothing can destroy that.

And so, what is the foundation of our hope Peter tells us in verse three? It says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." And notice that there are three things there that Peter mentions that we did not do and that we cannot change. And this is why we know that this foundation is firm. First of all, he tells us that the Father has caused us to be born again, that we didn't give birth to ourselves, that the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerated our hearts and made us new creations in Christ. We didn't do that. We can't undo that.

Second, he says the Father has caused us to be born again according to, what? According to our great merit? No, according to his mercy, that this is rooted in the eternal, unchanging character of God, the Father. And then, finally, he says the Father causes to be born again according to his mercy through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is surely as Christ is alive, our hope lives. We're standing on a foundation of his finished work and atonement. The basis of the gospel is our hope. We know that, but we need to start there and we need to stay there because this is the hope that our hearts were built for.

Until we rest on this foundation, our hearts are always going to be fearful. They're always going to be anxious. They're always going to be restless until we rest on this foundation. And so, the question I want to ask you right now is are you anxious? Are you an anxious person? A better question is how anxious of a person are you? Because, we all have fears. We all have cares and anxieties. And the problem is most of us spend way too much time worrying about the little things, because we put way too much hope in the little things. When I was in college, I struggled with anxiety in a pretty intense way. There were times I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I'd be up all night worrying about things. And it was a constant struggle for me.

I started college in the year 2000 to study graphic design. At the time, the whole world was changing. The internet was coming to be this thing that we know it today, was something that I didn't even grow up with at the time. And the design world, there was this shift taking place where the workforce was shifting from designing things by hand on paper, to doing all of these things on computers. And so, there was this huge need for new people to learn the skill and rise up and enter this workforce. And so, I was told this is a great career to go into. And so, I started off college, and then by the four years later, when I graduated, apparently those needs had been met because there were no jobs left. And I was one of a very few people in my graduating class that actually managed to have a design job lined up after graduation.

And so, the week after graduation, started this great job at a small ad agency, moved to a new city. I got my own apartment, started paying my own bills for the first time. Kelly and I, we were engaged at the time, had started going back to church together. Things were going great in a lot of ways, but I still struggled with a lot of anxiety and something still hadn't clicked with the gospel in my mind. And forward about six months later, I'm in my new career. Things are going well. And one day, I come into work and my boss calls me into her office and closes the door. I'm like, "Ugh, this is not good." And she tells me that our agency had just lost their biggest client, which made up the majority of our work. And that because of this, the last three people who had been hired on staff were going to be fired. We're going to be laid off, and that included me.

And now, looking back, this seems really silly, but I started freaking out. I was devastated. I was crushed. I felt humiliated. The whole world was crashing down, and I started catastrophizing everything. "I'm never going to find another job. Kelly's going to call off the wedding. I'm going to run out of money. I'm going to lose my apartment. I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life homeless and living in a gutter." That was what I was thinking. Maybe not reasonable, but those were the real thoughts that were going through my mind that day. And I remember this so vividly. That night, I was walking through my living room, and all of a sudden, I just fall to my knees and I just started crying.

And I cried out to God and something clicked, because I didn't cry out to God and ask him to give me my job back. I didn't cry out to God and ask him to change my circumstances. For some reason, I cried out to God and I just said, "I don't care. I don't care if I lose my job. I don't care if I lose my apartment. I don't care if I lose everything. I just don't want to lose you. I need you, so don't leave me." Where did that come from? I'd never had that thought before. For the first time in my life, I wanted God for God. I truly saw my sinfulness and my need for a savior. And all of a sudden, everything clicked. I confessed. I repented of my sin, of my pride, of all of the ways that I had been trying to rule my own life.

And I don't know how to describe this, but there on the floor of my living room, it was like something reached down and just pulled me. I felt physically this weight of anxiety lifted off of my back. And I stood up. I felt life, and I felt this joy. I felt peace that I had never experienced in my life. I had so many misplaced hopes, and the basis for those hopes had always been myself. And you can only live that way for so long before that will crush you. I needed to learn that losing my job was not my biggest problem, money wasn't my biggest problem. None of that, didn't matter. My biggest problem was me. My biggest problem was my sin. My biggest problem was my soul hadn't been reconciled to God, and I'd been trying to build my life with no foundation, a foundation of sand.

I opened my Bible that night and I read through the Sermon on the Mount. You get to Matthew 6:31 and Jesus tells his disciples, he's like, "Therefore, don't be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you." We're going to talk about the substance of our hope as Christians, but we can't talk about that until we talk about the foundation of our hope, because hope without a foundation is just wishful thinking. We need something real. What I'm saying is don't assume, as I had done for so many years, that you're okay just because you grew up going to church, or because mom and dad are a Christian.

Have you personally experienced Christ for yourself? Do you long for his kingdom and his righteousness? Do you hunger for his word? Are there signs that you indeed are born again, a new creation that the Spirit is working, bearing fruit in your life? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. In other words, do you bear the family resemblance? Are you growing to look more like your heavenly Father, more like Christ, your brother? If so, rejoice, because you have been born again, born again to a living hope, to an unshakable foundation. And once you have that foundation, now we can begin talking about the substance of that hope. Because, what we see is that with this new birth comes a new Father, a new family. And in this new family, you have a new inheritance.

This is point number two, the substance of our hope. This is what Peter talks about next. And going back to verse three, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is in imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

There are these two really dangerous apps that you can get on your phone. One of them is called Red Tree, and one of them is called Zillow. Now, I've never done this, I'm sure you've never done this, but we've heard about people who have done this. They get sucked into these apps. Begin looking around like, "Yeah, why not? Why shouldn't I increase the filter? Let's see what can you get for half a million dollars, a million dollars, $2 million, $4 million, $8 million." You start looking at all these big, beautiful mansions in Brookline. And then, you see the price of a studio apartment, and you delete the app and cry yourself to sleep.

Wouldn't it be nice to find out that you have a rich uncle and he died... And that part's sad, but you didn't know him. And before he died, he wrote you into his will. And he left you a mansion in Brookline, or even just a house with a yard and a washing machine that doesn't take quarters. I'd be happy with that. The bad news is you don't have a rich uncle, or maybe you do. I don't. The good news is you have a generous Father and you have an inheritance that is so much better. Imperishable, undefiled, unfading. It's guarded, it's secure. It's kept in heaven like a treasure in a safe, ready to be given, ready to be received at that last day at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Apostle John in the book of Revelation, he has a vision that kind of helps us just grasp a little bit of what this inheritance will be like.

Revelation 21, beginning in verse one, he says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.' He said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'"

"And he said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And to the thirsty I will give from the spring of water of life without payment. To the one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.'" And he goes on to describe the completeness of this city, the perfection of this city in verse 22. He says that, "And I saw no temple in this city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there."

"They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life." If you've been born again, and your name has been written in that book since before the foundation of the world, and nothing can erase it. Now, imagine an eternity where everything is as it ought to be, where heaven and earth become one, where the battle has been won, and where those who conquer will dwell with their God and see their Savior face to face.

The night that Christ was born, the shepherds ran to see the face of their Savior, gentle and lowly swaddled in a manger. The day that Christ returns, we will rise to see the face of our Savior, beaming with power and glory and seated on his throne. This is our inheritance. This is our hope. This is important. Because we are hope-fueled creatures, without hope, we can't survive. But with the right hope, we can do almost anything. Hope gets us out of bed. Hope sends us on our way. Hope keeps us pushing forward until we reach our destination. When you combine the right foundation of hope with the right substance of hope, you get the unstoppable power of hope, power to persevere, power to do the hard things that we are called to do as we ultimately wait for the fruition of our hope to come. And this is point three, the power of hope.

Peter continues in verse six, says, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Theologically, the basis of our hope is our justification. The substance of our hope is the glorification. That's the easy part. Right now, we're in the hard part in between. Justification, glorification, for us, those come easy. The hard part is our sanctification, and this is why we need a hope that gives us power.

Because, the question that we're tempted to ask in the hard part is does this cost really outweigh the benefit? Is this worth it? And obviously, we know in our minds that it is worth the pain. But when you're in pain, it's easy for your heart to forget. And you need that reminder. And so, think of it like this. Justification is like conception. You find out you're pregnant, everyone's excited, there's joy. There's celebration. Glorification is like birth. You're holding that little bundle of joy in your arms. Sanctification, it's like all the stuff in between. It's the pregnancy, there's groaning, there's suffering, there's discomfort. It's the morning sickness, the mood swings, the contractions, the pains of labor. And it's not the most fun, but you get through it. And at times, you're even able to make it fun. Why? Because, you know that the pain is temporary and you know the joy that is coming.

Peter puts it more like this. Justification is like our cradle. We're newborn babies, born again. We didn't give birth to ourselves. We're just happy to be here. Glorification is like our inheritance. We didn't pay for it, we didn't build it, but our Father has left us this epic mansion. And then, Peter switches metaphors a little bit. Sanctification, it's not just like the demo and the renovation. The metaphor that he uses, he describes it as a crucible, where you're thrown into the fire, where everything that is unholy needs to be burned away until all that is left is pure gold. When you think about suffering like this, this completely changes the way and you think about the trials of this life, that our suffering is not random. It's not meaningless. It's doing something. It can produce value. It can result in things that impact our eternity, that we are going to be rewarded with what we do with it.

Peter says that the tested genuineness of our faith will, what? It'll be found to result in praise and glory and honor in the revelation of Jesus Christ. And so, have you ever thought about suffering as stewardship? We all know that if God gives us wealth, if God gives us blessing, if God gives us talents, that we should not let those talents go to waste. What if God gives you suffering? Would you let that go to waste? When faced with suffering, we have a choice. We can be faithless and grow bitter and let those flames burn us up until there's nothing left. And that's no advantage to us. It's no advantage to anyone else. Or, we can face those flames with faith. Not to grow bitter, but to get better, to let them refine us. And to do so, knowing that we will receive the praise of our King and we will hear those words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come, enter into the joy of your master."

This is why James, the brother of Jesus, he begins his letter, James 1:2, he says, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when..." What? "When you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Romans 5:1 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us."

Have you ever thought about suffering as an investment, with a return both in the long term and in the short term as well? Like, we know we'll be rewarded in the future, but there's something to be gained here right now. James talks about steadfastness. Paul talks about endurance. What is endurance? I'm not a runner. I don't run. Fun run, oxymoron, I don't get it. But, I understand some of you do. And we used to have a woman in our community group who loved to run. She was actually a professional runner. If I were to run with her, I would not have a very good time. I would be keeled over, passed out, gasping for air. She would just be getting warmed up. And in some sick twisted way, she'd be having fun. Miles in, and she'd still be having a good time, not winded, enjoying her run. Why is that? Well, she had endurance. She had run so much in the past that she had grown her capacity to run faster and farther in the present.

The question is how do we do this spiritually? And there's two things that you need to do to grow in this kind of endurance spiritually. You need to run, and you need to remember. First of all, you have to run. There's no way around it. You have to go through suffering. And as you go through suffering, you need to remember, to remember God's faithfulness to you. In your walk with Christ, you are going to be faced with trials that seem impossible to endure. And sometimes, they're going to come to you through crisis. Sometimes, they're going to come to you through calling.

Crisis is the unexpected. Something happens, your whole world gets flipped upside down. Calling is God's going to ask you to do something that from your perspective seems terrifyingly impossible. And so, here's a little life hack for when you're faced with these trials. You need to run, you need to remember. In order to remember, you need to start writing things down. First of all, you need to write down every time that God has been faithful to you during trials in your past. Our community group had an opportunity to do this this week. And everything inside me wants to share this story, I'm not going to because the people who went through it are going to do a much better job with some day. But, all I want to say is we began a trial last week that ended in a testimony by the end of the week. And that in between, God had done a miracle and showed us again his faithfulness. I'm going to write that down. I'm going to remember.

Remember the day that I lost my job? That was a crisis. But, you know what? I think I got saved that day. And following that day, things didn't get better right away. It took three months of constant job searching before I even got a response. Since I had just gotten saved, I would spend my mornings, the first part of my day, finding any job that I could and applying for it. And when I ran out of that, I would spend the rest of my day reading my Bible for hours at a time. I'd never read the Bible before. This was new to me. By the way, there are three really important pieces of evidence that you need to look for that will tell you if you have truly been born again.

First of all, you're going to love Jesus in a real way. And that's going to click for you what that means. Second, you're going to love the church. You're going to stop making excuses for why you don't want to go to church, and you start looking for opportunities to go to church, to serve, to worship, to gather with the body of Christ. And then, three, you're going to get hungry for the word of God. You're going to want to just start devouring scripture. And that's where I was at this time.

This is a true story, by the way. Three months go by, I'm running out of money. My bank account is about to hit zero as I'm writing my last rent check. The week that I was writing that check, I finished reading the Bible cover to cover for the first time. And I'm not kidding, that week, for the first time in three months, I got three calls and I got two job offers. And by the next week, I'd started working a new job.

God was making it obvious that my biggest need was not my job, that my biggest need was him. But, also, that he orchestrated this entire thing from the beginning. It didn't feel good, but he was using it for my good. And looking back now, I wouldn't trade it for the world, but what I needed to learn is that if I'm going to follow him, I need to actually trust him. And so, I wrote that down, I remember that, so that the next time when you're tempted to freak out about something, you count your blessings. You remember, "God loves me, that he was faithful to me here and here and here in the past, and he'll be faithful again." And so, first of all, write down every time that God has been to you through trials in your past. Secondly, write down any evidence of God's providence, of God's present activity in your life right now.

I told you about a crisis, I want to talk to you about a calling. In 2012, God called my family to move to Boston to join the mission at Mosaic, and we were so excited. It was the honeymoon phase. We were pumped. We're ready to move to this big city and be part of this amazing thing that God was doing at Mosaic. And that excitement lasted right up until the day that we started looking at real estate in Boston. In the Midwest, we had a four-bedroom house, two-car garage, beautiful yard, privacy hedge. We had a deck with a hot tub right outside of our bedroom, a grill. And we had an escrow, mortgage taxes, insurance, thousand dollars a month.

"All right, Zillow, let's see, Boston, Massachusetts, thousand dollars a month. That gets us almost the parking spot in Austin. Oh, it's going to be like that." We started freaking out. "Oh, I don't know, maybe God's not calling us to Boston." What did we do? I made a list. I started writing things down. And I've been thinking about this because after Mosaic's 10th birthday party a few weeks ago, I went back and I found that list. It's still on the notepad on my laptop. I'm not going to read it all for you, but I want to give you a few examples of things that made the list.

The first one is kind of silly. We started researching Boston. We want to learn everything about the city, and we started researching the different churches in Boston because we want to know what is the spiritual landscape going on. We came across this church called City on a Hill. You're probably familiar with it. We know them now and we're friends with them, but I had never heard of them before. Seemed like a good church. We're looking at their website, and on the homepage of their website is a picture of my deck. When we moved into the house, I painstakingly, I sanded it down. I stained it. And then, we put these nice little lights up all around the deck, and Kelly took a picture of it and posted it on Splash. And they had found it and they'd used it with their website. I was like, "Huh, that's weird."

Secondly, we knew that if we were going to move here, that Kelly was going to have to work, and we kind of assumed she would have to find a new job. And so, she scheduled a meeting with her boss to let her know like, "Hey, we're going to be moving and I'm going to have to step down for my job." And he asked her in that meeting to not only keep her job and work remotely, but in the process, she was offered a promotion. And he said, "If you work an extra hour a day when you know would be commuting, you can stay on a hundred percent full time and only work four days a week." And so, those first couple years, we were able to stagger our days off and only pay for three days of childcare. And if you know, you know. That's a big deal, that saved us a ton of money. And so, I'm like, "Oh, that it was encouraging. I'm going to write that down."

I remember the day called Pastor Jan to tell him we are in, we're moving to Boston, it was actually the day before the Boston Marathon bombing. The next day was a little bit like, "Oh man, what did I get myself into here?" But, I called Pastor Jan. We talked on the phone. And after we were done, I called Kelly and I let her know, "Hey, I talked to Jan. I let him know we're going." We hung up the phone, and Kelly's iPod randomly shuffled to the song called The City is Yours. So, we say we're going to take this city because God told us we're going to take this city. But, that's weird. Was that a coincidence, or was providence? "I'm going to write that down." And then, the biggest one was Mosaic couldn't afford to pay us for the first year. That one actually was not a great sign, but by God's grace, we were able to sell our house and raise all the money that we needed for that first year of ministry here in the city. And we did it all in six weeks.

And despite never having any experience doing any kind of fundraising before, there were all these signs that, yeah, God was with us and we needed to write them down. And some of them were big and some of them were small, but we put them in a list so that when those fears and those doubts crept in, because it was like a nine-month period of time, and there are so many times we were doubting. "Are we doing the right thing?" We'd pull that list out, we would read it, and we would remind ourselves. "Oh, that's right. God was faithful here and here and here. And we've seen providence here and here. Why would we start to doubt him now?"

Psalm 9:1 says, "I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds." The power of hope for our crisis, for our calling, we're recounting God's faithfulness in the past, and we're believing his promises for the future so that we can press on and persevere through our trials right now. Romans chapter eight, we all probably know and love this passage, but we have to go there because it's just so beautiful. It's so powerful. Romans 8:28, "And we know that for those who love God all things are working together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

It says good is done. "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" It doesn't mean that things are always going to turn out the way that we want them to in this life. It means we can march forward with faith, knowing that no matter what happens, God is in control, that he loves us. He's working all things together for our good. Peter concludes in verses eight and nine. "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

At the start, I mentioned that we have the benefit of looking back at the gospel, of seeing the things that even the angels long to see, but we don't see everything. There's still a lot that we don't see. We don't see Christ right now, not face to face. We're not always going to see the purpose in all of our pain. We're not going to get answers to all of our questions, but we've seen the love of Christ and we know the power of his resurrection, and therefore, we can rejoice and we can have hope. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Awhile back, Kelly and I started reading, we read through The Hobbit with our son, Owen, and a few weeks ago, we let him watch the movies for the first time. Since then, we've kind of been slowly working our way through the Lord of the Rings series with him. And there this quote early on in the first book. Frodo, he's lamenting the crisis in the calling that has been thrust upon him. That the whole world is on the brink of darkness and doom, and the weight, the hopes of the world is kind of resting on their shoulders. And he says to Gandalf, "I wish it need not have happened in my time." "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to these such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what we're going to do with the time that has been given to us."

And my prayer for you, my prayer for us, as a church, is not that we would never see such times, but that when we do, we would suffer well, that we would never suffer in vain. I pray that is when we do suffer, that our suffering would produce endurance, that our endurance would grow our character, that this character would result in hope, and that this hope would fuel us to change our lives, to change the city, to change the world to the glory of Jesus Christ. At the first Advent, Mary suffered well. Through the pains of labor, she gave birth to the son of God. Jesus suffered well through the pains of crucifixion, gave new birth to the sons of men. And may we suffer well the labors of our life and calling so that at that second Advent, when Christ returns, the tested genuineness of our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So that in this time in between, the world would see and know and experience for themselves the reason for the hope that is alive in us.

We are celebrating communion today. And like Advent, communion is a time where we look back and we look forward. We look back to the cross of Christ. We remember his sacrifice. We remember the atonement that was made, but in 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that it's also a time where we look forward and where we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again. The way that we celebrate communion, hopefully, you're able to grab one of these on the way in. If not, there's some in the back, or better yet, you can just raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring one to you. The bread inside represents the body of Christ that was broken for us. The cup represents his blood that was poured out for us. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, or if you are a Christian and you're walking in unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain from this part of the service. It's not going to do anything for you. It's not magical. Scripture tells us that we need to examine ourselves to partake in a worthy manner. But, if you...

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, church. I will explain my t-shirt in my conclusion so you have to keep listening.

As I was worshiping, I remembered that even just a little while ago, I used to rate our house bands. I used to rate them. In my mind, there was the A team. There was the B team. Once in a while, there was a C team. I think all our events are A team now. And that's saying a lot.

I'm not a musician but like music, it's saying a lot because Caleb's not here and that was just tremendous so praise God.

If you watch online, you don't come in person. Let me just tell you what you're missing. You're missing the live band. When you go to a party, there's good parties and there's better parties and the good parties have a DJ. The better parties have a band. It's a live band. And what I'm saying is if you watch online, you don't come in person. I am calling you to repentance. If you're in sin, if you're in sin. If there's other reasons, we can talk. I'm calling everyone. Everyone should go to church.

How's your Thanksgiving?

I had a really good Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving just to tell you perspective, every single Sunday, I don't know why the time works like this but I get a notification from Apple that tells me about my screen time and it's always right before I go up to preach. My screen time for this week was one hour and 27 minutes which is significant to me because it went down by 71% from last week. So I'm saying I had a tremendous Thanksgiving, spent time with family at my dad's house, there's 21 of us, 21 eternal souls.

My sister, Aida, brought her dog Zuma. So now my daughters want a dog. I'm praying for the Lord to change everyone's heart in the house to want a dog. So I ask that you pray with me.

I like Thanksgiving. This is why I like Thanksgiving. I like Thanksgiving because everyone now has to be thankful. Unfortunately, most of the nation doesn't know who to be thankful to and I just want to tell everyone, you got to thank Jesus. You got to thank the Lord. The Lord is so good to us. So with that said, would you please pray with me? I prepared a little pastoral prayer.

Lord, we're thankful. We thank you for being the best God ever. Thanks for being so loving. Thanks for being so forgiving. Thanks for being so merciful and thanks for ever being present with us. And thanks for giving us the greatest gifts, love, grace, wisdom, strength, courage, family, friends.

And we're thankful for this church. If we didn't have this church, I have no idea where I'd go to church. We've got the best worship music. We've got the best kids in youth ministry. We've got the friendliest greeting. The hospitality is tremendous. This church has helped me raised my daughters. This church has grown my faith like no other, like no other. Thank you, Lord.

Heavenly Father, we pray that you give each one of us a heart for the lost, break our hearts over the fact that we have siblings or parents or children or spouses or friends who don't know Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.

Lord Jesus, give us courage to do everything we possibly can to help them finally see how awesome you are, that there's nothing more meaningful, there's nothing more significant, more transformed, more exhilarating, more joy filled, more hope filled, more peace filled, more love filled than to believe in you and obey you. Obedience of faith. What a gift. Thank you, Jesus. Holy Spirit, we welcome. You magnify God, the father, God the son and God, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So I was at my dad's. He lives in Jamestown. It's an island which is a boss thing to do like I'm just going to live in an island. He does. And while we were in his backyard and he had not a fire pit because he's Russian, we had a bonfire just in his backyard and I was like, "Hey, is that even legal?" He's like, "Well actually I went to the town hall and I asked can I have a bonfire and they said no one's ever asked the question." So he just took that as an answer that he can.

We're sitting around the bonfire and it's tremendous and he decided to start burning just broken branches and leaves and as he is doing it, he's making fun of Americans for bagging leaves. That's my dad.

We're sitting there. It's him, it's me, and it's my daughter, Sophia, we're sitting there. Every once in a while, my dad just out of nowhere, he just starts reciting poetry, Russian poetry.

He likes this guy Yevgeny Yevtushenko and he likes the guy because the guy wrote in Soviet times and the guy was a genius. No one knew that he was a genius until actually the Soviet Union fell apart because as then he could actually put his name on his stuff to get it published so he would publish everything anonymously.

One of the things that he published anonymously was he wrote a poem but he couldn't call it the monologue of a Russian or a Soviet writer so he called it a Monologue of an American Writer as if he's making fun of Americans. It's an American writer making fun of Americans but it's really a Soviet writer making fun of the Soviet Union. It's tremendous, it's genius. It's genius. So you should look it up.

But I'm going to cite a little bit to you in Russian and then I'll translate. And so you get the point, okay?

Мне говорят — ты смелый человек. Неправда. Никогда я не был смелым. Считал я просто недостойным делом унизиться до трусости коллег.

It's a poem about courage and people tell him, "You have courage," they tell me it's not true. I was never courageous. I simply felt it unbecoming to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.

Устоев никаких не потрясал. Смеялся просто над фальшивым, дутым. Писал стихи. Доносов не писал. И говорить старался всё, что думал.

I like that because it says, "I've shaken no foundations. I simply mock that pretense and inflation. I wrote articles, scribbled no denunciations. And I tried to speak all on my mind." Liked that.

О, вспомнят с чувством горького стыда потомки наши, расправляясь с мерзостью, то время очень странное, когда простую честность называли смелостью!

And that's his punchline and it goes like this. "Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame to remember when punishing vile acts at most peculiar time when plain honesty was labeled courage."

I want to meditate today on the word courage. Boldness. Are you courageous? Can you stand up and speak the truth to people who don't agree with you? Actually, people who despise the fact that there are even any people who believe what you believe. Imagine true Christian courage.

Like when the Pope... Bro, you are the boss of all the church, you're the Pope. You're the head guy and then you meet with the leader of the free world, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and you do not call him to repentance. Bro, that's the easiest... That's your only job. And he didn't.

So I'm calling the Pope to repentance. Both of them. And I'm calling Joe Biden to repentance. And Trump for that matter.

Here's how I view a good president. You know what my test is. Would I let this guy babysit my daughters? We haven't had a good one in a while. I want a president that cares about children, that cares about families, that cares about what's most important in life.

So I'm calling everyone to repentance. I'm on a mission. I'm calling the whole nation to repentance. Everybody. We all need to repent of our selfishness and our self-absorption because every single one of us we live as if this movie called life is about us, that you're the main character of the movie, of life.

You're not the main character. Maybe you're in the supporting cast. Jesus is the main. He's the point. He is the point of everything. We need to repent and follow Him.

Many of you are courageous when it comes to secondary issues. No, I just wrote a few down. Politics, COVID vaccines, the economy, deep state, big food, big pharma, big tech, big banks, all that stuff. You're very passionate about it which is good and I respect passion. I really do. Whatever your passion, I respect it. But I'm also passionate and let's have a conversation.

But the main thing I want to talk about is Jesus Christ. I wish you would channel some of that courage of speaking truth. I wish you would channel to speak a truth to yourself. Speaking truth to your family members.

I have a dream. You know what my dream is. I have a dream that every single man and woman in this church on a daily basis gets up wherever you live in your house, you take out a Bible, a really big one, not on the phone because your kids think you're watching YouTube. You take out a Bible visually, it's important, and you read something and you read it with conviction and you explain it to the people that you live with. "This is what it means." And then you talk about it and then you pray for each other.

If every single one of us did that in our homes on a daily basis, everything will change. This is how I parent my children. And then I turn on my little Bose speaker and then we have a worship dance party. That's what we do.

That's how I teach my girls that worshiping Jesus is awesome. Why wouldn't you?

So courage. Imagine if every single one of us viewed ourselves as missionaries, full-time missionaries, not mercenaries, missionaries who transform the world.

Practically, what am I saying? What am I saying? I am saying everyone should start throwing tremendous parties, house parties. This has been on my heart for a while because I wanted to do this thing where I want to invite the whole neighborhood to party so we have tremendous food and there's live band and then I get up and just tell a few jokes and call people to repentance. I have that dream.

But I do that in my house already. I invite people in and you say, "Do you have a verse, Jan?" Yeah. Look at Luke 14, 12 through 14.

He said also to the man, this is Jesus. He said also to the man who had invited him. So some rich guy invited Jesus to a party and Jesus, it's kind of savage, because the guy invites Jesus to a party and then Jesus is preaching to the guy that invited Him to a party and this is what Jesus said.

"When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you'll be repaid. But when you give a feast..." When. What's the assumption, dear church? "When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just."

Did you even know that was in the Bible? If someone told me when I was a kid, "Hey, Jesus, just wanted everyone to have a good time. Jesus just wanted everyone to have fellowship, friendship. You will be blessed." I challenge you, church, resolved to throw great parties.

You know who's really good at this? Tyler. Tyler and Allison Burns.

I was at their party for Thanksgiving. You got to talk to Tyler. You know what the first thing he said when I came to his house? You know what the first thing he said. He said, "The fridge's over there, the bathroom's over there. Make yourself at home." That's all I needed to hear.

Oh, and he has this couch that reclines. That was awesome. And we watched football and we had fellowship.

Music, food, drink, dessert conversation, warmth, love, destruction of strongholds, fire pits, bonfire, scripture, laughter, reflection. Let the word of God flow like wine. Make memories, bless people. And you say, "Oh, that's expensive." I know. I throw parties and whenever I throw a party, I got to feed at least six human beings to begin with.

Have you taken five females to the movies for a date? Have you ever done the calculation of how much that comes out to? With two tubs of popcorn? Have you ever? We watched Clifford The Big Red Dog. It was awesome. That's how my daughter at Ekaterina is sneaking a dog into our house.

This is how I grew up. The best part of church for me was the parties. The sermons were all in Russian. I didn't understand half of what was going on and we had a choir, which I...

You know what? I've been thinking about choirs. Choirs are awesome. I think we should bring them back. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud. Nate Young doesn't like that.

The parties were the best part of church. Every time we'd go to the park, we'd go to Lincoln woods. We throw a party after church. That was the best part because I was like, "Oh, this is what church is."

But they didn't call it a party. They call it общение, which is the most buzzkill kind of word that you can think of, which means fellowship. But it was actually a party.

If you remember the church when we got started, this is how we started the church we threw parties. We did apologetics the way apologetics was supposed to be done in the context of fellowship and friendship. When you could have a long conversation with someone, when I'm not just trying to win a debate and lose a friend, I want to continue the conversation at the next party where we can have full hearts of fellowship.

Dear Christian, people like to hang out with you. I say that because we live in a city of nerds which is awesome. When the nerds... You ever watched those old movies from the eighties when the nerds do awesome things? That's what I want this church to start doing. When the nerds start having a good time. Where was I going? Oh, yeah. I want to call you to repent of your being introverted, church. "Oh, I'm so introverted." I am too. If you really know me, this is hard work for me. And then I have to go home and sit in a room by myself and listen to Russian Orthodox chants.

There's no Bible verse being an introvert. Jesus literally said love people and have conversations with them. Get to know them, have parties. So I never want to hear the word introvert-extrovert ever again. I'm just going to gauge people about how faithful they are as Christians.

Okay. Now it's time for the text. 2 Corinthians chapter 10. And I assume you've done all the homework. I've created another study guide this week and if you follow along the study guide, everything else will just make so much more sense. If you didn't get the study guide, go to mosaicboston.com. There's a blog section. I've got the study guide in there in a link as well. It's in the newsletter. If you haven't subscribed. I did all the exegesis and now we'll just talk through the text.

2 Corinthians chapter 10:1. "I, Paul," St. Paul, "I treat you," the church that he started, "by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. I who am humble when face to face with you but bold toward you when I am away. Exclamation mark."

What's going on here? What's going on here is that St. Paul has changed his tone because sometimes if you want to be heard, you have to switch things up. You have to switch up your tone especially if you're talking to different people.

In chapters eight and nine of 2 Corinthians, he was talking about generosity. He was talking about gathering, a collection, finances for the herding church in Jerusalem. And so he was talking of faithful Christians because that's who loves to hear about giving. And now he switches his tone because now he's talking to the wolves in the church, the wolves who crept in in sheep's clothing and he's speaking differently to them because they are trying to undermine everything that he has faithfully done. So that's the tone change.

He starts by saying... Before he talks about boldness. He says, "I entreat you, I plead with you, I compel you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ." I want to come to you with gentleness. I want to come to you with meekness. I don't want to come with boldness, I can and boldness is the rail to have certainty in a matter, be confident, be courageous. Courageous to do what? What's Paul doing? He's taking on the wolves in sheep clothing.

In Clifford The Big Red Dog, I will allude to that movie because I just watched it and it's a classic. But there's a mean sheep. There's a sheep that looks really nice but it wants to kill you. It's a mean sheep. Well, St. Paul biblically speaking that's wolf in sheep's clothing, but St. Paul, this is fascinating to me, he doesn't just shoot the wolf. He pleads with the wolf. He tries to convert the wolf from being a mean sheep to a holy sheep. That's what he's trying to do.

Paul was meek and he was a gentle guy. Why? Because meekness and gentleness was Jesus' natural demeanor. Jesus was just a chill guy. He had a calm masculine presence that brought order to a chaotic world.

People like this when you're with them, just their presence calms everything in here. You have peace inside and you can create peace around you. That's why people wanted to hang out with Jesus. He was gentle. He was meek. That's why kids wanted to hang out with Jesus. Kids all the time saw that guy and say, "That guy's having a good time. I want to be close to him."

There's something about being a man of God or a woman of God where kids just want to hang out with you. You know me. I have a spiritual gift called being a baby whisperer. I said, "Give me a baby. I will put it to sleep." It's a calm presence.

But Jesus Christ could like... When Jesus would hug people, you knew that he really meant it and he could also suplex you. That's why the hug actually meant something more.

Jesus is bold. He is bold because he's gentle and when he sees someone hurting, the weak, he's bold in speaking and standing against it even to the point of death and that's why Jesus Christ died on across for us. He went to war.

Look, in a perfect world, you wouldn't need courage. But we don't live in a perfect world. If everyone was just a navy seal Christian, we could all just relax and just have a good time. They wouldn't have to be...

This is why I tell my girls. I'm like, "Can you just grow up a little? Because I can be more of myself around you if you just grow up a little, if I don't feel like I have to parent you all the time."

That's what St. Paul here is doing. He's like, "I want to come with meekness and humility and gentleness so we can just have fellowship. I don't want to come bringing discipline."

Meekness, gentle, humility. They weren't seen as virtues in Paul's day and the same today. But if you combine meekness and gentleness and humility and you also... A lot of us have that. But if you also add courage to actually say what everybody is thinking, to actually address the elephants in the room. If you know me, this is how I operate.

I was at Cane's Chicken yesterday, Raising Cane's. I wanted to finish off Thanksgiving well so I took my girls on a walk. Mom didn't know. I took them on a walk. "We're going on a walk. It's exercise, it's healthy." And then we got fried chicken.

But as we're in Raising Cane's, it's tremendous and the sauce, ah, slaps every time. I'm in line for 45 minutes because apparently you got to do the mobile order thing and people coming in and out and just grabbing stuff for mobile order. I'm like, "I should have... ahhh. Now I know."

Finally, the lines I move, I go up to the guy. I'm like, "Hey, man, can I help? Anything I can help with? I can't cook chicken, but I can pray for you. Can I..." And the guy's like, "Oh, the girl cashier, she just started." Oh my God. Okay.

But there was a guy next to me who had three kids and he was waiting for an hour and he was like, "Hey man, you just said out loud what everyone's thinking?" Like, "Yeah, that's what I do." It's my job to speak the truth with love and then I gave her a tip after. It's hard, I know.

But the point is you need courage. That's what he's saying. Verse two. "I beg of you that when I'm present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some of you who suspect us of walking, according to the flesh."

He's like, "You've seen the boldness. I can be bold. I don't want to use that tone. So please put your lives in order. Please put the church in order." That's what he's saying. And the more you submit, dear church and dear Christian, the more you submit your life to Christ, the less energy your spiritual leaders have to invest in leading you to follow Christ and the more energy we can focus on reaching the lost.

I view much of what we do here as defense. Defense. Defense. COVID, it was all defense, defense, defense. Can we just protect the church, protect the church, protect the... Defense, defense, def... I'm sick of playing not to lose. Can we actually score? Can we actually throw some touchdowns? You know what I'm saying? Can we actually run the ball? Can we actually see our relatives get saved? Can we see our colleagues, our neighbors, everybody, everybody around us, people we interact with? Can we just share the gospel with them? Throw a party.

And the reason why we could do a lot more being on the offense if people just didn't get so offended, no offense. Imagine how sick our offense could be if people in the church didn't get offended when Pastor Jan with his t-shirt. I don't know. "What was he saying? Is that political statement?" If you know me, that's not a political statement. But if you know me really well, you're like, "Yeah, that's probably a political statement, double meaning. I don't know. I'll get to it."

I am doing this intentionally. I want to ruffle all your feathers. I want offense so we can finally get past defense and we can actually go on offense.

Yeah, you see Hebrews 13:17. "Obey your leaders." I love this verse. I really do. Would you pray this verse over me and you? "Obey your leaders and submit to them." What a word.

Americans don't understand this verse. Slavic people understand this verse. Basically, people from any other part of the world except for America, they get this verse because we don't do honor here. "Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping over your souls as those who will have to give an account."

Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy and I, we take this seriously. I know I will stand before God and God will say, "Jan Vezikov, did you care for the souls, those I've entrusted to you?" I pray for you every day. I pray for you every day. And if you have a prayer request, text me, email me. I will pray specifically. I pray for you every day. I pour... My whole life, it revolves around this. My whole life. Every single waking second. Even when I sleep, I dream about church. Every single second, I'm like, "Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, please bless your church. Let them..." Yeah, we'll go there.

So if you have criticism, critical spirit, you can bring constructive criticism. You can coach... Coach me, coach me. I welcome the coach. If you want to criticize my question is, are you responsible for the church? Will you give an account to God for the church? And if you want to be in that position, I can help you get there. If not, well, no offense. Let's see some people get saved and then you continue to let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be no advantage to you.

That last part really blesses my soul because there've been seasons in my ministry where there's been a lot of groaning like, "Ah." People that know me now realize I have so much joy in this season of life. I think this is my favorite time of my whole life. I think if Jesus came back today and be like, "You know what? Good. Okay, my screen time was only an hour 27. Sweet. I think I'm ready to go, Jesus."

The point is just follow the Lord. And if false teachers continue to bring destructive diabolical, demonic, critical spirit into the church undermining, St. Paul says, "My reputation, my integrity. I'll come at them with spirit filled power and boldness. Courage." Do you have courage?

Hebrews... I'll do 2 Corinthians. There's the same word for boldness he uses earlier in the letter, 2 Corinthians 6:6 through 10 where he talks about dying. He says this. "So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body," while we're still here, "we are away from the Lord for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." Because I'd rather be dead because I'd be with Jesus, but I still have work to do.

"So whether we are home or away, we make it our aim to please Him for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body whether the good or evil."

Have you done enough for the Lord in the body that you're like, "Yes, Lord, I am ready for that second judgment?" First judgment is, did you believe in Jesus Christ? That's the first judgment. If you believe in Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, you will spend eternity in the house of God and a feast. And there's a work as well, but it's a party. Heaven is a party. Joy.

If you reject Jesus Christ, you will spend eternity in a place called hell. Hell, eternal, conscious suffering. I don't know how to make it even more clear than that. Fire and brimstone is that... Are you a Bible thumper? Fire, brimstone. Yeah, I am. It's in the Bible.

I believe in hell. This is why I weep over my lost friends. I weep over my lost family member. I weep. I weep because hell is real. People die on a daily basis and they're eternity apart from God. So have we done enough to get as many people in the house of God as we can?

Hebrews 13:6. "So we can confidently say," that's the same word, confidence, courage, it's confidence in the Lord and His word, "The Lord is my helper. I will not fear what can man do to me?"

I haven't done a C.S. Lewis quote in a while. So C.S. Lewis in Screwtape Letter says, "This courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions." Pilot was merciful till it became risky.

Lot of you are tremendous Christians in church and then you forget when you leave church.

By the way, I think church would make a lot more sense if people thought about church as like I was thinking about this as we were worshiping as an Irish bar. You ever been to a good Irish bar where they have a live band and a violin? They literally sing and there's people at the bar who are... Men sing from their bellies.

I was listening to Mark Driscoll. So I do this every single Saturday night. If you want to know what rhythm Pastor Jan gets, I listen to Mark Driscoll servant, every single... Because I'm in the ministry because of that guy. If you don't like that guy, he... I'm a church planter because of that guy because that guy is like, "Hey young men of the nation, we should plant churches to take over the nation." I was like, "Oh, that sounds like a good idea." And that's why I went to ministry.

I listened to that guy. He's in Arizona and he was talking about men in worship, men singing, and he said, "Men who can't sing at worship, they don't sing because they're emotionally constipated." I like, "Oh, that's a good way of thinking about it."

You can't express what's in here unless there's other spirits. Well, we have the Holy Spirit so why can't we express?

And Martin Luther says this, "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking. I'm not confessing Christ however boldly, I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. They have to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

This is why I do not get why people go to seminary and then go take pastoral jobs down south. I don't get that.

Why aren't the best of the be... I'm not even... I'm trying to be better. I'm not even that good at it. There's people who are so much better at preaching. There's people, there's some Christians who are so just phenomenally talented and they're in places where it's saturated with churches. There's more churches down south than there are Dunkin Donuts in Rhode Island.

I just want everyone to move to Boston, that's what I'm saying.

2 Corinthians 10:3, "For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh." That's what the critics were saying, the false teachers. They would come in and St. Paul here is saying, "They think I'm walking according to the flesh. They, my critics, think that what is happening, what I'm doing in my ministry is according to the flesh because they have in their mind, this idea of what it means to be a spirit filled person."

Oh, yeah, my dad told me to wear a tie today. I told him I'm going to wear a t-shirt. He said, "You got to wear a tie." Say, "I'm not going to wear a tie because it points people to hell. I want to point people to heaven." If I'm going to wear anything, it's going to be a bow tie. It's funny. He said, "No, it's a noose. It's a noose that you are in submission of Jesus Christ." I said, "Oh, in that case, I'm going to put a yoke on me," because Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you." Literally, he said that.

So what I'm saying is there's no picture in the Bible of what it means to be a spiritual person. That's why these false teachers who had an idea of a religious person, they've got the garb, they've got special hairstyle, and then you see someone who's not like that and you're like, "Ah, you're probably in the flesh and you're just doing what every other person does. You judge a book by its cover."

St. Paul uses the word flesh, sarx, and he's like, "I'm not living a rebellious life. I'm living a spirit filled life." And yes, St. Paul did have a sinful flesh and he would ask himself every morning, he'd get up and he'd say, "Am I in the spirit right now? Am I in the flesh or am I in the Holy Spirit?" And then from the outside, he just looked like a regular guy.

I think if St. Paul walked in, you look at him. Oh, that's a nice congenial gentleman. You would not think this is the guy who influenced the world like no one else after Jesus Christ. He just looked like a normal dude and that's why his words, written word, was more compelling to people because he communicated with such depth that it takes time, energy, humility, prayer, and meditation to understand and receive.

And the only way to win spiritual battles, this is a lesson here, is not to wage war with the flesh. A lot of us, we see everything that's going on around us. They're like, "Yeah, I'm going gun shopping." That's a different conversation for a different day.

That's not the real war. The real war is men and women of God on their knees, begging God for the Holy Spirit, studying scripture, just eating up... A lot of you don't understand scripture I've realized because you're not a big eater because you don't really expend a lot of energy. There's a lot of people like that. I've never had...

My kids, they just eat everything. Everything you put in front of them and then they go and expend all the energy, studying and running and playing music, making jokes, writing. They just work all day. I like living like that.

Well, when you actually do the Christian stuff, you expend energy and then you get really hungry and then you take the scriptures and you devour it, chapters at a time. You devour sermons, you devour worship music. You are in the spirit all the time.

I was re-listening to last week's sermon and I realized in the same way that I have typos in my newsletters. That's why I send them to my brother who caught two typos and then one he missed. But I realize when I preach, when I verbal process, I have typos that come out sometimes and I need to edit them. I said that David took on Goliath and 1 Kings 17, it's actually 1 Samuel 17. But in my mind, I mix them up 1 Samuel, 1 Kings because in the Russian Bible, there's no Samuel. There's 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 3 Kings, 4 Kings that's why.

What I'm saying is you got to be in the word. You got to study the word. I dare you. I want you to know the word better than I do. I want you to know the word better than I do. I challenge you. 2 Corinthians 10:4 and 5, "For the weapons of our warfare," weapons, strateia in the Greek, we get the word strategy from it. We get stratagem from it, strateia, warfare. He uses that word, warfare. It's a military campaign designed to achieve a specific objective in a foreign country. Huh? That's interesting. In a foreign country.

And then he uses the word power. "For the weapons of our warfare, not of the flesh, but have divine power, dunatos..." You know what power is in the Greek? Skills or qualification to do something well. Power is skills or qualifications to do something well.

I pray, dear church, that you developed a skillset to dismantle strongholds that people have against believing in Jesus Christ. power to destroy. Destroy.

This is a fascinating word, katharsis, because we get cathartic from it. It's interesting because the word destroy is cathartic and that doesn't really make sense to you if you've never did demolition.

You ever watch like HDTV and they demo a house? I've demoed a house where I live. I demoed it. I know the satisfaction that you feel when you have a sledgehammer in your hands.

I think the church would really bond if we bought a big house that we demoed together. I think we would really bond over that just to see how people work together.

"So destroy strongholds," he says. A stronghold is a strongly fortified defensive military structure. So he says, "People have in their minds strongholds, in their hearts strongholds to keep them from obeying Jesus Christ, following Jesus Christ." So we, Christians, need to go to war against the strongholds. We need to destroy them with divine power. That's what he said.

"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ."

What a rich text. He's saying, "The strongholds are any idea, any opinion, any ideology, any world view that stands against Christ, that keeps people from obeying Christ, knowing God. Anything that gets in the way, anything that obfuscates faith in God."

To do this, we must know the word of God inside and out. "Wield the holy sword of God's word against the demonic ideas."

Some ideas are fully true, those ideas are from God. Some things are fully true. A lot of things are partially true and those things are from Satan because Satan presents half-truth as a full truth which makes it a sinister lie.

Lessons start with yourself on a daily basis. "Take every single thought captive." You're listening to the radio. A song comes on. You're like, "What is that song about?" Just imagine if one of my daughters was in the car when you're listening to that song and my daughters very inquisitive and they say, "Dad, what is that song about?" They listen to the words or a show or a movie or a book or your favorite pundit.

Be very careful of who you let influence you, of what voices you let into your house or what voices your children are listening to or what voices your spouse is listening to.

Adam. Adam, you should have been careful. You shouldn't have let Eve listen to that podcast run by Satan. That's what he's saying.

And let me give you a weapon real quick. It's an Uzi. This is a submachine gun. Warren W. Wiersbe, 699. That's the price in the back. It's probably cheap on Amazon. Read this. The Strategy of Satan: How to Detect and Defeat Him. This book is really, really tremendous. This lady from my CG, nice sweet lady, gave this to me.

Chapter one, the deceiver. Satan's target, your mind. Satan's weapon, lies. Satan's purpose, to make you ignorant of God's word. Your defense, the inspired word of God.

It's everything I'm saying. He just says it better. So I challenge you to read this and talk about it at your CG.

You know what's a fun game to play? I play this game all the time. One second. Hydration's really important.

I play this game all the time of I think through non-Christians in my life who have influenced me like no one else. I think about the strongholds in their mind and in their heart and I think about how I would dismantle those strongholds. I think about that. I think about that with my best friends.

One of the reasons I became a church planner is because I wanted a church that I could invite my friends to and my best friends growing up...

Let's start with my roommate from college, Dave. I won't say his last name. But we lived in a Jewish fraternity together. He was a brother and I was a cousin because I'm not Jewish.

So Dave and I, we lived together for three years in college and I would share the gospel with him all the time. I still do. Whenever he calls, I'm like, "Dave, can you just repent and we can be brothers for eternity please?"

I want to say to Dave, "Dave, man, you're not really Jewish. You're Jew-ish. You don't even know your own scriptures, man. If you're really Jewish, can you please read your own scriptures so I can talk to you about Isaiah 53? So I can talk to you about Psalm 22, about Psalm 110, about Psalm 16, that they all point to Christ. Can we just talk about that? Dave, you are the smartest person I've ever met but can you please do some homework about the most important question that there is." So that's why I would say to Dave.

My friend, Keith, we grew up together. We wrestled together and we were co-captains of the wrestling team together. When you wrestle a man, you really get to know him. You feel their power. Keith, he was always the man. This guy grew a beard in sixth grade. He was Irish. I always coveted that and I broke all kinds of commandments. I was like, "I want a beard..."

He looks like Matt Damon. He looks like Matt Damon Good Will Hunting. So I would say... Now he lives in California. I watch him on Instagram. He does CrossFit workouts. He's got two beautiful boys. I pray for his family. And all I want to say to him is like, "Keith, you're the man. You are such a good person. You are a better person than I am in many ways." I'm working on it. "Imagine how effective, how powerful you would be if you submitted your sword to Jesus Christ."

Craig, my boy, Craig, we grew up together. Another Jewish guy who... A big heart. Loves people. Just loves people. And I just want to tell him, "Craig, you're almost there. You just need to welcome in Jesus Christ into your life. That's the missing piece."

My friend, Narath, Narath is funny because Narath made me the president of the national honors society as a joke. I'd say this because Narath, we gathered together senior class and the teacher just got up and she said, "Who you nominate to be president of the national honors society?" Narath just got up. He said, "I nominate Jan Vezikov." I was like, "What?" And then all my friends were like, "Yeah, Jan would be a great pre..." And that's how I got into college. So Narath, thank you.

Narath is the kindest guy I've ever met. He's so kind. I just want to say, "Narath, you're not the kindest person in the world. Jesus Christ is. You need to repent of your sin."

I think about my cousin, Serge. He's the smartest guy I've ever met. If Elon Musk for Russian, that's my cousin, Serge. I pray for him. I pray... He's such a great guy. He bakes bread. Just a great guy. He works for Amazon. I want to tell Serge, "Hey man, if you came to church, man, we probably could figure out a way to take over the world for Jesus Christ. You got to set your ambitions higher. You got to get in the word."

I think about other voices that influence me, Jordan Peterson. I figure out if I sat with him how could I help disciple him. I don't know if he's a Christian. I heard he recently became...

Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle is a Muslim. He's a Muslim. He's a genius. I want to sit down with him and like, "Hey man, can you just be a true Muslim? Because you know what the Quran says, the Quran says to actually listen to what Jesus Christ said. Can you just do that? You can't be a true Muslim if do not read the New Testament. You can't do it. You can't do it, Dave."

Biden, I wonder what I would say to Biden. Let's not get too political.

Tom Brady. This is what I'd say to Tom Brady. Maybe like, "Hey man, how's your marriage? Because I get it, man. You're married to a beautiful strong-willed international woman. She doesn't want you to play football anymore and you just keep..." That's the angle that would take.

The thing is I do this all the time. I do this just for fun.

Last one, last one. I've got a whole list here. My favorite Russian rapper is Oxxxymiron because he's actually a philosopher. He went to Oxford and he got a degree in literature and then he just started doing philosophy with rap, Russian rap, which is really difficult to do.

I've known him. I followed his work. He stopped producing in 2015 and then two months ago or a month ago, he came up with a 10-minute song talking about the past 10 years of his life and that was meaningful to me because I was reflecting on the past 10 years of my life in ministry at Mosaic and I was like, "That's weird."

He has this song where he's got this one line and first of all, this is how I share the gospel with him. His dad's name is Jan and I'd be like, "Yo, Oxxxy, Jan Vezikov Ян, как твоего батью. Слышь." He's got one line in that song where he says, "Я так не хотел стоять десять секунд на коленях Что в итоге стоял на них десять лет ."

He talks about the fact that because he didn't want to stand on his knees for 10 seconds he's been standing on his knees for 10 years. I just want to be like, "Hey man, can you just get on your knees for 10 seconds, repent of your sins, and then you can get up. Jesus just forgives you all of your sins, shame, guilt, everything."

I think about these people and I'm like, "What would it take for them to hear me out? What would it take for me to end up on a Joe Rogan podcast, tell them about Jesus Christ and have three hours to do it?" That's what I pray about. This is the things I think about. This is how much I care about evangelism.

So I've got home work for you. Your homework is this church. Send me an email with how you would share the gospel with the most influential non-Christians in your life. Would you do that for me in the email with one, two, three, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Non-Christians in your life and how you would share the gospel with them. This is serious. This is really serious so that I can start speaking to them with your language so that you can actually start bringing your friends to church. You got it? Write that down. Homework.

Okay. 2 Corinthians 10:6, "Being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete." He talks about church discipline here. I don't have time to get into it. But church discipline, there's positive church discipline. This is what we're doing, teaching, exhorting from the scripture. We're teaching, teaching, teaching. And then there's negative. There's negative discipline. There's actions that spiritual fathers need to take because they love their spiritual children.

A lot of fathers don't understand fathering, if you don't understand the concept of discipline, but there have to be consequences for rebellious behavior. Meditate on Hebrews 12 where he talks about God being a loving father who disciplines His children. That's an important category.

2 Corinthians 10:7, "Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is Christ, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ so also are we." He's saying, "Look at the data. I'm a Christian, you're a Christian. Don't just judge me by looks, skin color, ethnicity, background." The whole world wants to do that. He's like, "Can you just look at the heart like God does not at the outward appearances?"

2 Corinthians 10:8-9, "For even if boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed. I do not want to appear to be frightening with my letters."

This is fascinating because he talks about influence and he talks about authority that God gives spiritual influence, God gives spiritual authority and we are to use it to build people up, to build up their souls, to build up their faith, to build up their heart, to build up their families, to build up their life. We're called to be builders. A lot of Christians don't understand Christianity because they don't understand building. The gospel is like demo. You go in, you demo everything, and then you rebuild that. A lot of Christians stop there and they're like, "Okay, we did the demo. Now we're going to live in a house that's down to the studs." You can't live in a house like that. That's not comfortable. And then you rebuild. That's what he's talking about, that we are given authority, we are given influence.

Over whom has God given you influence? There are people that you can speak to that I can never speak to, there are people that you just know their language. You're just on the same wavelength with them in waves that I will never be so use that influence to destroy strongholds. Do you use the authority God has given you to build up those under your authority?

2 Corinthians 13:10, "For this reason, I write these things while I am away from you that when I come I may not have to be severed in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for the building up and not for tearing down."

So what he says at the end of the letter? He's like, "I want to build you up. I want to build you up." 2 Corinthians 10:10, "For they say, 'His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account." What's fascinating here is they judged his power by his looks and that's not how the Holy Spirit works. He says, "Don't look at my outward... Listen to the words, listen to the heart. Focus on the ideas. Focus on the truth."

Verse 11, "Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent we do when present. Not that we dare classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding."

Saint Paul says, "I do not care what people think about me." That's where his courage came from. "I don't care. I don't care what people think of me. All I care is about what God thinks of me. I want to submit completely to the God of the universe, the king of king." St. Paul just says, "I'm good soldier. I don't care about self-commendation because self-commendation is self-condemnation." Or you look for praise from people. "What are people going to think? What are people..." Who cares? Who cares?

When you worship, I pray that you, at Mosaic, you worship the way you worship at home. If you want to get on your knees, get on your knees. If you want to just exuberantly worship, exuberant... If you want to just scream at the top of your lungs, you just tone it down a little bit or come up here and then the music rounds you out and it's awesome. That's what he's saying.

2 Corinthians 10:13, "But we will not boast beyond limits, but we'll boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us to reach even you." So God assigns the influence. Many of you haven't asked for more influence. "God send me more influence. God make me a person that when I speak, people hear my words, they hear my heart so I can communicate from my heart to their heart."

Verse 14, "For we are not overextending ourselves as though we did not reach you, for we were the first to come all the way to you with the gospel of Jesus Christ."

What's fascinating is that St. Paul every once in a while reminds people of how much he sacrificed for them to become Christians.

You know what kind of church I want to go to? I want to go to church where the guy up there is the guy who sacrifices the most for the church. I want to go to church like that. "Oh. Oh, you really believe in stuff?" Yeah. "Oh, you made life decisions where you sacrificed things." Yeah.

2 Corinthians 10:15, "We do not boast beyond on limits in the labors of others. But our hope is that your faith increases and our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged." That's all. He's like, "All I want is your faith to grow. I just want your faith to grow. I want your faith in God to grow. And when your faith in God grows, then the influence of spirit filled Christians grows in your life because you begin to sense that when they speak, they speak from a place where they're filled with the Holy Spirit, spiritual influence grows to the degree that you help people grow in their faith."

Verse 16, "So that we may preach the gospel and lands beyond you without boasting of work already done in another's area of influence. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord."

Historically, St. Paul wanted to go to Spain. That was his great ambition. He was ambitious to go preach the gospel where it was never preached and he wanted to go to absolutely the Western point of Europe and Clement of Rome. Writing at the end of the first century claims that Paul traveled to the furthest point limit of the west which is how people refer to Spain in those days. He's just want to do something great for God.

2 Corinthians 10:18, "For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends." So the only approval that matters is the Lord's.

I read from Luke 14, I'm coming in for a landing, I'm doing a text and then conclusion. Luke 14, we read that in the beginning, verse 15, "When one of those," Jesus at the feast, "who reclined at table with Him heard these things. He said, 'Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.' But he said to him, 'A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time..." it's like if we threw a member's party for Christmas on December 4th and we got brisket and all that and it's like if the members just don't come, it's like that. That's a nice plug for that members' party and for you to come. It's going to be tremendous.

"At that time for the banquet, he sent a servant to say to those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything's now ready,' but they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I bought a field. I bought a field and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused."

I don't know what the real estate market was back then but maybe it's like today where it's like you like a place and there's 14 offers on the first open house. So like he bought a field and he didn't even go see the field which is a terrible excuse. So that's the first thing he did. "Please have me excused."

"And another said, 'I've bought five yoke of oxen. I go to examine them. Please have me excused." Buying a car that you've never seen?

"And another said, 'I've married a wife and therefore I cannot come." That one I get, I understand that one. I don't want to go to that party. Okay. All right.

"So the servant came and reported these things to the master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, 'Go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.' And the servant said, 'Sir, what you commanded has been done and still there is room.' And the master said to the servant, 'Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in," Compel, persuade people to come in, "that my house may be filled for I tell you none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet."

That's how Jesus Christ talks about evangelism. He talks about evangelists throwing a feast and inviting everyone who can never return the favor. Imagine if we caught that vision.

I challenge you this week. Invite someone over who cannot return the fa... And let me just say a word. If you live in Boston, a lot of us, we struggle with this thing called real estate shame. You're ashamed of your place. You're ashamed of your kitchen. You're ashamed of your bathroom. You wish it was bigger. You wish it was nicer.

Let me tell you something. I was talking to an old brother this week and he said, "None of that matters." I was like, "Oh." He's like, "Yeah, yeah. It's just a fellowship that matters." Like, "Oh." "Yeah. Yeah. Who cares?"

Okay. Now I'm going to, in conclusion, explain my t-shirt. It's not a political statement because I'm a pastor. It's a prayer. I can't do this. Make America born again? I can't do it. So I'm begging God. Lord, send Your Holy Spirit. Regenerate souls. Lord, make everyone a Christian. You've done it before. You've done on a day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit just comes. Fire from heaven. Lord, make America born again.

And so this is my campaign. If I were ever president, I would run a campaign called make America born again. I can't be president because I wasn't born here so unless we change some rules, if you know some people.

This would be my campaign speech. I would say this. I'd say, "America, we're not having a good time. A lot of you just aren't very fun. America, can we all just be people that people want to hang out with? Can we all just be kind and gentle and humble? Can we all just hang out together?" That's what I'm saying. I was watching an Asian comedian this week. He was hilarious and he said that his mission was to reconcile white people and black people and that's meaningful to me because God said our job is to reconcile all people with God and that's where world peace begins, where people repent of sin, and they stand before God, they humble themselves and God fills your heart with love and then you can love people.

You know who I like to hang out with? I like to hang out with people who let me be myself but they don't keep me there. They challenge me to grow, to grow in my love for God, understanding of God, love for people, love for the gospel, love for the kingdom of God.

I like to hang out with people who have the courage to challenge me and whenever anyone does, I say the Russian word davai. Davai means let's go because I want to feel your power. I want to feel your influence. I do want you to change my mind.

That's why I like parties where you can just talk about everything. Politics, religion, everything, just everything. You love the people. You talk about family, how to raise son and daughters, how to invest, how to increase your bench, how to build a business, how to build empires and submission to the king.

So if I were running for president, my only agenda would be America, would you do me a favor and invite your neighbor over for a party. That's my only agenda and invite Jesus too.

Some of you are great at throwing parties but you forget Jesus. So invite Jesus too and have Jesus be the king of that party and pray for the people that do come before the meal. It doesn't have to be awkward. Just get up and say, "You know what? In this house we worship Jesus Christ and we love you so much that we invite..." They're going to eat your food so they're going to bear with you for a little bit and you say, "Don't hold the hands thing." I get sweaty palms when people... Just raise your hands man of God and women of God and just pray for you, pray for everybody by name.

You came to my house. Yeah, I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to pray for you to get saved. You can repent of your sin. And if it comes in a prayer, it doesn't feel like it's evangelism so you can go as long as you want. And you like, "Lord, I know that this person's stronghold and they don't believe in Jesus Christ because they have all these issues," and you just dismantle them in the prayer and you're saying Jesus' name and then you eat the meal and they're like, "Hey, what did you just do in that prayer?" And you're like, "Oh, let's talk about it."

That's my only agenda. How do we make America born again by making America pray again, getting on our knees as a nation, on both knees, and begging God, please forgive us of our sins and when you do, God forgives you and He's awesome and following Him is tremendous, but it's also the hardest thing you'll ever do because anything worth doing is difficult. But by the divine power of God, you can do it. I believe in you. If I can be a Christian, anyone can be a Christian. That's what I'm saying. And it's a miracle. And the Holy Spirit is with you.

Would you rather hang out with someone who makes things sad or do you want to hang out with someone who makes things fun?

There's a lot of people that can make fun things sad but Jesus Christ is the king of making sad things fun. Satan takes fun things, he just ruins them. He ruins sex. He ruins money. He ruins a good tie. He just ruins everything. He makes good things sad. Jesus Christ makes sad things fun. He's the king of it. Jesus is the master of taking the saddest moment. Good Friday, Jesus Christ dies on a cross and he's put in a tomb, cold, dark, dank tomb and He turns Good Friday into Easter Sunday.

He's the king of turning sadness into fun. He turned the cross into conquering power, conquering death with resurrection power. He's the master of turning what is meant for evil into good. He's the master of turning sinners into saints. He is the master. He's the boss of turning destruction into rebuilding. And he's the only doctor who can heal our broken heart. Let's pray for healing.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this time and the holy word. Jesus, we love You. We thank You. You gave everything to love people so that they could meet God, have their sins forgiven. I pray for our city. I pray for our state. I pray for our nation. I pray for the world. Pour out your spirit in a way that You have never poured it out and use us in the process. Ignite a fire in our hearts, burning zeal, to share the gospel, share our lives, and share our hearts with the people that You have given us into our lives, under our influence. And we thank You in advance. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning and welcome to Mosaic. I'm Jan one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. We're so glad that you are with us. A couple things if you're new or even if you're not, I worshiped from the front today, and I did that... I usually worship from the back, because I'm like, I'm distracting and all this. But then Raquel who's on staff here. My girl Raquel, she said, "Do you want to teach the men at the church to worship God, and start worshiping God from the front?" And then she sent me a haka dance. She's like, "That's the way you're supposed to worship God." I'll be doing that once in a while. I'll switch things up.

Second thing I want to communicate is my T-shirt. I've been trying to speak from the heart and it's hard. So I'm going to wear what I want to say. I'm going to wear it on my heart, and I'm going to switch this up. If you've got a T-shirt that you're like, "Pastor Jan, this should be on your heart." Just give me that T-shirt. So this one, the Holy Spirit sent me this week. It's an astronaut and he's holding the Earth and it says love. And it's meaningful to me because Elon Musk believes that the world is so broken, that the only way to save humanity is to go to Mars. And I want to call Elon to repentance and to tithe. But repentance in particular because no, if God hasn't given up yet, then we shouldn't either. And there's power to fixing, the power is the love of God poured out through the Holy Spirit.

With that said, would you please pray with me. And I wrote up prayer, a pastoral prayer. Heavenly Father we come to you in the name of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray that you stir our hearts to love, and stir our hearts for good works. Make us a church that seeks to stir up one another lovingly, but courageously to live lives of absurd generosity. The kingdom of God, the Gospel work in this region of the nation. Lord, I pray that you stir up every member of this church, every Christian attender, every former member, and every former attender, anyone who loves and cares for this church, and for this spiritually dark part of the nation. Lord stir us up to be ridiculously, nonsensically, extravagantly, holistically, generous, and only your Holy Spirit can do this. And Jesus, we look to your sacrifice on our behalf. We see that you sacrificed everything in obedience to the Father to save us, to pay our debts, to give us access to the throne room of God, access to the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.

And we pray turn our theological, our theoretical generosity into true, practical, genuine, real generosity. Where we are ready to cut fat checks, where we are ready to make sizable wire transfers, where we truly go all in. Burn in sin, greed, and covetist, and selfishness, and fear of future out of our hearts, engulf our hearts with the Holy Spirit. God you are a giver. You have everything. And you have given everything to save us because you love us. So make us Godly givers who are ready to give everything to you because everything is yours to begin with. And we pray all this in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I've sent out a study guide. It was seven pages. I wrote it from the heart. I wrote my own commentary. I did all the exegesis. Chloe was so kind as to format it and make it look pretty. I also have a 13-page manuscript of all my thoughts and they're coherent. If you'd like the whole thing, I'll send that to you as well. And I'm just going to speak from the heart today. We'll see how it goes. I pray the Holy Spirit stirs your heart as well. My wife told me, Tanya, she came to church today, praise God. We had a little situation because I wore a T-shirt last week. But she liked this T-shirt, she liked the sermon. It was tremendous. And she said to me, "What are you preaching on?" I said, "I'm preaching on money. I'm preaching on..." She said, "Don't preach about money. So you're stirring stuff up already. Why are you preaching on?"

I'm like, "It's the next text? I'm just going verse by verse." And she said, "But everyone is going to think that you're trying to get them to give you their money." And I went like this because I go like this when I'm trying to explain something. When I get really sad, and then I'm angry, and then I pray for the Holy Spirit of baptize the anger and turn it into the zeal. And when I explain it, I was like, "Tanya, do you know what opportunity cost is?" Opportunity cost is when you're 23 making 75 grand a year in 2006, and you quit everything because you came up with a crazy idea that God called you, but God called you. And then you're like, "The CIA can't win the battle for hearts and mind, so let's do it. So we are going to do it ourselves."

And opportunity cost is like all the income that you give up because you go to seminary, and then you got to pay for the seminar. You got to live while you're in seminary, you can have a baby in seminary, and then you go another seminary, and then you go third seminary. Opportunity cost. The point is, I'm not doing it for the money. It doesn't pay that well. I am doing this to be faithful to the Lord. He called me and He said, "I got a word for you and I will prophesy from this word." Whatever the fallout, I care, but I don't. I care too much about what's best for you, so I don't care about ruffling just some of the feelings because no one has ever hurt your feelings. To tell you the truth I'm here to hurt some feelings. So okay, you get the point.

We are in a tremendously... Oh, the other thing I was going to say, I forgot this in the first service. If you don't get anything that I say read the study guide, and read the text, and then re-listen to the sermon because I realized that I make a much better second impression. Sometimes I make a better third impression. So just listen and just hear my heart. That's the first thing. The other thing I told Tanya, I was like, "Hey Jesus, talked more about money than about hell because if you love money more than God you are going to hell." So I'm calling every one of us to repent of greed and covetness. That we're a tremendously filled, Holy Spirit filled sermon series through 2nd Corinthians, if you don't believe me go back and listen to it. It's really tremendous. I've been really blessed by Holy Spirit stirring something in my heart.

And so the context of this book is, and we called it prodigal church because St Paul plants this church in court, they get saved. And they get saved miraculously. They live in a very pagan town, sexually immoral, driven by greed and money, money, money, money, money is at the center of everything. These people get saved. St. Paul leaves, and what happens is the church goes prodigal. They were in the Father's house. They were enjoying the Father's riches, His lavish grace, His lavish forgiveness, His lavish generosity. And then they decided to take God's grace, His riches, and then go live a life of sorted sin because they believe, "Well, God forgives me anyway." And they took God's genuine lavish grace, and they made it cheap grace. So St. Paul writes them and he calls them back to repentance. And he is like, "Hey, you don't understand grace. Grace isn't just a get out of hell free card, so you can sin as much as you want, live any way you want. You come back to Jesus whenever you choose."

So God allows the prodigal sometimes to end up in a pig stay, to come to his senses, to run back to God. God is waiting, arms wide open. And he welcomes the guy in, His younger son into a party. So that's at the heart of everything St. Paul is saying. So he writes them again in 2nd Corinthians, and he is like, "It's time church that we grow up from being takers." Take, take, take, take, take, mooches, and turn into givers. From being prodigal children taking from the father to prodigal children, the true definition of the word giving. Giving to the work of God. My wife and I, we have four daughters. And anytime we meet anyone who has fewer than four children, we usually hear a comment like this. "Oh, they're going to be so happy when they grow up, because they're going to have each other."

And it's true and I try to teach my girls, "Hey, you got to be generous with one another." Bible story last night, before we pray and go to sleep, it was this. God loves a cheerful giver. "Be cheerful givers to one another girls, because there'll be a time that mom and dad are not here. Be generous to one another." Well, the family of God is just like that. So if you are an only child, and you join this church family, we will love you like family, like siblings. You're my brother. You're my sister. You have needs. Let us help. That's what the family of God is. We're a family after all, aren't we? So that's where St. Paul starts. And he starts with the assumption that you've been saved because of Jesus Christ.

He though being rich became poor so that you might become rich for his name sake, rich in every way that matters. We're going to walk through the text together verse by verse. 2nd Corinthians chapter nine, verse one. "Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints." Superfluous means redundant, means unnecessary. If you don't know what that word means, go on my Facebook or Instagram. I got a picture where I wear... In 2011 where my neck was really thin, and I used to hide it with a scarf, and they called it, and you wrap it around. They called a superfluous scarf. You don't need that. It's redundant. And he says, "I don't have to write to you about the ministry for the saints. You already know. You already know." This is what I'm trying to communicate to the church, Mosaic, you know so much.

And if you're like, "I don't think I know enough." There's 10 years of sermons online where I pour my heart and soul, Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy, we pour our heart and soul into those sermons. You want to know more, go listen. That's why in the newsletter I did that sermon from Nehemiah from 2012. It blessed my heart. I was listening to it, and my daughters Sophia came downstairs and she's like, "Hey, can you put the pastor down because I'm trying to sleep?" I was like, "Sophia. Who is that?" She's like, "Oh no, dad. No. Tell me that's not you." "Yeah, that's me." I talk like this now, because that's what Boston does to you.

"It's superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints." Ministry is the service. And he's talking about generosity, that's ministry. So if people are like, "Well, you're in ministry, your..." Every single one of us, every member ministry. And he's talking about for the needs of the saints, ministry for the saints. Who is he talking about? He's talking about the church in Jerusalem. The church in Jerusalem where it all started. Where the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost poured out his Holy Spirit upon the church, transformed their lives. They started selling real estate. They started selling their land. They started selling everything, and bringing it to the apostle's feet. Because they're like, "It changed my life. The world needs the Gospel. Here you go."

And I'm not saying you should sell everything and bring it to the feet of Christ, but I am. Because if every single one of us, we actually sold everything that we have and pulled our money together we'd finally get the church building that we need, with a school. It's a campus now. The vision is growing in my heart. It's a campus. It's like Harvard. We just own the whole thing. And we have housing for every member. If you're a member of the church, this is just my dream, bear with me, where it's free housing for couples, for singles. But if you are a married couple and if you want to live here, well you have to adopt an orphan from the city, and you have to raise them in the Lord, and you have to disciple them, and you have to send them to our school.

The MBA, Mosaic Boston Academy. That's what I call it. Where did you go? I got an MBA from MBA. It's in my heart. Imagine if we actually believed that the Gospel changes everything. You know what I was thinking of this week? If everybody became a Christian, we could fix all the problems in the world. And Christian is the only one that can do it. The only one. If you imagine any other world religion. Okay. Everybody is a member of that religion. Is that a world I want to live in? Everyone is a spirit filled Christian. So men are spirit filled, so that dad don't have to worry about you doing something to one of their daughters. My daughter Sophia was telling me about health class. And the teacher, her health teacher was teaching them about date rape drugs. Like, "Hey class, if you ever go to a party and someone gives you a drink, say no thank you, because they might have slipped a drug in it."

I was like, "Sophia, get me in the class please. And I'm going to tell, "Girls, how about this? How about we don't go to parties where someone might offer you a drink with a drug to then rape you."" I used to say, I don't believe in litigating morality. I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe that anymore. Because everyone is litigating morality. I believe in litigating morality because God gave us 10 commandments to litigate everyone's morality. They're right there. They're in the Hebrew. Look it up. Exodus. I want everyone to become a Christian. That's what I want. I evangelize to absolutely everyone I meet. Everyone I call them to Jesus. Please.

I'm at the point where I've been attending the Brookline town meetings on Zoom. And they were three meetings and I went to two of them. The first one, they let me speak what was on my heart. And they showed everyone in the room and I was just going and everyone is like, yeah, on the screen. So I can see the people are with me. I'm a man of the people. The second one, they blocked all of the screens, so I couldn't get that energy. The third one, they wouldn't let me speak because they can't handle the smoke. So now I'm at the point where it's like, "You know what? I think I'm going to run for the town board. I think I'm going to run for it." Because there's got to be a dad on the board who thinks like a dad and cares for the children of the town. Because the town members do not have children. They don't care about. They're making decisions that are impacting my children.

So the point is, the ministry for the saints we should care about. What's the saint? What is he talking about? He's not talking about people who are absolutely holy, but the very second you become a Christian, you are a saint. It's an office. He moves you into that office on the outside door. It says you are saint, and that is your ministry. The saints need help where the Gospel actually got started. Verse two, "For I know your readiness of which I boast you to the people of Macedonia saying that Achaia has been ready since last year, and your zeal has stirred up most of them." I know your readiness. The readiness here is a military term. But you are soldiers of God. You know what the mission is. When you live like that, you begin to understand...

A lot of people don't even understand Christianity because they think, "All right, I get saved. And now I have a book and I have to learn it, and I just got to be a nerd. And I got to be a scholar, a biblical scholar. That's what a Christian is." Pastor Andy, who I love with my whole heart. He called me today. Was the biggest compliment. It was kind of talking trash, but he loves me, so it was a compliment because when you really love someone, you tell them what you think. He called me a Russian Rhode Island, Guido, nerd, bro.

And I used to think of Christianity, yeah, it's very nerdy. You got to be a nerd to be a Christian. You got to study the Greek and the Hebrew, you got to do all this. And then I realized nerds don't change the world. Nerds do not transform the world unless you're Elon Musk. But even he started taking testosterone. What I'm saying is, you really have to believe. For Christianity to makes sense, you really have to believe that the very second you become a Christian you get thrown into the arena as a gladiator and God gives you a sword.

You're not thrown into a lecture hall. You're thrown a world where this only makes sense if you were actually doing it, if you're trying to do it and you realize how helpless you are apart from God. So your readiness of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonian. St. Paul knew their generosity, they got saved, and they were giving everything away. He goes to Macedonian plants the church there, and he tells them, "Hey, you know what happened in Corinth?" And no one could believe it because Corinth was like Boston. Whenever anyone comes to visit Mosaic from another part of the country, I always tell them, "Hey, when you go home, can you please send greetings from the saints in Boston?" And they always laugh. Because it's absurd to think of Bostonians as saints. You don't think of Bostonians as saints unless they got a gun to your head.

Saint Paul is saying, "I went to Macedonia. I told everyone you're saints. I told everyone you're generous, now please make sure that you actually live up to the zeal. Your zeal has stirred up most of them." You know what zeal is. It's a fiery passion for God. You're just on fire for God. Lord I really do want to be used by you. Lord I'm all in. Lord fill me with the spirit. Lord there's no part of my life that I am holding back from you. You take it all, take it. That's zeal. And when people see someone with zeal, you know I have happens? They're like, "Oh, maybe I should actually like care a little bit." You feel the zeal, and you're like...

The thing is when you feel zeal, you're not going to stir everyone. And this is fascinating. Your zeal has stirred up most of them. You're not going to stir everyone up. So this is why I say move with the movers and shake with the shakers. Jesus said that you go into a town and people reject the Gospel. He said dust off your boots and go to the next one. Don't let the haters kill your zeal. So zeal, stir each other up. That's what we're trying to do here. But I'm sending the brothers. He sends the men to go on mission, do the most dangerous work. I'm sending the brothers, so that are boasting about you may not prove empty, vain in this matter, so that you may be ready as I said you would be. And he does this in chapter eight where he talks about the brothers. And one of the brothers is Titus. One of the brothers is the brother who was famous for preaching the Gospel.

Which is fascinating because St. Paul doesn't name the guy. And I think he doesn't name the guy on purpose. So the guy doesn't get a big head because he's already famous for preaching the Gospel. So he's sending these brothers to go and to pick up the generous gift from the Corinthian church. And he says, "So that it wouldn't prove empty. My boasting about you." Continues that same thought in verse four. "Otherwise if some Macedonians come with me, and find that you are not ready, not military ready, you're not ready for the mission. We would be humiliated to say nothing of you for being so confident."

St. Paul thinks about humiliation, not in terms of fear of man. He thinks about humiliation in terms of, you didn't keep your promise. That's how you humiliated yourself. You promised to give and you didn't keep your promise. You broke your promise. And now because you broke your promise, people are going to suffer because you are not a man or a woman of your word. Don't humiliate me. Don't humiliate yourself. It's like when someone fathers a son or a daughter, and doesn't father them. That's humiliating. I heard of a guy who when his wife... This week his wife was pregnant with a fourth child and he just left her. And he left the children. He humiliated himself. And then he came back. He repented of a sin and he came back. St. Paul says, don't humiliate yourself by presenting yourself a facade, a mask of being a Christian when your heart is not in it.

What would people think if they found out how much you give? I don't know how much anyone gives here. Would you be humiliated if people found out how much you give to the work of the Lord? That's what he's saying. So I thought at verse five, I thought it necessary to urge the brothers, urge, stir, to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised. The word gift here is blessing, evlogía in the Greek so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction. Because before they come, I want you to prepare in your hearts what you're going to give and prepare the gift. Actually set the money aside. So if it's in crypto, if it's in stocks, and if it's in whatever. That's what he's saying. When the time comes, have it ready, so that the presence of these brothers doesn't force you into generosity. Then you won't do it willingly. And it's going to feel like an exaction. And it's going to feel like you're extorting them.

St. Paul says, "No, no, prepare it ahead of time." And verse six is the point is this... And I love when pastors get to the point. It took him nine and a half chapters to get to the point. But he is like, finally, I get to the point. Here's the point. This is verse six. The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So he talks about, and this is fascinating. He talks about giving, not as losing. And this is so different than how the world talks about giving. You give and then it's lost. No, no. He views giving, giving by faith. He views giving as investing. And the image that he brings in is a farmer with a bag of grain, and he knows the winter is coming. And he can take the bag and eat off of it, eat well for the winter, or he can eat not as well, good enough, get by, and take the excess and invest it into his own future.

So he takes the bag of grain and he goes, and it doesn't take a generous farmer, a generous planter does not penny pinch, pinch the seed. He takes a full handful, swinging arm, and just cast it, just lavishly, generously because he knows the more he sows, the more bountiful the harvest will be. Is that how you view giving? Do you view giving as like penny pinching toward God and toward people? Well, Yeshua of Nazareth was not a penny pincher. As the great rapper said, I forgot his name. Who said that Vlad? Huh? That guy. Yeah. So that's what he's saying. He's like, "Do you invest like this into relationships? Do you invest like this into brothers and sisters?" And I'm telling you, I'm trying to grow in this. I'm not naturally like this. I come from an immigrant family. My dad, he's growing in generosity, I'm growing in generosity.

Because I'm good at math, and I'm good at numbers. And I'm like, "Yeah, if I give then I can't invest. And this gift of 100 bucks, isn't really 100 bucks, it's also... If I put in Shiba coin, in a year, it could be a lot more." And then I go through all of that, but the Lord is like, "But I give it to you now to give this person and meet this need." And it's not even yours Jan. That's the point. Do you give this generously? Two texts that I was thinking about today. Luke 19 you get the story of Zaccaeus. And I say this because giving doesn't get you saved. A lot of people think that if you come to the church and you cut God a check, you get God off your back. And now you can go and sin and live any way you want. And you think you have atoned for your sin. And doesn't work like that. So if someone brings in the check, and they're like, "This is to atone for my sins." Would I take the check?

We'd have to pray about it. I would call the person like, "Hey, this doesn't save you. This doesn't save you. You know what saves you? Repenting of your sins and trusting in Jesus Christ. God, please forgive me of all my sins." At the very second you submit your life to God, and you believe in him. You trust in Jesus. He died on the cross for your sin. And he didn't penny pinch his blood. He didn't tie this blood. He gave all of his blood to save you. The richness of his blood, of his... He died on a cross for you. Brutal. Was executed for you. Crown of thorns instead of a crown of gold. He did that for you. When you realize that he did that, Jesus died on the cross for my sin to pay all my debts, all of my trespasses, that changes your heart.

And then when you read the text, and God tells you to be generous, and you say, "How?" And He says, "As I've been generous to you." Jesus went all in and calls us to do the same. So Luke 19, I was thinking about Zaccaeus. He gets saved and after he gets saved, he was a tax collector. He extorted people, his own people. And he got exorbitantly rich. And then he finally hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Jesus was preaching. He was on a tree. And then he gets saved. He gets radically saved. God elects him sovereign regeneration. Zaccaeus comes down and says, "Lord, whatever I've stolen from anybody I'm going to return fourfold. And then from my wealth, I'm going to give away half."

Have you ever considered giving away half to the Lord? I have. I do. You know when? When I'm having fun, when church is fun, when ministry is fun, when life is fun, I'm like, "Yeah. Give it all way. This is so much fun." Because it's more blessed to give than to receive. So like you give and God sends blessing, and you're like, "Oh, this stuff is real. Yeah, it's real." And church has been tremendously fun recently. Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy came over my house two and a half hours. I grill them five steaks ribeye black angus from Maine. I grilled them up. They come down into my man cave, and Pastor Andy brought me a bottle of wine. And the reason why he bought that particular bottle of wine is because it had a cross on it as a sign from God. So what I'm saying is, when you're having fun, you're like, "Yeah. Life is so much more bigger, more enjoyable than just stuff, than just money."

Verse seven, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart. Generosity is decided in the heart not reluctantly, not under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. God loves a cheerful giver." You want to give. And God loves when you want to give. Not under compulsion. You're not forced. Not reluctantly, like, "I don't really want to give this." Cheerful giver, because God is a cheerful giver, Jesus Christ is a cheerful giver, for the joy that was set before him, he went to the cross. All right, for God so loved the world that He, what? Let's say it together. He gave. God so loved the world that He gave his begotten son. He gave his son for us. God is loving, generous, giving God, so whosoever believes in him. If you're not a Christian, believe in him.

It's just that simple. Just believe in God. He changes your heart, and our sins are forgiven. Your eternity is secure. So why wouldn't we live generously for him? God loves a cheerful giver. Here I want to pause, and I want to talk about your favorite topic, tithing. And if it's not your favorite topic, hopefully it will be after I'm done. Read Matthew 23:23, dear Christian. This is a word for Christians. If you're not a Christian, I'm not talking to you. I mean I kind of are, so you know what you're getting yourself into. But Malachi three, read Malachi three. Read about how God feels when his people do not tithe. What is tithing? He calls it, you're robbing me. You robbed me.

God commands that we are to give him 10% of our income. The principle remains. It's like the principle of the Sabbath. We are to give one seventh of our time to the Lord, to devote one seventh of our time to Lord. That's why I'm giving you homework. Because I want you to take a Sabbath where you do homework and you study scripture. And that's why I'm preaching for a lot longer than you perhaps want me to preach. But I have the mic, and unless someone turns it off I'm going to keep going. But my favorite lectures in college were three hours. My favorite lecture in college was a guy named Serge Nikita Khrushchev, Serge Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev's son. And he taught for three hours once a week. And he assumed you did all the reading. He assumed you did all the writing. He assumed you thought.

And the lecture was just him speaking from his heart. It changed my life, the way I viewed the world. So yeah, I'm calling you to do that. I'm calling you to give your time. I'm calling you to give your life, and I'm calling you dear church to give your tithes. Why? Because... And I'm speaking to Mosaic, obviously I already expect this. I believe in you. That's why. So I expect things from you. The American church on average gives 2.3% of their income to the Lord. Like how can I talk about generosity when we're not even doing the basics. The basics. Read your Bible, pray, silence, solitude, fasting, share the Gospel, give 10%.

Before we talk about generosity. It's 10% of what? 10% of my take home. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The tithe has enough thing to do with Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is a pagan and I call him to repentance. Uncle Sam, I do. I don't trust Uncle Sam with my money. I don't trust Joe Biden with my money. I don't trust he's going to do the right thing with my money. I'd rather give it to the Lord, and see what the Lord does. So I'm saying taxes that's another conversation for another day. I'm talking about the tithe. It's all the Lords before it's FICAs.

So it's 10% of what you earn. And also it's 10% of what you earn off of your real estate, off of your stocks, off of your crypto, off of your side hustles, off of your Uber, off of your everything. So if you're going to tithe, you're going to sit down and you're going to say, "Okay, how much did God give me? How much did I earn? I'm going to give 10% of that." Imagine if the whole church, United States, imagine if the whole church tithed, we would change the world, would transform absolutely everything. And imagine if the church repented of not tithing, and said, "Lord, I've been robbing you for years, and now here's everything that I robbed you of with interest and inflation. Here you go, Lord." Is he serious? Yeah, maybe, I don't know. I'm saying it would change the world. And God loves a cheerful giver. He loves cheerful giving to his work, to his ministry. So we talked about tithe.

And then it's anything you give above tithe that's generosity. So I know of believers, members of the church who give to foreign missions, which is awesome. Give to foreign missions after you've given to foreign missions here, because this is a foreign mission field. The whole world is sending their children here to get brainwashed, and then we export the brainwashing to the rest of the world. Well, why don't we take Boston, and do it in such a way where we actually do impact the world. But what have you decided to give to the Lord in your heart? That's verse seven. Verse eight, "And God is able to make all grace abound to you." That's fascinating because there's grace that God is withholding from you. There's blessings that God is withholding from you because you're not ready for it.

If God blesses you right now and you don't have a generous heart, if God blesses you, and you don't have a generous heart, that blessing is going to turn into a curse. So yeah, God does withhold grace from some of his children who are disobedient. God does withhold some of his power, some of his presence from you because you're not ready for it. God is able to make all the grace abound so that having all sufficiency in all things and all times. Just satisfaction in everything. You may abound in every good work. You have all sufficiency in... Can you say that right now, and dear Christian? Because sufficiency is not a number, sufficiency is a state of heart. Is your heart right now satisfied in the Lord? Is it satisfied with what he has provided to you? And I wrestle with this, because I'm rich, but I'm Boston poor. You know what I'm saying?

Where it's like anywhere else I'd live, I'd have the car I want, I'd have a parking spot, I'd have a garage, but I live in Boston. So like I wrestle with the sufficiency part, and the satisfaction part. So this week I've been wrestling with this text, and I realized I am filthy rich. I am so rich. I have two washer dryers. I have two. I have not one fridge, I have two and a half. I have two full fridges. And I always thought, you know you've made it in life when you have a second full fridge. Because I go to my friend's house and they're like, "Yeah. There's a fridge in the kitchen, there's a fridge in the garage." I'm like, "You got a fridge in the garage." "Yeah." And I also have, on top of my two and a fridge, I have a freezer chock-full of black angus meat. I bought a half a cow from Maine. It's my love language. So if I love you, I'm going to give you a pound of ground beef, or whatever is at the top. I'd give you the ribeye.

I'm saying this is a sphere of generosity you want to cultivate here. My community group this week, we have a lot of people who don't have family around here. We're going to have a Thanksgiving meal. I hate turkey. I just despise turkey. If you know me, I got stories about turkeys. But it's what you got to do. And I'm like, "Yeah. But there's a reason why they had a Thanksgiving turkey because they couldn't catch anything else. Yeah." We're going to have turkey, but if it were up to me, we'd have steak. What I'm saying is, this is the season to be generous. This is the season to say, "God thank you. God thank you for the people in my life. I want to bless people. I want to be generous with everything that God has given me."

Verse nine, "As it is written, He has distributed freely, He has given to the poor. His righteousness endured forever." He's quoting from Psalm 112, which is... It's a song. It's a poem about a Christian philanthropist. About a person who is generous in everything that they do. Generous with their life. Generous with their children, generous with their spouse, generous with their neighbors. I met with a... Long story. I met with a realtor yesterday and she said, "We're looking for some space for a church." Long story. She said, she was talking about the neighbors, and she's like, "Ah, there's a spirit of generosity." She said. "There's a spirit of generosity in this neighborhood." And I was like, "Oh, isn't that something?" Imagine if there was a spirit of generosity in Massachusetts, the spirit of America. Imagine we could change the nation.

Verse 10. "And He, God, supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the harvest of your righteousness." God supplies the seed, God supplies the bread. God will, if we're generous, if we're faithful, He will multiply your seeds for sowing, and increase the harvest of your righteousness. I pray about you all week. I pray this all week. I pray, "Lord bless the people of Mosaic. Bless them this week. Bless their souls. Bless their families. Lord provide for all of their... Provide them seed, provide than food. And Lord multiply. Lord God multiply the work of their hands. Lord God, every single bank account of every single person who goes to Mosaic, is a member, Lord multiply. I prophesy that over you. Lord multiply." And you're like, "Is this a name and claim church?" No. It's a biblical church. Come back next week. We're going to talk about church membership and church discipline. But today we're talking about generosity.

I pray God blesses your investments. I pray God blesses your crypto coins. I pray God blesses your businesses, your startups, your career, everything so that you can be even more generous to the world. And that changes things. And I love verse 11. This is a promise, friends. Like you can take God up on his promises. Look at this. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way. Who doesn't want that? Do you want to be enriched in every single way? I do. Well, God promised, God says, "I want to enrich you in every single way. It starts with the Gospel. It starts with repenting of your sins." Including greed, friends. When is the last time you got on your knees and said, "God, please forgive me for greed, for being greedy, stingy."? For just mooching off of God. We are to repent. That's a sin. That's a sin. We are to repent of it.

And I'm calling the church of the United States to repent. I'm calling everybody to repent. That's my job. And myself, I've had to wrestle with this. I've had to repent of all kinds of brokenness in here when it comes to the sin of being greedy, of worrying that God will not provide. And then what happens when I start worrying, I start working more. And I start working now 40, 50, 80. I start working 100 hours because it doesn't look like the Lord is providing, so I'm going to do everything I possibly can with my own efforts. And that's not really helpful. And then things shut down. What I'm saying is the Lord is bringing healing in here, and I pray that he does the same with you, so that with our hearts together we can be generous toward God.

Verse 12, "For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God." This ministry is not just to meet needs, He says, but it's to bring a crescendo of an orchestra of people worshiping God, just overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. That's the point. So when we serve, when we give to God, it's not to get a thank you from people. I ask that you pray, but it's to thank God. "God, thank you." And by the way, I do want to thank you for your generosity. Or those who faithfully give, and for those who faithfully serve, praise God.

I don't know how much you give, but I can tell who is giving because they care. Because when you're invested in a place, when you invest in a church, you show up, and you actually want to serve, and you want to do evangelism. You want to do... I had a couple come to me and they're like, "I'm so glad you talk about Thanksgiving dinner because we had Thanksgiving dinner yesterday." And she showed me a picture, and she said, "We had a turk, duck, chicken." It was a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. That blessed my heart. Like it's so absurd. That's how generous it is. So I'm saying, church, thank you for your generosity.

"By their approval of the service, they will glorify God because of your submission." So the people that you bless glorify God because you submitted your submission. And what does the submission flow from? Flowing from your confession of the Gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for others. They're going to glorify... God is going to get more glory. God is going to get the glory he deserves if you don't just confess Jesus Christ with your mouth, but actually submit your life to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to the word of Jesus Christ. And when you submit your life to Jesus Christ, everything changes. People actually glorify God. You know why David went against Goliath. Read the text. 1st Kings, I think 17. Because for 40 days and 40 nights Goliath would get up and defame the name of God. He would just get up and mock, and curse God, just cursed and...

And it's like in Boston when people using the name of Jesus Christ, it's usually to curse someone out. And then David finally, he's like, "Enough is enough. I'd rather die than this continue." And with generosity of his life, he put his life on the altar, and like, "God, all right, I got some stones, can you please direct one of them?" And God did it. This is the generosity of heart, where if you have this, if your heart is in the right place, if your heart is in it, everything changes. Verse 14, "While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you, thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift."

And he ends here and this is fascinating. A sister from the church texted me yesterday and she's like, "Hey, you talked about evlogía, in the study guide it means blessing or gift, and it's used twice. Hey, what about the word at the very end? It says gift. It's a different Greek word. Why does St Paul do this? Is it just a synonym?" Well, the gift here, the blessing that gift means. Focus on the gift. Focus on the gift, don't focus on the giver because where people give God the glory, here's the gift. This one focuses on the giver. It's an inexpressible gift because the gift giver is God Himself, that's why it's inexpressible. And he's talking about the gift of Jesus Christ. He's talking about the gift of God, the Father sending His son Jesus Christ to die for our sins. It's an inexpressible gift.

Jesus Christ lived the most generous life that anyone has ever lived. And on top of that, he wasn't just generous in his life, he was generous in his death. Jesus Christ allowed himself to be crucified. He allowed himself to be flogged, scourged. He allowed that crown of thorns. He allowed himself to be put on a Roman cross that he carried. Now they put him on it, and they drove nail. They hammered nails through the most sensitive parts of his hands and his feet. He allowed all of that to happen. His blood poured out, his body broken for us. And then he gets put in a grave, and we think it's all over. And then he comes back from the dead. And the reason why there's Christianity today. And if you don't believe this, I dare you to explain how Christianity grew.

Other religions grew by the sword, Christianity grew despite the sword. What would make the early believers go to their death testifying to the Gospel? It's the same thing. What happened? It's the same thing that moved them to sell their real estate. It's the same thing that moved them to sell their land and bring it to the feet of the apostles. What moved them? They saw the resurrected Christ, and they felt the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It changed absolutely everything. That's why Acts 2 is so important. Acts two says the following, Acts 2:42 through 47. "And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching." They, the early church after day Pentecost. And the breaking of bread, and the prayers, and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, and all who believed were together, and had all things in common.

And they were selling their possessions and belongings, and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their home. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day. Those who were being saved. We believe in this so much, we sold everything to be together. We sold everything, get the Gospel out. And by the way, this is the craziest stuff ever, so we're having a good time. And when we're having a good time, other people want to have a good time, and that's how people got saved.

I'm working on the theology of fun. I'm working on it. So just bear with me, I'm verbal processing right now. Let me know what you think. I'm working on theology of fun because I've never heard anyone write about this. And the theology of fun goes like this. Who is more fun, God or Satan? And that's the battle over your heart. And what I'm here to tell you is, sin isn't fun. It's fun for like three seconds, and then you wake up the next morning. You know what is fun? It's a lot harder, but what is fun is following Jesus. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like the Holy Spirit stirring you, just miracle day after day, after day. There's nothing more fun.

So what I'm saying is the Jerusalem church did that so that the Gospel could get out, and the Gospel got where? To Corinth, and now Corinthian believers have finances that the Jerusalem church needs, and Corinth gives back to where the Gospel came from. So this is my appeal to you church, and my appeal to the church of the United States, which I do not understand. I don't understand the church in America. I don't understand the church in America because we're not thinking about the Gospel right. We're not thinking about the kingdom. We're not thinking strategically. We're not. If we were thinking strategically, and this is a global church as a whole, if we were thinking strategically about how to get the Gospel out, and how to fix the world, this is how we'd be thinking. We'd say, "As America goes, so goes the world."

How does America go? America goes as Boston goes. Boston is only a decade ahead of everyone else. And the American church sends their children here to get brainwashed and then export demonic ideologies to the churches of the United States. So what I'm saying is, it's time to take the head off the beast. Why doesn't the American church pull their finances together and say, "You know what? We're actually going to take Boston the way that we should have taken Boston. And we're going to send resources, and Pastor Jan is a nut, but he's effective." And so we together, we're going to build that campus. We're going to build Harvard the way it should be with a church in the middle, and a school, and the Mosaic Boston Academy, and an orphanage. And I want a cafeteria to feed absolutely everyone. And you get free meal if you listen to a 15-minute talk by me.

And then when you get saved, you start actually joining the church, and joining the community. This is my call to the church. And also, and by the way if you live here, stay here. And I am talking to all the former members of Mosaic. I'm talking to you. I know you guys listen. You text me. I know Drew. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I can call out the name. I'm calling you back. I'm calling all of you back, and I want every single the seat filled so that we're talking about third and fourth services. I'm calling you back. And if you don't come back, at least send your tithes and offerings to the church. But first give tithes to your local church, then be generous here.

And then here's what I also want to... All the time when I say Boston, we're going to take this city. And people are like, "Yeah. Real state is too expensive." Don't live in Boston. I'm not talking about Boston proper, I'm talking about Boston the idea. If you ask anyone from Worcester, where are you from? And they go to Texas. Where are you from? They're not going to say Worcester. No one knows what Worcester is. No one knows how to spell it. Everyone says Boston. Where are you from? Rhode Island, Long island? No, no, no. I'm from Boston. Everyone says Boston.

So if you're from Boston, New Hampshire, Maine. And Maine's only an hour away. I don't even... Just drive here. If you drive here like taking the T from the north end takes longer to get here than driving from Rhode Island. You know what I'm saying? So if you come here on a Sunday, if you can get here on a Sunday, start a commuting group wherever you at. We're taking the city. That's what I'm saying. And then if you're like, I don't have a fancy degree to live up here. Hey, do you know how to build anything? Because no one up here knows how to do anything with their hands. The only thing they do with their hands is type, that's it. So if you're a builder in the United States or from outside, if you're an immigrant, if you're from Russia, I'm calling all the builders, and we're going to rebuild the city together.

I'm going to help you establish your business. I know how. And then we're going to build a family home for the church. Have I said everything on my heart? Yes. 2nd Corinthians 9:15. Oh, by the way, if you're not a Christian today, would you become a Christian? Just repent your sin. Come on. Welcome to the team already. I've been doing this for too long to be like... That's why I'm switching up my style because I realized I don't want any barriers between who I am in my life, and when I get up here. I don't want to be like the different guy. This is how I live my life. I share the Gospel. I love the Lord. I read the word. I love my wife. We get in fights. She came to church today. We forgive each other. I love my daughters. I just want everyone to be a Christian.

And if you are a Christian, let's grow up together. That's what I'm saying, and haka dance to the Lord as we worship. 2nd Corinthians 9:15, "Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift." Amen. Let's pray. Lord God please pour out your holy fire upon the hearts of your people. Burn in our hearts a desire to take the head off the beast like David took Goliath's in Jesus holy name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, church. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you through the Connection card. If you fill it out legibly, just leave it at the welcome center. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father, I pray that you reveal your heart to us, the Father's heart, that everything you do and everything you say comes from a place of love. Because you love so much, you allow yourself to be grieved. You do experience anger. There is a jealousy. There is a wrath, but it's all there because of your love.

I pray that you make us a people that understand your heart, a people who are willing to share our hearts with you and share our hearts with one another. Only when we can do that can we encourage each other's hearts, infuse faith in hearts.

Then Lord, I pray as you knit our hearts of faith together, set our hearts ablaze with your faith for the work that you have called us to, to proclaim Jesus Christ, who because of His great love for us came, lived, and died, and said, "Whoever would believe in the heart, have faith in the heart, not in the mind but in the heart."

I pray, Holy Spirit, stir our hearts. I pray, engulf our hearts. We pray for anointing, a special faith, a faith for revival because we love you, because we love each other, and because we love the world, because we love people. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

Title of the sermon is The Heart of a Man. I am going to primarily focus on 2 Corinthians, chapter 2, 8 through 16, from our text from last week. Then as I was preparing the message for this week, I realized, "Yeah, I preached an expository sermon that exposed the text, but I didn't show you how the text exposes my heart."

If you don't know how the text exposes my heart, you don't know my heart. If you don't know my heart, you can't know my faith and my vision. I'm going to read 2 Corinthians 2, 8:16. Then I'm going to meditate on what it means to share what God put in your heart.

I had a question from a brother after the sermon. He said, "What do you want us to talk about in CG? The sermon was so different." I said, "2 Corinthians 2:8 through 16. Talk about what God has put in your heart."

One verse... I'll go as far as I make it. "But thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

If you have been at Mosaic the last month or so, you realized things are different. It's because God has something put on my heart that I don't even know what I... It took a lot of time just reflecting. It's like, what is going on in here? Because I'm naturally wired to get up here with a huge machine gun of biblical truth, and just shoot you up, sit down, worship Jesus, go home, because that's the way I'm wired. It's all mind, mind, mind, mind, mind.

My mind thinks a million things at the same time. That's why I'm all about know God. SDG, Soli Deo Gloria. It's all for God's glory. Get to know God, get to know God, get to know God. Then I'm like, once you know God, GSD, GSD, GSD. Get stuff done. SDG, GSD. This is like, it's on my heart.

In order to live like this, you got to know what's in there. This week, I got hacked or something. I don't know. Someone set up a fake email and a fake Facebook and asking people for money. I had to send out a newsletter. I did that. I didn't want to do that because I don't like sharing all of the demonic attack that happens over the course of the week on me, on my marriage, on my family, on the staff.

It's like ah. We're moving the church toward real talk as part of our culture. Well, you got to talk. I did that. I kind of exposed. Then I was like, all right. Saturday comes along. I'm like, "Gosh, everyone knows something's up. Everyone knows something different. I'm going to send a newsletter, and no one's going to know what's up."

I'm going to write a joke that's only funny to me and God, partially because I'm trying to speak from the heart, expand the heart, and no one really knows who I am unless I speak from the heart.

I was talking to my wife about this. I was like, "Why can't I bring humor into the church, laughter into this church, sad times? People need to... " She's like, "Because you have a crazy laugh. You have a maniacal laugh."

I laugh like that. Then she's like, "Don't do that, please." My laugh comes from the heart. What I'm saying is no one got that joke except for the people that really, really, really know me.

Tyler, who runs our youth ministry... He came up to me after one of the sermon. Holy war, I think. He's like, "Bro, you freaked everyone out." He's like, "I know what you meant, but they don't know you."

That really stuck with me. I'm like, "Oh, why don't they know me? Why don't they know that everything I do, is I do it because I have a big heart. I love this church. I love my family. I love my wife. I love my daughters. It's all coming out of here."

I got a verse this week, John 5:4. I was like, "Yeah, that's what I'm doing. God, thank you for the anointing." John 5:4... It says an angel comes down to stir water, just stir things up. I was like, "Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm stirring things up, getting the church to a place of authenticity. It's just real talk all the time."

Then it says for healing. I was like, oh, I've been wielding my sword. Everyone walks out of here just caught up. They're like, "What just happened to me?" I am here today just to expose a little of my heart. I've been trying to do that in this season.

It's hard. It's not natural to me. I've branded myself as a Russian from New England. It's a miracle that I have any emotions at all, but I have so much in here. It's just that when I begin to share, my brain begins to glitch out. Then also, my wife doesn't like that I show emotion. I'll get into that.

To really get 2 Corinthians and then why I have been doing it because St. Paul... Verse by verse by verse, he's like, "I love you. I'm proud of you. I boast about you. You're the greatest church that I have ever planted. I have so many big visions for you. I believe in you."

It only makes sense because they know that he loves them. You can't have direct talk, real talk to people unless they know it's coming from a place of love because this is how I disciple my daughters. I get down to their level.

When I do this, when I do this, and you're like, "He's freaking me out again," I'm just saying, I want to have a one-on-one conversation with every single one of you. I know, logistically, it's Boston. I've got an opening in February.

I'm just going to pretend this is the one on one. I want to bring this voice into the culture of the church where we bare our hearts. St. Paul is speaking as a good father. He wants to be helpful. He's not criticizing to criticize. He's coaching them.

If you ever played sports, even kid sports... I was at my daughter's soccer game yesterday, Elizabeth. The coach is yelling at them. He called my daughter angry Elizabeth. That's her nickname because when she's angry, she scores goals. I'm like, angry Elizabeth.

She's like, "Dad, don't scream. Don't scream. You're freaking me out. You're embarrassing me." I'm like, "I'm screaming because I love you. Put your heart into your foot." She scored two goals yesterday, and her team won 5 and 0. They went undefeated in the whole year. Praise God.

When I'm speaking like this, it's not because I am mad at you. I'm trying to stir your heart up for great work for God. Without real talk, there's no real life change. We can theoretically talk about God and the scriptures. We walk away, nothing changed. It's just information, information, information. That's how the world works.

Scripture isn't given for information. It's given to change the heart. Scripture is supposed to change the heart. True expository preaching is exposing everything in here. Stir it up. Yes, there's sin. Yes, there's sadness. Yes, there's grieving. Yes, there's anger.

There's all kinds of stuff going on in here. To really read scripture, you got to allow it to read you and to respond. People are like, "Is this different than what Mosaic is about?" Mosaic was always about this. We put it in our core values. Love Jesus, simple.

By the simple, the heart... When we started the church, simple was never simplistic. It's not baby food. It's not breastfeeding. It's get to the heart of the matter because the matters of the heart are what matter.

You can't get to the simplicity of Christianity if you do not know each other's heart. I know the challenge is in the city. I feel like every time I get up here, we don't know each other.

There used to be a song called We Don't Talk Anymore. I used to sing it all the time. Whenever something would happen in the church, I would be like, "We don't talk anymore." That's what COVID felt like. We just stopped talking heart to heart.

I would get up here. I'm like, "This is what God said. That's what God said. Just do that, do that, do that. SDG, GSD." I'm like, "How do they understand what I'm saying if they don't understand the heart?"

I got to take it from God's heart. I got to download it into my heart. I got to do the hard. This is hard. This is hard. This is hard. I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm going to write. I wrote. I wrote 14 pages.

Then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to stand up here and speak from the heart because I want to connect not just with your mind, but with your heart, because true faith isn't in the mind. A lot of you know God with your mind inside and out. You have books of the Bible memorized, but do you believe in your heart?

Scripture says, "Confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe," where? With your heart. Believe with your... from the depth. God, I love you. I talk about the love part. I'm like, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. I just assume you believe. I assume you believe. You don't truly believe unless you believe with your heart.

There's stuff in the way of true faith. Sometimes I get up, and I talk about faith. I talk about the vision. My vision for the church, my vision for the world... I just want to fix everything because that's how dads think.

I have fears in my heart that I don't want to be there. I have fears in my heart about my daughters. I have fears about my daughters going outside and things happening to them. Then I say, that makes me sad. That grieves my heart.

It transitions to anger. Unless you stop there and say, "Is this from God? Holy Spirit, sanctify all these emotions. Holy Spirit, baptize these tears. Baptize these feelings. Baptize whatever I'm feeling." Only then can it turn into zeal and resolve to fix things.

One of the reasons why I am doing what I'm doing is because I knew this was coming when we were like, okay. The 10th anniversary party... I got to meditate on what just happened the last 10 years. I'm like, I don't want to even go to... I got up.

I was like, there's years of my life missing. 2017, I have no idea. Part of it is that this is the way I work. If a year is painful, if a moment is painful, if it's a moment that I'm... It feels awkward. I don't want to be here. I shut the heart off. I turn on the mind. I turn on the strength. What are we going to do about it?

Then I do that for a while. Then a year goes by. I'm like, "What just happened?" For me to get back into the heart, it's very painful because it forces me to feel what I didn't feel at that very moment. Then I'm like, "What just happened, 2017? I don't want to feel any of that. I don't want to feel any of that."

Partially, this is the way I work because this is the way I got through my childhood. I never bring up my childhood. I never bring up my mom because there's a lot of very sad memories in my life that shaped me to be who I am. My mom and dad moved here when my dad was 30, my mom was 27.

My mom got married at 19 just to get out of her house because she was the ninth of 11 children. She's like, "This is crazy. I'm out." She just got married. She had me at 20. In her heart, I know. She had pain from her childhood. She brought that into child rearing. Then we moved to the States. Now she's a foreigner.

A lot is going on there. I grew up as an immigrant kid in an inner city public school system in Rhode Island, which is how... When people talk about race and things like that, one of the things that people don't realize is I was the minority, always, in every single sense. The way I see the world is very unique than other people.

My wife told me. She's like, "Why did you write that you love people? I love you so much." She was like, "Why are you using that language?" She's like, "No one believes you anyway." The reason why she says, she knows I love... The people that know me, they know I'm a loving person. Everything that I do, it comes from here.

She says, "Because you walked on the street, and you're scary. You laugh like a maniac. You like to growl and things." I'm like, "Oh." My personality doesn't make sense to anyone unless they really understand the missing link. The missing link is I love Jesus. As crazy as that, I love God.

I believe in God. I really believe in the God of the Bible. You don't understand how I read holy scripture unless you understand how I love, how much I love God. When I read scripture, I read scripture in 4D. I read scripture, and I see the movie in my mind as I read the words.

I don't just understand the ideas. I see it. I see myself in the role. Whatever role, whatever story, I'm there. I'm inside. I always want to do the greatest thing. In the story of King David, I want to take Goliath down.

In my commissioning sermon to become a pastor, I got up. I was like, "I am going to take Boston." You hear me say that right now, and you're like, "Oh yeah. That makes sense." Back then, if I could go back in time in a time machine, I would go back and eat that guy. Very different because Boston changes a man, because war changes a man.

Where was I going? I called my mom. This is really important because I do not call my mom, because my mom wants to talk about feelings. I call my dad because my dad just wants to talk about stuff, get stuff done. He just wants facts.

I called my mom. I haven't called my mom in so long that I didn't even know her number. Changed her number. She was in my speed dial. I was like, "Ah man. That's why." I called her. We had a nice conversation. It just felt good.

I'm here to encourage you. If you want to work on heart things, call your mom. Call your mom. I called her. I missed her. I told her I missed her. We talked. We could talk for 33 minutes and 30 seconds. That's meaningful to me because I think that's the longest we've ever talked. Had a really heart conversation.

She watches my sermons. She's like, "Something is off." This is why I called her. She sent me a sermon, and she's like, "This is my favorite sermon. You should listen to it." I'm like, "Oh." What did she say?

I'm listening to the sermon. I'm like, "I don't even know what this guy is talking." It's a Russian sermon. He's not expositing anything. I'm all technical analysis. I'm like, "This is a terrible sermon. Get that sermon out of here."

I called her. I was like, "Why did you like that sermon?" She's like, "Well, he said good things." I said, "What did he say?" She's like, "I have no idea." Then I went back, and I listened to him. I'm like, "Oh, he was just speaking from the heart, and it connected to her heart." I'm like, "Oh wow."

Then I was like, "Mom, look. I'm changing things up in the church. It's kind of crazy. Everyone thinks I'm a nut, Mom. Can you please speak into this?" I'm not crazy. I just want to say.

Some of you are psychiatrists. You're like, "Well, I am analyzing Pastor Jan. What is wrong with this guy?" Especially if you listen to last four or five sermons, you see just a different person up here every single time.

I talked to Pastor Shane. Pastor Shane's like, "Hey, man. Everyone's freaked out. Can you just connect everything and do it in one thing?" That's what my wife says. I'm like, "All right."

I called my mom. I said, "Mom, what would you recommend I do?" She said two things. She said, "Tell everyone, especially the sisters in the church, that you're not fighting them. You're fighting for them. You're fighting for their faith."

I was like, "Oh, that's a good thing to say." I'm not fighting. This is what Adam should have said. "Hey, Eve, baby. You're offering me an apple. I'm going to go have a steak. I don't want to fight you about it. I'm going to go to war against the serpent who's offering you," right?

That's what should have happened. Then she said this. She said, "Also, can you slow down your pace because I no speak English good." That's true. Just bear with me. I'm trying to expand. I got a big heart. I'm trying to find my range of voice. I have all kinds of something.

2 Corinthians 8:16. It's the heart. "Thanks be to God." God, thank you. Paul believes in God. When Paul talks about faith, we're saved by grace through faith. He understands. Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I believe that God puts things into a person's heart, things to do for God.

"Thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you." When God saves a person, He puts into their heart not just salvation, not just forgiveness of sins. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of Christians stay.

This is my challenge to you, church, my appeal to you. Do not just stay at the place of, my sins are forgiven. If your sins are truly forgiven, your heart is transformed. You have a deep passion and love for God, for people. You care. You care for people.

When God saved me, He... This is why I found the newsletter so funny, because I find my life so funny. I find it ridiculous that God has placed me in the position that He's placed me.

Whenever I talk about wins in my past, I'm not saying it because I'm awesome or because I'm so capable. I'm telling you those wins are important to me because it was a miracle. It was a miracle that I ended up in this country. It was a miracle that I grew up in a Christian household. It was a miracle that I got into college.

Anytime I share any of that, I'm like... If you knew little pepperoni-faced me in middle school, you'd be like, "Oh." It's all a miracle. When I see things that I hope for the church in the future and they sound crazy to you, well, it's because I've seen miracles of God in my past.

I've seen God work over, and over, and over. When we started the church, Pastor Andy reminded me of this in staff meeting. He's like, "Remember that time you got up in the library of the YMCA, and you said that we are starting a church that one day is going to fill Fenway Park with a worship service?"

I was like, "Oh yeah, I did say that." Here's why that hit me. I'm already past that. This is the way my heart works. Because I really love, I just assume that God is going to bless us so incredibly because God loves us so much. I'm like, "Of course, we're going to fill Fenway Park."

I'm already onto the church building. When are we going to build the church building for everybody? This is the way my faith works. When I said, "Hey, everyone, can you please just catch up?" I said that last week. Everyone's like, "Oh, chill out, bro."

I'm saying not just catch up in knowledge. I'm saying catch up in faith, but for you to catch up in faith, you got to catch up with your heart, not just with your mind. To do that, I got to share what's on my heart.

When God saved me, He really made me work to love, love Him, love His word, and love His mission. I want to do something really significant with my life because I read the Bible. It's like, I see Christians nowadays. They live biblical lives, with small, small B, small letters, biblical.

If you read the Bible, the reason why that word is used in other contexts, it's like biblical... This is biblical. I'm reading the Bible. I'm like, "Why isn't my life biblical? Am I leading a life that could truly be a chapter in the Bible which is legendary?"

Well, how do you live a legendary life? You do what Jesus Christ did, the greatest legend, the greatest man, the Son of God, the Son of man. He lived for people. He cared for people. He sacrificed for people. I knew I was called into ministry. I was training up for it, and then I met Tanya. I explained the legend part. One of the things that I do to live a legendary life is I live a life that would... when I tell the story so that people would just be so amazed that it's beyond.

I do things where I'm like, "That wasn't me. That was the Lord. That wasn't me. That was the Lord." I'm like, "All right, Lord. I need a pastor's wife. Can you send me a pastor's wife?" I gave God a list of things, a requirement, a list.

She needs to be a woman of God. She needs to know the Bible better than me. She needs to actually care about evangelism because that's what real Christians do. I threw in freckles and green eyes just for fun, just to see what the Lord would do with it.

I met Tanya. I'm like, that's the one. That's the one. She didn't know it yet. I had to convince her. I did. We were called together to ministry. We went to seminary. In seminary, I thought I was going to go to Russia.

From seminary, I realized Lord stirring something in my heart to go to Boston. I'm from the area. I want to go to Boston. I want to plant a church. Tanya didn't want to go. She didn't want to go. She cried. She cried her first vision trip.

Well then, she's like, "You know what, baby? If you believe, I'm going to pray about it. Our hearts are bound together." Just to show you how we love each other, this is why when everyone is freaking out, when my wife and I... We just go at it. We go at it because we love each other. There's no exit ramp. There's no... It's like, we're going go duke it out because we're got to live together anyway.

At home, it's the culture of real talk most of the time. I have one story to explain how different we are. Everyone assumes that Jan and Tanya are Slavic. Therefore, they're exactly the same because everyone assumes that if you're Russian, Ukrainian, whatever, from all these countries, that you're just Russian, which is kind of racist. No offense. None taken.

She's from Ukraine. I'm from Estonia. I grew up here. We are very different, including our senses of humor. When I was trying to communicate with the joke thing, it's like, you really got to love someone to know what makes them laugh.

She's found out what makes me truly laugh. I'll give you one example of when she made me laugh harder than I've ever laughed in my whole life. It was my 38th birthday. She got me a little gift. I take it out of the little gift bag. It's a T-shirt. It's a black T-shirt.

On the front is a picture of Michael Scott. She's going to hate this story. I love the story. Under the picture, it's a very famous phrase that he says. I was dying. I was like, "This is the funniest thing I've... " to the point where she's like, "What's going on? Why is this that funny?"

I was like, "Do you know what it says? Do you know what that means?" She said, "It's like when I tell you to do something and then you go do... " That's what she said. She has no idea, but she knew that was going to be funny for me.

What that showed me is that woman does not get me at all, but she gets me on a level that nobody does. That's what love is. That's what love in a family is. You get to know each other's idiosyncrasies, just things that are weird about you.

I say that because we have this at staff meeting. The staff of Mosaic... We have a group chat that is absolutely hilarious. None of you will get it. We get it because we have a language that connects our hearts.

St. Paul says, "Look. Before you tell people about care you have for them, hey, can you tell them what's in your heart? Can you tell them how much you love before you tell them information about God?"

Here, I just want to pause and talk particularly to men because this sermon is about a heart of a man. I want to address, specifically, gentlemen. Hey, I don't know if you notice, we have hearts.

Ladies, just as FYI, we have hearts. We have feelings, a broad range of feelings. I have to mention that because we... Number one, we live in a culture where that's not that important. Men aren't welcome to share their feelings because that doesn't do anything because it's all about skills, and what you can do, and making money, and executing.

What is the heart? It's the center of emotion. Men have emotions. We have to process and feel things. Men do it differently than ladies. Men, when we're really growing together, we're growing together because we connect our hearts. For men, it's different.

Ladies... They go out for tea. They go for a walk. They read a book together or things like that. Gentlemen... We don't really connect like that. We connect, like, "Hey, man. You want to do something? What do you do? Do you build something? Hey, teach me how to build. Show me your skills. Show me what you're good at."

Then shoulder to shoulder, as we're learning, our hearts are connected. We connect at a much deeper level than we would otherwise. That's why for gentlemen, community groups, sitting around the circle... I tell people that community groups are kind of the... It's the gateway drug to the church.

Maybe worship service is, but what I'm saying is to go really deeper, community group is just there for you. Open the Bible. You pray together. You get connected with your hearts on mission for the Lord.

Don't just share wins because if you share wins... This is a lesson I'm learning, is if you keep sharing wins, just, people think you're just super human. As a believer, we believe in the Holy Spirit, don't we? We believe that the Holy Spirit sometimes anoints people.

When you share wins, when you share a vision, when you share faith, when you share from the heart, you're not saying, "I'm awesome." You're saying, "This is very important. This is very different. I want to explain this to you because that's not me. I'm actually kind of pathetic, but it's the Spirit of God in me."

I'll just give you one story of when my mom... Since I'm on this throne. My mom really ministered my soul. The very first time I was called to preach the gospel, to preach God's word, I preached in my home Russian church in a tie. I got up there with a Bible. I didn't want to preach. I'm like, "God, did you want me to preach? I don't want to preach. What am I going to preach on if I don't want to preach?"

I preached on Jonah because Jonah didn't want to preach either. I got up there. I had the sermon memorized because I had to preach in Russian. I got paralyzed. I turned beet red, cotton mouth, everything.

If you don't understand that point, you don't understand why this is hilarious. I got down. It was the most uncomfortable sermon for everyone in the church. I got down. My mom's like, "Hey. Hey, what happened?"

My dad's like, "This is what you should fix next time." Then my mom is like, "Oh, what happened?" She's like, "Oh, you're afraid. You're afraid of people." Then this is the way she does. She called everyone is село, which is a village.

She's like, "They're just people. They're just people. You're a person. They're a person. Just share what's on your heart." I was like, "Oh, you can't share what's on your heart if there's fear of how you will be misinterpreted."

That's the day and age that we live in. It's all just information, information, information, mind, mind, mind, mind. That's where we go to war. We don't really share what's on our heart, what's really going on because we're not sure that people will understand.

One thing men don't do enough is to really talk about how they feel things. In this season where I'm trying to reshape the culture of the church, what I'm trying to do is just to bring more people in. I have a really big heart. I love all people, all kinds of people. I can relate to all kinds of people.

That's why people that know me know I can connect because of my very diverse experience. I can connect with people from everywhere. That's why at this church, we have people from all over the world because one on one, I know how to speak to different people.

When I get up here, all of you are in the room at the same time. I'm trying to have a one-on-one conversation. My mind just breaks. What I'm doing is I'm trying to expand the culture of the church to include speaking from the heart. To speak from the heart, you got to be honest about what's going on inside.

How are you? You know what? Things kind of did not go on well. There were seasons in my life where there's deep, deep sadness, grieving, that I'm like, "Yeah, this isn't helpful to anybody. I just need to encourage everyone from God's word when I don't really want to feel."

Did I get to the Tanya story yet? I've got a lot of Tanya stories. I'll tell you one story. During COVID, I choked up for the first time in a sermon because I'm like, "This." I'm preaching to a camera downstairs. Pastor Shane, Chloe handling logistics. I'm looking at the camera, empty room. It hit me, just overwhelm hit me, how long this is going to be.

I just saw that this is going to be part of our life for a long time and that the church was going to be gutted through it. I got choked up. Then I went home. I forgot about it because that's what I do. I went back to work.

Then Sunday comes. I preach on Thursday. Sunday comes. My wife and I... We watched the livestream in different rooms because we tried watching the livestream once together, and my wife is like, "Oh finally, I have an opportunity. I'll finally tell you everything that you should have fixed in real time."

I'm like, "This isn't helping, baby. I'm going to another room." Then she saw me get choked up. Then she's like, "Never do that again. People need strong leader." If you know my wife, that's what she says.

I was like, all right. I packed on 50 pounds of muscle and figured out how to grow a beard. Here I am. You're welcome, Tanya. Thank you, Tanya.

This week, I had time to process. I went back to that moment. I was like, "You know what? That's messed up, that you can't share what's on your heart. How am I supposed to lead people into battle if they don't know I care so much that I'm willing to lead the charge and die? How can I say that from the heart if people don't know I really love them?"

It does grieve me when sad things happen. That was a sad time in my life. I remember Julie Busby came up to me. She's like, "Hey, man. Wow. Pastor Jan does get sad." That really hit me. I'm like, "Why don't people know that?" Oh, because I'm a tremendous actor, by the way. I can get up here, and I can do the whole joyful thing.

Every once in a while, men, we have to share what's on our heart, and we have to connect at a heart level because no one really cares how much you know until they know how much you care. If you care, then you can give them what you know. If you care, if they know your heart, then when you speak of what faith God puts in your heart... That's really my gift.

A lot of people don't know that. My spiritual gift is faith. That's my superpower, very illogical faith. When none of the data makes sense and everyone's like, "Why are you doing what you're doing?" I'm like, "It makes me sense to me because the Holy Spirit made it make sense to me."

It doesn't make sense to anyone else around until I really share my heart. That's what St. Paul says in verse 16. We're talking about Titus. Titus is his disciple. Titus became a Christian because St. Paul shared his life and heart with Titus. He's like, "Hey, Titus. Let me tell you my story."

That's the most powerful way of doing evangelism, is just telling your story. Let me tell you about all the miracles God did in my life. Let me tell you who I was before I met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Let me tell you what Jesus did. He revolutionized my life. He put me in a place where I am supposed to do the same for other people, share the gospel in a way that connects to their hearts so their hearts are changed.

I'm thankful for St. Paul for preaching the gospel and sharing his heart. I'm thankful for Titus for sharing what God put in his heart. I'm thankful for Jesus Christ, with whom it all starts, for coming and sharing his heart, what's on his heart, speaking truth in love because everybody knew that He loved them. Everything that He did was motivated by love to the point that He was willing to die, and He sacrificed Himself on the cross.

He's like, "This is how big my heart is. Everything I do, I do it because I love God and people." Paul influences Titus, and the influence is not just with truth but with love, with his heart. He says to Titus, "Hey, Titus. Do you understand the world?" Do you understand who your master is because if you don't understand that Jesus Christ is your king, that Jesus Christ is your master, you don't understand anything.

If you think you are your own master, that's when you will understand that you're not a very good master. Either you become a despite to yourself and just drive yourself to produce, produce, produce, or you allow your flesh to take over. You allow your passions, and your lust, and your greed, and everything inside that's sinful, all the evil in here, to take over, Titus.

You need a master who can put everything in here in order and tell you what to do, give you marching orders. Young man, do you know who your master is? Do you know who your king is? Do you know who your God is? If not, you don't know what your purpose is in life. It's definitely not just, have a good time until you die. That's a very meaningless way to live.

Movies are not made about people like that, that inspire. We're inspired by legends, by legendary movies where people submit to a greater, higher calling. Who's your master, Titus?

Then once you know who your master is, hey, Titus, young man, what's God calling you to do? What's the very specific mission that God has placed in your heart? It's very specific. God does have a very specific plan for every single person.

To understand your mission, you got to share that with people. You say, "I feel like this is... God was place." Share it with your community because I have people that come to me all the time. They're like, "I feel like I'm called to international missions." I ask them, and I talk about it.

Then I say, "Okay, why don't you start now in the city where there's people from all over the world?" We are together, are to shape each other's mission, whatever that mission is.

Before you think, gentlemen, especially young, single gentlemen... Before you get to know someone to marry, before you find a mate, you got to know who your master is. You got to know who your mission is.

Then once you know your mission, then you know how to meet someone that can help you in that mission, that we're partners together, someone you can lead in that mission. Too many men are lost, young men in the nation. That's why we look to voices, young men, like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, to teach you about manhood instead of looking to Jesus Christ.

Those voices are helpful as long as you know that Jesus Christ is the master giving you a mission. Before you think about dating, get that ironed out. Then when you meet a girl, you're not just saying, "Hey, I'm looking for a 10, physically." I'm looking for a 10, holistically, so that we can be on mission together and be as effective as possible.

Let's do another verse. We're on a run. Verse 17, "For he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest he is going to you of his own accord." His own accord because God put it on his heart. God, I'm ready. I'm ready. Put me in. Put me in. What do you want me to do?

St. Paul says, "Seasoned, mature Christian." "Hey, Titus, you have eagerness to serve God. Now I got a job for you." He appeals. One of the things I noticed is that I make appeals. I'm like, "I have this vision for a church building with a school." No one really understands because no one really understands the heart. That's why I'm trying to share the heart of the Father.

Before I appeal, I need you to be on the same page of, "Hey, are you asking God, 'Hey, God. What did you put on my heart? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?'" Then when I stand up and I make appeals, it makes sense.

Church, I will make appeals. I will challenge you and not because I'm mad at you, but because I believe in you. I want the absolute best for you. If you're not sure of your specific mission, well, until God calls you elsewhere, I am here to tell you. Your mission is to take Boston. This is our town. This is what it means to be a man of God.

You walk into a place. You say, "You know what? God has placed me here. I'm taking responsibility for this town." We're going to change things from the inside out. Lord really spoke to me this week when I read... For the very first time, it hit me, what's at the bottom of our license plates.

What's at the bottom of our license plates? Spirit of America, Massachusetts. How's that going? Kind of demonic, if you ask me. It's a demonic spirit that's coming out of here, a spirit of criticism and condemnation, judgementalism. Certainly not a spirit of true, sacrificial, authentic, real love.

God is calling us into this place to change the spirit. To change the spirit, we got to plead with God, "God, anoint us by the power of the Holy Spirit to exercise the demon," that is the spirit of America, that is Massachusetts. I welcome you into that mission.

Verse 18, "With him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel." It's Titus. This brother is famous for preaching the gospel. There's no need to be famous for preaching the gospel. Some people do preach the gospel, and they're more famous for it, but that's not really the point at all.

The point is always to make the gospel famous because Jesus Christ is to be famous. We are to worship and glorify Him. There's lots of lessons in that text, but the point that I want to bring out is when God calls you to something, He's going to build a team around you, brothers and sisters.

The bigger the calling, the more people God is going to bring into the call. It's just a matter of finding your position on the team. Being in one position doesn't make you better or more significant than any other. Some positions are more visible than others, but they're all equally important.

One person is the quarterback. Another person has to be the lineman. They're friends at the end. The wins are wins for the team. We are to be hard workers at whatever we do. This gentleman wanted to preach the gospel. He was famous for it because he did it well.

One of the things that I'm telling you I'm doing is in this season, I'm pushing myself to become a better communicator of the gospel, that after 10 years, I look back, I'm like, we did some great things. We did some great things.

I'm so proud of this church. I'm so proud of what we've accomplished together. I'm so proud of your sacrifice, and your service, and your generosity, of your faith, of your selflessness. I'm so proud of you.

I'm doing soul-searching. For me, I'm like, "There's things I should have done differently." I'm saddened by the fact that I did not stir hard enough, partially because when I stir the church, the church stirs back, because when I switch things up, people get freaked out. They're like, "Are you crazy?"

I'm switching things up. I'm stirring things up because I want more healing. One of the things I wish I had done, I wish I had stirred people up sooner. I wish I had invited people into the heart, into the vision of what we're trying to do at this church and calling people to make hard sacrifices.

I'm making heart sacrifices. Staff is making heart sacrifices. People have planted their life here. I'm stirring you up, church, to make those sacrifices, to look into the heart. I stir myself up. That's what I'm trying to say.

I preach the sermon. Then every Sunday night, I watch it. The last four have been riveting for me. The reason why I started switching stuff up is I got to a point where my preaching, where I would get bored watching myself. No one wants a sermon like that because it wasn't from the heart.

I've been sharing what's on my heart, but I'm freaking people out because they're not used to what's on my heart. That's why this is different. I watch the game tape, what I did well. I invite feedback, but here I just want to mention something.

I have concentric circles of feedback. When people send me feedback, I have a question. Are you a fellow soldier? Are you here for the long haul? Do you have vision in your heart to help us raise sons and daughters of God? Are we in this together? What are we doing?

To the level that you're like, "Yeah, I'm in... " My wife... Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. I don't like when you switch things. I'll tell you. Tanya believes. She's got the gift of faith just like I do. The thing is she hears a sermon, and then she's got to go back to the guy who preached it and live with that guy.

It's not that she doesn't believe in what God's doing. She's just not ready for the man that I'm becoming. If you know anything about me, I go through a season where I'm just different. I just change. There's things that never change. You get an anointing. You got a vision to do something great.

She's like, "Oh, I got to live with that guy. He thinks he's going to rebuild the world." We're here. We love each other. When you give me feedback, I ask, how close are we? Tanya, Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy, Raquel, Chloe, Tyler, Caleb, my friends, my CG, my family... I receive the feedback. I receive when you coach me.

I know it's hard to get through to a person like me, but I receive it, and I welcome it. I want you to know, I process all of it with the Holy Spirit and the holy scriptures. At the end of the day, I got to put it altogether. I do receive it. I do love you. We're doing this together. I receive the feedback.

One thing about the staff, I just want to say. A lot of people don't understand how much we love each other. When we got beef, and you're like, "Something's up between Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy... " I'll say that hypothetical because that's not real.

I just want to say the reason why we do what we do is because we love each other. We're like, "Yeah, we're called. We're called. All right." You can be direct. You can say what you need to say. You can knife battle it out sword to sword. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. You got to duke it out.

I say, I love it. The Holy Spirit courses through our meetings. We love each other. We're just going at it a thousand miles an hour. If you were in the room, you wouldn't even understand what's going on because we have years together of relationship and love. We just communicate in ways that a lot of people do not understand.

Then we pray. We hug it out. We go home zonked because if you've ever spent four hours in a room with me, you get zonked. That's just how we work. We're in this together.

Verse 19, "Not only that, but he has been appointed by the churches to travel with us as we carry out this act of grace that is being ministered by us, for the glory of the Lord himself and to show our good will." Last week, we were talking about this act of grace, this generosity.

The generosity isn't just money. It's being generous with your life, with your home, with your lessons. There's people in the church that... You know Christianity. You know life better than younger people or people younger in their faith. We're to share life with brothers and sisters and minister to them.

Verse 20, "We take this course so that no one should blame us about this generous gift that is being administered by us, for we aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord's sight but also in the sight of man."

St. Paul says everything we do, we want to honor people. We want to honor God, honor people. He's taking precautions to do that. Here, I just want to pause and say, yes, we want people to honor everything we do. They don't have to understand what we do, but they have to honor it.

Honor is a very cultural aspect. Different people from different cultures come in, and they show honor in different ways. Thus, the challenge of planting a church in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2021. We come in, and we don't really know how we are to honor. What is honorable in other cultures is not honorable here.

There's a melting pot even within the church as the church continues to grow, and as new people come in, and as people move away. The only way that this melting pot works is if there's someone here just stirring the pot, stirring the pot, stirring the pot, so we understand each other. That's my calling. I want to stir in a way that brings healing. I want you to know that I'm cooking with love. Everything that we're cooking here, we're cooking with love.

Verse 22, "And with them we are sending our brother whom we have often tested and found earnest in many matters, but who is now more earnest than ever because of his great confidence in you." He talks about this guy who comes. He has a vision. He has a plan.

St. Paul is... Let me test you. Are you ready? We in the church need to have real talk, to have hard, tough conversations because we're testing each other. We want to strengthen each other to be a church where we experience life together, have real life and have real talk because that's what leads to real faith and real love.

Don't be soft-minded and hardhearted. That's what the world wants for everybody. Soft-minded... This is what you're to think, not how to think. That's being soft-minded. Hardhearted... If you don't agree with me, I don't love you. We're to be tough-minded in that, hey, is this true? Is this really true? Is this true from the perspective of God's word?

Be tenderhearted even to people that we disagree with. The pushback is always, but there's always two sides to the issue. You got to equally represent both sides of the issue. Why? One person has to. The truth has to be truth.

We are to be willing to engage and say, "You know what? I might be wrong. Hey, change my line. Hey, can you convince me? Show me the data? Where from scripture is what you're saying true?" There's two sides to whatever issue, but there's only one truth.

I found that this is Satan's current strategy. Just keep everybody divided, divided, divided. They never talk. They never really connect on a heart level, so no one ever really understands each other. Instead of being united and building together, we are being divided and destroying each other in relationships, in families, in the nation.

I've really grown in this awareness of what is happening in the world. I used to never pay attention to the politics and all this stuff partially because I'm a child of the '90s. I grew up in the United States in the '90s.

You know what? I didn't even know who president was most of the time. Freshman year of college was 2001, which is absolutely different from the world today. Today everybody knows everything that is going on everywhere.

Then you never want to talk about it because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Then we never really take time to figure out, "Hey, what is true? Hey, what resources are you reading? What sources are you reading? Hey, let's have difficult conversation."

I used to do this. I used to say, "What's the left saying? What's the right saying?" Yeah, the truth is kind of probably in the middle, until I realized, "Oh, nothing ever gets better." It's kind of all moving in the same direction.

Now this is my working theory of politics in the United States. It's like fake wrestling. I grew up watching fake wrestling. This is where they hit people in the head with a chair, and drop them on a table, and things like that.

You're like, "I think they're hurting each other." Well, little bit. They're a little hurting each other. They're kind of duking it out, but then they go into the locker room. They shake hands. They hug. They pick up their checks. The checks are all signed by the same person: Satan or someone. I don't know, whoever's funding them.

I'm saying this to say, now that we are creating a culture of real talk from the front, I want to share something that still grieves my heart. It still grieves my heart that I have not spoken directly into difficult situations in our nation as they were happening.

Primarily, I didn't do that because I was like, "They're not going to get me. The church doesn't understand." You just won't understand the perspective that is in my heart because I don't just analyze what's happening with my heart. I analyze everything that's happening with my heart, with my soul.

Yeah, it grieves my soul, what happened to George Floyd. That grieves my heart. I put a lot of thought into this newsletter because I sent it at 8:46 AM. Well, 8:46 was long as the knee was on George Floyd's neck.

I never really spoke into it because it wasn't really clear what was happening out there in my heart, so I never really addressed it the way I should have addressed it and said, "Hey, hey, nation, church. You can't just think about this from a position of feelings. That's what the enemy wants. The enemy wants to get you to feel something so that then you act on those feelings, and you destroy things."

From a biblical perspective, we got to... Yes, that's what we feel. Let's sit here. Let's lament. Let's grieve together and then process what is it that's going on in the world. Then from perspective of the soul... You do the heart. You do the mind. Then from the soul, it's like, what does this do in my soul?

Oh, that's what matters. It's people's souls. Well, that's what Satan wants us to not think about, is people's souls. Before we muster all of our strength, we got to say, "Look. We got to think about this from four-dimensional love."

Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, mind. From each perspective, you look at the issue. Once you start doing that, once you start realizing that this is how God wants us to process things, through the heart, through the soul, through the strength, through the mind, and then you meld those together.

After a while, you begin to see things differently than perhaps others. God's really been working this in my life because God sent me four little Tanya's who help me process things very differently.

Sophia processes things with her mind. Elizabeth, with her heart. Ekaterina... It's all strength. Can I outrun you? Am I stronger than you? Can I out-eat you? We lift weights together. She loves when I pick her up from school because she's like, "My dad's stronger than the rest of the dads. Yeah."

Then there's Milana who's all soul, all soul, all soul. She just wants to have a good time. She doesn't even pay attention in community group unless you mention the word fun at least once. At least you laugh at least once.

I have to learn how to love each one very differently, but then when we're in the car together or at home together, they're all speaking at the same time. I have to do all of this all at the same time. That's why I have a hard time sharing what's on my heart. I have gotten better at the four-dimensional loving, of loving holistically. This is what the Lord calls us to.

I'll close with this. My wife and I were having a conversation this week. The conversation was like this because I had this vision from the Lord. The vision was very, very clear. I was like, where am I going to be in 10 years? I'm going to be here. Well, if I'm going to be here, my family is going to be here. How old's my daughter? She's going to be 23. My oldest daughter is going to be 23.

I asked my wife. I was like, "Where are the husbands coming from of these men? Where are the men coming from that these ladies are going to marry?" They might have the gift of singleness. Statistically, probably get married. I'd like for them to get married because I want grandkids.

My wife said, "Probably coming from Russian church where they produce real men." I said, "First of all, do they? Apparently, we still have to nail that one down. Number two, why aren't they coming from Mosaic? Why aren't these sons coming from Mosaic?"

She said, "They can't handle down." Mosaic, I'm welcoming you into my Father's heart so you understand what's going on in here because I think by God's grace, I have been anointed to raise daughters, spiritually.

Because I've been raising daughters, I know how to raise sons. You're like, "Why do you say that?" I say, "Because most American men are raised like daughters." I'm sharing. I said it lovingly, so you can't do anything.

I bring up this topic because it does stir stuff in my heart because I really wanted a son. This is why Tanya and I... With our fourth, we were like, "All right. This is a son." It was Milana.

This week, I wrote a letter to my future son. When I'm speaking, I'm speaking to the spiritual sons. If you are a spiritual father, this is the vision that I'm casting. We're to raise spiritual son and spiritual daughters, men and women of God. This is what I wrote.

I wrote, "Dear Son, I love you. I'm proud of you. I loved you before you were even born. I longed for you. I love you with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, with all my mind. I tried to raise you the way I wish I had been raised. I revealed truths to you that have taken many hard years to learn. Here's just a few.

SDG, Soli Deo Gloria. Live for God's glory alone. Only when you live for God's glory alone, audience of one, following Jesus Christ who is the man you'll become, the man, because your faith, your love casts out fear so the opinions of people are just the opinions of people.

DBG... Love someone more than yourself. Don't be greedy. That's the world tell you to live for yourself. Pleasurize yourself. Just do whatever's fun. Good times. No, no, no, Son. That's not a legendary life.

LFG is let's fervently go, fervently. Just everything you got. GSD is get stuff done. Actually work with your hands. We are men to serve God with our head, heart, and hands. What are we doing with our hands?

DBAB is don't be a baby, brah, because to be a man of God that actually does something of significance, you got to be able to take pain. A lot of this is spiritual war that's going on. Just, body is falling left and right because you don't have the pain tolerance, so do things that are hard. Deadlift or squat, just things that are like, wow, yeah, I've been through something.

Son, play games, sports. Learn strategies. Apply them to real life and real battle. Pick up your sword. Learn it inside and out. Wield it powerfully against the enemy in here, in here, Son, and then out there. I'm here to help. With love... I mean it. It's how I lost. Dad."

Let's pray to our Heavenly Father. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you love us with a Father's heart. Jesus, we thank you that you are the Son of God. You came to reveal the heart of God the Father.

Holy Spirit, we thank you for these holy scriptures. We thank you for the many lessons that are here. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you don't just want us to exposit the scriptures, but you want the scriptures to expose what's going on in our hearts, in our souls, in our minds.

I pray that you continue to make us a church, Lord, that's real, where we can have real talk about real life to develop real faith and all from a heart of real love, the love of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Welcome dear church to Communion Sunday. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a generous God. In the small things, you gave us an extra hour to sleep, and in the big things, you gave us your son. And Jesus, we thank you that you gave us yourself and the Holy Spirit we thank you for your presence here with us and we thank you for writing this book. Words that define reality, define love, define sacrifice, define generosity. We love your word and we thank you that you're the author of this book. You're in the room. And I pray as we hear from your word that you interpret to us what it means, to us where we are and how to apply this. I pray that you give us a vision for generosity. The same vision that's in your heart and I pray that you bless our time in the holy word. Amen.

Grace is generous gift giving. That's the title of the sermon. That's the big idea. Grace is generous gift giving. I've realized recently that a lot of Christians miss out, a lot of people miss out on some of God's greatest blessings because they don't listen to God's word the way you should. A lot of people read God's word, listen to God's word. Some things said to some people by some people a long time ago. And if that's how you approach scripture, it's always going to be theoretical, it's always going to be, this is what it means to me, it's always going to be standing over in judgment over God's word. I do not listen to scripture like that. I do not read scripture like that. I know the God who wrote it and I walk with Him on a daily basis. I'm just so thankful that God is so gracious to me as to speak to me, as to communicate with me and He cares about me.

Someone said that no one cares how much until they know how much you care. And God cares about me so I listened to His word. I sit there with God and I say, "You're the author, you're in the room." What does it mean? Here's how I view preaching. I view preaching as me living vicariously through Cameron Hanes. If you don't know Cameron Hanes, he's living the life that I would be living if I were not called to be a pastor. He's a hunter. You can find him on Instagram. He's got 1.2 million followers. He's a hunter and he hunts humanely. He's a bow and arrow guy. So I view myself as I go hunting into the mountain to get the moose and then I carry it back on my back and then I dress it up, and then I cut it up, and I slice it up and then I throw it on the grill. And that's what this is, that's what preaching is. And I do not chew it for you. You have to chew it yourself or else you choke on it.

I made a conscious decision to change the way I preach because I'm tired of doing the homework for you. I'm tired of regurgitating to you what you can get in the ESV Study Bible. You want historical context, literary context, you want a definition of the Greek or the Hebrew word? Open an ESV Study Bible, read it. From now on, I just assume that every single one of you has read every single word in the Bible and if there's something that you do not understand, you go into the bottom of ESV, there's cheat codes to explain it to you. I say you got to do your own homework. I say this because I send out a newsletter every Saturday and at the bottom I put the text a link to the chapter. So what am I doing? I assume that you have read it but the data shows that you have not because then I see the click through-rate in MailChimp, which is 2.3%. Having is only 2.3% of the churches with me when I am... I assume you have read. So do your homework.

It's like in college where the lecture makes so much more sense if you've read the material the night before. You know what I'm saying? And then you're like, "Oh, the professor got it from the book." That's what I'm saying. I told you a couple weeks ago that we're at war. And the reason why I said that is because a lot of people don't realize that we're at war and the weapons of the enemy are weapons of mass distraction to just get you distracted from what matters. Just hours of your day, you're thinking about the Metaverse, just something out there instead of real life. That's why you need to know the sword of the Spirit, you need to know this word. So it's a conscious decision because I want to spend more time in the sermon doing application and testimony. Because when I listen to a sermon, my favorite part of the sermon is where the guy up there is like, "Before he tells me how to live, I want to know that he actually lived it."

So you need testimony to do that. And today, a lot of the sermons give me testimony of the blessing that it is to be generous. And I've thought about this for a very long time. I'm 38 years old and I've experienced life from the perspective of meeting generosity and I've experienced generosity from the perspective of giving and living generously. My parents emigrated to the States in 1989. My dad was 30, my mom was 27. They have three kids, fourth on the way, $700 net worth. We were recipients of generosity. And I watched my dad from this place where he received generosity grow into a place of tremendous generosity. It's hard to be generous in a day like ours. And when I talk about generosity, I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about wealth. And wealth consists of two parts. They sound the same; presence and presents. That's wealth. Presents. Let's talk about money, presents, with a ts at the end. Presents, this is money, this is gifts, this is things, this is services.

It's hard to be generous in a time where inflation, hyperinflation. Now we're going into recession so security payments are going up by 5.9%. If you look at us car market, it's a lot higher. I think we just printed another trillion dollars. Is there going to be recession? Yeah. What else are you worried about? Gas prices, job turmoil, you might have to pick up and move. Real estate, who knows? Kids, you might have to switch schools. You're talking about generosity, you want me to give money. And then there's presence. This is your time. That's our greatest commodity. It's time, it's words, it's ideas, it's encouragement, it's discipleship. It's hard to be generous with that presence in the day when there's members in the church who haven't seen their family in two years. And just being with people is just awkward right now. And then what's the alternative? It's video meetings. And if I have to sit through one more video meeting I will get Bell's palsy.

That tic, the nervous tic I get when I'm in a video meeting, that's probably going to be permanent. Okay with people, okay presence, you don't know where they stand on COVID. You do know where they stand on COVID. It's hard to be generous with words when you haven't complimented a person in years. This is my philosophy of complimenting someone. When I see that they're trying, you did something different, I'm going to notice, if I notice it. Usually I have a million things in my mind but if I notice it like, "Hey, you got a haircut? Hey man, happy haircut." If a girl is like, I just know how much it costs to do your hair. I'm like, "Oh, man. That looks good."

It's hard to compliment people in a day where... It's awkward. Masks make communicating so hard, especially for internationals or someone with a speech impediment. You want to text. My gift game is through the charts. I got all kinds of pictures on already. That's why we have to talk about driven generosity because no one costs into generosity. You have to talk about a vision for generosity now, here and now, but also in your life. Are you on a trajectory? Do you have a vision in your heart to be generous because that's what love is. It's generosity. That's what grace is. Grace is unmerited favor. And you can't talk about love if you can't talk about treasure. This is why Jesus said, "Wherever your heart is, that's where your treasure is." You can't talk about love if you do not talk about wealth. So that's why we're talking about it.

2nd Corinthians chapter eight. I'm going to assume you have read it. As I mentioned, this is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths on your heart. And also if you have not read it, I challenge you after to go and read the whole chapter. I'm going to read this as we go along and relisten to the sermon because that's another thing, I assume that if you're a member or if you go here, you do not miss sermons because we pour our life, our heart into these sermon, and we're leading the church through the preaching of God's word. We're leading. So if you're a member and you're on vacation... The average member of this church goes to church half the time, half the Sundays. Stuff just comes up. You got to take a weekend trip. "Yeah, I can't live in the city." You got to go New Hampshire, you go to the White Mountains.

You just travel the world and you miss and you come back, you're like, "This is a different church. I didn't go to this church. I became a member of this church?" Yeah, keep up. That's what I'm saying. All right. 1st Corinthians 16, this is the context, verses one through four. It's there if you want. St. Paul said this, he said, "The Gospel was planted in Jerusalem through Jesus Christ." Now there's a church in Jerusalem, Jesus' brother, his younger brother, half brother James, becomes a pastor. And then God sends the Holy Spirit upon the church and then God said to them, "Go and preach the gospel in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, to the ends of the earth." They didn't so God sends persecution so they start actually doing their job. And because of the persecution in Jerusalem and because there's a famine at the time, the church isn't doing well, they can't even work, they can't find jobs because people find out that you're a Christian, now all of a sudden you're fired.

So St. Paul then, he hears about the church of Jerusalem, and then he's been planting churches in Ephesus, Colossi, Philippi, in Corinth. He plants these churches and he knows that they are prospering financially. And he says, "Hey, the church in Jerusalem has a need so I'm going to ask you to collect finances and then send one representative from your church. Don't give me the money." He says, "Send one representative to Jerusalem with the finances. I will accompany you." And by accompanying you, that shows us that he has no mercenary interest in the matter. It's not for him at all but he's risking life and limb to accompany them to go to Jerusalem and he actually ends up in prison because... So it shows that he's generous with his life to be generous to the church of Jerusalem. And also what he's doing is he's healing tension, racial tension between the Jewish church and the Gentile churches. What he's saying is, "We're one big family." That's the context. Three points. Grace is generous gift giving. Grace is generous gift giving.

First of all Grace is, and that's what he starts with. This the first one. We want you to know brothers about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia. Grace, unmerited favor, God saved them. They added nothing to their salvation. Grace, God predestined them before the foundation of the world. Draws them, elects them, they become Christians, it's all grace, all their sins forgiven, by the grace of God that has been given among the churches, Macedonia for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy so they're experiencing affliction as well. They're persecuted as well. Their abundance of joy. They have so much joy that God saved them. And they're extreme poverty, they don't have much money. They're afflicted, they have extreme poverty in Macedonia that have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. He's saying, "The church is poor." And if that tiny little church plant in Macedonia, that church plant is younger than the church in Corinth, if they were generous because they're wealthy in generosity, shouldn't you be more generous than a baby church?" That's what he's saying.

And he's talking about grace. There's a difference between grace and mercy. Mercy is you don't get what you deserve, you don't get help. Grace says you get what you don't deserve. You get pulled over, you're doing 79 and 35 and the cop says you deserve a $450 speeding ticket. If you don't know what I'm alluding to, listen to last week's sermon. And the cop shows up and he's like, "Here's your ticket, $450." But then he tears it up and he says, "Oh, well. Why are you speeding?" And you say, "I'm speeding because my dad set my curfew at 10:00 PM." And he said, "I'm going to take your keys away because my dad said that nothing good happens after 10:00 PM." And I'm like, "Ah, that's when the good stuff started happening." And then the cop says, "I get it. I had a dad like that." And then the cop gives you $450. That's great. Did you deserve that gift? You did not.

So St. Paul says, generosity starts on knowing. I deserve hell, but God promises me heaven. Jesus paid all my debts and He redeemed me. I have access to the treasures of Jesus Christ because I belong to him. Once you receive the forgiveness, you are willing to give whatever God causes you to give. They're dirt poor but the rich enjoy their overflow and wealth of generosity. Do you have a vision? Are you driven with a vision for generosity? Are you driven for this? I'm not talking about just working enough to meet your needs. I'm talking about work enough to meet someone else's needs. I once heard that Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose Driven Life, now it's a different title. What on Earth Am I Here For? It was the best selling book of all time. Hardback books after the Bible. Best selling. He made bank. And then I heard that he turned into a reverse tither where he didn't just give 10%, he gave 90%. I remember hearing that and thinking, "Oh my. Imagine doing that." And I had this desire, I'm like, "Lord, I would love to one day to be the reverse tither."

And then I became a pastor. I became a church planter in Boston. How big does your 10% have to be? But I haven't lost the vision because I believe in a God of miracles. If your crypto investments go to $10 million overnight, are you going to tithe? Are you going to give a million dollars to the church? And if you can't be generous with theoretical money. This is absolute real talk because in the same way that 2.3% of the church actually clicks the link, 2.3% of the church actually gives. So there's 10 people that give most of the giving. We'll get to the tithing. I'm just going to plant this here, make you feel a little uncomfortable knowing that we'll get there. By the time we get there you're going to forget that you were uncomfortable, okay? And what are you doing to make the vision a reality? Whoever doesn't work shouldn't eat, Scripture says. And if you do work, you're going to work hard enough to have something else to share.

You work hard enough to put yourself in a position where you can be exorbitantly, lavishly, liberally generous. Not conserving, just conserving everything that you're given. So you got to ask your yourself whenever you're making... I just want to plant the vision in your heart and then it's going to be you and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit. Once you add, "Lord, how can I be driven to be more generous? Will this decision helped me become more generous?" And then you weight decision. Even when you're young, you weigh which school to go to and what to major in, how many loans to take out and how long it's going to take you to pay off the loans so that you can be lavishly generous. This vision it's not how you change your life today.

It's a philosophy of life. Verse three continues, for they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means like the widow with the two mites and Jesus watched her give money to the Temple of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints and this not as we expected but they gave themselves first to the Lord. And then by the will of God to us. They first gave and said, "God, I'm yours. You did everything to make me yours. I'm yours and everything I have is yours so Lord, what would you have me do with what you have given me, both my dollars in my days? My time, my treasure, my talent. Everything, Lord, it's all yours." And when you have that mindset and you hear of a need, you say, "Please, let me help you." He uses the word beg. They begged. You don't think of beggars as giving, as generous. And he says, "They're begging me to take their finances to help this other church."

What a vision. It's like when you start a company and it's tremendous, and the idea is tremendous. It's going to help so many people, and then someone hears it's a great idea and they're like, "Please, let me invest. Let me invest. I'm begging you, let me invest." Because you know that this investment is going to turn into something a lot more. That's what it means to give in this world. It's an investment for heaven. God keeps track of everything. I've given money away I don't even remember, I don't remember. And then somebody writes to me like, "Hey, you changed my life that one time." My family is from Ukraine and Estonia. I remember we went to visit a family member Ukraine. Their annual salary, she was an engineer, she makes $500 a year. $500, here you go, cash. It changed her life. What's $500 here? Three days of rent? You know what I'm saying? Generosity has to be precise. If you really want to be generous, you always you have extra. You're waiting for the opportunity.

You hear of a need and you're like, "Yeah. What's your Venmo?" I'm going to meet the need because God has met mine. Timing is everything. How can I help? And not just finances. If you're in college, you don't have much to finances but you have time. You can be present with people. Timing is everything. How can I help with this posture of heart? What would change your day today? What do you need from me right now? How can I help? And you got to get to know people and practically this is why community groups are so important because in community group you get to know people and then at prayer request time, they're like, "Hey, can you pray for this situation? I need help." So it takes humility to get to know people, it takes humility to pray for people, and it takes humility to actually voice your need. And then it takes humility to receive the gift because there's always this mentality of, yeah. But then I owe you. No. You don't. This is a gift. You didn't deserve it. Just don't forget it. Just say thank you. Just thank you.

Are you adding value to someone's life with your wealth? That's true generosity. You can't meet everyone's every need but you can at least pray. That's the bare minimum. I'll think about you. I'll expand my brain energy to actually pray for you and continue to pray for you. For example for me, what do I need? My wife hates buying prisons for me because she's like, "What can you give a man who has everything?" And I hate buying presents for her, different reason. She's not hearing this service, praise God. I can be transparent. I bought her a purse one time. Nice. Leather. Big. She doesn't like big purses. I had no idea so I gave it to her. She took it back. She took it back. Don't take it back. If it was a gift just pretend you like it, okay? So what do I need? I need prayer. I ask that you pray for me, I ask that you pray for me by name. I ask that you pray for my family, I ask that you pray for the Sikkemas and the Hoots, Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy.

I ask that you pray for the staff. I ask you pray for the members of this church, and I ask you to pray for a building. I was at a pastor's meeting and they're like, "Hey, can you fill out the survey?" And it's all your personal information. They said, "What's the greatest need in your town, in your city?" I wrote church building with a school. I've been here for 12 years and if people had not moved away at the rate that they were moving away, we would have a church of thousands. It'd be a different conversation. So in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking subconsciously, what will make this a church that you're like, "I will not move away." What would that take? And in my mind, I imagine a church building so nice that you're like, "Why would I go anywhere else? I'm going to figure out how to stay here." So I ask that you pray for that.

St. Paul talks about this. He talks about his generosity, the generosity with his people Macedonians and then he brings in Titus. Accordingly we urge Titus that as he had started so he should complete among you this act of grace. So Titus is there and he's like "You started the collection. Let's finish the collection so that Titus with representatives from your church can go bring this to Jerusalem. Second is generous verses seven through nine. He uses the phrase excel in generosity. 2nd Corinthians 8:7, But as you excel, you excel. Does that word do anything to you emotionally? Well, if you work with Excel, it does. He says, "In the same way that you excel in faith." I know a lot of Christians like this. "I just want to know about God, I just want to know God's word, I want to memorize the whole thing." Yeah. Keep going, "Excel in speech, excel in knowledge, in all earnestness, in our love for you-- see that you excel in this act of grace also."

I went to seminary with these people who have never really done anything in... I went to seminary after working for two years in the business world and I worked in government and I realized I got to seminary, none of these people know life. They don't understand how the real world works and that's why the pastors are like, "I don't want to talk about money." This is what people think about all the time. This is what you do at your job all the time. In some sense, you're thinking about creating value and getting value. He says, "Excel in this act of grace." Not just the faith part. A lot of people they take faith so seriously that it never becomes real so it's just theoretical and works. And some people are all about works theoretically. Some people somewhere should give something. That's why the government should tax everybody and the government should figure out how to be generous so that I don't have to be.

That's why whenever I hear Elon Musk gave this amount of money and then all these haters show up and they're like, "Yeah, but that's only 0.001% of his net worth." What if we made your generosity public? I want to come on in on that tweet. He's talking about generosity. Giving, excelling, liberal giving. It's as important to the faith as works is it is works, it's faith with works. It's all intertwined. And by the way, generosity is not tithing. Tithing is giving 10% of your income to your local church before uncle Sam or FICA takes their cut. That's tithing. Giving 10%. Tithing is not generosity. Tithing is just not stealing from God. It's Malachi three. You look it up. He says we are to give, and I will go against any theologian who says otherwise with the like, oh, new covenant, it was the Old Testament, not the New Testament. In the old Testament the tithe remains and then they had temple tax and all kinds of stuff. It was actually computed it was 27 and a half percent, whatever it is.

Did Jesus Christ talk about tithing? He just assumed it. He assumed if you love your local church, you will give to your local church because you believe in it. And do you have a verse? Yeah, Matthew, 23:23. Jesus condemning the Pharisees. Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites. They were the conservatives. The sad you sees were the liberals. These are the conservatives and Jesus hits both sides. "You're so conservative with your money." He's saying, "Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you tithe mint, dill, cumin. They had a little garden. They get 10 leaves of mint. One goes to the temple." They neglected the weightier matters of the law. Justice, mercy, faithfulness.

These, you ought to have done the justice, the mercy, faithfulness, the most important stuff without neglecting the others, the tithe. Do we care about justice and mercy and faithfulness? We do. Do we care about justice? I stand against any form of oppression, any form of oppression. Any form of oppression I stand against so should you, but also you got to care about giving because money flows when you love something, when you believe in something. You invest in what you believe naturally, you invest in what you love naturally. Take my money, take my wealth. Let me just apply this to dating. So all the single people, but also the married people you listen too because I'm teaching generosity here. So young men, I'm going to start with young men. You like a girl, you like a girl. She's a Christian because why would you marry a non-Christian? Marriage is hard enough.

You like a girl and you know that she likes you, that's important because a lot of people just assume, you're single, I'm single, I'm of the other gender so you definitely like me. No. If you can't even read that she likes you or not, you definitely aren't ready for marriage because women communicate very differently than men do. So you got to read her, you got to read the signs. You can't be oblivious to the stuff. And if you are, you come talk to me and I will tell you, "Bro, she literally emailed me and said, Pastor Jan, please tell this person to stop. I don't like him." And then Pastor Jan is going to say, "You know what? Here's a few things that you can work on." Okay. You like a girl. She likes you. You ask her out on a date. You ask her out for dinner and you go somewhere nice. Not too nice. Not too swanky.

Good food, good ambiance. You're having good conversation. Lead with the questions. Lead the conversation. You ask her about her life, about her dreams, about her vision, her beliefs, what she likes, you're a student because that's what marriage is. And then the check comes, how are we paying for this? Bro if there's any hesitation in your heart, I didn't expect her to order appetizers. If you have to do that, you're not ready. You're in the wrong place. You should be at your job, at your second job. You should be at your side hustle. There's 16 hours in the day and you're single. What else do you do with your time? Now, also you got to tip. You pay for it and you tip well, not based on, ooh, if they didn't serve me right. Have you ever been in the food industry? Some of the hardest work ever. You tip and you tip well and you'll let her know I'm a boss because that's what a girl wants.

Split the bill. Let me just analyze this. It's such a cultural issue because I come in with Slavic bag. On Slavic back it's completely different. Completely. If I said I had to talk about this at church, if I said that to any of my Russian brothers, they'd be like, "Why?" They'll be like, "Oh, Americans. They don't know." You don't know. Tanya, my wife Tanya, in the first sermon, I said that she dated a guy who gave her a gift then she texted me during the sermon. She's like, I never dated him. It was just a birthday present. But this guy shows up and he wanted a date or she didn't go on a date yet. She thought he was boring because girls like to laugh and he had no sense of humor, but he had money.

So he bought her a gold watch on her birthday. It didn't work. She kept the watch and she gave it to my daughter, Sophia, who still has the watch. But I had to ask, I'm like, "She's high maintenance because how big does a rock have to be to marry a girl like that?" Back to the cultural analysis, the splitting the bill you're hedging bets. And if you're hedging bets this might not work out. So I don't want to take a hit on my net worth. If you're hedging bets and you don't view this as I'm investing, if you're hedging your bets, you're in the wrong spot. You should have been at community group with her, getting to know her. Because when you get married, you got one bank account anyway so get married and your chances are higher if you pay for the bill, that's one thing. The phrase, let's go Dutch, is splitting the bill. Do you know that phrase? Let's go Dutch.

Pastor Shane, who is Dutch told me that that's inaccurate. He said, "No. True Dutch people do not go Dutch in the restaurant because true Dutch people do not go out to eat. They go fishing, which is a much better date." What I'm saying is, if you really love, there's got to be generosity. And ladies, just a word, please have the humility to let the guy pay because marriage is getting an order. There's an order to creation. There's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, husband, wife, children, angels, demons and demons became demon Satan became Satan because he wouldn't get an order where you as the wife, as a woman, you're saying is, I will follow you. I will follow your lead if you're going to lead like that, if you're going to lead with generosity.

No one wants to be married to a stingy person. No one wants to be married to a mooch. No one wants to be friends with the mooch. A person who all the do is mooch off of you. They go to your house and they always come with empty hands. And you're like, at some point I'm going to stop inviting you into my house. And usually those mooches are theoretically very generous. In their heart they're like, I'm bringing my presence. Yeah bro but you got to bring presence to. This is the act of grace. That's what St. Paul is talking about. You excel in the act of grace. Do you have a vision to Excel? I say this, not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. Love can be proven. It can be tested. And you can tell if you love when your time and your talents and treasure, everything just flows into the direction of the one whom you love. And Paul uses the example of generosity, Macedonians to inspire the Corinthians verse nine, for you know the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

This is what it's all rooted in. You know the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that though He was rich yet for your sake He became poor so that you by His poverty might become rich. This is the greatest act of generosity in the universe. The God of this universe, the son of God who always existed, there was never a time that He was not. He did not start being when he was born. No, no. When He was born and He took on flesh. That's His incarnation. That's when His humanity started, but Jesus always was. So you've got the whole doctrine Jesus Christ. He was the Christ here in a nutshell, one person, two natures. And we have the greatest motive. We have the greatest motive for the greatest act to ever happened. Why did Jesus do this? Because He loves us and He wants to make us rich. Jesus wants to make you wealthy so He bankrupts himself to make you wealthy. Jesus Christ was poor on purpose.

I've heard of people get really rich and then they get poor but it's never on purpose unless you're dying and then you're a philanthropist and you give everything away. My dad says that money is like oxygen. You only need it when you're alive. But Jesus Christ did this intentionally. And by the way, people looked at Jesus Christ and they're like, "Bro, you're poor." And He's like, "But I own everything." And by the way He could have also used, He had a very particular set of skills that He could have used to enrich Himself on earth. He could have started a tremendous wine business or a baker but he chose not to. He chose to bring a different kind of wealth into the world, a wealth that really matters. That's what he did so He loved and He died. So Jesus Christ was rich.

We live in a world that demonizes wealth because we idolize it. Jonathan Edwards has this thing where he talks about the cycle of idolization and demonization where you idolize something, this is my savior and you realize it can't save you, you begin to demonize it. The world does this with money. We do this with people. And this is why one of the things I say as a pastor all the time, do not idolize me. I'm not the guy. I'm not Jesus. I'm just here literally just talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It's not about me. It's about Jesus. I walk with Jesus and I'm going to tell you how I walk with Jesus but it's not about me. So do not idolize me because I've seen and then all of a sudden we're not friends. Same thing the world does with money. Is it inherently wrong to be rich? No, of course not. Is it inherently wrong to be poor? No. Jesus was both.

There's righteous rich and righteous poor and there's unrighteous rich and unrighteous poor. And Jesus Christ said, "I came in here. I look poor but I was wealthy." Because you can be poor and wealthy at the same time. You go to countries that are not as materially prosperous as ours and you look at their life and they live a richer life. I was reading Solzhenitsyn this week. Solzhenitsyn he is famous for The Gulag Archipelago, where he was imprisoned. And by the way, if you want to really understand what the world is going through, read him. And one of the things that he said was when he got out of The Gulag, out of the prison for speaking truth, he got out of the prison and he would write in prison and he would memorize everything that he wrote and then he would burn the papers and then when he got out, he wrote it all down and he brought his best friends into his little cabin with a dirt floor and he for five hours recited his work because that's all he could give them.

And their life was changed because they were enriched. That's what Jesus is saying. What does Jesus want in return for his word? For his work? He wants gratitude. Just like each one of us when we're generous to someone just say, thank you. Romans one, they didn't thank God, we didn't thank God. That's what sin is. Sin is in gratitude toward God. Jesus says, worship me, glorify me. Verse five, and this not as we expected but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Generosity to others as the embodiment of Christ incarnation of his embodiment. What's the most generous thing that you can do to someone? The highest level of generosity. What is the absolute generous thing you can do to someone is help them understand the greatest act of generosity for them, help them understand that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, my sins, everybody.

And He wants to forgive you so that you will have life with Him now, eternal life that begins now and for all of eternity. There is no greater gift that you can give anybody than the word of the gospel. There's no greatest act of generosity and that's why I need to say the following. A very famous quote was thrown around in the church all the time and it goes like this, preach gospel at all times and use words if necessary. Francis of Assisi, it's attributed to him but he never wrote it. It's actually very anachronistic.

(silence)

It's an oxymoronic quote because how did you get that quote in my mind? Did you come up to me and put your hand on my shoulder and infuse and inject those words into my mind. Did you buy me lunch and through that sandwich or just in my mind? No, you use words. And I hear what you're saying. I understand what you're saying but you're saying, you're using words. The problem is that quote, a lot of people use it as an excuse to justify the fact that they have never shared the gospel with another human being. Well you're being a mooch. You're being stingy with your greatest gift.

So share the gospel. That's the point. Speaking the gospel's the most compassionate, the most empathetic, the most kind generous thing you can do. It's also the most savage thing you can do. In a world that says, "No, you can't talk about that." You're like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to talk about that." You need to believe in Jesus, repent of your sin because you're going to hell. I don't want you to. Let's go to heaven instead together. Savage. Savage love. So what I'm trying to say is don't Assisi-fy Christianity. Let's do what Jesus did. Jesus didn't just give us fruit from the tree of life. He welcomes us into the garden and shows us where to get it. Three is gift giving. And this is 2nd Corinthians 8:10 through 11. These verses are just an application of St. Paul of these principles.

So I'm going to read them fast and I might skip some. In this matter I give my judgment. This benefits you who a year ago started not only to do this work, but also desire to do it so now finish doing it as well. So that your readiness and desire may be mashed by your completing it out of what you have. They had begun to gather lapsed, perhaps false teachers came in, perhaps they won the money themselves, but he says, I want you to give now because everyone's generous theoretically until you have to cut the check, until you have to hit the send button, until you have to actually take from yourself and give to another. Verse 12, for if the readiness is there it is acceptable according to what a person has not according to what he does not have.

What he's saying is it's not about the amount, it's about your desire to give. He doesn't care who gives what. I have no idea who gives what at Mosaic. I have no idea. I don't have access to any of the finances. I have no idea. I only know how much one family gives. That's my family. And I look at that number every once in a while. I'm like, is this commensurate with how much I love? Verse 13, for I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need so their abundance may supply your need that there may be fairness. What he's saying is, right now, you are more prosperous than those people, so you should share. We teach little kids at home, hey, you guys share. It's not your Legos and it's not her Legos. It's my Legos.

This is how you know that a child is maturing because a child actually turns around at mom who your whole life and I'm saying, did you eat? Are you hungry? Did you eat? Did you eat? You try and say, "Mom, did you eat?" There's a maturity in generosity. Verse 15. This is really a principle and he gets it from the old Testament. As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over and whoever gathered little had no lack. And here he goes to when Israel is in the wilderness freed from captivity but they don't have access to food because they're in a desert. They ask God, God sends manna. So every day manna would fall from heaven. I think of manna as a Los Amigos burrito. That's how I think of manna from heaven, the surf and turf, praise God. So burritos are falling from heaven every single morning.

And people they go up to grab their burrito. How many burritos are you going to eat? And you know that this burrito is actually going to go bad tomorrow so you can't save it. And you have a decision to make you grab your three burritos for the day, a very nutritious meal. There's a lot of burritos on the floor. You have decision to make. If you are an able bodied, healthy human being. The question, am I going to gather more for whom? Well, it's not for me because it's going to go bad. Am I going to gather for someone else? Perhaps was weak or frail or perhaps it was responsibilities at home like a single parent where I don't have time to go out and gather burritos.

And the most industrious, the most driven would say, "You know what? This is an opportunity for me to serve my brothers and sisters. I am going to gather as much as I can to be as helpful as I can." Well that kind of vision for your life, it changes a person. It changes your capacity. One day you gathered 10 burritos, the next day you gathered 12. A year goes by and you're gathering 400 because you need to figure out how to organize people. Now you're managing other gatherers of burritos and after a while you develop the skillset of how the world works, leadership, et cetera, et cetera and then you get into the promised land and you have a certain skill set that other people do not. And this is where the gleaning laws come in. God knew this and he knew that the most industrious, the most diligent, the most self-driven and most ambitious are going to build businesses.

So God says, "Look, when you build a business, when you got a farm, do not harvest absolutely every single bit. Don't maximize your profits." I want you to start a business from the perspective of generosity. And he says, "Leave things on the outskirts for the widow, the orphan and the immigrant." The American church today has lost the vision of the gleaning laws. So if you start a company, are you driven by generosity? Are you driven by greed like Facebook is, like Google is, like Apple is. If you publish an app in the app store or Google play, you know how much they take? They take 30%. They didn't build it.

Let me speak to my fellow entrepreneurs. My culture creators, influencers, hustlers. Let me speak to founders. I know the heart of a founder, a heart of a founder is like a heart of a father. You are always thinking about your baby consciously or subconsciously. You have dreams about your baby. Build with generosity. To my fellow employees who work for bosses, I want you to understand that when you clock out, your boss does not. You stop thinking. You're like, "I don't get paid to think about this. I don't get paid to answer this email." Well your boss does not. So there's got to be generosity. A generous employees, generous bosses, generous CEOs, managers, generous consumers. I know a guy who's the most generous guy I have ever met. I'm going to tell you a story about him after. He's generous toward everybody except for Chipotle.

They mess up his order and he is on the customer service line demanding extra burritos. Bro, generous tip. You got to tip. Most basic thing you can do. Generous lawyers, generous nurses and doctors, generous scientists, generous teachers, politicians, developers, builders, executive consultants, analysts, students, professors, generous in the food industry, generous in the international relations, generous bankers, investors, VCs, designers, artists, musicians, architects, childcare professionals. I've said pastors, athletes, comedians, and everyone I left out. And I want to speak here about someone that everyone leaves out, stay at home moms. My wife was a stay at home mom. You know in Russian what they say? What is your wife doing? And they say doma sidit. She sits at home?

Come in my house for a day. Sits at home. My wife is a homemaker. That's her full-time job. That was a conscious decision. We live on one income. Why is it her full-time job? Because it's a full-time job to be my wife. So husbands if your wife works a full-time job, do not demand from her that being a mom and a wife is a full-time job. If you want it to be a full-time job, make it her full-time job. This sermon I like because this topic I like because it throws everyone for a loop. Where's Pastor Jan politically on? Let me just explain where I am politically, because the last few sermons when I go real talk people are like, "Where is he politically?" I went to Brown University. Even in the Ivy leagues it's the most liberal one. Everyone's like, "Oh, you went to Brown. Oh, that's weird. That's just weird."

They don't have a business school on purpose. It doesn't help the endowment. So I went to Brown University, but I will go to church on Sundays at a Russian Baptist church as conservative in every perspective as possible. They were Republicans before they even learned English to know that they're Republicans. They're Republicans before they learned the word. So at church, I am the lib and at Brown everyone's like, "What is wrong with you?" There were tree huggers before that became a thing. And Bush was President and I bashed Bush and my dad called me a lib for bashing Bush.

And then the libs love Bush now so was my dad a lib? That's where I am politically. Here's my analysis of being in these two worlds. Liberals are strong in works theoretically. The ideas when they hit the pavement, they don't work. They want someone else to be generous. Let's talk about your generosity. And conservatives, they're theoretical in the faith part. God, faith, family, freedom. Great. Let's talk about the faith. All of you need to repent. All of you. Satan sometimes comes as a Republican and sometimes he comes as a Democrat. And I'm an equal opportunity preacher. All of them need to repent, everybody. Trust in Jesus. That's what I'm saying.

2nd Corinthians, I say that because on the one hand, I'm like, generosity. On the other hand, I'm thinking about homeschooling my kids. So where am I politically? I don't look at things through political lenses. I look at things through biblical lenses which makes it hard for people to make sense sometimes. 2nd Corinthians 8:16 through 18. But thanks be to God who put into the heart of Titus. So now he's talking about Titus generosity. The same earnest care I have for you for he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest, he's going to you of his own accord so Titus is generous with his time. With him we're sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel. Great thing to be famous for. Was Paul generous? Of course he was, but he's not talking about his generosity here. He talks about Titus. The brother of preach the gospel. He's talking about the Macedonians.

Being generous specifically when people do not deserve it. That's what we're talking about. My friend Walt is one of the most generous people I've ever met. He was our video guy so I'm going to talk about Walt for a second. I bought new couches for my basement from Bob's Furniture. Tremendous place. I bought these new couches. They're supposed to get delivered. So I'm waiting. I'm supposed to get delivered 3:00 PM. They got delivered at 10:30 PM so I'm like, these guys do not deserve anything. It was raining. I saw the guys, they pulled up to my place. I'm like, "Hey, why are you guys late?" And they said, "We got Storrow-ed." You know what that means? Yeah, look it up. They got Storrow-ed. I look at the truck. Yeah, they got Storrow-ed. The truck was too tall for the bridges on the Storrow. I'm like, oh, okay. This is the first time.

And then it's raining. They're bringing the couches in. They scratched the mop. Either take my doors off. They wouldn't do that and I brought half the couch in and then Walt comes to me, there's three guys and he's like, "Hey, do you have any cash?" I was like, "For what?" Cash. "To tip them." I said, "Number one, it's not your couch. Number two, they didn't deserve it." And he said, "Yeah, that's why it's a gift." He gave each guy 20 bucks. 20 bucks and I gave him diet Cokes after. That's generosity. 2nd Corinthians 8:19, not only that but he has been appointed by the churches to travel with us as we carry out the act of grace as being ministered by us for the glory of himself in the show of good will. And then he continues in verse 20. We take this course meaning Paul himself is going to be with them, but he's not holding the money, representatives from each church are going so that no one's asking questions. That's verse 20.

We take this course so that no one should blame us about this generous gift that's being administered by us for we aim at what is honorable, not only in the Lord's sight, but also in the sight of man. So he's saying, I'm taking extra precautions so that no one has any questions. So there's no malfeasance. That's what he's doing. So this is very unique because St. Paul has an open heart. I want to be generous but he's got an open mind. He understands the way this fallen world works and he understands that there's measures to take to make sure that no one's asking questions. It's a discerning generosity. Jesus said, "Be gentle as doves but shrewd as serpents." Because what is generosity? What is grace? It's giving people a gift that they do not deserve but if you are a generous person, what can happen is people just start expecting you.

You're supposed to be generous to me. And if they're expecting it, now it's not a gift. It's cheap grace, you paid for it, but it's cheap because they don't value it because they feel entitled to it. And this is why a lot of Christians get taken advantage of because you are not discerning that a lot of people are still sinners. You're a sinner, they're a sinner, all's a sinner. So there's an aspect of total depravity. So sometimes to these people, the most loving thing you can do is say, "Hey, get a job and I'll help you get a job." Because sometimes helping actually hurts and the most generous thing to do is not help. Let me just give you an illustration from one of my least favorite things to do in the world, washing dishes. I do not do it often but when I do wash the dishes, I expect everyone to notice.

Because as soon as you've stopped noticing, I stop washing. And here in lie, the source of so much of the gender role struggles. It's a secret, I'm here to reveal the secret to you. Men and women view dishwashing differently. Women washed the dishes after they eat, men wash the dishes before they eat. Because man if you washing the dishes just gave you a lot of things, supply and demand. If I supplied too much then the price goes down. So this is the way, why wash the dishes every day and my wife might stop noticing when I can wash the dishes once a week and she's ecstatic?

And the point is notice when people are generous to you. Just say thank you. Don't take it for granted because then it's not a gift anymore. St. Paul view generosity through concentric circles, generous to the Lord, generous to the church. He wasn't married. So I got to bring in a few concentric circles. I'm generous to the Lord. That's my first circle. My second circle is, how can I be generous to my wife? My third circle is, how can be generous to my daughters? My fourth circle is, how can I be generous to my grandchildren?

Then I say, how can we generous to my parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, community group, church members, attenders, neighbors and I want to be a reverse tither. So how much we need? God's got it. Verse 23, as for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker. For your benefit as for our brothers, they're messengers of the churches, the glory of Christ. So the churches are the glory of Christ so why wouldn't we invest? So prove before the churches of your love and of your boasting about you to these men. Give proof of your love in the context of finances. I'll close with the story before we go into communion, a story of Doyva and Rufina Angira. Rufina was from Siberia. Doyva was from Finland. They met in Narva, Estonia in the '80s. My dad was Doyva's manager at a factory that my dad worked at.

And one of my dad's jobs was to give out bonuses at the end of the month, depending on who worked the best. Well there were drunks in the factory because everyone had to work. So if you got fired on one job, you just get another job and it's not about performance by you just showing up so they wouldn't really work. So he would take their bonuses and give it the Doyva. Salary was 200 rubles a month. My dad would make sure that it's an extra 50, 60 rubles a month extra for Doyva. The reason why that's important is because Doyva had eight kids and they were so poor that the whole family could not go outside for a walk because they didn't have enough sets of clothing. So my dad was generous to this guy. My dad shared with me this week, he said, one time, the first time he did it, Doyva will get his check-in and he's looking at it and he had bad eyesight. He's trying to figure out why is the number wrong?

And then it finally hit him and he looks at my dad and he says, "May God bless you for that generosity." Well, one of the things that Doyva did was he was writing to the US Senate for a decade. He had been writing since the late '80s for a decade. Hey, I can't live in the Soviet Union as a Christian. I can't feed my family. I need refugee status to come to the United States. And he was granted it and he moved to Providence, Rhode Island. And he's the one that actually invited my family. He forced my dad to give them all the information. And then when my sister Aida was born, she was born in '88. My dad got the invitation and then finally he applied and he got a visa.

So our family, with $700 in my dad's pocket, my family immigrated to the United States in Providence, Rhode Island and Doyva, I'll never forget, he came to pick us up in his beater and he was so happy to be in the land of milk and honey. That generosity, alleged generosity but then the cycle continued. My dad made it a mission in his life to help immigrants. How many times have you heard of immigrants coming? There was always finances. There was always groceries. He would help them and he would hire them. We live in a country where everyone's talking about theoretical generosity. We have 11 million undocumented immigrants living here amongst us. Are you generous to your neighbor? Receive the grace of Jesus Christ. If you haven't, grace is a generous gift giving. This isn't just a phrase, it's philosophy of life. Jesus lived like this so let us live like this.

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Audio Transcript:

Morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church, my name is Jan, one of the pastors here along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card that you should have gotten at the back at the welcome table. If you fill it out legibly, and then redeem it at the welcome table, you'll get a gift there. And then if you give us your mailing address, we'll send you another gift in the mail to say thank you for coming out. With that said... Oh, also we have a membership class today. So if you're not a member, you're interested in membership, and if you're not interested you should be, we have a class with lunch provided with I think Burritos. Burritos, heavenly manna. And so we usually order more, so if you didn't sign up, you're still welcome to come, I'll give you mine.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you created a place for us, a space for us, you created this earth, and you gave it to us to rule over under your dominion. And Lord, we rebelled against you, we like the prodigal son ran from you because we thought life would be more enjoyable without you, without your love and it's not. Jesus, we thank you that you the older brother, you did came looking for us, you lived with us and you loved us, and you loved us enough to speak the truth to us, and the truth got you crucified. Our sin got you crucified.

We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us and we repent of the fact that often we have grieved you, we repent. I pray that you bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, I pray that you make us the people who know the truth and love the truth, repent when we transgress against the truth, people who know your love as you define, and people who carry a culture of speaking truth and love anywhere we go. We speak what needs to be said, we have the courage to say it, but it's only because we love. We pray that you bless our time in the Holy Scriptures and show us that you call us to make room for people who disagree with us, to engage with them, to have hard conversations. I pray you remove any spirit of self-censorship from our church, from our homes. Bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

My last sermon two weeks ago, I said some things that ruffled feathers, and I will address those comments today at the end of my sermon, so you have to pay attention until we get there. I've learned from my mistake, don't do it in the introduction. The title of the sermon is Ride or Die. I come from a big family, I have four siblings. And my extended family is also large, my dad has five siblings, my mom has 10 siblings. So I have family all over the world. And one of the things that our family, or one of the culture or core values of our family is we're ride or die. If you're part of my family and you text me when you're in a bind, I am there and I roll deep.

I'll give you just a story from my own family. I remember when I was 13 years old, my goal in life, my American Dream, other people want picket fences, my American Dream was to get a car. So at age 17 I finally saved up enough for a car, I got my license. I bought a stick shift but I didn't know how to drive a stick shift, but it was cheaper than the not. So I got this car and I loved it. It was an Audi 80, just old, nasty, just problems all the time, but it was fast. And one time I got pulled over by a cop for doing 79 in a 35. It was a speed trap. I was doing 79 in a 55 but it turned to 35 downhill. And so my ticket was $450, I go to my dad and I say, "Paps, help me out." He said, "You bought the car, all the bills with the car are your bills."

So I had to get a job, and I got a job. The only job I could get was delivering newspapers. So I'd wake up at 3:30 AM, and go to the place and fold up the newspapers. And then this is back in the day. This is people used to read newspapers. This is back like AOL, like Juno, like Jan.Vezikov@juno.com. You know what I'm saying? AIM, my name was Jantheman. Way back. Way back. So I realized it's hard to drive stick shift and deliver newspapers, so I would just stall all the time and it was terrible, late for school that first day. I come home, I tell my sister, "I can't deliver newspapers in my car." She said, "What time are we waking up?" 3:30 AM she's with me. I'm driving, she's tossing. And we did that for a month, just long enough to get $450. Ride or die.

This text doesn't make any sense unless you understand that St. Paul views church like that, many of us don't. Many of us don't understand church like that. Many of us view church as it's like the movies. How often do you go to the movies when something good is playing? St. Paul viewed as family. He was like, "I'm a spiritual father, and I'm going to say things that are going to grieve you because I love you. And I'm doing it for your good, for your benefit because we're ride or die." That's the heart. And if you know me, I preach expositional message, I go verse by verse, and we explain. This one's a little different. I'm going to cover all the verses, but this one is kind of like an onion. You don't really understand the heart of what's going on unless you go layer by layer, by layer, by layer and then you get into the heart, and that's what we'll do today.

2nd Corinthians 7:12-16, would you look at the text with me? "Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you for I said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. I'm acting with great boldness toward you, I have great pride in you. I'm filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within. But God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus. And not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoice still more. For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that the letter grieved you though only for a while.

As it is I rejoice, not because you are aggrieved, but because you were aggrieved into repenting, for you felt a Godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this Godly grief has produced anew but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing with zeal or punishment, at every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. Therefore, we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoice still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.

For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame, but just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true. And his affection for you is even greater as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. I rejoice because I have perfect confidence in you." This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. St. Paul starts with this phrase, this metaphor, this image of making room. "Make room for us," he says. He started the language. 2nd Corinthians 6:11-13, he said, "We've spoken freely to you Corinthians, our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as to children, widen your hearts also."

St. Paul is speaking as a spiritual father. This is Papa Paul. I love you, that's why I've spoken hard words to soften your hearts. It was only because of love. My heart's wide open, is yours toward me? And then in 7:2 he says, "Make room in your hearts for us." In the Greek it just says, "Make room for us in your hearts." In the English translation, they put that in because the parallel is in your hearts, but he's saying, "Make room. Is there a room at the church that I planted? Is there room for me?" St. Paul is saying. "We have wronged no one and we've corrupted no one, and we have taken advantage of no one.

In Mark chapter two, Jesus Christ goes back to his hometown of Capernaum, and he starts preaching, he starts preaching in the house. And the house is filled with religious leaders, they want to know what Jesus is teaching. And then the gentleman that gets to the door he gets carried there by his four friends, and his friends want this gentleman to be healed by Jesus, but the religious leaders won't let him in. They won't make room for a person who is different than them. They don't make room for a person who needs Jesus more than they need Jesus. And then finally, the friends were like, "All right." They climbed to the top of the house, they dismantled the roof, so I always feel bad for the owner of that house, but what are you going to do? The guy is more important.

Lo and Jesus heals and forgives his sins. Jesus makes room for him. Jesus knows what it feels like to be rejected, and so Jesus really does care about making room for those on the fringes, those who have been ostracized. And that's what St. Paul is saying is that, "I make room in the church. I love you." He said, "You have room in my heart, now let's reciprocate." And this is how we'll frame up our time. You know someone is in your heart when you're willing to be grieved by them. You're willing to grieve them, you're bold around them, you're willing to eagerly repent, you're willing to joyfully forgive, you're comforted by them, and you die or live with them. This applies to every relationship.

First, you're willing to be grieved by them, this is what it means to love. What it means to love is you open your heart to someone else. You let them in, you make them family, and you make yourself susceptible, you make yourself vulnerable to being hurt by them. That's what it means to love. It's the same thing God did, he creates us. And he's not aloof. He's not just transcended, he's also imminent, he's with us and he feels when we offend. Genesis 6:5-6, this is right before the flood, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and had grieved him in his heart."

He saw what was happening. Where is God when there's evil in the world? He's right there. He feels it. Just like Jesus Christ, he made himself vulnerable, God becoming man. He let those whom he loved crucify him. Isaiah says that Jesus was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was despised and we esteemed him not. This explains why St. Paul is so worried about this church. He planted the church, he's in Ephesus planting another church, he hears the church isn't doing well. They've allowed unrepentant sin in the church. They're actually celebrating the sin. And he hears about it, writes 1st Corinthians, hard words for hard hearts.

And then he's grieved. How are the words accepted? Did they receive them and did they repent? And he says in verse four, he's worried, "I'm acting with great boldness toward you, I have great pride in you, I'm filled with comfort in all our affliction. I'm overflowing with joy for even when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest. We were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within." He's anxious for the church. He's afflicted with thoughts about the church. How many of you think about church outside of church? How many of you think about church on vacation? I had last Sunday off, I could do anything I want. I could have slept in till 2:00 PM. I came to church. On my day off? Yeah. It's my favorite thing in the world. Which service did you? I went to both. I was the last person out of the room.

You know what I do for fun? I study other churches. You know what I do? Honestly, you know what? I listen to sermons. I watch football, but I listen to sermons while watching football. I redeem the time. Tanya and I went to a marriage retreat to Maine, the Cliff Hotel. It's awesome. We had an oceanfront room and I didn't think about church once. We were there Monday through Wednesday. Didn't think about church once for like an hour. Then I got texts and emails and phone calls, and then I realized, "Yeah, it's family." If your mom calls you when you're on vacation, will you pick up? It's family. That's how he feels.

St. Paul here picks up from the excursus. In chapter 2:13 what he did was, he was telling us about why he's writing, how he felt. He was writing about the fact that he's in Ephesus and he sends Titus to Corinth, and Titus then is supposed to bring a message back to Paul, but Paul waited. Titus didn't come, he goes to Troas hoping to meet Titus there, and then he goes to Macedonia's church planting, and still thinking about the church the whole time. He's exhausted. He said, "Our bodies had no rest." I once heard a pastor say, "Don't complain about how hard your job is to your people." He said, "Everyone thinks you work one hour a week and you play golf the rest of the time." He said, "What do you want? A violin? What do you want?"

Well, St. Paul knows, he's comforted by the fact that God knows. God knows. This is verse six. "But God who comforts the downcast," the word downcast here is depressed. St. Paul experienced a spiritual depression. Not a physical depression, a spiritual depression over his concerns about the church. He said, "But God comforts the downcast. Comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal, so that I rejoice still more." His joy is so wrapped up in the joy of the church and their health and their maturity and their growth, that he doesn't experience joy until they experience joy.

Any parent knows when your baby is sick at night, you can't sleep normally. You can't. You're riddled with anxiety because you love this little human being. You're allowing that person's pain to be your own pain. You're allowing them to grieve you. Phillips Brooks was a pastor in Boston, you see his statues Downtown. He said this and he wrote a work called The Influence of Jesus. He said, "To be a true minister to man is always to accept new happiness and new distress. The man who gives himself to other men can never be a holy sad man, but no more can he be a man of unclouded gladness. To him shall come with every deeper consecration of before untasted joy, but in the same cup shall be mixed a sorrow that it was beyond his power to feel before." That's how deeply St. Paul loved. He's willing to be grieved. God knows this, God's experienced that kind of love.

Titus finally arrived, brought encouragement to Paul, and Paul experiences immense relief. That the message was received, the people repented, the relationship has been reconciled with God. They showed Titus hospitality, communicated their eagerness to see Paul. But it wasn't until that moment that he could rest. 2nd Corinthians 2:13 before the excursus he said, "My spirit was not at rest, because I did not find my brother Titus there so I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia." Parallel language, 2nd Corinthians 7:5, meaning this is the end of the excursus. "For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within."

Do you love your brothers and sisters like this? Do you love brothers and sisters in the church like this, where you're willing to be grieved by them? And I say this specifically to a church in Boston. I mean a lot of people, they just come to Boston, this is just a pit stop. This is just, "I'm here. I'm going to get what I need, and then I'm out. I'm going to Florida." "Can I come with you?" But while you're here, love like this. 2nd Corinthians 7:13, "Therefore we are comforted." This is the whole idea of like he's comforted by them, meaning he was grieving over them, meaning he wraps up his joy with them. "And besides our own comfort, we rejoice still more at the joy of Titus because his spirit has been refreshed by you all."

You can't love without opening yourself up to being grieved. God loves God. Jesus loves Jesus. Holy Spirit loves us. As Christians, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and Ephesians 4:30 says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit with your sin. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit." Second is you're willing to grieve them. If you really love them, you're willing to grieve them. 2nd Corinthians 7:8, "For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it. For I see that the letter grieved you, though only for a while." What's going on here? "I regret writing what I wrote, but I don't regret writing what I wrote. I'm sorry that it made you feel sorry, but I'm not really sorry because you're sorry." That's what he's saying.

And sometimes I do this where I say something, and I'm like, "Oh, I'm so sorry." And they're like, "Are you really?" I'm like, "No, because we're finally talking about the thing." That's what he's saying. He loves them enough to have the hard conversation, the uncomfortable conversation. That's what it means to love. You want the best for the person. This is what it means to love a child, to parent a child. You want the best for the child, so every once in a while you get down and you look your child in the eyes and you say, "I love you more than anyone else on earth. I love you more than your mom does. I love you more than anyone else on earth."

And listen to me, I need to tell you something. This is not a comfortable conversation. Do you think I want to have this? No, I don't. But I love you more than I love my comfort so I'm going to speak. No one likes a surgeon's knife, but pain is worth it if it cuts out the disease. Unpleasant truth, life-altering truths. This is what it means to preach the gospel and to teach how to live a life in a manner worthy of the gospel. You tell people, "Hey, your life is not in step with the gospel of Jesus Christ. You're not living as someone who is saved." To have that conversation, you tell people that they need to change their life. That's not easy.

Life-altering, lifestyle implication truths. Sit down with someone and say, "Hey, we got to talk. I know where you were this weekend. I saw from your Instagram story. It wasn't even your story, you got tagged in it, and I know exactly where you were. And that story didn't stay in Vegas." A conversation like that. Lifestyle conversations. St. Paul says, "If you love, you speak directly." Jesus was willing to grieve the people closest to him. His closest friends. Who Was Jesus' best friend? It was Peter. John thinks it was John, but he wrote down in the Gospel of John, a little biased I think. I think Jesus was like, "John, you're my best friend," and then, "Peter, you know you're my best friend."

He goes to Peter, he's like Peter, "You're my rock, you're my foundation. I will build my church using you as you proclaim the Gospel." And sometimes Peter was dumb as a rock too. So in the very next breath, he says to Jesus, Jesus just told him, "Hey, I'm going to die to save you." And Jesus says, "No." "Jesus, I will go to war for you." And Jesus says, "Get behind me," and what does he call him? Satan. "Get behind me Satan." That's offensive. And at that moment, Peter could have written Jesus an email and said, "Jesus, you're not a good pastor. I'm leaving this church. I'm going to find another one of our pastors that doesn't call me Satan."

He doesn't deal with the state of friends like, "Yeah, all right, my bad. Hug it out." Truth, love. You can speak truth when you know you love each other no matter what." I got a sister who's a vegan. She's done all the analysis and she says she believes that this is the healthiest way to live. I always tell her, "You got a supplement. If you got a supplement and stuff, then you're not getting that stuff." "Oh, yeah..." I make fun of her all the time for it, she makes fun of me for eating meat. We're still family. On her birthday, I got her a vegan sweatshirt. It's pink. It's made with vegan materials. Because that's what families do. You speak about uncomfortable things because you know you're not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere. That's love.

And three is you're bold around them, because you're not afraid of offending them because they're not going anywhere. You're bold around them. 2nd Corinthians 7:4, "I am acting with great boldness toward you. I have great pride in you. I'm filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I'm overflowing with joy." So look how, "I love you, I am proud of you, I take comfort in you. You know that. And I'm going to speak with great boldness." And all this is in the Greek is freedom to speak. Cut to the chase, speak plainly. Jesus used the same phrase in John 16:25. He said, "I have said these things to you in figures of speech, the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the Father." I'm going to speak plain. I'm going to speak plain to you.

The more you love a person, the more you're willing to just cut to the chase, and I respect that. That's when I know you really love me. When you have to sit down with someone and you have to say, "All right, this meeting is going to be an hour. We'll spend the first 45 minutes talking about how I really appreciate this person and I love this person, and then finally, I'm going to say what needs to be said. And the whole time I'm like, "I know what you're doing. Just get to the point." The longer you know each other, my wife and I, 16 years. October 23rd was 16 years from the day that we met. We're at a point where she was sitting in the first service up top. She sits up top when she thinks it's going to be controversial sermon, and she communicates with me through the air.

If you've been married for a while, you know. "I know exactly what you're saying." She didn't like my sermon last week, or two weeks ago. I said, "Why didn't you?" I said, "Did I say anything untrue?" She said, "No." She said, "I'm just afraid people are going to hate you and you're going to end up in prison." I said, "Oh, so you get it. We're on the same page." She's like, "Yeah." She said, "Also, can you stop freaking people out with General Jan?" I was like, "I was talking about holy war. What do you want?" So today I'm, "This is Papa Jan." This is more. I even wore a different shirt. This is my dad bod shirt. Just I didn't even do anything to my hair. I'm like, "This is dad. We're going to have dad jokes and we're going to talk about what matters."

You're bold, you can speak. What the Holy Spirit has laid on you, you can speak that with people that you truly love. And I'm afraid, I'm afraid that we're losing that at this church. We're definitely losing in the culture, I'm afraid we're losing it. One of my jobs as lead pastor and founder of this church, one of my jobs is I am a culture creator. Whenever I see something in the church, where I don't like the culture, I speak and we change things. For me, it's really important to have tremendous music. I love... I wish so...We have one of the best worship bands in all of the nation. And I know it because I watch other church services for fun. We do. They crush it, they crush it. Even on the livestream like, "Yeah." It's better in person, but even in a live stream, meeting it up. That's culture.

Good coffee, its culture. If we have food, we're going to have good food. We're going to have a brisket and there's going to be enough brisket for everyone. I kind of laid an egg last time, I take ownership. Next time we're going to have more brisket. Culture. And I want a culture, I dream about a culture of being able to speak truth however uncomfortable, because we love each other that much. Where there is no self-censorship, where there are no topics off the table, bring whatever topic, free liberal exchange of ideas. Harvard University was started with that at the heart by the Puritans. They said, "This is how we are going to reclaim, recreate culture. We're going to take every single idea, whatever subject, and we're going to analyze it through the lens of Holy Scripture. If the idea is God glorified, we test the spirit, it glorifies God, it's going to further the common good, it's a good true beautiful idea, yes, we take it."

"No, we reject it." We'll say it has gone to war against truth, and it does that with postmodern, there is no truth. And then censorship, people aren't speaking about what's true. St. Paul here says no. Like Jesus who is truth, we don't tiptoe around the truth. I get emails and texts and calls every once in a while with good friends of mine listening online, they're like, "I can't believe you said that thing." And I always, I like, "Why? Is it not true?" Like, "No, it's true, you just can't say in Boston." I say, "Why not? Is there some force field around Boston where there's things you can't say?" Apparently there is. And you know this force field, I experienced this force field.

I just spent three days with my wife in Maine, we had our room was ocean view. I've never had that in my life. I spent three hours on the balcony just staring at the ocean, talking to God. My wife's like, "You going crazy?" I was like, "No, I'm praying." Because I like praying, I'm going to keep worshiping God, turn on music. And then I'm driving home on Store Road, my wife and I we weren't even talking. We were talking but not talking. As soon as I hit Store Road, I go, "Oh." Just angst, pain, ennui, the Russian word called toska, and you should look it up, T-O-S-K-A, toska. Tolstoy wrote about it, and Solzhenitsyn did. My soul was crushed. My wife is like, "What's happening to you? Can we go back to Maine?" I was like, "Please."

Going honestly four hours. I had a brother who stopped by my place and he's like, he didn't say anything but he knew. And then three days later, he's like, "Yeah, you were just weird." It was like depressed, I was depressed. It's spiritual war, and it manifests itself where you can't say things. No, we're going to speak truth in Boston as it is in heaven. And we need to fight for that culture. Four is you're willing to eagerly repent when someone speaks truth to you. And you say, "Yeah, this is true. It's from the Holy Scriptures. I'm not lying. My life isn't in line with the scriptures." Verse two he says, "Make room in your hearts." For us, we've wronged no one, we've corrupted no one, we've taken advantage of no one. So before St. Paul, the great St. Paul starts poking around in other people's eyes to take our specs, he checks his own eyes. He looks at the Holy Scripture as a mirror and he said, "I got a log."

Do I? If I got a spec. He says, "Show me where I'm wrong. Show me where I've sinned. Change my mind. I'm willing to repent." The false teachers accused him of lying, of being unreliable, because he didn't come for a visit. He couldn't control those things, he's not a sovereign. He's asking, "Did we sin against you?" He's saying, "I have a clear conscience to you." We don't believe, I don't believe in sinlessness. Only Jesus was sinless. So we don't believe in sinlessness, but we do believe as Christians in sinning less. As you grow in your faith, you are to be more sanctified. You are to grow in holiness. With day by day, a year goes by, you should be more holy then you were a year ago. And when people see you they should say, "What happened? You're different."

Too many of you are managing sin, the same sin over and over. You commit the sin and then you go repent, you take communion, you go commit the sin. Just a cycle of wasted life, wasted talents, wasted zeal. My wife told me last week, she's like, "You're talking about holy war? There's people in the church who have not won the war over porn." Holy War. We'll win that war first, win that battle. I'm tired of pastors getting up and talking about, "Oh, we're so broken. Oh, yeah, we're so sinful," and talking about it with a defeatist spirit as if true freedom can't be experienced from a sin. Jesus Christ said, "If you struggle with sexual sin, cut off your arm and pluck out your eye." Savage.

I'm going to write a book called Savage Jesus. And I'm saying that out loud just so no one steals the title. Stop. Stop sinning. Stop sinning. True freedom can be found, and it feels so much better than sin management. So we repent when we are called out? Jesus never repented so we can't look to him and say, "What does repentance look like?" But he did repent on our behalf. On the cross he said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Meaning ignorance is not a defense against God. At the judgment, you can't say, "I didn't know." Because you know what Jesus says? It doesn't matter, you're still guilty, and you're still guilty because you didn't know. You didn't know. You did know that was a sin, you did know. And God knows that you know.

So we are to repent, and we are to believe, and this is how we grow in the Christian life. We repent and we believe, we repent and we believe and we got blind spots brothers and sisters next to us. They tell us speak truth in love. The first of Martin Luther's 95 theses, he says this, "When our Lord and master Jesus Christ said repent, he will the entire life of believers be one of repentance." Real. That's your whole life. Every day repent, believe, repent, believe. What is repentance? How can we know that it's real repentance? How can we know that it's true, and can it be distinguished from its imitations? Yes. And that's what St. Paul continues. He says, "I'm willing to joyfully forgive," and that's point five, "because I know that this is a real, true repentance."

Verse nine, "As it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved but because you were grieved into repenting. For you fairly Godly grieved so that you suffered no loss through us, for Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death." Now he's differentiating, he's qualifying repentance. There's true repentance and there's false repentance. There's true repentance that starts with a Godly grief, and there's false repentance that starts with a worldly grief and it only ends in death. This one ends in salvation without regret. The reason why he needs to differentiate is because they look the same in the very beginning.

In the early stages, it's hard to differentiate which one's real and which one isn't. Because they're sorrow. Both of them are grief. When you sin and you experience the consequences of that sin, you don't have to be a Christian to be miserable about messing up your life. You ask anyone in prison, if they're grieved, they'll tell you they're grieved at being there, at their situation. When the debts run up and the bills come in, and they can't be paid and bankruptcy looms. Played around with a sin, all of a sudden you got addicted to it, and it seems like you can't live without it. You're unmarried and there's a baby on the way. Words are spoken and there's no taking them back.

Marital infidelity, the damage is done, you try to rebuild but things will never be as they were completely before. A lie was told, found out, theft, impure. Whatever the sin, troubled pain, heartbreak, grief and sorrow follow in the wake. And tears flow, self-accusation, emotional wounds, but the question is, are you convicted of the sin? Is it grief over the sin or is it grief over being exposed? Worldly grief is what people will experience at the judgment. It's when you're weeping and gnashing of teeth as they're sent to hell. That's grief. It's not Godly grief. You feel bad for yourself. You feel bad that you've sinned against yourself. You don't feel bad that you've sinned against God. You're not grieved that you grieved God. You're grieved that you're grieving.

Issa, the Scripture says saw repentance with tears and never found. Judas Iscariot, three years with Jesus Christ, and then finally he realizes what he did. It's not real repentance. Peter and David, they weren't just sorry that they got caught, Peter and David were sorry that they sinned against the Holy God. And St. Paul does this, and I think he does this intentionally because I've seen him do it before. Before he gets to the word that he really wants to use, repentance, he uses a word that's very similar to it but it's very different. Verse eight, "For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it though I did regret it. For I see that letter grieved you, though not only for a while."

The line between heaven and hell is the line between remorse and repentance. Regret, remorse, you feel sad on account of how things ended up. If you got on a time machine, you went back, you might change things. But it's my bad, I shouldn't have done that, it's my mistake. That's remorse. And it doesn't matter how deep your remorse, if it doesn't turn into repentance, it's not going to do anything. Matthew 27:3-5, the story of Judas, "Then when Judas his betrayer saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the others saying, "I've sinned by betraying innocent blood. I've sinned. I've sinned." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed and he went hanged himself. "I've sinned. I've changed my mind. I shouldn't have done that."

And he didn't repent to Jesus Christ for betraying him. He could have and Jesus would have forgiven him. 2nd Corinthians 7:9, "As it is, I rejoice, not because you are grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. You were grieved into repenting for you felt a Godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us." Repent. This is metanoia. Turning around, it's a change of mind that leads to a change of heart. And the change of mind, change of heart leads to a change of life. You change how you live. Your pattern of life changes. The things you do change. Luke 22:54-62, Peter who denied Jesus shows us what true repentance looks like.

"Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house and Peter was following at a distance. They had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant girl seeing him as he sat in the light, and looking closely at him said, "This man also was with him." But he denied it saying, "Woman, I do not know him." And a little later, someone else saw him and said, "You also are one of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not." And after an interval of about an hour, still another insisted saying, "Certainly this man also was with him for he too is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you're talking about." And immediately as he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter, and Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times. He went out and wept bitterly."

Judas was grieved over the fact that he sinned. Period. Peter, as he was sitting, looks and sees the eyes of Jesus Christ looking at him, blood, sweat, tears, crown of thorns. He realized that he didn't just sin, he sinned against Christ. That's true repentance. "God, I'm sorry, I've sinned against you. I grieve over the fact that I've sinned against you. I grieve over the fact that I've grieved your heart." Sin isn't just breaking commandment, sin is breaking the heart of God. "Yes, I shouldn't have but I did. I repent." There's no lawyering up, there's no self-justification. We've sinned against God. Our sin doesn't just offend God, it pierces God.

Zechariah 12:10, "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy so that when they look on me, on whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly for him as one weeps over a firstborn." So when caught in sin, repent to Jesus, for your sin against Jesus. And even better, repent before getting caught. And better yet, mortify your sin. When repenting, repent with the spirit of King David who when the prophet comes and the prophet Nathan comes to him and convicts him of sin, David repents. Psalm 51:1-4, "Have mercy on me oh God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly for my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you. You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment."

Against you only. He sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against Uriah, but he said, "Yeah, I've sinned against them, but the most egregious sin, the reason why I sinned against them is because I already sinned against you." That's where true repentance starts. Jesus Christ told us to mourn over our sin, that it's a blessing. Matthew 5:3-4, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." Verse 11, "For see what earnestness this Godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves with indignation, with fear, with longing, with zeal, with punishment. At every point you've proved yourself innocent in the matter. Remorse led to true repentance and true repentance leads to reconciliation, restoration, relationship with God and relationship with people. This is why repentance leads to action.

Westminster Shorter Catechism defines repentance like this. What is repentance unto life? Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin, an apprehension of the mercy of God and Christ does with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God. Full purpose endeavor after new obedience. True repentance, "And God forgive me, and God I'm yours. How do you want me to live? What do you want me to change? It leads to a change of life. And St. Paul, I just love his heart. They've hurt him, they've hurt God, but when he hears about their repentance, the first thing, he doesn't gloat, he's not like, "I told you so. You wicked sinners." They repent and he's like, "Come on. You're back in the family. You're back in the house. We'll make room for you."

When people repent, we don't gloat. Just like God doesn't gloat. God is so willing to forgive. God is standing at the door and he's waiting. He's waiting for the prodigals to come home. He's right there. And Scripture says that there's more joy in heaven over the repentance of one sinner than over 99 who are no need of repentance. The fact that God rejoices when we repent should make us eager to repent. Six says, "You know you love someone when you're comforted by them. When just their presence brings you comfort, that's when you know you really love them. 2nd Corinthians 7:12-16, "So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God." I'll deal with that verse.

"Therefore, we are comforted, and besides our own comfort, we rejoice still more the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all, for whatever boast I made to him about you, I was not put to shame. But just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting for Titus has proved true, and his affection for you is even greater as he remembers the obedience of you all and how you received him with fear and trembling. I rejoice because I have complete confidence in you." He's saying, I didn't write just because of the one who did the wrong, that's the man who committed an incestuous relationship with his dad's wife. I'm not writing just because of the man that was wronged and suffered the wrongness of his dad. He said, "I wrote so that you would change."

The culture of the church would change. And when they repented, he rejoices with those who rejoice, he takes comfort in them, delight from them just like God does in us. 2nd Corinthians 7:6, "But God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus." And point seven is you know you love someone when you die or live with them. 2nd Corinthians 7:3, "I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together." What a strange way to talk to Christians. Have you ever talked to a Christian like this? We're ride or die. He spent 18 months with them. I would die with you and I'd live with you.

There's some people I would die for, living with? Oh. It's like die and live. And he starts with die to show us how deadly serious he is. He's saying, "I'm not condemning you, we're family, we're brothers and sisters." And this is really the heart of the whole text. Every other verse is just a layer of the onion. Paul never lost confidence of the fact that they were Christians, and they proved Paul right. He says, "You're already in our hearts, and we know that we are in your heart as well. We saw that from your repentance." This is what he does in verse 12. "So although I wrote to you, it wasn't for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God."

He's saying, I wrote those hard things not just to deal with a particular situation, I wrote it so that you see just how much you love the family of God already. You've made room for us. Continue to do so. We're already in your hearts, just like you are in our hearts. What he says is, "Live together and die together." He uses that language so flippantly because he's like, "It doesn't matter." We're going to spend eternity together, brothers and sisters so we might as well start getting along now. You will spend eternity with people who got vaccinated and you will spend eternity with people who did not. If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, repent of your sins, then you will say at the family table. You will have dinner together for all of eternity.

If you don't believe in Jesus, you will spend eternity in hell, which is just like COVID but for eternity. The COVID tension, you know that? That's what hell is. Quarantine here and isolation, that's hell. So trust in Jesus. That's my simplest way of contextualizing the gospel. So since we're on the topic, my wife has three trigger words that turn off her mind. COVID, vaccine and masks. As soon as she hears them, mind off. It's just like something trips and that's it. So I'm going to say a few things right now that will be hard to hear for two reasons that I see. The first reason is the sensitivity of the topic, the second is the simplicity of the analysis. Sensitivity of the topic. People have died. People have lost and people have suffered.

I know I've lived through it. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about a hard topic, so don't let the sensitivity of the topic check you out right now. Keep listening, please. And the simplicity of the analysis, I'm going to tell you words that you've heard before. And perhaps it's just the order of the words just slightly different and I don't want you to miss the profundity of the concept because the words are so simple. "Pastor Jan, why did you mention the politically charged topic that you did two weeks ago? Emotionally charged topic? Why did you mention? You usually don't." That's right. I usually don't. Because the things we deal with here are so much more important.

Whenever something out there happens, just love each other, love God. Make sure you're going to heaven. But this thing is different. This thing is different because it's not going away. I waited, and I waited and I waited, and I was like, "A vaccine is going to come and we're stuffed. It's going." It's not. Because we have been so caught up in the details of our disrupted lives in the last 20 months, we perhaps have not understood the historical significance of what we have lived through. We have just lived through one of the greatest turning points in all of world history. Climactic. Things have changed. We're talking about the before times, and the new normal. Like an epoch has changed. We're talking about the New World Order.

This one's different, and you say, "What about love, Jesus, simple? Isn't that what we focus on?" This has everything to do with love, Jesus, simple because the battle right now, the battle is being waged over the definition of love itself, of what it means to love, of what it means to be a loving person. That's under question right now. Jesus Christ gave us the great commandment, he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself." I see my neighbor is hurting. You say, "But Pastor Jan, the reason I got the vaccine is because this is how I love God and how I love my neighbor." So should you. See, the first part I don't have issue with. That first part, you did the risk analysis. You got informed, educated, and this is how you choose to love yourself and how you choose to love your neighbor. It's a conscience issue.

Okay, great. We're in the family of God together, that's... The very second you say, "So should you," you have entered different territory. You are adding rules to the commandment of God. It's called legalism. It's what the Pharisees did. Jesus Christ didn't tell me to love my neighbor as you love your neighbor, or as you love yourself. Jesus Christ didn't tell me, "Love my neighbor as the government tells me to love my neighbor. CDC, WHO, Fauci, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna." Jesus Christ told me to love my neighbor as I love whom? Love your neighbor as you love whom? Say it together, yourself. Well, that one word changes things. As you love yourself.

So I put myself in the shoes of the person in my community group, she has antibodies. But she's being forced to get injected to keep her job, her livelihood. And I said, "Would I want to be put in that situation? No, I would not." And God forbid if the church ever put me in that situation. I'd have two questions, the first to myself, "Jan, why didn't you lead better? Why didn't you have the hard conversation? How did we get here?" And I'd ask, "Lord, is this a sign that I need to go plant a new church in Idaho, on a volcano with an airstrip, or Florida? Make America Florida again. Or Russia, that last bastion of freedom?" I just want to share my heart.

And I know I'm an outlier here, I know, but just bear with me for just a little bit. I see out there creation of two classes, and I can't change that out there. I can't. I see it creeping in here. That's what concerns me. Point to one time in world history that this has been done, the creation of two classes and it hasn't led to bloodshed. The Nazis had their Untermensch, the underclass, the inferior people, Jews, gypsies, slobs, Black people, and people with physical disabilities, political prisoners. You're subhuman, you're not even human. And then there's the Übermensch, that's what it means to be a true human. That's what a loving human being is.

Now we're living through, "Get the vaccine, enjoy society. Don't get it, but if you don't get it, it's your fault." Phrase, the pandemic of the unvaccinated? You're creating scapegoats and I know how this ends. I've seen this movie before. Two classes clean, unclean, obedient, stubborn, in, out, righteous, unrighteous, good, evil, loving, hateful. I know, I know. I'm one of the only people in the nation whose doing this. I was on a marriage retreat, 70 pastors and their wives. That was Monday. Tuesday we have breakfast, we have breakfast. All the pastors are in one room, all the pastor's wives are in the other room. And it's Q&A. "I got a Q&A, all right, I'll go."

So I go. I sit in the back. I always sit in the back. I know I'm weird, and I start talking and people are like, "This guy is weird. What's he talking about?" I just know. There's not many rooms I walk into I'm like, "All right. I belong." I'm just weird. So I walk in and I sit in the back, I'm drinking my coffee, and the head guy comes up to me. He's like, "Hey, Jan, I want you to sit in the front. I got three seats up there and I want the room to look a little more full, so would you please sit there?" I hate when people do that. I never do that to anybody. Whatever. I respect the guy, I go to the front, I sit down, there's question and answer. "How do you lead your wife? How do you love your wife?"

I'm like, "You guys are all pastors. Just love her. Talk about Scripture together. pray together, eat good food together. Have fun together. Tell her a joke. Make her laugh. That works." I'm sitting there, I'm like, "All right." Okay, now we're half an hour in, we got another half an hour to go, people stop asking questions. And I'm like, "All right, I got nothing else to do." And I said, "Are all questions allowed?" They're like, "Sure." The guy who was leading is from Brooklyn, the guy who was ahead of church planting here in Greater Boston, and the guy who's a megachurch pastor in Georgia, those were the three guys. First guy says, "Oh, here's my question." I said, "How do you minister to people in your church who are getting fired from their jobs for not getting the vaccine, and the religious exemption isn't accepted?"

First guy says, "Religious exemption? I didn't know we have two different religions." I know. What he's saying is, Christians don't even ask this question, because the loving thing to do is to get the vaccine. In his mind, this isn't even a category. It's like these Christians aren't even welcome to the conversation. The second guy said, "I have never even thought about that." The third guy said, "We just decided not to give out religious exemptions." I know. I'm one of the only people that's ringing the bell. Do you realize what is happening here? This is an ungodly worldly sentiment that's creeping. There's churches. I used to deeply respect these pastors. On their website it says, "We have seating arrangements. On the first floor, it's for vaccinated people. For everyone else, you can sit over there."

Okay, verses in James that says not to do that. What concerns me is this ungodly sentiment creeping in here where there's people in the church and I hear things, walk around asking, "Are you vaccinated so I know whether I can hug you?" No, no, no, get that out of here. Do what the rest of us do. We don't hug. We awkward fist bomb just like, "Yeah, I'll hug you with my eyes." Do that. Don't bring... I don't check for vaccination status at the door of my house. I don't do that. I'll close with this. I was at another pastors meeting this week in Truman Temple, and they had chicken and rice guys, it was so good. And they had trays of food, really, really good. And so I heaping plate, annihilated it, and then see there's more food. I'm like, "Which tray am I taking home?"

But they didn't do that. But they gave us styrofoam little things that you can take food home, so I pile it up. And just I'm pumped, I'm bringing food home for my girls. How do you love your wife? You bring food home. Hunters and gatherers. So I'm walking down the street, walking Park Street into the T, and as I'm on Park Street there's a gentleman sitting there in front of the Park Street, and he says, "Do you have money?" "I don't have cash." I wish he had a sign with those little Venmo. I wanted to give him that tip. Then he looked at, he's like, "Food. Give me your food." I was like, "All right." I gave it to him. He opens it up, and he says, "My man." It looked that good.

And then I walk into the T and I have so much joy on my heart and I'm thinking, "Why do I have so much joy?" It's not because I did this thing because it wasn't my food, it was just like, God. And I was like, it hit me, "He treated me like a human being not as a disease carrier." He looked at me and he said, "You're a human being. I'm a human being, you got food, can I have some?" "Yeah, okay." That's love. That's love. That's what it means to love each other. You see the humanity in the person. And this is my fear, it's only lasted 20 months. We stopped seeing the humanity in each other. We stopped loving each other the way Jesus called us.

In the church of God, it's a family and there's no partiality. There's no prejudice, there's no discrimination. It doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter how you dress, it doesn't matter how you smell, it doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter to me your vaccination status, I will love you either way. And also you're not made righteous through your vaccine, you're not made righteous through not getting vax. So this spirit of judgmentalism, of classifying in your mind who are the right Christians and who are the wrong Christians, no, no. We're made righteous by the blood of Jesus Christ. His blood gives us immunity from Satan, sin and death. Have you repented to Jesus Christ? Well, welcome to the family.

"I'd live with the family," St. Paul says, "I'd die with the family." Jesus lived with the family, died for his family. He makes room for us. Have you made room for him and have you made room in your hearts for those whom he has accepted, even if their perspective is different than yours? Make room in your hearts for us just like Jesus made room in his heart for you. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this word. We thank you for the fact that in this church we can have hard conversations because we love each other and we want to make room for more people here. Holy Spirit continue to use us in that. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. And welcome again to Mosaic. If you're new, my name is Shane, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we're so glad to have you with us this morning. We would love to connect with you. And if you would like to connect with us, we mentioned this earlier, we do that through a little connection card in your worship guide, you can fill that out and just drop it in the little white box back there at the back of the room. We have a little gift we'd love to send you in the mail. Or if you turn it in at the welcome center out front, we have another gift that we'd love to give to you just to thank you for being our guest here this morning. We can get you some more information about the church there if you're interested in that as well.

Last weekend, my family did the stereotypical New England fall drive. We went out across Massachusetts, up to Vermont and around and saw all the colors and that. And really the highlight of the trip though was along the way we came across some sky divers. And they were actually pretty low, they were kind of coming in for a landing and we're all looking, watching out the window as they're coming in. All of a sudden I hear my daughter Nora, from the back set just scream out, "Why on earth would anybody do that? That's so dangerous." And I'm like, "Okay, that's fair enough." I don't know, what's the most dangerous situation that you've ever been in? Have you ever been in a situation where the distance between you and death was thin, thin like the string attached to your parachute, thin like the foothold that you take when you're peering over the edge of a cliff and you get that kind of uneasy feeling in your stomach?

My friends and I in college, we were kind of thrill seekers. We liked to go snow boarding and rock climbing. But one of the things that we really got into early in college was spelunking. You know what spelunking is? You put on helmets and knee pads and headlamps, and then you crawl and you climb and you sometimes even swim to go through exploring these underground cave systems. And really, normally, usually in order to explore an actual wild cave, a cave that hasn't been commercialized for the public, you're supposed to belong to an official caving organization. And you have to oftentimes go downtown to the city hall and they'll have a key that lets you get access to the property that the caves are on. We weren't in one of those. But my friend somehow this one mythical place in Southern Indiana that was completely off the grid, under the radar.

So we made this trek from Northwest Illinois to Southern Indiana. And we get there and you're going down this country road, all of a sudden you hit this T intersection and there's just some woods and a small little opening in the trees, just big enough to drive your car through. And so we drive it down this old dirt road until we get to this rusty metal gate and next to the gate, there's a box and a sign and the sign says basically, "Drop $20 in the box, sign this piece of paper and enter at your own risk. If you die, you die." And as college students, this sounded amazing. This was the adventure that we were looking for.

And so we go, we set up a little campsite and we spend a couple days exploring these caves. And some of them had these big, big, beautiful openings, like stereotypical caves. I've got a picture of one of them. Most of them were really just a hole in the ground. If you weren't looking for it, you could easily walk right past it and not even know that they were there. You'd come across this hole just barely big enough to shimmy your way down inside and then you'd army crawl for 10, 20, 30 yards. But then eventually they would open up into these big cavernous rooms and literally inside there would be miles of tunnels to explore.

And so what's the point? The point is, I remember a moment when we were probably over a mile deep into one of these caves and it really finally hit me. I knew it going in, but it hit me in a real way, that if for some reason the batteries on our headlamps were to die, then we were to die. The only light that we had was the light that we had brought in with us. And if we were to lose that light, we would be lost. We would be left to grope through the darkness, never knowing if we were getting any closer to where we were going or only further and further into the darkness. It's a dreadful feeling, which is why we brought extra headlamps, extra batteries, extra everything just to be safe. But the danger was real.

We have been going through a sermon series on 2 Corinthians. And Paul has been repeatedly pleading with this church to remember the darkness that they were saved out of, that they were lost, dead in their sins, lost in the darkness and pleading with them not to go back into that darkness. A couple weeks ago in chapter four, he told them this, he said, "Listen, the God of this world...", 2 Corinthians 4:4, "... has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness.', has shown our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

"Corinthians, remember you were in that darkness, you had no light. You had no life. You had no hope. And you got yourself into that darkness with no way of getting yourself back out. But while you were lost, while you were dead in your sins, blinded by the false God of this world, the true God of this world, because of the great love with which he loved you, he sent us to you with the light of the gospel to save you out of darkness. Now, whatever you do, don't go back." This is his plea. Why? Because some of them were. What we see is that false teachers, unbelievers were creeping into the church, gaining influence over people's hearts and minds and like wolves in sheeps' clothing, they were leading them away from their savior, away from the safety of the flock and ravaging the church.

If you have your Bibles, open up to 2 Corinthians, chapter six, we're going to be looking at 2 Corinthians 6:14 through to 7:1 And what we're going to see is that Paul is again, he's giving us a warning to not return from where we came. He's giving us a reminder of who we are and he's giving us a vision of where we're going. So if you have your Bibles, you can open up. If not, the words will be up here on the screen, but would you please look at our text with me this morning? This is 2 Corinthians chapter six, beginning in verse 14.

"Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an believer? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of living God. As God said, 'I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me.', says the Lord almighty.' Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion and the fear of God."

This is the reading of God's word for us this morning. Would you please join me in prayer for our sermon today? God, we thank you for your word. Your word is holy. It is an errand. It is infallible. It is authoritative. It is a light for our path. It is a lamp for our feet. I pray that you would write the truth of your word upon our hearts to know it, to understand it, to believe it, to love it and to apply it to our lives in obedience and faith. My father, I pray that you would give me grace now and the power of your spirit to speak as I ought to faithfully preach, and to teach your word to your people this morning. I ask this in Christ's name, amen.

Three points today. Point number one, completely cast off the yoke of slavery. Point two, completely take up the yoke of salvation. Point three, get completely yoked with your savior. Arm pump emojis all around, we're going to talk about what that means in point three. But point number one, Paul begins right off the bat, verse 14, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." Four, what partnership has righteousness with lawness or what fellowship has light with darkness? What a court has Christ with Belial, with the worthless one, with Satan? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of with idols?"

This metaphor of being yoked, it's used in a few places throughout scripture, but there's only two other places in the New Testament where it's used in this negative sense. The New Testament uses it a few times literally. Jesus uses it one time as a positive metaphor. And we're going to talk about that later. But it's only used three times in this negative sense. It's used here and it's used in Acts 15 and it's used in Galatians 5. And we're going to take a look at these two other passages because they help us to understand what Paul is talking about and give us a good commentary on what this means. But in summary, both of these passages, they're addressing two things.

On the one hand, both of these other passages, they are warning the church to not be yoked to false teachers and to false teachings that were telling them that in order for you, Gentile Christians to be saved, you first need to be circumcised and to keep the Mosaic Law. Not just the moral law, but the ceremonial law and the civic law as well. And it's warning them that that you don't need to earn your righteousness through works of the law. And it's warning them there on the one hand. But on the other side, both of these passages also come with a warning against being slaves to the flesh, of living in immorality and sexual immorality and idolatry, as you did in your former lives as pagans. And so Acts 15, this is what we see.

We see in Acts 15:1 that some men came down from Judea and they were teaching the brothers unless, "You are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." And so verse six, the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and he said to them, "Brothers, you know that in the early days, God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentile should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us. And he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by what? By works of the law? No, by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither are fathers, nor we have been able to bear, but we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will." And so, in response to this at the end of the chapter, the apostles decide they're going to send a letter to this church to clarify their stance on the issue.

And this is the letter in Acts 15:23, it says this, "To the brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourself from these things, you will do well. Farewell."

So he's saying, "You don't need to earn your righteousness through these works of the law. You don't need to be circumcised to be saved. But this is also not giving you a license to continue to live in your former pagan lifestyle." These things at the end, they're describing practices of idolatry and sexual immorality. We see the same thing in Galatians, chapter five and Galatians 5 is just such a great commentary on this issue that I'm actually going to read this entire chapter, because it really helps us to grasp the fullness of what Paul is talking about.

And this is how he begins Galatians chapter five. He says this, "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law." If you think that that is going to save you, you need to keep the entire law perfectly. He says, "You were severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen way from grace. For through the spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

"You were running so well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and that the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettled you would emasculate themselves." That's a Bible verse.

"For you are called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one in word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. These opposed to each other to keep you from doing the thing you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

"Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

You see, both. On the one hand, you can't save yourself through the law. And the other hand, this grace that we have in Christ does not give us a license to continue living an unchanged life in the flesh, continue practicing the idolatry and the immorality of our former lives. He's saying, "You once lived in that darkness." But then the gospel came and the light of the gospel revealed that salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in the work of Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God the Father alone. So therefore do not be yoked to anyone who teaches you that you need to add anything to the work of Jesus in order to be saved. And do not be yoked to anyone who says that your freedom in Christ is a license to sin and to live an unchanged life as a slave to your flesh. And do not be yoked to anyone who practices or promotes permits idolatry in any form. That's who we are not to be yoked to.

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to be unequally yoked to these things? Well, Paul gives us five descriptors in the text. And he frames them in these five rhetorical questions. "What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?" It's a rhetorical question. There is none. "What fellowship has light and darkness?" They can't exist in the same place at the same time. "What accord has Christ with Belial??" It means the worthless one. He's talking about Satan, the devil. "What portion has the believer with the unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of God."

James 4:4 says this, "You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." What's going on here? What does this mean? Does this mean that we as Christians need to completely separate ourselves, cut off every we have with every unbeliever in our life? That we need to just completely isolate ourselves from the world? Does this mean that Mosaic needs to go buy some property in rural Pennsylvania and build a homestead with a lake and a garden? And the longer I live in Boston, the more I think I'd be a really great monk. I'd be a married monk, but still. Is that what he's talking about?

No, if that's what he was talking about, James would be contradicting Jesus. Paul would be contradicting himself. Jesus says this in his high priestly prayer. He's praying to the father in John 17. He says, "I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in the truth.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians addressed this issue as well. 1 Corinthians 5:9, he says this, "I wrote to you in my letter..." His former letter, 1 Corinthians is actually kind of 2 Corinthians, but we don't... The first letter was not part of scripture, it was not part of canon. We don't have that. But he's referring to a previous letter that he'd written the church. "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and the swindler or the idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church who you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you."

And so it is not commanding us to leave the world. He's not telling us that we need to cut off all relationships with unbelievers. We need to reach them with the gospel. But he is saying that Christians need to remain sanctified, set apart and utterly distinct from the world around us. The church needs to be in the world, but the church can't allow the waves of the world to creep into the church, into the lives of believers. We talked about this a few weeks ago. This is not our home. We don't belong here. We are ambassadors here for Christ's kingdom. Our citizenship is in heaven. God has placed us here and called us here to change the world, not for the world to change us.

And so what that means is that as we carry out this ministry, we can't build the kingdom of light using the tools of darkness. We can't fight the good fight using the enemy's weapons. We can't ,arch into battle allied with the enemy's soldiers. It's not that we're fighting against them, we're fighting for them. We want them to be saved, delivered from that darkness. But we're not on the same team. We can't partner in the gospel with those who have yet to repent and receive that gospel. And I believe that is primarily what Paul has in mind here when he says, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers."

Now, most of you, if you have heard this passage before, if you're familiar with it, you've heard it used in what context? In the context of marriage, right? This is why a believer can't pursue marriage to an unbeliever. Now, is that what Paul is talking about here? And when you read the text, this text has nothing to do with marriage on the surface, but it has everything to do with marriage when you properly understand it. Because what Paul is talking about here is a partnership in ministry and marriage is ministry. If you don't understand that, you don't understand marriage. Marriage, Christian marriage, is a missional covenant between one man and one woman in submission to one God. It is two people coming together to say that from this day forward, we until, death do us part, are going to be partners in gospel ministry together. Marriage is a commitment to work together toward the shared goal, of building a relationship, building a family, building a home that glorifies God, and that intentionally reflects the gospel out into the world around us.

And we see this very clearly in Ephesians chapter five. And read this chapter with this in mind, and look at this, Ephesians 5:22, "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands." Why? To give the world a glimpse of the gospel, to reflect the truth of the gospel to the world around us. Likewise, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that, she might be holy and without blemish.

"In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes, it just as Christ does the church, because we're members of his body." Husbands cherish your wives, lay your lives down for the sake of your wives. Why? To give the world a glimpse of the gospel. He roots this in the gospel. He also roots this in creation, that this is how it was meant to be from the beginning, verse 31, this is quoting Genesis, "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

And then he continues, "Children...", in chapter six, "... obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, this is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." This is God's purpose, this is God's vision for marriage and family. And so therefore, before you yoke yourself to someone for the rest of your life, the most important question that you need to be asking and answering is, "Is this person going to help me plow in that direction?" If not, you need to take off that yoke. You need to break off that relationship.

Now, one caveat here, does this mean that if a Christian is for some reason already married to an unbeliever that they need to seek a divorce? No. Paul made that clear in 1 Corinthians, you can look up instructions for that. It's 1 Corinthians 7:12-16. But the big idea is that going into marriage, that this is God's desire, this is God's vision, it should be ours as well that marriage is ministry, ministry to one another, ministry to our children, and ministry to the world around us. So while the text is not talking about that, it is a proper application of the text. What are some other ways that this principle of being unequally yoked applies to us? The most direct application of this, that Paul is talking about primarily in the text, has to do with ministry in the church.

He says, "You are the temple of God. And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?" Paul's writing to a church that had been deceived. They'd begun yoking themselves to false teachers and false ideas. And he wants them to see that behind these false teachers, these false ideas were false gods, were false idols. And so some of them were embracing legalism, a self righteous works righteousness. Others were tolerating paganism. Most of them were probably mixing the two together. And Paul wants them to see. As good as these teachers might look on the surface, they come to you and say, "Oh no, we're just trying to help people be more holy, or we're trying to make sure that people are really committed, and that's why we're demanding these works of the law. Or we're trying to be more tolerant, we're trying to make things more palatable so that more people will come."

He says, "However good. It might look on the outside, inside these teachers and these teachers aren't just different, they aren't just bad, they're demonic." And he gets to this later on, we'll get here eventually in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, but just to give us a glimpse of where he's going, this is what he says. He says, "Such men are false apostles." An apostle is someone who's sent, so if these are false apostles who sent these apostles? They're, "Deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it's no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds."

The New Testament warns us over and over and over against the deadliness of false teaching and false teachers. Because they so often come to us in disguise. They don't always appear as these hideous demonic forces on the surface. They come and it almost seems good if you don't have discerning eye, if you aren't looking through the eyes of faith. But it warns us because we need to keep these false teachings, these false teachers out of the church. Don't give them a platform, don't give them influence, don't give them any kind of foothold. This means we need to know God's word and understand where it is that Jesus, our good shepherd, is leading us.

We need to avoid partnering with these false teachers, but we also need to understand the positive side of this as well, what the application is there for, what you should be doing is you should be partnering yourself. You should be yoking yourself with other believers who you know are going to pull strong and straight and steady after the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is why church membership is so important. This is why we take church membership very seriously here at Mosaic. It's people coming together and committing and saying, "We are committing together to pull strong and straight and steady after our Lord Jesus Christ. And if one of us wanders to the right or one of us wanders to the left, we're there to encourage and to correct and hold each other accountable to staying on this straight and narrow path." If you're interested in a membership, we're actually having a membership class next week, you can get signed up for that. But that's how this applies inside the church. There needs to be purity inside the church.

But where else does this apply? Because obviously ministry happens in the church, but ministry happens in all areas of our lives as well. And so we read this passage, we begin to think, "What are some of the other ways that this is fleshed out in our lives?" And this is where things get a little more dicey. This is where you got to really rely on the Holy Spirit and have a discerning mind. And there's so many variables involved that it's hard to give a one size fits all response to, "How do we apply this in all the other areas of our life?"

I'm going to give a few examples, but before we do just, we need to start by just asking ourselves honestly, in your friendships, in your relationships and in your partnerships at work, at school, wherever life takes you outside of the church, is there something there that is pulling you away from Christ? Are you there as an ambassador, bringing the values of Christ's kingdom into the world? Or if you're honest, is the world winning? Is the world instilling its values in you?

So college students, many of you are paying a lot of money to sit through courses. And some of these courses are education. Some of these courses are indoctrination. Are you discerning enough to know the difference? And are you strong enough to stand firm in what you believe? If you're going to a school, if you're sitting in a class where you are always being told what to think and never being taught how to think, if you're going to a class, to a school where it's not safe to ask questions about God, about origins, about purpose, about destiny, about morality, where everyone is expected to hold this same opinion and terrified to speak their mind, you're not in a classroom. You're in a cult. A very expensive cult.

Now be honest. How is your soul? Are you there as a light in the darkness? Or are you becoming one with the darkness? If you are yoked to an institution, a person, idea, anything that is pulling you away from Christ, you either need to be strong enough to pull back and stand your ground against that at force or you need to be wise enough and humble enough to cut your losses to cast off that yoke before it drags you away. Parents, you need to ask questions of your kids. What are they hearing? What are they seeing? What are they feeling? What are they reading? What are they being told in the books that they read and the TV shows and the movies that they watch? Even at school.

Our son was four years old the first time he had to stand his ground against a teacher at school. He was in a classroom of 19 boys and they were told it was time to play dress up. And Owen said, "I don't want to play dress up." The teacher said, "Why?" "Because all of the costumes are for girls, and boys shouldn't wear dresses." And his teacher scolded him. Now, if you know Owen, he's a very thoughtful and sensitive kid. He took this really hard. He felt ashamed. He thought he had done something wrong. So we talked about it that night at dinner. We assured him that he did the right thing, and we talked about why.

We talked about why boys need to present themselves as boys and girls need to present themselves as girls, because God made us different, that those differences matter. And that as a son of God, God calls his sons to stand up to defend and to make sacrifices for his daughters, just like his son, Jesus Christ, did for his church. It matters. And so we told him, "The next time that this comes up, you look at your teacher and you say, 'Miss teacher, the facts don't care about your feelings.' And then take a long drink out of your mug of leftist tears." No, we said, "You tell this teacher, 'I love you, but we don't agree.'"

Within a week, it came up again and he did exactly what we taught him. And you know what he found out? His teacher didn't get mad this time. He found out that actually I think he caught her totally off guard and we noticed a change in her, that from that day forward, she looked at him with a new respect. And she actually voiced that to us at some of our conferences. But when he said, "Teacher, I love you." He meant it. And when he said, "I don't agree." He meant that as well. But as it turned out, she turned out to be one of his favorite teachers. But the point is your kids need to know what they believe and they need to know why they believe it. And they also need to know how to lovingly, but firmly stand their ground. And so as parents, you need to ask questions, you need to debrief and you need to disciple your kids. You need to shepherd their hearts and you need to sharpen their minds or the world will do it for you.

What about the workplace? When I read this passage, that's one of the things that comes to mind, because there's partnerships that are formed in work, in career. And how does this play out? Well, there are some occupations and some organizations that are so at odds with Christ's kingdom, that a Christian cannot patronize, cannot partner with them in any way at all, period. But by God's grace, most work can be done to the glory of God as it contributes to the common good under God's common grace. And so assuming that that's the case, if you're the boss, praise God, I hope you're tithing. I know you are. I don't even need to say it.

But your goal as the boss, hopefully, is you're trying to build a business and an organization and a culture that honors Christ. And so therefore you need to be careful about who you hire, who you partner with, who you yoke yourself to, who you give leadership and influence to. Because if you want to build a business that honors Christ, you need to be yoked with people who are going to help you pull in that direction and not pull things off course.

Most of you aren't the boss, and maybe you don't have much say or sway at work. Some of you might be asked in the workplace to push forward to support agenda, immoral, unethical agendas that conflict with the agenda of Christ. Are you going to be able to stand up in those moments and speak for what is right, even if that means risking your position, your promotion, even your presence in the workplace? What does it profit a person if they rise to the top organizational hierarchy and yet forfeit their soul? We need to be careful about what we attach our hearts and our goals and ourselves to in this world, to make sure that we are pulling after Christ and that these things aren't pulling us off course.

So we need to completely cast off the old yoke of slavery, that's point number one. But in order to do that, we need to completely take up the yoke of salvation. Now, verse 16, "What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, 'I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord almighty.'" To completely take up the yoke of salvation is to completely understand God as a father, a father who loves you, has loved you, has loved you to such an extent that he paid a price. He sent his son to redeem you out of slavery and to adopt you into his family. When you understand this, it changes everything in your life.

We called this series Prodigal Church, because the Corinthians had so much in common with the two brothers from The Parable of the Prodigal Sons. I say prodigal sons, because the point of Jesus' parable is really that both sons were lost. Both sons had recklessly abandoned the love of the father. The younger brother abandoned the father to pursue sex and drugs and pagan parties. The older brother abandoned the father, he didn't abandon the father physically, but he abandoned the father in his heart. He honored the father with his actions, he was a slave to the father's laws, but his heart was far from him. And both sons were miserable. Both sons were yoked to a false understanding of God. They knew him only as a force to either be avoided or to be appeased. And they failed to see him for who he was, which was a father to be loved and embraced.

Now, Jesus calls out in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yo upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." To completely take off the old yoke, you need to yoke yourself to Christ. In Christ, you are no longer a slave to sin. You are no longer a slave to the law. You are a son, a daughter adopted into the family of God. And so you need to take up that new yoke, take up that new identity.

And then Jesus says, "And learn from me. Learn to follow my lead. Learn to pull in the direction that I am going in every area of your life." So whether you're more like the younger brother or more like the older brother, Jesus is the better brother. Jesus is the brother who was sent to find us, to save us and to bring us back home to find a father who was waiting, not to scold us, not to cast us away, but to embrace us and to welcome us home with open arms. So completely cast off the yoke of slavery, completely take up the yoke of salvation.

Point number three, get completely yoked with your savior, arm pump emoji. This is chapter seven, verse one. "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God." People cringe at this idea of holiness. But deep down, everybody wants it. Everybody wants holiness. Everybody wants people to treat them that they would want to be treated. Nobody wants people to lie or to cheat or to steal or to sin against them. Deep down, everyone wants holiness for others. Just not so much for themselves.

Now as Christians, this cannot be the case. We desire holiness and we desire holiness because holiness is our destiny. As Christians, we look forward to an eternity without sin, no selfishness, no pride, everyone is working in the best interest of others. People are humble, selfless, they're full of peace, full of joy, no rivalry, no jealousy, just happiness for one another and the Lord. We look forward to that, that is our destiny, and therefore that holiness is our desire. To take that glorious future that we are waiting for and to do what we can to make it a reality right now. And so read that verse again, "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion and the fear of God." Bring holiness to completion. In other words, we all are going to be completely holy. We're going to be spiritually yoked in eternity. Therefore, start working out right now.

What do I mean? I mean if holiness had muscle, if holiness had mass, then God's desire would be for all of his children to be completely yoked like professional baseball players. Not like today's professional baseball players, like the players of the 1990s when steroids were still mandatory, that's what we're talking about. When people look at your spiritual gains, they should say, "There's no way that's natural." Because it's not. You're not natural. You're supernatural. You are a new creation in Christ. The Holy Spirit of God lives in you. Therefore, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the body and spirit, not just the outside, but the inside as well, and bring holiness to completion in the fear of God.

The reason that Jesus could say that his yoke was easy and that his burden was light was not because there wasn't a heavy burden to bear. There was. But he took that burden alone. What was the yoke that Jesus took? What was the burden placed on his back? It was the cross of salvation for sinners to be saved. Long before Christ was born, the prophet Isaiah looking forward to that day, he wrote an Isaiah 53, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our inequities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed."

We all like sheep have gone astray/ we've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Jesus took the soul crushing weight of our sin upon himself. And he carried that to the cross. He did that for us. And now he invites us to come, to take his yoke, to take up our crosses daily and to follow after him. Not because we need to bear the burden of our salvation again, not because there's more atonement yet to be made for our sin, but in order to bring holiness to completion and to carry this good news of his cross to the ends of the earth.

If you are a Christian, you're here this morning, are you yoked fully to your savior Jesus Christ? And if you're not, if you've been trying to carry this burden, if you've been trying to prove yourself through your own righteousness or run from God into slavery, to sin, come and lay that burden at the foot of the cross. Take the yoke of Christ upon you and know that he loves you. He died for you so that you could be saved. You can do that today. Just repent, put your faith in him. Let's pray.

Jesus, you are the light of the world. You are the light that will never grow dim, the light that will never go out. Your words says that you shine in the darkness and that the darkness will not overcome you. And you've also told us, you have called us the light of this world, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. God give us the grace and the power to shine this light without compromise, without fear. God give us the grace to be the holiness that we long to see in the world. Fill us as beacons of light, the beacons of your hope to a world that is run by darkness.

God, I pray that you just help us to grasp the gravity of what is at stake, so that we're never tempted to run from this responsibility or to try to push forward in the works of our own flesh, but to rely fully on you, on your spirit, every step in submission to your word. God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit. We thank you for your son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, our savior. It is in his name that we stand before you and pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good god. You created everything and you've said it's good, it's very good. Yet Satan rebelled against you, a third of the angels rebelled against you, and we, in tow, rebelled against you. We declared war and instead of vanquishing us as you could in a second, you sent your son Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you are truth. Everything you ever spoke was true, and you've stood up against the lies and the accusations and the perversions of the evil one and the evil one's manifestation in this world. You've stood up to Caesar. You've stood up to Herod. You stood for the truth, and you were killed for it.

So how can we expect the faith to be safe? When the author and perfecter, the champion of our faith was killed for it? I pray today, Jesus Christ, that you send us a steely backbone, a backbone of ... Infuse us with courage. To know what's true and to stand up for it no matter the cost. Just like many who have come before us. We pray that you continue to expand your kingdom and King Jesus, our swords are yours. As we open up the sword of the spirit, the word of God, I pray today, do a powerful work in each one of our hearts, we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

The title of the sermon is Holy War. If you want to live a life of safety, do not become a Christian. God is a good god, but he is not safe. The biggest competing god of our day and age, god competing for our affections and our allegiance is not the god of money or the god of sex or the god of leisure. It's the god of safety, and the most power-hungry amongst us know this, so they promise us safety if we give them our power. What is our power? It is our freedom to do that which God has called us to do. So as we give them our power, we are rendered powerless, which is the most dangerous place to be, and they conquer us by planting fear in our hearts. And then they promise to relieve our fear. If we would just put our faith in them, they plant fear and demand faith. They make us sick and then they promise to keep us safe, but they only make us sicker, yet we keep believing for safety's sake. They promise us safety, then they lead us to the slaughter.

God isn't safe, he's petrifying, he's wild, he's anything but tame, and that's why he's the safest place to be, because he's good. C.S. Lewis in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe has this one quote, "Aslan is the lion, the lion, the great lion. "Oh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "Safe," said Mr. Beaver, "Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king I tell you.""

A lot of people get nervous when you talk about politics at church. Get really nervous. Is he really going there? Oh yeah he is. He's been going there for a while now. I take my points from church history. We all love C.S. Lewis. Even pagans love C.S. Lewis until they understand what he's talking about. C.S. Lewis thought a lot about tyranny. He's got a lot of great work about freedom and standing up for freedom. One of the quotes that has been circulating around posted by Joe Rogan on his Instagram. Joe Rogan, the one who took the horse dewormer, that Joe Rogan. Well he posted this, a quote from C.S. Lewis, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some times be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Well that's all Joe Rogan posted, and I wish he had kept reading. Because that would have made for even a better quote. C.S. Lewis goes onto say, "They may be more likely to go to heaven, yet at the same time, likelier to make a hell of Earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which may not regard as disease is to be put on the level of those who have not yet reached the age of reasons or those who never will to be classed with infants, imbeciles and domestic animals." God in the Dock. Why does C.S. Lewis go there? He went there because he as a minister of the gospel, us as believers in the truth, stand up for the truth, and when lies begin to encroach upon reality, we must push back. God, save us from this tyranny of safety. God doesn't offer us safety, he offers us salvation. Then he sends us to war. He frees us for war, so what does the enemy want to do? The enemy wants to take away our freedom to fight.

I will fight for my freedom to fight. Will you? I'm not talking about guns. The biggest battles aren't won with guns. They're won with words, and that's why it should shock every single one of us, believer or not, that we have entered a time when you can't fight with words anymore. You can't fight with ideas anymore because some ideas are forbidden. They've taken away our freedom to fight ideas with ideas, and just to ask the question now, you're banned. Instead of debate, they deplatform, and now you're banished to the hell of silence for asking the question, for thinking the thought. For the idea itself. Here is your muzzle. Put it on all the way. You can't fight for truth anymore. We went from there is no truth to you can't question the truth real quick. Hey, what happened to live and let live? What happened to live your truth? What happened to that? How fast can you go from postmodernism to communism? 18 months.

18 months ago, I was talking about radical individualism. It's not about you, it's not about you, you got to care about the church, you got to join the church, you got to care about other people. Radical individual, and now I'm like there is no more radical individualism. It's all collectivism. It's what best for the herd, what's best for everybody, even at the expense of the individual. You don't follow the orders? You're fired. No matter how much you've poured into your career, you don't follow the orders, no education for you. You can apply for religious exemption, it's against my religion. No, your faith doesn't matter. Heretic. No jab, no job, no school, no what else? What's next? No travel anywhere? No grocery stories? No hospitals? Can I go to the morgue? Or is that only for those who follow the orders? Suffering is coming if you stand up for the truth. So brace yourself. For what? For war. A holy war, and that's what we're talking about today from 2 Corinthians 6:1-11, would you look at the text with me?

"Working together with him, then we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says in the favorable time I listen to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold now is the fabled time, behold now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit. Genuine love. By truthful speech and the power of God with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left. Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true. As unknown and yet well-known, as dying and behold we live as punished and yet not killed. As sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything. We have spoken freely to you Corinthians in our heart. Corinthians, our heart is wide open, you are not restricted by us but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as the children widen your hearts also."

2 Corinthians 6:1-13, this is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points, you are at war. To win, suffer loss. And fight with a smile. First you are at war. If you didn't know this, it's probably the reason why your life is so boring. If you aren't fighting, you live a domesticated life. Only because someone else is fighting for you. It's passive and ultimately pathetic, leading lives of quiet desperation someone said. If you don't know we're at war, then you're losing, and if you're losing, then the enemy isn't going to waste time actually attacking you, and probably, that's why God isn't using you because you haven't pledged your sword to him. You haven't offered to work together with him, the king. You are too busy building your own little kingdom to worry about his. That's why Saint Paul in Verse 1, he says, "Working together with him. I'm working together with God, I'm working together with the king of kings, who's expanding his kingdom. Working together with him, then we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain."

The context is that this is one of the truly beautiful passages in all of scripture, in all of Paul's letters in the original Greek, it's particularly impressive, bears some resemblance to famous specimens of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Socrates, the fourth century B.C. Greek orator, he said that, "The most powerful way to be persuasive is to argue from one's own life and experience, to share from your own battles because you have had your own battles." That's what Paul is doing here. What does he give us here? He gives us his own life, he shows us how he has faithfully endured suffering and hardship for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the salvation of others. He's an ambassador. He said, "I've been commissioned by the king to go and to set the captives free. We're in enemy territory and that's our job, and we're warning everyone that the king is coming, and unless you're reconciled with the king, he is coming to devour. He is coming to bring the sword."

So see, we see Paul's devotion, his sincerity, his focus, commitment to what? To the holy war of God. He says, "We appeal to you. We're working together with God," so it's actually God who's making that appeal through us. It's the words of God.

2 Corinthians 5:20, the text before this one, "Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. God stands behind the gospel, behind this message, God who is speaking," and as Paul spoke, as the minister of the gospel spoke, the power of God unto salvation came through, coursed through their veins, and now they got saved. They've been given grace and Saint Paul says, "Make sure that the grace was not in vain." What is he talking about? It's in the same breath as he says we're working with God, we're working with God. Don't let the grace of God be in vain. Meaning he's saying, "Are you working with God?" How is it even possible to receive grace and do nothing with it? It's like God has commissioned you, he's given you a sword at the commissioning, and you go home and you say, "That's awesome," and instead of unsheathing the sword, you put it over the mantle and you say, "That's a tremendous decorative sword." And it starts to accumulate dust upon it. That's taking the grace in vain.

In 1 Corinthians 15:19-10, the words of Paul, "For I'm the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. By the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me." Saint Paul always viewed the grace of God as power, as fuel, as energy. Not just a get out of hell free card. It's energy to do the work of God. Once you receive it, follow God with every fiber of your being.

Just to give you a little perspective. You know how special it is to have received the grace of God? You did not force God's hand in giving you grace. Your name was written in the book of life if you're a Christian. Before the foundation of the world. God says, "I picked that guy for my army before that guy's even born. And I know you're going to sin, and I'm going to regenerate your heart and you are going to be commissioned. It's special," and as you're commissioned, God says, "I give you grace which is strength, and you never know how strong you are until the strength is tested."

Well God says, "I'm going to send you a test. It's a blessing. I'm going to send you suffering so that you yourself see how much strength I've put in you. You must understand what you've been chosen for. You've been chosen for war. War against sin, the temptations of ... " Every time you say no to a temptation, it hurts. Every time. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Kind of, but you just got used to the pain. You've got pain tolerance. Every time you say no to temptation, the flesh, the world, Satan, that's war. War against personal complacency, war against lesser loves, grace isn't cheap so stop treating it as if it is. Don't be a waste of grace.

2 Corinthians 6:2, he continues, for he says, "In the favorable time I listen to you and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold now is the favorable time. Behold now is the day of salvation." God has visited with these people with salvation and the mission and he did it through Paul's ministry. Through Paul's battle, through Paul's warfare, and Paul's authority here is demonstrated by the work of God among them and he says, "Now is it favorable to now, now." God is summoning us, if you're not a Christian, to receive the salvation, to be reconciled, to stop being an enemy of God. Because you're not going to win. Your arms are too short to box with God, and if you are a believer, will you continue to bring the message of salvation. As Isaiah said, "Seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon his name while he is near."

We are at war, and point two is to win, you got to suffer loss. You can't win anything worth winning without suffering. 2 Corinthians 6:3, "We put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God, as slaves of God, we commend ourselves in every way." We commend ourselves in every way and Paul denies the charges the false teachers have made, we've talked about that, and asserts the faithfulness of his ministry and how does he assert the faithfulness of his ministry? He gives us later on a whole list of his suffering and he continues that same thought in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12, and here he just outlines how much he has suffered on behalf of the ministry, and also he suffered in not putting any obstacles in anyone's way. He suffered to live a life that is unimpeachable. When ministers of the gospel act shamefully, there's always great damage. There's always fallout in the wake and a damage to the credibility of the gospel and the reputation of Christianity, so Paul says, "I scrupulously, carefully avoid giving any offense so I suffer." It takes suffering to be obedient. Hebrews talks about Jesus Christ. Learn obedience through suffering. It takes suffering to be obedient.

1 Corinthians 9:26-27, Saint Paul says, "So I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified." That's self-discipline, to be ready to be used by God it takes work, it takes suffering, and there's also an enemy within us, it's the flesh, the sinful nature. There's an enemy out there, Satan, there's the enemy in the world, that's all of the systems built up against God and there's the enemy inside, the flesh, the sinful desire.

1 Peter 2:9-12, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy beloved I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation."

Fight the good fight and that fight begins in your soul. A lot of people want to fight out there. A lot of people want to change everybody. I want everyone to change. You want to start with yourself. Men of God, women of God, we start with ourselves and to live a life that exhibits the power of the gospel, that your life is an exhibit, is a testimony, is a sign to the power of God, it's a life lived in the thick of battle.

You look around at the world today and you're like, "What is going on? I can't make sense of anything." Because you don't understand that we're at war, and once you understand that there's a spiritual war raging, everything makes so much more sense. So let me just speak to you directly. Let me speak to men, and I want to speak with men directly. King David had 30 men of war. Any time, he sends one text in that group chart. "We're going to war." You got the Tom Brady emojis, you got the Arnold emojis from Rambo. No, that's Sylvester Stallone. You know, you have any group chats like that? Going to war. You share your battles and you share victories over Satan's sin in the world.

Too many men are wasting too much time playing fake war. We love war. I love movies about war. I love it. If I wasn't married, I'd be fighting somewhere, something. My wife said, "You're going to put on your green shirt today?" I was like, "Yeah." Was like "Ahh no. I'm not going to that sermon." Stop wasting time, that's what I want to say to men. There's a real war waging, and you're losing if you spend all your time playing fake war. You're losing. That's why in the culture you're known as a loser unless you're monetizing off of it and then that's a gray issue, but are you tithing that money?

The real battle is waging. There's a real war and it's not enough to just study a war or play a war. You got to fight for your soul, for the freedom of your soul. For you to do what God has called you to do, you got to fight the sin inside. You got to fight the evil desires with good desires, you've got to fight for freedom, freedom from what? To begin with, freedom from sin. Through spending all day, connected to a screen, consuming content that someone has curated for you. You get enslaved to it and you lose because you become passive. You got to fight for the truth by knowing the truth, by studying the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, by speaking the truth.

And men, yeah we should be on the front lines. "Pastor Jan, how do you stand on the issue of women getting drafted into the military?" I've got four daughters... Women getting drafted in the military? I will be on the front lines. I'm on the front lines. They can be there with me, but I will protect them to the death. That's how I stand.

Ladies, the real war isn't against men. That's not the real war. So stop trying to fight us. That's what I'm trying to say. Stop trying to be the, "I'm a watchdog for all the men." That's not your job. We're fighting together. So let's fight the enemy together. Marriage, husbands and wives. Next time you're in a fight, you say, "Baby, baby, baby, I'm not the enemy." That's a tremendous trick. "It's not me. I didn't do that. That was Satan." No, but seriously. Let's fight Satan together, that what I'm saying. You're not too young to fight, you're not too old to fight. The war continues. If you're alive, you're in the battle. That's what Saint Paul is saying here.

He later goes in Verse 4 and 5, people, the false teachers came in and they accused him, "Where is your letters of recommendation? Where's your credentials, St. Paul? And also your suffering, what kind of servant of God suffers?" Bro, we look at you and we're like, "God's favor is definitely not upon that guy. He's got a unibrow." Those are the accusations. But he says in Verse 4 and 5, "As servants of God, we command ourselves in every way by great endurance and afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger." The list of hardships here has been called the apostolic identification card. Did the Apostle Paul idolize safety? No, he didn't. Did any of the disciples idolize safety? Yeah, one guy, it didn't work out for him. Saint Paul knew, he knew that God isn't calling me to safety. He's calling me to a life of courage. Which is courageous. We don't see movies about heroes and legends, making all the right moves to keep themselves as safe as possible. That's not a movie that's captivating. Heroes and legends aren't forged by sacrificing everything for safety. They're forged by sacrificing safety for God and for people, and if you can't point to scars that you've obtained to living selflessly, then have you been in the war?

Something's very wrong if we follow a guy who got murdered and he said, "Follow me and take up your cross daily," and if you can't point to scars and wounds. If any of this sounds strange to you, if you're like, "I've been in the church my whole life and I'm just church shopping and I walked in today and I wasn't ready for this." If you have never experienced spiritual combat, if you have never experienced the struggle, the exertions in the face of difficulties, then you've got to do some hard self-assessment, which side am I on? Am I even a Christian? Am I living a life of virtue and not one of the virtues are self-protective. Therefore safety is not a virtue. Every single one of the virtues are self-sacrificing.

Saint Paul says, "With great endurance." Paul knew what it meant to keep going when you feel the pain. Will you keep going when things get tough? This must be settled in your mind and your soul now before it does get tough. Saint Paul here gives us three triplets of his endurance. Things he had to go through to build up endurance. Afflictions, hardship, calamities, just general terms to difficulties. Second triplet is beatings, imprisonments, riots, more specific instances of trouble. You see the clear accounts in the Book of Acts, and the third triplet is labors, sleepless nights and hunger. It sounds like he's having a baby. Like he's giving life, it's difficulties that are voluntary in nature. He labored, he preached all day, he goes home, he writes the sermon for tomorrow, and then he works with his hands to provide for himself and to have enough to share with others. Sleepless nights, that's why, and hunger, he's talking about hunger, yeah, he didn't eat in order to work during the day. He's also talking about fasting. Prayer and fasting, discipline himself to strengthen his prayers before God.

This whole passage is intended to challenge every single of us to re-examine our commitment to God. To the Lord Jesus Christ, to the king of kings. Am I following him like this? It's to get us to a point where we renew, rededicate every power, every talent, every moment of our lives to the single-minded pursuit of the will, the purpose, the pleasure of God through spiritual war. We must be aware that this kind of level of commitment is going to bring suffering. The scriptures are clear that anyone that wants to live a holy, righteous, godly life will suffer in this day and age. It's the way. Because Jesus is in the business of expanding his kingdom. He uses that language all the time and how do you expand a kingdom? Do you go to your enemy and say, "Hi, I'd like my real estate back, please." No, you don't do that. You sneak in. Covertly into the enemy's territory. You say, "Yeah, I'm just like you. Yeah, I live amongst you. Yeah, I look like you, I talk like you. My kids go to the same school as you," and then I send my kids in there like little spies. Learn their little worldview tricks, and here's how you counter them.

When your teacher stops calling on you because you have mic dropped her so many times, then in the next class, you got to do it even more covertly. You don't tell anyone you're a Christian. You just ask questions. That's how. With words and ideas. It's that kind of war, but it's war. How do you expand the kingdom? Through war. How do you take what belongs to another? Through war, and is this is a just war? Yes of course it is because everything belongs to Jesus Christ. He's just reclaiming it and he's calling us to do it, and to reclaim what belongs to the king, you have to go to war.

Being a Christian, following Jesus, that's easy. Isn't it? No. Becoming a Christian is easy. You repent of your sin, you turn to Jesus Christ and you trust in him, and then he gives you a sword and you're like, "What?" Other churches aren't honest. Other churches are like, "Come to Jesus. He's going to make everything better," and then everything gets worse, and you come to Mosaic and we'll just tell you the truth. There will be days where you will question whether it's worth it. Where is Jesus? Jesus is fighting on the front lines, he says, "Follow me," that's where he is. What kind of war is this? It's not a war of flesh and blood, it's a spiritual war in the spiritual realm. But how is that spiritual war manifested in the physical realm, and this you need to know. It's manifested with words and ideas and thoughts and ideologies and narratives and stories and these things are invisible basically, but we know their power, we see their power. It's a war of ideas, it's a war of information, it's a battle for hearts and mind.

I come at this with a very particular perspective. I'm from the Soviet Union, I've been studying communism for 30 years. I know the tactics of the enemy and on top of that I worked for the government, and you know what the project was that we were working on? How do we capture hearts and minds. Hearts and minds. That's spiritual warfare conversations, and the way you ... You can't do it with force. You can't force people to believe an ideology. You can try, but even after a while, people are going to start asking questions. Which now is happening. It's not with force, you do it with either fear or faith, and that's where they fear, fear, fear, fear from one thing to another. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Because when you live in fear, you're paralyzed of critical thinking. You lose sight of what these words are, what are they saying? You lose sight, you get this amnesia of, "Wait, what did they say a year ago? What did they promise a year ago and what's happening now? And what are they promising now and we believe it?" The battle can't be won with force. It can only be won with fear or faith and the enemy wages war with fear, and we wage war with faith because we believe in God. Jesus Christ is our Lord and savior. We kneel before God. That's why we can stand before tyrants. We fear God and we fear not. Like Jesus Christ, and you're like, "Is any of this Christian? This isn't even in the Bible." Yeah it is. Let me give you a couple texts. John 18:33-38, "So Pilate, representative of the Roman Empire, entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me?" Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom.""

Jesus, what are you doing? We don't want you to die. You feed people, you turn water into wine, come on. That's why we followed you. Let's not talk about your kingdom. Not here, not now. Let's ... Just tell them what he wants to hear and live to fight another day. ""My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I may not be delivered over to the Jews but my kingdom is not from the world." Then Pilate said to him, "So you are king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am king. For this purpose I was born, for this purpose I have come into the world. To bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." Pilate said to him, "What is truth?""

You see what's going on? Jesus is like, "I'm the king of truth," and Pilate says, "Are you? Are you? What is truth? Truth is whatever I say it is because I have all the force." What does that kind of talk do to a person? It gets you crucified. John 19, "Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him, and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him saying, "Hail King of the Jews," and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to him, "See I am bringing him out to you, but you may know that I find no guilt in him.""

So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe and Pilate said to him, "Behold the man." When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, "Crucify him. Crucify him." Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify, for I find no guilt in him." The Jews answered, "We have a law and according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the son of God."

When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave him no answer, so Pilate said to him, "You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you," and Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin." From then on Pilate sought to release him but the Jews cried out, "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend." Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar, so when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic, Gabbatha. That was the day of preparation of the Passover, it was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, "Behold your king." They cried out, "Away with him. Away with him. Crucify him." Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your king?" The chief priest answered, "We have no king but Caesar." So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

Pilate knew who stood before him. He also knew the cost of following the truth, and he did the math and decided it wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth following the true king. His wife had a dream the night before and she said, "Don't do anything to him. I know who this man is." But he had too much to lose, too much to sacrifice. So Jesus was crucified. The most godly always become the most dangerous to whom to those who love evil. That's why tyrants hate the king of kings, and the greatest Christians are deemed the greatest heretics in the church of Satan, and scripture is clear that if you're going to follow Jesus, you will suffer and we must be prepared, don't get caught off guard." The most dangerous shots in every fight are the ones you don't see coming, the spiritual battle rages, and the battlefield is strewn with the wounded and dead.

I've seen this happen where someone's like, "I want to follow Jesus." And then difficulty comes, struggle comes, war comes. Like, "I didn't sign up for this," and they walk away and they get mad at God for the war. Well if you're mad at God for the pain, for the suffering, then how can you receive his pain and suffering? That's what it took. There's no such thing as battle scars without wounds and our Lord and savior fought, bled, died on the battlefield. He told us we're going to have the same battles. John 15:18, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. They persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things, they will due to you on account of my name because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin but now they have seen and hated both me and my father. But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled. They hated me without cause. But when the helper comes, who I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth, who proceeds from the father. He will bear witness about me and you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning."

You are at war, and to win, you have to suffer loss. But fight with a smile. You know why? Because no one wants to fight the guy who's happy about it. No one wants to fight the guy who's like, "Come on. Thanks for giving me the excuse." You look at that guy and you're like, "You're a nut. You're absolutely crazy, you're enjoying this? You're not afraid of death?" "No."

I think about Jack Nicholson, you know when he's like that? That's kind of what I'm talking about, it's like, "Yes, come at me." That's what he's saying. You know why? Because fear is actually a sin. You know the commandment that's repeated more than any other commandment in all of the scripture? Just over and over and over and over, do not fear. That's a commandment, that's in the imperative voice. The only fear that's not a sin is fear of God. So yes, if God said, "Go into battle," and you say, "Yes, sir, where's my sword? I don't have one. Where's my shield? I don't have one. Where's my armor? I don't have one. Take a stone, okay, let's go." But we do, we have the armor of Ephesians 6, you should read that.

A happy fighter is a dangerous fighter. Matthew 5:11-12, "Blessed are you when others reviled you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You see this with the disciples, the disciples get up, they preach the gospel, and then the people in charge at the temple, they're like, "Yeah, that's not going to happen. You shouldn't do that anymore. Yep, canceled, you're banned." They come back the next day and they're preaching the gospel, and they're like, "All right." They arrest them and then they beat them. What do the apostles do? They come out of there and they're like, "God gave us the honor. God loves me so much that he allowed me to get beaten for him."

What a perspective. If you feel like you're going through hell, rejoice, because we know someone who saves people from hell. By the way, this is why the greatest Christians have the best risk tolerance. Because God already saved me from the greatest hell, and you'd been through so much hell, you can take more. That's pain tolerance and this is why the strongest Christians are also the boldest Christians because they're like, "I can't lose. If I stand up and I do what God tells me to do, if I say what God tells me to say, and then they kill me for it. I'll go to heaven. What am I doing here? If I say what I need to say, people get saved and others get mad but I go to sleep but honoring the Lord, reward's in heaven. Then if they kill me I go and get to enjoy the rewards. It's a win-win, you can't lose." That's why.

2 Corinthians 6:6, he says, "By purity, I went through all that stuff. By purity, knowledge, patience, kindness and the Holy Spirit in genuine love." He turns from sufferings he endured for the gospel's sake to the virtues of the Christian life, which take suffering. The false teachers pointed to his hardship and said, "God's not with you," and Saint Paul says, "No, I go through the hardship because God is with me." In Verse 7 "by truthful speech and the power of the God with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left." The truthful speech, he's talking about in the word of truth. It's not just a reference to the way Paul speaks, but what he proclaims, which is the gospel. He preached the gospel with the power of God. Because he always knew it's a truth war. The Holy War, if you boil it down, it's a truth war. With weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left. He said "I proclaim the truth and that I live the truth." Verse 8, "Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true."

This is the first of seven antitheses, opposite things, in which the perception, he's like, "This is what people see. They see dishonor." He's like, "But it's actually honor. They see slander but we see praise. They see imposters but we are true," and he just keeps going. This is what people see with worldly judgment, this is actually what's going on in the spiritual realm. Verse 9, "As unknown and yet well-known, as dying and behold we live, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing. As poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything."

If you study church history, the more faithful a Christian is, the more difficulties they accumulate, the more burdens they carry. Becoming a Christian is easy, living the Christian life is not. From Abraham to the patriarchs, from Moses to the judges, from David to the prophets, the story is same. Beaten not killed, sorrowful yet always rejoicing, poor yet making many rich, having nothing yet possessing everything, great endurance, troubles, hardships and distresses.

The most amazing thing as you read this is there's not even a whimper of complaint, and if you've been through difficulty for Christ's name's sake, you know this. You know how hard it was, but you're thankful for it. Both battles imposed by others on us and those we impose on ourselves. We wear that with a badge of honor. It's what following Jesus means. It's how we live lives of loyalty to him. It's in the battles that we see him most clearly. We feel his presence most near." Everyone that's been through a battle with Jesus Christ knows this. "That was hard. Jesus, we almost died, yeah." Imagine sitting with Jesus at the campfire? "Jesus, we almost died today, yeah. But we didn't." Delicious meal by the campfire. Jesus is in the battle with us. He will honor those who do battle. "He who honors me," he said, "I will honor."

Do you want more of God's presence in your life? Do you want more of God in your life? Do you want to feel him more near? So many of you experience so little of God because you won't fight. Joseph Conrad, the American novelist, wrote The Mirror of the Sea and he quotes a letter of Sir Robert Stopford who was one of Horatio Nelson's captains, Horatio Nelson is a world-renowned commandeer of ships, and Nelson chased the West Indies and enemy fleet, et cetera, et cetera. But this is what Stopford said about serving with Nelson, he said, "We're half-starved and otherwise inconvenienced by being so long out of port. But our reward is we are with Nelson." Our reward is that we are with Jesus in the thick of battle, he gives us more of himself. Living life behind the lines where it's comfortable, where it's safe, where you remain unwounded, yeah, okay. It's not the fullness of life. Ask any soldier that comes back from battle. They live their life of safety, okay. "Yeah, I got to mow my lawn. I got to paint my white picket fence. Do a little barbecue." And never risk another thing in your life? Who wants to live like that?

If you live for safety, you're actually always going to live in fear, I got to protect this, I got to protect this, I got to protect this. So many of us have been so focused on how we're going to die, how, how, how, that we lost sight of the fact that we're going to die. We're all going to die. We're all going to die. Every single one of us. I'd rather die fighting. I'd rather die swinging. This is the Christian life. Soldiers fight for the king, fighting a bloody spiritual battle, displaying strength, courage, honor, no matter the heat of the battle, no matter the strength of the foe, no matter how exhausted you are. Keep going and sometimes the battles are public. Most of the time, they're private, they're in your soul. Some of you will get up on stage and you will have to stand up for what you believe in. Some of you have to stand up at your job. Some of you have to stand up to a colleague, to a neighbor and say, "You know what? That's not true. What you're saying right now isn't true. This is all a charade. Let me speak truth, no matter the cost."

2 Corinthians 6:11-13, "We have spoken freely to you Corinthians, our heart is wide open. You're not restricted by us but you are restricted in your own affections. In return I speak as the children, widen your hearts, also." What's going on with this text? We were just talking about war and spiritual war and saying all kinds of stuff that's making everyone feel uncomfortable. What's going on here? Then he's talking about love, then he's talking about widening your hearts. Yeah. Saint Paul is demonstrating his fatherly affection. I love you, that's why I'm speaking the way I am. Because he knows what he's fighting for. What's he fighting for? He's fighting for love, he wants to love God and be faithful to him. God said do this, and what's God telling him? God is saying, "Love God, go tell people love God. Stop loving passion, stop loving sin, stop loving temptations. Love God." He's motivated by love, so if he's fighting for love, then how is he fighting? What are his weapons? You can't fight for love unless you're fighting with love. You can't fight for love unless you're fighting with love. "Be more tolerant. You're not tolerant enough. Be kinder. Do good. Stop being so judgmental. Be more empathetic or else."

That's how they wage war. They try to force you into submission. I'm going to make you a better person. Then Jesus Christ comes and he's like, "All right. These people? For Pilate? For Herod? All right. For Jan? For you? Give me the cross." He carries the cross, gets on that cross. He fought with love. For love. To get you to love God, to get you to love neighbor. Because the more you love, actually the better of a soldier you are. You have more to fight for, the more you love, the better soldier you become. The more you love, the more you're willing to sacrifice like Jesus Christ, for God so loved the world that he gave, Galatians 2:20, "I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith and the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." So a Christian, how can you live a life of fear if you love God? Because the scriptures say that perfect love, what does it do, what does it do? It casts out fear. It casts out fear. What are you afraid of? Let the love of God cast that demon out. Cast out fear.

I'll close with this. Do you have any war stories? You can't say that you lived a life of spiritual warfare if you don't have war stories. What war stories do you want to tell your grandkids? How do you want them to remember you? Do you have scars to show them? Well if you want scar, if you have scars, then that means you have wounds. Those are our war trophies. You have them if you fought, and how can you say you followed Jesus Christ if you don't have wounds and scars?

I'll close with this. Amy Carmichael wrote the following. "Hast thou no scar, no hidden scar on foot or side or hand, I hear thee song as mighty in the land. I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star. Hast thou no scar? Hast thou no wound? Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent, lean me against the tree to die and rent by ravening beasts that compassed me I swooned. Hast thou no wound? No wound, no scar, yet as the master, shall the servant be. And pierced are the feet that follow me. But thine are whole? Can he have followed far who has no wound or scar?"

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you are truth, and they killed you for being true, and you allowed it because you love them, us. Jesus, we thank you that you didn't allow Satan's sin and death to conquer you. You rose from the dead and that you are right now the king of kings, the Lord of Lords. We thank you Lord for saving us, selecting us, commissioning us into your army, and we thank you for this call to speak truth. To fight for truth, to stand for truth. To wage the good fight as we stand in your presence.

Lord, we thank you that you are good and that you're great, and we thank you that you are not safe. I pray that you make us a people who would do absolutely everything to be in the center of your will, the safest place to be. We pray this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Please stand and let's sing.

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Audio Transcript:

We're going through a sermon series through II Corinthians that we're calling prodigal church. Why prodigal church? Because every church goes prodigal in one way or another. So we need to focus on the scriptures, go back to the scriptures to reorient our focus on what's most important. This week reminded me of one of my favorite things about living here is that Boston is a city of champions. And I was reminded of this last Sunday night when Tom Brady came back to Gillette Stadium. And I grew up watching Tom. Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl when I was still in high school.

And so the immensity of the moment didn't really hit me until I sat down like, "Oh wow. My childhood hero is playing against my favorite team. Who am I rooting for?" And I rooted for both. And every single play of the game was awesome because it felt like two of my favorite teams were, the bucks I don't care about, but it's Tom Brady. He's a team in of himself against the... And it was tremendous. And then Mack Jones went 19 for 19 completions in a row tying Tom Brady's long. So I remembered that. Awesome. And the reason why Tom Brady, he orients his whole life around this one goal of winning championships. And then Tuesday comes around and it was Sox, Yankees, oh my. And the Sox pulled it out. It was probably the best game they played all season.

And then now that with the Rays. This is all in one week. This just happened this week. And then the Rays, okay, we blew that first game, but the second one we snagged the second one. Now, it's one on one. And so that's all to say this is a great city living. And we know about winning and we know what it takes to win in life. It takes short term pain to win for long term gain. Every athlete knows this. And we just lose sight of the fact of what is the finish line? The finish line isn't it when you get a championship, the finish line isn't when you cross the marathon finish line, that's not the finish line. The finish line is when you die and you stand before God. That's the only race that ultimately matters.

And when we talk about Christianity, why is there suffering in the world, it's because in order to have the ability to love, in order for love to exist, sacrifice has to be part of reality, because you can't love without sacrifice. So how can we talk about loving God and loving people if we don't talk about the pain that you have to go through to do that. It takes pain to live a revolutionary life. I'm so fed up with this narrative of kids growing up in a good solid Christian home, and then finally they turn 18 and they go off to college and they rebel against their parents. And by rebel, we're taught the rebellion is you get drunk, you get high, you live any way that you want. That's rebellion. That's not rebellion. That's what everyone does.

You know what true revolutionary living is, you love God, you love Jesus Christ, you love the holy scriptures. If you were single, you commit yourself to chastity. If you're married, you commit to yourself to this one person. If you have kids, you do not abandon them. You proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ with your words and with your life. That's the only revolutionary life that's left. And that's the only way of living that actually matters in terms of eternity. Living a revolutionary life means you do not live for yourself. Look at everyone in scripture and live a revolutionary life.

Jesus Christ comes to hung out with 12 dudes, just regular dudes. And he taught them, "Look, don't live for yourself and I'm going to throw you transform the world." They turned the world upside down. Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Nathaniel, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Judas, not Iscariot, and then Paul replaced Judas Iscariot. As you got Sarah, Rahab, Ruth, Hannah, Mary, Anna, Samaritan woman, Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene and Lydia, all people that changed the world, but not living for themselves. So today we're going to look at the keys to living a revolutionary life from II Corinthians 5:11-21. Would you look at the text with me?

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the reading of God's holy in our infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The bigger the mission, the bigger the goal, the more sacrifice it takes. So if you have a big vision for life, if you have a big goal for life, you need a why that is iron clad. Why am I doing this? What motivated Paul to orient his whole life run the gospel. What was it? What were the keys to a revolutionary life? And I'll give you four from this text. It was fear of judgment, love of Christ, gospel, respect and reconciliation. First is fear. I missed out one, but that's okay. Fear of judgment. The context here is one of the greatest summaries of the message of scripture. It's all about salvation and St. Paul saved. You need to understand what happens after.

Once you are saved, a lot of people think that you're saved and Jesus saves you from your sin. And then all of a sudden, you are in the waiting room. Like in a hospital, you're in a waiting room. Like yeah, you got better, but you're in a waiting room until you die. And that's now what happens, what happens is when you become a Christian, you get thrown in gladiator and God gives you a sword. And now lions and tigers and soldiers are coming at you. That's what the Christian life is. And Saint Paul says, there will be a ceremony, there will be a podium, a medal ceremony when we die.

There's the first judgment. We talked about that last week before the White Throne of Christ, where Jesus Christ is going to judge us, did we believe in him, did we trust... Out medals. And St. Paul says, "This drives me." II Corinthians 5:9-10: So whether we are at home or away, whether we're alive or not, we make our aim to please him. That's our goal. That's our finish line. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Saint Paul says, "I've been saying, I know I'm saved." Now, I'm running with every fiber of my being to get to the finish line. And I want to win as much as possible for God, for God's glory. And verse 11" Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.

He's saying since we are going to give an account to God, I fear, I stand in fear in awe of the awesomeness of the Holy God before whom I stand. Fear of God is what fuels me, he says. He's not terrified or afraid that God won't accept him. He knows he's accepted because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He just knows that he's going to stand before a Holy God who is morally superior in every way. So removed from evil in every way and in his awesome presence, all human pride, all selfishness, boasting, arrogance, all of it vanishes. And as you stand before, you got nothing to say, you're a humble speechlessness. God, you saved me, thank you. And you equipped me and you gave me time and you gave me talents, you gave me treasure and I will give an account to you for that.

And as an apostle, St. Paul felt the fearful way on his soul, that he will give a strict account, the judgment, see, for how he fulfilled his apostleship. James 3:1 says, "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know, that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." I do not take that verse lightly. And if you are a leader, if you're a Christian, you should be teaching somebody. It's called discipleship. You should be learning from somebody and you should be teaching somebody. And you should know that when you teach someone something that you do not live out yourself, God will judge you for that hypocrisy.

There's a verse in Hebrews that says, "Elders will give an account for the souls that God has entrusted to them." I do not take that lightly. That's why we take membership seriously. Who's part of the church? Who are the souls that I will give an account to God for? Knowing the fear of the Lord, he says, that's why we persuade others. Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. Fear evokes in him persuasion. Fear of God releases him from fear of people so now he can persuade people about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was at the park yesterday. There's a gentleman that we've just known for years. He's got two daughters who are the same age as my two youngest daughters. And we got to talking. And he's like, "Do you want to slice it? We're birthday parties. Like do you want to slice pizza?" I said, "No, I'm saving room." He said, "Saving room for what?" I said, "I'm saving room for barbecue. I got our 10th anniversary. Our church is doing our 10th anniversary birthday party today. I'm saving room for the brisket," which I did not have any of.

So if you had brisket, I want to emphasize that fact, that leaders eat last. And I sacrificed my love for brisket, because I love you guys so much more. And so he said, "Oh, your church 10th anniversary. Wow." He's like, "Oh, have you been going there for a while?" I was like, "Yeah, kind of. Yeah." He said, "Why did you start a church, because you like community or because you're religious?" Where are we going with this one? If a fear for the Lord does is like... I was like, I can't reveal all the cards right away, because I still got to see him every week. But I said, "Yeah, because we believe in God. That's why. We believe that there's a God that created everything and you haven't said thank you to him." So that's how I planted that seed.

Fear of God helps you get over the awkwardness of telling people, hey, we really believe this. We believe this is true. We believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved from the wrath of God that we deserve for our spiritual insurrection before God is the only way. Fear of God. Do you share the gospel with people in your life? Do you speak words of the truth of the gospel? Not just talking about living in a way where people see that you're a good person. Everyone's so self absorbed, they're not even going to notice. Do you speak the truth of the gospel to people in your life? That Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and he is life. He's the only way to God. Do you speak truth of the gospel? If not, what's holding you back? I know what's holding you back. Oh, what are they going to think? Who cares? Who cares? Who cares what people think about you? Only one person's opinion matters, and that's God's.

Saint Paul says that fear evokes persuasion. He's persuaded. He persuades people of the gospel. You know that someone said something and you definitely disagree with them, but you do the math of is it worth it? Is it worth to have this conversation right now? Is it worth the emotional toll it's going to take? And St. Paul says it is when it comes to God. And Saint Paul doesn't need to persuade God. He says what we are is known to God. And I hope it's also known to your conscience. Paul says, "I don't need to persuade God, God knows my life, character, motives." All of that is laid bare before God. And Paul's character has been assailed with these poisonous slurs by critics that come in and they've criticized him for not being an apostle, not seeing Jesus Christ, not really being anointed, not being filled with the Holy Spirit. And Saint Paul appeals to the Lord. The Lord knows. So does your conscience.

He speaks to their heart. Your heart testifies what the critics are saying is a lie. Deep down, the Corinthians were aware of Paul's character and the character of his ministry and the moral faculties of their conscience would connect the dots. He's sure of that. And in expressing himself like this, that God knows who I am, he knows my character, you know in your heart. He's aware that his detractors are going to accuse him of boasting in a dubious manner. So he covers himself. Verse 12 he says, "We're not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you a cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance, not about what is in the heart." So as critics are boasting about outward appearance, literally, about the face, about their image.

And it's a conscious reference here to God's advice to Samuel. When Samuel goes in and he's about to choose a king, and he goes into David's family, he sees all older brothers and God says, "No, I'm not picking people based on height or based on what they look like or based on their athletic ability or leadership skills or anything like that." He's like, "I will choose a leader based on the heart." I Samuel 16:7: But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, that's face and the Septuagint, but the Lord looks on the heart." So Paul's opponents come in and they boasted in the face on their sheer externalities, perhaps about their skills or about the rhetorical eloquence that they had or extravagant letters of recommendation or where they went to school.

The Paul's saying, "I'll give you cause to boast about me." My heart is in this. I love the Lord, I love you, I love the gospel. What's most important was written in the heart by God's spirit says I'm giving you cause to boast about us. I remember when I was a new Christian, I was enamored with... So I grew up in a church where no one went to seminary. And I grew up in a church where if you showed up to church 15 minutes early with a Bible, you're probably preaching. Especially, if you wore a tie, the pastor would come up to you and he was like, "I think you have a word from the Lord." You're like, "I do." Yes, you're going to preach them. And the reluctant preacher, you're going to preach on Jonah. And that's why.

So no one really knew what was going on. Guys would just read the text and they're like, "Yeah, I think this is what it's talking about." And another guy would be like, "No, that guy is totally wrong." And then once in a while you get into these debates. And at the end, the pastor would get up and correct everything and then you go home. And it was a four hour service. So I was enamored with pastors who had degrees. Like, "Oh, that pastor went to Cambridge university. He's got a PhD in church history. He really beezes better. He knows more." But if that pastor doesn't preach from the holy scripture, it doesn't matter. That pastor doesn't love God with all his heart, soul, strength, mind, love Jesus Christ, love the cause, love the gospel, love his family. And none of that.

Saint Paul says those are fine, skills are fine, degrees are fine, all of that. Influence of a pastor or how well known a pastor is, that doesn't matter, what matters is what's in the heart. Boast about the fact that God's spirit is in or upon a person and ever weary and attuned to his critics. He continues verse 13. He says, "For we are beside, if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are not in our right mind, is for you." What's going on here? When he talks about being beside ourselves, he's talking about spiritually ecstatic experiences, where you have an experienced vision from God or a prophetic dream or you have a prophetic word or ecstatics. That's what he's talking about, that's being outside the body.

And he's like, "If we want to go there, if we want to establish credibility for spiritual work there," he's like, "I could do that." Paul was taken up to the third heaven. He talks about this in II Corinthians 12:4. And heard things that cannot be told. He's talking about himself. I heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. He says, "I've seen, I've experienced things I can't even communicate to you, but that's not, I don't want you to base your spiritual walk on my spiritual experiences." I have spiritual experience, some kooky spiritual experiences, I don't share. I never share. Sometimes I share once in a while, maybe I'll share. I'll share right now.

My wife wakes me up in the middle of the night this week. She wakes me up in the middle of the night. She's like, "What were you doing?" I said, "I was wrestling." She said, "Who were you wrestling?" I said, "I was wrestling a demon." She said, "What did it look like?" I was like, "I didn't see it. The demon, don't see demons, but I've felt it." See, that's why I don't share because that's kooky. You're like this guy's a nut. That's what I'm saying Paul doesn't share any of this stuff. The spiritual realm is real. It's as real as everything that we see. A spiritual warfare is absolutely real. But Saint Paul says, I don't want you to ground your walk with the Lord. I don't want you to ground on that stuff.

He said, "I want to reason with you." He said that if we are beside ourselves is for God; if we are in our right mind, it's for you. He's like I want to be in my right mind because I want to argue with you, persuade you from the holy scriptures because that's the only foundation that we really have. II Corinthians 5:18-19, Paul told the Corinthians earlier. It's in I Corinthians and it's not second Corinthians 5:18. I don't know why I put that in there. I Corinthians chapter 14. I thank my God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. St. Paul says, "I spoke in tongue. I pray in tongues, he says that." But in church, I want to speak words with my mind in order to instruct mark of authentic ministry is an ecstatic experience is public ministry, where you persuade others passionately, soberly.

Martin Lloyd Jones called this logic on fire. It's just truth and logic and you're persuading and you're doing it passionately. And that was Paul's consuming passion to persuade others from scriptures. So he was motivated by the fear of God and that he's motivated by the love of Christ. This is the opposing side of the paradoxical power of Paul's revolutionary life. It was fear of God. On the one hand that I will give an account to God, fear of God, love of Christ on the other. II Corinthians 5:14: For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died. Love of Christ controls us. And how is Christ's love demonstrated to us, not just in sentimental words. He says, "This is the love of Christ that he died," because we have concluded that he has died for all, therefore all have died. And that's curious logic here.

Why does he say therefore all have died? Wouldn't it make more sense to say Jesus died for all, therefore all did not die? Or Jesus died for all, therefore all live. That would make more sense. But he says one has died for all, therefore all have died. How does that compute? Well, from the scope of scripture, the math is rigorously logical and it's also sublime. What does this mean that we have all died? Christ died for all, therefore all died. He's talking about the fact that Christ died, not just the personal death, he died a substitutionary death. He didn't die for his own sins, he's pure and blameless. He died for the sins of the elect. The all here doesn't mean all. It doesn't mean that Jesus Christ died for the sins of everybody alive ever. That's not what it means.

Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for everybody, but ultimately it's only efficient, it's only going to count for those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ. Because if Jesus Christ, by the way, that's where universalism starts that Jesus Christ died for everybody. And then they say, well, Jesus Christ died for everybody. And then how is there a hell? Because it's like double jeopardy of Jesus paid for your sins on the cross and why would he make you pay for your sins in hell? So that's where that goes. That's not what scripture teaches. You have to respond. It counts to you, but you have to respond. Christ's death is the death of all the elect. In a sense, he died the death that we each one of us should have died. He bore the penalty for our sins. He died in our place.

So when Christ died on the cross, I died on the cross. When Christ died on the cross, you died on the cross if you are follower of Jesus Christ. I died on the cross outside the walls of Jerusalem. That's what he's saying. I deserved that, but Jesus did that for me. This is the unmitigated love of Jesus Christ. This is the love St. Paul says that controls us. Christ love is the controlling force in his life. It's what keeps us tethered, keeps us in bounds, hams us in. Fear of the Lord negatively controls us. Although that could be argued that it's actually positive control, because you want a reward. But then love is what propels us, overpowering love of Christ demonstrated when he died in the cross for us. This is what led Paul to live a revolutionary life and seeing this great love.

How in the world could you live for yourself? That's what he says. II Corinthians 5:15: And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Do you live for yourself? I think this is why I'm going to start asking people. Are you a Christian? Like yeah, I believe in Jesus. I repent of my sin. I want to start, do you believe in Jesus? Yeah. Do you live for yourself? Because Christians do not live for themselves. If you're like, I'm a Christian, but I still live for myself, you're probably not a Christian.

Back in the day, I used to think there was different levels of Christians. Like if you're a Christian, you just got to pray this prayer and you're a Christian. And then you got to grow to get to the point where actually you're a revolutionary Christian and you do not live for yourself. That's not true. It's not true. Like that point of when you live for Christ revolutionary life, that's you become a Christian. Jesus literally says, "Take up your cross and follow me daily." That means every single day you got to die to something that you really, really want. That's what it means to follow Jesus. You wake up and you pray a prayer, "Lord, Jesus, what would you have me do today? And in order to do that, what would you have me sacrifice on my personal cross that I'm carrying around?"

Jesus died for you. So it's unfathomable to live primarily for yourself. If you're a lukewarm Christian, Jesus is having a conversation with you as he's doing an assessment of your current life. And Jesus will sit down and say, "I died for you." And in response, you show up to worship service once a month at best twice a month, once a month, when there's a long weekend. That's once a month. When there's a holiday weekend, okay, I'm gone, I'm going to go worship God, doing something else. Well, worshiping God just isn't even a priority. And you show up once in a while, you give God some half hearted worship on Sunday and then you tip God and pray to him whenever you're in a bind. How does that math make any sense? Jesus says, "I gave everything for you and you give me lip service and the tip? I died for so much more than what you're giving me and I didn't die so you could live a small life focused on possessions and earthly passions."

Jesus, didn't die just to save us from sin, he died to save us from a pathetic life. Pathetic life is a small life is when you live for yourself. You just live for yourself and you can get older and older and older, and it's just you. You're just living for yourself. There's no joy in that. Jesus died to free you from yourself to live for him to give you freedom and joy. What good? And then ultimately, is there anything better? Is there anything better than serving people, seeing them rejoice and that fills your whole heart with so much joy. Is there anything better? Romans 8:31 says, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Every athlete knows this. It's like short term pain, but that's actually the best thing for you. Deny yourself in the short term, but then the feeling of completions, the satisfaction of crossing the finish, I did this. There's nothing greater than that when you do it for the Lord and God fills your heart with joy and satisfaction and just his delight. This is the energy cell and Paul's revolutionary heart is charged both negative and positive fear of Christ and love of Christ. And the combination was explosive. Point three is gospel respect. Verse 16, from now on, therefore we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

The word regard means to be cognizant of or aware of something, understand something, but also means honor something. So when he's talking about regarding Christ and regarding the gospel, he's talking about a level of respect. I Thessalonians 5:12, he uses the same word with the same Greek word. We ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you. St. Paul here is saying, he said, "I knew of Jesus before I was..." Paul was a Pharisee. He was a high ranking Pharisee. I don't know. We're not told if he heard Jesus preach or saw Jesus or had conversation with Jesus before his crucifixion, burial and resurrection. We don't know if he saw his miracles. It's easier to assume he didn't, some theologians say, because he doesn't mention it anywhere. But perhaps he doesn't mention it anywhere because he viewed Jesus through the flesh.

He saw Jesus and he just did the analysis. And in his mind, Jesus was a messianic pretender who pushed too far and got exactly what was coming to him. And when Jesus was condemned by the Sanhedrin, crucified by the Roman, Saint Paul was in agreement with that, so much so that he then persecuted the church because in his mind, from the old Testament, it was clear that Jesus Christ was cursed. The scripture in Deuteronomy says, "Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree." Jesus was hung on the cross, the tree, but something changed. Jesus changed all that by appearing in splendor, the splendor of his glory. And something happened in Paul's life where the thing that Paul had despise became the center of his life. And he realized that he had been viewing Jesus through the flesh. Therefore, he wasn't respecting Jesus and giving him the respect that he deserved.

In personal irony, Paul, now is being regarded in the same way by certain people in the Corinthian church, where they are regarding him according to the flesh and judging him on his looks, on the way he speaks, judging him on his credentials, judging him on letters of recommendation. And Saint Paul is saying, there's two ways of looking at Jesus Christ. Some people evaluate Jesus Christ on his historic significance, historically, and they just look at the stats, everything he's accomplished. And there's a different way of looking at Jesus Christ. And that's through the eyes of the spirit. Many know Christ only in worldly ways. They know about him and judge him without a true understanding of who he is. And St. Paul talked about this in the past chapter, it takes the holy spirit to come in and change your heart. Put the lights on. And because of Christ, St. Paul says, "Because he did that, now I have respect for him, respect for the gospel. I honor him.

And also because of Christ, he says, we regard no one according to the flesh. He says, "I'm done with judging people by what they look like. I'm done with judging a book according to its cover. I'm done with judging people in the shallow, external carnal way, especially those of the household of God." Stop judging people according to the flesh. That's what the whole world is doing. The whole world wants everybody focused on what you look like. The whole world wants, because image is everything. So let's focus on image. And Saint Paul says, "Instead of judging people by image, we should view them as image bearers and look at everyone through the eyes of Christ's love." This changes everything.

Imagine we viewed each other like that, like children of God, image bearers of God, it doesn't matter what your skin color is, it doesn't matter what your nationality, none of that matters. We're children of God, the whole world's trying to divide and conquer. That's what they're trying to do. And Saint Paul says, "No, we are to be unified, unified as one human race, unified in our need for Christ. And then unified once we're in Christ as the body of Christ. Why? Because anyone in Christ is a new creation. This is verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The oldest passed away, behold, the newest come. This is a biography of every single Christian.

There's many metaphors in scripture to describe becoming a Christian, receiving a new heart, a new birth, being born again, becoming a new person. And one of the main results of being United with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection is that you change. There's a profound and radical change that happens when you become a Christian. Salvation isn't just Jesus forgiving you of your sins, it's Jesus changing your nature, it's a radical change. You've changed at the core, change so profound, it makes you a different person than you were.

Jesus had this conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He shows up to Jesus at night because he didn't want the other Pharisees to know that he's having a conversation with Jesus. And he says, "How do I inherit the kingdom of God? How do I get into heaven?" And Jesus said, "You got to be born again." And Nicodemus says that's not even a category in his mind, because he thought he was good enough. I was born this way and Jesus says you have to be born again. You need a new heart, you need a new nature, you need new affections, new desire. You must be changed. The presupposition to you must be changed. This is why it's highly offensive. The presupposition is something so wrong with you and me. In of ourselves, there's something wrong with us and God is offering to make you new, make you all over again, wants to make you a new creation from the inside out.

So what's the prerequisite to becoming a new creation. You've got to accept, acknowledge your need. This is the gospel respect. I need the gospel. God, I need transformation. There's something wrong with me. I can't fix it. Yes, God. I agree with the fact that I'm so bad that God had to save me, that Jesus Christ had to die for me. I'm helpless without his work. But then when you are in Christ, there's a security and acceptance and insurance for the future. Inheritance of glory of participation in the divine nature that you now are a new creation. And the fourth thing that motivated him to live revolutionary life was reconciliation. II Corinthians 5:18: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

There's three models of Christ's work in scripture. There's redemption, which is Christ buys us out of bondage by a payment of ransom. There's propitiation, which is turning away of wrath by offering a sacrifice, redemption, propitiation. And then there's reconciliation, which is the restoration of a relationship, a restoration of a friendship or a harmony of Shalom between two parties between two persons, who've been estranged or alienated. And obviously if Christ reconciles us, offers us reconciliation, it means that we need reconciliation, it means that we are profoundly as strange and alien and from whom. Everyone around us is telling us that our biggest problem is that people are at odds with one another, that we need reconciliation between people.

Is that our biggest problem? St. Paul says, "No, our biggest problem is that we're separated from God that we are at war with God." Our problem with God isn't some minor misunderstanding that can be easily put right with just a conversation, God, can we work it out? No, we're at war with God. Then of ourselves is a mutiny against God, a rebellion, an insurrection, a true insurrection. There's no human rebellion that can compare to this insurrection. It's an insurrection against the God of the universe. That's the essence of sin that you put yourself in the place of God, that you become the arbiter of truth, that you become a controller of all things. And this desire obviously leads to self absorption, self love, self worship. But this isn't the only factor on alienation from God. Some of us don't understand because we're like, "Oh, we sinned against God. Okay." But the greater the party, the more honorable the party against whom you've sinned, the more egregious that same sin is.

If you go up to a person on the street and you spit in their face, that person is no body. Yeah. You might get a ticket or something. If you go up to a person and the person is the governor of state, well, then there's deeper consequences. If you do that to the president of a nation, well, now that's insurrection. Well, what if you spit in the face of the God of the universe? And you know what insurrection is? It's basically flipping God off. Who are you? Who are you? You're nobody to me. That's what insurrection is. It's not just sin. It's sin against the holy just God. And we deserve his wrath until God's holiness has been satisfied, terms of his justice met. There is no reconciliation.

Romans 1:18-23: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, having clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So we are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Basically says, everyone knows that God exists everybody, deep in your heart. You know it. To believe that everything came out of nothing, takes more faith than believing in a God who created everything out of nothing by speaking. Deep in our hearts we know that we are not here just by accident, we know this, our heart testifies to it. And he says, "This sin is that we didn't honor him. We didn't respect him. And we didn't give him thanks. Didn't give him thanks." I was listening to a comedian who was talking about the fact that he can't be a veterinarian. He's like, I couldn't be a veterinarian. And I didn't really understand what he was talking about. He's like, because animals don't really say thank you.

And then I saw this video clip of this guy driving down the street, I don't know where it is, like in Australia or something, and he's driving down and there's sheep, a big fat sheep. And it's stuck in barbed wire fence. And he pulls over and this thing's massive. This thing's like 100, 150 pounds huge. He gets out of the car and he tries to wrangle it free from this fence. And he's wrestling with it. The thing is fighting back. He's wrestling with it and it's inflicting pain on him, but he finally pulls it out and he understands he can't just leave it, because it's a dumb sheep and it's going to jump into the fence again. So then he musters all his strength and with tremendous deadlift form, he hoisted upon himself and toes it over and then the sheep just runs away. It just runs as fast as it possibly can.

And I'm watching this thing run the whole time. And I'm watching it run to a tree and then it turn. And in my heart, I see it go, "Thank you." But it didn't. And the guy's crestfallen and he is like, "You're welcome." And he gets back in the car, like I did all of this for you, dumb sheep, all I want is a thank you. And that's what I was telling the guy at the playground. If you want to have a gospel conversation, you want to start over here. That's basically what we're saying is everybody owes thank you to God. No one is saying thank you to God. And what we're telling people is you should say thank you to God. And then they're like for what? For the fact that he provided a way for you not to go to hell through the reconciliation and the work of Christ on the cross. That's what Paul's saying. This is precisely what makes Christ sacrifice so important. Jesus died in our place, the just for the unjust, precisely meet the mans of God's holiness and his justice. We've rebelled and we deserve God's wrath, but God matches our rebellion with his love.

Verse 19: That is in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespass against them and trusting to us the message of reconciliation. This is the message. The message of reconciliation isn't telling people, hey, you got to make peace with God. That's not what we're saying. You can't make peace with God. If right now, from this moment on to the rest of your life you live like Mother Teresa, that would not be enough to atone for your past sins. That's not how the holiness of God works. Ministry reconciliation is telling people, look, Christ has made peace. Christ is offering us amnesty, but you have to accept it. That's why the gospel isn't just good advice, it's good news, is tremendous news, but you need to act upon it. Verse 10. Romans 5:10-11: For while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Salvation isn't achieved, reconciliation isn't achieved, it's received. You have to just take it. Just ask for it.

And he says in Christ, God doesn't count our trespasses against us. So apart from Christ, this is the assumption that God does count our trespass against us, which dooms us. We're sinners deeply, constantly comprehensively. We're guilty and liable to be punished for our sins. Therefore, we're in desperate need of salvation. What is the most important information that I can give anybody? What is the absolute most important information I can give anybody at any point? This is it, Christ is offering reconciliation with God. And also there's no information, more offensive, because every time you say that, you're telling the person they've been living wrong.

And that never feels good. That never feels good for someone to show up, and you're like, you're wrong. But I'm saying we're all wrong. That's what I'm saying. We're all unified and being wrong. It doesn't matter how you see yourself, it doesn't matter how others see you, all that matters is that God sees you based on his standards, not the worlds. And a lot of people push back and are like this is so out of date. Speaking of sin is so out of date. Is it speaking about evil is so out of date. We see evil all around us. There's nothing out of date about sin or evil. And because there's nothing out of date about sin or evil, there's nothing out of date about God's grace.

We live in a world where there's so many just logical inconsistencies with the worldview outside of Christianity. One of them is we're told in school that everything came from nothing meaning we got here by accident. Primordial soup and all of that, we just got here by accident. It's all just a lucky accident. So here we are. So there was no creator, no designer, no benevolent God. We are insignificant. If you came from nothing, then you're not significant. That's on the one hand. On the flip side, everyone thinks they're awesome. Everyone thinks they're just amazing. Everyone thinks that you are God's gift to the world. There's no kid that is born and he's like, "Oh, I'm just really insignificant." No, every kid that's born is like I own the place. I am awesome. And I am going to be a tyrant of this house. And that's why you got to parent them actively, parent them. So that's on the one hand.

And then Christianity shows up and says, No little human being. You're not awesome. You are, but you're not." You're sinful. We're all sinful. And we're all alienated from God. We all need to be remade. And at the same time, we are magnificently significant to God because he gave his greatest treasure to save us. We're the object of the most amazing thing that ever happened. The son of God came into the world as a man to suffer and die in our place to reconcile us. Now, Blaise Pascal said, there are only two kinds of men, the righteous who believe themselves sinners and the rest sinners who believe themselves righteous. It's all it takes to be a Christian. Just recognize your need. I Peter 2:24: He himself bore our sins in the body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. How are people reconciled with God through the proclamation of this message, the belief of this message and this changes everything. Verse 20, therefore we are ambassadors of Christ. God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God.

And St. Paul uses a bold analogy here to describe this ministry and the ministry of each Christians that were ambassadors, that you are a representative for him. Ambassador was your representative of the Roman empire. So you walk into towns with immense authority, you don't speak for yourself. You don't act on your own behalf. It's not your authority. It's not your message. It's the sovereigns authority. It's his words. And this is the message is be reconciled to God. Receive the offer of reconciliation except the amnesty. Isaiah 53:5: But he, Jesus, was pierced for our transgression; he was crushed for our inequities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. Dear Christian do not drift from this message. This is the center of the message that we proclaim, the message of reconciliation between God and human beings. Don't drift like the church in the United States has been drifting for a while.

Quick test. What's more important to the world today, reconciliation between the races or reconciliation between the one human race and God? That's a battle that's waging in the church right now. What's more important? What's more important? What's in the position of primacy? There's nothing more important than talking about reconciliation between the one human race, all of us and God. Talk about unifying and healing, racial tensions. We are all united in the fact that we need to be reconciled with God. There's no greater need. And therefore there's no greater power for unity. You want to be United, I'll do my best to unite this Mosaic. You're all sinners. That's what I do every Sunday. We're all united in that. We have all fallen short of the glory of God, no matter your skin color, nothing.

You know what? I was meditating on this week. We got a couple minutes. I was meditating, my wife noticed recently and she's like, "How come wherever you go, you always find enemies." She's like whatever room you walk into, there's always someone shows up that just doesn't like you before they have ever met. I'm like, "Yeah, why is that?" And then you probably already know. But then this was a revelation to me. Well, first of all, I'm a man, I'm a big man, I'm like 6, 2, 240. I'm a big dude. And I'm a big white man. And I'm a big white Christian man. And then I'm a big white Christian heterosexual man. And on top of that, I'm rushing. So it's like every one of those adjectives just times 10, whatever room I walk into, I just already know hater's going to hate and how's the Lord going to use this?

What's the point? The point is, we're all sinners. That's the point and me too. So we all need Jesus. And II Corinthians 5:21, this is how he sums it up. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. This is one of the greatest verses in holy scripture, 15 words in the Greek. This is our foundation. This is how salvation comes to sinners. Knows how careful the language is. He doesn't say that Jesus became a sinner, he says that Jesus became sin. The sinless became sin. God didn't make us righteous, but he made us righteousness. It's imputed. It's not our righteousness. So our sin was imputed to Jesus and Jesus righteousness is imputed to us. Imputed means counted.

Jesus never sinned. He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. 33 years, zero sins. Remained sinless until he became sin for us. The sinless one becomes our sin, our substitute, our sacrifice. All of our sins were poured over Christ on the cross wave after wave, after wave, after wave, he was robed. And all that was heinous and hateful and evil and corrupt lies, hatred, jealousy, pride, lust, gluttony, greed, all poured on his sinless soul. And it wasn't just that. It's not only that our sin is poured on him, it's our sin is poured on him and he's robed in it. And then God's wrath is poured on our sin, which is upon Christ.

Jesus died the death that we deserve to die so that we can live the life that he deserved to live. And John three, that conversation about Nicodemus. And I'll close with this. Everyone knows John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Everyone knows that, but not most people just, they don't know the context. And I'll give you the context. The context is verse 14. And as Moses, John 3, lifted up the serpent and the wilderness. Yeah, there was plague. God set in a plague upon the people of God because they sinned. They rebelled against him. And then he tells Moses, "Hey, Moses, I want you to take a serpent and I want you to lift it up high." And whoever looked upon the serpent got saved. Serpent. So as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of God be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name, the only son of God. Jesus Christ here compares himself with the serpent. Serpent. Jesus died the death the serpent deserves to die, to extend to us the life that the son deserves. He did that so we might be the righteousness of God both legally and practically. This is our justification.

And then II Corinthians 6:1-2: Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, "In a favorable time, I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I've helped you." Behold, now as a favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. If you yourself right now, do not know that you are a Christian, that you do not live for yourself, that you are eternally secure, today is a day of salvation, repent from sin and turn to him. And for the rest of us, what motivates us to live revolutionary life should be fear of judgment, love of Christ, gospel, respect and reconciliation.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you paid everything. You paid the full price. And therefore Lord, we owe everything to you. And I pray that you make us people who are motivated by fear of you and love of you, people who respect the gospel and take the gospel to those who need to be reconciled with you. And bless us as we go and fulfill the mission you've called us to. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church on this wonderful communion Sunday, the beginning of October. If you're new or visiting, we're so glad you're here. And we'd love to connect with you that through the connection card that you can pick up in the back, if you fill it out legibly, just leave it at the Welcome Center, you'll actually get a gift there and get a gift mail.

And if you don't want to talk to anybody, which we understand, social anxiety is a real thing, then you can fill out the connection card in the app or on the website, and we'll reach out during the week. With that said... oh, one quick announcement. I've been highlighting this for the last couple of weeks. Next Saturday, we are celebrating our 10th anniversary as a church. It's our birthday party. It's also a banquet. You can't have... it's not a party without food.

So, we will be getting delicious food, we're getting catered. We just need to know how many people are going, so do please RSVP if you are coming. Who's invited? Anybody who loves Mosaic Church and anybody who wants to be part of the next season of building the church, and building the church for centuries to come. You're welcome to join us. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word? Heavenly Father, we pray that you today impress upon our hearts the brevity of our life.

Life is but a breath, your Word tells us, we're here, we live, we love, and then we're gone. And I prayed today that you show us that we do not die, that our soul does not ultimately die. Our soul is eternal. And I pray, Lord Jesus, that you save any soul listening to these words that is not yet redeemed, has not yet reconciled, by grace through faith, draw them to yourself. Lord, show us that when we do die, as believers, we go into your presence.

And in your presence, we long for the day when you return to earth in the Second Coming, and you redeem everything, and you resurrect us and give us glorified bodies. Right now, our bodies are just tents, but tents. And we long for that building that house of the glorified body that is immortal, that is perfect. Just like Christ has a redeemed body now. And I pray, Lord, that you impress upon our hearts that a vision for Heaven isn't just Heaven as a destination.

But the more clear we see Heaven, and we see the future, it's a motivation for us to live with every fiber of our being for Your glory and service to You and in service to our neighbors. Pray, fill us with the Holy Spirit. Give us a vision for our lives to aim and to please you, live lives that you command. And when you welcome us into our eternal homes, you will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant. This is the son or the daughter in whom I am well pleased."

Give us that vision for our lives. And we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. We're going through a sermon series through 2 Corinthians. We are calling this Prodigal Church Season Two. Why we're calling it Prodigal Church? Because every church in some sense is prodigal. And that they walk away, we waver from the Holy Scripture. So, we turn our attention week after week to the Holy Scriptures to remind ourselves where we wavered and to hold fast to the way that God has for us. The title of the sermon today is, Homesick for Heaven.

We'll start with some facts. Fact number one, you were born. Fact number two, you are alive. And fact number three, you are going to die. Just here to encourage you a little bit with the truth. That's true. So, we as believers, we need to meditate on that fact. And when we die, our bodies die, our souls do not. Our heart testifies the fact. And also, anytime you go to a funeral and you look at the body, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Oh my, it's not the person I knew.

Where do they go?" Well, that's because the soul is gone. And honest life, any honest life should be lived in the frank acknowledgement that this is true. Therefore, we need a theology or framework of death. We must think about death now and often and always. And our theology of death must shape our outlook of life. If you don't know what happens when you die, then you don't know how to live. The meaning of life lies in our understanding of death.

So, we need to meditate on death. Ecclesiastes, he says, "There's more wisdom that is gleaned in the house of sorrow than the house of joy." Most people don't think about it, most people don't even really believe in their own death. Everyone's somehow convinced of immortality, or we just push it off. We just pretend it doesn't exist. And that's why we're always surprised when someone that we knew or know or someone from our social network dies.

And it's just a stark reminder that this isn't home, that people do die. Our loved ones die, our bodies wear out, society changes and rose on with time. And the text before us today gives us one of the most complete views of death, what happens to the believer when they die? Yes, Christ has vanquished death in all its powers. Therefore, we as Christians have a completely different perspective on death than non-believers. There is a joy even in it, but it's still changed with sorrow. St. Paul here looks death straight in the eye.

And he lives with expectation of it. And this realism, instead of making him morbid or depressed, actually changes the way that he lived. Because he understood that Heaven wasn't just a destination, it's a motivation for living now in service to God and neighbor. It stimulated, galvanized him to be most fruitful and most useful. And this view should have the same effect on us. So, St. Paul in this text was trying to do, is cultivate a homesickness for home, for Heaven. We're just sojourners. We're just pilgrims.

We're just travelers, we're passing through. But as we do, we are also agents of change, ambassadors of God. We are to work for reconciliation and redemption. So, today, we're looking at 2 Corinthians 5:1-10. Would you look at the text with me? "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our Heavenly dwelling.

If indeed by putting it on, we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan being burdened, not that we should be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee. So, we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." This is the realm, God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths about upon our hearts.

Five points to frame up our time, and this is St. Paul, is using all of these operative verbs to help cultivate in us homesickness for Heaven. Verse point one is we long, second is we groan, third is we know, fourth is we aim, and fifth is we appear. If you're a little OCD like I am, you're asking how come points four and five don't have an O sound. I need to either articulation or rhyming, or similar sounds or something, and I'm right there with you.

I wrestled all week, and English just wouldn't let me do it. In the Greek, the verbs is to end with the same O sound, and I wanted to give you Greek points, but not everyone speaks Greek. So, it's just a sign that English is a fallen language, really is. And all the international said, "Amen, that's true." So, point one is we long, and that's verses one through three. Here in the context, St. Paul has been outlining some of his hardships as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He has suffered in order to do the work of the ministry in order to plant the gospel in the city centers, and he would go from city center, city center, proclaim the gospel, evangelize, and then get a core group together and plant churches. And as he did, there was a physical toll from physical persecution from opponents of the gospel. And on top, so Satan tries to destroy the church from without, but Saint also tries to destroy the church from within.

And he said, "From within, critics arose." Critics who added, exacerbated his physical hardships with psychological, emotional and mental hardships through criticism. These critics came in, they weren't believers, and they saw something that God had built using St. Paul and the other ministers of the gospel. And these are people who, instead of taking their time to build something of their own, building is hard, spent their time destroying, or criticize or deconstructing, or dismantling, or dividing. And this spirit of destruction or deconstruction comes from the evil one. Because Satan does not build, God creates, Satan counterfeits.

And sometimes, when Satan can't counterfeit perfectly, he also wants to destroy what God builds. So, St. Paul is dealing with that, and he's talking about this as a momentary affliction. So, he ends chapter four with this text, and I'm going to read it because it seamlessly transitions into our text. He says in 4:16, "So, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." It says, "We live in a body that's wasting away. There's death in us and there's death around us. Outwardly," he says, "everything we see on the surface, it passes." But he, it finds encouragement the fact that there will be glory. In the momentary affliction is outweighed by the glory. So, St. Paul strengthens his soul, fortifies himself by the hope of what is coming, hope for the future reality sustains him to endure present troubles.

Present troubles that will soon come to an end, because everything that is seen is transient. It passes, it's ephemeral. And everything unseen is eternal. So, he says, "I've focused my whole life, I build my life around what is unseen." Now this for many people is a very foreign concept. Because most people, well, all of us, we live in the physical realm, we see with our eyes, and whatever we see, that's what we focus on. Most of us live most of our lives focused on what's seen. But he's saying... he's not saying, "Don't live like that."

He's saying, "Don't live for that. Don't live for that which is seen. Because if you live for that which is seen, it will all pass and you will end up with nothing. Live for what is unseen." And what is unseen? It's God, it's his glory. It's the kingdom of God is eternal souls, live for that which is unseen. John 6:27, "Do not work," Jesus says, "for the food that perishes." "Don't only work for food," that's what he say. "But for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has set his seal."

So, dear Christians, don't buy into this lie of the world that we are here to accumulate as much stuff as possible, or have as many experiences in the physical realm as possible. The more stuff you get, the more you actually have to lose when you pass. Instead, focus more of your energy, attention, your thoughts, your energy on the unseen. Focusing your attention on Jesus Christ, who is life, who is our greatest treasure.

Because if Jesus is your greatest treasure, then nothing can touch your greatest treasure. So, nothing, no one can do anything to you in this life to take what's most important away. So, when you even, even if you sacrifice the ultimate sacrifice, which is your life, for the sake of Christ, you actually don't lose anything, you gain everything. And then, he transitions to verse one. He says, "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens."

So, the tent he's saying is our physical body. Our physical body is like a tent. And in Heaven, God is going to give us a building. It's a building from God, when the earthly home, the tent your body is destroyed, God is going to give you a building. It's a house not made with hands, it's eternal in the Heavens. And he uses the word, "If here," it's only a matter of speaking, he's not saying, "Maybe this is going to happen," because then he brings in the present tents that we already have, we have present tents, a building from God.

He's so sure the future reality, he used the present tents. But if this allows for the possibility that if Jesus comes back when St. Paul is alive, then things are a little different. So, the Heavenly home, he's not going to receive, the glorified body, he's not going to receive. In Heaven, he's going to receive it when Christ returns. But here, this distinction is made between this body and the body that we will get, a glorified body. A lot of people have a hard time wrapping their minds around this because they think Heaven is just a spiritual reality.

It's not. Heaven is a physical reality. It's as physical as this world is. That's what Heaven will be. Eternity is in the new Heavens, in the new earth. It's a physical reality. We will have physical bodies that will be different, they will be updated. They were the greatest versions of our bodies, the bodies that we were supposed to have before the world fell into sin. But he says, "We have this temple, and then this temple will be destroyed."

So, what he's doing in the very beginning is bemoaning the fact that our bodies are our tent. Who wants to live in a tent? Nobody, no one in their mind. The American dream is not to have a tent with a white picket fence. That's not the American dream. No one imagines, "I want to live in a tent." And this is why I don't even understand camping. I don't get it. My wife and I, we've been married for 15 years, and we approached our first anniversary.

I said, "Honey, let's do whatever you want. What do you want to do on our first anniversary? Where do you want to go?" And she said, "I love nature. I've never been camping, but I heard it's great. Let's go camping on our first anniversary." I was like, "All right, baby, happy wife, happy life. Let's do it." And we were living in Virginia. We got the tent. And we drive over the camping ground which you have to pay money for. I still don't understand that. So, we go there.

It started off great. She made some lamb kebab. We had some Yuengling juice. It was tremendous. And then, it started getting a little dark. We get the campfire going. It's romantic. I love it. And then, we pitched the tent. And as soon as I got on the tent, I'm like, "The ground is pretty hard." We didn't bring a mat or anything. I was like, "All right. Okay. All right, go on and sleep." And I fell asleep, sleeping like a bear in the middle. And I hear shriek piercing through the night, and it was my wife. "We should wake up." I said, "What?"

She said, "There's bears outside." I was like, "I know. We're in the middle of nowhere. And our only protection is a little piece of plastic." And then, she's kept me up the whole night. And it was terrible. And then, it started raining. It was awful. It was all... I still have a little PTSD from that. We didn't even save any pictures. I was like, "I don't want to remember that. Let's do this all over again." So, when people tell me, "Hey, Jan, let's go camping." My response is, "Do you know how much I pay per month not to?"

There's just, "Why would I go camping? I have a home. There's a bed in my house. There's a mattress, my favorite place in the whole world." And that's what St. Paul is saying. He's like, "This body is just a tent." There's no foundation. It's vulnerable. We're susceptible to disease. We're susceptible to the aging process. We're susceptible to death. That's what he's saying. St. Paul knew tents. He knew tents. He spent every night after preaching the gospel, he would go home, and he would make tents. He's like, "This is all the body is.

It's not permanent. It's not built to withstand the elements long term. It can't take storms." Just like our bodies, it will not take the ultimate storm which is death. And St. Paul always knew the theology of tents. In the Old Testament, Moses and the people of Israel, after Lord, had led them out of Egypt. They had a tabernacle, it was basically a tent. It was a setup and teardown church service. They had this tent, it was impermanent, and they would go there, worship God.

They would carry it with them. And then, that was just a foretaste of something permanent. And that was the temple. And St. Paul says, "In the same way that the tent, our body is impermanent. Building the God will give us of our glorified body will be that much better." Philippians 3:20-21, "But our citizenship is in Heaven. And from it, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body," the tent, "to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to themselves."

So, when a Christian loses his body, when a Christian dies, there's a hope that God will send an upgraded version of the body. And that's expounded in 1 Corinthians 15. So, in the meantime, we long for Heaven. And this is verse two and three, "For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our Heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on, and we may not be found naked." He's using the word longed here. The same word that he uses in his letters, when he says, "I yearn to be with you. All these churches that you planted, I longed to be with you.

I longed to be in a reality that I'm not in right now." He says, "In the same way, we longed to put on our Heavenly dwelling a redeemed body." He longs for Heaven, he longs for the new Heavens, new earth because it will be that much better. And we as Christians, one of the reasons why we're not Heavenly minded enough, is because we don't think about Heaven enough. You can't be Heavenly minded if your mind isn't occupied with Heaven.

And one of the ways to do this, really, practically, is you walk around life, and you just look at things as they are. And you imagine the best version, the absolute best version. And if you're a perfectionist, you already do this. You just imagine, you see all the things that are wrong with whatever, and use to imagine the best version, that is Heaven. The best version of food there will be food, the best work version of work that will be work, the best version of friendships that will be friend, the best version of our bodies.

We know when we look in the mirror, our bodies are not perfect. And we work hard. But in Heaven, everything is perfect. Everything about you that you want to change, it will be perfect. You will be the perfect weight. You will be the perfect percent body fat, no imperfections, no wrinkles, no pimples. Hair day, always perfect, always perfect. And if you're like, "I don't have hair," then you will have a perfect bald head. I don't know. I don't know.

I was meditating on the height thing. How tall are we going to be in Heaven? I don't know. I don't know. But there won't be planes. So, 6'2 could be a possibility because 6'2 here is a fallen height, because you can't fit in a seat. But in there, there's none of that. St. Paul says, "We are to think about Heaven." It's like, we're building in this world with Legos. And then, in Heaven, you have is the new earth, God just builds everything, and He builds it perfectly.

Colossians 3:1-4, "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory." Do you want to go to Heaven? Do you want to go to Heaven? Do you want to be in the presence of God?

Do you want to be in eternal bliss where everything is perfect? Do you want to be there? Do you want to be there now? "Oh, I'm ready for Heaven, just not quite yet. I just want to have a little more fun. I just want to have more experiences. Just not quite yet." Well, if there's any hesitation to your sake, as shows that there is an attachment to the physical realm, that perhaps it's misorder. St. Paul says, "Look, I'm here. I'd rather be with Jesus, but I know I still have work to do. But I can't wait for the day."

I was meditating on that this week. I'm like, "Am I ready right now? I think I am. I will have to preach a sermon on death, just be in the presence of Jesus where now my faith is turn to sight. I see the face of Jesus Christ, you can reach out and touch His face. I can't wait. All of your problems go away. No more bills. No more taxes. No more government. Praise God." No more of that, just the practical questions of like, "What is happening in this world that I don't even recognize in the past 18 months?" I can't wait. And that's what St. Paul here is saying.

He's like, "I can't wait to go to Heaven." And he starts mixing metaphors. He says, "The tent is our body, and we will get a building home." He's talking about the body. So, your body is like a home. So, in Heaven, you're not just given a home, your body is a home. And what he's saying with this imagery, he says, "You put on this body." It's like a clothing. It's like, wherever you go, your body gives you everything you would get at home.

All the best things you get at home, which is rest. You can refresh yourself with food. Everything you have, you have security of provision, you have protect. You have everything. He says, "You will have that in your body because your body is perfect, your body is immortal. Your body won't have any needs. Yes, there will be food, but you won't need to eat food to exist. There won't be threats to your body. Everything will just be perfect."

And he goes into this language about nakedness and being unclothed. And we'll get into that, but what he's talking about is in the meantime from this death, the tent dies, the soul goes to the presence of God. Before we get glorified bodies, we're in this intermediate state. But that's point two. Point two, we groan... verse four and then verse five. Verse four, "For a while we are still in this tent, we groan." Why? Because we're burdened.

"Being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." What's he talking about here? He's saying, "There is the state before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, where when you die, your body goes in the grave, your soul goes into the presence of God. But that's not your final state. That's not your fullness of life, you are still disembodied. You're in the presence of Jesus Christ who has a glorified body. And then, at the resurrection and Second Coming of Jesus Christ, you will get a glorified body, but you have to wait for it.

And because you have to wait for, he says, "We groan," because we know that's not the ultimate state. What is groan? It's an involuntary expression in face of undesirable circumstances. And to really understand what he means, because he's infusing this word groan with theology. And we can glean that theology from elsewhere. What does he mean by this word groan? In Romans 8, we have three instances of groaning. We have the groaning of creation, we have the groaning of the Christian, we have the groaning of the Holy Spirit.

Look at the text with me, Romans 8:18-23, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation is subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." Creation is sick with sin. And he says, "It's groaning, because it doesn't want to be subjected to futility. It doesn't want to be subjected to sin and evil, and sickness, and disease, and corruption. It longs to be redeemed to its initial state before the fall."

And then, he uses the imagery of childbirth, in the pains of childbirth. So, it says, "If creation is pregnant with a new creation, and the closer you get to the moment of the birth, the more powerful the contractions are." So, anyone who's had a child understands this process. You get a contraction. You're like, "Oh, baby's coming soon," and time elapses. And there's another contraction. And then, you watch the time between the contractions.

And the shorter that window becomes, the closer you are to the birth of the child. So, this is the imagery of, in the end times, you feel contractions. A little time goes by, and you feel contractions again. And then, less time goes by, and you feel more contractions. So, you have one cataclysmic event that changes everyone's lives, that changes the whole world. And then, you have another one, and then you have another one, and then you have another one.

And you don't even realize how the world has changed within 18 months. Does that sound familiar? I'm not saying this is the end times. Well, I'm not saying it isn't. It might be. The creation is groaning. And with creation, we are as well. Verse 23, "Not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit," we have the Holy Spirit, but we ourselves are groaning, "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

Yes, we are adopted as children of God. We are redeemed in our souls and our hearts and our spirits, but our body has not yet been redeemed. When you repent of your sin, and you trust in Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, you have a brand-new heart, you are filled with the Holy Spirit and dwelling the spirit, but your body is still fallen. Your body is still sinful. Your body is still prone to death. This is why Christians get sick. This is why Christians die.

And that shouldn't come as a surprise. And there are heretical, errant streams of Christianity that teach otherwise. That if you come to Jesus, and if you have enough faith, you will never have sickness. That's just not true. The followers of Jesus Christ got sick, followers of Jesus Christ died. Romans 8:26-27, this is the third groaning. "Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." He says, "The Holy Spirit groans as he is praying for us."

We have the Spirit in us. You ever have a moment where you sit down and you're about to pray, you just don't know what to pray for. You don't know what to pray for. You have a situation in life, it's like, "Lord, I don't know which way to even approach this. I know all my will is, but I don't even... let's just skip to your will, Lord." And the Holy Spirit groans and prays on our behalf, with groanings too deep for words. And by the way, this is a very important practice.

And once in a while, you should actually practice this in your own prayer life. Where you go into your prayer closet, you close the door, and you're just one on one, you find silence, you find solitude, and you say, "Lord, I don't know what to pray for. I'm still before you, I know that you are God. You are my refuge. You are my strength. Holy Spirit, pray on my behalf." And he does. This language about the being unclothed, and this is where we see that St. Paul himself is groaning about the prospect of not having a body for his soul.

And one of the things that he's doing here is, he's answering the heretical teaching of the Gnostics. Gnosticism is that anything physical is wrong, it's evil, is tinged with evil. Therefore, we just forget the physical. We can't wait till our spirit and our soul is freed. And St. Paul says, "No, no, no, I want a body. God created everything. He created everything as physical, as material. I want a body. We're created to be body and soul, psycho and physical.

So, believers in Christ will be made perfect forever, in perfect union, body and soul." And St. Paul says, "I can't wait for that. But if I die now, I will be in this intermediate state, and it feels like nakedness." And this is the part of death that actually causes St. Paul some turmoil. Because this is the part I do not look forward to, that there will be time. If I die now before the Second Coming of Christ, there will be time, which I won't have a body.

I don't know how time passes in Heaven. I don't know if it's the same as here. I don't know if it's in the blink of an eye. Who knows? But there will be appear, and St. Paul, what's fascinating is, he faces death in a very matter of fact way. There's no sentimental sappiness here. He understands that there will be a time where he's in a state that's not final, that he's not looking forward to. And what he does is, he points out that Christians should view death as an enemy.

A lot of Christians, they would pass, "Oh, if the person was a Christian, they died, they went to Heaven." That's true. That's true. But his death is still painful. And death until the Second Coming of Christ, it does take away strength and vitality and energy, and it does break homes. It does break families until everything is swallowed up in death. So, he views death as an intruder. He understands that until the Second Coming of Christ, we get a half-life.

So, in the meantime, we regret that our souls will be in one place where our bodies are in other place. And the reason why he has this tension in his heart is because he loves life, because Christianity loves life. God loves life. Christians life affirming, not death affirming. And we see just a glimpse of this in the heart of Jesus Christ. When his friend Lazarus dies, and Jesus knew that Lazarus was sick, and he intentionally didn't come when Lazarus was sick because he wanted to resurrect him to glorify God. So, he knows Lazarus is going to be resurrected.

He comes and he meets with Martha and Mary, and you get the scene where he knows exactly what's about to do. But it says, "He wept." He knows that he's about to bring Lazarus back from the dead, and says, "Jesus wept." And the verb there for weep is the same word that's used when Mary Magdalene washes the feet of Jesus Christ with her tears. He's just weeping, these tears streaming down his face, not because Lazarus was going to stay dead, but because Jesus feels in himself. He feels in his heart the pain that death causes to all of humanity.

2 Corinthians 5:4, "For while we are still in this tenant, we groan being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." St. Paul talks about death as death swallows up everything that is living. It's as if, death is a monster, a huge monster swallows up the living. So, St. Paul says, "There will come a time when the mortal that which dies will be swallowed up by life."

Just to give you a graphic image, we'll go to the animal kingdom, the animal. A lot of people just have a very rosy perspective on life. And if you do, I just want you to study nature a little bit. And I followed this one account on IG called, Nature is Metal. And it's just little videos of animals devouring each other. There's one of a snake that just swallows up a bunny. And all you see is a little cotton tail. Lions just descending on gazelles, which isn't very different from nature. I was thinking about it. Whenever I bring the rotisserie home, or rotisserie chicken home, my daughters just descend upon it like little lionesses.

And I'm like, "Where'd the chicken go?" She's gone, hardly a bone left. So, that's when he's talking about, life will come and swallow up everything that is mortal. So, now everything that remains becomes immortal. We get an articulation of this in 1 Corinthians 15:50-58, "I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." So, if you die as a Christian, to die as a Christian, as a believer in Jesus Christ, a follower of Jesus Christ, your soul goes to be with God in His presence. And then, when Christ returns, your body will be resurrected, no matter how you died, no matter how you were buried, no matter if you were buried in the ground, or if you were cremated, or if you dry. No matter what happened to your body, God will resurrect it, the same God that breathed life into us.

There's nothing impossible for him. He resurrects your body. If you're alive at the Second Coming, and by the way, I pray that's what happens to me. Because I think it shows me so much better. So, what happens is, everyone that's dead is raised to life. So, you watch this, you're like, "Oh, my. Hey, Grandpa," it's like, "everyone's getting raised to life in a glorified body." So, at some point, your grandpa actually looks better than you do because he's got a glorified body. And you're like, "Hey, Jesus, where's my glorified body?"

And then, you're brought up with him. And this is the 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep," dead, "that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that those who are alive, who are left until the coming of Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from Heaven with the cry of command and the voice of an archangel, and the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words." So, Jesus is coming back in a glorified body. And in the process, he raises the dead, gives them glorified body, catches us up and gives us a glorified body.

What will the glorified body be like? We can learn some attributes of the glorified body from the glorified body of Jesus Christ. He has a body that's glorified. It's a perfect body. And in the perfect body, Jesus came back and he ate with his disciples. He had Easter breakfast, in John 21 he has. He eats his breakfast with the disciples on the beach, he has broiled fish. He met with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and he shaped shifts.

So, they didn't recognize who he was. And then, he goes, "He has dinner with them." Another time, the disciples all in the room, he walked, the door is close, the windows are close, he walks through the door so he can walk through physical objects, and then he just disappears, which is awesome. And I think we might be able to fly in our glorified bodies. Because Jesus ascends to Heaven as glorified body. I'm not sure, but that would be awesome.

And this is how God operates. He imagines the greatest possible thing. So, what I'm saying is, Heaven is going to be awesome, and you need to be there. So, if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, just believe in Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, and you get to go to Heaven for eternity. The glorified body is the new improved version of you. It's a redeemed body. Whatever it was meant to be, you'll be clothed the beauty and power forever. 2 Corinthians 5:5, "He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee."

So, the moment you repent of your sins and trust in Jesus, he gives you the Holy Spirit. In dwelling the spirit, it's a guarantee. The Greek word means down payment. Not just like a down payment a house, like this is what you have to pay in order to get a mortgage, what he's saying is, it's like a down payment, if you go buy a car, used car, you go and you say, "Okay, I'm going to buy this car. Here's some money as a down payment to show you that I'm serious about coming and bringing the balance."

Another instance of this word is used, it's talking about inheritance ring, where a father gives an inheritance ring to a son, and he says, "When I die, you get a portion of my inheritance." Another instance of this word is used, is talking about an engagement ring. When a young man falls in love with a woman, and he wants to marry her, he proposes. And he proposes with something, this is a cultural thing that we do. He proposes it with something.

He proposes with a ring. "I guarantee that I will marry you, that I will be faithful to you, that I will love you and serve you, and lead you, and provide for you, and protect you. I am guaranteeing something." And if you don't understand the guarantee part of marriage, then that's probably why you're single. Young men, there's a guarantee, a woman wants to know, he's going to guarantee something. And the Holy Spirit is the guarantee that God is going to redeem us, give us a glorified body. He's going to bring us into Heaven, and he's going to give us eternal life. This fulfillment of life, body, soul together is God's purpose.

And it passes because of the Holy Spirit. We know it will pass because of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:11, "If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus," the Holy Spirit raised Jesus, "from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." Third is we know. 2 Corinthians 5:6-8, "So, we are always have good courage." We're confident, we know this truth. "We know that while we are at home in the body," in the tent, "we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Yes, we are of good courage," same phrase, again, we're confident, "we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." We know this with certainty that when I die, I will be with the Lord. Same phrase he used in verse one. "For we know that the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands." Do you have the same certainty? Do you have the same certainty that if you die today you will be in the presence of God, you will be at home? Do you have that certainty?

The reason I ask is because you can have that certainty. And if you are believer, you should have that certainty. You know this is a fact, this is the foundation that I'm building my whole life on it. If I die, I will be in the presence of God. How can we be certain? We can be certain because our salvation does not hinge on our performance. Our salvation is found in the performance of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

A lot of Christians in the world, in churches where the Bible isn't open, where it's not expansive, where it's not explained, a lot of Christians, you ask them, be a Catholic background or Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox background, if you ask them, "Hey, if you die today, do you know that you are going to Heaven?" And the response usually is, "I hope so. If I do more good works than bad, perhaps." Well, friend, that's not how God operates. One sin is enough to banish you from the presence of God for all of eternity. That's how Holy God is.

Just pick one of the commandments, you break it once. That's it, you're guilty. And there's nothing you can do to atone for even that one sin, well, friends, each one of us, we've broken all of the commandments, all of them, because Jesus summarizes the commandment by, "Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." No one's done that perfectly. We've all sinned, we've all fallen short of the glory of God.

We've all misaimed. What is the word sin means? Just missing the mark. You have missed the mark, you have missed the point of life. One thing, as I was meditating on this week, anyway, I come to the second service, it just gets more material. I was meditating on the fact that most people shape their worldview, shaped when they're young in school, maybe in college, you read a little philosophy, you read a little of the word religions.

And then, as soon as you start working, you're like, "I have a couple days a week to do what I'd like, and I'm not going to read world religions." Most people don't do that. So, you just inherit this worldview that you've been given. And by age 22, it's like solidified, and then you never go back to it to question if what they taught you was even true. What I'm telling you is, you need to question what you were taught. And if you're alive today, you got to be asking, "Is what I believe about everything isn't true?"

And I know that cognitive dissonance. I know the emotional pain, psychological pain, the trauma that you feel when you get to a point where you're like, "Oh my goodness, I was wrong." It's like what Bill Belichick is going to feel today when Tom Brady's back. "I was wrong. I was so wrong." But times 10 million, you know I'm saying? So, what I'm saying is, it's never too late to reassess things. "Does God exist? Who's he like? Is this guy, Jesus Christ, who impacted the world like nobody else is Jesus Christ. True, is he God?

And then, what do I need to do with it?" And when you... Jesus Christ say, "You can know. If you trust in Jesus Christ, you repent of your sins." Jesus said, "Whoever believes in me has eternal life. You have it now. You can know that you are going to Heaven because you already have the guarantee within you." And he says, "Look, I rather be at home with the Lord."

I know if I pass away, I will be at home with the Lord. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain because I get more of Christ. St. Paul is in this limbo of like, "Okay, I want to need to do as much as I can for Jesus, but not for you because I want you to know Jesus, but I'd rather be with the Lord. I'd rather be home." Do you know the feeling of homesickness? Like the ache deep inside? There's not even a good word. In Russian, there's a word called toska, which is just this annoying. It's just, it's like an anxiety, it's kind of a depression. It's kind of, "I don't belong." It's kind of a loneliness. It's like a homesickness or homelessness.

You just don't belong. I felt this my whole life, this whole thing of not really belonging here. I'm from the Soviet Union. My parents immigrated here in 1989. I grew up in a public-school system where English was my second language. I was an ESL until third grade. Because it was more fun than regular classes, so I just pretended I have a Russian accent. I still don't understand what's going on. I just didn't belong. And in the United States, everyone's like, "You're Russian.

Now go back to Russia." You're like, "You're American." I just never belonged. But Christians, we know our citizenship isn't here. We belong in Heaven. St. Paul says, "I want to go home. I've been here longer, I want to go home." Because he's been in ministry for so long, most of his friends probably passed. And the longer you live, you get to a point where you have more friends in Heaven than you do here. Where you have more family members in Heaven than you do here.

And you're like, "I think I'm ready to go." Three of my best friends died tragically in a very formative years of my life. My best friend growing up was a guy named Pete, he died. His brother was driving, they're both driving on the... They were driving to my house for bible study, and they hit black ice, and crashed. Pete died. And then, right after that, I went to Moscow for a study abroad, and my best friend there was Constantine.

And Constantine and I went to a prayer meeting together. And we do this every Wednesday. It was the two of us and three older ladies, and we had a tremendous prayer meeting. But when you pray for someone, and you do that repeatedly, you get really close to them. After I left, Constantine got married, and he and his wife, couple years later, died in a car crash coming from a Christian conference. Then, at seminary, my best friend there was a guy who struggled with mental illness, for love of the Lord.

And then, after he graduated seminary, he had a deep, deep doubt bout with his mental illness and died. And I'm meditating on like, "Why? Oh, God, what lessons are you teaching? What are you teaching me through that?" In those years, was particular really is, I think number one is this, "Jan, you got to learn to love people that are going to be gone. It's the only way to truly love someone without stiff arming them, without hedging your emotional bets."

Like, "I will love you to an extent, but you might leave." Oh, Jesus Christ love to the death. We have to love people even knowing that they die. And it's easier when you're Christians, because when you leave, if you die, we're going to see each other again. It's the only way also to stay in Boston long term, because people that you love move away. And that's a form of death. And maybe they'll come visit every once in a while. But you'll see them in Heaven.

But it's also the only way to live where you understand that God gives you this gift. You love these people while they're here. And then, you'll see them again. St. Paul says, "While we're not at home with the body, we'll be with Jesus." And that's why he says, "I'm ready to die, are you?" And you're not really ready to understand life and how to live life unless you're ready to die. And so, Paul understood this because he understood the theology of being a pilgrim or sojourner. We're just traveling through. Heaven is the destination.

Because Heaven is destination, it's the motivation for us to live for the glory of God here. And the key to travel is learn to travel light. Everyone knows how miserable travel is with suitcases. And it's miserable even with carry-ons. Travel light. Take things with you that you don't mind losing. And it makes things more enjoyable. Point four is we aim. 2 Corinthians 5:9, "So, whether we are home or away, we make it our aim to please him." He says, "This is my purpose in life.

This is what gives me passion. I don't live for myself. A lot of people are so miserable in life." Are they bored in life because they think that the point of life is to live for yourself? That's too small of an aim, too small of a goal. And St. Paul says, "I have an aim to please God. I want to get to a point where God sees me. He walked with me into Heaven." He says, "Well done, good and faithful servant." He says, "It's my aim. Sin is when we missed the mark. We missed the aim. Living for the glory of God is, I want to please God."

Some of you have heard that, if someone's Heavenly minded, they're of no earthly good, which is true in some cases. Some people when they hear, but the reality of Heaven or Jesus coming back, they check out from life. I had an uncle like this, who racked up credit card debt and would just pay the minimum because he's like, "Jesus is coming back soon, why am I going to pay?" So, I don't think he understood what Heaven is. Heaven is a physical reality.

We're going to work there. And so, we might as well start working now here. Honestly, the most spiritual people I know, the most Heavenly minded people I know have also been the most practical. The most Heavenly minded people I know understand that this world is just passing. So, they manage and steward their finances well, they understand relationships, how love people really well because they do it from perspective of eternity.

They just understand life better. And that's what St. Paul is talking about here. A lot of us, we need to transition from just praying, "Please God." You know you haven't matured yet and you're still a baby Christian where all of your prayers are, "Please God, please God, please God," and you give God your wish list. You know you begin to mature in the faith where instead of praying, "Please God," you start praying, "God, how can I please you? God, what can I do to please you?

What can I do to obey you? What can I do to bless you and bless the name of Lord?" And finally, point five is we appear. And this is verse 10, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." Every Christian needs to understand that there's two judgments. The first judgment is, when we die, we're going to stand before the white throne of Jesus Christ.

And the judgment there is, what did you do with Jesus? Did you obey Jesus? Do you repent of your sins and believe in Jesus? If so, then you enter the presence of God. If not, you are banished from the presence of God, and you go to a place called eternal Hell of eternal conscious suffering. I had a conversation recently where the person was like, "I don't like all these churches. I talked about Hell because they tried to scare people into loving Jesus." It's not the intention.

But you don't get mad at meteorologists, when they say, "Hey, a storm is coming. Prepare." Thank them. There's a storm of God's judgment coming. And the good news doesn't make any sense at all, unless you understand the bad news. There is Hell, there is eternal damnation. Jesus Christ went through Hell so you don't have to. You just need to trust in Jesus Christ, and you are saved. And you go and spend eternity with the Lord. Now, if you... and the first judgment, if you're a Christian, you now are moved to the second judgment.

And it's called the bema, or the judgment seat of Christ. It's like a court date where you give an account for the life that you lived. You're getting account for what you did with your time, your talent and your treasure. It's not about salvation because you're already saved, but it's about service. What did you do for the Lord? It's like a performance review at work, where you get evaluated for how you work in the past quarter. And if you are nervous about your performance review, there's probably a reason that you are.

You didn't work so good. But if you're excited about, you're like, "Finally, my boss recognizes how hard I worked. I worked more than 15 hours a week like my co-workers. I actually worked, and I want to be recognized for." That's what St. Paul said. So, the second judgment is like the podium in the Olympics. It's just, "Okay, now we discern who did the most gold, silver and bronze." In God's angels, there's distinction, there's rank between the angels.

Same with us in Heaven, depending on how we live, depending on how we build. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw," he's talking about building materials in value in descending order, depending on value.

"Each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burnt up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." They're saying, "What are you... are you giving God your best? Or are you giving God your leftovers?"

You're just a Christian because the fire insurance, "I don't want to go to Hell." Or do you actually care about God, his glory, his work/ And what's the most important work in the world? It's glorifying God, serving him, loving him, serving our neighbors, helping them meet God, helping them learn. Your home, it can be fixed with the glory of God. Your family, your relationship, everything can be fixed. God is helpful for all of that. But your home is not the ultimate home.

The ultimate home is in Heaven. Jesus Christ left his Heavenly home. John 1 said that he tabernacled with us. He took on the tent of mortal human flesh. Live the life where Jesus didn't even have a house. He didn't have a place to place his head. He didn't have a place of his own. So, he lived in this homeless state here on earth that he created. Everything is his. And then, he goes to the cross. And on the cross, he experienced this cosmic homelessness, cosmic homesickness, cosmic loneliness where he cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus went through all of that to provide a way home for us.

And all you have to do to know that you are going home is repent of your sin, "God forgive me," confess your sin, and ask for the Lord Jesus Christ to save you, and submit your life to him as your Lord and Savior. This time we're going to transition to celebrating Holy Communion. And Holy Communion is given to us as a tangible reminder that we are to partake in a regular cadence. Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me." To remind ourselves that we need a savior.

That we're sinners. And that Jesus is that Savior. He provides the means for our salvation. For home is Holy Communion. Holy Communion is for repentant Christians. So, meaning, you have to be a Christian first, you have to repent of your sin and trust in Jesus. If you're not a Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or become a Christian today by repenting and believing. Welcome, partake. It's also for repenting Christian.

So, if there's unrepentant sin in your life, right now is the chance for you to repent. Ask God for forgiveness, ask God to free you from that sin and to give you power over it. And if you don't, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service as well. I'm going to pray. And then, we'll partake together. As I'm praying, if you want to partake in communion, and you haven't received a cup and the bread, raise your hand.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this reminder that life is temporal, that we're femoral. We thank you for the remainder of the brevity of life, that we're here, then we're gone. Everything we see will pass, and only that which is done for the name of Jesus will last. We thank you for that remind. Jesus, we thank you for living the perfect life and then going to the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. Thank you that you died, that you bore the wrath of God.

And we thank you that you didn't stay dead. We thank you that you came back from the dead, victoriously over death. Jesus, we thank you that your body was broken, and it was broken to heal us. We thank you that your blood was shed, and your blood was shed to cleanse us from our shame and our guilt. We pray that you bless our time in Holy Communion, and we pray that you bring to mind any sins right now that we haven't repented of.

We take some time to repent of pride, of selfishness, of folly, of rebellion, of self-reliance. And we thank you, Jesus, that you did everything to accomplish our salvation. Bless our time in the Holy Communion. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood Churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the Pastors here, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. We're so glad you're here and we'd love, especially if it's your first time, we'd love to connect. We do that through the connection card. That's how we officially do it. You can also unofficially just introduce yourself after the service, we can chat. But officially, if you fill out the connection card and then redeem it at the welcome center, we'll give you a gift and then if your mailing address is on there legibly, we'll send you another gift in the mail just to say, thanks for coming out.

One announcement I will emphasize, is our 10th birthday is coming up and birthday parties are fun, if you make them fun and we're going to make this fun. It's Saturday, October 9th, 4:00 PM. You do have to RSVP, so we know how much barbecue to order. There's also vegan option. So everyone's invited. One caveat, you have to love the Church because we're investing barbecue in you. And I also need to know how many people are coming, because we like to feed people well. You know it's a good party when everyone had their fill and you're sending people home with food. And I'm not promising, we're going to send everyone home with food. I just want to make sure that I go home with food, that's because I've got four daughters that eat like adults, so that's ... Yeah.

Let's pray, over the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the reminder that you are God and we are not. You are God and we are not our own, yet we lived like it and many was still of like it. Therefore, we've sinned against you, but you sent your son, Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God. Father, you sent the Son. He is your perfect image. And Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, you reminded us, you showed us what it means to truly be human. How to live a true life, a life of love toward God and people, a life of service toward God and people. And then you showed what love is.

Love is sacrifice, and you showed that on the cross by dying for us to redeem us, to bring us back into this relationship with the Father, by the power of the Spirit, to show us that who we are. We are yours. You put your name Jesus on us. We are Christians. And I pray that you remind us of that identity today, because we live in a city where everyone wants to define us with labels about what we do, what we look like, how we speak, where we're from, what we have. That's not who we are.

The essence of who we are is who you say that we are, and in Christ we are yours. I pray that you remind us of that and that you fill our hearts with joy to live that out and fulfill the mission that you have for us. We pray all this in Christ's beautiful name. Amen.

We're going through our sermon series through 2 Corinthians, that we're calling Prodigal Church Season Two. Season one is online. And what we're doing is we're just going verse by verse through this incredible Book of the Bible. The title of the sermon today is, Seven Rules For Life, and I'm not just talking about for success in life or happiness in life. I'm talking about fullness of life, of finding life, the meaning of life, the purpose of life and eternal life. But to do that, you got to know who you are.

I think the culture of our relationships, the culture of our marriages, the culture of our families, the culture of our community groups, of our Church would change radically, if instead of stopping at the question of how are you, we continued and asked the question, who are you? Who are you? What's your essence? Not the facade, not who you pretend to be. Who are you? Because how can I love you if I don't know who you are.

A Pastor at Church here and bless the Pastors of this Church, it's a Church full of people trying to find themselves. We live in a city of people trying to find themselves. You don't know who you are and the more you look for yourself, the more lost you get, the more you lose yourself. And I get up here every single week and basically say the same thing, "Stop looking for yourself, because you won't find yourself by looking for yourself. You only find yourself by looking for God, finding God." And you're like, "Oh great. I need to go find God. I'm going on a year long trip backpacking Europe." No, that's not how you find God. You find God by looking for God.

God said, "Whoever seeks me shall find me." That's how you find God, and as you find him, you'll realize that he's been looking for you the whole time. Jesus said, "I came to seek and save that which is lost." By finding God you'll find yourself. John Calvin wrote one of the most important works, not just in Church history, but in all of history, The Institutes Of The Christian Faith, and this is chapter one, "The knowledge of God and of ourselves mutually connected nature of this connection." So he's saying, basically here's what you need to know about God and knowledge of God and he has two points in chapter one. Read the whole thing. I was tempted to read the whole chapter today. I was tempted to do that.

That's how I used to preach. When we started the Church, I was like, "I'm 26 years old. I don't know a thing. I'm just going to read chapters out of tremendous books." And I would get up, I remember I've read a whole thing from Knowing God and people like that's ... If you want to succeed in life, I'm going to give you rules before I give you rules. You got to read the whole Bible. You have to. If you have never read the whole Bible, I don't know if you're saved. Not that that saves you, you're saved by grace through faith, but you got to read the whole Bible. That's number one. Then you got to read, Mere Christianity, you have to read that. Then you have to read, Knowing God by J.I. Packer and you have to read The Institutes Of The Christian Faith by John Calvin, to really understand Christianity.

So in this chapter, he says knowledge of God and he's got two points. The first is without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. If you don't know yourself, you will never know God. He starts with the self. He says, "Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it's not easy to determine which of the two proceeds and gives birth to the other." And the second point is, without knowledge of God, there is no knowledge of self.

Just meditate on that. I challenge you, just meditate on that today. You won't know yourself till you know God. You won't know God until you know yourself. That's true knowledge, and this is what St. Paul has been doing in this letter. And he began this argument in chapter two, verse 14, in which he says, "Hey, you can only know God, if God reveals himself to you. And he reveals himself to you through the piercing truth of the gospel into your heart."

So yeah, we preach the gospel because that's the only way that people are going to get saved, that's God's method, that's God's means. We do God's work God's way. But as we preach the gospel, you just need to know. Some people hear it's the aroma of life, from life to life. It's a fragrance. You hear it, you're like, "Oh yes, Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Yes, I'm going to heaven. It just makes sense." Other people hear it and it's the aroma of death. Not because it's uninteresting, irrelevant, distasteful, offensive, but because by refusing to believe the gospel, people seal their fate of being separated from God for all eternity.

And if you today are here and you're not sure, the gospel just doesn't make sense, you don't know if you're a believer and you're here for a reason and you're listening to this message for a reason. And I believe you are here because God put you here and you're listening to this message because God foreordained, preordained this to happen. I believe you're elect. I'm preaching to you like you're elect. So if you're not a yet a Christian, I dare you. God, if you're there, please remove the veil. I want to see you. I dare you. During this sermon, just do it. Just do it. I dare you. And then, come up to me after if you did it and we'll baptize you. We'll schedule a baptism service. That's how we do ministry at Mosaic.

So today we're looking at 2 Corinthians 4. Would you look at the text with me. "Therefore having this ministry, by the mercy of God, we did not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. But by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake."

"For God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body, the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you."

"Since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what has been written, I believed and so I spoke, we also believe and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people and may increase Thanksgiving to the glory of God."

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." This is the reading of God's Holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths about our hearts.

The reason I was smiling as I'm reading that is, does your mind hurt after listening to that? Some of you have such incredible minds that your minds have never really been challenged. If you want your mind to be challenged, read this book and understand what's going on. When you do, you will come to know God and if you come to know God, you come to know yourself. You'll find your voice. You'll learn how to communicate. You'll learn how to speak the Word of God, because you finally found your voice and you speak for God and you speak for good. And to do that, you need Seven Rules For Life.

I don't do the Seven Rules For Life usually, because I've seen other Preachers do this and they build mega Churches, like Rick Warren would come up and he's like, Five Keys To Happiness," and everyone's writing them down. And he gives them a little piece of paper where you got to fill in the key. It's like number one blank, and you got to fill it in. The reason why they do that is to keep everyone engaged during the sermon. I'm like, if you got to use a trick like that, then you're not engaging enough, but I am going to do a trick like that, to understand this text. Okay, Seven Rules For Life and it's to find real life ...

Live with heart. Live with integrity. Live with spiritual perception. Live to exalt Jesus Christ. Live with creation and confidence. Live with paradoxical power. And live with daily renewal.

First, live with heart. 2 Corinthians 4:1, he says, "Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart." Why does he say, we do not lose heart, if he wasn't driven to the brink of losing heart? You know what it means to lose heart? It means you quit. You lose the fighting spirit. Your heart's not in it anymore. You know what Ministry is? Ministry is just loving people. So I'm not just talking about ministry, vocationally speaking. Ministry is loving people. Have you ever had a relationship where you got to a point with a person that you loved and you say, "I just can't do this anymore. I quit. I'm out." That's what it means to lose heart. You lose heart for this person and it's tempting, because ministry is hard because loving people is hard.

Charles Spurgeon's classic, Lectures To My Students, writes a chapter to new Pastors, Preachers, Ministers and he entitles this chapter, The Minister's Fainting Fits, in which he describes the pressures put on any minister to lose heart. He says, "Our work when earnestly undertaken lays us open to attacks and the direction of depression. Who can bear the weight of souls without sometimes sinking to the dust? Passionate longings after men's conversion, if not fully satisfied and when are they, consume the soul with anxiety and disappointment, to see the hopeful turn aside, waxing more bold in sin. Are not these sight enough to crush us to the earth?"

"The Kingdom comes not as we would. The Reverend name is not hollowed as we desire, and for this, we must weep. How can we be otherwise than sorrowful while men believe not our report and the divine arm is not revealed? All mental work tends to be weary and to depress for much study as a wariness of the flesh, but ours is more the mental work. It is heart work. The labor of our inmost soul. Such soul travail is at the heart of the faithful minister and will bring an occasional season of exhaustion, when heart and flesh will fail."

Anyone who is loved knows the cost of loving and no one experienced more of what Spurgeon describes than the Apostle Paul, specifically the personal attacks in Corinth, the Church that he started. These people came to faith through his ministry, that's why they were especially galling because he loved them. The attacks come from people that he loved. Namely, they were attacking him, accusing him that his ministry's weak, it was fading. That he was dishonest in some way, that he had effectually corrupted God's word in some way, that he hindered the preaching of the gospel. And in light of Paul's sincerity and integrity, these accusations were hurtful and they were wicked and unfounded and what's fascinating is he doesn't shrink away.

They're attacking him and he could have gotten to the point where like, "Fine. I'm out. I'm going to different city." But he doesn't. He remains and he engages. "Let's duke it out. You want facts? I'm bringing facts and I got receipts," because his heart's still in it. He's duking it out. So the question is, how's your heart? How's your heart for ministry? How's your heart for loving people? If you lose heart, you lose everything.

Michael Jordan, when he won three championships, after winning three championships, he retired and he went to play baseball. And everyone's like, "You went to play baseball. You stink at baseball." And he stunk at baseball. He was terrible. And they asked him, "Why aren't you playing basketball anymore?" He said, "My heart's not in it anymore." Because his dad had passed the way and he was driven to play it for his dad. And it took him to take some time away to find his heart again. No heart, no energy. You lose heart, you lose everything. You know what heart is? It's courage. It's courage. So when you get discouraged, you lose courage for the fight. So when you're encouraged, you're infused with courage for the fight. And he says, "My heart is in the ... I haven't lost my heart."

A lot of you, you haven't loved enough to get to the point where you know what that line is. A lot of you don't know what it means to love so much that it hurts and it shows, because a lot of you, it's been easy to be loved, because you're so talented. You're like, "It's easy to be loved and it's easy to love because people don't really push you." But it's really, when you love hard people that you understand the toll it takes to love and that's when you want to quit. And a lot of you haven't loved that much, so you don't know what it means to feel the pain.

The reason why many of you don't win is because you don't know how to lose. Let me explain. A lot of you have just won in life and because you've won so often in life, when the L comes, you don't know how to deal with it and then you quit. That doesn't work in relationships, I'll just give one example. I remember freshman year in high school. I started wrestling in eighth grade because Keith McGinley was sitting next to me and Keith McGinley turns around. He's like, "Jan, you're Russian. Russians aren't good at soccer. You should wrestle." And that's all it took because I wasn't good at soccer.

So I signed up for the wrestling. I only had one year of experience, eighth grade. And then ninth grade, I show up and my coach is like, "Jan, how much do you weigh?" He weighed me. I weighed 140 pounds. I was 6'1" and 140 pounds, freshman year of high school, crazy. My left leg is 140 pounds right now. So 140 pounds and he's like, "Great, we don't have anyone at 140 pounds. You're varsity. Welcome to the team." Well, I stunk, I was terrible. And I had a history teacher that really liked wrestling and he was proud of the fact that I was on varsity. And then my first match, I got pinned in 10 seconds. And then the next morning, so that was published in the Cranston Herald. I'm from Cranston, Rhode Island. It was published in the Cranston Herald, all the stats. And then next day, I'm sitting in history class. My history teacher comes up to the table and smacked it. Pinned.

And that was funny. I'm like, "All right, he did that." I'm like, "Okay, I can handle it." Except he did that the following week. And he did that for 15 weeks straight, because I went O and 15. And I'm thinking back now, I'm like, I think he would be fired for doing that. That's inflicting some kind of trauma on ... I look back now, I still have PTSD. I still hear that thing. And you know what I'll tell you? That was a gift. That was a gift, because the off season, I trained like an animal and then I became the Crushing Russian. But I thank him, I thank him for that and I say that because we live in Brookline and in Brookline people don't know how ... They've won so much, they don't know how to lose and that's why they quit. They lose heart.

I remember my second daughter started playing soccer and I think she was like five or six. She started playing soccer and her team was just so much better than any other team, because the girls on the team were more robust. They were a little bigger, a little stronger. They was more robust and they didn't just win, they trounced other teams, just obliterated scores like 15 to nothing. And I loved it, of course. I'm like, "Yeah." Parents from the other teams would take their kids out of the game and take them home, because they say, "You're not winning this game anyway." That's a disservice. In order to learn how to win and not quit, you got to know how to lose. And the way you know how to lose is by realizing, it's just a game. It doesn't matter. It's just a game.

So if you win, don't let it go to your head. And if you lose, don't let it get to your heart. And when you know that none of this matters, none of what we do really, really matters in the great scheme of things for the perspective of eternity, the only thing that matters is what we do for God, for his glory. The only thing that matters is what we do for eternal souls. That's the only thing that matters. Well that gives you the spiritual fortitude, when you are pushed to the brink to not quit and to not lose heart. And St. Paul says, "We've been given this ministry. It's hard work and it's a surpassingly glorious ministry of the new covenant, that when we proclaim the gospel, people get saved by grace through faith. The Holy Spirit removes the veil of unbelief, brings liberation of the Holy Spirit, brings transformation to the image of the Lord's glorious work."

Matthew Simpson talks about the ministry like this. "He, the person bringing the gospel message, he stands in Christ stead. His message is the word of God. Around him are immortal souls. The Savior unseen is beside him. The Holy Spirit broods over the congregation. Angels gaze upon the scene and heaven and hell await the issue." It's hard work, but it's worth it. It's hard work, but it's worth it so he doesn't lose heart. Having a ministry of such splendor, leaves Paul with no place for faint hardness, but only for boldness.

You know what I say to myself right before I have to do something really hard? If I'm lifting, it's like say, "Oh. Squats, deadlift." Or like having a hard conversation with someone. You know what I say? I say, "DBAB. Don't Be A Baby, bro. Don't be a baby, bro." I preach it to myself. What I do here, I do to myself all week, "Don't be a baby. Suck it up." This life is full of pain. There's no pain, no gain. No life without sacrifice. Every person, every woman that has ... Oh man, I was going to say, every person that gives birth. No, only women give birth.

Every woman that gives birth knows this. To bring life into the world, you go through pain. That's what St. Paul is talking about and then what gives power to do it? He never forgot God's mercy on him. He never forgot that God saved him. Every time he shared his ministry, his testimony, he never could get over the fact that Jesus saved him, that God chose him, chose him for work, chose him for suffering. And he focused on God's mercy and that energized his ministry. It heartened him, encouraged him.

He continues, 2 Corinthians 4:16, these are the two parallels. The two book ends of the text, "So we do not lose heart." Verse 16, "Though, our out outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day." Point two, is live with integrity. St. Paul lived with integrity. In addition to being heart and energized by God's gift of salvation, he also embraced integrity in how he did the ministry. God gave him a word. He kept the word. He focused on the word. He didn't edit the word. He didn't change the word. He didn't tamper with the word to make his life easier. 2 Corinthians 4:2, "But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. But by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God."

He said, I reject all deceit, I reject all subterfuge. I reject cutting any corners to make things easier. I reject any kind of thing that's only done when no one's looking, shameful things. He says, because I do everything in the sight of God. I live for an audience of one. Yes, your opinion, it kind of matters. You know whose opinion matters more than anyone else's opinion? What does God think about my life? What does God think about how I live? You want to live a life that truly matters, a meaningful life and purposeful, live as if God is always watching you. That's what he's saying in the sight of God and he rejects. He's like, so why would I change the gospel? Even if the end is altruistic and that's what the false teachers were doing.

False teachers would come in. They're like, "Hey, Let's not preach about sin, hell, damnation, all that stuff because that scares people away. Let's talk about God loves you. God wants to bless you. God has big plans. Let's talk about that stuff. And then once we got them in, then we'll be like, "Hey, there's other stuff too, like if you didn't believe this, you're going to go to hell." And I know Churches that do that. I literally know a Church where the guy said, "We don't preach the gospel on Sundays." He said that. He said, "We teach life principles on Sundays, because we want to help people's lives. And then once they're in the Church, then we're like, all right, then we'll open the Bible."

He uses the word cunning. We don't use cunning. Does that make sense? It kind of makes sense. He uses the word cunning. It's the same word that he used to describe Satan's schemes. 2 Corinthians 11:3, "But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion of Christ."

The Church down the street, St. Paul's Church in St. Paul's Street, they're blessing bicycles this week. So if you ride your bicycle in Boston, you should go there. What I will tell you is the hard truth, that you should not ride your bicycle in Boston, because you'll die. I know because I got hit by a car on my moped one time. The week we started the Church, I got hit by a car, I almost died. Good thing, I was wearing a motorcycle helmet and then that's why I didn't die. And then that week, the first Sunday on our inauguration service, I got up with a cast and I'm like, "You know? Satan almost killed me this week. Here's proof." That really happened.

I know a Church in Texas that on Easter, they gave away Ferraris. They had a raffle. If you show up to the Church, you might win a Ferrari. And you know what my first thought was, and this is the fall of human nature? "I should go there, just in case. Just in case I get to drive out of the Church parking lot with a car, almost as nice as that Pastor's. Just in case." And St. Paul says, "No, we don't tamper with God's word. We don't do that." A lot of people do that today.

Ways that people do that to today, first is they approach Scripture with fallen presuppositions that they take from somewhere else. Presuppositions that your professors give you. They literally have New Testament classes in universities all around us and the presupposition, day one, is none of this is true. There is no God. Jesus wasn't God. So now you're reading a text with a presupposition of disbelief. So obviously you're never going to understand the meaning of that text.

The only presuppositions that we can read Scripture with are presuppositions that we take out of Scripture. Some people do this today by removing texts from context. Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." That's not talking about, because of Jesus I'm always going to win. It's talking about because of Jesus, I can win and lose. I can be brought high or low, by moralizing the text, reducing the Bible just to ethics.

Christianity is just about being a good person? No, it's not. Christianity is literally about one good person and everybody else needs him. No, one's a good person. Jesus is a good person. That's what the Bible's about. Using the text to promote hobby horses or dogmatic insistence that the text says something that it doesn't, and this is a desire to be clever or popular, relevant or intellectually respectable. But the most often way that God's Word is tampered with is, it's watered down because of preacher's laziness.

Preaching the gospel is hard work. You know why? To understand this, is hard work. Just to wrap your mind around this and then figure out how to present it in a way where people actually listen, because this is the most important message in the universe. So how can I present in a way that you are paying attention the whole time? But before I even get there, I have to live it. I have to read it. I have to understand it and I have to do it. And I live with five females, who think that they have been commissioned by God to make sure that I'm living this out.

My wife thinks it's her calling in life to make sure that I do it perfectly. And then I have four daughters that sit in the back seat as I'm driving and they, once in a while, throw in, "Hey, you can't say that Pastor Jan." This is the hardest job in the universe. I know your job's hard. Come do my job. I dare you. Let's plant Churches. So that's what he's saying. Where are we? Okay, yeah.

Oh, 2 Corinthians 2:15, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." Rightly handling in the Greek is ortho straight. Paul's charging Timothy, "Hey, I want you to get the text straight and to give it straight. The undiluted word of God, with boldness and simplicity and clarity."

Three, live with spiritual perception. St. Paul preached a simple gospel to physical people, but he understood that there was spiritual realm above everything. So when he preaches the gospel, he's aware that this is spiritual warfare. He's aware that he's preaching to eternal souls. So he looks through people, through bodies, through flesh, and he speaks to their soul, speaks to their heart. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, "Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

For some people, the gospel is veiled to them because there's a veil in them, a veil over their hearts and minds, a covering where the gospel, it doesn't make any sense. And St. Paul here is responding to the question. If the gospel's so powerful and glorious, how come so many people don't believe? How come more people, the majority of people aren't saved? And St. Paul says, "There's a veil over their hearts and minds. They can't see the glory of Jesus Christ, because the God of this world ..." Who's he talking about? Who's the God of this world? Satan. Satan.

For God was the God of this world. God relegates authority to Satan. You will never understand the world. You will never understand geopolitics. You won't understand economics. You won't understand anything in the world unless you understand that Satan has authority over people and Jesus Christ breaks through that authority, one person at a time through the preaching of the gospel. Paul knew this first hand. He knew how blind he was to the gospel. He knew how blind he was to the dazzling glory of Christ and it wasn't until Jesus Christ revealed himself to Paul, that Paul finally saw spiritual perception.

You have to live a spiritual perception. You need to understand that there's spiritual realities above us that we do not see, and the only way to understand that is Scripture. And then once you see that it changes the way you live. It changes the way you relate to people, where you start learning how speak to people's souls, but you have to look through the body.

Do it right now. Do it right now. Look at me. Look past my hair. What's he doing with his hair? I don't know, can't figure it out. I think he's getting curly with the humidity. Look past my beard. Is that a beard? What's he doing? He needs to trim that. Look past my crooked glasses. Look past the fact that my name is Jan, Yan. That's weird, this is so much weird. But I'm telling you, look. Is he wearing a Carhartt shirt? Is hee trying to be a lumberjack. Look past this.

I'm telling you, this changes the way you live. Look at people in the eyes. Look at people in the eyes. I dare you for a week, look only in their eyes. It'll solve so many of your problems. Don't let your eyes gravitate where they should not. It changes the way you live, if you view every single human being as eternal soul, it changes things. That's what he's saying. He's saying, "If you really want to find life, you got to live a spiritual perception."

Four is lift and exalt Jesus Christ. The antidote to the veil blindness is lifting Christ up, so focus on that. In verse five, "For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake." He's not building my ministry. I'm not proclaiming myself. I proclaim Jesus Christ is Lord, and that's the gospel. That's the fullness of the gospel right there, in a nutshell. Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus' name means salvation. Salvation. Luke 2:29-32. This is Simeon as he takes baby Jesus in his hands. He says, "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation." Takes Jesus, he's salvation.

Jesus is salvation. Christ means anointed. When he's the Messiah, God has chosen him for this ministry and Jesus Christ is Lord. He's Lord of Lords, King of Kings. He's King of the cosmos, that's what we believe. Jesus is salvation. I need to be saved. Jesus is the Messiah, that was prophesied centuries, millennia before he came. And Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of Lords and all you have to do to be saved is to confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. So everybody repeat after me. Jesus Christ is Lord.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Let's do it again. I hate when people do that, but I love ... Let's do it again. Jesus Christ is Lord. See, now all of you are saved.

If you also believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord and that he was raised from the dead, that's all it takes to be a Christian. That's all it takes to be a child of God. That's all it takes to find eternal life. That's the gospel.

Five is, live with creation and confidence. Verse six, "For God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." He's saying Satan may have blinded people, but Jesus Christ gives sight to people. Divine grace is more powerful, pierces the heart with light and understanding. So obviously in our ministries, there's no place for self glorification. We don't do it. We don't save people. Jesus Christ saves people with the same power that God created everything.

How did God create everything? He spoke everything into existence. That's what he is doing in this verse, "Let light shine out of darkness." God spoke it. God created everything through the Word. God created everything through Jesus Christ. And then God recreates everything through the Word through Jesus Christ, but it's the same creative power. So when we proclaim the gospel, proclaim God's word, we have access to this divine creative power and God creates and recreates through each one of us, creation of power.

St. Paul knew this. He knew firsthand what it means to hear the message. He was a contemporary of Jesus, did you know that? They may have crossed paths. If not, then he definitely crossed paths with his disciples or people that met Jesus, eyewitnesses of his miracles and Paul didn't believe. He actually persecuted believers in Christ and then everything changed when Jesus Christ revealed himself to Paul. We live in a world where people even, especially smart people, believe almost anything except God's word, except the gospel. People believe anything and it's just crazy to me, how they don't see the lies. There's still people in the world that believe the government loves them and wants to do the best thing for them. There's still people in the world that believe politics is the solution and they vote. Crazy. There's still people that believe that the media tells the truth, the full truth, nothing but the truth. They just believe crazy, crazy things. But you mention Scripture and you mention a gospel and they think you're wearing a tin hat.

You know it used to be a virtue to go to Church. It used to be a good thing. You would tell people you're a good person, if you go to Church with your family. It's not a virtue, not here. So I told my daughter, she's 13. I told her, I said, "Sophia, you are a missionary. None of your friends know another Christian. None of your friends in school know another Christian. You're the only Christian that they have ever met." And she said, "Well, I tried to invite my friend to Church." I said, "Okay, you got to tell your friend that if you are educated, if you are an intelligent person, how can you understand the world if you have never read the most influential book in world history?" This book has impacted world history like no other book and that's why they don't want you to read it. And that's why you should, I dare you.

Point six, live with paradoxical power. 2 Corinthians 4:7, "But we have this treasure." Treasure, this gospel, this treasure, "In jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." This verse was ruined for so many of us by a band named Jars Of clay. And you know, I made fun of them in the first service and I feel kind of bad, because then I talked to a guy who's like, "Hey, they slept over my friend's house, because they were at a show and then after the show, they didn't have a place to sleep. And the guy's like, "Aren't you going to a hotel?" And they were like, "Yeah, no, it's too much money." So the guy invited them to sleep in his place. You know what he said? He's like, "They're just regular dudes." I was like, "Oh, so they are Jars Of Clay."

So that's what he is talking about, Jars Of Clay. On the outside, you just look normal. You look inexpensive, easily broken. It's a throw-away container. It's Earthenware pots. It's when you go to the restaurant, this is what they give you leftovers in that container. You don't put anything valuable in them. And God says, "This is how the ministry works." God chooses to reveal his treasure by putting it in jars of clay and then the jar of clay goes and tells everyone, "Hey, there is treasure inside my heart. I have the spirit of God. I know God. I know the God of the universe. I have salvation. I have the Holy Spirit." And people are like, "You're a kook." And then they get saved. And then they're like, "But you're a jar of clay. How did I get saved?" And then you're like, "Yeah, it's a surpassing power that belongs not to me but to God."

So that no one mistakes about the source of the power, God chooses this method so that no one gets glory other than God. Who gets any of the glory? And St. Paul says, "It's all God." And when St. Paul says he's weak, he's a jar of clay, he's not posing. He was a great writer, but in person, he was just awkward. He was just an awkward guy. Have you ever worked with someone like this? They say hello and you say hello, and that's it. It's like, you're playing basketball with someone that never passes.

St. Paul was just an awkward dude and he had a uni-brow. So in person, no one understood and he couldn't speak. It wasn't a good order and he was Jewish in a time where the Corinthians were anti-Semitic, the whole empire was. And what St. Paul is saying is, my weakness is actually why God chose me. I am weak. He is strong. I'm a jar of clay. He is the treasure. And this is where a lot of Christians get this strong. They think, if I demean myself or deprecate myself, that's how I increase my power.

No. It's not about your power. It's never about your power. It's not about how you get more powerful. It's about how you get out of the way and let God be more powerful. So it's my weakness that releases the power of God, as long as I don't get in the way. Someone asked St. Francis, how he was able to accomplish so much in his life. And he said this, "The Lord looked down from heaven and said, "Where can I find the weakest littlest man on earth?" Then he saw me said, "I found him and he won't be proud of it. He'll see that I am only using him because of his insignificance." I love that. It's so ironical. That's the ironic way of saying ironic. It's so ironical and so you never lose the humor of it. I can't believe that God saved me and God called me to do this. And then you have just ...

There's an air of joyful playfulness, "Yeah, okay. I'm doing the most important work in the world, but I didn't sign up for this. So let's see what God can do." And it's entertaining too and your life becomes like a movie. It's tremendous. This is what happened on the day of Pentecost. The Apostles got up, filled with the Holy Spirit. These guys were fishermen and tax collectors, regular dudes and they start proclaiming the gospel and 3000 people got saved. And they got saved because they realized there was just this discrepancy between the guys speaking and the power with which they're speaking. And people were like, "Oh, this is borrowed power. It's not their power. God is really with them."

The other challenge here about jars of clay ministry is you get ... What do they say? Familiarity breeds contempt. You know what that mean? It's like when you get to know someone ... That's why they say, never meet your heroes. Like when you think this person's so great and then you meet them in person and you're like, "Oh, you're just a normal person." Yeah." "Oh, you too have to use deodorant and brush your teeth?" "Yeah, just a regular dude." "Oh, you get hangry?" "Yeah, I do. It's almost lunchtime."

The challenge is you never see the treasure. The longer you're with a person, the hardest to see the treasure through the clay pot. This is what Jesus said, "There's no prophet in his hometown." Because if you grow up with a Jesus and you're playing baseball with him and you strike out Jesus, it's kind of hard to believe this guy when he says, he's the Son of God. "You're the Son of God and I struck you out." And he's like, "I let you strike me out, to boost yourself confidence."

Something like that happened with Paul. Paul was with them. They got saved. After a while, they get to know him and they're like, "Oh, you're not that great." Then Apollos comes in. They're like, "Apollos is a polished speaker. We like that guy better. And we like these false teachers better." And then after a while, they're like, "Paul, maybe you're not that great." And Paul's like, "Yeah, now you see why God used me because it's the same thing John The Baptist did with Jesus. He must increase, I must decrease."

So I'm saying in your relationships with people, never lose sight of the fact that if they're a Christian, they got to treasure inside of them and you got to look for that treasure. You got to look past the jar. This is why some of you are still single. I mean, when you're trying to get married, sorry ... You can't it see past the clay pot. You're looking for the treasure. You're looking for the 11. Jesus is the only 11. So the clay pot, get to know it. Get to know the pot. Get to know the cracks in the pot and you see what the ... The pot is still here and then fall in love with that pot and then I'll do your wedding, if you're a member of Mosaic.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10, and this is what he says, "We're afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not driven to despair. Prosecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but down destroyed. Always carrying the body, the death of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies." He's like, "You clearly see that we've been getting knocked down, knocked down, knocked down, but we're not getting knocked out because the Spirit of God is with us."

2 Corinthians 4:11-12, "For we who live are always being given over death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also maybe manifested our moral flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you." For two reasons, the same hostility of the demonic realm that was brought down on Jesus, the same hostility we feel when we proclaim the truth, because this is spiritual warfare. It's not informational warfare. It's spiritual warfare, so that's why you experience the persecution, the suffering, et cetera but then also, he says, it's because it's the way of the cross.

Christ's life for us. Jesus to give us life, he had to die. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. True love always takes death. Sacrifice to self, death to self. Every married person knows this. You die the self. You die to owning your calendar. When you have kids, you die to owning anything. They own everything. This is what he's talking about.

George Muller was a great pastor and he set up orphanages for tens of thousands of children. He was asked at the end of his life about his secret, he hung his head and he said, "There was a day when I died." And then he hung his head lower and he said, "I died to George Muller. I died to myself." And this is what Jesus said, if you want to find true life, die the self. "Take up your cross and follow me."

2 Corinthians 4:13-14, "Since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what has been written, I believe and so I spoke, we also believe. And so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence." And here you don't really understand what's going on, unless you understand that he's quoting from Psalm 116:10, in which David was on the brink of death. He almost died and God gave him a word and he said, "You're not going to die." And David said, "I believed and so I spoke. I believe the word of God." And he didn't die.

And then St. Paul says, "Well, we also know that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us from the dead." So even if I die, even if I die, I'm still in God's presence. So I'm going to live every single day as if this is my last day, doing the most important thing that I can, which is preaching the word of God. And then verse 15 forward, "It's all for your sake. So that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God."

He's saying I'm willing to take the hits. I'm willing to take the suffering, and I'm willing to get knocked down so that more people can actually hear the gospel and not to build up my own ministry, but so there's more people worshiping God. So more people are giving God the glory that he is due. So more people are thanking him and loving him and worshiping him because he deserves it.

Then points seven is, you live with daily renewal and that's verse 16, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary infliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

I don't focus on this moment, because when you focus, when you're going through pain and you focus on the moment, the moment feels like an eternity. But when you focus on eternity, I'm going to spend eternity with God and God has a house and his house is so big that the rooms in it feel like mansions. Jesus said, "I'm going to go my father's house and prepare room for you." In King James' version, mansions.

I'm going to spend eternity in bliss. There is no pain. There is no suffering. There is no sin. There is no evil. There is no warfare. It's just life. And this momentary affliction from the perspective of eternity, it just feels like a moment. So I'll get through it. That's how he does it and that's what gives him energy to not lose heart, not lose heart.

My family does this thing where ... We have a big family. So I have four siblings and I have four kids. My sister has four kids and Alyssa has two kids. So there's a lot of us. So my dad and my mom, they invite us over and we're celebrating five people's birthdays. We have five people in our family that have birthday in September. It was tremendous. And we got a bouncy house, it was epic. It was epic. We're getting better at parties. And we had steak and pizza and Olivye, which is my favorite Russian salad. It was tremendous.

My dad calls me ahead of time. He's like, "Hey, you got to prepare a word. Before we pray, you got to prepare a word." I was like, "Fine, I'll prepare a word." And I was like, "What am I preaching on?" So I prepared this word and I read this, verse 16, "Though our outer self is wasting away." Happy Birthday everyone. You're wasting away, but it's true. You are. No offense, none taken."

Pastor Shane, if you met Pastor Shane. Pastor Shane ages like Tom Brady. I age like Bill Belichick, wasting away, but you know what? I'm having a good time, because every day I get renewed on the inside. Every day, I get renewed by the Spirit of God who reminds me that God is Father. I'm just a kid. I'm just a child of God, and this responsibility that God's given me that aren't mine completely to shoulder, so I don't need to get bogged down with depression and anxiety. God's got it. I just got to do my job, have fun while I'm doing it and God fills my heart joy. And the more joy I have in my heart, the stronger I am. So what's the point of losing heart?

In conclusion, you don't find yourself by looking for yourself. You find yourself by losing yourself, in the moment. Eminem was close, he was so close. It's not just about losing yourself in the moment. You got to lose yourself in God, and when you lose yourself in God, that's when you find yourself because you find yourself in God.

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, "Once you become that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord." So do you know God? If so, rejoice, and if not get to know him in prayer right now. I dare you. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for an incredible word, a dense word, a rich word, a substantive word. We thank you Holy spirit that you were with us. We thank you for the treasure that you have deposited in our hearts. And I pray that we, as jars of clay, bring this treasure to world. I pray Lord powerfully work through us, so the world sees that it's not our power, it's your surpassing power. Your glorious power to reveal Jesus Christ, to unveil hearts and to reveal your glorious face. I pray, you do that to many in and through this Church, build this Church and expand your Kingdom from it. And we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card. You can get the physical one at the welcome center. And then if you fill it out with a little pen that we gift you, and then just redeem it at the welcome center, we'll give you a gift here, and then you'll also get a little gift in the mail.

One quick announcement. Our 10th anniversary party is October 9th, Saturday at 4:00 PM. Everybody who loves this church is invited. Everybody who loves this church. I've been getting a little sentimental recently. It might be because I'm getting older. It might be because I have a 13-year-old. As of this week, my oldest daughter, Sophia, she turned 13 and we celebrated her birthday. It hit me in a new way because she was nine months old when we moved to the city. She's more Bostonian than most of you.

Raise your hand, if you've been in the city longer than 12 years and three months? Oh, tremendous. It's like seven of you. It's all to say. You should come to the birthday party. It'll be catered. There'll be a meal. Dress nicely. We will praise God for all of his blessings to date, and we will cast a vision for the next season of Mosaic.

In the next season of Mosaic, we don't just want attenders or congregants, we need builders to build the church building. I'm praying for our own space. That's what I'm praying. I'm praying for no more set up and tear down. I'm praying for chairs, more comfortable than these. I'm praying for climate control. I'm praying for being rooted in the community, not for the next 10 years, but for the next century. That's what I'm praying about. So you should come. RSVP. Go to brookline.mosaicboston.com/worshipnight to RSVP. Okay?

With that said, would you please pray with me for the preaching of God's word. Heavenly father, we thank you that you, the great God of the universe breathed everything into existence. Through the word of God, the son of God. Jesus Christ, you are word and you took on flesh. And you the word of God in flesh powered by the spirit, you live the greatest life ever lived, and then you word of God, author of life were crucified.

Our sins killed the author of life. We pray, Holy Spirit to come down and show us that apart from the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we lost. We lost, and we need you to save us. I pray we never forget that. I pray we never forget that we need to be saved. We can't do it on our own. Well, we know who can. I pray, Holy Spirit. Bless our time, the holy scriptures. Now, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. We're going through a sermon series through 2 Corinthians that we're calling prodigal church. This is season two. Season one is online.

The title of the sermon is God, the writer. This week, comedian, Norm McDonald passed away from cancer. I'm Not sure if he was a believer. People close to him say he was. A few years ago, he tweeted the following scripture, faith, grace, Christ, glory of God. Smart men say nothing is a miracle, I say everything is.

I like that perspective on life. Some look around and they say, "Where's God? Nothing's a miracle." And some who have eyes to see realize that absolutely everything is a miracle. And surprised by joy, CS Lewis is describing his conversion as... He thought he was seeking God. He didn't understand that God was actually pursuing him, hounding him. He called him the hound of heaven. CS Lewis is a writer. He says, "I could not more meet him, God, than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare."

And that's a really compelling illustration that Hamlet could explore his world without finding evidence, any evidence of the author, Shakespeare. Not in outer space, not behind a tree, not submerged in the depth of the ocean. In another sense, Hamlet wouldn't exist without Shakespeare. Nothing in his world would exist without the author. We should see evidence of the author all around us, but we don't.

We think that we're the point of the story. And for Hamlet to know, Shakespeare, personally, the author would have to write himself into the story to show him, "Hey, Hamlet, you're not the hero of the story because I made you. You're not the hero. You're not the author and you're not free to write your story any way you want, because you're just words on my paper coming from my pen."

Lewis later says, "Hamlet could initiate nothing for the two to me, it must be Shakespeare's doing. The author would have to write himself into the story." And this is the claim at the foundation of the Christian faith, that there is an author to our story, to our world. And the only way to meet him is not of your own initiation, not of your own logic and intellect and cognitive ability. It's the only way to meet him. He must act. He must write himself into human history and he has.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh. The author entered the plot and he did it to rewrite our stories into his story. His story is actually the best part of history. The greatest story ever, the good news written by the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 139:16. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. God has a book on every single one of us. And he writes our days. He writes our days as the best that we can be, empowered by the Holy Spirit. There are days that you live and you're like today was a good day. Not just because you live for yourself, there are days where you just pour yourself out. You pour yourself out.

Holy Spirit fills you and you just keep doing it again. That's what we're talking about. Today, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, would you look at the text with me? Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all, and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. Non-tablets of stone, but in tablets of human hearts.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant. Not of the letter, but of the spirit for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Now, with the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end. Will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory for if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness far exceeded in glory.

Indeed. In this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end, it came with glory much more will what is permanent have glory. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold. Not like Moses who put a veil over his face so the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end, but their minds were hardened for to this day when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ does it taken away.

Yes. To this day, whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. And then when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now, the Lord is a spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed to the image from one degree into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the spirit.

This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points. Number one, you aren't the hero of your story. Number two, you can't please God without faith. And number three, you can't free yourself. I've realized recently that I'm kind of an... You know those motivational speakers out there? People pay a lot of money to go see Tony Robbins. People like him made a lot of money.

I'm kind of an anti motivational speaker. You show up and I just tell you, "You need Jesus. That's what I'm telling you. That's the point. So first of all, you aren't the hero of the story. 2nd Corinthians 2:17, St. Paul started the thought that he continues to 3:1, "For we are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ."

St. Paul said, "God commissioned me. God commissioned me. I didn't enlist." A lot of Christians don't understand the Christian life because they think that they enlisted. You're like, "I chose this." No, you didn't. No, you didn't. You were drafted. God chose you. You were drafted into the army of God, into the family of God. You were adopted. Same metaphor.

God commissioned me. And the response that they might say, "Oh, you're being so proud. You're saying God singled you out." And he's like, "No, I didn't choose this." He says, "We're men of sincerity." And his critics would say, "Are you being proud of your sincerity? Oh, Paul's commanding himself again." What they didn't understand is the difference between self-confidence and God confidence. And if you don't know the difference and you meet someone who is rooted in God, confident in God, you're like, I have never seen that before.

But the closest that I've seen that is this is a really proud person. Saint Paul says, "No. No, it's not me. It's not my power. It's not my word. It's not my message. It's not my Holy Spirit. I'm confident in God." And that's verse one. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Do we need as some do letters of recommendation to you or from you. You yourselves are our letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all.

So St. Paul started this church. He spent 18 months with these people, loved these people, knew these people. They knew him and they became Christians. He was the midwife of them coming to life. He saw the new birth in them. He saw them regenerate as he proclaimed the gospel. He loves them intimately. They are the letter of recommendation. Why even bring this in? Because he left the church and then critics came in and said, "Who's St. Paul? Who's the apostle? Who's that guy?

Look at my letters of recommendation. I know what my credentials are. What are Paul's credentials? And Paul, he's not saying that the letters of recommendation are wrong because he wrote letters of recommendation himself, commending Timothy in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. Phoebe in Romans 16. Timothy and Epaphroditus together in Philippians. The Book of Philemon itself is a letter of recommendation. But he says, do we need, as some do letters of recommendation from me?

Do we need it? They clearly need it because they're from the outside. They're peddlers of God's word with shady characters who use and abuse these letters. The same people demanding letters from St. Paul never got letters from him. They just saw an opportunity. He left, they came in. Paul's point is such letters would be ridiculous because you would not be the church apart from.

That's what he's saying, St. Paul, "You would not be the church apart for me." That's what he's saying. "You know my calling. You know my anointing. You know my divine commissioning. Authority is a preacher of the gospel because you're believers. You know that the spirit is working through me saying because you have felt it. And then he says, "You're written on our hearts. You are our living, breathing letters written, and most interior secret dimension of his being. You are living validations of my calling and ministry," he says.

Verse 3. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us. You're writing on our hearts. You yourselves are a letter written, not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. Not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts." He says, "You are our letter. I didn't write you," he's saying. "I didn't write your letter. I didn't write your story. I'm just a mailman. You are a letter from Christ written by the Holy Spirit of God. You're written on my heart, but you are a letter. I'm just delivering that letter."

Christ is the author. Holy spirit inspires. Saint Paul was used. God wrote the 10 commandment tablets the first time with his finger, the scripture says. With his finger. And the same God with the same fingers, metaphorically speaking, his writing on the tablets of our human hearts.

And just take a step. By the way, this may be the most dense chapter I have ever preached in my whole life. I wasn't done with this. I thought I was done yesterday at 4:00 PM and then I realized I wasn't. And I wrote until 9:30 PM. Completely rewrote sections of the sermon, because I realized that I didn't get what was going on, because the way St. Paul, he just goes level by level by level, dimension by dimension, dimension.

See here, I'm just going to pause every once in a while. As I get too deep, we're going to come up for a breath of fresh air, and then we'll dive back down. So a breath of fresh air. Speaking of Christ writing stories, have you ever written your story? Have you ever sat down and written your story? Autobiography?

That's a compelling thought. I was meditating on that today. I was like, how honest would I be? How honest could I get about my story? Knowing that everybody would read it? How honest could I get? From here on out... And that's trippy because we know there's parts in our lives that you're like, "Ah, I can't mention that, or that, or that because I got kids and they might read my book."

Well, that's an incredible thought experiment because you can kind of reverse engineer the life you want to live. From here on out, if you wrote an autobiography about what you want your life to be. This is the life I want to live the life. I want to be remembered for the things I want to accomplish from here on out. You can write that down right now and work toward it, to be remembered for the things that you want to be remembered for.

But then as you write that story, here's a question. Who's the hero of that story? Who's the hero of your autobiography? Is it Jesus Christ? If not, if not, we got to reassess some things. Who's the hero of your story? And I say that because God is the one who created you, right? God is the great author who created you. He fashioned the character and the personality that you are. He created you just to make the world a little more interesting.

Like if I were writing a book and you want a book with interesting, compelling characters. He created you to add value to the whole story. You make the story better. You make the story more exciting. You make the story more entertaining, but when you make it about you, that's when you lose everybody because that's demonic, because that's what Satan did. The greatest character that God ever invented with the most abilities, the most handsome, probably the funniest, the sharpest wit, the most strength was Satan.

He was number two. Then Satan was such a compelling character that he confused himself. He thought that he was God. He thought he was the hero of the story. So who's the hero of your story? Your life has a letter. It's a chapter in the book that God is writing. People are reading your life now. And what are they reading? I'm telling you, Pastor Zane, Pastor Danny, and I were thinking about what we're going to do for the sermon series for the fall. And we're like, "You know what? I think there's a theology of adventure in the Bible. There's a theology of adventure because of the lives that people lived, the people that got into the Bible lived incredibly fascinating lives.

I couldn't think of one boring person that made it into the Bible. Can you think of one? A lot maybe? But even then he's like an anti-character and you're like, "Ah." I can't think of one. I can't think of a one boring person. So the point is we don't have to go to adventure theology, but let's just read the Bible. Paul lived a fascinating life. Fascinating, interesting, exciting.

I heard one preacher say, he said, "If your sermon is boring, you're sinning, because you take the greatest story that ever was, and you can't even tell that story. That's the greatest story ever, the trippiest. Any story that actually is worth listening to, it always copies from the Bible. It's just plagiarism all the time, like a hero dying for everybody and then dies and then comes back from the dead. It's a cliche. They stole it from Jesus, plagiarism.

So my question for you is, is your life boring? Is your life boring? If you documented your week, this past week, is it even watchable? Is the episode of this... Or the past month, is that episode even watchable? Could you sit back and be like, "You know what, there were some pretty good parts in this past month." Is it even watchable?

And as you watch it, who's the hero of the story? I want you to wrestle with that. Is Jesus on a day-to-day basis the hero of my story, when people look at my life and they're like, how did you do that? Why did you even accomplish that? Why did you say that? Where did you get that little nugget of wisdom? That relationship, that service to someone, that generosity, that's what touches the heart. Do you do that? Do you live a life from the heart, a life worth living?

Jesus is the hero of the story. That's what St. Paul was saying. And then he continues and he says, "Look, you can't please God without faith. You can't please God without faith. So you're not the hero of your story. And you also can't please God without faith. I'm going back to the same metaphor I used in the very beginning that God is the author. God wrote Shakespeare, Hamlet, that whole thing. So you can't understand life unless you understand that you're not the author.

In order to say that God is the author, he's the one that's writing on our hearts, writing the story of our lives. You need to believe there's no other way. You need to believe that he is the author and you are not. Hebrews 11:16, and without faith, it's impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

So St. Paul, he was talking about, "Look, I don't need letters of recommendation, your letters of recommendation, your letters, et cetera, et cetera." And then now he's talking about confidence. Verse 4, such as the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. The conference that we have is that you are believers because the Holy Spirit flowed through us, the Holy Spirit made you Christians. Your letter of recommendations, yours written on our hearts, such as the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us.

But our sufficiency is from God who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Confidence in God is one thing. St. Paul is like we have confidence in God, but he immediately renounces self-sufficiency.

Our sufficiency is from God. God used us, but it wasn't us. I'm just the vessel. God used us, but it wasn't us. The messages isn't us. The powers isn't ours. None of it is ours. Our sufficiency is from God. "I'm confident," he says such is the confidence. I'm confident that I can't do anything. Jesus Christ said, "You can't do anything apart from me."

I'm confident that I can't do anything. I can't do Jack diddly-squat. I've said that to one of my daughters and they're like, "Ooh, I've never heard that term." I'm like, "Ah, man, I've got to edit that out of my story."

I can't do a thing. That's what he's saying. I can't do it, but I know the one who can. God can. I'm confident I can't, but God can. And with fine irony, Paul asserts his confidence is rooted in personal inadequacy. The reason I have confidence is because I can't. This is what I'm telling you, this is one of the trippiest things. If you learn this truth, it will transform how you live your life. You're going to walk into any room like Conor McGregor doing the billionaire walk. And they're like, you're so proud. And they're like, "Nope. I'm with the one who is glorious."

There's a, I guess, a humble confidence. That's what I'm saying, a humble confidence. He asserts his confidences rooted in personal inadequacy. Just like Moses. God calls Moses. Moses killed a guy and then he's in the wilderness for 40 years. And then God says okay from the burning bush, he said, "Come, you're in the holy ground. Take off your shoes," et cetera.

God is like, "You're going to go into Egypt and you're going to take my people out," et cetera, et cetera. And Moses said, "I can't even talk. I can't even talk." He has a stutter. He had a speech disability. He said, "I can't even do it." God is like, "That's why I chose you to be my mouthpiece."

Same thing with Gideon. You see this all throughout scripture, insufficiency, human insufficiency, divine sufficiency, Gideon. "Lord, please pick anybody else. I am the weakest in Manasseh. I am the least in my father's house." And God tells him, "I'm going to be with you. And you will strike the Midianites as one man." "God, I can't do it." God's like, "That's why I chose you."

Isaiah, "Woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips. Amongst the people with unclean lips." God is like, "Finally, you got it. I chose you because you have a dirty mouth so to speak." And then God cleans his mouth with a coal. Jeremiah. "Lord, I do not know how to speak for I'm only a youth." The Lord said, "Whatever I command you, you shall speak."

Ezekiel had an innate sense of insufficiency remedied with vision of glory of God. He saw God. A lot of you aren't used by God even like you're not even at 10% of the capacity that God has for you. You're not even at 10%, because you are so capable. You're so capable in your lives. You're so gifted. You're so talented that you don't even have to really try. The problem is when you apply that to Christianity, that I can do it, everything's easy for me, you will lose the power of God. And then you are not used by God to your full potential.

Oswald Chambers said, "God can achieve his purpose either through the absence of human power and resources or the abandonment of reliance on them." All through history, God has chosen, used nobodies because their unusual dependence on him, made possible the unique display of his power and grace. He chose to use somebodies only when they renounced dependence on their natural abilities and resources.

I wonder if you have. I wonder if you renounced your abilities, your credentials, your resume, your accomplishments. This is real talk. You got to do it on a daily basis. You crushed it yesterday and then you get up. You got to be like, "I haven't done a thing. I can't do a thing. I need God. I need you." And then St. Paul moves from this idea that, "I can't, but God can when I fully rely on him. My confidence is rooted in my inadequacy.

From here, he launches into that's the point of the whole Bible. That's the next section. That's the point of the whole Bible. And everyone reads the Bible either through the lens. This is what God told me to do and I'm going to do it. I'm going to show, I'm going to prove to God that I am worthy of his love acceptance into heaven. That's one way of reading it.

Reading the holy scripture is, "I can't do it. I read the 10 commandments and I can't do one of them apart from the Holy Spirit." So the old covenant is self-sufficiency. I can do it apart from God. Paul says, "I'm a minister of the new covenant and the occasion." And he quotes Jeremiah 31:31-34. That's where the idea of the new covenant comes from.

The occasion is the reign of Josiah in 600 BC. When after rediscovery of the law, there was a time of national repentance and the people made a public covenant with God and then they failed immediately. They said, "We're going to do it. We're going to obey. We messed up that time. This time we're going to fix it. We're going to try a lot harder." They failed immediately and then God promised the new covenant.

The old covenant, just to summarize, the old covenant is you can do it. You can do it. Here's the law. Here's God's will for you. You can do it. That's the old covenant. The new covenant is no you can't. Jesus did. And now by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can. Old covenant. You can do it. In new covenant, you can't. Jesus did. Now you can with the Holy Spirit.

Jeremiah 31:31-34. "Behold the days are coming," declares the Lord. "When I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke though I was their husband," declares the Lord.

"For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord. "I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts." I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer she'll each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more."

This is real salvation. This is real new life. This is real forgiveness. This is real faith. As opposed to thinking you're part of the family of God, because of your DNA. That's what Israel thought. We're born into the people of Israel. Of course, we believe in God. There were circumcised religious offering sacrifices prescribed by God's law. They weren't personally saved. They didn't have a relief. They didn't know God. They knew about God. They had words about God, but they forgot the spirit of God. They weren't saved. They didn't have a living faith.

There were circumcised outright, but there was no inner circumcision of the heart. So St. Paul was saying the old covenant is external. It's the things you do for God. The new covenant is internal. It gives you a new heart and he gives you new power source. And that's the Holy Spirit. As promised in Ezekiel 36:26. "I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the hardest stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."

That was the problem with the old covenant. The old covenant was God's word, but they forgot God's spirit. That actually inspired that word. So 2 Corinthians 3:7-11 St. Paul continues. "If the ministry of death carved into letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end. Will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceeded in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it for if what was being brought to an end, came with glory much more will what is permanent have glory."

Pause, pause. Okay. We deep dive. Let's come out. This is what I was thinking about this week. A lot of you listened to sermons like editors, and I can tell by your eyes, there's parts of my story you're like, "Nope, I get rid of that part. I would include something else. I include a little story here. That didn't slap, this'll slap. You listened to this. Because I do that. That's how I listened. I listened like an editor.

I want you to listen to this sermon like a writer. If you were writing a sermon on this text, what would you say? And by the way, this is next level, but that's how you actually learn to study the Bible. If you study the Bible like an editor. Oh, I didn't like that part. Oh, I didn't like that. Ah, that book just get rid of that whole book.

If you want to know what scripture means, you got to read it like a writer. Holy Spirit wrote it. I can't edit it. So I need to receive it. It's a different way of... Okay. Do what St. Paul doing it. Many have interpreted this text and this chapter, the following way that St. Paul looks at his ministry and he says, "my ministry is far superior than that of Moses. Moses was old covenant. That's old news. That's antiquated. That's what the false religious teachers are teaching you. And he ties them to Moses false of antiquated covenant.

My ministry is far more superior. That's how many old covenant, it's time chronological. Jesus comes. In other languages, like in Russian, in my Russian Bible, this is the way it was interpreted because testament, the word for testament is actually covenant. Ветхий Завет is covenant. новый завет is covenant, but it's testament.

So a lot of people think, okay, the old books, the old testament, that's old news. Now, we have the New Testament. The reason that interpretation is so dangerous because Christians just get rid of the Old Testament. The Old Testament means nothing to them. The Old Testament God was just mean. The New Testament God, Jesus is nicer. I like Jesus. He pats me on the head. The Old Testament God throws rocks from heavens at his enemies.

I want to submit to you that's not what St. Paul is doing here. He's not contrasting his ministry with the inferior "ministry" of Moses in the Old Testament. Is he contrasting his superior ministry of Moses inferior? No. He's not doing that. He's not saying that's outdated. This is now the good news. He's not doing that. What he's doing is he's saying the old covenant was missing the Holy Spirit because they intentionally divorced themselves from the Holy Spirit. They divorced themselves from God. So they lost the point.

That's why they focus on the letter instead of the spirit. Read any of Paul's letters, any of his teaching. He never says Moses ministry or his message was inferior. Hebrews actually says that what Moses preached was the gospel. It was good news. Look at Hebrews 3:16-17. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled was not all those who left Egypt led by Moses and with whom was he provoked for 40 years. It was not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness and to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient. So we see that they were unable to enter because of, what? What's the keyword, because of what?

They didn't enter not because of disobedience, but because of what? Disbelief. They who were missing faith. Hebrews 4:1-3. "Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it for good news... Gospel for good news came to us just as to them. Same message. But the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened for we who have believed enter the rest as he has said.

As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. And then verse 6, Hebrews 4. Since therefore it remains for some to enter and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience. Again, he appoints a certain day to day saying through David so long after the word's already quoted. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

The reason why they needed a new covenant with a heart transplant is because they refused to believe, so their hearts were hardened. Moses message was the same as Paul's message. Moses, and before he comes... Moses with the 10 commandments. Moses with the 10 commandments. He gives us to the people.

Before he gives the 10 commandments, he says, "Hey, everyone. Remember that thing we just lived through where God brought us out of Egypt? He saved us, freed us from captivity. We now have a relationship with God. Let's believe in him. He saved us. Now, here's the law." That's just like the New Testament.

Live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He saved you. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. It's the same message. God saved us. Now, love him. Now, obey him. Paul explicitly said this in Romans 10 as he quotes Deuteronomy 30 in Romans 10 verse five for Moses writes about the righteous and says based on the law that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven," that is bring Christ down. Who will descend into the abyss, that is bring Christ up from the dead.

But what does it say? Now, he quotes Deuteronomy. The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. The word is in your heart. Do they have the Holy Spirit? Not in the same way that we do after the day of Pentecost, but did they have the Holy Spirit? They had the holy scriptures. Well, who wrote the holy scriptures? The Holy Spirit.

If they got more of the word of God in their hearts, that's what he's saying. Get it in your heart and believe it. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. You're supposed to believe. They were supposed to believe. They didn't believe. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You will be saved. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. If you don't know where you stand with God that this is all it takes. Confess with your mouth. Jesus Christ your Lord, and I believe that you rose from the dead. That's it. You confess that and you're saved. That's it. That's the whole message. Let me just boil it down, the whole thing. Let me just give you a whole thing. God saves. God saves. So just ask to be saved. That's what he's saying. And everyone just complicates things.

For what the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved for the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame, but there's no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same. Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him for everyone who calls in the name of Lord will be saved.

So the point is he's not criticizing Moses. He's not criticizing the law of God. He's actually saying you don't understand Moses. It's not like everyone understood Moses correctly. And everyone understood the Old Testament correctly, 1,400 years and then Jesus came and then they're like, "Oh, okay. We understood everything correctly, but Jesus is like I didn't come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill the law." And what Jesus said was, "Hey, everybody, Pharisees, you're not the heroes. You need a hero. You can't save yourself. And that's why they crucified him because he's like, "You're all sinners. You can't save yourselves. You're not the author, et cetera, et cetera."

What Paul is saying is we've misread Paul. We've misread Moses because we've read Moses to think that we could do it, that we could actually save ourselves, justify ourselves. St. Paul isn't saying Moses ministry was wrong and mine is right. He's saying I was just more fortunate. We preached the same message. I just got more of the Holy Spirit. God just finally got to a point where he's like, "They can't save themselves. I'm going to set. I'm going to do it for them by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the day of Pentecost where the author of life sends life, the Holy Spirit." He's saying the message was the same that only God saves, love him with everything. I just got a little more revelation in the Holy Spirit saving people.

2 Corinthians 11:4 says, "If someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaim, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

This is the same thing you did with Galatians. This the same thing you did everywhere where he preached the gospel. How are you saved? Only by grace through faith. It's only faith trusting in Jesus Christ. Teachers would come in from the old covenant. They're like, "Yeah, but you need laws. You need ceremonial laws. And they begin to add things to salvation. Saint Paul does this with absolutely all of the churches and all that he says is, "No. Look to the scripture. Look what it says. It says that we can't save ourselves. We're not the hero. God is the author. We are not. So we need to ask him to save us and we need to ask him to free us. And that's point number three.

2 Corinthians 3:12-14. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold. Not like Moses who would put a veil over his face so the Israelites might not gaze the outcome of what was being brought in it. But their minds were hardened for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ that is taken away.

But the old covenant, that phrase here is the only time it's mentioned in scripture. And it's mentioned to describe unbelieving Jews who thought we are God's chosen people. We are the hero and we can do it. We can free ourselves. What's fascinating is Israel even now, Israel looks back to their time in the wilderness as their golden age, as the summit of their history.

Like this God led us out of captivity and this is the pinnacle of our history. When if you read the scriptures, it's absolutely clear. God intended to bring them into the promised land much sooner than he did. And they were punished for their lack of faith. God saved them with miracles from the hand of the Egyptians. And then God says, "Go into the promised land." They're like, "No, there's giants." God is like, "All right. I took you out of Egypt. Now, I got to take Egypt out of you."

For 40 years, all they did was wander the desert until that whole generation died. They all died and God is like to the kids, "Do you now believe?" And they're like, "Yeah, we finally believe." And then they go into the promised land led by Joshua and Caleb. But they thought that God, you expect us to save ourselves. And God is like that burden, responsibility, I didn't place on you. I'm going to save you. I'm going with you. I freed you once. Now, I want to free you from the responsibility of thinking that you have to free yourself.

Jesus is the one that frees. St. Paul isn't talking about the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, he's talking about the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. The difference between I can and I can't. So the point is the old covenant isn't before Christ in time, and the new covenant is in the year of our Lord AD. The old covenant is it was then, and it is now.

The old covenant was then and is now. There's people today who are in the old covenant, the old way of thinking that you can save yourself, that you can command yourself to God in some way that you have done so much good or that you have suffered so much, and that's why God should have a relationship with you. That God look at everything I've done. Look at everything I did for you. And God is like, that's the old way of thinking.

New covenant, the true covenant. Abraham was in the old covenant and in the new covenant. Moses, did he believe in the old covenant way or the new covenant way? David, when he sinned, he committed adultery of Bathsheba. Why didn't God smite him right there? Because he was old covenant. Why? Because he repented. He said, "God, I can't save myself."

Psalm 52. God, I can't. Please wash me. Wash me, savior or I die. The conscious between old is new isn't the contrast between Moses epoch and Jesus epoch, it's the difference between the old man and the new man. I had a barber named Joe. I didn't know his last name until like years after because I only called him Joe, the barber. Joe, the barber in Cranston, Rhode Island, he's the one that he was Pentecostal. I remember in eighth grade he turns me around in his barber chair and he smacks me in the forehead because he's Pentecostal.

He said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I prophesied that you are going to be a minister of the gospel." And then he just turned me around and kept cutting my hair.

Oh, that's why. So Joe Camastrachie had a joke. He told me this joke one time. He said, "Did you know that St. Paul, his dad actually talked to Jesus?" I was like, "Oh, no way." He said, "Did you know this? Yeah, not only that, but his dad was actually crucified next to Jesus Christ." I said, "Where did you get that? Extra canonical, some kind of Pentecost, maybe have some kind of different revelation?" I was Like, "Where did you get that?" And he's like, "I got that from the Bible." I was like, "The Bible?" He's like, "Yeah, where St. Paul says my old man was crucified with Christ."

That's what St. Paul was talking about, my old man, my old flesh, old covenant, new covenant, old man, new man. That's what he's talking about here. The old way of relating to God thinking that you can do something to ingratiate yourself with God. And that's the old one. The new way is God saved me. That's it. St. Paul here is saying the old covenant is relying on yourself. The new covenant is relying on Jesus Christ. That's the word for us today in Boston. That's the word for us.

Have you noticed, you can talk about with your friends here. You can talk about absolutely any religion, except one. You notice that? Any religion, any faith. Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam. You could have a Koran bible study and people would come. As soon as you say, "Hey, you want to come to my house and talk about Jesus?" Everyone gets weirded out.

Why? Why? Because Jesus is the only one that tells everyone, "Hey, apart for me, you can do nothing. Apart from me, you are nobody. Apart from me, you deserve condemnation. There's only one way to God."

2 Corinthians 3:6, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not the letter, but the spirit for the letter kills and the spirit gives life. So he's not saying letter is the Old Testament religion or the spirit is the New Testament is spiritually gracious. Because St. Paul says the law is actually how I came to faith. That's Romans 7. The law brings knowledge of sin. You read the 10 commands and you're like, "I've broken every single one of these at least in thought on the heart level."

And Jesus said, "If you've committed the sin in your heart, you committed the sin in real life." So the ministry of the law actually has a ministry. So he's not saying there's anything inherently wrong with the law. What he's saying is when you divorce the word from the spirit, when you divorce the word from the spirit, you lose absolutely everything because God says behind every single word in the holy scriptures is the spirit of God because the spirit of God wrote it.

So if you just focused on the letter of the law instead of asking for the Holy Spirit to show you the spiritual dimension of the holy word, then you actually misread absolutely everything. There's one way to read the whole Bible and that's, "I can do this." The new way to read the Bible is you read the whole thing as, "I can't do it. Jesus did it. And now by the power of the spirit, I can do it."

2 Corinthians 3:15-18. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now, the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed to the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the spirit."

This whole chapter is a commentary on Exodus 32-34. And I commend that you read that. I was tempted to read the whole thing today because I do that sometimes. Just read it out on your own. You know how to read. So in Exodus 32-34, it's the accounts of God's response to Israel's breaking the promise to keep the law. So at Sinai in Exodus 24, God says, "Here's my law. Here's what I expect from you. The blessing is before you and the curse in twice." You know what they say. They say, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient."

You know the meme of the lady was like... You know that one? That's literally right there where you're like, "Yeah, we're going to be obedient." Right away they commit sins. Moses goes up to Sinai to meet with God, to get the 10 commandments that God inscribed with his own finger.

Moses has met with God. He sees the glory of God. He comes down the mountain and he hears a party. They're throwing a party in which they're worshiping a golden statue that Aaron made. "God, we're going to worship you. Oh, Moses left. Okay. Let's throw a party." And then Moses, he takes the 10 commandments, he smashes them at the foot of the mountain and it was a sin so bad that God is like, "All right, I'm done with them. We'll wipe all of them out, and I'm going to start a new Israel through you, Moses."

Moses is like, "I'm pretty old. I don't want any more kids." And God is like, "All right." In the moment, Moses is like, "I'm going to intercede for them." He intercedes and God finally forgives them, but this is what happened. God withdrew his presence. God withdrew his presence. You didn't do what you were going to say, so I'm believing. God withdrew his presence. They rejected the spirit of God.

God says, "If for a single moment, I should go up among you, I would consume you." But Moses begs him. He says, "Please, God. Don't leave. Please stay with us." So Moses pitches in the tent of meeting outside the camp far off from the cabinet. In the tent of meeting, a pillar of cloud will rise over the entrance and Moses spoke to God.

So Moses intercedes, asks for God's presence. God says, "Okay, fine." Then he goes up the mountain again and Moses cuts two new stone tablets ascends Sinai again, and the Lord descended in the cloud. And this is where the Lord hid Moses in a cleft. The rock of ages, cleft for me. Moses is in that cleft. And Moses said, "Please, God, give me a glimpse of your glory. I just want to see a glimpse. I want to see if it's all worth it. All the sacrifice I've ever done, I want to see if it's all worth it.

And God passes through and gives him his afterglow. Just a little tease. And then Moses descends from the mountain and his face is glowing. That's the story. And this is Acts 34:29-35. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai and the two tablets, the testimony in his hand, and he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face is shown because he had been talking God. Aaron, and all the people of Israel saw Moses and behold the skin of his face shone and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to him and Aaron and all the leaders in the congregation returned to him. And Moses talked with them.

After it, all the people of Israel came near. He commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil. Until he came out. And when he came out, he told the people of Israel, what he commanded. The people of Israel would see the face of Moses, the skin of Moses face was shining and Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went in to speak with them.

What's going on here? What's going on here is Moses is like, "I meet with God. And while I proclaim the word of God, the glory of God, okay, you see it, but I have to cover it because if I don't, all of you are going to die. Because you sinned against God. That's why he had to cover it."

In 2 Corinthians 3:12 through 13, Paul says, "Since we have such a hope, we're very bold. Not like Moses who put a veil over his face so the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end." So is he saying that Moses wasn't bold? No. So though the whole term bold, it comes from the Aramaic. Bold is you show your face. Shameful is you cover your face.

He says, "We are bold." That's the word bold means, "because we do not have our shame. Our shame has been removed." But Moses would cover his face, not to cover his own shame. He would cover his face because the people of God had sinned against God and he was doing it to protect them because they couldn't handle the glory of God. And that's what he says in verse 15. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.

So it's over their hearts, not their minds. So when people don't believe in God, it's not because of intellect, it's because of the heart. It's because moral reasons, their heart is covered with this veil of shame. And when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. And now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Now, there's freedom because there's no shame.

Yes, I have sinned against the holy God. Yes, I have fallen short of the glory of God. I deserve to be destroyed because I have sinned against God. But St. Paul says, "We are confident. We can draw near to the throne of grace because Jesus is Christ who removed the veil of shame." When did he do that?

It's when Jesus Christ, remember he was the glorious son of God, transfiguration of his face shown. And then that same Jesus goes to the cross. The most glorious one takes on the most shame. And on the cross, he is shrouded with the condemnation of God because he took our sin upon himself.

So now, because Jesus was killed instead of us, he bore our shame to give us a glimpse of his glory. We can approach the throne of grace with boldness and turn to the Lord who removes the veil. I made people like this. Some people are... There's two categories. One category is people are like, "I don't need God. I'm a good person." And the other category of people is, I have done so much evil. I can't come to church because God's going to strike me with lightning.

Just turn to the Lord. Whoever it turns to the Lord, he removes the veil because Jesus Christ on the cross, he died. He was crucified. And the curtain that protect us from the Holy of Holies was torn from top to bottom.

Years later, Jesus Christ took up in the final hours of his life, he held up a cup at Passover and he said, "This cup is poured out for you. It's a cup that is poured out for you. It is the new covenant in my blood. So how are we transformed from one degree of glory to another? We behold the cross. The son of man, son of God, on the cross.

In conclusion, is Christ handwriting evident in your life? If someone took your life, the story of your life, would that story pass the handwriting analysis that this story was written by the son of God, in the spirit of God?

And here's the test. Here's the test. In whom do you trust? Period. In whom do you trust? St. Paul in Philippians 3, he says, "Look, if we're going to play this game about confidence in the flesh, I could beat all of you." This is Philippians 3. I'm not going to read it, but Philippians 3.

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Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy, I bet you didn't know that Pastor Shane can sing, he can. Some people get all the talents. If you're new, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card and the worship guide, you can fill it out. The physical copy, you give them the back of the Welcome Center, and if you just leave it there, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. We also send a little gift in the mail, and if you're like, "Oh, a gift, what is it?" Well, there's only one way to find out. With that said, would you please pray with me with over the preaching God's Holy Word.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good Father and we are so proud of you. We boast in you that you are our God that you revealed yourself to us. You gave us the gift of revelation, you gave us the gift of faith, you gave us the gift of regeneration. You give us the gift of anointing, the same anointing that Christ had, we are anointed by the power of the Spirit and our hearts are sealed, within our hearts is a guarantee that we are yours, and we're so proud that we get to know you, and we're so proud that we get to serve you, that we get to be used by you, we thank you for that.

Jesus, we thank you that you lived that perfect life of love toward God, toward people and then you present your life as a living sacrifice for us, you died in our stead, in our place. Bearing the wrath of God that we deserve and you rose from the dead on the third day, and we're so proud of you. You are our Lord and our older brother, we're so proud that we get to know you thank you for saving us. Holy Spirit, we're so proud that we get to know you, we're so proud that you are in us, that you are filling us, that you fill this church, that you're building, this church we're so proud of your work here in a really difficult area, and we pray continue to work, continue to use us.

Lord, we are proud of one another. We're proud of the work you're doing in one another. There's a mutual up building that's happening, and we're so thankful for it. I thank you for this body of believers and I thank you for joining many more to yourself uses here in the city to continue to build your kingdom all to the glory of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Title of the sermon is I'm proud of you. Do you grow up in a household where you were told by your parents, verbatim out loud using these words, I'm proud of you. I'm so proud of you. I did not. I know my parents are proud of me. I can see it in their eyes and both my mom and dad but they didn't use that language, partially because of Slavic background. It's like if you do good, you're supposed to do good congratulations. Then partially I think there were theological reasons, why? Because pride is a sin, it's the mother of all sins. It's the sin that made Satan, Satan. God hates pride. So many of us have a hard time of saying anything that begins with the words I'm proud, et cetera.

So should parents tell their kids that they're proud of them? Yes, resoundingly yes. When you see your children growing, when you see them maturing, when you see them growing in the Lord, you're supposed to say, "Praise God, that I get to be your parent. Praise God, for God's work in you. I see how he shaping you into the image of Christ. I see how he's changing your heart, to love God and to love people. We see the Lord at work in your life, and we thank him for what he's doing." God the Father gives us the example. He looks at his son and the day that Jesus is baptized, and he says, as he's anointed by the power of the Spirit, he said, "This is my son, that's my Son, in whom I am well pleased."

So we shouldn't be proud of our God, we should be proud of our Heavenly Father, we should boast in the Lord. God, we're proud of you, God, thank you for the work that you're doing in this church, the work you're doing in these people, and we're proud of the service of God's people. We should be, we should be able to say to one another, "Hey, I'm proud. I see the work that God is doing. I see how you've grown. I see how you serve. I see how you give generously. I see the gifts of the Spirit that you're exercising for God's good. I see that." There's no tension there. We agree with that. But can you say, "I'm proud of the work that I have done for the Lord by the power of the Lord." If you preface this with in the Lord, in Christ Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, I'm proud of the life I've lived. I'm proud of what I've accomplished. Can say that? There's a tension there, it's a little uncomfortable. That's the tension we're dealing with today.

In Second Corinthians chapter one, verse 12, and then through chapter two, verse four, would you look at the text with me? "For our boast is in this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity, and Godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God and supremely so toward you. For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and acknowledge and I hope you will fully acknowledge, just as you did partially acknowledge us that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us, as we will boast of you, because I was sure of this. I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.

Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes and no, no at the same time? Surely, if God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ when we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in him, it is always yes for all the promises of God find their yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for His glory, and it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

But I called God to witness against me, it was despair you that I refrain from coming again to Corinth, not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith. For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you, for if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart, and with many dears not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you."

This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together boast about God's grace in you, boast about God's work through you, and then boast about God's love in you. First boast about God's grace in you. He begins verse 12 by saying, "Our boast is this. This is what we are proud of." What are you saying, Paul? We are proud of this, the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity. The original is hagios holiness. Meaning I focused, I oriented my whole life around what's most important, which is God has glory, loving people proclaiming the gospel, building the church. That's a life of holiness. He calls it simplicity. He didn't clutter anything around.

So if you missed the love Jesus simple sermon series go back. But we say love Jesus simple and by simple we don't mean simplistic, simple, we mean we focus on what's most important. That's how St. Paul built his life, simplicity, holiness. That's his external behavior, simplicity. We behave with simplicity and Godly sincerity. Not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God and supremely so toward you. Boasting is a major theme in Second Corinthians, the word group, the verb or the noun is used 29 times significantly more than any other letter of Paul. Why is he bringing in languages of boasting partially because he's defending himself against false teachers that have entered the church, and what he's doing is he's comparing and contrasting, they're boasting in the wrong way about the wrong things. He is showing that you can boast, there is a right way to boast, a holy boasting, a humble confidence, and he does it in his own personal example.

There's lots of lessons to draw from the text. So when I sit down when I'm preparing a sermon, I get a text like this. I'm like, "You can go a million different ways." You can talk about conflict resolution, proper management of disputes between Christians and people in general speaking hard truth and tender love. I had a writing teacher I remember in high school English, and this is what she used to say, "If you write a paragraph, it can only have one idea. That's it. That paragraph needs to support the one idea of the chapter and your book should have this, whatever. There's one idea." Then I go to homiletics class in seminary, and they're like, "Your sermon should have one idea. One big idea, what's the big idea?"

Then I started studying scripture, and I read Jesus and Jesus sermons have many more than one idea. The sermon on the mountain has about 80,000 different ideas, and then I read St. Paul and St. Paul is like, every sentence could be like 12 sermons, it just weaves things. I think they just had a shortage of parchment of paper, and he's like, "How many pages we got today?" They're like, "We have six." He's like, "All right, we're making the most of it." That's how he writes. So there's a million ways you can go, but I think there's something here that's the undercurrent of the text, and it's and I choose to focus on this because it's so rare in Christians. It's so clear in the Scripture, but it's not found often in the practice of believers.

What you see here is something difficult to acquire, at least in the truly biblical form, something many of us are suspicious of even averse to it's a confident assertion that I did the right thing, a confident assertion that I believe the right thing. A confident assertion that I have true knowledge I have, it's mine, and I act accordingly. It's a confident assertion that I have been faithful. You look back at your life and you say, "I have been faithful." Why is this so hard to grasp? Why is there such a tension because we know sola gratia, that we're saved by grace alone, only grace. We are dead in our sins is Jesus Christ that saved us. He gives us the gift of faith. He gives us the gift of sight of sanctification, he gives us the gift of justification, and ultimately glorification, he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everything he does, in and through us he does by the power of the Spirit. Yes, we know that.

We believe in total depravity. We believe that there's a comprehensiveness of sin. So seems somehow inappropriate, even blasphemous to say, "Well, there is virtue in us. There is a goodness in us. We did good and we were right." I was having this conversation with my wife, she's like, "What are you preaching?" I was like, "I'm preaching on the fact that in the Lord, I'm proud of the work that I've done for him." She was like, "You can't say that?" I was like, "Why not?" Paul says it. She says, "You're not Paul. He's an apostle, his name's in the Bible, he wrote half the New Testament, you're not in there." I was like, "Ah, but my name is written the book of life bruh." That's what I said to her. These are the conversations that we have. So what do we do here?

If Paul like he's as close to an angel, as anyone gets uncommon, devotion, uncommon testimony, God, Jesus Christ in the flesh, resurrected appears before and that's how he got saved, and he must have had an extra dose of the Holy Spirit that we don't have access to. So he live the holy life all the way from the Damascus road to the prison in Rome where he died. Since he is not like us we can't draw any lessons from him and his life, right? I would argue no. Paul isn't the only one in the Bible that boasts of his character, of his conduct. He's not the only one that says, "In good conscience, God is my witness, I did the right thing. I lived a life of integrity." Psalm 26, one through three. "Vindicate me oh Lord for I have walked in my integrity. I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, oh Lord, and try me, test my heart and my mind, for your steadfast love is before my eyes and I walk in your faithfulness."

Or Nehemiah who sacrifices so much to go rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Toward the end of his career, he says, "Remember me, oh my God concerning this, do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service." Nehemiah isn't that a little boastful? Well, scripture does teach we are to give honor where honor is due, and everything we do, eat or drink we do to the glory of God. In a sense, if God does work in you, if God changes you, if God uses you, for you to not give God honor for that work that he's doing in and through you is to deflect from the glory of God.

I'll just give you an illustration and I'm going to deal with a couple caveats. Illustration. In my household, we have four daughters, my wife and I were bilingual. So we decided we're gonna raise our kids to know two languages. My job with them is to teach them how to read in English before they're taught that in school, her job is to teach them how to read in Russian, her job significantly harder. I chose these. I'm sitting with my third daughter yesterday and we started probably three and a half, four and now she's six and we've done some good work. She read a whole book yesterday, 27 pages about a little otter that went to a zoo, it was so sweet. Then at the end, he went to the gift shop and he bought stuff. It's a marketing ploy by the zoo, that's what that is. She read the whole thing, she read the whole thing, I helped her with a couple of hard words, she read the whole thing. At the end, I'm like, "Baby girl, I'm so proud of you. You can read. You did a tremendous job." Which is fine. It's great.

Now, if she gets up but she's like, you know what? I'm proud of me, that I taught myself how to read. I'm going to take issue with that because I've invested hundreds of hours, and I'm talking about hard hours. After you work a full day and in the evening hours before I put you to bed out, I am brain dead right now, when I'm giving you an hour of my time, I've given you the hundreds of those hours. Baby girl, if it wasn't for me, you'd be an ESL. There's this combination, we did it together, you did it by my help. In the Christian life it's the same thing, that God is sovereign, we're responsible. He is the one that empowers us. He's the one that gives us every single breath that we have. He gives us the Holy Spirit, but you have to work. Scripture says, "You're only saved by grace through faith, faith itself is a gift of faith without works is dead."

So you have to be able, at some point, if someone asks you, "Show me your works. Show me why you're a Christian." You have to be able to say, "By God's grace, I have done X, Y and Z. By God's grace." St. Paul says in First Corinthians 15, he said, "It's by the grace of God, I am what I am, and God's grace has not been in vain in me, because I've taken his grace and I've worked harder than any of the other apostles, it wasn't me it was God's grace in me." So if we are to not take God's grace in me, we are supposed to work, and then you have to be able to show a portfolio of the work that you have done by God's grace for God's glory.

Caveats. Whenever you deal with something that has as much tension as this, you got to deal with a little caveat. Caveat number one, simple isn't claiming sinlessness. When he's saying, "I live the life of holiness." He's not saying I've been completely sinless, a lot of us use holiness as a synonym for sinlessness. It's not true, holy means you've been set apart, your life has been set apart. St. Paul is brutally honest, Roman seven, verses 14 through 25, brutally honest about his own sinful nature, demoralizing sinful nature. But there's so often that he doesn't do the things he wants to do and the things he doesn't want to do, that's the stuff that he does. He wrote Romans during his three month stay in Corinth, the very visit that he's promising to make.

So if you would ask him as he's in Corinth, as he's writing, Romans, "Hey, St. Paul, when you were in Corinth, and you wrote Romans, are you saying that you had never committed a sin of thought, of deed, of word ever in relation to the church in Corinth or in relation to other churches?" He'd say, "My goodness, no." I'd never done a sinless thing in my life. I'm certainly not saying I'm sinless. No one is sinless, except for Jesus Christ, that's a caveat. Caveat two is, in claiming innocence, holiness, faithfulness here. He's saying he did everything in the power of Christ. So he's not taking credit for his own achievement, he's recognizing the achievement that God has done through him, that's what boasting in the Lord means.

So he's saying, "Look at what the Lord has done in and through me of all people." This certain kind of pride is entirely appropriate, a certain kind of satisfaction and doing the right thing, being the right person in the Lord. Jeremiah nine, 23, 24. Something St. Paul quotes all the time. "Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his mind. Let not the rich man boast in his riches, let him who boast, boast in this that he understands and knows me that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight declares the Lord."

Can you do it? Can you stand up and say, "You know what? I am proud that I know God. I am proud that I understand God. Not because I came to this understanding in of myself, God revealed to me. So I am proud that I know the truth." There's too many Christians today who vastly right there. I know Jesus said He's the only way but a lot of people said that there's another way to God, and because we don't have that firm conviction where we say, "You know what? This is truth, and I'm proud that I know this truth. I get to know this truth, and I'm going to proclaim this truth, so that others get to know God." First Corinthians one, 30 through 31, "And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification, and redemption so that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord Christ is in us by the power of the Spirit, and we are in Christ. So everything good in us comes from Christ."

There's a wisdom that we have access to, there's a sanctification, there's a righteousness, there's a redemption that we have access to, and we both, God I am so proud that you will let me be in Christ. God, I'm so proud that you give me access to this treasure house of wisdom. God, I'm so proud, I'm boasting in the Lord. Second Corinthians 10, 17 through 18, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord for it is not the one who commands himself who was approved, but the one whom the Lord commands." So he's saying we should boast in the fact that God approves of me. God approves of me not because of what I've done, because of Christ has done and because of Christ has done he fills me with the spirit now he does things through me.

Second Corinthians 1:12, he makes it clear, it's only by God's grace. This is our boast. "We behave in the world with simplicity, Godly, sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you." So who gets all the glory? God does. But there still is a recognition that God you did this in and through me, and you're using me. God, you chose to use me, you chose the four year grace into me. Caveat number three is, Paul's claim to holiness or innocence in matters of dispute, and that's what he's doing. Is not to deny that his personality might have rubbed people in the wrong way, and this is true. It's true that we find some people easier to love than others. Some people just have a more congenial personality, just more personable. Maybe just they have more people skills, or maybe they have a nice smile, and you're like, "You're a nice person. I already like you." You haven't said anything.

A lot of the time just from appearance, you look like a nice person. St. Paul did not. How do I know he didn't look like a nice person? Extra biblical historians tell us and then we get some of this book of Acts where he goes into towns with Barnabas, and everyone's like Barnabas is the head guy, right? Because he's good looking and Paul can't be the head guy, he's not very good looking. Because extra biblical historians, they tell us that he was short, he was pudgy, and he had a unibrow. You can Google it. This is true. I'm telling you, if you have a unibrow in the middle of school, that shapes your personality in a way.

So he in of himself until he started talking people don't, they were like, "What do we supposed to mean?" Then he does start talking, and he was the smartest person in any room that he walked into it with. That's why it took Jesus to stop him on the road to Damascus and be like, "Hey, bro you're mine." Because Jesus was the first person he ever met that was smarter than him. St. Paul had this personality where finally, if you convinced me that this is the truth, and Jesus did, now he has this mission, a sense of mission of just a force of zeal in him that whenever he walk into any room, and he's teaching people feel like they're drinking from a fire hydrant.

He had two speeds, one in relation to people, he listens and then he dominates. That was his personality. That was his character. So we can't always say that St. Paul is likable. He's not talking about likability, Paul and Peter were the same in this, John was a little more likeable. But if you read church history, virtually every great Christian whose name you know, who's actually accomplished things to get into church history, they rubbed people the wrong way, they rubbed good people the wrong way. John Knox, John Calvin, Martin Luther, they exasperated people with their personalities. Jerome Francis Schaefer. No one has ever met someone that everyone finds endearing, there aren't people like that. Paul isn't speaking about personal likability, he's speaking about his conduct as a minister of the gospel, he's speaking about his character as a Christian.

We can't always say, "Hey, we live blameless lives." Like Paul here says, but we are to strive for blameless and holy and life of sincerity. When we find ourselves that we're not living a life of honor, we're living a life of shame. We have to repent at those times when we fail, David was faithful, and he was righteous until he wasn't. But God calls him a man after my own heart because he repented of his sin. So St. Paul isn't talking about personality, he's talking about care. He's talking about life, he's talking about integrity, and if you have the grace of God, it should make a difference in your life. If you're a Christian, it should make a difference in your life.

People should be able to see that difference, that you're a person of integrity, you're a person of honor, you're a person of patience, honesty, commitment to truth, love, kindness. Yeah, we are to remain humble. It's only God. It's only by the grace of God, but he does make a difference. We can and should be able to boast about the difference that he's made. Praise God am not the person I used to be. Praise God, that He did save me, because I know the trajectory that my life would be on. Praise God, that He saved me, that he loves me, he fills my heart with love. Now you can look back and say, "Yeah, we've done great things for the Lord." If you are a Christian, you should be a better person than a non Christian. You should be, and you should be growing there. Why? Because you have the power of God within you. You have the grace of God, you have the anointing of God, but who made you to defer? It was God. So by all means, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. So let us boast.

Second Corinthians one, 13 through 14, "For we're not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand, just as you did partially understand us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us as we will boast of you." St. Paul says, "This should be a mutual boasting." I'm proud that I get to serve you and you should be proud that you get to serve me, this is a mutual boast. So you know what? After church, I want you to go up to people that you know well and say, "I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you, I see the work of God in you. I'm proud of you for your service. I'm proud of you for your generosity. I'm proud of you that you're following the law. I'm proud of your faithfulness."

There's that mutual ability, I even test it out with my wife today. I said, "I'm proud of you baby." She said, "For what?" I said, "You want the details?" She's like, "Yeah." Do you want the details? Girls want the details. You give them the details. I'm proud of you, I'm not going to tell you stuff. But I was like, "You, 15 years you've been putting up with me, I'm proud of you. Good job. That's not easy." Second point is boast about God's work through you. Through you, that's verse 15. "Because I was sure of this. I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea."

So I mentioned this last week, St. Paul planted the church, then he goes to Ephesus, in Ephesus, he hears that the church isn't doing well. So then he comes back, and that's what's called a painful visit. He talks about it, and it was so painful, because he saw these people that he loved dearly, they shared the gospel with. He saw that they were saved, now they're living in sin, open sin, and actually boasting in the fact that because they're Christians, because they're saved by grace through faith, they can sin as much as they want, because God's job is to forgive and our job is to sin. So St. Paul goes there and he says, "That's not how it works." It was a painful visit, brings discipline. Then he leaves and he writes, First Corinthians. First Corinthians is a hard letter hard words, to soften hearts.

What he's saying here is like, "Look, I promised to you that I was going to come a second time, make two visits after that, but I'm going to hold off. I'm going to hold off because I'm going to let God's Spirit take God's scripture, First Corinthians, and apply it so that you have time to put your house in order so my next visit isn't painful." Verse 17, Second Corinthians 1:17 says, "Was I vacillating? When I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes and no, no, at the same time." So he promised in the beginning, he's going to make two visits, and then he says, "You know what? If I make that first initial visit, it's going to be painful again.

So you know what? I'm going to take that one out, I'm going to give them some time and then I'm going to make a visit that's longer." He talks about that in First Corinthians 16, and because he did that, because he said, he's going to make two visit but then changed his mind, his enemies came in. They're like, "This guy vacillates, therefore we can't trust him." What St. Paul says is, "Look, when I say yes, I mean, yes and when I say no, I mean, no. But sometimes the Lord changes plans. I wanted to come, that was my initial plan." But then the Holy Spirit said, "Give them time. Give him some time." So that's what he says, verse 18, "As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no." He says, "I'm not being double minded, I'm not double speaking. This isn't a duplicity. I'm not like a politician says whatever you need to say for you to get the vote."

He says, "I am honest, a man of integrity, my conscience proves and God testifies that everything I did, I did with holiness, and I did for God, but I did want to come, I didn't want to come and give you a second dose of grace and I will." From that what I glean is, this is a man that understood whatever room he walked into, he is a representative of God. Whatever room he walks into, he knows he's here to serve people. He's here to encourage, he's here to edify, and when he's in the room he gives people doses of grace. That's something that we need to aspire to, that God wants to work through us. In Second Corinthians one, 19 through 20, he talks about God's power, in ministry for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you Silvanus and Timothy, and I was not yes and no, but in him, it's always yes for all the promises of God find their yes in him. That is why it is through him we utter our amen to God for His glory.

He said, "We preach Christ too, how can you question our character, our integrity, when you clearly saw your life transform when we proclaim the gospel?" St. Paul knew that this is the way that God works. God chooses to save people through, and this is 99% of the time, sometimes he saves people through visions and dreams, et cetera, but most of the time it's through a human representative. That the representative is filled with the words of God and the representative when he proclaims the gospel of God, the gospel of God as a power, of God unto salvation for anyone who believes and when St. Paul proclaim the gospel to them, the Holy Spirit save them, and then he leaves and these people that come in and say, "We can't trust Paul." St. Paul here is saying, "You can't trust me. If you can't trust me here, how can you trust me that I preach the truth to you? Oh, you can trust me that I preach the truth to you, because your life changed, therefore give me the benefit of the doubt. We preach Christ, and Christ is the one who is the ultimate amen for the glory of God. He is the ultimate truth. In Him all the promises of God from the Old Testament find their yes."

Then verse 21 and 22, it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. So he continues this motif of God uses us, but not just me, he say, he uses the word language us, put together. Here we see the Trinity, we see God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Father establishes us with you in Christ. God is the one that establishes our faith with Christ. Christ is the one through whom we're saved, and he anoints us, in here, this is a wordplay. Christ is Christon in the Greek, anointed is Christos. So Jesus is called the Christ because Christ means the anointed one.

So a lot of people are like, "Oh, Jesus is his first name, Christ is his last name." Hello, Mr. Christ. No, Christ is a title, is the Messiah. He says, "In the same way that God establishes us with you in Christ, in the same way that Jesus was anointed, God anoints us." Every single Christian God anoints us, how? He also put his seal on us, like on a letter, there's a seal, he puts a seal on us and given us in His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. So every single Christian is established by God in Christ anointed, just like Christ was with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ, when he started his ministry sat down in a synagogue and he took the scroll of Isaiah in Luke 4:18. He says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me." A lot of us, a lot of Christians, we're afraid to use the language of anointing because we've seen some Christians or some churches abuse this anointing. But Scripture is clear, there is such a thing as anointing that when God saves you, he also seals you with the Spirit and He anoints you, anoint you for what? Anoints you to be set apart and powered to serve God and you're authorized to act on his behalf.

So when God does use you, you're the boast in the fact that God uses you, and if God doesn't use you, as a Christian, you got to say, "Why not? Is there sin in the way? Have I been suppressing the Holy Spirit, grieving the Holy Spirit? Have I been searing my conscious? Is there sin in the way? From the Holy Spirit flowing, the anointing being used by God. I want to give you that vision, I want to give you a vision that you are a minister of God. I don't know maybe we'll get to here at some point, but I wanted us to come up with these T-shirts where it says Mosaic Boston, on the back it says staff. Every single person this is your T-shirt, that you're the staff, you're the ministers of this church, every single Christian you have anointing from the Holy Spirit, use that anointing, use that power of God.

So if you're a Christian you are to be being changed, bad grammar but tremendous theology. You have to be changing and you have to be being used by God because you're anointed. Every single person, there has to be transformation, change in your life that affects change in the lives of other people. If you don't want to change, if you just want a church that you go to as a check mark so when mom and dad who are back in some other state, another state. Mom and dad, yeah, I went to church. If that's the only reason you're here, or because you just want to meet someone or you just want some friends. If that's the only reason you're here and you don't want to change, I'd recommend you don't come to this church. Because at this church people change by the power of God, the Holy Spirit changes people in the Holy Scriptures are read.

I was studying how Jesus marketed I was like, "How did Jesus start the greatest human movement in the history of the world?" I was like what were his marketing tactics. Jesus would do this crazy thing where He heals someone He's like, "Don't tell anyone." Bro, everyone I know, everyone that knows me knows I had seven demons in me. I was filled with demons, you did an exorcism. If show up at a party and my friends are like, "Why happened to you?" "I can't tell you." "You can't say?" You used to be blind and you're not, what happened? So it was tremendous marketing, "He told you not to tell anyone, what? Who is that guy?"

So I was like, "Why don't we do that in Mosaic?" Text time we do tea ads and not just love Jesus simple, where it's like Mosaic Boston, don't come here. Not the church for you, go somewhere else, unless you want to be changed. Unless you want to be changed, unless you want your life to change, unless you want your life to be reoriented around what matters most, which is the ministry of the gospel to the glory of God. This is what I tell people when they move here, and I say this because at the beginning of the year, fall, I already know everyone's church shopping. So if your church shopping, this is a message for you. Let me just explain what the city does to your faith. Let me just explain, I've been here for 12 years, I have seen this over and over.

When you come in, you're like, "I think I'm a Christian." You're going to go one or two ways. You're either going to become a Navy SEAL Christian, like you are elite, or you become unitarian. It's one of the other there's nothing in the middle. Why? Because the city has a spirit. If you're sensitive to the demonic realm, the spiritual realm, you know. I go out to like New Hampshire, and I go up to other parts of the country and like, there's just an openness and your soul and your spirit, and then I come back here and as the plane's am like, "Oh, no. Oh, not this again." You just you're entering, this is a battlefield. So I office in my basement, and the water just gets in. So I got these two dehumidifiers, and twice a day, you walk into the room, you don't smell it, it's not musty, it's just normal room.

Twice a day, the dehumidifier gets filled up, both of them get filled up, and I got dumped it out. It's manual work every time, there's no way to automatize and I'm telling you, it's kind of like that, Boston's like that. There's a spirit and you need a spiritual dehumidifier of getting the gunk out of your soul, and that's what ministry is. That's what the gospel is. That's what Scripture is. That's what the church is, that's what your community group is. But you need to understand that that's happening. If you are going to be effective, you need to stay close to the Scriptures, stay close to the Lord and to His church. You've been anointed, you've been sealed, there's a guarantee that you are His.

Verse 23, "Would I called God to witness against me? It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again, to Corinth and not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy for you stand firm in your faith." St. Paul says, "I could have come." This what the false teachers are saying, he's not trustworthy because he didn't come when he said he didn't come. He said, "I didn't come on purpose, because I already did one painful visit, I don't want to do another painful visit. I'm going to let God's word do its work." St. Paul is saying, "You think it's fun for me to come in and tell people of their sin? That's not fun."

It's like any parent knows, it's not fun to discipline your kids, when they do something where they clearly disobey, where they clearly rebel against you. That's not fun. I don't want to discipline my kids. All I want to do is love my kids. But if all you do is say yes to whatever your kids want, you don't really love them, you don't really care. You don't want to deal with the emotional baggage that comes with actually doing the discipline. St. Paul says, "I had a reason for not coming." Because I don't want to just come with a whip. I don't want to lord it over your faith, because I'm not your lord. You have one Lord, Jesus Christ, and there are times where there's no one in the room except for you. No one knows what you're doing. No one knows what you're thinking. No one knows the decisions you're making except for your Lord.

If you're going to grow in the faith, you need this awareness that the Lord is with me, that I am doing what I'm doing, I'm making the decisions that I'm making to live a life of holiness, simplicity and sincerity because I love the Lord. Because he told me to do this, and I want to do what He tells me to do, because I know He wants the best thing for me. St. Paul says, "I don't want to lord it over you." The same way pastors, we're not your Lord. I'm a pastor, meaning I'm a servant, meaning I'm here to serve. I'm here to help. So we're here to equip you for the work of the ministry, but you must have a ministry. You must have a ministry.... We ran out of batteries? Oh, we're back. Praise God. We rebuke the demons that are in the sound systems, the demons.

We do everything, we check everything. Now, you have spiritual gifts, you have anointing, you have the Holy Spirit, use that. You don't need my permission to be a Christian. You don't need my permission to start Bible study. You don't need my permission to do evangelism, to throw parties for your unbelievers where share the gospel. You don't need our permission. You have the Holy Spirit, you have a lord. So do the work that God has called you to do. If you have the gift of prayer, pray. If you have the gift of healing, heal. If you have the gift of prophecy, prophesy. If you have the gift of proclaiming God, the gift of evangelism, evangelize, that's what we need. That's what St. Paul says, "Stand firm in the faith."

Then finally boast about God's love in you. In chapter two, verse one and two, it's the same train of thought. So the chapter of vision, if you didn't know this, the chapter divisions, the big number's the chapter, the small number's the verse. That's not inspired by the Holy Spirit that was added later by the church in order to make it easier to find text, but this chapter division, it breaks up the train of thought, and that's why we're going to continue into verses one through four. Second Corinthians two, one through two, "For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you, for if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad, but the one whom I have pained?" He says, "I didn't want to come with discipline again, because when you're in pain, I'm in pain, when you're glad I'm glad, when you're rejoiced, I rejoice."

How can he say that? He says that because his heart is wrapped up with their heart. Their sorrow, his sorrow, and he wants to avoid increasing it. He continues this in verse three, "And I wrote as I did so that when I came, I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice for I felt sure of all of you that my joy would be the joy of you all, for I wrote to you out of much affliction, and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you."

He's talking to people that caused him affliction, he's talking to people that caused them anguish, because he gave birth to this church so to speak. He planted this church, these are his spiritual children, and then he sees them rebelling from God and from truth. Then he writes them a hard letter in First Corinthians and he wrote it with tears. When's the last time you wept over someone else's soul? That's what he's doing. Why? Abundant love. He's like, "I have so much love in my heart for you, overflowing. That's what says in the original, I have overflowing love for you, and you're like, "Then why are you writing First Corinthians to us?" He's like, "Because I love you, and so I'm going to tell you the truth." This is where it's helpful to understand what biblical love is. Biblical love isn't just sentiment, it's like, "Oh, I love you, you're so sweet.

No, biblical love is a choice, it's an act of the will, that leads to sacrifice. That's what biblical love is. So St. Paul is writing to these people and writing to the church, and the church, by the way, had a lot of people already that he didn't know. So sometimes it's hard for me to get up and say, "Mosaic Boston, I love you. I have abundant love in my heart for you." It's hard for you to understand that because I look like this, but St. Paul had a unibrow. So it's okay. Give him the benefit of the doubt, give me the benefit of the doubt. He loved them even though he didn't know a lot of them. What kind of love is that? What kind of love is that? It's supernatural love.

He's not saying I have abundant love in my heart, because I'm such a loving person. I'm not a loving person. People aren't the love, and people hurt me and people stab me. But I love them anyway. St. Paul, where did you get this kind of love? What kind of love is this? That you can love the people who are stabbing you in the back. He's like, "I got that love from Jesus Christ." Who on the cross as he's being crucified says, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Father, forgive them, forgive them for crucifying me." Pouring out his love on his enemies. So when you come to God and you realize that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that's what it took to save you because he loves you. He loved you not because you were lovely, or because you were loving, he loved you because he's loving, and he loved us when we weren't lovely, so that we can now be transformed by his love.

So Jesus, you died for me, my sins were crucifying you, and you did that willingly? What kind of love is that? That melts your heart and you're like, "Now, okay, fine, fine. I can love people, even people in Boston. I can love them too." By the power of God, it's not me. It's not me. It's not you. It's the power of God so we can rejoice in that. God gave me this love, that God filled my heart with this kind of love, and we can boast about God's love in us. This, by the way is what made St. Paul's so effective. He truly loved God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, with everything. Then if you love God, and he's like, "All right, if I love God and I have to keep his commandments.

So I'm going to keep His commandments to the best of my ability, repent when I couldn't, by the power of spirit I'm going to do that. Well, what are his commandments?" One of his commandments is going to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to everybody. So I'm going to do that, and it's going to be hard, and there's going to be consequences for doing that. But I'm going to do that because the God whom I love, who love me, told me to do that, and I also love people. When this combination of like I'm doing because I'm filled with God's love, and I'm doing it because I love people, that right there is what changed the world, that's what grew Christian, that's what's going to transform the city, and that's what's going to grow the kingdom of God here where we are.

I'll close with Romans 15, 17 through 21. Because when St. Paul on his second visit does go to Corinth, that's what he wrote, Romans, he starts like this, he says, "In Christ Jesus then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem, and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. Thus, I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, less I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see and those who have never heard will understand."

As we transition to Holy Communion, we celebrate communion on the first Sunday of every month. The question before us before we partake is can you honestly say that you have a clear conscience? Can you like St. Paul say I have a clear conscience? "I have a clear conscience." Second Corinthians 1:12 that's what he says. Our boast is this the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and Godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God and supremely so toward you. First Timothy 1:5, "The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." First Timothy 3:9, "They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience." Second Timothy 1:3, "I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly my prayers, night and day." Second Timothy 1:3, "I thank God whom I serve as..." I did that twice, all right, there you go, because it's doubly important. That's how important it is.

What do you do when your conscience isn't clear? You examine, you own it. Lord, I know my conscience is unclear, so I repent of my sin. I repent of my sin, I thank you for Jesus sacrifice, I call upon the name of Lord. The very second you repent, God forgives you. He forgives you of your sin, He cleanses, the blood of Jesus cleanses your conscience. So that's how we approach Holy Communion. First Corinthians 11:28, "Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup." Examine yourself. For whom his Holy Communion it's for repentant Christians.

So if you're not a Christian, if you've never repented of your sin, if you've never believed in Jesus Christ, cried out to him, called upon the name of Lord, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service it'll do nothing for you, or repent of your sin and become a Christian today. We welcome you to do that, and then you are welcome partake. If you are a Christian, who is living in unrepentant sin, if there's clear sin in your life, repent of it today, and you welcome partake. If not, we ask that you refrain as well.

That said, would you please pray with me over Holy Communion. Heavenly Father, thank you for the Holy Scriptures. They don't just teach us about you, they don't just enlighten our minds and illuminate our hearts but they also nourish our souls, and make us the people who desire by the power of the Spirit to fight the good fight of faith and live lives of a clean conscience. So we can be used by you. So the Holy Spirit courses through us, so the Holy Spirit give grace to whomever we encounter and continue to use us to do that. Lord, we do repent of sin. We repent of pride where we attribute your work to ourselves, we repent of that.

We're so proud that you call us your own, that you save us and that you forgive us of sin and continue to anoint and empower us. Bless our time in the Holy Communion, Jesus we thank you for your suffering. We thank you that you died on the cross on our behalf in our place to save us. We thank you for that. We thank you that you humbled yourself, the great God of the universe, to save us. Bless our time in the Holy Communion we pray this in Jesus name, amen. The way we do it is you take this little cup, you take the first lid off, you take the bread and then you take the second lid off.

The night that Jesus Christ was betrayed he took the bread and after breaking He said, "This is my body broken for you, take eat and do this in remembrance of me." Then proceed to take the company said, "This cup is the cup of New Covenant, my blood was poured out for the sins of many, take drink and do this in remembrance of me." Jesus, we do remember your sacrifice in the cross, and we do remember your resurrection and we do remember your ascension, and before you ascended you promised to send us the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit we thank you that you have come, that you are in our hearts, that you have sealed us and the Holy Spirit continue to empower us, bear fruit through us. We thank you that you forgive us when we sin and we thank you that you forgive us when we repent of having grieved you, having suppressed you. I pray Holy Spirit continue to use us to build the Church of God, I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Would you please stand and join us as we continue...

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card you can get in the back of the worship center, if you fill it out, and then just leave it there on the way out, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the start of a new sermon series through this incredible book of 2 Corinthians. We thank you, Lord, that you called your servant, Paul, to yourself. Is by your will that he became an Apostle, and you're the one who inspired him with the Holy Spirit to write these holy words. We pray right now Holy Spirit, come take these words and apply them to us individually as Christians, apply them to us as a church. St. Paul wasn't just writing to the church in Corinth, he was writing to the church in Boston. He knew the same problems that they had there, we will encounter and do encounter. And it's only by your spirit that we can make our way through.

I pray Holy Spirit, focus our attention on Jesus Christ, who truly unites us. We're in Christ, we're one body in Christ, and we have one mission from Christ, to go and make disciples of all nations and all nations are here. They're all around us. They are our neighbors. And I pray during the sermon series, that you ignite our hearts for sharing the gospel, proclaiming the gospel, speaking it, each one of us to get a vision of each one of us speaking to our friends and our neighbors. There is only one hope, There is only one way to be saved, to be reconciled with God, to be forgiven of sin. I pray Lord during the series, save many, draw them to yourself. I pray that you send awakening, a great awaken, use George Whitfield right here in the Boston Common, he preached to 30,000 people. Lord why not? Why not? Why not now and why not us? I pray that you bless our time with the Holy Scriptures and I pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

We today are beginning a sermon series through 2 Corinthians, we're calling it prodigal church season two, we did season one a few years ago. It's online if you want to listen. And season two, we're going through 2 Corinthians. Why are we calling it prodigal church? Because the church has always been in a sense prodigal, because the church is full of saints who are still sinners. You're saved, but you're still in the flesh. There's still temptation of the flesh of the world of Satan all around us. So it's a tug of war for each one of us and it's a tug of war for the faithfulness of the church.

I remember a few years back, I was taking my daughters to school, and right here off of Babcock Street on the sidewalk, I saw a little plant growing through a crack, just from a crack, a little plant. And I just kept watching it every day as I'm taking my girls to school and little by little by little, I realized there was a tomato plant. And then finally I'm walking to school and there's a little tiny tomato hanging off the plant. For me, that was a sign from God, an illustration, an image of what it means to be a Christian in Boston, Massachusetts, and what it means to be a church in Boston, Massachusetts. And we've been at this for ... we're going to be celebrating a decade come October, and it's just a decade of God's faithfulness.

I was at a convenience store in Austin this week, and the owner of the store's a guy named Pete. And I met Pete when he just opened the store right before the pandemic. And anytime I go in there and I asked him how he's doing, he says the same thing. I'm still here. And he asked me how I'm doing and I'm like, I'm still here. We're still here. We're still at it. And he told me, he said, I'm from India. I'm from India. And we have a saying in India that if you start something, you need to know that you are not quitting that thing for three years. Whatever it is that you start, do not quit that thing for three years. And I said, why three years? He said, 1,000 days. And I don't know why, but that just connected. 1,000 days.

I bring that in to say this is how St. Paul viewed his church planting work. He started a church in Corinth. He spent 18 months, a year and a half in Corinthians, he started the church with his disciples Timothy and Silas and the godly couple Aquila and Priscilla, and they went to Corinth because Corinth was strategic. It was the number three city in the Roman Empire after Alexandria and Rome. It was situated in the Isthmus of Greece. So it was a master of harbors, they call, it was the crossroads of the Roman Empire. They call that passage of all mankind. It was economically bustling.

So people would go to Corinth to make a new life for themselves, a name for themselves, to create wealth for themselves and their family. It was a city filled with materialism and pride and self-confidence. There was sports, entertainment, the isthmian games were held there, they had a theater for 18,000 people, a concert hall for 3,000 people. People went there to make a life for themselves and people went there to sin. Those are their goals. I'm going to get away from my family and get away from my traditions, I'm going to go where no one knows me and I can be whoever I want to be. I'm going to recreate an identity. I'm going to indulge. And St. Paul knew that if we plant a church here in this strategic place where people are coming and going, very transient, very expensive, we plant the church here. We're going to reach the Roman Empire. He spends 18 months there, then he leaves and then he starts hearing about problems. He sends a first letter to the Corinthian church by the hand of Titus. We learned about this the 1 Corinthians. That letter preceded 1 Corinthians.

So there's actually three letters that St. Paul sent this church, the first one we don't have, it didn't enter the canon. The second one we do have in 1 Corinthians. And in 1 Corinthians, we see St. Paul writing a letter as a father to his children who are in sin, and he understands if they continue in sin, they are going to die eternally. It's a very difficult letter, 1 Corinthians, he dealt with a number of serious problems, divisions that marred the Brotherhood, a toleration of scandalous behavior, even incest. There were certain men consorting with prostitutes and they were asserting a Christian right to do so, they're free in the Lord, brothers taking one another court, lovelessness of relationships express in the practice of the Lord's Supper where people weren't waiting for the poor people who worked all day. This agreement about eating of meat offered to idols participation and banquets, held in pagan temples. They misuse the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit, confusion about the resurrection of the dead. It must have been a hard letter to write, it must have been even harder for them to read and to apply.

No one likes being rebuked, not even by your dad. No one likes being rebuked. No one likes being taken to the woodshed. And that's what 1 Corinthians was. And Paul must have wondered, what do they think? How do they feel about him, and 1 Corinthians makes it clear that someone in the Corinthian church already had a negative opinion about him. So what we learn in this letter in 2 Corinthians that Paul planned to meet Titus to get an update, how's it going in Corinth, and he finally meets Titus, after missing him in Troas, meets him in Philippi, and Titus reports and he says, look, the people who were insane, they are repenting furiously, things are on the mend, the church is doing better, in many ways, but it wasn't all good news. There were still a group of people in the church that refused to submit to St. Paul's authority. There are also false teachers that arrived seeking to advance their own claims, doing their best to discredit Paul, impugn, malign his character, which explains why Paul shares so much of his personal character and story in 2 Corinthians.

So with that context, Paul writes another letter. He relentlessly loves this church. He realized my 1,000 days are not up yet. I'm going to keep pursuing, and that's what 2 Corinthians is all about. Today we're in 2 Corinthians 1, 1 through 11. Would you please look at the text with me? Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the Church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted it's for your comfort and salvation, if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken. For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

We do not want you to be ignorant brothers, the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength and weak that we despaired of life itself, indeed we felt that we had received a sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks in our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. This is the reading of God's holy infallible, authoritative word, may you write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, love like a sibling, parent the children. Second love like a sinner saint. And third, love number one, anxious less about the rest, and I'll explain what that means. First, love like a sibling, parent the children. Paul begins the letter by explaining that he is a fellow sibling in the church, with the brothers and sisters, the Adelphi, with the other Christians, we are a family. Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother. So Paul here at the same time that he is pointing to his authority saying, I'm a brother just like you, we are siblings, God is our father, Timothy, our brother, Timothy is with Paul as he writes. Paul calls him a brother later on the text. He addresses the Corinthian church as Adelphi, as brothers and sisters.

On the one hand, St. Paul views Timothy as a brother, but if you read first and second Timothy, what does he call Timothy? My precious child. My child. And now this is getting trippy. How are you brothers and your brother's your child? Well, he's talking about spiritual family, and as spiritual family, yes, we are siblings. But my friends, as you grow in the faith, you cannot always remain a sibling, especially as your parents age. In your family, in your family, I have four siblings, and in my family, I am the older brother, and then I have three sisters and a younger brother. And as my parents age, I see just a deeper desire to care for my own siblings in a way that my dad does. My dad has his own relationship with my siblings, with each one of them just like I have my own relationship with each one of the siblings. I have a group chat with each single one of them, and then we have group chat where there's three of us, excluding the other two. And then we did a group chat of the four of us excluding one. And then there's a group chat of the five of us, but my dad can't do that. My dad's got a group chat of the whole family because he cares for the whole family.

This is St. Paul group chat letter to the whole family. I'm your brother, but I'm also your dad. And he calls himself an Apostle, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, he's an Apostle. He's an Apostle ... a capital A, I don't know why in the ESV they may have small A, is capital A, he's one of the 12. He's one of the 12 called by Jesus Christ and you had to see the resurrected Christ I witnessed and Jesus called you and Jesus allowed you to see the resurrected of Christ. St. Paul wasn't initially part of the 12, he became the 12th after Judas betrayed Jesus, and Jesus shows up and meets Paul on the road to Damascus. Why does St. Paul start with this? By the will of God. He didn't choose this. God chose me to do this by the will of God. And he's bringing his apostolic credentials because they were under attack. And the opening salvo here in the beginning is a defense of his divine authority as a messenger of the Lord Jesus Christ. The resurrected Christ himself called Paul to follow him and to reject the authority of Paul the Apostle is to reject the authority of Christ. God chose Paul, God filled him with a spirit, and to reject the writings of Paul is to reject God.

I say that because this is still relevant. This is all relevant. So many in the church today say I love the writings of Jesus. I don't like the writings of Paul. Well, here's something, is like fun fact Bible trivia. Jesus never wrote anything. The only time Jesus wrote anything was with his finger when the woman caught in adultery was brought to Him, the Pharisees are like, alright, what are we going to do? And Jesus is writing on the ground. I don't know what He wrote. No one knows what he wrote. That was the only thing Jesus Christ ever wrote. So every single book that we have in the New Testament is a book written by either an Apostle, or someone who had a close relation with the Apostle, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. So we do not have the right as Christians to pick and choose. This isn't a buffet. You take it or leave it. And that's why St. Paul starts with this.

And also, he says, Paul, by the will of God, Paul belongs to Christ, the authority that God gives to Paul belongs to Christ. And Paul doesn't own the church. In the same way that Paul belongs to Christ, and Paul's authority belongs to Christ. The church belongs to Christ. Who does the right to? To the church of Paul, although Paul started the church. No, he says to the Church of God, it's not my church. This church isn't my church. It's not your church. This is God's church, and we are God's people assembled under God's word, to worship God, and we're filled with the Holy Spirit of God. He says, grace to you and peace from God, our Father, in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're all under God's grace, and the only way to peace is with God.

2 Corinthians is the most personal of all Paul's letters. He shares details, autobiographical details that he doesn't share in other places. The book is full of references to people, places, events, only shared here in the New Testament. Why? Because Paul is defending himself against the attacks of people who are vying for authority. So Paul rises to his own defense, because his character and credentials as an Apostle are under attack. And he knows if you attack my credentials as an Apostle, you are actually questioning the authority of the Holy Spirit. The false teachers accused Paul of being ... and I find this hilarious because they couldn't find anything wrong with this guy's character. So the only thing they could find was the fact that he didn't keep his appointments.

So later on in this book, this is what they talk about, is Paul, you promised that you are going to come visit us as a church and you did not. And Paul couldn't make it. And then they said, because he couldn't make it, he couldn't be trusted. Paul originally had planned two visits to Corinth, and that changed in Acts 20, he changed to one longer visit. But they didn't understand that they were unforeseen circumstances and reasonable people understand the plans change. But not all people are reasonable. And these false teachers seize on innocent harmless things and they make issues of them. And on the basis of this change [inaudible] of his likeness, of his flip flopping, and this is 2 Corinthians 1:7. He says," was I vacillating when I wanted to do this", meaning come visit? "Do I make my plans according to the flesh ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time?"

And this is what's challenging, I don't even remotely come close to St. Paul. But there is this challenge of when you are called by God to proclaim God's [inaudible] mouthpiece for God that's absolutely flawless. And St. Paul's like, I'm not God. I'm not Jesus. Yes, I wanted to come visit you guys, but I was caught in a shipwreck, I was beaten, I was stoned ... and not the Austin kind of stone, like literally stoned 40 lashes, this happened five times. I'm not God. And this is balance of like, yes, this person is called by God and filled with the Spirit, but I'm not God. Yes, sometimes I wake up and I'm in a bad mood and I don't even know why, and then I realize is because I haven't had coffee. I know. And I say that because I'm just a dude. That's what Paul's saying, I'm the Apostle, but I'm just a dude. I'm just a guy. I'm just trying to love Jesus as much as I possibly can, fight sin with everything I got. Love my wife, love my girls, but I'm just a dude.

Every once in a while I just want to sit back and watch the Sox, watch the Pats, every once in a while I just want to talk about ... whatever, whatever. You know what saying. You know what I'm saying. I have people in my life who I just hang out with, because they don't expect anything out of me. You're a dude, I'm a dude, you know what I'm saying. So that's part of what Paul is doing here, is your expectations of me are unrealistic. I'm just a dude. That's his response. And this is what these people are saying, the false teachers are claiming that Paul isn't to be trusted.

Later on they say, hey, Paul, where's your letters of recommendation? So they accuse him of not having the credentials that he himself had given to Timothy. He had sent letters of recommendation about Timothy to the Corinthians, and then Corinthians are like, where's your letters of recommendation? And St. Paul's like, letters of recommendation? I'm the guy that writes the letters of recommendation. I'm the Apostle. What are you talking about? And then they begin to question his authority. And he's like, you're questioning my authority? You're only Christians because of me. You exist the church in Corinth, you want to authenticate my authority, the fact that you are a Christian. It would be like my daughter Milana who looks the most like me. I take that as a compliment, because she's very beautiful. She looks the most like me. That would be like her coming up to me, would be like, Dad, show me a DNA test that you're my dad. Look in the mirror. Look in the mirror. That's exactly what's going on, is Paul's spiritual children are coming to him and they're like you're not our dad. He's like, what are you talking about? And this group of false teachers also undermine Paul's authority. Why? To increase their own authority. That's what's happening. So Paul writes this letter and he addresses the issues one after another, in the final four chapters, what he does is he exposes the false teachers, answers insinuations that they spread about his character. Here's what I've been wrestling with this whole week. Paul poured his life into this church, into these people, and then he sees it just unravel a little here, he's going to write a letter and then it unravels again, he's going to write 1 Corinthians, unravels again, he's going to write 2 Corinthians, and after 2 Corinthians, he goes, he spends three more months with them. But what he sees is it just unravels, it's one thing after another, bad theology, bad morale, turf wars, petty jealousies, empire building. I'm sure he he was wounded, injured, emotionally, because these people whom he loved so much quickly go from loving him to deep suspicion, from seeing the best in him to believing the worst about this man that God used to save them. And he could have just thrown up his hands and said, you know what, fine, fine. Good luck. Have a nice life. I am done. I'm doneski. I'm going to a different church. I'm going to a different city. I am out of here. You want to follow false teachers, go ahead. But he doesn't.

And this is really ... for some of you, this might be hard to understand, why doesn't he? Why doesn't he just quit? And I'll tell you why. Because dads, good dads do not disown their kids. Good dads do not give up on their kids. You keep loving, you keep pursuing. And this St. Paul, he viewed himself as a spiritual father. He took responsibility for this church. It's not my church, it's God's Church. Ultimately, I want them to know God, that's the best thing for my kids, for them to know God. So here's the practical application, dear friends. Do you view yourself only as a brother or a sister, as a sibling in the church? If so, I want to give you a vision for being a spiritual father or mother, where you come into this church and you're like, oh, we need older people, and I hear this all the time, we need older people and I'm only like 20, I'm only like 25.

Let me tell you something. When Jesus called his disciples, how old were they? How old were the other Apostles when Jesus called them to himself? Only one of them was over the age of 19. And that was Peter. Because Peter and Jesus were the only ones who had to pay the temple tax. And the temple tax was, if you're 19, now you are responsible for the finances of this temple. All of the other guys were teenagers. In the Hebrew culture in Israel, you become a man at 13. So Jesus Christ, He picked up these guys who were 14, 15, 16, 17, they were all under 19, except for one, and then Jesus gets resurrected and then He sends in the Holy Spirit. Now Peter gets up, he's probably in his early 20s, preaches a sermon, and 3,000 people get saved. Now, these young people, early 20s, are spiritual fathers and mothers in the church. Do you view yourself as a spiritual father or mother? And here's what I mean. You take responsibility for the health of everyone else.

For some of you, that's hard to understand, Because the only human life that you are responsible for is your own and you might have another life that you care for, that's your pet. For some of you, your only fatherhood or motherhood is being a dog mom or a dog dad. That's the only ... So this concept is ... This is weird. But this is a true reality that yes, you become a child of God. When you regenerate, you become a child of God. Now you're an infant, now you're a toddler, now you're growing, you're a sibling in the family, but you got to get to a point where you are actually responsible for the church. And this is my prayer that over the course of this series, that you catch this vision that I am responsible. So in your community, I'm responsible for the spiritual health of these people. So I got to care for them. I got to love them. I got to know them. And if we get a vision for that, it's going to change everything. And that explains why St. Paul is willing to deal with the suffering. A lot of people think the Christian life is like a marathon. You just keep running and keep running and keep ... and it's not a marathon, it's not a ... I don't like that analogy.

The Christian life is like a 12 round boxing match, where every single round for three minutes you're going full tilt and then you get a water break and a breather for 30 seconds, 45 seconds as you sit on the stool and coach Jesus massaging your traps, and then you get back in. It's a slugfest. Here's the thing about fighting and I love fighting movies, I love combat sports in general. Here's the thing. The best guys always have something to fight for. And those are the stories that really capture our imagination, that captivate us. You have something to fight for, and that something can't just be money. It's always the family. It's Adrian, that's who it is. It's the boxers who are like, I just had a baby. Now I'm going to go kill a man in a ring. It's that. But it's like, even if I'm not good, I'm going to get pummeled and whatever, I'm going to get check at the end of this whole ... that's what I'm ... So St. Paul is that. He deals with that suffering because he's doing what's best for the family. He's willing to suffer because he wants the best for the family. So that's point one.

Point two is love like a sinner saint. So these people have caused him a lot of pain. They've injured him emotionally, and then Paul writes and he's like, yes, I'm an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother to the Church of God, that is in Corinth of God has a church. And the universal church is localized. It's in Corinth, all the saints were in the whole of Achaia, what does he call them? What does he call them? He calls them saints. You're saints. They've sinned. One guy was sleeping with his mother in law, or step mom or something, that's 1 Corinthians 5, just scandalous. And he writes, some guys were sleeping with prostitutes, and they're like, we're doing evangelism, and St. Paul, what? Are you nuts? And he writes, he calls them saints, he addresses them as saints, no matter all the trouble they had cause them, he calls them saints, you're set apart, you're the holy people of God.

And what St. Paul understands is that even the saints, the holy ones can behave badly from time to time, and they weren't saints because of their behavior. They weren't saints because they were perfect. They weren't saints because of their righteous. There's a lot of people who aren't familiar with the teachings of Christianity, they don't understand this and they come in, they're like, a lot of Christians are hypocrites. A lot of Christians are hypocrites. Some of you have unbelieving friends, who would be better Christians than you are. I've got friends like that. The reason why we're saints isn't because of our behavior, the reason why we're saints is because we're in Christ. It's our position in Christ. The way you become a Christian is you repent of your sin and you trust in Jesus Christ, was saved by grace through faith. Not because of any works, nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing that you do makes you a Christian. The only thing that you add to your justification is your sin. That's the only thing that you added. You're only a Christian because Jesus, you're only a Christian because Jesus chose you and set you apart.

1 Corinthians 1:30 through 31. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, grace to you and peace ... No, not grace, but yes, grace to you, that only comes from Jesus. The point is, the sanctification from Jesus, the righteous ... everything is from Jesus. So St. Paul was so effective as a minister in the church because he understood that he himself was a sinner saint. No matter what sin he saw in the church, he never lost sight of the fact that I used to murder Christians and God saved me. So when I see sin in the church ... This is a life hack. This is a life hack. Let me just share this with you. You want to learn to love people well? Never lose sight of the fact that you're a sinner. And then when they sin against you, you're not shocked. I know. I'm whatever, the same.

So in the church, when the saints are sinning against him, he's never lost sight of the fact that he's a sinner as well. And he's reminding them that, hey, you're not just sinners, you're also saints. So you need to grow into your full potential of being as a saint. So with Christians, this is why he was so tenacious and relentless in his love. And with unbelievers, understanding the fact that they're sinners and you're a sinner just like them, the only difference between them and you is the fact that Jesus saved you, then you can relate to them. When you look at them and you see their sin, you're like, man, I understand. I'd be living just like you if Jesus didn't save me. So now I can speak your language. I can understand ... We relate, we can connect. Some Christians forget, but still don't forget that you're a saint, even when evangelizing, don't forget you're a saint and don't forget that you're a sinner within the church and St. Paul never forgot even when he was wounded.

With evangelism, this is how I view with evangelism, when I see an unbeliever, man, I just look at them like ayah, not only do I relate, but you have so much potential to be a saint. If you Go saved, oh my, we live in a city of St. Paul's. Imagine if the people around us is God saved, we live in the city of CS Lewis's. We live in a city of like, man, if you've God saved, this is how I view every single unbeliever. If you God saved, we would have some crazy awakening. I got a roommate from college that I grew up with, we were roommates for three years. This is how I view. I've told him. I'm like bro ... and he's Jewish. I'm like, you'd be just like Paul. If he's just like Jesus, you need to get saved. If that mind and those talents that you have now get filled with the Holy ... Oh my. So that's with unbelievers.

And then with believers, I never lose sight of the fact that you're a sinner and I look at you and when I see you sin, I'm like, you had so much potential to be a sinner. You had tremendous potential. You will be so bad. I can't believe God saved you. So this right here, the sinner saint paradox when it becomes real to you, it changes the way you do ministry in the church and changes the way you do ministry with unbelievers. And that's why St. Paul, he calls them saints and those are sinners. And what does he do? This is incredible. In verse 10, he asked them for help. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us, on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer. Pray for me. Could you pray for me? So that many will give thanks in our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. St. Paul, he's like, could you pray for me? And this is really sneaky. He's asking his spiritual kids to pray for him. This is incredibly sneaky. He's asking the people who are fighting him. Don't trust him, pray for him.

It's sneaky because I do this with my kids. Every single Sunday, I walk with one of my daughters to church and today I'm walking with my daughter Ekaterina. She's my third one. She is six and she's going to be seven in December and she wants a pet. She wants a pet so bad. She started off with a dog, I went to fish and now we met at parakeet. I asked her, could you pray for me? Could you pray for me? And she's praying for me. It's just natural. Well, what does that ... all of a sudden, that's becoming part of our life. I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray for ... dad needs prayer. I'm going to help Dad out. That's part of the growth process and this is what it means to grow spiritually. It means to grow from just being a sibling to a spiritual father or a mother, and it's growing from being just a saint, a sinner just barely a saint, to growing as a saint. It's through nutritious food, it's through the Scriptures.

Hebrews 5:12-14. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again, the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. The most practical way that you become a spiritual parent, is you begin to feed children. You feed them. Well, what do you feed them with? You feed them with scriptures, the Holy Word of God. Well, in order to feed them, you got to learn how to feed yourself first. And then you have to learn how to take the word and create a meal, and now you're cooking for your children and then you're feeding your kids. This is how you grow into a spiritual parent. A lot of you go to church to get fed. This is what you do, I go to church to ... Oh, I didn't like that church. It didn't feed me. I'm going to a different church to be fed. You need to start cooking. And to start cooking, you got to know your ingredients and you got to know the cookbook, you got to know the Holy Scriptures.

And then point three is love number one, and anxious less about the rest. Here's what I mean. St. Paul was a man who was willing to suffer and he was willing to experience physical and spiritual pain. And the reason why he was doing it is because he cared about the primary thing. He cared about God, he cared about God's mission, he cared about God's church, he cared about the Holy Scriptures. Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else shall be added on to you. In that text, he says, don't worry. Don't worry about money. Don't worry about food. Don't worry about clothing. Seek first the kingdom of God. So he's saying, the problem is a lot of you are riddled with anxiety about things that don't really matter. And when you start caring about the thing that really matters, and you begin to endure pain, even despite the fact that there is pain, your pain tolerance goes up. And then when you deal with these problems that actually are eternally consequential, problems of other people's souls, problems in the church, then you go back to the real world, and those problems kind of don't really feel like problems.

When you care about a friend's soul and eternal soul, you care about sharing the gospel, and you're fighting, vying with God in prayer, God save this person, you get up and you don't ... you're not really that worried about how you look or your weight, or your bank account, or what you're going to eat that day, you got more important issues. And I get this principle and the reason why I focus on this principle now is because we see this principle all throughout 2 Corinthians, but look at Philippians 4: 4-7, Paul wrote, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Don't be anxious about anything. And a lot of people are like, well, how do I do that? And they're missing the other piece.

Do not be anxious about anything, does not mean do not be anxious about anything. Do not be anxious about anything means don't be anxious about secondary stuff. And I get this because Saint Paul was a man who had anxiety, but he had anxiety, but the most important thing ... in 2 Corinthians 11, he gives us a whole list of resume of his suffering, and you can read it on your own. But then at the end, this is the punchline of the resume. He says apart from other things, that's the physical suffering, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for whom, for all the churches, who was weakened, and I'm not weak, who was made to fall and I'm not indignant, because I had anxiety for the churches.

I had anxiety for the things that really matter, anxiety for eternal souls. And when you start caring about eternal souls like this, and you're willing to overcome whatever suffering comes in the way of proclaiming the gospel and sharing the gospel to your friends and caring for the church. Well, you go back to your job and you get an inbox of 300 emails. You're not that worried about it because your friend got saved. You know what I'm saying? Eternity of change. So this right here ... and then you can do your work without anxiety. And this is like a life hack. And then you do ... like this isn't the thing. It's like we'll take his stuff, it's just money, it's materialism, and when you care about the primary thing, you're less anxious about everything else. So St. Paul does start with, the God who is blessed, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:3, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. He starts with the fact that we worship a God that allows his children to be afflicted. We worship a father, a Heavenly Father, allows his children to suffer. We worship a God, who like a good general allows his soldiers to suffer. And he does this so that we are now better equipped to comfort others. He grows us as ministers to make us more useful. He allows us to go through suffering to increase our pain tolerance. This is what St. Paul is saying. He's saying, God allowed this, the word comfort here is in the noun and verb appears 10 times verses three through seven. St. Paul is saying, look, you are worried that in keeping appointment, and he does later on in the book. He's like, let me tell you what I've been through. I almost died time and time and time again. I'm sorry that I didn't come to the appointment.

As I said, I suffered, and he says we suffered and we do this to share abundantly, verse five, for as we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. In Philippians St. Paul says that he aspires to have a fellowship in Christ sufferings. If you really want to know Christ, you need to know his suffering. And when you know his suffering, when you experience his suffering, you realize that he is closer to you than ever, and he comforts you. And what you realize is that there is true, true comfort, and we have access to true comfort. He's not just talking about physical suffering, he's not just talking about sickness. Christians aren't the only ones who experience sickness. Christians aren't the only ones who suffer loss. Christians aren't the only ones who are persecuted. In general, he's saying for the faith, for the faith.

Jesus Christ said in John 5:18 through 20, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will always keep yours. I used to read texts like this, and I thought that's not in our lifetime. I no longer read texts like that. I do believe we're going to see persecution, Christians will see persecution in our lifetimes, in this country, just for being Christians, just for proclaiming the Word of God and dear Christian, are you ready? Are you ready to stand up and are you ready to say, yes, I am a Christian and yes, I'm not budging, I'm not recanting. Kill me. Kill me. I know exactly where I'm going. Do me a favor. No, don't. But you know what saying? I'm going to heaven. I'm going to heaven. And I'm going to proclaim the gospel until the very last second that my heart is beating. Are you ready?

It starts like you before the battle, you need to prepare yourself. And St. Paul says, God does allow the suffering, and you need to know we have an enemy and Satan does attack Christians and he does attack the church. And obviously, the followers of Satan will attack us and will attack the church. But God allows us to suffer and suffer a lot so that after suffering, we begin to be more sympathetic and tender hearted and more helpful and hopeful. When trials mount, the coffee mug that you have at home with like a trite little Christian, saying platitude, it's not helpful, it's not helpful. When trials come, what you need is to sit down with a sage, who's been through it and you sit down with a Gandalf, who's been through it, white beard, I've been through the suffering, I know how much it hurts, but also I know how much stronger you get. And I know that there is access to true deep waters of comfort that God sends. And the more useful you want to be in the church, like if you want to grow as a spiritual a father or a mother, that means you're going to be in positions of leadership where you're leading other people.

Well, if you are in a position of leadership, you're calling shots. And you need to know that if you want to be the one calling the shots, you will take shots, is pain tolerance. That's it. It's a key to growth in the Christian faith, it's the key to effectiveness and fruitful ministry. 2 Corinthians 1:6, if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. St. Paul says, you know why I'm willing to deal with this, I'm willing to suffer as much as I do, because I know it's for your good.

Last week, my wife was visiting her family in Philadelphia, and she texts me pictures of just their life, and I'm sitting in my basement, I work in my basement, just concrete all around and just Ah back electricity. I have an air quality thing down there just to make sure I'm not going to die of lung cancer anytime soon. So that's where I work. It's kind of like a dungeon. I call it the dungeon and I do it and I write my sermons there and I feel like I read more spiritual sermons because St. Paul was in the dungeon etc., etc.

And then I'm sitting in the dungeon and my wife sends me a picture of my youngest daughter at a hibachi place in Philadelphia, like a swanky spot, for some reason, it's half off. And she's sitting in front of this whole massive thing of food with the biggest smile. And I hearted, and I'm like, she's living her best life now. And I was thinking about that. I'm like, if I were there and I had that food, I would not experience nearly the amount of joy of getting that picture and seeing my daughter living and enjoying life. I'm willing to do the suffering. And I learned this from my dad. He's an immigrant dad. He was willing to go through suffering for the betterment of his children. And this spiritually speaking is the principle of usefulness. A. W. Tozer said is doubtful that God can bless a man greatly unless he is hurt him deeply. Because when God does allow pain, a great pain, he also provides a great cure.

Verse 7, our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:8, for we do not want you to be unaware, brothers of the affliction we experience in Asia, for we were so utterly burning beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Is he referring to persecution and suffering Ephesus? We don't know. Is he referring to the thorn in the flesh here? We don't know. Was it some deadly illness? We don't know the nature, but we know the fact that he was at the brink of death. Other places, he said, I've suffered the loss of many things. His suffering didn't weaken his faith.

A lot of people as soon as they begin to experience a modicum of suffering, there is no God, God doesn't love me. God is love. God is good. And God is all powerful. God doesn't love me. St. Paul suffered. Probably after Christ, He was number two in terms of suffering, and his suffering actually deepen his faith. Why? Because as he's in the depth of his pain, he knows he's with Christ. He knows that God is with him. He didn't turn his back on God and that suffering, because he understands if God allowed the suffering, then this is for my good and if this is for my good, then I can rejoice because God is with me.

Verse 9, indeed, he says, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. And this is why suffering is so important. This is why God allows suffering. Because suffering teaches us the greatest lesson that there is. That we are not to rely on ourselves. We are to rely on our God. And when you're in suffering, when you're in pain, and you know you can't save yourself from that moment, there's only one whom you can cry out to and that's God. And this is why St. Paul, he's focused on the number one, and in suffering, the number one is clears. He's in the depth of this well, and the deeper he goes, the brighter number one is the North Star above him and he cries out to God, a God who, present tense, raises the dead.

It's a lesson that it takes a long time to learn to rely on God every single day. It takes a long time to learn and takes a second to forget. Because there's so many other things we can rely on. My question here towards the end is, upon whom or what do you rely? Is it money or treasures? Is it other people? Is it your accomplishments, your resume, your job, your boss, your real estate? What are you relying on? St. Paul says, I learned to rely on God. I learned to rely on Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, He was in the same ... To participate in the sufferings of Christ is to remember Christ when He was in the depth of his suffering that began in Gethsemane, and he says, God, if there's any other way, if there's any other way, then he prays the most powerful prayer that anyone can pray, not my will, but yours be done.

And then Jesus Christ goes to the cross. Yes he was flogged and yes he carried the cross, he experienced immense physical suffering, but the greatest suffering he experienced was the spiritual suffering, when he went through hell on the cross. God's wrath poured out on him. Jesus went through hell, so that you wouldn't have to. And St. Paul knows because Jesus Christ did that and because Jesus Christ died, because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, because Jesus Christ's gospel, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, that gospel when you trust in him, that that right there saves you and St. Paul was saved. He knows that Jesus Christ made all the difference. He completely powerfully alters the meaning and the purpose of our lives, therefore he imbues even the darkest, hardest moments of our lives with hope.

St. Paul says, I suffered but I suffered for you. He suffered a lot. But he took his troubles lightly. He's like yes, I did this thing, yes, I was flogged five times, 40 lashes five times, I was shipwreck, I was stoned, yes, I did that thing. Because that stuff doesn't really matter. My life doesn't really matter. I did this because I see the great need for the greatest work and I see great fruit from the Gospel. He couldn't doubt that he led a wholly happy life after this, obviously, in heaven, but he didn't allow all those troubles to outweigh and lose sight of what's most important.

He talks about the cycle of comfort, the cycle of comfort. I will suffer so that I can comfort others. I suffer, Jesus comforts me, I comfort those who suffer. And I'll conclude with this. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the handful of German theologians to stand up to the Nazification of the German church. And one of his prominent writings was the Barmen Declaration in which he rejected the infamous Aryan clauses imposed by Nazi theology. He tried to fight the Nazi ideology within the church in the German church, he couldn't, and then he went and start his own seminary, his own church. He founded an underground Seminary in Bavaria, which then was closed by the Gestapo Chief, Himmler himself. And after that, Bonhoeffer was like, you're not going to let me preach the gospel. I'm going to fight the Nazis. And he joined the resistance movement and he was imprisoned by the Gestapo in April 1943.

Now he knows he's going to die. And he was engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, and he knows he's going to die, and before he dies, he writes her a poem about ... she doesn't know he's going to die. He already knows how the story ends. And he wrote her a poem, and stanza three is the famous. The poem was called New Year 1945. And he says, this should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving, even to the dregs of pain. At that command, we will not falter thankfully receiving all that is given by the loving hand. He knows God allowed this suffering, is going to bear the weight of suffering, is going to drink it down until it dries. He wrote this poem, and it comforted his fiancée. Just as the war was ending, Bonhoeffer was hung in prison three months later.

18 years later, across the Atlantic in America, another bride to be was grieving the death of her fiancé. Her fiancé died in a freak accident, but he was the son of the author of Joseph Bailey and his wife, Mary Lou. Joseph Bailey, he read this poem, his son's fiancée found it and she read it and then she sent it to Joseph Bailey, the author, and he read it and they found comfort both Joseph Bailey and his wife, Mary Lou. So Joseph Bailey, he is author, he wrote a book of poems, compiled a book of poems called Heaven, and then 12 years after this, so this is 30 years after Bonhoeffer's his death, Joe Bailey receives a letter from a pastor friend in Massachusetts, relating that he was just in a hospital in Boston and he was visiting a terminally ill woman, and he knew that she was at the brink of death. He gave her Joe Bailey's book of poetry called heaven to comfort her soul. And the pastor said that the dying woman had stayed up awake late the previous night, read it and told him the comfort that she had received, a few hours later she died.

That woman, the pastor wrote, was Maria von Wedemeyer. Bonhoeffer's fiancée. So Bonhoeffer's words comforted his fiancée twice. And you see that the cycle, God's comfort circulates among his children. Sometimes it comes full circle as in this true story, from Bonhoeffer to Maria von Wedemeyer, in her grief, the Joseph Bailey Junior's grieving fiancée and to Joe and Mary Bailey, they write the book and then back to Bonhoeffer's fiancée to comfort her in her dying hours. The astounding cyclical nature of comfort, and it all starts with Jesus Christ. But let's thank him now.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for enduring the greatest suffering that anyone endured, and we thank you that you did that in order to comfort us. To comfort our souls, to forgive us of our sins so that we can have eternal comfort. In the meantime, you send us the great comfort of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, you're with us and we thank you for that. And I pray Holy Spirit that even when we do enter dark times of persecution, that you give us a steel strength to keep proclaiming the gospel, to remain faithful to you. Even if we endure suffering, so what? We know that there's nothing more important than the work of the gospel. And make us a people who like St. Paul, are just focused on what's most important, with our words, with our thoughts, with our time, our talent and treasure. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

All right. Well, I guess that's a sign from God that there's no time limit on this sermon. Praise God. If you're new, welcome, and we're so glad that you came early today. The 15 minutes early to the service, it felt like a sacrificed, didn't it? A little bit? Good. Good. That's the whole point. We should just keep doing that every single week, just incrementally change the time. We have coffee in the back. We brought coffee back in. So enjoy. I don't think we have any announcements other than God is good all the time.

So let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you so much that you are a God who loves us. And we do understand that we live in a fallen, sinful world. We have a fallen flesh that seeks satisfaction in sin. We rebel against you. We have that nature. And then we also live in a fallen world. The world is against the church. And on top of that, we have an enemy, Satan and his army of demons, vying for our souls and opposing the work of God. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that we lose vision of you, Jesus.

Our vision gets cluttered. I pray today, remove that clutter. Jesus, in the same way that you entered the temple with a whip and zeal for the house, we pray, make us a people who are zealous with a holy zeal to cleanse our temple of sin, our personal bodies and souls to ruthlessly fight sin and to also oppose sin in the church when it creeps in or anything that gets added onto the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. Holy spirit, we welcome you into this place. We pray that you lead us, that you equip us.

I pray that you today comfort the afflicted and also afflict the comfortable and continue to build your church here in the city. And Lord, we thank you for the privilege of getting to work with you. You don't need us, but we need the invitation. We need the work because that's what shapes us into the image of God and that's what keeps us close to you. And I pray, Lord, make us a church that is as zealous as you are about the church. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is Cleansing the Clutter. This is our Love Jesus Simple series. This is our DNA. It's to refocus us on who we are, our identity, and given our identity, what we do, our activity. And then with our activity, what's the vision? Where are we going? And we talk about love. That we are given the great commandment to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. We're given the great commission that we are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son, the holy spirit, and teaching them to do everything that Jesus taught us.

And we have the great compassion where Jesus says that we are to care for the least of these of the world so love. By Jesus, we talked about the living word of God as attested to in the written word of God, the second person of the Trinity that reveals God to us and that reconciles us to God. So we focused on Jesus. And today we're talking about simplicity, to simplify, to get rid of anything that gets in the way of the most important, of the most essential. So we can be a church that majors in the majors. I drive a 2007 Highlander, and I do that on purpose because I can park. It's got three row seating. I've got four kids. I can park it in tight spots. But also, it's old and I don't care if it gets dinged up. It's tremendous. I am not attached to my car at all. Therefore, we have never had it detailed, ever. Ever not once. And then we started looking around, there's crayons from 1980. It's just nasty. I look around and I'm like, "You know what? This is one of the reasons probably why we hate driving this thing."

So I took it to a detailing place. My wife took it to a detailing place in Allston. I don't even know the name of it, but I love their little motto: it's a spa for your car. So I went there and they got it detailed and I couldn't recognize the car. It was pristine. And for some reason, I think it started driving better. I don't know if there's a connection, but you know that connection when it's clean and you want to be in that car. So there's something that happens when our houses get cluttered.

People are fascinated with hoarders, people that just keep getting... And we watch shows about it. There's a whole movement about deep cluttering and simplifying, focusing on the essentials, living in little homes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is why we do this on an annual basis because in the church, there is a tendency for things to get cluttered. Question. If you're new to Mosaic, I have multiple introductions in the introduction. This is my second introduction.

Question. How much of your waking hours are spent looking at man-made things? Of your waking hours, how much percentage of that are you looking at man-made things? I'm talking about your apartment. I'm talking about the brick and mortar around us, the asphalt around us. I'm talking about the mediocre transportation. I'm talking about Storrow Drive. My brother and I and my dad were stuck in Storrow Drive traffic yesterday. And my dad looks around and he's like, "This is why I hate cities."

He lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island, on the ocean. He's like, "I hate this." I was like, "Imagine living here 12 years." And then, you know what he says? "But there's also a lot of benefits to the city." He does this thing to encourage me, like keep living here. This as important. But just think about how much of your waking hours is man-made things. And on top of that, you're at work. You're staring at a screen all day. And then when you come home, you got your phone. You don't even go to the bathroom without your phone. You're just staring at man-made things all the time. Plus, we're surrounded by unbelievers.

Most of us, the only time that we relate with Christians, fellowship with Christians is when we go to church or a community group. So there is so much to be discouraged about because everything manmade is sinful. And on top of that, we're surrounded by people who don't know God. Yes, cities are tremendous because there's so much more of the image of God per square foot and there's also more of the human flesh depravity, the reprobate nature per square foot. Not to mention the demonic oppression when there are so many concentrated souls and Satan is vying for these.

So during the week, we lose focus. We lose sight of what's most important. And this is why Sunday morning is so important. This is why community group is so important. This is how I feel about Sunday mornings: I feel like I'm your tour guide. And I pull up and I've got this massive, massive van. I'm like, "Hey, get in. Get in." And I drive you to the mountains. I take my machete and I'm like, "You know what? Grab a machete too because this sermon is going to be hard work."

And we're just climbing the mountain with machetes, climbing, climbing. And then you're tired. I'm like, "Have some more coffee, have some more water, caffeine, holy spirit hydration. Let's go." And we're slugging away, machete after machete after machete. And then finally you begin to see a little clear and then finally you get to the top. And I just point you, look to the cross, look to calvary, look to the glory of God. And that fills your soul and you're encouraged. And then we go back down the mountain and we drive you back into the mission that is the mission of God here in the city.

And you're like, "Ah, I got to do it all again." Yes. And that's why church is so important. So everything we do at Mosaic is very calculated. It's like a good coach managing the energy of the team, the momentum of the team. It's like a good CEO, who knows the data, who knows the resources at hand and how to strategically invest for the maximum benefit of the organization and everybody. And it's like a good general who knows the soldiers and knows the mission and cares for the soldiers and actually gets off his high horse and says, "I am on the mission here with you. We are on the front lines."

I shared the gospel with I think it was a random guy on the street just by saying hi. I said hi to him. He said, "What?" I was like, "I just wanted to say hi." And he's like, "Everything is messed up," and that's not the word he used. He says, "Everything's messed up." I was like, "I know. I know. Politics is messed up and the economy's messed up, everything." And he's like, "Everyone asleep." I was like, "I know. I know. I'm trying to wake them up. I'm trying to wake them up." He said, "To what?" I said, "The true reality." He said, "You know the secret?" I said, "Oh yeah." So he told me he's going to come to church today. So I'm extra pumped. So hopefully he does show up.

But this is why we're here. We have zeal for God. We have zeal for God's people and we have zeal for God's house. And we have zeal for the mission of God. This is why the sermon is so important. And I pray that we never lose sight of that. Today, we're in John 2:13-25. Jesus Christ the context is. And the beginning of chapter two, he begins his ministry because mom asked him to. He's at a wedding and they ran out of wine. And that was a major full pot.

And Jesus is like, "I know it's a major full pot. You got any water?" They had 180 gallons of water. And he made the most delicious wine that they had ever tasted, not boxed wine, not wine with an animal on it. That's when you know that's not good wine. He made the best wine that they had ever tasted. That was awesome. People know his glory. And the very next thing he does is he enters the temple and he starts cleansing it. So that's our text today in John 2:13.

The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changer sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."

So the Jews said to him, "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" And Jesus answered them, "Destroy the temple and in three days, I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead. His disciples remembered that he had said this. They believed the scripture, the word that Jesus had spoken.

Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people. He needed one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. This is the reading of God, totally and authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Two points to frame up our time. First, Jesus is consumed with zeal for God's house. And second, are you consumed with zeal for God's house?

Point one begins with Jesus Christ going to Jerusalem at the Passover feast. Now, you got to remember the importance of the Passover feast. What was the Passover feast celebrating? It was celebrating the fact that God led through Moses the people of Israel out of Egypt, after captivity, bondage, oppression for four centuries. And how did God lead them out? Sign after sign, after sign, after sign. And Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, hardening his heart. And then finally God said, "The only way to get you out is through death. The only way to give you life and freedom is through death."

God sent the angel of death. The angel of death was going to pass through. And every firstborn in every single household will die, the first son will die, unless the doorframe is painted with the blood of the lamb. Now, whoever believed... This is cookie. This is crazy. They didn't even have the sacrificial system yet. But God was saying your sin, Israel, your sin, Egyptians, your sin deserves death. And the only way to save you is a substitute, a sinless substitute. Someone must die in your place if you are to live.

So the Passover feast was for them to remember God's grace. God, you saved me because someone died for me. God, I'm celebrating your love and remembering your wrath for my sin. And all the Passover feast was, it was a big, thank you. God, thank you, thank you, thank you for saving me, for saving us. So we gather annually to do that. And we see in Jerusalem, in the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and he could see the money changer the sitting there. The animals were sacrifice.

Deuteronomy, the people of God were told you need to raise the animal yourself. The animal has to grow up with you, grow up with your family. It has to basically be a pet. And then you got to take this animal and you got to take it with you to the temple, however far it takes, however much work it takes. And you need to feel the emotional pain of this animal, the one you knew dying in your place. We have emotional attachments to animals. We do. That's what God was doing. I want you to take your beloved.

It's hard to even say, like you're beloved, your dog, your cat. That's what God was doing. But then the religious people realized, okay, that doesn't make practical sense for people to bring the animals. Let's make it a little easier. And you know what? This might solve our funding issue. People aren't tithing as they should be. We've got buildings to build. We've got capital campaigns. We've got staff salaries to pay.

So you know what? Let's sell the sacrificial animals at the temple. Let's tell them there. Let's just offer it as a service, just to make it a little more convenient for those whom it's hard to go to worship. And then the people would come and they're like, "Oh, I can buy an animal. Tremendous." And the people that couldn't buy the animal because of price gouging, it's like when you go into the Red Sox, a hotdog is like $80.

They got you in there. You're in. You're in. That's it. It's supply and demand. Now, you're in. Okay. Here's the price. So the poor people couldn't do that. So the poor people are bringing their own animals. They're bringing the pigeon. And then the people are like, okay, that adds another layer of difficulty. We've got to solve that problem to continue our streams of income.

So they said, we're going to have inspectors. We're going to inspect the animal. Oh, your lamb, it's got a blemish on it. What blemish? There's no blemish. There's a blemish. It's a lemon. You brought a lemon. Well, we have another vehicle that we can sell you. Well, we'll buy this one. You can trade it in for that one. We'll give you 20 bucks for your little lemon lamb. And then we're going to sell you one for a hundred. And the person doesn't have a choice because it's the religious inspectors.

It's the first used car dealership right there at the temple. And then on top of that, they would take the little lemon lamb, they would take that lamb and then sell it to the next person. Tremendous income stream. And they're like, you know what? This is great. Let's keep doing this. And then they're like, why are we using Roman currency? Whoever controls the currency, controls everything. So let's create our own currency.

They create their own temple currency. They're like we're done with the fiat dollar. We're going to use Bitcoin. That's what we're going to do in the temple. We got our own temple coin. That's what we're going to do. And obviously, when you get there with the money, I'm sorry, your money's not accepted here. So you can trade it in. Obviously, there's a little fee on top, the Coinbase fee of whatever percentage it is. That's what's going on.

So they're making money left and right off of whom? Off of people that want to show up to the temple and say thank you to God, to know more about God. So you got extortion and you got corruption. And it's all run by the people who are tasked with the job of telling people that God wants to forgive their sins. So John 2:15, what does Jesus do? Making a whip of cords. And I want to pause here for a second to show how premeditated this was. This wasn't Jesus hot headed, seeing something he doesn't like and going and tossing tables and causing chaos.

He deliberately, methodically sits there, prayerfully making a whip, a whip of cords. And he drove them all out with a temple them, the people with the sheep and the oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. Does this Jesus have a place in your theology of God? Because if this Jesus isn't in your theology of God, you don't know God. I understand that some people naturally are not wired to loving this Jesus I am.

I love this Jesus. This is my favorite Jesus. This Jesus, when he comes back in Revelation with a sword coming out of his mouth, with a huge tattoo down his leg that said, "Lord of lord and king of kings." I love that Jesus, because that Jesus Christ kill me. And if you can kill me, I'm going to follow you. That's that's how I'm wired. But you need the savage Jesus in your theology. This is the start of his ministry.

What did he do for the first three decades of his life? He was a builder. He worked with his dad and he was builder. He built things. So I see, like, he swung a hammer. There were no power tools back then. So if you build stuff, you're yoked. This is yoked Jesus showing up at the temple. Well, how do I know he's yoked? Because he doesn't need two hands to turn over tables. He's got a whip in one hand and he's tossing tables with the other hand. And what is he doing? Jesus Christ, yoked carpenter, cage fighting Jesus. This Jesus is declaring war against the establishment.

He's declaring war against the priest and against the temple religious system. He's declaring war against every single person who's getting in the way of people meeting God, people in authority who are getting in the way of people meeting God. That's what sparks his zeal and he makes a whip. And what does he say in verse 16? He told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my father's house the house of trade." Jesus, what is motivating you emotionally to do this thing that might bring you to the brink of death.

The priesthood has the Roman soldiers at their disposal. They can whack you in a second. Jesus, you're risking everything to do what? What are you motivated by? He's motivated by a love for his father's house. This is my father's house. This is where God, the father, is worshiped, where the children of God gather. This is my house. When I go to my dad's house, I take off my shoes. But the only thing I do diff... Well, I take off my shoes in my house because my wife does the same thing.

But at my dad's house, I walk in and I open the fridge. What do we got? What are we eating? It's my too. Is it my house? No, but it is my house. My mom never said, :Make yourself at home." She already knows. Jesus walks into his house. He doesn't take the whip and go to someone else's house. This is my house. This is my house. So we need to clean it out, clean and declutter this house. The main issue is he says, "Why did you make my father's house, a house of trade?" If you want to do the business side and selling the animals, do it outside. Don't do it in the court of Gentiles. That's where they were doing.

So in the temple, there's the holy of holies. And there was a place where the men of Israel could enter. And then there was a court of the Gentiles. The court of the Gentiles couldn't go into where they were doing the sacrifices. This is as close to God as they could come. They didn't see how graphic the sacrificial system is. They didn't see it. That wasn't emblazed on their hearts so they understand the gravity of what's going on, that this animal was dying for you.

These people want to go to pray. They want to go connect with God. And they find themselves in the midst of bizarre, animals bellowing and bleeding, selling. It's like the New York Stock Exchange on a Friday after noon. You're trying to pray and all that people see is business. And what does that communicate to people that do not know God? What that communicates is these people don't care about God. The people in charge don't care about God. Why should I care about God?

If the people in charge have a transactional relationship with God. I give God money, he forgives me of sins. That's what we're doing here. You want your sins atoned for, forgiven? We'll take your money. That's it. Your sins are forgiven. Kind of what the Catholic church did before the reformation. It was the same thing, transaction, business. We're going to build buildings and we're going to fill up the coffers. And then we're going to fill up our own bank accounts. It was the same, same thing, people getting in the way of people worshiping God.

So Jesus, in verse 17, his disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." Zeal for your house will consume me. And probably they remembered these words after the resurrection, from the deeper vantage point of everything they had seen. And what this is, is a quote from Psalm 69:9, "For zeal for your house has consumed me. And the reproaches of those who reproach, you have fallen on me."

Now, initially, this was written by David. David is saying he felt a reproach. He suffered reproach because of his zeal for the house of God. Now, it's fascinating, it's both from the Hebrew, Psalm 69, and the sub teigen, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This is where you got to get your machete ready just for a little bit. We're still swinging. What's important there in the grammar is that tense is in the past tense. For zeal for your house has consumed me. That's a past tense.

John turns the past tense into a future. He says, zeal for your house will consume you. It will consume you. Why is that important? Because John is treating the Psalm as a messianic prophecy of the ministry of Jesus. This is the Messiah. This is the prophet who was promised that will come and he will speak God's word to God's people. He's the priest that will come and atone for the sins of God's people. He is the king. He's the anointed one who will force people to submit to his rule.

Psalm 69 is one of the six Psalms most often referred to in the New Testament, and Jesus quotes this multiple times, twice in the book of John. John 15:23-25, Jesus starts talking about the fact that people hate him. Whoever hates me hates my father also. And if I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my father. But the word that is written in the law must be fulfilled. They hated me without cause."

This isn't they disliked me. This is they despised me. And then John 19:28, Jesus on the cross, "After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, to fulfill the scripture, 'I thirst." And the jar full of sour wine stood there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on the hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit of prophecy, again, written in Psalm 69, fulfilled in Christ.

What happened to king David happened much more to an infinite degree more to David's great descendant, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. David wanted to build the temple. He loved the place of God, the worship of God. He loved it. He suffered a reproach for it. Jesus Christ loved it and suffered reproach for it. But ultimately, it wasn't the temple that he really cared about. It was the presence of God that people were thwarted of entering.

And then Jesus Christ ultimately to destroy that temple allows the temple of his body to be destroyed as fulfillment of the temple and replacement of rights and sacrifice. And what's so resoundingly clear from this text is that Jesus Christ was opposed. There was outright hostility from the religious people. And then at the end of the text, we see people, "Oh, we like Jesus. He's awesome."

And Jesus, it says, did not entrust himself to them because he knew what was in them. He knew how fickle people were. So you've got hostility from the representatives of God and superficial loyalty from everyone else, which is just a sugar coated hostility. And yes, in our culture, that hostility crowd is growing. You tip people's holy cows and see how zealous they become. The holy cows of gender, sexual identity. How things should be set up in the church. You tip holy cows, you tell people that what they do in their house...

I'm not coming into your house to clean it. I'm not doing that. I'm making a whip, but I am proclaiming God's word. And when you hear God's word and are offended by it, that's the point to awaken you. That's the point. I don't go into your house with a whip and I pray, dear friend, return the favor. Do not come to our house with your own whip, trying to change Jesus, change God, change God's word. You know why?

Because if we allow you or someone to do that, hypothetically, it's not anyone sitting here. Hypothetically, if we allow you to come in and change God, change God's word, change how God told us to do things, then Jesus is going to come with a whip. And who is he going to start with? Me. Me. So I don't want to do that. I don't want to mess with Jesus. I want to snuggle with Jesus like the apostle John. I want that. Don't kill me, please. Thanks. That's the Jesus that I want.

So I want to stay in his good graces. That's what's going on. So on the one side, people are growing in hostility to God. So to those people who are like, "Yeah, Jesus got a whip." So that's what we preach. And then to the other people, there's just a superficial loyalty, "I love Jesus." And I see this with a lot of young people. You show up to church and I already know why you're here. You're here because you want to marry someone. Tremendous.

So don't fake it. Don't fake being a Christian. Don't fake it. Don't ruin someone else's life. And if you're faking it, you're not going to discern if the other person is actually solid Christian. So that's what I'm saying. Like the superficial loyalty, Jesus rejected that as well. And you know what happens? As soon as Christianity gets difficult, the profession of faith just disappears. It's just gone.

And you need to be ready right now. You need to say in your heart, "Okay. If the Taliban knocks on my door and says right now, 'Bring out your daughters to me just because you're a Christian." What are you going to do? Are you ready to suffer for the faith. That's a decision you've got to make now. And Jesus Christ said, "Take up your cross and follow me daily." Meaning there will be a price to pay.

Jesus comes and he starts with his own. John 1:11, "He came to his own and his own did not receive him. They were convinced they were loving God by hating the son of God." And that's an important word. The religious elites crucified Jesus thinking they were loving God. The things humans can get away with when they think they are doing God's will. Stalin went to seminary. Stalin was a trained pastor. He thought he was doing what's best for humanity.

Be careful that in the name of something you call good, that you don't create barriers for people to meet God. And that's a word to us, to Christians. I've seen this. I grew up in a church like this. I grew up in a church I didn't want to go to. There were barriers there. Do you think boy bands were cool? Then, they were never cool. But before boy bands took off here, they took off in my Russian church.

We had four dudes show up that can't sing, but they got slicked back here. I was one of the boys. We did that one time. Dennis, remember that? We did that one time. And then I looked back and I cringe. No wonder my friends didn't want to go to that church. They didn't preach the word. They didn't explain that this is real, that Christianity impacts every single day. How real this truly is.

Because we were paying attention to the color of the carpet. That's what we talked about at member's meeting, not saving people, not bringing people to church and seeing people meet Jesus. Not once did I see someone who's an unbeliever show up and say, "You know what? I have no Christian background and I want to become a Christian." I didn't see that once. And I couldn't take my friends to church because they didn't speak Russian.

So that's what I'm saying. Christians have this tendency to add stuff to church that keeps people away from seeing the point. And the point is that you are a sinner, that God's wrath is upon you, you deserve Jesus whip and ultimately his sword. But Jesus Christ came and he was consumed with zeal so much so that the one that came with the whip allowed himself to be whipped, allowed himself to be scorched, tied to a pole, shirt taken off. Roman brutal machines of death whipped him with a cat o' nine tails and at the end of every single one of those strands was a rock or a piece of bone to get his back and flesh, to get pulled.

So he allows it so that you don't have to, so you don't have to bear his wrath, so you don't have to bear his sword of judgment. That's the point. And Jesus came and he said, that's it. That's what I'm trying to say. I am your only hope to salvation. And that's why the people who are closest to him and heard the message closest to him, most of them hated him.

A lot of us think, people, if they just knew how great Jesus was, they'd love him. This is a lie. This is a lie. And that's why people are like, "Oh, don't read that text. Don't read that text." When people really understood who Jesus was, the few, the select, the chosen, they became Christians. Everybody else despised him. They wanted to kill him outright. Why? Why would people hate Jesus?

Because the same Jesus who tenderly says, "Come onto me all of you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest." The same Jesus made a whip of cords, drove people out of the temple, scattered and upset, their animals, overturned their tables, scattered all their money. And how does that make you feel? That's an important question. If you really understand, how does that make you? Did Jesus hurt their feelings? Yeah.

Wasn't there another way, Jesus? Could you not have like sat down with them and had a conversation, give them a little therapy, brokered a little deal. And like, hey, you guys are doing this wrong. Let me point you to God's word. Do a little Bible study. No, it's not what he does. Because that's not enough to awaken them. What they needed was someone to come in and to hit them where it hurts most, in the pocket book and the ego.

And to know that they don't care about the thing that he cares about most. And if they don't care about the thing that he cares about most, they will suffer consequence. So what did he care about most? In John 2:17, his disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me. The word zeal comes from the word deboil, like boiling water. That's inside. It's boiling. His blood is boiling.

And obviously, there's lots of examples in scripture of unholy zeal. Like when Peter who just woke up from sleep and watching Jesus get arrested, he's like, "Ah, I'm zealous. I'm going to chop off this guy's head," and only gets the ear. And then Jesus is like, "What are you doing?" That's unholy zeal. And St. Paul says there's people that have zeal not according to knowledge, but Jesus' zeal was holy.

There was nothing wicked about it. His zeal is as holy as his love and his gentleness and his grace. His zeal was his love. He was zealous because he was so loving. Zeal is love made angry because the thing you love, the one you love is being hurt. That's what's going on here. Jesus loves God. He loves the house of God. And he sees that what these people are doing is pulling people away from God. And one of the ways that they were trying to pull people away from God was trying to make it easier, trying to make the church more palatable, God more palatable. Okay. You don't have to raise the animal. We'll do it for you. We'll make it more efficient. We'll make it more timely, more convenient. What better convenience than to sell the sacrificial animals there? A one-stop-shop worship.

They took the pain out of worship. They took the pain out of worship. They began to encourage lazy worship, loveless worship, sacrificeless worship, and they catered to their consumer mentality. You come in, you pay, you receive, and creating a customer mentality. And then customers. Well, the customer is always right. If it's a business, if church is primarily a business, the customer is always right.

A lot of churches do that. The customer is always right. So that's what we're going to preach. You know how many people you can attract with a message like that? Joel Osteen fills a football stadium primarily because he has nice hair and a beautiful smile and a wonderful jawline and he serves ice cream. He just gives people ice cream. That's all he does. Pay me I give you ice cream. Pay me I gave you...

He looked at the church and he's like, "I can offer you ice cream for your soul." You go there, you're uplifted, you're encouraged. Everything is awesome. Wonderful. He doesn't call me to do any of this. This is tremendous. You show up here and I say, "Grab your machete. We're going to war. This is what we do." We pull you to work. You show up, you have a pulse, we tell you about Jesus and we'll give you a job.

That's what we do. Because that's the best thing for you. I grew up painting with my dad, who likes painting if your house looks bad. Don't get mad. Tremendous. I was six years old. He's like, "You want to work with me tomorrow?" I said, "Tremendous." I show up to work and I'm working. Was I good? No, I was terrible. He didn't need me there. I needed to be there more than he needed me to be there.

I needed the service. I needed to learn how to work hard. I needed to learn how to sacrifice. And that's why God gave us sacrificial systems. That's why, when God says, "I want to forgive your sins. And also, take up a cross and follow me." And that's why God does talk about wrath. He talks about for every instance of God's love and mercy and grace in holy scripture, there's three instances of his wrath and damnation and hell.

Why does he do that? So when he saves people, they understand what they're saved from. So they're motivated to give all of their life, all of their zeal to save those who are not yet Christians. And here, these people didn't care about it. John 2:18, the Jews said to him, "What sign do you give us for showing these things?" And what's fascinating is their demand betrays them. It betrays the fact that they know that he's not a kook, that he's not just a revolutionary.

They feel his authority and they saw it in his eyes. And what they're saying is not, "Oh, teach us how to change the worship. Teach us what we're doing wrong." No, they didn't care about that. They cared that he was tipping their holy cow of authority. And that's why he's like, "You want to sign? Here's the sign, destroy this temple. And in three days, I'll raise it up." Obviously, he's not talking about destroying the temple. that's what they used in order to arrest him after and those are the insults that were hurled at him as he's hanging on the cross. And he's not talking about this temple, he's talking about destroy this temple. That's the sign that...

A lot of people are like, "I believe in God. If there was a sign from God." There is a sign from God. A guy lived, a guy died, and a guy came back from the dead. That's the sign. And that's the sign that everybody gets. God is an all equal opportunity sign giver. Everybody gets the same sign. Tremendous. But you've got to believe in it. You got to understand why he's on the cross. You got to understand what he did for us.

What's fascinating is the same zeal with which he started his ministry, that was the same zeal with which he did his ministry. Him cleansing the temple was just a sign of everything else that's coming. Everything he taught. The Jews had 618 laws. This is what you got to obey in order to be made right with God. And Jesus is like you can't be made right with God unless you believe in me. And then the 618, let's just condense it. Let's put it in a shot glass, distill, two commands. Love God and love people. Tremendous. Go do it.

They want to sit around and have Bible studies instead of doing the stuff that is in the Bible. So Jesus starts his ministry by cleansing the temple, cleanses the people of God, and ends his ministry doing the same thing. And this is what a lot of Christians owner of Stan. This action, what Jesus did is so important to our theology. He does it twice. He does it at the beginning of his ministry, in John 2, and then he does it at the end of the ministry. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have that second one.

And the context says in Matthew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem on the holy week, enters in the holy week as the king. Everyone's screaming out, "Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna." And then as a king, he enters the temple again to do the same thing. And that's Matthew 21:12-17. Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and seats of those who sold pigeons.

And he said to them, "It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, 'Hosanna to the son of God,' they were indignant. And they said to him, 'Do you hear what these are saying?' And Jesus said to them, 'Yes. Have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.' And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there." He did the same thing. This time, he adds, you've made my house a house of prayer.

You've made a den of robbers. He calls it my house, and this is my house. I'm in my house. And you made it a den of robbers. And here he quotes Jeremiah 7, where God tells Jeremiah, go into the temple and preach the sermon. And in that sermon, Jeremiah accuses his contemporary as bringing into the temple all of their sins. So it's not even just about the sacrificial system. It's about the fact that you don't use it.

The sacrificial system, the whole point of it was raise a little lamb, care for it, love it, walk it all the way down to the temple and watch it's throat slit for your sins so that you go home and you remember the bleeding of that sheep that you loved and that's to motivate you to live a sinless life, a holy life, a life of zeal toward God. So Jeremiah says to these people in verse eight, "Behold, you trusted deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear false, make offerings to Baal and go after other gods that you have not known. And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name and say, 'We are delivered,' only to go on doing all these abominations."

"Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it," declares the Lord. What they were doing, but this is what's happening in so many American churches today, so so many. You go in and you're like, "Oh, Jesus is the new sacrificial system? Tremendous. I'm going to sin all week. I'm going to live a godless life." Zeal for sin instead of a zeal for the savior. And then you come in on a Sunday, oh yeah, I committed adultery. Okay. Let's repent of that. I stole. Let's repent of that. I worshiped other idols. Okay. I swore falsely, let's repent.

I murdered someone. Jesus said, if you hate someone in your heart, that's tantamount to murder, meaning they didn't care about Gods will at all. They just used God. So Jesus quotes these words to these people, den of robbers. And he inflamed their zeal. And that's what got him killed. Ultimately, his zeal did consume him. Ultimately, he did die for us. Jesus was zealous for God. And they were zealous for self power, money, status, positions. And the same battle raging in their hearts is raging in every single heart today.

Jesus wants to cleanse your heart of sin. He wants to enter your life with not a whip. Right now, in this life, while you're alive, he wants to enter your heart with mercy and love and grace and forgive you, cleanse you with his blood. This is the beauty. Jesus wants to cleanse you with his blood, not his whip. The whip comes later. But if you bow your knees to Jesus Christ, if you repent of sin in this life, while you're alive, everything is forgiven.

You talk about great business models. You could talk about great deals, you could talk about streams of income, all that. This is the greatest deal in the history of the universe. All of your sins are forgiven. So repent. But once you do, you need to know, he expects something from you. He expects you to live zealously for him. And this is point two, Jesus is consumed with zeal. Oh, wow. Point two is going to be really fast. That's why I needed the timer. Dangerous.

Okay. Are you consumed with zeal for God's house? When you see this Jesus with a whip, how does that make you feel? It should make you feel that, hey, I don't know if I'm as zealous as he is for God's house, for God. And we're all zealous for something. And you just follow your time, talent, treasure, where your skills are used, where your time is used, where your treasure is used, where it goes naturally, that's what you're most zealous about.

And we need to ask ourselves, are we zealous for God? Are we zealous for God's temple? And God's temple obviously is in Jerusalem. Now, God's temple is the church universal, lived out in the church local. And again, I have this conversation all the time. People are like, "I'm a Christian, I'm part of the universal church." That's like me going to you and saying, "Are you a human being?" And they say, "Yeah, I'm part of the human race."

Do you have a body? If not, you're Casper the Friendly Ghost. Same thing. Are you a Christian? Are you part of the universal church? Are you part of the local church? If you're not a part of a local church, you're probably not alive. That was the love sermon or the Jesus sermon. I don't know. I preach the same thing every week. Are you zealous for God's work. Are you zealous to please God?

Are you zealous to declutter your own soul and life of sin? And your answer, I want you to look at the data. I want you to look at the evidence. If you say I'm zealous for God, look at the data. Where does your time naturally go? Where does your money naturally go? Where do you thoughts naturally go? Look at the data. Study yourself. Show me the receipts that you are zealous. And also, is there anything better to consume your life than zeal for God's house? Is there anything better?

If you know me personally, when I get zealous about something, I get zealous. So when I talk about God's word, I am... If I'm not sweating profusely, like I'm at a workout, I'm a CrossFit right now, then I'm not even trying. No. When I get zealous about something, I go all in. I went vegan one time. I dropped like 40 pounds. I was yellow by the end of that. And after that, I started powerlifting. Go completely. I get zealous.

I became an amateur boxer just for fun. I get zealous. And the whole time with all of my different whatever, I'm zealous for the church of God. I love the church. I love this church. I love it. I love the scriptures. I love the church. I want to give all of myself to it. And I remember reading J.I. Packer, Knowing God. And he has this section about the zeal of God. If you know God, you have to be zealous for God.

And this little section, it's chapter 17 of Knowing God, it changed my life. He says zeal and religion of Christianity is a burning desire to please God, to do his will, to advance his glory in the world in every possible way. It is the desire which no man feels by nature, which the spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted, by which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called zealous men.

In religion, Christianity is preeminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he's earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, cares for one thing. He lives for one thing. He's swallowed up by one thing, and that one thing is to please God, whether he lives or whether he dies, whether he has health or whether he has sickness, whether he is rich, whether he is poor, whether he pleases man or whether he gives offense, whether he's thought wise or whether he is thought foolish, whether he gets blame or whether he gets praise, whether he gets honor, whether he gets shamed.

For all this, the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing, and that one thing is to please God, to advance God's glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it. He's content. He feels like that, like a lamp. He is made to burn. And if consumed in burning, he has done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, give money, he will cry inside and pray.

If he can not fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work with Moses and Aaron on the hill. And if he is cutoff from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter. And the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of zeal and religion. May God make us men and women of zeal. And that's going to absolutely ever change the world.

Revelation 3:15, 16, 19. "I know your works. You're neither cold nor hot. I would that you were either cold or hot. So because you were lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." Those are the words of Jesus. "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent." Titus 2:11-14, "For the grace of God," that's our salvation, "Has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and live self-controlled upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope."

"The appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for God's work." And then practically, how does this work? As a church, we focus all of our attention on three things. And those three things are meant to fire up your zeal to the Lord.

It's not the only things that we do, but this is where we focus our energy: on our worship services, on our community groups, and our service teams. Acts 2, that's what the early church did. At my house, I live with five females. They're wonderful. They're my favorite roommates. We do three things in my house. We worship God. We talk about God all the time. We read scripture. We pray. We talk about God all the time. My daughter, Milan, is four. She was visiting her aunt and her aunt said, "Do you love God?" She said, "Yeah." And her aunt said, "Why?"

And we're expecting, "Oh, he made me. He gives me good stuff. He feeds me." She's like, "Because he told me to." Oh man, that's good. That's good. Love because he's God. That's tremendous. That's great theology. So we love each other. We love each other. We worship God. We love each other. We fellowship and we serve each other. That's every good family. Worship. God, tell each other that you love each other, spend time together, and then serve each other.

That's what we do. We worship God. We fellowship in community groups. And if you aren't in one, join one. And then we serve on a weekly basis. And why do we do this? We do this to fire up our faith. And at the center of all of that is the holy scriptures. Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, with the disciples walking the road to Emmaus, he just gave him a Bible study and their hearts burned that they were fired up for the mission of God.

So everything we do in our worship service, community groups, and service teams, we do with scripture at the center. So if you're like, "I am so zealous for God right now. I am so pumped." Now we're descending down the mountain and we're about to get back in the van and drive back into the city. I am so pumped. What can you do? Well, I've got a job for you. I've got jobs. And I've got a slide with jobs.

Oh, this is what we need. We need help. In operations, we need 10 greeting team members, 12 tear down team members, which is tear down in setup is tremendous if you like working out and you pay money for that. You can just get rid of your membership and come to church. Six security team members, six special events team members. So all of this. Production is a little harder because for production, portfolios are required.

So if you've got a photography, video, you need skills. Sorry. We believe God's perfect. So everything we try to do here, we try to do with excellence. So if you stink, don't sign up there. And then mini Mosaic, we need to nursery assistants, prayer. Crucial. We need three prayer team members and two intercessory prayer team members, in particular, men. This is requested. Why? And you're like, is that misogynistic that we want particularly men for the team? We want everybody. But right now the team is carried by women.

Gentlemen, sign up. Tremendous. You're welcome. So that's that. So if you'd like to sign up, tremendous, brookline.mosaicboston.com/serve, or you can go to the app. Conclusion. I had conversation this week with a girl from the church that got a job and she's working at this job. It's a brand new job in a city. One of the things that they do and one of the benefits that they include is they want to motivate their people.

One of the services that they had included, they invited this guy in, who was a guy who's like he created a business for himself, like gathering people in his living room, like people are working, company execs, and he would all force them to cook together. They cook a meal together. So everyone's on the same plane. The guards go down. They all eat the meal together. They sit around on a circle and the guy asked one question.

And the reason why they do this and the reason why it's so effective is because apparently they found out that companies where people are thankful to be there are so much more successful. And this is the one question that they ask and they talk about, who is the person in your life that you have never thought to say thank you to? I heard that and I was like aaah. I'm getting goosebumps now.

That's so powerful. Who's the one person in your life that you never thought to say thank you? And I knew right away. I knew exactly, second grade Mrs. Wodziak, little Polish lady. And I was still in ESL at that time. And I will never forget, it's Christmas time and we had to bring gifts. We had to do the Santa swamp thing. You had to bring a gift and then one of the other kids gets your gift and you get one of their gifts. It was tremendous. And I brought the gift. I don't remember what I brought. And I saw the biggest box under the tree.

Because all the kids got to sit there for like weeks looking at all these presents. And they scoped out the biggest one and it came up and I held it up. It was weighty. I was like, this is the one. And I stole it. Second grade. So obviously, on the day of getting the gifts, some kid is not going to have a gift. The day comes and finally they're like, it's the last person. The last person has no gift. There's no present for the little kid. I'm sitting there with my two gifts. Peace to Jenna at second grade.

And then Mrs. Wodziak pulls out a present from under her desk, same size. And the kid opens up. It was the same thing that I stole, 64 crayons. You remember those boxes? Same thing to this kid. I'm like, obviously she knew I stole it. She knew. And she gave me mercy. And then in secondary, we took a field trip to Sturbridge village and all the kids had money. I didn't know we were supposed to bring money. Also, my immigrant parents were like, "Money for what? You're lucky we feed you." So then we get to Sturbridge and all the kids are buying stuff and they bought yo-yos And I was like, oh, man, I wish I got a yo-yo. I was scoping out one to steal. And then Mrs. Wodziak comes up to me with a green yo-yo. And I never said thank you. I think she was a believer. She's the one that taught me in one fell swoop about mercy. You don't get what you deserve. And grace. You got what you didn't deserve. That's a powerful question. And I want you to ask that question. What's the one person that you've never thought to say thank you? I want you to say thank you to them if they were alive.

I want to pause right now and say thank you to the members of this church and everyone who serves, gives time, talent, treasure for zeal. You're zealous for God. So thank you. Praise God for you. And I'll just end with this. The reason why that question is so powerful, because I've been thinking about that all week. I'm like, why is that so powerful? I know. I know. Because there's one that most people who are alive have never said thank you to. You've never even said thank you. God, thank you.

Thank you for giving me life and God, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, not giving me the wrath that I deserve, and then giving me love and mercy and grace that I don't deserve. God, thank you. So in terms of love, Jesus, simple, and simplicity, that's what we're going to focus on, worshiping God. So let's worship him together. Heavenly father, we do come to you and we just say thank you.

We thank you that you're a great God and a holy God. And we thank you, Jesus, that though we deserve the whip, you took it for us. We deserve the cross, you took it for us. We deserve the wrath of God, you took it for us in order to forgive us and give us mercy and then also give us grace. And make us the people who are motivated with gratitude, with thanksgiving, and zealous for you, zealous for your house, zealous for your people, and zealous for the mission of God. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Usually about this time of the year, we do this every year, where we focus on the DNA of Mosaic. The reason why we do this is because every single organization has mission leak or mission creep, where they forget why we exist. So we remind ourselves of why we exist and we communicate that with the three words, love Jesus simple. This is our DNA. Why do we use the word DNA? DNA is the information within every single organism that gives identity, that dictates function, how we are going to function, and it dictates the activity of this organism. I use the word organism because church is an organism. It's not just an organization. Church is alive. Jesus Christ says that the church is His body. It's alive. It's an organism. And the church is His bride. It's alive. It's an organism. And that's why we use the word DNA. The DNA is the blueprint, it's the recipe, the code for who we are.

Last week we talked about love is the motive for everything that we do, because love was the motive for everything Jesus did. Jesus Christ loved God and loved people by primarily loving the church. So we do the same. And today we're talking about Christ as Christ is the center of everything that we are. He is our identity, and He as we proclaim Him, His word, that we proclaim Christ crucified, that is the power of God onto salvation. St. Paul said, "The power of God is in the gospel for anyone who believes." The reason why we do this series is to remind ourselves of the mission of God. CS Lewis says, "There exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence." So we must strive very hard, by the grace of the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave to it.

At the center is Jesus Christ. He's the center of everything we do. He's the main point of everything we do. He's the main point of the Christian life, of the Christian faith. And this is our message that your happiness, your eternal happiness, the eternal happiness of every single person wholly depends on Jesus Christ, what you do with His life, death, burial, and resurrection. If you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, you are saved by grace through faith, saved meaning you need to be saved. By grace is a gift from God, and it happens when you believe that Jesus Christ didn't just die, He died for your sins. When you believe that Jesus didn't just come to show us the way to God, that He is the only way to God. It sounds outrageous, I know, and it always has. But when the message is proclaimed, people do get saved. So that's why we do this on a weekly basis.

Our text for today is 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. I didn't bookmark it, so let's see if Pastor Jan knows his Bible. Oh yeah, right there, 1 Corinthians 1:18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.' Where's the one who is wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and weakness of God is stronger than men. Consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you are wise according to worldly standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. But God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So that as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'

"And I, when I come to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech, my message were not implausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Why do we preach Jesus Christ crucified? That's why. I can just say amen and pray. That's why. The scripture says, "For each Christ crucified, that's all we do." Did St. Paul write to the church in Corinth? Did he tell them any other things other than Christ crucified? Yeah, of course, he did. But the central message that impacts everything else is that Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins. Three points to frame up of our time. First, the cross is folly. The cross is power. And the cross is wisdom. St. Paul starts with where everyone knows the first time you hear the message. The secret to the universe, the secret to reality, the secret to understand yourself, the people around you, the secret to understand all the world history is the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sin. The fact that when you hear that, the first time you ever hear, the natural reaction is: "It's folly. It's foolish to believe. You believe this? You gather on a Sunday to proclaim it? You believe this?"

Yes, it sounds folly. That's the point. In verse 18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to those who are being saved, it is the power of God." On the one hand, yes, it's folly, but it's also power. Let's start with it's folly. St. Paul in this text, he talks about two groups of people, the Jews, and he talks about the Greeks. The Jews he's talking about, religious Jews, that grew up with the mosaic law, the 10 commandments that God gave through Moses. They believed that they were religious. They believed that they could save themselves through their own efforts. And then the group, the Greeks on the other hand were too sophisticated. The Jews are too religious for Jesus. The Greeks are too sophisticated.

So we start with the Jews. For the Jews, the cross was a scandal, scandalous to say that God became man. It was scandalous to say that God's Messiah was crucified. That's like saying God sends a king who then loses, He's crucified. It was an impediment to them, first of all, because in law of Moses, there's a Bible verse in Deuteronomy that says, "Cursed is anybody who hangs on the tree." So when St. Paul comes in, when the disciples come in, they say, "Our Messiah died on a cross." They looked at text, and like, "You're saying our Messiah was cursed? That's blasphemous." On top of that, they hated even the idea of crucifixion because so many of their countrymen died through persecution. The Romans would come in, and anytime there was an insurrection, they would take all of the people, hundreds and thousands of them, and on the way into the city put up cross after cross after cross and execute people. So for Jews to hear that your Messiah was executed through crucifixion, they had the same visceral, emotional antagonism to it as telling a 20th-century that your Messiah died in a concentration camp. The same visceral reaction.

Besides the cross, telling Jews that the Son of God died was ludicrous. They had a high view of the divine transcendent God. They had a very inflexible commitment to monotheism, that God is one. It was in their Shema. It was blasphemous to say that there's a second person, there's trinity, there's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, but it's one God, three persons. That was blasphemous to them. So they had theological, intellectual, emotional opposition to it. And we see it all culminating in St. Paul. Paul before he became Paul, he was Saul. He studied under Gamaliel. He's the greatest theologian, probably theological mind to have existed probably second to Jesus Christ.

What did Paul do in his early ministry? Well, he thought that he was doing God's work by persecuting Christians. When he heard about Christian, when he heard about Jesus Christ dying on the cross, that this is the Messiah, he had such a visceral reaction that he wasn't just motivated to speak out against it. It wasn't just about him not liking the message. He would actually physically hunt down Christians, persecuting them to the point of terrorizing them and then killing them. And that ministry started with him watching the death, the stoning, physical stones were thrown at the first martyr, Stephen, and Paul was there. He hated that message. And what changed his mind was when he met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.

So for the Jews, the religious people, they had a visceral reaction against this truth. And for the Greeks, they just felt too sophisticated to believe that their hope, their eternal happiness, eternal life hinges on what they do to a carpenter who then became an itinerant rabbi who died in Judea on a Roman cross and that crucifixion had anything to do with God. Because there was a stigma attached to crucifixion. The elite Greeks and the Romans were embarrassed that this was even a part of their society. The scholars who study the writings of the Greco-Roman literature at that time, they point out the fact it's rarely ever mentioned. It's like the French never talking about the guillotine.

This is in us. They would rewrite their own history. They didn't want it to be part of what they did as a society. Crucifixion was regarded as the worst form of death. It was worse than dying in an arena where animals, beasts were released from trap doors. They weren't fed for days and released to tear Christians limb from limb. Dying in an arena eaten by animals was considered more noble and honorable than being crucified. Being crucified was worse than even being burned to death. Crucifixion was that brutal, and any person that was crucified left a legacy as being the worst kind of criminal scum. That's why the early churches was ridiculed, mocked for worshiping. And they said, "An evil man. Your God is a criminal. Your God was crucified. How can you believe this?"

Archeologists excavated the quarters of the Imperial pages in the Palatine Hill in Rome. It dates back to the third century, so the 200s. In it, they found this carving on a wall, and it's a picture of a little boy who's got his hand raised as if he's worshiping someone on a cross. It was a body on a cross. And instead of a head, they put a head of a donkey. And underneath it said, "Alexamenos worships his God." Little boys were mocking a Christian little boy who worshiped Jesus Christ dying on the cross. It was blasphemous for them to believe this is true. And you can Google it, Alexamenos worships his God, to see the depiction.

Not many people worship someone who's been executed with an electric chair. No one puts little electric chairs around their necklace or a needle for lethal injection. No one hangs a noose around their neck as a little symbol of something great. No one does it with a guillotine. Yet we do as Christians. We wear little crosses to remind ourselves that our savior died on a cross, experienced excruciating pain. We had to come up with a word to describe just how bad crucifixion was. We worship a Savior who died the death of the most heinous, monstrous criminal. And on top of all of this, for the Greeks and the Romans to tell them, "It wasn't some political statesman like Cesar who died for your sins. And it wasn't some philosopher like Socrates who died for your sins. It was just some obscure carpenter, amateur rabbi." And here come the Christians proclaiming what? Proclaiming the secret to human life is found in some rabble-rousing rabbi from a distant Judea, telling people that the meaning of life is found in the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension of Jesus Christ.

And as we do so, that was crazy then, it's just as crazy now. It's always been crazy to get up and to tell someone, "Hey, unless you believe in Jesus Christ that He died on the cross for your sins, you're going to spend eternity in hell, apart from God." that's always nuts. It's always crazy to say that. But that's what the early church did in the beginning. And that's what we continue to do. And by the way, here's the other challenge of doing that. The moment you say that, that very moment, what else are you saying? What else am I saying when I say Jesus Christ is the only way to go? What am I saying? I'm saying there's no other way. I'm saying there's no other way. So what I'm saying is every other way is wrong, every other way is a lie. Jesus Christ is the only way. Right, that doesn't feel good. That sounds so intolerant.

If there was another way, then Jesus Christ would not have had to die on a cross. It was the only way. That's what it took. There's no other way. So yes, I'm standing up here, and I am saying that everything else is wrong. Islam is wrong. Buddhism is wrong. Atheism is wrong. Secular is wrong. It's all wrong. And you saying Jesus Christ is one of them, that's wrong too. When our world hears that, they say, "That's folly. That's folly." But for us, we love this message. Yes, it's naturally repugnant. Yes, it's naturally faintly ridiculous. But it's also wonderful to us. What makes us think it's so wonderful? How could anyone think this is wonderful? How could anyone give their life to this message? Give their life for this message? Give their time, talent, treasure to invest resources in the propagation of this message? It's so improbable, so unsophisticated. It's so offensive to our culture or taste. It's foolish.

But it's got power. And that's why we do what we do. This is the only thing that can really save us. And this is the second point, that the cross is power. 1 Corinthians 1:22-25, "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." So the Jews would say, "Hey, we want more evidence. We want more signs. We want signs like Moses. Moses did the signs as he led the people of God out of Egypt, out of captivity. We're looking for the same political Messiah, and we want signs to go along with it.

For the Greeks, they want sophia or wisdom. Their civilization astounded the world with its progress. Their advances caused many to abandon belief in traditional God. We want something that polished. The Jews said, "We want something religious." These guys said, "We want something really, really polished." St. Paul comes in and he says, "The greatest sign that God could give is that God the Son, Son of God, Son of man died on the cross for our sins, and He came back from the dead." For the Jews, a crucified Messiah was an oxymoron, like a married bachelor. For the Greek, it wasn't so much more irreverent, it was just ridiculous. But St. Paul says, "There's another piece, there's another element. It's not just this message. It's not just information. This information, when God the Holy Spirit takes it and applies it to your heart, when the God of grace gives a man, a woman by the Spirit of God a brand new heart, summons that heart to Himself, what was first thought as foolish is recognized as the deepest wisdom. Initially thought as weak and silly, it's nothing less than the actual power of God.

This is where the power is. The power source is the proclamation that Jesus Christ died for your sins. Karl Barth in the 20th century was probably one of the most influential theologians. At the end of his life, he was giving a lecture in the '70s in Princeton, theological lecture. At the end, he was doing a Q&A, and one person asked him, "Hey, Dr. Barth, you have read tens of thousands of theological tomes. You've written hundreds of theological tomes. If you could synthesize the greatest, the greatest truth that you discovered, the greatest nugget of gold to share with us from your vast experience, what would it be? And he said, "That's easy. Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so." That's it. That's our message.

Jesus loves us so much that He was willing to die on the cross for our sins. And when you realize, when it goes from, oh, Jesus did that thing to He died for my sins, my particular sin, when God reveals the darkness of your sin to you, the cross becomes life and life when you realize that nothing short of the death of the Son of God would be adequate to atone for our sins. And this is what we do every single week that I stand up here and I just remind you how evil you are, that you don't understand yourself, you don't understand the world, you don't understand anything. You don't understand parenting. You don't understand that they are born as little evil, cute little baby. They're evil. You're evil. You don't understand marriage unless you understand it's two evil people getting married. You don't understand the economy unless you understand it's evil people. Politics, it's all evil people. It's all evil. You don't understand any of them unless you understand that we're all evil. And it took Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sin.

Every single person, there's two realities to you, to every single person. The first one is who you are on paper. The first one is whom you project yourself to be to the world. It's what you have achieved. It's what you look like. It's your LinkedIn, it's your social media. That's one part of you. And then there's the real part of you, the daily life part of you, the no one's in your car when you're on Storrow Drive part of you. My wife tells me, "Don't forget that our back windows are tinted, but the front ones are not. So when you drive, Pastor Jan, you just need to remember that people are going to see you." I'm like, "I know, I want them to see me. I want them to hear my horn when I'm discipling them to be a better driver. I want to do that."

So there's two parts of it. There's the you part when you interview for a job and they're asking you, "Hey, what's your greatest weakness." "Is I work too hard. I work too hard. I care too much. I can't stop working. That's me. That's my greatest weakness. I'm going to put in 100 hours a week on this job. Tremendous." And the real part of you is one month into your job. That's The real part of you when you work 10, maybe 15 hours a week. Maybe. So your company knows that you're online, you get the little Mouse Jiggler so when you stop working it just says, "You're online. You're online." That's the real part of you. The real part of you is... Your roommates, ask them the real part of you. Your spouse. Yeah, I know the real part. That's every single one of us. And deep inside we know that for all of our moral goodness showboating, for all of our virtue signaling on our bumper stickers and our yard signs, deep inside, when no one's looking, there is so much evil right in there. We just don't have the power, most of us, to sin in the way that we really would want to sin.

If you were a trillionaire, and you can do whatever you want, would you live a holy life for God? There's sin in our hearts, every single one of us. We're all moral failures, inveterate sinners, no more able to rid ourselves of our pride, selfish impurity, sexual sin, hypocrisy, dishonesty, envy and different-stored God. And that's really what it boils down to. God created you. He has power over you. And if you are indifferent toward Him as if God doesn't exist, you are living your life as a huge middle finger to God. I don't care. That's the greatest level of sin that there is. You created me. You have total claim over me. You have a moral code for me that I don't even know what it is.

And then we also have standards for ourselves that we break. We have standards for other people that we ourselves break. And as soon as we realize the true weight of our sin, that we sin against the holy God, we deserved what Jesus Christ went through. He went through hell. We deserved that, but He was willing to take it. We see the holiness of God, the justice of God, and the love of God all coinciding at the cross. When you hear, and when you understand that this terrible death, it was horrifying, and it was horrifying for Jesus. It was terrible because it had to be terrible. Only such suffering, such a sinless victim that God, man, He alone could pay the terrible debt that we owe God. And when you realize that Jesus did that for me, He died on the cross for my sin and my sins, that Jesus Christ is the only one that stands between me and the judgment of God that I deserve, when you see that, now the terrible cross becomes the most precious message that you've ever heard. It's wonderful. It's powerful.

Scripture says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung upon a tree.' Jesus Christ was cursed. Deserved blessing, was cursed because we deserved that curse. He was doing it for us so that He could extend blessing to us. We're like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. For the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Why did Jesus do this? Because He loves us. He loves us. That's the only reason why He did it. 1 John, 3:16, "By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."

He died for us when we were His enemies, when we were His sinners. He did that because He loves us, so that He can forgive us. Jesus Christ loves you. We are not to take that for granted. Jesus Christ the God of the universe whom we've rebelled against, turned our back on Him, He loves us. 1 John 4:9-10, "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." On the one hand, God loves you, but that doesn't make sense unless you understand that God hates you. It's true. A lot of us, we've just taken the message of Christianity, "Jesus loves you," put that as a bumper sticker. Your buddy, Jesus? Yeah, yeah, you're cool. Look up the word propitiation. It means He absorbed the wrath of God. Meaning God has a wrath against you. God hates you. In your sin, apart from Christ, God hates you.

When people say things like, "Every single one of us, we're a child of God." No, we're not. We're creatures of God. But if you reject Jesus Christ, you're not a child of God. You're still in your sins. So for love of God to make sense, you need to understand what it took for God to not hate you anymore. And it took Him pouring out His hatred, His wrath,... on Christ for your sins. We receive the love of God when we believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins.

Here's what the early Christian father, Tertullian, described this. This is how he described the place of the cross, the heart of the early Christians. He says, "Every forward step and movement, every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, and all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead sign of a cross just as a reminder that the cross is the center of everything we do. The cross is power. And also, the cross is wisdom." St. Paul uses this word 17 times in the 1 Corinthians, wisdom. In the first three chapters, 16 times. In all of his other letters, he uses the word wisdom only 11 times. So this is crucial to him. It's the Greek word, sophia. I remember I loved that word so much in seminary. I named my first daughter after wisdom, Sophia, Lord give us wisdom. If anyone lacks wisdom, God gives us sophia. So anytime I say Sophia, just a reminder that I need more wisdom from God.

I went on a roll in seminary, and then we had our second kid. I was still in seminary, cage stage, where everything's about seminary. And then I had my second kid, my second daughter. I liked the ESV's Bible version so much I named my second daughter ESV, Elizabeth Seraphin Vezikov. I was going to keep doing that with all my other kids. My wife was like, "That's enough. That's enough. We're not going to play that game." But he talks about wisdom here as this is how you understand the world, that you do not truly understand reality unless you understand that Jesus Christ was crucified for our sins. And that's why he does this analysis of it doesn't matter how wise you are in the world. It doesn't matter if you have a PhD from Harvard. It doesn't matter if you're a president of Harvard. Doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter you're noble birth. None of that matters when it comes to knowing the greatest truth at the center of the universe is that Jesus Christ is Lord, Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

If you don't know that, if you don't believe the greatest truth at the heart of the universe, you're wrong. If you don't know that this is true, you're wrong about the most important fact. Therefore, no matter how wise you are from an earthly perspective, you're a fool. If you don't believe that Jesus is Lord, if you don't submit to Him, you're going to die. You're going to stand before Him, and all of your eternity you're going to be saying, "I was a fool. I was wrong about the greatest truth." That's why he talks about wisdom. And that's why in 1 Corinthians 1:25-2:5, he goes on and he's like, "Consider your calling, bros. Not many of you were wise, not many by worldly standards, not many powerful, not many of noble birth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." And what he says, "What makes the difference, what made you a Christian, it's not your education. It's not your bank account. What made you a Christian, what made you a Christian is that God chose to save you so that no one boasts.

And that's why he goes on, "God chose... " That's verse 28. He starts at 27, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification, redemption. So that as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'" So if you are a Christian and I ask you, "Why are you a Christian? Why are you a Christian?" and if you say anything along the lines that begins with I, if you say anything where it's like, "I believed. I studied. I read. I chose Jesus," then I don't know if you're a Christian. Because it wasn't you at all. The answer is, "Jesus saved me. Jesus chose to save me."

Christians need a robust understanding of election and predestination. But what makes the difference between an unbeliever and a believer? What makes the difference between someone who's dead in their sins and someone who is alive to God? What makes the difference? What role did you play to decide that you are going to be born? Nothing. No one asked you. No one gave you a vote. You weren't interviewed. Nothing. Same goes with becoming a Christian. You become a Christian, the only reason you're a Christian: God saved you. The only reason I'm a Christian. God saved me. And I can't believe God saved me. If you know me, I have a hard time following Jesus as it is. But if I wasn't a Christian, if I know the Holy Spirit, I would be one bad guy. I'd be a terrible dude. I'd be a gangster or a legal gangster. That's working for the IRS and stealing money from people legally because taxation is theft. I'd do one or the other.

But God saved me. That's it. This is what he's saying, he's like, "You heard the message that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. Jesus was crucified for you. You Heard it, but what makes the difference between one person hearing another person hearing is God chose you. God by the power of the Holy Spirit saved you. You need to understand, you played zero role in that. If you're like, "Well, how do I know if I'm elect?" Choose yourself. That's how I say. Choose Jesus, and then you're elect. But you only chose Jesus because Jesus chose you. That's how it works. So that there's 0% of your work in being saved because Jesus saves.

You know who we are? We're the degenerate, reprobate sinners. We should have been left in our sins. I got one Bible verse, one very special Bible verse the Lord laid on my heart today. At the next Mosaic members meeting, this is the next... 2020, my t-shirt idea was, "2020, skubula happened." If you don't know what skubula is, look it up. My idea for 2021 is from 1 Corinthians 4:11-13. Let me read the text. "To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless. We labor working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted; we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things." I want a t-shirt that says, "Mosaic Boston, scum of the earth." That's what I want. Or if we ever rebranded the church, I want to be scumoftheearthchurch.com. That's what I want. This is tremendous. What's your message to the world? You're all scum. We're the worst scum of the earth.

Jesus Christ died for us. The Son of God died for us? What? To make us children of God. I can't believe it. And by the way, this message is what transformed the world. St. Paul was writing to Christians who lived under tyranny. Not only was it illegal to be a Christian, but they were persecuted for their faith, made a show in arenas where tens and hundreds of thousands would gather to watch Christians getting eaten by lions and crucified upside down, et cetera, et cetera. And by the way, if you're not a Christian, you have to answer the question of how did Christianity, despite the odds, how did it grow from one Jewish guy, kind of a rabbi, kind of a carpenter? He had 11 guys and then St. Paul gets saved. And then with them in 100 years is 25,000 Christians in the Roman Empire. And then when that generation of eyewitnesses died, it became even more powerful so that by the time Constantine comes to power in 310, we go from 25,000 Christians in the year 100 to 20 million Christians by 310 A.D. In 200 years, it grew by 40% per decade, the greatest movement in the history of the world. How did that happen?

It happened with people proclaiming the message: Christ crucified. Just to give you a perspective, it was illegal to be a Christian. They didn't have church buildings. They didn't have any institutional resources. So how in the world did that happen? They proclaimed the one message that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we are to submit to Him. We haven't submitted to Him. We deserve damnation, but Jesus Christ is also savior. And then once you're saved, you've got to bring everything, every part of your life in submission to Jesus Christ. And startled the message, Jesus is Lord. And they got that from Deuteronomy 6:14 where it says, "Hear all Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord you got with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength."

The Lord is one. Yahweh is Lord. Jesus shows up and says, "I'm Yahweh. I am Lord. I'm king over everything." God is one, and the task of our lives is to bring every aspect of our lives under the reign of Jesus Christ, every aspect of our life, from our finances to our work, to our domestic life, to sexuality. Everything we bring under the reign of Jesus Christ. And the reason why we focus on Jesus in particular is because that's how the New Testament explains how we are to do ministry. God the Father puts Jesus in a position of preeminence, and the Holy Spirit blesses the church when the church focuses on Jesus Christ. Why? Because of the role he played in redemption, but also the role that God the Father gives Jesus as sitting at the right hand of God the Father.

Psalm 110:1 says, "The Lord says to my Lord," so God the Father speaks to God the Son, "'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" And Paul even suggested the actual function of the Lordship was given by the Father to the Son, it's passed to Jesus. Ephesians 1:20-23, "He," God the Father, "raised Him," Jesus, "from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named not only in His age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under His feet and gave Him as a head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all."

So Jesus is in the position of preeminence, and that's why we focus on Jesus. That's why we talk about Jesus all the time. If you ever move away, and you're looking for a church, this is the secret sauce of finding if it's a good biblical church. When the pastor gets up there and preaches a sermon, he's got to say the name of Jesus at least 50 times. That's just from my professional experience. It's got to be at least 50 times. You just talk about Jesus. If you don't talk about Jesus, huge red flag, huge red flag. And if you change the name of Jesus, if it's like Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints, no, don't change the name, it's just Jesus Christ. You talk about Jesus Christ because the Bible tells us to talk about Jesus Christ. And when we talk about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit takes that message. It is power, and it is wisdom. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Him. Our identity, our destiny as a church must be inextricably linked to Jesus Christ. He's the only way into a relationship with God.

A lot of churches talk about God in general, some nebulous idea, so that you can think God is whomever you want, that God demands whatever you think he demands. But when we say Jesus Christ, this is a historical figure who lived in a particular time, particular place, human body. He really lived. He really taught. He really died. Historical fact. We're not talking about spiritually or this is metaphor for something. He literally died for our sin, and He literally rose from the dead. So when we talk about Jesus, we're talking about what's at the heart of scripture. Jesus Christ is the door. He's the connection to God the Father.

George Adam Smith, 19th-century biblical scholar, but wanted to see the holy land. He meets a shepherd in the holy land, and the shepherd was very hospitable. They spent the day together. And at the end of the day, the shepherd said, "Hey, do you want to see the fold where I keep the sheep?" And he goes into an enclosure with four walls, and there's an opening in one of the walls. The sheep all came in, and the shepherds said, "This is where they go at night." And then George Adam Smith asked, "Hey, where's the door? Where's the gate." And the shepherd says this: "When the light has gone and all the sheep are inside, I lie at that open space and no sheep ever goes out but across my body, and no wolf comes in unless he crosses my body. I am the door."

Jesus Christ is the only way into a relationship with God, and He's the door because He laid down His life for His own sheep. Apart from Jesus Christ, we are nothing. Apart from Jesus Christ, we have no message as a church. Apart from Jesus Christ, we have no mission as a church. We take all of our talking points from Jesus Christ. I pray that we never become like the Church of Laodicea, which a lot of the churches in Boston, historically, they became the church in Laodicea. Church of Laodicea, Jesus Christ is standing outside the door knocking. A lot of people use that verse in Revelation 3 to say, "Oh, Jesus is standing at the door of your heart, and He's knocking." No, Jesus doesn't stand at doors, and He doesn't knock. He breaks the door down and regenerates people. That's how Jesus saves people.

But he's talking about Jesus not in terms of one particular soul. He's talking about Jesus Christ is standing outside of a church. It's the Church of Laodicea. How did Jesus get outside the church? They forgot to let Him in. Jesus is standing outside the door knocking. They forgot to let Jesus in. So the question we're going to ask is, for myself, is Jesus Christ the Lord of my life? For my family, is Jesus Christ the Lord of my family? Is Jesus Christ the Lord of my community group? Do you talk about Jesus in your community group? Is Jesus Christ at the center of my conversations with other Christians, or do we talk about the Red Sox finally going to turn things around, or the Pyths, they really got a squad this year? Or are we're going to talk about politics?

What really brings things into perspective is when someone dies, someone close to you dies. I had a family member that passed away this week. And we had a gathering with my family yesterday, completely different. Just the reminder of how close we are to death. You know what we talked about? We talked about Jesus. We hugged each other. We cried. We told each other how much we love each other. We focused on what matters. Every single one of us needs to live every day like that, that this day could be my last. Because there will come a day that will be I last, and we have no idea when that day comes. Imagine if we lived like that, that every time you saw an unbelieving friend, you want to tell them about Jesus. This is the only hope you have. This is the only way to God. This is the only way for your sins to be forgiven.

And with Christians, why aren't we talking about Christ all the time? It could be our last day. The greatest example I see this is in Elijah. I'll do this, and I'll close with a quote from John Stott. Elijah in 2 Kings, the day before he gets taken up to heaven, it's his last day on earth, you know what he does? He wakes what's up, and he preaches the gospel in Bethel, preaches about God, preaches in Jericho, preaches in Jordan. What you realize is he's just living a normal life. It's just what he did every day. He just shared with people about God over and over and over. He followed the normal schedule. He so followed God as shepherd. Didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary on his last day alive, and he goes to heaven in glory. He's lived his day every day like it was his last.

Imagine if we did. Imagine if we as a church had that kind of urgency. There's people around us who are dying, who are going to die and spend eternity either with God in heaven or apart from God in hell. It all depends on what they do with this message. I can't save them with the message, but I can proclaim the message and then let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit will do. Jesus Christ is our touchstone. He's our defining center. He's our founder. And therefore, he has preeminence in our life as a people, our life as a church.

Oh, here's the last thing I wanted to say before John Stott. The gospel is something so simple that every child can understand it. And the gospel is the wisdom of God, that once you start to plumb the depth... It's like the message, "Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior or Christ crucified," and you read it and like, "Oh, tremendous." But then it's like you take the message and you pull it out. It's like an accordion. And you see it's like level after level after level after level. And then you see it's dimensions. You're not just talking about one dimension or secondary, you're talking about multiple dimensions of the gospel as it applies to every aspect of your life. That's why we focus on the gospel.

Okay, John Stott, end of his life. If you want more theology on the cross, the greatest work written on this and the most accessible is written by John Stott. It's called The Cross of Christ. It's probably one of the greatest books of the 20th century. It's a modern classic. In the preface to the masterpiece, this is what he writes: "I try to show that the cross transforms everything. It gives us a new worshiping relationship to God, a new and balanced understanding of ourselves, a new incentive to give ourselves a mission, a new love of our enemies, and a new courage to face the perplexities of suffering. In daring to write a book about the cross, there is, of course, a great danger of presumption. This is partly because what actually happened when God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ is a mystery whose depths we will spend eternity plumbing. And partly because it would be most unseemly to feign a cool detachment. For willy-nilly, we are involved. Our sins put Him there.

"So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts His word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by His love and brimful of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in His service." Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the head of the church. Jesus, we thank you that you died on the cross for our sins. Jesus, we thank you for this message, and we thank you for the power that you bring by the power of the Spirit when this message is proclaimed, when this message is understood and when this message is believed. I pray for every single one of us. Make us a people who love the message of the cross and love the way of the cross and live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Lord, I pray that you continue to save many people in this city, in this region. And use us in the process as we proclaim your gospel and pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card that you can get in the back at the Welcome Center. If you fill it out legibly, return it there, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. We also have a virtual one you can get in the App Store. Just search Mosaic Boston on Google Play or the App Store, and you can also get the card online on our website. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you, the eternal God, have taken us finite, temporal beings who rebelled against you. You could have let us go, leave us alone to wander from you, to rebel against you, and you could have allowed us to die in our sins. Instead you sent your on, Jesus Christ. You loved us so much that you gave your son Jesus Christ to live the perfect life, to proclaim the Gospel, to speak truth to us, because we needed it and because you love us, and love means not just giving people what they want, but giving people what they need above all else. Jesus, you did that, and then on top of everything, you went to the cross to atone for our sins. It was the only way that we could be reconciled with God the Father. And by the power of the Holy Spirit today, we can be reconciled with you and Jesus. Jesus, you save us, and you saved us so that we can covenant together as your people in local churches as an embassy of God, a nation within a nation, a kingdom within a kingdom, to proclaim the glories, the excellencies of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ. That's our job.

I pray, Lord Jesus, show us how much you love the church. You love the church with an intimate, affectionate, a marital, a spousal love. Make us a people who love your church as much as you love the church. That makes the people who are part of the church want to see the church thrive, because the church is your body, and the church is your bride, and the church is your flock. It is your temple. The church is your army. And make us a people who don't just commit, don't just join, but make us a people who care for and are zealous for and pray for and serve the local church. And as we do, Lord, deepen our relationships with each other, and make us a people who don't forget there are many in this city, in this region who don't know you yet. Make the people care about them and go and pursue and preach the Gospel, and welcome them into the fold of God. Blessed art thou and the Holy Scriptures. Right now we pray this in Jesus's name. Amen.

We're in a three week sermon series that we're calling Love Jesus Simple. Those are the core values of Mosaic Boston as a church. Those values shape everything we've done, everything we do, everything we pray to do, and they've shaped the past decade of this church, and we pray that these values shape the next decade and decades, Lord willing, to come. And what do we mean when we say love Jesus simple? We mean that love is the motive for everything that we do. Jesus is our message, and simplicity is our method. What does love mean? Well, love means the God-given gift of love, which is so much more than just sentiment. It's volitional. It's an act of choice. I choose to love you. And the same way that God points to us, takes unlovely people, unloving people, and He chooses to pour out His love on us, that's the same love that motivates everything we do. It's a love that speaks truth into people's lives. You speak the truth with love.

When Jesus Christ came, He lived a perfect life. He fulfilled all of the law, and He summed up the essence of Christianity, the essence of the law, by saying this. That the essence of faith is love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. A holistic love for God. And love your neighbor as you love yourself. So, how did Jesus Christ... He perfectly did both of those. How did He do it? What did He devote Himself to? Did He go around singing praise songs and teaching people to sing praise songs, because hey, if you love God, you sing? Is that all He did? No. And in terms of loving people, did He just start soup kitchens and meet people's physical needs? That's not all He did. He did something so much more. In order to fulfill the commandments to love God and to love people, He devoted Himself to something. He loved something. He loved so much that He sacrificed for something. What was that? It's the church. Jesus Christ fulfilled the two greatest commandments, love God and love people, by loving the church, giving Himself for the church.

Our text for today is Ephesians 5:25 through 27, just to frame up our time together. And if you're new to Mosaic, what we usually do when we preach God's word is we take Holy Scriptures, it could be a paragraph, and we go verse by verse through the text. Today I want to architect, or lay out the architecture of what the church is from the whole framework of Scripture. There's going to be multiple Scriptures, but this will be our landing point. Ephesians chapter five, verses 25 through 27. Would you look at the text with me?

"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these internal truths upon our hearts. What an interesting text to start with. My wife loves this text. She's like, "Baby, you better get that memorized." She said no tattoos, unless I get Ephesians 5:25. A tremendous tattoo, in the Greek. Just to remind myself, husbands, love your wives.

Incredible pattern. But the pattern is given to us because it's based on a reality. What is that reality? The reality is that Jesus Christ loves something above everything else. That He loves this church as a way... He loves the church as a way to love God and to love people. This is what Jesus Christ devoted Himself to. I remember being, I was 22 years old, out at college, working a consulting job in outside D.C., Fairfax, Virginia, and I would drive every day from 8:00 to 8:29. I was driving my '99 Toyota Solara to work every day. And grace to you, John MacArthur would go on, and it was the first time I ever listened to expository preaching, verse by verse. Fell in love with it.

And then I remember listening to John MacArthur sharing his testimony about how God called him to be a pastor, and he asked this question. He said, "Hey, what should I do with my life? What should I devote my life to?" And he said, "I love Jesus Christ and I love the Scriptures, and in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures, I see that Jesus devoted Himself to something, and He devoted Himself to the church above all else. Everything He did, everything He taught, everyone He served, it was all for the church." So why would we not devote ourselves to a greater degree to a church? And I pray that this sermon, this sermon series in particular, will deepen our love and zeal for the church of Jesus Christ.

Three points to frame up our time. The church is gathered. Second, the church is family. And third, the church is temple, body, bride, flock, army, all different metaphors to define this reality of what the church is. And I start with the church is gathered, because gathering in all of the metaphors and all of these instances is essential. Gathering isn't merely a nice thing that Christians do. Gathering is central to what the church is. Gathering is who we are. Apart from the gathering, if the church does meet, there is no church at all.

The Greek word for church is ekklisia, which just means assembly. And a lot of people, when they want to talk about the church, they want to primarily go to talk about the universal church. Let's not talk about local church. Let's talk about universal church. So that's where we'll start. Tremendous. And then we'll talk about the local church. But the universal church is the universal gathering of every Christian in Heaven. Every Christian that has lived, every Christian that currently lives, and every Christian that will, in a sense. Because in Heaven, it's above time. It's a timeless place. So in Heaven, Hebrews 12:23, it says, "The assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in Heaven." So in a sense, every single Christian who is alive today, physically, you're here. Spiritually, you are already assembled in the universal supernatural church in Heaven. Yes, it is a future reality, but it's also a present reality.

Seeing Paul writing to all of the Epistles of the cities, but Colossae, for example. He writes to them in chapter one, verse two. He said, "All of you who are in Christ, you're in Heaven already. You're in Christ, because Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. You're in Christ, but you're at Colossae." So in Heaven you're assembled, but also here on Earth you're assembled. So even from Saint Paul's perspective that if you are part of the universal church, obviously, obviously you're part of the local church, because faithful local churches are earthly displays of the Heavenly church.

Here's how I want to frame up church membership. A lot of people ask me, because a lot of people, a lot of Christians really have no ecclesiology, and perhaps that's some of you. Perhaps you grew up in a church with... There are churches that never talked about a church, never talked about the importance of church. It's like being on a road trip, and you know where you're going, but you never talk about the car itself that you're in. You're just focused on the journey. Yeah, it's important, but you've also got to care for the car, and you've got to gas up the car, and you've got to change the oil, et cetera, et cetera. So, we have to speak about the church. The church is crucial.

And a lot of people are like, "Give me a Bible verse. I just want a Bible verse for the church." I'm going to give you a lot of Bible verses today, a lot. So, you're going to be kind of blown away by how much Scripture's going to come at you real quick. But I'm doing this for a few reasons, because I love Jesus, and I love the Holy Scriptures, and I love the church. I love the church, and I love this church, and I pray that you dear Christians fall in love with the church as much as Jesus Christ loves the church, and become a member of the local church.

So Matthew 18:20, "For where there are two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." All right. Jesus is talking about Christians gathering together, and Jesus is present through the Word. Well, a lot of people take this text out of context, and they use it as an excuse, justification for them not having to be part of a local church. Which is very ironic, because actually, the whole pericope, the whole text, has to do with the importance of the local church, because he's talking about church discipline.

But before I get... I remember I was at a prayer meeting. I joined a church in Moscow when I was doing a study abroad. I loved the church, and they had a prayer meeting. I was like, "Awesome." And I met a guy there who it was his first time, and when it was my first time, he was training for the Olympics in wrestling, and so we were like, "Yeah, let's hold each other accountable, and we'll go to even prayer gatherings." And we gathered. It was me, him, and there was two older ladies every single time. The two older ladies, they'd say the same thing every time. What they would say is, "Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, Jesus is there with us." And I was like, "Oh, that sounds good."

But on the one hand, you're pulling a text out of context, because that text is talking about church discipline in Matthew 18. On the other hand, Jesus said, "I am with you always, until the end of the age." So, Jesus is with every single individual Christian, yeah, so it's not like I need another Christian to say, "Okay, you've got a little Jesus. I've got a little Jesus. With your powers combined, now Jesus erupts." That's not what's going on in here at all. So, you can't use this text to justify you chilling around your fire pit with your boys, smoking a cigar and drinking beers and talking a little about Jesus, saying, "That's my church." That's not your church. A church has qualities, qualifications, clear lines of delineation. And in that context... And we'll get into Matthew 18... it assumes that there's a body of believers. It assumes that we know who's in, who's out. It assumes that there's spiritual leadership. It assumes that the members meet together repeatedly in gatherings. It assumes ordinances and accountable membership.

So, from the perspective of the Old Testament, gathering, the assembly of believers was also always crucial. God saves Israel, brings them out of captivity in Egypt. And the very first thing that He does is He gives Moses the law, and the people of God gather on Mount Sinai to receive God's law. They hear God's law spoken, and Moses calls this in Deuteronomy 10, 9:10. He calls it The Day of Assembly. And then God afterwards says, "Hey. Now I want you to build a tabernacle where the people of God gather on a regular basis for the festivals, for the sacrifice, to hear God's word expounded, explained, for the people of God to worship and praise God." And then Israel would gather in synagogues. They would gather at the temple when it was built, and at critical junctures in the history of Israel. King Solomon, when he dedicated the temple in Second Chronicles, he called it "all of the assembly of Israel."

Then Jesus Christ, He goes to the cross, He dies, He's buried, and then for 40 days He's teaching His disciples. And then He finally ascends to Heaven, and He said, "Don't leave Jerusalem. Don't do anything until I send the helper, the Holy Spirit." On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends upon the people of God, thus forming the first church. And as the church was formed, they knew who was in and who was out. In Acts five, the persecution of that church, and it said, "For fear of the persecution, others would not join the church." Assumption that there's joining. So when people are like, "Give me one Bible verse about church membership," I'm like, "Hold on. I'm going to give you the whole New Testament." Because the New Testament doesn't make sense apart from churches. Christianity doesn't make sense apart from membership in local churches.

That's what Jesus was doing in the Gospels, is training up the leaders of the church. And in the Book of Acts, what we see is the Holy Spirit descends upon the early church, and what we see is the church grows. They go from Jerusalem to Judea to Sumeria to the ends of the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire. Saint Paul even wants to plant churches in Spain. What are they doing? Planting churches in city centers, so from there they could influence all of the Roman Empire. So when people are like, "Hey, give me a Bible verse for church membership," I'm like, "That's like saying, 'Give me a Bible verse to prove that God created everything.'" Yeah, there's one. In the beginning, God created all the Heavens and Earth. Boom. God created everything. But then the proof of it is... Look around. That's how God treats it. And then in Scripture, it's just assumed. It's assumed God created everything. It would be ludicrous to believe anything else. That's how Scripture approaches church membership as well. Obviously this is part and parcel of the faith.

Who starts churches? This is crucial before we start defining the church. God does. Saint Paul says, "I planted, Apollos watered." But God gave the growth. God's the one that's planting churches. So in Acts 20, verse 28, Saint Paul says, "Pay careful attention to yourselves, and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood." He's talking about the elders in Ephesus who are leading a particular group of members in a church. This is Jesus's blood bought church, and He has ordained you. He has chosen you as overseers by the Holy Spirit. That's where it starts, the calling from God. Jesus starts churches. Jesus also ends churches.

In the Book of Revelation, he writes seven letters to seven churches, and to the church in Ephesus he says, in Revelation 2:5, "The words of Jesus Christ. 'Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place, unless you repent.'" Because the church had stopped proclaiming the Word of God, stopped obeying the Word of God, and Jesus says, "I call you to repentance." Because He loves them, so He gives them a hard Word. That's what love means. Giving them what they need most, not what they want most. Calls them to repentance. Or else, He says, "I'm going to snuff out the light, the life of your church."

So there's a lot of churches. There's a lot of church buildings, even in our own city, that are dead. God snuffed out the lamp stand a long time ago, because they wouldn't repent. Every reference to the word church, almost every reference in the New Testament is about the local church, a group of Christians who covenant together, make a clear... There's a clear relationship. You hold me accountable, I hold you accountable to gather regularly for worship of God and ministry of the Gospel, to proclaim the Gospel to one another and to unbelievers, underqualified church leadership. So, that's why Titus has given to us in First Timothy, "For worship the preaching of God's word, the ordinances of baptism and communion."

And yes, there is a universal church, but we're physical beings. We're physical creatures. Right now we're in a time and we're in a place and in a space. So in the same way that our spirit is in the universal church of God there, our bodies need to be in a local church here, and we gather as an assembly, just like the early church did on the day of Pentecost. After they get saved, what do they devote themselves to? That's a tremendous pattern. We should devote ourselves to something similar.

Acts 2:42, 47. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need, and day by day attending to the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people." And the Lord added to their number, which is clear. This is how many we have.

"Day by day, those who were being saved, they devoted themselves to the preaching of the Word, the understanding of the Scriptures." That's the apostles teaching. "They devoted themselves to fellowship." We get to know each other. We know who the other members are, and they did that by fellowshipping in homes, and that's why we have communities. We meet for worship on Sundays, for the Holy Scriptures, to worship God as a corporate body, and then during the week, we meet to have fellowship with one another, breaking of breads, communion. They prayed for one another, and they voluntarily met one another's needs.

I remember in college bible study, a guy was like, "Yup, this is why. This proves that Jesus was a socialist, and the early church was just... They were all socialists. They just sold everything, and they gave everything voluntarily." Voluntarily. That's the difference between socialism and Christianity. Socialism wants to demand, force everyone into generosity. You can't do that. That doesn't usually end well. You need gulags for that. Jesus does that by changing people's hearts. Now we're generous.

So, what we see is that Christianity is inextricably linked to the local church. The local church is the New Testament's expression of Christianity. And we see what happened in Acts, and it continues as the church grew. We see it in the Book of Acts, and then we see the Epistles of Saint Paul. If you don't understand the importance of church membership, clear, defined, who's in, who's out, you're not going to understand the Epistles. Every single one of the Epistles is either written to a church, or is written about churches. That's how important it is. And that's the Epistles. And then from the Epistles, we get the Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation begins with seven letters from Jesus Christ to seven churches, and the Book of Revelation ends with Jesus Christ coming back dramatically for His bride, who is the church.

And just to give you a few other verses, First Corinthians 11:18. Just assume that a church gathers together. "For in the first place when you come together as a church, when you assemble as an assembly." And the original First Corinthians 4:23, "If therefore the whole church comes together." So, the assembly of the covenant members who said this. "We are a church body." They're coming together, gathering together. So the gathering is a distinct event, and then Paul provides specific instructions on what believers should do in church as the church gathers. First Corinthians 14:19, "Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than 10,000 words in a tongue." First Corinthians 14:28, "But if therefore, if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church, and speak himself to God."

And the New Testament instructs Christians as they gather to do things that can only be done when you meet together. Teaching, admonishing one another, singing, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, and reading Scripture publicly. First Timothy, 4:13, "Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture to exhortation to teaching." And when we gather together, we remember our hope that is in Christ, that Jesus is our high priest. He is our temple. And because our hope is in Christ, that's why we gather. A lot of people have this backwards. A lot of people say, "I have a relationship with Christ. He's forgiven all of my sins, and now I could just feed myself off of podcasts, or go to conferences and read Christian books. I can have a great time, and listen to my own preferred style of worship, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." But in Hebrews 10:19 through 25, the writer of Hebrews, he grounds the commandment to not forsake gathering in the hope we have in Christ. So, because we have this hope, because He's our high priest, because we can go to Him, let us go to Him by gathering together.

This is Hebrews 10:19 through 25. "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain that is through His flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the House of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up in one another love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near." So we're not to forsake the gathering because of the hope we have in Christ.

And even when the author of Hebrews wrote this, there were clearly people there, as is the habit of some... And I always feel, whenever I talk about church membership or the importance of attending a church, I always feel like the teacher that gets up and starts berating all the students who are there, berating them because of so many students who are absent. And I get it. You're here. But that issue, that's always been an issue. There's always been Christians who just hear what they want to hear. "Oh, Jesus forgives my sins. Oh, Jesus is my personal savior. Now I can just follow Jesus on my own," without understanding that no, you need to be part of a church. You need the church. The church needs you.

And then also, Jesus envisions the church as a whole when it speaks to the unrepentant sinner. This is in the context of church discipline in Matthew 18. One of the reasons I've been... So, I grew up in a Russian church that my dad was a minister at. Became a member at 16. Moved to college, outside after college. Moved to D.C. Joined a church there where my uncle was a pastor. It was kind of like family, so church goes together. But I remember the first time I joined a church on my own volition, outside of family. I had to make a decision to join this church. It was FBC Durham, where Pastor Andy Davis was, is still the pastor. Where, like you had to decide. This church, what do they believe? How do they do ministry? And it's a volitional decision.

My wife and I, we said, "Look. We want to join this church," even though I was in seminary, and it was just for a short period of time. But I knew we needed it. I knew we needed to go to another body of believers and say, "Please hold us accountable. I do not trust myself, because I know the flesh wants an excuse to walk away from God, walk away from faithfulness. My wife and I and our family, we need this. My soul needs this. I need you to hold me accountable, and I will return the favor." And that's how Jesus views church. Actually, one of the only times He uses the Word ekklisia in the Gospels, He does in the context of church discipline, which is going to a Christian who's living an unrepentant sin and speaking truth into that person's life. As awkward as it is, as hard as it is, this is the most loving thing to do when a person is walking away from the faith, because it wakes them up from the spiritual stupor of sin.

So, this is Matthew 18, 15 through 20. "If your brother sins against your brother," you know who your brother and your sister is, because you have defined relationships with spiritual family. "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church." So, it's clear who the church is, clear who's in and who's out. Tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and tax collector, meaning the person is no longer in the church. The person's in the category of an unbeliever. A believer, by definition, you're a Christian if you repent of your sin. As soon as you stop repenting of sin, you, by your lifestyle, are showing that you are not a Christian. So now you are like a Gentile or a tax collector, so now you're not a brother or sister that we hold each other accountable. Now you're an unbeliever that we are preaching the Gospel to.

Verse 18, "Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven. Whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven. Again I say to you, if two or three of you agree on Earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." So in that context, you see. When the gathering of two or three people who agree, "Yes, this is true. Yes, this is God's will," and yes, this person to testifies to be a Christian isn't living in line with the Gospel, is living in unrepentant sin, now that person is no longer a church, a part of the church. So it's clear who's in, who's out.

Saint Paul, in First Corinthians chapter five there's a sordid account of a gentleman who was sleeping with his mother in law, and they were just celebrating. They're tolerating this sin as a church, because they're so loving. And Saint Paul says, "That's not loving. That's actually the most hateful thing you can do when someone's living in sin and you're celebrating that sin. The most loving thing you can do is to say to that person, 'You're on track to end up in hell for eternity, unless you repent of your sin.'" So then Saint Paul says this. First Corinthians, 5:4, "When you are assembled, when the church ekklisia is assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."

On just the first reading, you know, that's not love. It's the most loving thing that can happen. If a person is walking away from the truth, from Christ, who is the only way of salvation, there's no coming to God the father except through Him. This person is walking away, pursuing sin. And if we as a church say, "Oh, that's fine. That's okay," we're doing the biggest disservice to that person, and we are ruining the testimony of the church and the community at large.

So, Saint Paul then later in that chapter says, "Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? We are to judge brothers and sisters. Are you living in line with the truth of God?" And that's what we mean by love. A lot of you... And I've heard this several times... "I come to Mosaic, and I just feel insulted. You just tell me how much of a degenerate, reprobate, pagan, just ungodly person." That's what I do. That's what I do, because I love you. Because I love you. I don't want you to go to hell. Life is short. Eternity is long. Hell is hot. And there's only one way out, and that's through faith in Jesus Christ. That's why we do what we do.

So a lot of people, when they think, "Oh, love. It's sentimental. It's gooey," if someone says they love you, but never tell you the truth, that person does not love you. They tolerate you. Indifferent is not love. Indifference is actually the greatest level of hate. Even if a person says, "I hate you," at least they care about you. Indifference is like, "I don't care what happens to you." That's not what we do. We want to tell you the truth, and this is why church membership is so important. In church membership, you say, "Please tell me the truth. Please hold me accountable." So church is gathering of the saints, and this is how we actually grow in sanctification to become the Christians we're called to be.

You can't play a sport just virtually and say, "Okay. I did that sport." You can't play football. You can't play Madden Football in a video game and say, "I'm a football player." You're not a football player. You're not a football player. I don't care what football you're talking about. American football or soccer or whatever. I don't care. You've got to actually play. And yes, football players, during the week many of them don't even look like football players. But if you don't show up for game day, you are not on the team. And that's really what church membership is. Who is the team? With whom are we on the team together?

So the gathering of the invisible church is made visible weekly in the gathering together, and then why? Because the church is also family. The church is family. In a family, individuals matter, as does the whole. And you need that balance. My wife and I, we have four daughters. I love my four daughters individually. Individually. They're very different. Each one of them has a... You need a very distinct approach to each one of them. Each one of them, I've learned that approach, I use that approach. We love them individually. And I even tell them, and I say, "Don't tell the others. You're my favorite. You're my favorite." I tell each of them that, and then they get together and they're like, "Dad said I'm his favorite," and the other's like, "Ah, he told me the same thing." Yeah. You are my favorite. Tremendously. But I also love them as a family, as a whole.

And a lot of Christians, they just want this. It's like yes, Jesus loves you individually. If you were the only person to be alive, to have ever lived, Jesus would have still died for your sins on the cross. That's how much He loves you. Your name is graven on His hands. Your name is written in the Book of Life with the Blood of the Lamb. He loves you individually. But not at the expense of loving His family corporally. God is Father, and He adopts children into His family. When you become a Christian it's a process of adoption, and God loves his family corporally.

So we reject the two extremes of spiritual individualism and institutional Christianity. Spiritual individualism says, "I have a private relationship." By a personal relationship with Jesus, what they mean is, "It's private. You can't ask me about my relationship. You can't ask me what I believe about Jesus. You can't hold me accountable for anything. Who are you to judge me? It's just me and Jesus." And we reject that, because that contradicts Scripture. We also reject institutional Christianity, as seen in the traditional Roman Catholic church and Roman Catholicism, where they say there's no salvation outside the church and necessitates sacraments for salvation. We reject that as well. We do believe in individual regeneration. When you become a Christian, you yourself, the expectation now is you join the corporate body of believers, and you make your spiritual individual experience a congregational reality. That's why Scripture talks about church as a household of God. That you're adopted, and now you're in the House of God.

First Timothy, 3:14 and 15, "I hope to come to you soon," Paul tells Timothy, "... but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, a pillar and a buttress, the truth." Paul writing to Timothy, who is a pastor, an elder of the local church, and he said that church is a household of God. We're a family. A family of truth seekers, a family of truth defenders. And as the redeemed family of God, yeah, we are His special people with a special purpose. To do what? To model what God expects of us all. So, we as a church need to... The vision should be that we reflect to the world, to the community, what it means to be a redeemed people. That we are a city within a city, a people within a people, a nation within a nation, so when people look into the church, they say, "This is how God intends for people to live." This is how God intends for family to happen, for marriage to happen, for sex to happen, for raising children, for money, for job, everything." It's a categorically different humanity.

Therefore church membership is important, because if there's a member of the church, a member of the family who is not representing God the Father, is not mirroring or growing in the likeness of God the Son, or isn't walking in the Holy Spirit, but is actually walking in the flesh, that's when we need to come along to this brother or sister and say, "Look. For the witness of the church, for the witness of this body, we need to work together and lead you to a path of repentance."

The other thing about family. This is why family is so important. How many of you have siblings, and you had no say in who your sibling is? No say. Just none. You had no clue. My mom and dad, I'm the oldest of five. My mom and dad, it was me and then three sisters. And I thought we were done. I thought we were great. I thought it was tremendous. We're doneski. And then I'm in sixth grade. I had a brother show up. Like, "Ugh. Great. Tremendous." And I love him. He's great. But I had no choice. You get to choose your friends. You have no say of who your siblings are. I told my daughter. I was just kidding around. I have four daughters. I told my daughter Sophia, I'm like, "Oh, I can't wait to have a son. I still want a son." She started freaking out. "No, not another one. Please, no." It's already hard enough for her at school to tell people that she's got three siblings. Like, haven't you heard of climate change and overpopulation and stuff? No, I haven't. The Bible says kids are a blessing. Praise God. Hallelujah. But my wife said no more for now, so who knows?

But what I'm saying is that kids, they have no choice. They have absolutely zero choice. You have zero choice. Same thing with the family of God. And we have people come in from bigger churches, maybe down South, where they've got a program for everything. They've got a niche group for everything. And they come in and they're like, "Okay, which one of your community groups is the young adult ministry? Which one of your community groups is the singles group? Which one of your community groups is parents with children, or moms of preschool? MOPS, moms of preschool?" And we don't play that game. I don't see any of that in the Holy Scripture. We have community groups for Christians. And I want your community... I want you to join a community group. You can't be a member of the church unless you join a community group, because that's the only way where we can actually shepherd you as a family. The little family gatherings, get to know each other. We're interconnected, interdependent, et cetera.

But in a community group, I want it to be slightly uncomfortable. I want it to be slightly annoying. There's people that show up and they have a different house smell, from a different... You know what I'm saying? You're different. You're just a different aroma. It's all right. Welcome. I've got a different house smell. And there's people that show up with accents. Yeah. We want you to sit there and actually have a hard time to figure out what this person is saying. We want you to do that. Because in the Kingdom of Heaven, there's going to be people talking all kinds of different languages, so let's learn them now. So, this is what we do as a church. And you know what? When you show up, now you have to learn how to love. Love isn't just getting along with people who are just like you. That's not love. That's affinity. That's easy. Love is when you have people who are very different from you, slightly annoying, maybe smell differently, their theology is off, and you love them because you choose to love them.

I love my daughters. There's an affection there. We love them. We're generous with words of affection, and with massages and hugs. They love the little scratchy scratch before they go to sleep, and the little tips of your fingers. They love that. I do that on the face, and then I close their eyelids, just you're asleep and then that's it. Because I love them. It's tremendous. But there's some days where everyone's exhausted. You show up and you're like, "Just figure it out. You brush your own teeth. You wash up. Find yourself dinner. I'm out. I'm locking myself in the door. You're lucky I haven't abandoned you." There's days like that as well. And the only reason I haven't abandoned them at moments like that is because I love them, and love means I made a decision. I did that with my wife, until death do us part. I do it with my kids. It's a covenant relationship. That's why covenant membership is so important at Mosaic. You make that covenant because you're saying, "There will be days where I would have left, had I not made a decision to love you." And that's why church membership is so important.

First John, 3:10, "By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice the righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother." And here it's not just physical biological brother. It's spiritual brother. He's talking about the brethren in the church. So, we are a gathering. Church is a gathering. Church is a family. And then I'm going to give five more metaphors. It's a temple, a body, a bride, a flock, an army. And as I give you these five metaphors from Scripture to describe church, I want you to think through these metaphors through the prism of the mission statement of Mosaic. What is the mission statement? Mosaic's mission statement is we exist to love Jesus, love those who love Jesus, and then love those who don't yet love Jesus. Love Jesus. This is our worship. This is our obedience. This is our service to God. Love those who love Jesus. This is we love other Christians, in particular this household of God with whom we covenant together. And then love those who don't yet love Jesus. We do those two because we want unbelievers to come to know Jesus.

So, the first metaphor is the temple. The temple assumes collective. You're interlocked. You're interdependent. Collective worship, collective ministry, collective witness. We've heard from First Corinthians and Second Corinthians, where it says that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So, this is the verse that people use to say, "Hey, you shouldn't abuse alcohol or drugs. Hey, you should eat right and exercise." Your body, your physical body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You should care for yourself. Yes, it is you singularly, but most of the time that metaphor is used plurally. That you together are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And you see this in First Corinthians chapter three, verse 16. "Do you not know that you," plural, "... are God's temple and God's spirit dwells in you?" Meaning every single Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit, and when we come together, we come together as building blocks or stones of the spiritual temple, and when we're gathered together, we experience more of the work of the Holy Spirit together.

First Peter 2, four through eight, talks about this. "As you come to Him a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves are like living stones. Like living stones, being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifice that's acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, for it stands in Scripture. Behold, I'm laying on Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious. Whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame." So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone and a stone of stumbling and a rock of a fence. They stumble because they disobey the Word, as they were destined to do. Jesus is the cornerstone. Every single Christian in a local church is a stone that is built up together.

So, from the perspective of the prism of how do we love God, love Jesus, love those who love Jesus, love those who don't yet love Jesus, from the perspective of the temple, is we first of all need to be part. I need to love God and honor God and obey God's commandment to be part of a local church, because that local church has a space in the wall of the temple that I need to fill. So, now I'm in there. I fill that need. Whatever that need is, I bring all my talent, time and treasure. Whatever God has given me, I do that. And as I do it, I'm interconnected with the other stones that have the Holy Spirit, Christians. There's people underneath me that I am standing on their shoulders. I need them. I need them to serve me and teach me. There's people above me. I need to serve these people. I need to support them and encourage them. And there's people next to me, to the left and to the right.

So that's from that perspective of like, this is how I love God. I do what He calls me to do. And I love other believers, but I also understand that there's room for those who are not yet Christians. So, we will never get to this point as a church where you say, "We're big enough. We've got enough members. We've got enough Christians." No, because as soon as you say that, you insulate yourself and you forget the mission, that we are to welcome other people to join, to be part, to allow God to build them into the community.

Ephesians 2:19 through 22, "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone in whom... " Excuse me. "In whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit." Here are the whole structures, the church an emphasis. He's writing this letter to a local church, and to that local church he's saying, "You're a structure. You're being joined together. You are the holy temple. You're being built together." So from the one hand, you need to know that God builds the church. On the other hand, God uses us to build the church. So where am I building the church? With whom am I building the church? For whom am I building the church? That's for God, and for those who don't yet know Him.

The second metaphor that we're looking at, point three is that Christ, church is His body. He loves His church. He's so intimately involved with His church, that He views His church as His body. A lot of people who just say, "I love Jesus and only Jesus," they worship a decapitated Jesus. It's like cutting off His head, and, "I love Jesus, and I don't need His body." Jesus Himself views the church as His body.

I'll give you just one illustration of this. Saint Paul, when he was still an unbeliever, he was persecuting the church, zealous for the things of God, not knowing the things of God, ignorant of the truth. He's going to persecute Christians, to imprison them, to kill them. Jesus stops him on the road to Damascus, and look what Jesus says. "Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from Heaven shone around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him... " And this is the voice of Jesus, "... a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul. Why are you persecuting... " What? Christians? Why are you persecuting the church? No. "Why are you persecuting me?" Jesus is so intimately involved with the church, if you persecute the church, Jesus feels it. It's His body. Therefore how you view, how you engage, how you serve, how you love, how you care for the church is how you engage with and view and care and love for Jesus Christ. Christ is the beloved Son, and as people who are created in Him, redeemed by Him, now our identity is in Him. Christ is the beloved, and in Him, we the church are also His beloved body.

Ephesians four, 11 through 16, "He, Jesus, gives the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers, the spiritual leaders," qualified spiritual leaders, for what? What's our job? What's my job, Pastor Shane's job, Pastor Andy's? What's our job? To do the work of the ministry? No. Our job, we're basically coaches. I'm Belichick. That explains my preaching style. This is what I do. I'm Belichick. I'm going to start preaching in a hood. I'm Belichick. All of you are Tom Brady. Don't go to Tampa. Don't go. It's nicer there, I know. But still. You're called here. Your job is to do the work of the ministry. My job is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the Body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith, of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullest of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body. So we hold on to Jesus, the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow, so that it builds itself up in love." We, the local church, are the Body of Christ. So how do we love Jesus from this perspective, looking at the body through the prism? How do we love Jesus? We love Jesus by doing the job that He has designed us to do in the local body. And we love those who love Jesus, we love other Christians, because they're other body parts of Jesus, and my, me as the gift that God has given me, I need to bless others, and they need to bless me, and we're interdependent. And how do we love those who don't yet love Jesus? When the body is healthy, when the body is functioning, is firing on all pistons, so to speak, that's when we can fulfill the mission of God most effectively, and that's when the love of God and the spirit of God draws people to Himself.

First Corinthians 12:12 through 27, "For just as the body is one that has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that will not make it any less a part of the body. But if the ear should say, 'Because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? And if the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'

"On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer. If one member is honored, all rejoice together."

Now, you are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it. That's why we call it membership. People are like, "Ah, I don't like membership. I'm not a big fan of organized religion. Membership reminds me of Costco. Nah, I don't want to do that." That's not what we mean when we say membership. We're talking about you're a member of a body, and each one of us has a very specific role. For as long as you're here, you need the church and the church needs you. The parts are important, but so is the sum.

And then the church is the bride. More than 30 times in the New Testament, the church is called the beloved. The church is the Bride of Christ. Ephesians 5:22 through 27, "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church's body, and is Himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. That she might be holy without blemish." So, the church is the Bride of Christ.

And you need to meditate on this if this is the first time you're hearing it through the prism of loving Jesus, loving those who love Jesus, and loving those who don't yet love Jesus. We love Christ as the church. We love Him by pursuing holiness, by being washed with the water of the Word. What's He doing with the preaching of the Word? It's revealing sin or blemishes, unrighteousness, unholiness, so we want to love God by saying, "God, where must we repent, so that we can be a bride that is unblemished?"

It's like when people get married, they say like on your wedding day, that is the pinnacle of your physical attraction. Like for both, like both groom and bride. You did the whole protocol. You worked out. Body fat is as low... You know, that's as low as it's getting. You got the hair did and your skin therapy and all that. You're looking tremendous. That's what they say. You prepare for that wedding. In a similar way, the church needs to be... This is why. We're preparing for the wedding day in Heaven, when Jesus comes and returns, takes His bride, and we're going to rejoice and celebrate at the wedding supper of the Lamb. So that's number one. That's how we love God.

How do we love one another? "Hey, brother or sister. This is unbecoming of the Bride of Christ, this lifestyle." Like, "This is a blemish, and let's work through this together. Repent of sin." And then for unbelievers, we do the same thing and we say, "Look. Jesus accepts us as we are." Jesus did not choose a perfect bride. He did not. He chose a very unperfect bride, a very blemished bride, a very sinful, unrighteous, unholy bride. So unbelievers, yeah. You're all welcome. That's how we enter the church together. Jesus Christ welcomes us, accepts us as we are, and then loves us so much that He transforms us into His own likeness. Jesus committed to an imperfect bride.

So just this idea, like when people say, "I love Jesus. I just don't love the church." It's false. That's false. You don't love Jesus. If you don't love His bride, and you don't love the church, it's like you coming up to me like, "Jan, I like you. I just don't like your wife." Yeah, I'm never talking to you again. Well, I'll pray for you, but we're not hanging out. And that's what people do with Jesus. "Jesus, I love you. I can't stand your bride." And Jesus is like, "I love my bride, so, sorry." That's how it is. So, that's number one.

The other thing is a lot of people say that church is a man made invention. "It's not God's idea. God just wants a relationship with me, that's all." That's not true. The church is God's invention. Jesus Christ is going to marry the church. It's His bride. He loves the church. And then the other thing. A lot of people are like, "Yeah, but church is full of so many hypocrites." And that mindset, it's usually like people who have that mindset who are perennial church hoppers. Just go to a church, just consume. Go to another church, consume. And they never commit. Here's what I say to people like that. If you ever find the perfect church, please leave it, because you're going to ruin it, because every single one of us is a sinner. We're imperfect. We're all sinners.

Charles Spurgeon said this: "If I had never joined a church until I found one that was perfect, I should have never joined one at all. And the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for I would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member. But still, imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on Earth." Yeah, we're a fellowship of the flawed. We're all sinners, though repentant. That's the difference. And Jesus does accept us, and He does bring us into a relationship with Himself because He loves us as a husband loves a bride.

So, we're also the flock of Jesus. Jesus is our great shepherd, who laid down His life for the sheep. And Jesus said, "My sheep, hear my voice," and then they follow me. First Peter, 5:1 through 5 is important. "So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker of the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, but not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples in the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

I use this text because it's so important. He's talking to pastors, and he's saying, "You, pastors, are shepherds of the sheep that is God's flock. But don't forget Jesus is your over shepherd." So what he's saying is, "You, pastors, are still sheep. You're sheep following the shepherd. The better you follow the shepherd, the better you know how to shepherd the flock for your sheep." So, the idea here is we're the flock of Jesus Christ following Him, but you can't just be the dumb sheep that's always consuming and only caring for itself. You've got to grow to the point of you now are a mature sheep, and a mature sheep cares for the other sheep. So the mature sheep are the ones on the outside, and the ones in the front and the ones in the back, keeping the immature sheep who are still growing in the middle, following Jesus.

And the mature sheep should be the ones that when they see a sheep wandering, they're the ones that go and get it, or notify the shepherd, "Hey, let's go get it." And those are the ones on the outside that see a wandering sheep by itself and say, "Hey, repent of your sins, little dear sheep, and turn to Jesus Christ and follow us. You're in the flock now." So, that's where we need to grow.

And then finally, the church is an army. Church is an army. If you don't understand this reality, you're not going to understand church as God called it to be. The church is by definition militant, and I use that word on purpose, that we are waging a spiritual war individually fight the good fight of faith. Stand firm in the Lord, and in the strength of His might, all of Ephesians six. And we also wage that war together. Yes, we were rebels. Yes, we were enemies of God. Yes, we were on the opposing team. We were in the Kingdom of Darkness. God saves us, snatches us out of captivity.

"Now we join His army, and our weapon is the love of God, the Gospel of God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit in prayer... " This is Ephesians 3:7 through 10... "Of this Gospel, as made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which is given to me by the working of His power to me. Though I'm the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Through the church, manifold wisdom of God, made known to whom? Who's the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places? It's Satan. It's demons. It's the demonic.

He's saying that when the Church of God assembles, when it worships, when it obeys God, when it prays, the demons are looking, and the demons are in trepidation, trembling before the Church of God. This is why Satan hates the gathering of Christians. Satan wants to destroy the gathering of Christians. This is why whenever you see an authoritarian regime, a political regime come into power, the very first thing they start to attack is the physical gathering of Christians. I've seen this intimately in the Soviet Union. My dad and my uncle, other family members, spent time in gulags for being Christians, for gathering as saints. You see this with the CCP. The Chinese Communist Party makes a habit of breaking up churches, and this should make us pause and think, why? Why do they care so much about these just regular people, Christians gathering to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ? Why do they feel so threatened by the gathering of believers?

I'll tell you why. Because they listen to the message, and the message is that our ultimate allegiance is not to a political party, and it's not to a political figure. It's not to a king, and it's not to a nation. Whatever political figure comes into power, we say, "That's not the guy. That's not the guy. That's not the guy. Don't put your hope and trust in that guy." No. We are not citizens primarily of this land, of this nation. We are a Kingdom within a Kingdom, a Nation within a Nation. We are an embassy, and we are ambassadors of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and He is giving us marching orders here, which is to go and make disciples of all nations.

So, that's why at church we don't just sit around in a circle and talk about our feelings, and if that's what you do primarily at your community group, get past that quickly. Because from feelings you've got to go to the fact, of the fact that God gave us marching orders to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we do that. That's how we're organized. Because we love God, we love Christians, and we love those who don't yet love Jesus.

I'll close with this. John 13:34 through 35, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another by this. All people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another." A few questions to finish up our time. What if the church hurt me? Do I still have to go to church? The church hurt Jesus. The church wounded Jesus, and Jesus still shows up. So go to church, join the church, be the church. Well, what if the church is annoying? Well, so are you, so go to church. What if I connect more with God and nature than with people? Go to church, and then go to nature. Do that after. What if I can just get everything I need from an online service? Well, it's literally called a service, and if the only one being served is you, that's not a worship service, so go to church.

What if I'm afraid of COVID? Well, do you go to the grocery store? Do you go to the gas station? Do you go out to eat? Do you go to house parties? Do you go to sporting events? Do you fly? Well, I don't want to put anyone at risk. Well, do you drive? Because if you drive in Boston, you're putting everyone at risk. But Delta, but Lambda, but Kappa. But the Alpha and Omega said that we go to church, so go to church. Love God, and... That's Jesus, by the way, if you don't know Revelation. Love God, and love people by loving the church. Amen. Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you for this time and the Holy Scriptures. We thank you that you love the church, and I pray infuse our hearts with the same love for your church, for your local church here at Mosaic here in Boston, the Greater Boston area. Continue to build your church, Jesus. We love you and pray this in your name. Amen.

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People in the back, if you fill it out legibly, and then just return it to the welcome table, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. Also, we have a connection card online, on our website, or in the app that you can get in the App Store, or on Google Play. Just search Mosaic Boston. That said, would you please pray with me over the preacher of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are God who speaks, that you have given us your word. Indeed, all of creation proclaims the glory and the majesty of God. Every time we go into nature, we meditate upon nature. We hear a sermon from you. We thank you for that natural revelation, but we're even more thankful for the supernatural revelation of your son, Jesus Christ, the eternal word. Jesus, we thank you that you were born, that you lived a perfect life, fully God, fully man's son of God, son of man. You lived a life of total sacrifice, a life of selflessness, a life of love toward God and love toward people. Jesus Christ, despite the fact that you had not sinned, not once, you were crucified by a hard-hearted people, people who they thought were doing the right thing, and yet they were committing the most heinous crime in the history of the universe.

Lord, we thank you that you did not remain dead, but on the third day you rose to life, and we thank you that you ascended to heaven, you ascended to the Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for the gift of regeneration, that you are a god who takes our hearts of stone, replaces it with a heart of flesh, a heart that's tender to you, and we thank you, great God, that you, along with giving us your eternal word, Jesus Christ, the son of God, give us the living scripture, your word inspired by the Holy Spirit. Your word is given to us to teach us and guide us and illuminate our path, but also to warn us, to rebuke us, to convict us, to show us the deceitfulness of sin in our blind spots.

So, I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures today, and for every person that's not a Christian, save them today. For every person that is a Christian, give them a vision of their commitment to the church, that they are members of a body, and they are to commit to a church, because true worship is holistic worship, entails all of life, and we need our brothers and sisters to help us with that. Lord, bless our time in the holy scripture. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

We are finishing a sermon series going through some of the choice Psalms that we've been calling balm Psalms because they're like balm to our souls. Today we are in Psalm 95, and then next week we are beginning a three-week series about the values of Mosaic Boston as a church, and along with the values we'll talk about our vision for the next season in life, and after those three weeks we will begin our fall series. Today's sermon, Psalm 95, the title of the sermon is Holistic Worship, and I think it sets us up perfectly for the series coming up.

You ever hear anything to this effect, something similar where someone says, "Oh, you go to church to worship? That's nice. That's great. Good for you. I don't need to go to church to worship because I can worship God anywhere. I can worship God as I'm hiking Mount Washington. I can worship God as I'm at the beach in Newport, and I can worship God in nature. I can worship God playing golf or swimming. You choose to worship God with Christians at church. I choose to worship God anywhere. That's what I do." Of course, this is true, somewhat. It's true that you can worship God anywhere. We're called to worship God anywhere and everywhere because we're called to live a life of worship.

You can worship God in nature. You can worship God at work. You can worship God at home, sitting on your couch. But of course, that can't be the entirety of your relationship with God, because God calls us into a body of believers, into the church. Jesus Christ didn't just die for individuals. Yes, he did, but individuals whom he brings together into the body of Christ, the bride of Christ. So, St. Peter talks about the fact that every single Christian is a living stone built up into a spiritual house, interlocking with one another, interdependent upon one another.

St. Paul used the metaphor that we are a body. We're the body of Christ. We're members of one body of Christ. So, we need to have more, a deeper ecclesiology, and ecclesiology comes from Ecclesia, Churchology, knowledge of the church, theology of the church. The church is a covenantal relationship, and to understand our covenantal relationship with the church, we can look to another covenantal relationship, which is marriage. God calls marriage a covenantal relationship, that you make a covenant with one another to love one another sacrificially, til death do us part, and you can't have a healthy marriage remotely, not long-term.

I can't go to my wife and say, "I'm moving out, but we can be married on FaceTime." That's not going to work, and a lot of people do that with church. I'm going to have church remote. I'm going to worship God remotely. Well, you don't understand what worship is, not completely. Worship isn't just singing. Worship is all of your life, and if worship is all of your life, we need brothers and sisters in our lives to hold us accountable, to call us out when we're sinning, to point out blind spots in our lives, blind spots that deceitfully pull us away from God. The scripture says, "Take care, less there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God."

He's talking to Christians. "But exhort one another daily, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." So, if you say, "I can worship God on my couch," yes, you can praise God, sing songs to God, but to life a holistic life of worship, oh, no. For those who think that that's what they should do, I actually have been meditating on a great business idea. If anyone has extra capital, you can invest in this business idea, maybe a patent. I want to create a couch that zaps people, like an electric shock whenever it knows that you're sinning. Christians would buy it and be like, "No, one episode of Netflix is enough. You're on season three," zap. It would zap you out of it. It's like, "Oh, you're watching a sermon at home? No, you can't go to a different tab," zap. So, we can talk about that after.

So, couches don't convict you of sin. Mountains don't convict you of sin. Trees don't convict you of sin. The Holy Spirit does, and so do brothers and sisters. So, true worship is holistic, all of life obedient worship, and you don't get all of life obedient worship without conviction, without accountability. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, "Let us consider how to stir up one another, to love in good works, not neglecting to meet together, physically to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day, the judgment day drawing near." This is how I want to encapsulate this Psalm, Psalm 95, because this is how Hebrews Chapter Three and Four interprets the Psalm. It quotes it at length, and it brings it in with a pastoral exhortation.

I'm not going to quote Hebrews Three and Four today at length, but definitely go home and meditate. Maybe with your community group you can bring that in as we study Psalm 95. Would you please look at Psalm 95 with me? Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hand are the depth of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness. When your Fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work, for 40 years I loathed that generation and said they are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest. This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our heart. Three points to frame up our time together, worship God with your lips, worship God with your love, and worship God with your life.

First, worship God with your lips. The people of God, Israel, were dispersed at the time of the writing of this Psalm, dispersed hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem, from where the Temple of God was built, from where the presence of God was to be understood to be. So, the people of God, where they lived, they had synagogues where they would gather together on the Sabbath day where the word of God was read, and they would hear the word, they would pray, they would sing worship songs to God, but three times a year God says, "I want all of the people of God to gather together in Jerusalem," and many of them as pilgrims had to travel a long distance.

So, for days they would travel. They'd walk 15, 20 miles a day with their families on the way to Jerusalem, and this Psalm seems to be written in order to exhort them on the way because every critical juncture of the Psalm, every breakdown is almost like a stop at a station on the way to worship God. It retraces the major stops, and what they're doing here is in verse one, the first verse says they're encouraging one another. Keep going. Oh, come. Let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Sing and make a noise. So, there's voices that are singing to God, and then the noises are the instruments that they're bringing. They're worshiping God with instruments.

In several sermons already we've talked about the importance of worshiping God with singing and with praise, and expressing emotion as we're worshiping. I think we as a church are growing and that. I've even heard clapping recently. People are bobbing and weaving just a little bit. I see a hand go up every once in a while. Tremendous, tremendous. So, that's not what I want to focus on, but I just want to say I had a gal in my community group, and she's from Nigeria, and she's like, "Oh, thank you so much for talking about expressing emotions in sermons. I'm from Nigeria. Let me tell you, we have a long way to go." I was like, "I know, I know, but you should've seen where we came from. A few years ago, we are the frozen chosen. We're not going to express any emotion at all."

So, continuing growing in that, but that's not what I want to focus on in this Psalm because this Psalm doesn't just focus on the singing or making the noise. It's focusing on God. It focuses on Yahweh. So, the name of God, the covenantal name of God when he reveals himself to Moses, when God meets Moses through the burning bush, and Moses says, "Look, you're calling me to go and lead the people of God out of captivity, out of slavery in Egypt, but if they ask what's your name, what's your name, at least?" and God says, "I am that I am, and this is the covenantal name. I'm the God of relationship. I'm Yahweh." Three times, in verse one, three, and six, Yahweh is used, but together with the synonyms and the pronouns for Yahweh, he's referring to 26 times.

The Psalm is about God, and he calls God the rock of our salvation. For salvation, they meant salvation from captivity, from physical, literally slavery in Egypt, and he's the rock of our salvation because he's a refuge. He's solid, stable. He's a place of safety, but also in the context of the Psalm's reference at the end to Meribah and Massah in the wilderness, the rock most likely refers to the rock at Horeb, through which God provides for Israel water from a rock, and the story is that Israel is traveling from Egypt to Rephidim, and they couldn't find water, and without water, everyone would die, and they say this. They begin to get angry with Moses, and they said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"

The Lord told Moses, "Hey, take your staff, the same staff with which you did miracles, with the same stuff with which you parted Red Sea, with all of that, take it, strike the rock," and water came out, and the people were satiated with the water. The rock denotes God's stability, safety, security that he provides for us. He's the rock of our salvation. In the New Testament, the rock of our salvation is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ tells a parable where he says, "Hey, there's a wise builder, and there's a foolish builder." The foolish builder decides to build a house for himself on sand. The storms come, and obviously, the house is taken down. The wise man takes the words of Jesus Christ and doesn't just listen to them, but understands them and obeys them. That's the foundation for his life.

Do the storms come to the Christian? Yes, they do, just like the non-Christian. Every single one of us goes through storms. The question is, what foundation are you building your life on? Jesus Christ says that the foundation is Jesus Christ. He's the cornerstone, but the foundation isn't just Jesus Christ. It's also Jesus Christ and his words, and our obedience to the words of Christ. That's the foundation. He is our rock, and he is our rock of salvation. He saves us from the penalty of sin, and he saves us from the deep-soul thirst deep inside, that even leads us to sin. In John 4:14, Jesus speaking to the woman at the well says, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

We have a thirst deep inside of us, every single one of us, a soul thirst, not a physical thirst, and only Jesus Christ can meet that thirst with himself. He is that water. He sends the water of Holy Spirit that wells up to eternal life. So, as the pilgrims, they travel, they enter the Court of the Gentiles, and the temple had three main parts, the Holy of Holies only a high priest could enter into, and then there was the chamber or the Court of the Israelites. This is the people of God who were Jewish, and the people of the covenant, and then there was the Court of the Gentiles. The Court of the Gentiles, everyone could enter, but only people who were part of the covenant people could enter the Court of Israel.

So, now they enter the Court of the Gentiles, and this is where they continue to rejoice. In verse two, let us come to his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with the songs of praise. Literally, come into his presence is let us come before his face, and it underlines the reality of the meaning that we are coming before God, and we're going to look in his eyes. We're going to see his smile. We are prepared to meet God. There's an expectation and anticipation that I'm not just here to sing. I'm not just here to hear a person speak. I'm here to meet God. I'm coming into his presence, this preparation here, and as we come into his presence, we must be thankful, can't but be thankful. Thankful for what? For the fact that God made us. We didn't make ourselves. He is our maker. He made us. He sustains us. He provides for us, and the Lord saves us.

We need to deepen our spiritual discipline of thanksgiving. We need to learn to thank God for the smallest things. Do you ever cook a meal for someone, and you worked hard at cooking that meal, and you're watching them enjoy that meal, you're like, "Is that good?" They're like, "Oh, that's so good," and what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? The person just gets up, finishes the meal, and puts the dish in the sink, just walks away. Not only did you not thank me, but you didn't wash the dish? You thankless, thankless... We expect that as human beings. We expect, hey, I did this thing for you. Just say thank you. That's all I want. I don't want you to Venmo me for the meal. I don't want anything. I'll even wash the thing if you just say thank you.

How much more so the God of the universe just gives us gift upon gift, upon gift, a God who provides for all of our needs? This week I was just feeling a little fluffy. I was like, "I got to go on a diet," and I didn't use the word diet because men don't diet. Men lean out, and I was like, "I got to just lean out just a little bit," and then it just hit me, I'm like, "My goodness. How blessed are we?" Because my dad immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1989, and I remember my dad, as a kid, I look at my dad, he was always in shape, and then all of a sudden he grew a little belly, and he comes up, he's like, "Where did this belly come from? I guess I need to go on a... What's that thing called?" He didn't even know the word. He had never used the word diet in his whole life because of rations, and you go to supermarket, and you're like, "Oh, there's nothing there. All right. I'm going to have to go find a chicken somewhere."

That's a completely different life, but God is so good to us in many, many... You got to thank him for his goodness. Then in Psalm 95:3, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods for... Why are we worshiping him? Not just because we're thankful, because of who he is. He is a great God. He's a great king above all gods. In the ancient Pagan world, they had different gods for different people, different gods for different geographical regions, different gods for cosmic regions, in heaven, earth, the netherworld, different gods over different aspects of life, war, fertility, harvest, but Yahweh is a great God. He's a king above all gods. Obviously, there's no other gods. The other nations worshiped other gods, which actually had demons behind them, but God is God over everything.

I take solace, I take comfort in the fact that God is a king over anyone in authority. That's what he's saying. We live in a day and age where we look at politicians, we look at people in authority. We live in a nation of checks and balances. How is that working out? Not so well. Who's doing the checking? Who's doing the balancing? I want God to do the checking and the balancing, and he is, and he is, and I take comfort in that. Whatever happens, I know God is king over everything. The Proverbs tells that God takes the hearts of kings, and the hearts of kings or politicians or rulers, it's like water in his hands. He guides it wherever he chooses. God is a great God, a great king.

Psalm 95:4 through 5, in his hand are the depths of the earth. The heights of the mountains are also his. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands, plural, formed the dry land. So, God created everything, formed it with his hands, and he holds it all with his hand. It's just a flex, like, "I created everything with two hands. I can hold everything with one hand." Colossians says about Jesus Christ that in him all things hold together. Here, this a poetic device of Merism, naming a pair of opposites, which obviously includes the whole, the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountain. Obviously, he holds everything, the sea and the dry land. He holds everything. So, vertically, from low to high, horizontally, from sea to dry land, he holds everything in between.

Try and imagine God's almighty hand, that wherever you go, you go to the very top, you go to the lowest low, he is there. Nothing and nowhere is beyond the reach of God, and this is a comfort for the Christian, but whose hands are the most meaningful hands in your life? I was thinking of that, and I think it was a Dove commercial, soap, and it was a Mother's Day commercial where they took a bunch of little kids and they blindfolded them, and then they had a lineup of their moms, the moms of all the little kids, and then each little kid, blindfolded, would go up to each mom and touch their hands, and by touching their hands had to figure out who was his mom. I love that. It's a tearjerker. It's awesome because hands are so meaningful to us.

Today's my dad's birthday, and I was meditating on my dad's hands. We grew up painting together. Coming home from work, as his hands are just callused with paint all over, I'll never forget just his hand veins bulging. Hands are meaningful to us, especially as children, and here he says that God holds everything in his hand, and we are part of that everything, so we too are in his hand. Finally, the pilgrims arrive at the gate, as close to the holy place as possible. They enter the Court of Israel, and this is the second part of the sermon, worship God with your love.

95:6 says, "Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker." So, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, but loving God is categorically different than loving anything or anyone else. Many of us, when we think that God tells us to love him, that Jesus calls us his friends, that we are somewhat equals. We are not. God is in a category different than us, categorically different than us, and loving God, therefore, by definition, is categorically different. You're loving the God of the universe. Therefore, it's not a whimsical love. It's not just a sentimental love, this is how I feel about God. It's a reverent love, a fearful love, a love with trepidation, a love that includes bowing down physically.

Verse six, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. It's a display of submission to the great king, the bodily posture, physically. You bow down. I think we as believers, you got to make that a regular rhythm, a daily rhythm of life where you get on your knees before the king of the universe. Get on your knees. Enter his presence. It reminds you that he is great, and we are not. He is God, and we are not. Jesus did this. This is how he prayed. We too are called to pray like this. Obviously, we can pray without ceasing. You can pray while you're driving. You can pray right before you fall asleep. I think on a daily basis you got to get on your knees before God, say, "God, I humble myself before you." It's a physical act of submission, of humility, of reverence, and ultimately, of love.

There's three words in this Psalm in English that are translated. Verse one, oh, come, verse two, let us come, and in verse six here, oh, come, and they're different words in Hebrew meaning different things. Halak means to come as in walking. Let us come into his presence. Qiddem means let us come closer, approach, and then here the word is bo, let us enter. Let us enter. The closer that we get to his presence, the more humility and fear there must be. Verses seven and eight, for he, why are we bowing? Why are we kneeling? He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

So, he brings in everything. He just said God holds everything in his hand, and we are the sheep of his hand, the same hands that made everything that exists, the same hands that holds us. We are in the creator's hand, the same creator, God, elected Israel, who elected Israel, elected us, brought us into his hand, and he guides us and sustains us as a shepherd does sheep, and this is very... It's covenantal language, relationship language. He is our God. He is our shepherd. He is holding us in his hand. We are the sheep of his pasture. At Mount Sinai, God told Israel the following, "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings, and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the nations, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests in the holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel."

Well, how'd that go? God said to Israel, "I'm going to save you, and if you obey my word, if you obey my commandments, I'm going to keep you as my treasured possession." How did that go? Well, not so well because they didn't keep his word. They sinned against him. They were stiff-necked against him. They were hardhearted toward him, so God cast them out of the Promised Land into exile in Babylon, and that's the same pattern that we see all throughout the scripture.

This is what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve sinned against the holy God, and God says, "Go." He banishes them from the Garden of Eden. Then God then recreates a new people, chooses Abraham, creates a covenant of people, makes a covenant with them, and says, "I'm going to give you a Promised Land," and then the people of God are brought out of captivity, free from captivity, and then in the desert they sin against God with hardheartedness, stiff-necked, and then God says, "This generation, you're going to die here in the desert," including Moses, who didn't enter the Promised Land. Then God tells the people a third time, "Hey, you can stay in the Promised Land you if obey me." They did not.

So, what hope is there for us? If God says, "Obey my commandments. If you do, I'm going to protect you. Then you will be mine. Be good. Then I will bless you," if that's the pattern for us, what hope is there? Because not one of us is perfect. Not one of us has never sinned. Therefore, we're so thankful that God said the following. He said, "Look. I'm going to make a new covenant." Jeremiah 31:31 through 33, through the prophet Jeremiah, "Behold the days that are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their Fathers. On the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband," declares the Lord, "for this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

God says, "A day is coming where I'm going to make a covenant such that I'm going to write, inscribe, emblazon the word of God on the hearts of my people." How does that happen? Through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes as a human being, lives a perfect life, a life of perfect submission to God, holistic worship to God, the Father, and the power of the Holy Spirit, never sinned, was tenderhearted toward God and toward people the whole time, even when people rejected him, even when people were hardhearted to him, and then Jesus Christ, right before going to the cross, he knows exactly what's about to happen. He's about to bear the wrath of God upon himself.

At that moment, he has a decision to make. He knows what God's will is. God the Father's will was for him to go to the cross as a substitution or sacrifice for each one of us, and Jesus is wrestling with God as Jacob wrestled with an angle, and Jesus says, "Father, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done," and Jesus remained tenderhearted and says, "Not my will, but yours be done," goes to the cross, bears the wrath of God on behalf of us, experiences God's heart hardening. God turned from his son, banished his son. That's why Jesus Christ cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He lost the presence of God, therefore, the rest of God.

Jesus died, and on the third day, by God's grace, he was raised by the power of God and ascended to heaven to send us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives us access to the presence of God through spiritual regeneration, that when we repent of sin, turn to him, our heart of stone is taken out, a heart that's hard toward God, and replaced with a heart of flesh, a heart that beats toward God, a tender heart, a heart that follows Jesus willingly, a heart that responds. So, in the Garden of Eden God says, "Go. You're out. You're out. Get out," and then through the gospel Jesus Christ says, "I was banished on your behalf, so now you can come." The gospel is what turns the get out to come let us worship, come enter the presence of God.

In John 10:27 through 30, Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." First two stanzas of the Psalm, they encourage people to worship God with their lips and with their love, and our worship isn't centered on what we get out of church, the edification that we get, the inspiration that we get. No, our worship is centered on who God is, what he deserves, and what we give him. Our worship is turning our lives over to him completely, the service of worship, the service of surrender.

So, how do you know that you are truly worshiping God with your lips and with your love? Because Jesus Christ goes to Pharisees in Matthew 19, quoting Isaiah 29, and he says, "These people, they worship me with their lips. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." How does he know that their lips are just giving God lip service, and that their hearts are far from God? How did he know that? Because he just sees their lives. It's your life that proves whether your worship of your lips and of your love is really, really, really true. It's your love. Do you obey God? This is point three. Worship God with your life. The third stanza here assumes the pilgrims are now kneeling in the temple. They're bowing, they're kneeling, and they're listening.

They were singing. They were making noise. Now they're bowing and kneeling, and then they suddenly hear the high priest say in verse seven, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. As at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness when your Fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work." The Psalm begins by urging people, "Make noise in worshiping him." Now they're like, "Be quiet. It's time for you to hear the word of God, and by listening to the word of God, if you hear the word of God, it assumes obedience. You listen in order to obey. That's true listening." The historical context here is Israel is on the journey through the wilderness, and they complain to Moses about a lack of water, as we mentioned.

The text is Exodus 17:1 through 7. All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink," and Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?" But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" So, Moses cried to the Lord, "What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me," and the Lord said to Moses, "Pass on before the people taking with you some of the others of Israel, and taking in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink."

Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of that place Massah and Meribah. Because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, "Is the Lord among us, or not?" Massah means testing. Meribah means contention. They tested the Lord by saying, "Aren't you the same God who saved us? Can you really do what you did before?" They're testing him for a self-centered demand, and they questioned God, "Is the Lord really among us?" From where does this question, this contention, this questioning of the spirit, where does it come from? It comes from a place of suffering. They're experiencing physical suffering, and they think, "God, if you were great, and if you were good, if you can do all things and if you are loving toward us, then why are you allowing us to go through the pain of this suffering?"

They didn't understand that God was preparing them to become a people strong enough to go into battle against the people in the Promised Land. They didn't understand the suffering had a purpose. They were experiencing suffering, and from that suffering they got really self-centered, and they said, "God, you no longer love us, and God, you are no longer great." So, yeah, God gives them that water, but then he also punished them. Yeah, you want water? But you're going to miss out on the Promise Land, and this generation who lived in the desert died in the desert.

Psalms 78, commenting on this text, in spite of all this, they still sinned. Despite his wonders... They saw all the wonders, all the 10 plagues that God sent against Egypt, everything that God did to save them, miracle upon miracle, despite its wonders, they did not believe. So, he made their days vanish like a breath in the years in terror. When he killed them, they saw him. They repented and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, the most high God, the redeemer, but they flattered him with their mouths. They lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him. They were not faithful to his covenant. They saw God's miracles, didn't believe, questioned God. God sends consequences and they're like, "God, sorry. We're never going to do this again," and then they do the same thing.

They flatter him with their mouths, and that's really a question. Softness of heart toward God is obedience toward God. If you love God, you obey God. My youngest daughter Milana, she's four, and I noticed this recently. She's a master emotional manipulator. She is. She knows the buttons to press to get whatever she wants, so she throws around the L word all the time. "Daddy, I love you. I love you so much. You're my favorite. I love you." I'm like, "Great. Go clean your room." "Oh, Daddy, I love you." "Go clean your room." "I just want to bask in your love." "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. That's love. Go clean your room."

They were saying the same, and this is what a lot of Christians do. It's like, "I'm going to sing worship songs to God," and God's like, "Well, that's nice. I also gave you a lot of commandments, and you're breaking a lot of them. If you truly love me, then you love me with this reverential love that's all life-encompassing," and that's what hardness of sin is. What's hardness of heart? What's hardness of heart? I'm not going to obey. I'm going to obey. I'm going to pick and choose, but it's a decision of the will. Volitionally, I am not going to obey. Either it's too hard to not sin, or I love the sin too much. The hardness of heart is picking and choosing what God said, cutting out parts of scripture, "Nope, that's not for me. Nope, that's not for me," standing over scripture.

Jesus Christ gives us a parable of the sower in Matthew 13, and the sower is sowing the seed that is the word of God, so the sower is like an evangelist or a preacher, someone who's proclaiming the word of God, and there's four different levels of soil, so to speak, and he's sowing the seed, and the first one falls on a path, and the path, this is where people walk. It was hard, hard soil, and the seed falls on top. It can't penetrate, and then a bird comes and snatches it, and Jesus said that that's Satan stealing the word of God from a heart. The second one is soil, but it's not deep. There's rocks in it. There's stones in it, and the seed falls and plants, spreads some roots, and then we see that the sun comes up and scorches the plant.

The third one falls among thorns, and it begins to grow, and it's doing great, and Jesus said they accepted the word of God with joy, but when difficulty comes, when persecution comes, when battling sin becomes more difficult, the thorn grows, and after a while it chokes out the life of this plant, and Jesus said that those thorns are cares of the world, deceitfulness of riches, but then there's good soil that's produced, that allows the seed to go deep. The root system goes deep, and it produces fruit and grain a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold, and Jesus said that this soil, that this heart is the heart that hears God's word, has ears to hear, understands God's word, and obeys God's word, and that final step, that's really true listening.

I wonder, how do you prepare yourself to hear God's word? How do you prepare yourself to hear God's word? There's practical things you can do. Saturday, get a great night's sleep. Sunday, have a great cup of coffee. In a couple weeks, we are moving the time of our services up 15 minutes. I know. I'm sorry, but coinciding with that, we're offering coffee, Starbucks Coffee. It's coming back. Praise God. Hallelujah. No carb, no bagels from Bruegger's because we care about you and your health. But you got to prepare yourself, that you walk in, and I'm not just talking about physically. I'm talking about your heart. I'm coming into the presence of God. I'm coming to hear the word of God.

There's different ways of listening to God's word and the proclamation of God's word, or even when you read. The prideful of, "I've already heard this," and the longer you're in the faith, the easier it is to give into the temptation of, "I've already heard this," and then there's the humble listening of, "God, what do I need to be reminded of?" There is a thing where the Holy Spirit, when the word of God is proclaimed, and sometimes I'm listening to a sermon and it's not even what the pastor is talking about, the Holy Spirit just brings something to mind and speaks a word into my mind, into my heart, and I know it's from God, and because of the preparation, that God, I'm here to accept your word.

So, how do we prepare our hearts? We say, "God, whatever you say, I want to hear it. I want to understand it. I want to think through, meditate upon it, and I want to obey it, whatever it is, no matter how hard it is. I know if you command it, that your will is good, and I know if you command it, you will give me strength to do it no matter how hard or seemingly impossible it is." This is what the great Augustine said. "Lord, command what you will, and grant what you command. God, command whatever you want, as long as you give me the strength to do the thing that you call me to," and by writing this thing, Augustine of Hippo, he provoked one of the greatest controversies in church history in the fifth century.

This prayer provoked or stimulated the British monk Pelagius to write his false or heretical theology. Pelagius heard this teaching, and then he goes to Rome, and he sees the Christians in Rome, and he sees the priests and the pastors in Rome who are living in moral laxity, who weren't living in the commandments of God, and he attributed the spiritual malaise to Augustine, to the fact that Augustine said that people can't be righteous unless God gives them strength to be righteous. What Pelagius should've understood is that these people did not understand Augustine, that they used Augustine's quote as justification to live a life of licentiousness. Well, I'm going to any way I want because God is a God of grace. He's going to forgive me, no matter what. That's licentiousness.

So, here Pelagius comes in with legalism, and with legalism he says, "No, no, no, no. If God commands that we do something, it implies the fact that we can do it in and of ourselves, that we shouldn't have to ask for grace in order to be obedient if God tells us to do something," and in order to make this theology work, he had to reject the idea or theology of original sin, that we're born as sinners. So, what he said was, "Adam and Eve, because of their fall into sin, they themselves were the only ones who had the sin nature, but everyone who was born afterwards has a clean, righteous, pure, holy nature, and every single one of us, we can be perfect because Jesus said, 'Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.'"

Two problems with this theology. Problem number one is Romans 5, which clearly says... St. Paul says, "No. Every single one of us inherited the sin nature of Adam and Eve. We're all born sinners." That's the first problem with Pelagian theology. The second one is babies. The second one is children. If you know children, and I think Pelagius was probably a single guy who wasn't married, had no kids, because if he had kids, he would not write this false theology. Babies are born as wicked, degenerate, corrupt, evil little beings. They're all Pagan. They're growing up Pagan. They're not born worshiping God. They're not born serving Mom and Dad. No. They're self-centered. They think they're the center of the universe, and the only reason why God makes them as cute as possible is so that we don't leave them at the edge of the forest. That's why.

We're all sinners by nature and by choice. So, now we're left with the conviction of if God calls us to do something, can we do it in and of ourselves? This is where Augustine is helpful, and he says, "Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect free will and perfect moral liberty." After the fall, we still have a will. You can do whatever you want after church. You can go have lunch. You can go to the park. You can go take a nap. You got a will, but the moral liberty isn't there, that in and of ourselves we cannot choose the things of God. We cannot choose God himself and the way that God calls us to be obedient. To him, only God's grace can restore our moral liberty, and thanks be to God through the gospel by the Holy Spirit, he does through the regeneration of our hearts.

Christianity declares that you can change, that when God calls you to do something, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, God's right there with you. He's the one working in us. He's working the salvation in us to work into will for his good pleasure. So, we can change, no matter how hardhearted, how callous, how insensitive, how desensitized you are. You can be tenderhearted, loving toward God and people through the gospel. Ephesians 4:31 through 31, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let old bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander but put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

He says, "Be tenderhearted, not because your parents were tenderhearted to you, not because if no one has ever hurt you, then be tenderhearted." No. We've all been hurt, but his commandments come with power if you believe in the word of God, that he says, "Be tenderhearted." With that word comes the power of God to do what he said to do, so we need to believe, and then we need to do. What is the power? Where do we get the power to be tenderhearted? Where do we get the power to obey God? He says, "Because God in Christ forgave you." Have you been wronged? Yes. Have we wronged God? Yes. Did God remain hardhearted toward us? No. God remained tenderhearted. He loved us even when we were still sinners, and if God can forgive us, then he gives us the power to forgive others.

The command is love. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love people. That's the command. Where's the power? Where do we get the power of love? The power comes from you are loved. The power comes from being loved. When you understand that you are loved by God, so much so that he gave his son to die on the cross for us, that's how much you are loved, and that's the power to then do the commandment of loving. Worship isn't just singing songs to God. Worship is doing what God told us to do, even make the greatest sacrifice. So, what did God expect from the people at Meribah and Massah? What did he expect at Mount Horeb when they're seemingly dying of thirst? What's he expecting from them? He's expecting them to say, "God, you brought us this far, and we don't know how you're going to come through, but we trust that you're going to come through, and even if we die, we're going to be in your presence, and we choose that rather than disobeying you, rather than being hardhearted, rather than questioning or contending with you."

That's true worship. God, I'm willing to sacrifice whatever you're calling me to sacrifice. That's true worship. We did the study of Abraham in the Jesus and Genesis series. Abraham, God finally sends him the promised son, Isaac. He waited decades for Isaac, and then Isaac is grown up, God tells Abraham, "Hey, I want you to take your son, your beloved son, your only son, and I want you to sacrifice him," and Abraham obeys. They get to the mountain after a three-day trek. They get to the mountain, and what does Abraham say to his servants? What does he say? He said, "Isaac and I are going up to the mountain," to do what? What's he say? Going up to worship. Going up to worship? He's going up to sacrifice his son. Well, that's worship.

God, I'm willing to sacrifice whatever you're calling me to sacrifice. That's worship. That's how much I love you, and it's not just lip service. I'm willing to do it, and I am doing it. The contrast of that is Jonah. God calls Jonah to go preach the gospel in Nineveh. He runs the opposite way to Tarshish, and then God sends a storm, and then all the sailors know it's because of Jonah. It's his fault. They go down, and he's at the bottom of the ship, and they said, "Hey, man, it's because of you. We know it's because of you. What'd you do?" and he says, "Oh, yeah. It's because of me. It's because I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, and I fear God." No, you don't. You're not fearing God because you're not obeying God. You're not worshiping God. The true worship is holistic worship, to sacrifice everything.

Psalm 95:10 through 11, "For 40 years, I loathed that generation and said they are a people who will go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter my rest." Strong words. "I loath that generation." So great was Israel's unbelief that rebellion aroused the feeling of revulsion in the heart and mind of God. It's not that they didn't know his ways. They didn't want to follow his ways, and they went astray in their heart. What kept them from trusting in God, it was fear, fear for loss of life or fear for loss of things that they had.

In Matthew 11:28 through 29, Jesus says the following. "Come to me, all who labor in our heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." True rest is found in the presence of God. In the presence of God, Jesus offers us, in the mission of God. He's not just calling us to get our sins forgiven. He's not just calling us to come and have everything we've done in our background wiped out. He's calling us to a mission. He's calling us to take a yoke upon ourselves with him, a yoke that actually is work for him that leads to spiritual rest, and this is true holistic worship.

Romans 12:1 through 2, "I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Hebrews Chapter Three quotes the third stanza of Psalm 95. That's seven through 11 of Hebrews 3. I'm not going to quote that, but I will close with this before we transition to Holy Communion. Hebrews 3:12 through 13, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you," Christians, he's talking to Christians, "Take care brothers and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

We need to be aware. We need to have brothers and sisters in our lives who also are aware of the sin in our lives because of the deceitfulness of sin. We are to examine ourselves, where we are in terms of worshiping God with our lips, worshiping God with our love, and worshiping God with our lives. This is why God gave us Communion. Jesus Christ gave us Communion as a time for self-examination and a time for renewing our commitment to the Lord. For whom is Holy Communion? Holy Communion is giving for repentant Christians. So, if you're a non-Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It'll do nothing for you. If you do choose to repent of your sin and trust in Jesus Christ today, you're welcome to partake. Also, if you are a Christian who is living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or repent of that sin today, turn from it, and partake.

First Corinthians 11:23 through 32, "For I received from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me in the same way also.'" He took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance for me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread of drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself."

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. If you would like to partake in Communion and have not received a cup and bread, please raise your hand, and one of our ushers will give you one. In the meantime, I'm going to pray as we prepare to partake in Holy Communion. Heavenly Father, we thank you for lavish grace, your love that's not just a sentimental love, but is true, volitional, sacrificial love that you gave your beloved son, and Jesus, we thank you that you love us and it's not just a sentimental or sappy love. It is a sacrificial love, that you gave yourself for us.

We pray, Lord Jesus, as we remember your suffering on the cross on our behalf. Indeed, the physical pain was excruciating. The spiritual pain was exponentially so, as you felt, you experienced, you bore the wrath of God that we deserve. God the Father turned from you, banished you. You went through that to give us access, so that you now tell us, "Come. All who are burdened and heavy-laden, come. Find rest for your souls." Lord, we repent of sin and we pray that you remove any hardheartedness. I pray you make us a people willing to obey, willing to hear your word, understand your word, because people are willing to obey, and give us the power to do it. Bless our time in Holy Communion now. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

If this is your first time with us, take the top off to take the little piece of bread. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread, and after breaking it he said, "This is my body, broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." Then proceeded to take the cup, and he said, "This cup is the cup of a new covenant in my blood, which poured out for the sins of many. Take drink, and do this is in remembrance of me." Heavenly Father, we thank you for speaking to us today through your word. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for impressing God's word upon our hearts.

Make us a people who are ready to hear your word and obey your word, and Lord, when we fall short, I pray that you give us a grace, a grace that empowers us to get up and to keep going. Make us a people who love you, and people who love you not just with words and not just with sentiment, but people who love you with our whole lives, with our wills, with our time, with our treasure, with our talents. Continue to bless each one of us, continue to build your church here, and continue to bless us so that we can continue to do your work. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we're so glad you're here, we'd love to connect with you. If you'd like to connect with us, we do that through the connection card, either the physical one. You can get in the back at the welcome center and then when you fill it out, just return it at the same place. And then you can also get the virtual connection card in the app, in the app store, in Google Play. Just search Mosaic Boston or on our website, mosaicboston.com.

Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Lord, we thank you for the reminder from the holy scriptures today as we study Psalm 90 written by your servant Moses. We thank you for the reminder that you are eternal from everlasting to everlasting, and that we are ephemeral, temporary. We're here, but for a short time, and then we're gone. And we thank you for the reminder that we do not disappear, that in a sense, we too are eternal. Every single one of us has an eternal soul and we will spend eternity somewhere.

Lord, you have written eternity upon our hearts, but for many of us, we can barely see the word eternity, it's as if it's been written in pencil. And I pray today, Lord, and blazing it on our hearts with fire from heaven that we are eternal, we will spend eternity somewhere. And every single person alive, every single person with whom we converse, with whom we relate, they too are eternal. And show us, Lord, that we have been deluded by the evil one to forget eternity, focus on here and now, focus on the material, focus on this world, focus on our money, focus on our families, focus on politics, focus on the economy, focus on stuff which will all pass away.

And the enemy does this so that we do not remember what's most important. But there are only three things that are eternal, which is the Holy Trinity, God's word and eternal souls. So with every single ounce of our being, with every single minute of our lives, we are to do everything we can in order to focus on the eternal, further the eternal, to wake people up to the truth of life, the truth of eternity.

Holy Spirit, we welcome you now in order to revive us, awaken us, send down that fire from heaven and make us a people who united around this vision, that there is no division in body, that there are not multiple visions. For what we are to do as a body, as a church, there's one vision, and that's to live, to glorify God, to proclaim his word to eternal souls. So I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures, and we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.

We're in a sermon series going through some of the choices Psalms. Next week will be the last season there and then we're going to do a three week series on the identity of Mosaic, love Jesus, simple. And then after that, we'll start our new series. Today, we are in Psalm 90. The title of the sermon is we're here, we're gone, we're there. We're here, we're gone, we're there. So we're talking about death today. So just prepare yourself, brace yourself for that.

And just to lighten things up just for a bit, before we get really dark really quick, I've got a meme for you. Here it is. Oh, no, didn't show up. Oh no, it's a good one too. Oh no, technical difficulties. Satan doesn't want you to see that meme. Oh man. Could I find it? How fast can I find it? All right. Twitter, Elon Musk real quick because that's where I got it this morning. I was like, "This is from the Lord." Oh man. Okay. So it's a picture, a bulletin board in the elementary school. And it said Halloween on the side and then it's got little quotes from little kids about what they're scared of most.

There's a little kid with a backwards hat and it says, "What scares you most?" And he says, "Werewolves, werewolves," by Paul. And then there's Nina. What scares you most Nina? And she says, "Sharks." And I can relate. And then Dylan, to answer the question, what scares you most? He says the unstoppable marching of time that is slowly guiding us all towards an inevitable death. And then there's Katherine at the bottom. It says, "What scares you most?" And she says, "Dylan." It's so true.

And the reason why it's funny, it's because it's a little kid who's meditating on death. And another little kid seeing the little kid meditating on death is scared of that little kid, because we are conditioned in our culture to not think about death. We live in a world of distractions, of diversions and because distractions and diversions, therefore delusions. And in a sense, we're amusing ourselves to death with social media, with entertainment, with movies, with just content, content, content and we're too busy to find the truth, what's most important to us, what's most important if we made a list.

It's our education, our jobs, our housing, our family, our leisure, our entertainment. We work for the weekend. We enjoy the weekend, the Sunday scaries, we're back to work. We do what everyone does, what everyone has done, what everyone will do. How often do we pause? How often do we sit still and meditate? In our lives there's lots of movement and very little progress. So many of us live lives with so little time thinking about what is to come because we live as if life is all there is.

And that's the lie that we've bought, life is there is therefore get the most out of life, grab life by the horns. You only live once, therefore get your bucket list and just go down that list. That's what life is all about. And this is one of Satan's most compelling lies. And it's so compelling because it's so chock full of truth. It's so compelling because it's wrapped in so much truth. The more truth in a lie, the more compelling it is. Therefore, the most compelling lies are actually 99.99% truth. And we got to discern where's the 0.1%?

Life is short, truth. We die, fact. James says we're mist, we're vapor, we're a transient whisper fog. But what about the 0.1%? Life is all there is. That's a lie. Life is not all there is. There's more after this life. And if you're honest with yourself, you know that. When's the last time you've been at a funeral? At any funeral, they say the same stuff. Any funeral, Christian, pagan, any religion, they say the same stuff. Oh, Joe here, he lived a good life. He's a good man. He loved his friends, he loved his family, et cetera. Joe is in a better place.

I've never been to a funeral where people are just honest. Pagans are honest, atheists are honest, agnostics are honest. Joe is dead, he is not. His corpse is underground and he's pushing up daisies because he's warm food. No one says that. Everyone says there is a better place. Oh, there is. Of course, there is. We know this. It's written on our hearts. It comes from outside of us this lie that this life is all there is. If you pause, if you meditate, if you look deep inside your heart and you see what's written there, you'll see the word eternity.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has written eternity upon our hearts. It's an indelible yearning in our hearts for more than this life. And it's true, you will live forever. You will live forever either with God on his terms in heaven or without God on your terms in hell. So the Latin phrase that they meditated upon in the Roman empire is quō vādis, where are you going? And Satan wants you to fix your eyes on the material.

And I'm not just talking to unbelievers, I'm talking about believers. He wants everybody. He wants the church of Christ, he wants to immobilize us by getting us fixed on the problems of this world. And he wants us veering off course, either slightly right or slightly left. And God tells us to set your minds on things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Are your eyes set on the things that are above, on true north?

Well, if your eyes are set on true north where Christ is, on Christ, then you know where you are and you know where you to go. And only then will you be able to number your days that you may get a heart of wisdom as Psalm 90 verse 12 says. Today we're in Psalm 90. Would you please look at the text with me? Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

You return man to dust and say, "Return O children of man." For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it has passed or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood, they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning, it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening, it fades and withers. For we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath, we are dismayed.

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath, we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, oh, Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many as you have afflicted us... make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children but the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.

This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Before we get into our points, I'm going to set the literary context to understand what's really going on here. This Psalm is written by Moses and you can see the little transcription on top of the Psalms. It's written by Moses. So it's the oldest poem, the oldest Psalm in the Psalter and therefore one of the oldest poems in all of history.

And what's important is that Psalm 89 and Psalm 90 are linked. We set this up when we started season one of the Psalter I just gave, the outlines of the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms is a book of five books that was comprised together and it's put in... Psalms are put in the books thematically. But Psalm 89 and Psalm 90 are linked. Psalm 89 ends book three, Psalm 90 begins book four, which runs from Psalm 90 to 106. So in order to understand what's going on in Psalm 90, you're going to need the backdrop of Psalm 89.

Well Psalm 89 verse 46 goes like this. How long oh Lord, will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? And we see the same language in verse 13 of Psalm 90, return O Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants? Well, what's fascinating is that Psalm 89, it starts so happy, on a happy note. Some 89 verse 1, I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever. With my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.

As you start reading, you realize that Psalm 89 is actually a dirge. It's a funeral song. It's mourning, it's a lament, it's solemn commemoration. Psalm 89:38 through 40, but now you, God, have cast off and rejected. You are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls. You have laid strongholds in ruins. Psalm 89 begins by remembering God's promises to David.

Hey David, you're going to have an ancestor on the throne of Israel forever. And it continues to remember that God made a covenant with Israel that you will be in the land, the promised land forever. And it seems, this is what they say, you've renounced your covenant. This is the deepest and the hardest theological question of the old testament that they're wrestling with here. Have the promises of God failed? Has the word of God failed?

If the promises of God and the word of God have failed, then God has failed. And that should be the end. Psalm 89 should be the end of the old testament. That's it, game over. So Psalm 90 is given to us to say, "No, no, no. Hold on. We got to go back." And that's why Psalm of Moses is put into book four as the people are wrestling with these questions about David and about the kings, because it's written and it's comprised here, put in this place at a time when people are wrestling with these truths.

So the Psalm 90 of Moses is put in here and it says, "Hold on, hold on. We've got to go back, we got to go back." The problem isn't that God's problems have failed, the problem is that the people of God have rejected God. Second Samuel 7, second Samuel 7, the people of God come to God and say, "Hey, hey God. Hey Samuel, we want a king like everyone else. We want a king to protect us just like all the nations have a king to protect us." And then Samuel goes to God and Samuel says, "I feel like I've been rejected."

The word of God, isn't enough and God says, "Samuel, you haven't been rejected, I've been rejected." They wanted a human king and they've rejected God. And Moses here writes this sermon and he's like, "Hey, I want you to understand this. That when you reject God, when you turn from God, there are always consequences to sin. There's always punishment." And the historical context of the Psalm is Deuteronomy 32 and 33 when Moses was punished for his sin.

So Moses after finding out that he will not go into the promised land because he has sinned, he sits down and pens the Psalm that we are all ephemeral, that we will all die, that we all experience the wrath of God every single one. It doesn't matter how great you are. Therefore, we need the pity of God, we need the mercy of God. So the people of God here are turning to the oldest truths to help them in their present plight.

So that leads me to the four points that we're using to frame up our time. Number one is God is home so come home. Second, God is eternal, we are not and we are. Third is God is just, we deserve justice. And forth, God is gracious, we need grace. God is home, so come home. Psalm 90 verse 1 says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. God, you are our home. You are our dwelling place. And Moses understood this like nobody else. God was his home.

He spent the first 40 years of his life in the comforts of Pharaoh's palace. And then he feels called by God in order to free up the people but tries to do it in the flesh so then he's banished to be a shepherd in the wilderness for another 40 years just wandering. And his only home, his only comfort, his only protection is the spirit of God. And then after he's called back into Egypt to free up God's people and then he frees God's people by the power of God, he's in the wilderness, God punished them for their lack of faith pursuing idols. And then for 40 years, we see that Moses and the people wander the wilderness, living intense, camping in the desert for 40 years.

So when Moses says that God is my dwelling, he knows. So if you ever feel like you are in captivity, like you are an exile, like you are a sojourner, or a pilgrim, this Psalm is for you. If you've ever said, "Lord, why is this happening to us? Where's the blessing that you promised us?" As the people of Israel saying, "Where's the land you promised us? Why haven't you given our king protection as you promised? Where's our protection?" And God here saying, "Look, you look to a human being for ultimate protection. And how's that going?"

God is your dwelling place. God is your home. God is your refuge. God is your city. God is a place you belong. The last king of Israel was taken to captivity by King Nebuchadnezzar. But before he was taken to captivity, his children's sons were killed before his eyes and then his eyes were gouged out. So that's the last thing he ever saw was emblazoned on his heart. And God is saying, "You saw protection in a human being. It's never enough."

No matter how strong your king, no matter how strong your political leaders, it's never enough. You got to look to God. God doesn't just provide our home, he is home. God doesn't provide protection, he is protection. He doesn't just provide a shield, he is our shield. He is our refuge, he is our life. That right there grounds us like no one else, centers us like no one else. We're in God, the new testament says, and he is in us.

Christians have the... they are the temple of the Holy Spirit so God is in us but we're also in him. God is our dwelling place. And this Psalm was written almost a thousand years before it was placed the start book four to show people. You can't look to circumstances as your refuge, you got to look to God. And Moses here is saying, "You have lost your present home, but you haven't lost God so you haven't lost your true home."

And this is exactly how Jesus Christ talks about a relationship with God. And he gives us the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal son runs away. He goes to his father and he says, "Father, you to me are good as dead. Therefore, give me my inheritance now before you're dead because my inheritance is more important than a relationship with you." He runs and he sins, he wastes all the money and then he realizes. He comes to his senses, scripture says, and then he runs home. And his father is waiting there, runs toward him, arms wide open and accepts him into a relationship.

That same sentiment going on here. When you realize that life isn't going the way you wanted, are you at home? If not, turn, come back to the Lord. That's what repentance is. The second point here is that God is eternal and we are not, and we are. Verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust and say, "Return, oh, children of man." For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday, when it has passed or as a watch in the night.

You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass as renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed, in the evening it fades and withers. Have you ever meditated on the fact God is everlasting? There was never a time when God was not. There will never be a time when God will not be. God is from everlasting to everlasting. If you look back from he is the vanishing point in the back and just keeps going. If you look forward into time, he is the vanishing point that's in front of us and it never disappears.

And here Moses uses that to contrast the ephemeral brevity of life of every single one of us, that for God a thousand years is as one day, as yesterday, as a watch in the night. We're dust. Scripture says we came from dust. God formed us out of dust, he breathes his spirit into us and we will return to dust. I was at the arboretum yesterday with my family and beautiful out and just lay on the grass. I was looking up before my wife yelled at me and said, "I'm going to get ticks and Lyme disease."

I had some time to meditate. And I thought, "Look, you're on the ground just lying on the ground. And at one point, you're just going to be six feet deeper." Every single one of us. And what happens with our soul? And scripture says that we are created by an everlasting God. And God breathes his spirit into us, therefore yeah, our body will turn into a corpse and we will turn to dust. But we are breath and God gives us that breath. So yeah, on the one hand, we're not eternal, on the other hand, we're as eternal as God himself because that's how God has created us.

Moses doesn't tell us this. Whenever you think about death you're like, "Urgh, this is so discouraging." Moses isn't doing this to discourage them, he's doing this to comfort them. If your hope is in something that dies with you, then you don't have a living hope. The good news is we hope in a God who outlives us. We have a hope that will outlive us. God is eternal. His word is eternal and souls are eternal.

And because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because of the work of Christ on our behalf, that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and then he went to the cross and he bore the wrath of God on our behalf, he died, he was buried, he was resurrected. Because of that, because of the gospel, all you have to do is repenting your sin and trusting him. And then Jesus says, "You have eternal life. If you believe in me, you have eternal life."

So your soul, when you die as a Christian, as a follower of Christ, as a child of God, your soul is transferred into the presence of God. You go from this life to the next life. That's true for every single eternal soul. But if you reject Jesus Christ, if you reject God, if you reject the holy scriptures, if you reject the gospel, you will die and you'll stand before God and you will be judged and then you will be banished for eternity to a place of eternal, conscious suffering in a place called hell. That's a reality, that's a reality.

And Satan wants to do everything possible to keep us from that reality, that every single person around us who doesn't know the Lord yet is going to this place of eternal, conscious suffering called hell, every single person. There are three things that are eternal, and that's what we focus all of our time on at Mosaic, all of our time. There are three things that are eternal: the word of God, the God who spoke the word of God and eternal souls who were created by the word of God. Those are the things that are eternal.

First, Peter 1:22 through 25, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living abiding word of God. And for all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

And this is the word, this word is the good news that was preached to you. The God who spoke the word, the word is an extension of himself. When people hear that word, the Holy Spirit takes that word and converts... you're born again, now you have eternal life. And that's how it works. So that's what we're focused on. I got an email recently. Now, I've been waiting, I've saved this email. I didn't respond to this email because I've been meditating on this email.

There's one sentence said this. There was an event that happened and then mainstream media told us, "Here's what it means for the trajectory of our nation." And that's what mainstream media does, that's what the media does. They take what happened, facts, and they turn your attention from the facts as soon as possible to their interpretation of the facts and the interpretation of the facts was just false. So this is what the sentence, "I am saddened to see." This is in response to my newsletter that I send out every Saturday morning, which if you haven't subscribed, you should. I take a lot of time to craft it.

And there's always one typo. Every time whoever responds, it's a game I play. If you respond and you find that typo, chicken wings on me. I'm saddened to see, as I have quite a few times in these newsletters, a lack of awareness in the present world we're living in. A lack of awareness, you say. A lack of awareness. I didn't respond because of disrespect today, and the tone of disrespect. Whoever wrote that, perhaps we haven't met. Perhaps we...

I have been trained to exegete information, and I've been doing this for over a decade. And not just in the material realm, but in the spiritual realm. I am aware of a lot of things. And if I don't include information, it's intentional, it's intentional. So that's the first thing. And then on top of awareness, like yeah, material awareness, you have to add the realm of spiritual awareness. And spiritual awareness, let me just give you a few texts. Ephesians 2:1 through 2, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following in the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

So Satan is the prince of the power of the air, that's what he's talking about. And people are walking him. This spirit of Satan is in the sons of disobedience and he's the prince of the power of the air. So if you have anyone who is in any position of power in the world, then Satan is influencing that person. That person doesn't have the word of God. In particular, Satan is the prince of the power of the air waves. He's the one that cultivates the information that is sent out to people. This has always been the case.

Second Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them. The God of this world, the God of this world. I thought God, the Trinity was the God of this world. Yes, yes. But in a fallen world, he allows Satan like a dog on a leash out to rule. We need to understand that this is a reality. And Satan does everything to keep them, people from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, we as the image of God.

And the way Satan acts in the church, and I'll tell you this, the way Satan acts in the church, and he's done this, he's studied church history, he's done this all throughout church history, Satan's job is to divide and conquer. Everything we hear in the narrative around us is crafted by Satan to divide. The media gives us facts, politicians give us facts that are questionable, but then the interpretation of the facts is what's even more questionable. And why does he do this? Because Satan knows if we are divided, we are powerless to stand up against him.

Satan subtracts, Satan divides, Jesus Christ adds and Jesus Christ multiplies. So at Mosaic, I'm not here to talk about the latest thing that happened in the news. That's not my job. I'm not here to be outraged and get you outraged by the things that the media says, "Care about this, care about this. This is the most important thing." And then two days pass, no one remembers what that most important thing was because it's another most important thing that they're outraged about. It's all diversion and it's all designed delude and to divide.

Are current events important? Of course, of course. Yes, of all importance? Of course not. What's of all importance is God, his word and eternal souls. That's what does the most for earth, that's what does the most to change people, change culture, change society, change the world. And we are to meditate upon heaven, that we will spend eternity there. And it's not escapist to think about eternity. Those who have loved having the most do most for earth. And once you know that God is true north and you don't veer off course because you're focused on what's most important.

Proverbs 4:25 and 27, let your eyes look directly forward. Let your gaze be straight before you, ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil. Jesus Christ didn't call us to be Republicans or Democrats. He didn't call us to walk left or right. He called us to walk the straight and narrow after him.

And if you see yourself veering the political issues or cultural issues, societal issues are more important to you than reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is more important than anything, then I would submit to you that you have veered off course. Do not swerve to the right, to the left, turn your foot away from evil. We look strenuous by looking forth because that's when we see everything. And I love the connection here in Joshua 1:7 through 9.

These are the words of Joshua to the people of God after Moses had died and Joshua now is in charge. And Joshua says, "We have a war to fight. We have a war to fight. We are here to fight the enemy of God." And Joshua says this, "Only be strong and be courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant command you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may have good success wherever you go.

The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you will be careful to do according to all that's written in it for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous? Do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. The Lord is with you wherever you go."

Now, I say all this, I say all this because I'm praying and I've been fasting. And this past season has been one of the most encouraging seasons in the life of Mosaic, one of the most encouraging. And I've seen a pattern that God sends encouragement. He sends a renewal of strength, he sends just a renewal of spiritual resources right before the fiercest battle. I've just seen this over and over and over in my life. So I don't know what's coming, I don't know what's coming, but the tactic is always the same. The tactic of the enemy is always the same.

You study your strategies and you see the tactic is always to create two sides. These are the people who care most about COVID and these are the people who care most about communism. And you know what? I hear both sides and I say, "That's not the most important thing. It's not COVID. COVID's not the greatest problem and your greatest savior isn't the vaccine. And communism isn't your greatest problem. And the solution and your savior isn't a politician. It's not COVID, not communism, it's the kingdom of God."

So in this next season, if you want to see the church go a certain direction and you come to us with your ideas, first of all, pray about them, pray about them. Pray, fast, bring them to us. And also understand that when there's unity, if there's true love, there's got to be a sacrifice. So wherever we go, unity is created, true unity when everybody is sacrificing something, that no one really gets what they truly want.

Everyone's sacrificing their own personal preferences for the ultimate mission, which is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people who don't know him. It's unspeakably comforting that God is eternal. You will die, your loved ones will die. Your children will die, your friends will die, your parents will die, your favorite people will die. Your dreams will die. Your health will die. Your strength will die. Your money will... Everything, everything will die. So can there be a living hope? Yeah, only if it's in the God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why do we die? And this is point three. God is just, we deserve justice. Moses ties together misery, the death of sin of everything in the world to God's wrath and his judgment. This verse 7, for we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath, we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone and we fly away.

Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? We fly away. We use the term time flies all the time. When you're young, it feels like time's going so slow. Well, because the time that you're experiencing now is just such a small proportion of the time you have experienced. So if you're four, if you're four years old, one year of your life is 25 years of your existence thus far. If you take the existence as an hour, if you're four, one year's actually 15 minutes of the hour. So that's long.

But if you're 30 years old, one year of the hour time span is two minutes. And if you're 60 years old, it's one minute. So it just speeds. Oh, but it's like we're flying and Moses says, "Why, why, why?" Because of our sin, death is the visitation of God's wrath and judgment upon us. And a lot of people look at the suffering of the world and they say, "There is no God, because I see so much evil because I see so much suffering. It's all injustice so there is no God. If God is good and God is great and God's stop all of it, why hasn't he?"

And I would push back first of all and say no, no, no, suffering in the world, evil in the world is actually proof of God's existence. Because when you say this ought not to be, or things should be a different way, how do you know that? If there is no God, the Holocaust just happened. If there is no God, it's not wrong. Because if there is no God, there's no objective morality, nothing is truly right or wrong. And when anyone says, "Why didn't God just kill Hitler? Why didn't God just kill Hitler as a baby?" Well, God is against babies first of all, so you shouldn't have framed up that question that way.

When you think lustfully about another person in your heart before committing adultery, Jesus says that same to adultery. Why does God kill you? When you hate another person Jesus says anger in your heart against another person's tantamount to murder. Why doesn't God hate you? It's always about someone out there, it's never about what's in here. But you know that there is a moral standard and you want to be kind of the judge of it and like, "God, why aren't you judging the way I think you should judge?"

And God's like, "Hold on. True judgment is coming but it already is here. There is sin and it leads to death." And sin is the culprit. And whenever we experience misery or death, we need to think back to sin and say it was sin that caused all of this, therefore we are to hate sin as much as God hates sin. God is holy, we're sinful, we're deserving judgment. And God is righteous and he righteously appointed death as the penalty for our sin. So as Moses contemplates the current situation that people have got in exile, he meditates on the person and the work of God, that God is just, that people have broken his covenant and sinned against him.

God's covenant hasn't failed, it's we have forsaken him and we are bearing the consequences for our sin. And then point four is that God is gracious. And we're so thankful for point four that we do need grace. And after meditating upon God, Moses prays to God with six petitions, the first one is so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Lord teach us to number our days. Help us to realize the brevity of life and when we do realize that, help us live accordingly. I was born in April 10th, 1983, that's 13,986 days ago.

There's a calendar on Google, you can put in your birthday and they'll tell you how many days you've been alive, almost at 14,000. Not a bad run. Numbering my days. Is that what he's talking about, to number our days? No, no, no, no. He's talking about... he's saying, "Weigh your days, weigh your days." It's not about days in your life, it's about the life in your days. Weigh your days. Lord, teach us to weigh our days. For some people live a lot of days, but their days are like styrofoam, they're like feathers. They mean nothing. They've done nothing significant. They've wasted their days.

God teach me to weigh my days so that every single day of my life, there's a gold. Now, first Corinthians 3 talks about this, that God's fire in the second judgment will burn everything we've ever done. There's different levels of materials, hay, straw, wood, some people have gold, silver, diamonds, and it's all talking about how much have you done for God and for people, how much have you lived for God and for people? And we can never learn this lesson on our own. We need the work of the spirit.

So Moses says, "Lord teach us to number our days, to weigh our days." And we have to be more concerned about living well than living long. William Swan Plumer says some die old at 30 and some die young at 90. The second petition is in verse 13, return oh Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. Lord, we are where we are because of our sin. We acknowledge it. And this is repentance here. We acknowledge that we've received the punishment for our sin, but Lord have pity on us. Lord, please have mercy on us.

God said in Genesis 3, from dust you came, to dust you will return. And that's the same phrase that's used in verse 3. You return man to dust and say return oh children of God. So Moses says we deserve it. But Lord, we're taking your words and we're turning them around and we ask in the same way that you call us to return to the dirt, we ask that you return to us, restore us. Lord, reverse the curse of the beginning, have pity and mercy on us.

And on what basis can God have mercy on us? This is verse 14, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all the days. Steadfast love another translation might say loving kindness or mercy. This is God's covenantal love. God with your covenantal love, because of your covenantal love that's eternal, please forgive us. Give us mercy because of your steadfast love. King David when he sinned, committed adultery with Bathsheba and then killed her husband Uriah.

After Nathan comes and convicted of sin, David repents. And in Psalms 51:1 through 2 he says, "Have mercy on me oh God. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." So it's not God have pity on me because I'm repenting so hard or because I'm so sad about my sin. God forgive me, not because of me, but because of you, because you are loving, because you have steadfast love. Forgive me oh God and fill my heart with joy. Steadfast love.

He says, "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love." Every morning, every morning you got to wake up and pray this. Pray this, I challenge you. Every morning wake up and say, "Lord, I've woken up dissatisfied. I'm dissatisfied. I want things more than I want you. Lord, satisfy my heart with your steadfast..." And the same way that every single morning you need a cup of coffee well, like Dunkin' and Starbucks satisfy me with your caffeine, the same way you say, "Lord, I need a cup of steadfast love, satisfy me with it."

The fourth petition in verse 15, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. So what he's doing, this is really important because he's saying the logic that he's using is, "Hey God, some days are sorrowful, they're evil, we're being afflicted, but can you just give us as many days are bad, can you give us as many good days just so it's even?" That's what he's asking for. Lord, balance out the sorrow of our lives with God-given joy.

But the new testament tells us the Lord answers this prayer better than Moses prays it. And thanks be to God that God often does that, he answers our prayers better than we pray it because often we don't know what to say. Moses asks for balance for sorrows on one side, joy on the other. But the new testament says in second Corinthians 4:17, 18, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

What he's saying is there's purpose in your pain. That's what he's saying. So because there's purpose in your pain, the same way there was purpose in the pain of the son of God on the cross dying for our sin, there's purpose there. And the purpose we'll see later, we see after he was resurrected, in the same way our suffering means something. God will turn it all around so we can take joy in that.

First Peter 1:6 through 7, in this you rejoice though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory to honor and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. God is shaping us with that therefore, we can rejoice. James 1:2 through 4 says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

And then St. Paul in Philippians 4:4 says, "Rejoice in everything. My brothers, rejoice, always, but for in supplication, present your request before God and the God of peace which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus." So yeah, when difficulty comes, we need to understand that if you are a Christian, and all things work together for good, that means everything that happens to us is a blessing. Sometimes it's a painful blessing, sometimes it's a pleasant blessing.

December 22nd, 1849 Fyodor Dostoevsky was led before a firing squad to be executed. He was convicted and sentenced to death on November 16th of that year for anti-government subversive thought. Huh? It's interesting. Subversive thought. So he's led there with a group of his fellow writers and he's put to the block wall and the soldiers pick up their rifles. And at the very last second, Dostoevsky receives a last minute reprieve and he's sent to a Siberian labor camp for four years.

I wonder how Dostoevsky lived the rest of his life knowing that he deserved execution or the government thought he deserved execution. He was about to die and he was given a second chance on life. On The Idiot, he wrote a book called The Idiot years later, Dostoevsky created a character who was facing death at scaffold and he ponders what he would do if he was given more life to live, one more chance. And this is what he says, "I would turn every minute into an age and nothing would be wasted. Every minute would be accounted for."

And then Dostoevsky went on after that to write his greatest books, Notes From the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. So this is what Moses is saying, we deserve the wrath of God. And when we understand that, and then we see what it took God to save us and that Jesus Christ is willing to take it, then we understand that every single day is a second chance, every single day to live full tilt for the glory of God and to share the gospel with every single person. We can do everything we can for the kingdom God.

The fifth petition is let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. He says, "Lord, we want to see your power. We want to see your magic. We want to see your spirit unleashed and souls getting saved and your church being built up. Lord, show us your majesty." And at verse 17, he doesn't end at, "Lord, show us your work." Then he says, "Lord, bless our work." Verse 17, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.

And in the old testament, Israel's great work was the construction of the tabernacle, which is transient, temporary and then later they built a temple which was transient and temporary. And what they're doing here is they're saying, "God, we know we're fog. We know we are just vapor. We're just wispy things and in our hands are just the fog. We're bringing you our fog and we pray for your favor to come down." The word for favor is beauty or glory. Lord, everything we do, we do for you, so make our work matter, whatever we do for work.

If you do it to the glory of God, God, it matters to you, make it matter. Don't let us do meaningless things. Make our work matter. Prosper the work of our hands. Make our work matter. Basically establish our fog. And that's obviously impossible to do apart from Jesus Christ. Because apart from Jesus Christ, everything dies so nothing matters. But because of Jesus Christ and his resurrection, everyone who believes in him will be resurrected to a new life. So everything that you do in this life, it does matter because this life is not all there is.

How did God answer Moses' prayer? Most likely Moses prayed this prayer, wrote this Psalm after finding out that he would not enter the promised land. We're told in Deuteronomy 34 that God takes him up to the mountain and God shows him the promised land of Canaan. Deuteronomy 34:4, the Lord said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to your offspring. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will never go over there."

Moses has dedicated the last 40 years of his life to getting the people of God to the promised land. And then when they just get there, God's like, "Nope, you're not going to see it." And I've always wondered, isn't that just a little unfair? Isn't it just a little messed up that this guy devoted his whole life to you, he sins once, from what we know of, probably a lot more, he also killed a guy so... It seems unfair if you think that life is all there is. It seems unfair if you think Moses lived up for 120 years, if you think that that's the end.

From our perspective, it seems unfair because we're so conditioned with this lie that this life is all there is, it's not. So from God's perspective, he's like, "You're not going to see it yet." Why can I say that? Did Moses enter the promised land? Oh yeah. We see this in the new testament, the mount of transfiguration. Jesus takes three disciples up with him, Peter, James and John in Luke 9:28 through 31.

Now about eight days after these sayings, he took with him, Peter, John and James and went up in the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. Behold two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, exodus, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. So yeah, God answered this prayer where both are saying, "God have pity on me. I want to enter the promised land."

God answered because of Christ and with Christ and God answered the prayer in a way the Moses could never have imagined, far beyond all they could ask or think. He entered this promise land and into this promised land, land of Canaan, now Israel, Jesus is talking about the next promised land, that's heaven. And the exodus now is from the captivity of sin and Jesus is going to lead us into heaven, into paradise because of his work on the cross. Jesus is the only reason God can answer this prayer of Moses, "God have pity on us."

I'm going to close with Hebrews 12:1 through 2 and then we'll pray. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Let's pray.

Holy Spirit, we thank you for this incredible word and we thank you for the words of Moses, the testimony of Moses. But we know these aren't just his words, they're the words of the Holy Spirit written for us to remind us of what's most important, to refocus our attention. Lord, make us a people who care about your kingdom, about the work of the kingdom, the work of the gospel more than anything else.

And even our casual conversations with fellow brothers and sisters, may this word of the gospel and of the mission, of the vision be on our lips more than what's going on in politics, what's going on in the economy, what's going on with the stocks. Make us a people who truly, truly, truly see the reality of eternity and live every single day as those who have been given a second chance, been pardoned and shown pity. And give us a heart of wisdom so that we do weigh every day, to live today holy for you. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're visiting or you're new, we're so glad to have you join us and we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card, either the physical one you can pick up in the back at the welcome table and then just leave it there or you can fill out the virtual one in our app that you can get in the app store of Google Play or on our website, there's a connection card as well.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word. God, you are a great God and you are a holy God. You are Lord over us. You are the giver of life. We are not own. We all to often forget that and that's when we rebel against you seeking heaven apart from you and that's what leads to hell, the flames of hell, a place where you don't exist, where your faith isn't shining. Lord, we thank you for Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God. Jesus, we thank you that you entered this world to restore it and you did that by coming and loving God and loving people with every single fiber of your being, you did it perfectly and you did it with the power of the Holy Spirit. And then you went to a cross to pay the penalty that we deserve, the wrath of God. You absorbed for our law-breaking and this is the way that you break into the world. This is the way that you bring restoration into a world through your son dying on the cross for us.

Holy Spirit, we pray today, focus our attention on Jesus Christ, who sits and rules and reigns at the right hand of God, the father. And Jesus, send us the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit that regenerates hearts and restores people from within, so restore us individuals, restore us as a church, to be the church that you want us to be and restore us as a nation to be the nation you want us to be. And restore us as a world, all of your creation. Lord, we long for complete restoration and the second coming of Christ that you have as a new earth, we long for that day and in the meantime, we have a foretaste of that restoration in the gospel. As we meditate in the holy scriptures today, Lord, I pray that you minister to us and expand our vision of you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

We're going through a sermon series that we are calling the Balm Psalms. We are going through some of the choices Psalms, the Psalms that over church history have blessed the church in a very special, particular way. Today we are in Psalm 80. We're calling it Balm Psalms because if balms were our souls, it's anointing for our souls and also a word play on balm, that God wants to balm our categories of God because they are too small and that's really the problem with the whole world, with all of us, is that God is too small and our vision of God is too small.

Every single one of us, we know that things are not the way they are supposed to be. There is something wrong in the world. Something is wrong, something is wrong out there, something is wrong in here. Things are not the way the should be. They are not the way they ought to be because a vision is embedded in our hearts of utopia, of a perfect world with a perfect people and Satan preys on that desire, on that longing, on that vision. He preys on it and he comes in and he presents his own vision of utopia, a vision where there is no God. It's the same tactic, he does it over and over and over.

With the garden of Eden, they are living in utopia, they are living in paradise. Satan comes in and says something is wrong with the world, we can make things better. You can be like gods, let's usurp God, lets dethrone him. You can have paradise, heaven without God and that's what led to the fall. That's why we are where we are and Satan tempts us with the same tactic over and over and over that we can build back better, build a world without God and he presents this prototype, he presents these blueprints of a world, of a kingdom without God. And we hear the whispers left and right where God doesn't talk about rebuilding, that's not the theme in scripture. God talks about redeeming and restoring. Restoring to what it was in the very beginning, using not our own blueprints, using God's.

I grew up painting with my dad and my dad, Vlad, my dad, Vladimir. He has a painting company called Vlad's Painting. If your house looks bad, don't get mad, call Vlad. My top three things to paint, I'll start with three. Apartments, we paint a lot of apartments in Providence, Rhode Island. I like apartments because there's no thought. It's just one color everything. You slap on a coat of paint on everything. Walls, trim, ceiling, floor, everything. Everything just one color. Not floors. My second favorite was brand new builds, a brand new house. It's a brand new canvas, and you, the artist, you go and you create. But my favorite above all else in painting was restoring old houses. That's my favorite. You walk in and you see the former beauty, you see it. It's built in a way that current ... I don't know why we don't build like that anymore. It's too expensive. Just built solid, it's beauty. And then you see it, dilapidated, and then with your hands, you restore.

And that's the vision that's given to us in the Holy Scriptures that created everything and everything was absolutely perfect. Everything was wonderful. And then sin entered the world because we bought into this lie of the enemy that we can have heaven apart from God. And then God wants to redeem and restore everything from within. It's a vision of restoration. We are in Psalm 80 today. It's a psalm of lament. It's a psalm of an anguished cry to God. Israel is in deep despair. Their enemies are mocking them as their attacking them, as they are pillaging homes, farms, towns are being burned. Relatives and friends are dying. God, why is this happening? God, how long will this last? God, restore us. That's the plea. Would you look at the text with me? Psalm 80.

"Give ear, oh shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned upon the cherub and shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us. Restore us, oh God, let your face shine that we may be saved. Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers? You have fed them with bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, Oh God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. You brought a vine out of Egypt, you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it and it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with it's shade, the mighty cedars with its branches, it sent out its branches to the sea and it's shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, Oh God of hosts, look down from heaven and see, have regard for this vine, the stalk that your right hand planted and for the son whom made strong for yourself. They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down. May they perish at the rebuke of your face. But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself. Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name. Restore, Oh Lord, God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved." This is the reading of the God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths on our hearts.

The greatest temple that was ever built was built by not King David, but by King Solomon, the son of David. It was the greatest temple that was ever built in Jerusalem. And after it's destruction, they tried to rebuild the temple and it was a such a show. It paled in comparison to the original one that at the inauguration, the opening of the second temple, people wept. They wept. The people that remembered the grandeur, the glory of that initial temple, they wept when it was reconstructed. This moment when Solomon builds the temple for the first time, this is pinnacle of the glory of Israel. And what does Solomon pray at that moment, at the very height, at the moment of glory, what does he pray?

In Second Chronicles, he prays for God to forgive the people. He prays for God to restore the people. Why is he praying for that, because in Solomon's mind, the wisest person to have ever lived up to that moment, in Solomon's mind, he knows that this is just a show of paradise. He says, "God, restore. Yeah, we're doing our best, but restore everything." That's why he prays that. And God responds by giving a four-step process. God's word is eternal and the four-step process has unequivocal applications for all people, including us. Second Chronicles, 7:12-14, "Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, 'I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my faith, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.'"

Four-step process to restoration and these are the four points, our time together. Step one to restoration is humble yourself. Step two, pray boldly. Step three, turn from your wicked way. And step four, seek God's face. Step one to restoration is humble yourself. The literary context of this Psalm is, it's part of collection of Psalms called the Collection of Asaph, from Psalm 76 to 83 and it's particularly close to the theme we see in Psalm 79 which concludes in verse 13. "But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever. From generation to generation, we will recount your praise." We the people are your sheep.

Psalm 80, verse one, the very next verse. "Give your ear, Oh shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim shine forth." God, you are the great shepherd and we are your sheep. And then in both Psalms, both Psalms are an appeal to God for help. God, save us from our enemies. They are mocking us, we're calling for vengeance from heaven upon our enemies. How long are you going to make us suffer? And why is this happening?

Psalm 79 most likely references the catastrophe that Jerusalem went through, 586 BC. And then Psalm 80, the Joseph, Ephraim, Benjamin, Manasseh, the reason they are used is because they are northern tribes of Israel and they were attacked by the Assyrian in 732 BC and for a decade, until 722 BC, when the Assyrians finally destroyed the temple in Sumeria, the people were suffering. Towns were being set on fire. Everything was being plundered and pillaged. The historical background is supported by the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. This Psalm has a superscription that says, concerning the Assyrian. The application is for the people of God when they suffer on a great scale. Why are they suffering? Why are the suffering, and the answer from the Psalm is, they are suffering because they've gone astray, as sheep have gone astray.

There's two metaphors used in the Psalm for God. God is shepherd, therefore we're sheep and God is vine-dresser, a gardener therefore we are the vine, therefore we are the garden and God expects us to bear fruit. The first one I'll deal with, God is our shepherd and we are his sheep. That sounds so nice. That's so bucolic. Little sheep, when they are born, they are so cute. They are so incredible. You see goat videos, sheep videos are cute too. And then they grow up and they are not that cute anymore. Have you seen grown sheep? You go to small farms where you can go apple picking in the fall. It's tremendous, but there's also a little farm area with animals. The sheep there are so ugly. They are the ugliest sheep I have ever seen. They are nasty. They are rancid.

There is so much stuff in their wool, they look brown. Stuff is stuck in there because they can't clean themselves. They can't clean themselves and they don't care to clean for themselves. Part of the reason why is because they are the least intelligent of all the domesticated animals. They are just dumb. So when God calls you a sheep, that's not a compliment. They are dumb. They are the least intelligent of all the animals. They are completely incapable of caring for themselves. They are dumb. They are directionless and they are defenseless. They are dumb, I dealt with that. I'll show you how dumb and directionless they are with one illustration. This really happened in 2005 in eastern Turkey. I'll read from the article.

"Hundreds of sheep followed their leader, a lead sheep, off a cliff in eastern Turkey plunging to their deaths while shepherds looked on in dismay." 400 sheep fell 15 meters to their deaths in a ravine in the Van province near Iran. They are dead, the 400. But because there are so many of them, they cushion the fall for another 1100 who fell on these and those 1100 survived. The shepherds from a nearby village neglected the flock while eating breakfast leaving the sheep to roam free. The loss to local farmers was estimated at $74,000. Dumb, they are directionless and they are defenseless. Sheep, the existence of sheep destroys the theory of evolution. How are they here? How are they here? They have zero ways of protecting themselves. They can't fight. They got nothing to fight with. They've got nothing to fight with. What are you going to fight with? Their teeth aren't even that sharp.

Fight, flight? Have you seen a sheep run? Tiny, tiny legs. They can't run. No fight, no flight. And then to scare the opponent, they've got no way to scare the opponent. Even cats at least hiss. They look scary in that moment. You're going to attack a sheep, they are like, okay. That's what's going on. They are defenseless. The only way, the only way that sheep can flourish is if they follow their shepherd. That's the only way. When they follow the shepherd, everything is great. When they stop following him, when they think they are smarter than the shepherd, when they think they can find greener pastures apart from the shepherd, when they think they don't need the shepherd's leadership or the shepherd's provision or the shepherd's protection, things start going bad. And when you start following any ideology, any worldly ideology that contradicts the word of God, that's what's happening. The only voice that we Christians can blindly follow is the voice of God.

God, what did you say? What did you say? What did you say in your word? That's the one we follow. Every other voice, we need to say, you know what, is this voice leading me astray? Even your own. You've got to question every other voice and compare it with the voice of God, the word of God. What does this do, recognizing that you're a sheep? It humbles us. We're dumb, we're directionless. We're defenseless. We need a shepherd. And then God is also a gardener, he's a farmer. He expects fruit. Psalm 80 verse eight and nine. "You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land." It's talking about God bringing his people out of Egypt as if he's a gardener transplanting a vine from Egypt to Canaan, prepares the land for it and then it begins to grow.

Verse 10. "The mountains were covered with its shade." The mountains are the Sinai Mountain range in the south. "The mighty cedars with its branches." That's the cedars of Lebanon in the north. "It sent out its branches to the sea." The Mediterranean Sea in the west. "And shoots to the river." The Euphrates in the east. God is our shepherd and he expects us to follow him. And God is our gardener, he plants us and he expects fruit to be produced from us. What's that fruit? It's a life to follow him, a life of godliness. He has purposes for his plants. He has a will. We produce fruit by loving God and our neighbors, by glorifying God and serving people in our lives. Meaning he gets to direct how we live and for what purposes that we live. We do not live for ourselves. And that is to humble us. That's the first step. God, we come to you in humility. We are your sheep and we are your plants.

Step two in the restoration is to pray boldly. Psalm 80, verse one. "Give ear, Oh Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned upon the cherubim shine forth." We start off with his grand vision. God, you are on your throne and you are encircled with angels, cherubim. When God instructed Moses to make the ark of the covenant, he said to put two cherubim on the top of the mercy seat. The ark was to represent God's throne on earth and there's angels worshiping. God is the king of everything and he has armies at his disposal, a heavenly army of angels. Psalm 99:1. "The Lord reigns. Let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake." You're saying, "God, I know you're great." That's where he's starting off with. "God, I know you're great. God, I know you're sovereign. And I know you're in control." And then he goes to verse two. He says, "Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us."

What's the significance of these names? He's mentioned Joseph. He mentions Benjamin here. And now he's mentioning Ephraim and Manasseh. What's the story with Joseph? Who were the parents of Joseph? They were Jacob and ... Bible trivia ... Jacob and ... yes, mini Mosaic knows. That's Julie, she knows everything. It's Jacob and Rachel. And then there's a story with Leah. I don't have time to get into that. Leah is also Jacob's wife. She has a lot of children with Jacob and Rachel is barren and she's crying out to God. "God, send me a child. God, send me a child. God, send me a child." And then God finally sends her a child in Joseph. Then how does Jacob love Joseph? He loves him a lot. I hate to say it, he's his favorite. He creates the beautiful clothing for him. He's his favorite. And then what happens with Joseph? His brothers, who are enemies, send him into captivity. They sell him. They sell the beloved son.

And Joseph is in captivity for 13 years. Joseph also has a brother. What's Joseph's brother's name? Benjamin. Benjamin. So Jacob and Rachel had a second son, Benjamin. Benjamin means son of my right hand. Does Jacob love him? Yes, he loves him so much. And then Jacob thinks that Joseph, his beloved, dies. He pours out all his love on Benjamin and protection and everything. And then he gets Joseph back. Obviously his heart is bursting with love for these sons. It was all part of God's plan. That's their names, Joseph and Benjamin. And then we got the names of Ephraim and Manasseh. Those are the two sons of Joseph. The oldest was Manasseh. The youngest was Ephraim. That's what's going on there. So what they are saying is, God, you are the God who is enthroned, you got the cherubim around you and you are also a God who loves us like Jacob who was then renamed to Israel, as Israel loved his favorite son. God, I know you're great and I know you're all-loving, so God, where are you, save us.

The Psalm starts giving God in imperatives. Usually imperatives are from God to people. Here we see imperatives from people to God as if they are telling God what to do. God, shine forth. Stir up your might. Come and save us, which is repeated four times in verses two, three, seven, and 19. Why are you doing ... Do this stuff because we know you want to and we know you can. Psalm 80, verse three. "Restore us, Oh God. Let your face shine that we may be saved." You're our God, you're our shepherd, you love us. Restore us, let your face shine. I call this bold desperation. It's a humble boldness. It's a bold desperation. God, I know you want to save us and I know you can. You're telling the God of the universe what to do. You're saying, God of the universe, I'm suffering, we're suffering, and you're the only one that can help us so please do it. And by the way, this is why I talk about bold desperation. The word please isn't even used here.

It's like, I know you're going to do this, and I'm asking and I already know you're going to do this and I'm asking and I'm kind of telling, but please do this, and also, I thank you in advance for doing this. It's a bold desperation. How can desperation be bold? Desperation seems cowardly. Bold courage, that's how we should be talking, or cowardly desperation. But not in terms of theology, not in terms of God, because some of the most powerful prayers we can pray are from a point of desperation. When you hit rock bottom, you have zero reliance on yourself because you got yourself in this situation and the only thing you can do is, like an infant, cry out to God, save us. You've got nothing to lose, because you've lost it all therefore you've got nothing to save. You've got no ego to protect, therefore from that position, you ask for the craziest thing you can. God, give me a second chance. I know I messed up, but God, give me a second chance. God, save me.

While we're at it, adopt me as a son or a daughter, by the way, and also give me eternal life, give me heaven and also I want to be Christ-like. I want to be godly, which seems to be like the greatest, boldest thing you can ask for. God, I want to be like you, so save me. It's from this point of desperation, Lord, we're desperate. We're desperate and we're asking you and we're asking for something that we know you want to give us, therefore we know you're going to give it, because it's in line with your will so we thank you in advance. Mark 11:24. "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received and it will be yours." What do you need to be boldly, from a point of desperation, asking for? The greatest things. The greatest things. Ask for it. God, forgive me of all of my sins. Every single sin. Every single one. Please forgive me as if I've never done it and also I want heaven, I want eternal life and also I want to be in your kingdom and also whatever happens in this life, if I die, I'm with you forever.

That's what Jesus is saying. Ask for the greatest things. And also in this life, what are we asking for, as a church what are we asking for? God, save more people. We've got so many empty seats. That's a lot of empty seats. Save more people. Save my neighbors. I have neighbors that I look at and I'm like, you're the last person in the world to be saved. You're the last one. Therefore, God, save that guy. Just for fun. Save that guy just so I can be like, God saved you. This is what St. Paul does. St. Paul says I'm the org chart of the world for the kingdom of God. Jesus is the CEO, chief executive officer. I'm the CSO. Chief what? Chief sinning officer. I'm the chief of all sinners. St. Paul looks at himself and says, I can't believe God saved me. I was the last person in the world that I think God would save.

This is what we need. We need to ask God to save people. God, build your church because this is how God restores. This is why Israel didn't understand true restoration. Israel thought, and the disciples too, after Jesus was resurrected, they looked at Jesus and they are like, is it time for your kingdom now because they thought it was going to be a political kingdom. Because Israel, the whole time, they said, "You know when we flourished? When King David would make us submit. Jesus, force everyone into submission." And Jesus says, "You don't understand my kingdom. I'm going to get you to submit by changing your heart. I'm going to rule over your heart and I'm going to make you mine from the inside and that's how I want to restore the whole world. I want to restore every single person by sending the Holy Spirit, giving people brand new hearts, brand new desires, brand new affections and they live completely wholeheartedly for the will of God and that's the plan for restoration." We ask for that, Jesus, and we ask you to come back and we ask for the new heavens and the new earth.

Point three, step three that restoration is to turn from your wicked way. If you want restoration, you need to know what caused everything to be damaged. What causes it is our sin, it's our wickedness. God, where are you? We feel like you've left us. And God's like, "I'm your shepherd. You're the sheep. You're the one that left me." Turn around. Psalm 80, verse four and five. "Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayer? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure." God is angry at them and they know that God is angry. Is this a category in your mind, a theology of God? It's okay. I like when kids make noise. It's tremendous. It's tremendous, he's worshiping God. Praise God.

God loves so much that he hates anything that might actually hurt what he loves. It's just like any father, mother. You hate, in your kids, even in them something that might hurt them in the future and that's what parenting is. I want you to love God. That's what's going to lead to your flourishing. And you walking away from God in this area, I hate that because it's going to hurt you in the future. So God here is angry. Israel knows that he's angry. They've sinned. They worship idols, their food and drink consist of tears. God, the shepherd of Israel, has not led his flock into green pastures. He has not led them beside still waters. He has not protected his flock as a good shepherd should, instead he has abandoned them, from their perspective. Basically he is sovereign and he has allowed these things to happen. He is in control. Why, God, why do you allow these hardships? Why do you allow the suffering? Why are you angry with us, God?

And then God's like, "Good. Good. That's why. Because I wanted you to ask the question, I wanted to finally get you to the point where you asked the question, God, why? Why are you doing this?" And I think God's response is because you walked away first. You're the one that abandoned me. Psalm 42, one through three, "As the deer pants from flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all day long, where is your God?" I want you to pant for me, God says. I want you to long for me. I want you to seek me, I want you to follow me. And scripture promises that when you draw near to God, God draws near to you.

Psalm 80, verse six. "You make us an object of contention for our neighbors and our enemies laugh among themselves. Israel's neighbors scorn the defenseless Israel. They fight over the spoils of Israel. They laugh mockingly, scornfully." What's happened to the good shepherd who prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies? The shepherd gave the sheep what they wanted. You wanted greener pastures without me, that's what it looks like. You don't want my wall of protection. You don't want me cultivating the garden. You don't want me here. It says in verse 12, "Why then have you broken down its wall so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it and all that move in the field feed on it." It's an image of God breaking down the walls of protection and then the boar, the unclean boar, this gentile nation of the Assyrians ravaging the vineyard taking everything there.

The Jewish commentary, the Midrash, explains once a vineyard has been breached, everyone goes into it and plunders it. Also, everyone who rises up, Babylon, Media, Greece, Edom plunders Israel. Come a ruler, he plunders it. Come a general, he plunders it." What's the image here with the vineyard? The image is that God is the one who built the vineyard and Jesus Christ talks about this. Vineyard imagery, it's used all over the Old Testament, in Isaiah, in the prophets. And then Jesus brings in a parable of the vineyard. In the parable of the vineyard he says that a ruler, a king builds a vineyard, beautiful vineyard with a beautiful wall around it and a watchtower in the inside. It's gorgeous and it's huge and then he leaves.

Before he leaves, he leases it out to people to tend it, to work there and then every year he would send someone to come and receive his fruit. Yeah, he would give them wages, but then he would receive fruit because it's all his. He employs these people. He leases it out to them. And then Jesus said, "Yeah, okay." He sent one guy and they looked at that guy and said, "We're not giving you anything." He sent another guy and then they beat him. He sent another guy and they killed him. And he says, "You know what, I'm going to send my son because they definitely won't have the gall to kill my son." They look at his son, "This is the one whose supposed to inherit everything. If we kill him, it's all ours." And they kill the son.

And what's the story, what's the parable of? And Jesus is saying, this is the story of Israel. He's talking to religious leaders. "I've sent you prophets. I've sent you prophets and the prophets will just say over and over and over, 'You don't own the vineyard. You don't own the vineyard. You're leasing the vineyard. You're renting the vineyard, therefore pay your rent. You pay your rent by giving due to God, over and over and over.'" The killed the prophet, they killed prophet after prophet after prophet and then God sends Jesus and what did they do with him? Same exact thing. The point for us is, you don't own a thing. You're not an owner and if you live in an apartment, you understand, you're renting. You don't own it.

On the one hand, that's awesome because when something breaks, you won't have to do anything about it. You sit down and dishwasher broke, you go, "Dear Landlord, I need a new dishwasher." That's awesome. You don't have to think that you are in control of fixing everything. You're not the restorer because you don't own it, God does. The other lesson is, you've got to pay the rent. You've got to pay the rent. Paying the rent is giving God what he is due and that's glorifying him, living for him, worshiping him, serving him, following him, obeying him. That's the point and we do that by recognizing we haven't in areas of our life where we've gone wayward, where we are in wickedness and we repent. You do a U-turn. There's a guy in Fenway who always stands, he's got an A-frame sign, it says turn or burn. But you turn or burn, and that's what repentance means. It's a U-turn from your wicked ways to following God. Step four to restoration is seek God's face. You see this refrain over and over. Verse three. " Restore us, Oh God, let your face shine that we may be saved." Verse seven. "Restore us, oh God of hosts," he adds, "that you are a God with armies. Let your face shine that we may be saved." And then Psalm 80, verse 19. "Restore us, oh Lord, Yahweh, God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved." God, you're all-powerful, you're the God of hosts and he brings in Yahweh, the covenantal name of God. God, you're a god of relationship, that you want a relationship with me.

Repentance that doesn't lead to relationship is just religion. It's God, okay, I'm going to fix myself. I'm going to restore myself. You tell me where I did something wrong, I'm going to fix that and then I'm going to keep doing that on my own, works righteousness, justification through my own stuff. I'm going to fix everything. And God's like, that's not true repentance. True repentance is you wanted life apart from God, you wanted heaven apart from God. You wanted that lie, that utopia that Satan promises. No, repentance is, I don't want a life apart from God. I want a life with God. I want a relationship with God. You're the God of hosts and you're also a God that loves. And God, all we need from you is your face to shine. We need a smile from you. We need you to turn to us and we want your smile which saves everything, it fixes everything. It restores everything. We just want to see your face. We want to see your image. We want your delight.

My youngest daughter, Milana, she senses my moods through walls. I don't know what it is. I've got a connection with all of them, but Milana literally looks like me and she's the spitting image and character, she's my spirit animal. She knows my mood. Sometimes she walks in the room and is like, "Dad, are you mad?" I'm focused, I'm working. She's like, "Are you mad?" I'm like, "No." And then I smile and she's like, "Oh good. You're happy." And she walks away. And that's all, she just needed a smile. Here's what Christianity says, that apart from Jesus Christ, God is angry with you because you turned your back to God. And what happens, you don't experience his face, you don't experience his relationship. You need to repent of your sins. This is called reconciliation with God and we are ministers of reconciliation pointing everyone to Christ, that Jesus Christ is the image of God, the perfect image of God.

He is the face of God, he is the one through whom we can be reconciled with God because of his perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection. And when Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptizer, the God the father speaks. The Holy Spirit anoints God the son. You've got the whole Trinity. God, the father, speaks and what does he say? This is my son in whom I am well pleased. I delight over my son. My son has my perfect delight. He fulfilled my perfect will. He did everything that I asked him to. And when you repent of your sin, this is the beauty of Christianity, you're repenting your sin, you trust in the word of Jesus Christ, now you are in Christ and you're in Christ experiencing the delight of God, the father, and that's what they are asking for here.

They are asking for Moses, Aaron prayed the blessing in number six. "May the Lord bless you and keep you." And what's the greatest blessing? May the Lord make his face shine upon you and lift up its countenance upon you so that you may have peace, so that you may have shalom, that's a Hebrew word, shalom, like in the very beginning. When you have a relationship with God, face to face, when God speaks to you, when you respond to his will, his face is shining upon you. God's face is either a face of delight or a face of rebuke. And that Psalm 80, verse 16, they ask, these enemies, they burned us with fire, the vineyard with fire. They've cut it down. May the perish at the rebuke of your face.

God has a face of rebuke and a face of delight. In Psalm 14, "Turn again, oh God of hosts, look down from heaven and see and have regard for this vine." God is a gardener and they said, "Come look after us again." And then the culmination of the text is verses 15 through 17. "The stalk that your right hand planted and for the son whom you made strong for yourself, they have burned it with fire. They have cut it down. May they perish at the rebuke of your face, but let your hand be on the men of your right hand and the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself."

Three things I'm going to focus on in verse 17. First, the right hand, then the man on the right hand, and then the son of man. The right hand, when God talks about his hand being upon someone, that's talking about complete blessing, that God is the one that leads this person into places of blessing. It's like the person is a pawn and God is playing chess with that person, putting the person in the perfect position of God's complete blessing. And we see this phrase used in Ezra 7:6. This says, "Ezra went out from Babylon, he was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses, that the Lord, the God of Israel had given and the king granted him all that he asked for the hand of the Lord, his God, was upon him." Ezra went to his king, he was like, "Hey, could you please help me restore all of Jerusalem?" Which is absurd, you're going to the enemy king. And God allows it to happen because God's good hand was upon him.

The same chapter, verse nine. "For on the first day of the first month, he began to go up from Babylon and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem for the good hand of his God was on him." Ezra goes to the king, he's like, "Hey, I want to rebuild all of Israel." That's crazy. And the king is like, "Okay, do it." And then he gives him the resources to do it because God's good hand was upon him. So in verse 17, you've got let your hand, your good hand be on the man of your right hand. What's the man of your right hand? What's he talking about there? He's talking about the king who is enthroned and you've got someone on your right hand. To understand who that is, you've got to look Psalm 110, verse one. "The Lord says to my lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your foot stool."

What's going on there? It seems like King David, who wrote this Psalm, has two lords. What's going on? Jesus gives his commentary on this text in Matthew 22:41. "Now while the Pharisees where gathered together, Jesus asks them a question saying, 'What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said the son of David. The son of David meaning he's going to be only human. We're looking for a human ruler, a political ruler, like King David. The son of David. He said to them, Jesus, "How is it then that David in the spirit," David, guided by the Holy Spirit, as he writes God's word, "In the spirit, calls him, the Messiah, the Christ, calls him Lord, saying the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son and no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day, did anyone dare to ask him anymore questions."

He goes, what do you do with that? He goes, what are you saying? They believe that this one god, God is one, God is alone. Yes, God is one. And then all of a sudden, Jesus brings him in and he's like, David, guided by the Holy Spirit, he's bringing the Holy Spirit, and he says David has two lords. What is going on? And what Jesus is getting at is to show, no, the Messiah is not just human. The Messiah is King David's lord, the greatest king in all of Israel has a lord over him. It's the father, God the father speaking to God, the son. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make all your enemies a foot stool for your feet. This verse, Psalm 80, verse 17, they don't even know what they are asking for. God, send us a son of man. Send us a son of man, let your hands be on the man of your right hand. The son of man, whom you have made strong for yourself.

What they are asking for and obviously they are guided by the Holy Spirit, he's asking for God, send us restoration and we know the only one who can really restore everything is not just human. It's the God, the son who is also son of man. And that's the title, Son of Man, isn't just to show that Jesus is human and fully God. It's a messianic title. Daniel 7:13 through 14. I saw in the night visions and behold through the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man. He came to the ancient of days and was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom. All peoples, nations, and languages serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away and his kingdom shall not be destroyed. It's someone who is human, son of man, and God, your absolute eternal.

In the Psalm, written centuries before Jesus Christ, may your hand be on the one who is at your right hand, Jesus Christ is also the son of man, fully God, fully human. Where was Jesus born? Where was Jesus born? Bethlehem. The house of bread. Bethlehem, the town of Benjamin. Keep that in mind. Matthew 26:63 through 64. But Jesus remained silent and the high priest said to him, this is Jesus before the high priest, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God. Jesus said to him, you have said so, but I tell you, from now on, you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Jesus connects those two, the son of the right hand and the son of man. He's going to be seated because you're going to try to kill him right now, but he's going to come back from the dead.

Jesus Christ is the son of the right hand. How did Jesus Christ get into this preeminent, exalted position, son of the right hand? Jacob and Rachel, Rachel's giving birth to Benjamin and she's dying. And as she's dying, she names her son, Benoni, son of the suffering. And then Jacob says no, that's not going to be his name. His name is going to be Benjamin, Benjamin, son of my right hand. He didn't even know what was going on. It was as if God's spirit just took over. Genesis 35:18. And as her soul was departing, she was dying, she called his name, Benoni, the son of suffering, but his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand. If you want to be the son of the right hand, you've got to be a son of suffering. Jesus Christ is the Benoni, he's the son of suffering, he is the suffering servant. He's the one that comes and he's the one that builds his kingdom through the greatest sacrifice that was ever made, the sacrifice of the son of God.

When you understand the gospel, this is how everything was planned and how obedient Jesus was. The son of God was willing to do this. When you understand that he died on the cross for your sins, to restore you, when you understand that, the more you understand that, the more he gets your heart. And the more he gets your heart, the more restoration is going to be unleashed in your life. In Psalm 80, verse 18 to 19, "Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name. Restore us, oh Lord, God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved. God, give us life because we don't have that life on the inside of us. Give us that life." And Jesus Christ is the life. He's the one that came to give the life and he came to give life by giving his own life as the shepherd for the sheep.

In John 10:10 through 11, the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Why sheep, dear Christian, should you follow Jesus Christ? Because Jesus Christ is the greatest shepherd. He's the only shepherd that dies for you. Every single other shepherd ultimately pretends to protect you from the wolves, and then ultimately that shepherd is the one that kills you. That's every other shepherd. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to give you what you're really looking for and kills you. That's every other shepherd.

Our shepherd is the one that says, I'm going to give you life at cost to myself. I'm the shepherd. I'm also the lamb of God that came to take away the sins of the world. And that's what Jesus did. He didn't just come to save us from our situations. That's kind of what the Psalmist is getting at. Restore our situation, restore the kingdom of Israel. No, no, no. Jesus says, it's a lot bigger than that. Matthew 1:20 through 21. The angel says to Joseph, "But as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins."

If we want restoration in our lives, this is what we need. God, save me from my sins. Plural, there's many of them. God, save me from my sins. If we want restoration in the church, we want restoration in our city, if we want restoration in our nation and the world, God, save us from our sins. And the only way we can be saved from our sins is through Jesus Christ and Jesus restores God's people by saving them from their sins. The angel says to the shepherd in Luke 2:10 through 11, "Fear not for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people for unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ, the Lord. The king has come, he is Lord and he is savior. In Jesus, God shines his face upon his people." Romans 5:8. "Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men."

I'll close with two more things that are really important. John 15 and then Galatians 5. In the Old Testament, Israel is the vine and God is the vine dresser. By the time the New Testament comes, people of God are no longer the vine because we could not produce the fruit from within the fruit that God wanted. So then God sends Jesus Christ. In John 15, Jesus says that he is the vine and the emphasis of, he's the vine and we are to bear fruit through our connection with him, communion with him, relationship with him. John 15:1 through 17. "I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this, my father's glorified that you bear much fruit and so proof to be my disciples. And as the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you, no longer do I call you servants, because the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friend for all that I have heard from my father I've made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another."

Jesus now is the vine, we're the branches. Through our faith we're connected to him. Communion with him. The more time we spend with him, the more we worship and glorify him, walk with him, follow him, the more fruit is produced by him through the Holy Spirit in us. That's why I look at the Old Testament and I'm like, I feel so bad for them. I feel terrible for them because they didn't have the power of Jesus. They didn't have the Holy Spirit within as we do. As we do. That's why we're so blessed. And I'll end with Galatians 5, which gives us the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit in which we can discern. Are we walking in step with the spirit or are we walking according to the flesh? If we're walking according to the flesh, we produce wild fruit, which is sinful instead of producing the fruit that God wants from us.

Galatians 5:16 through 25. "But I say walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Desires of the flesh are against the spirit. Desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you were led by the spirit, you are not under the law. The works of the flesh are evident. Sexual morality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enemies, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these." That's the heaven utopia that Satan promises us apart from God and it only turns into hell. But, he says, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit, let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Four steps to restoration. Humble yourself, pray boldly, turn from your wicked way, and seek God's face. I'll close with a benediction from Hebrews as our prayer.

Let's pray. May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord, Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card in the worship guide, or the connection card in the back. You can grab it, fill it out, and if you leave it at the welcome center, we will give you a little gift in return and also get in touch with you over the course of the week. There's also a digital connection card in our app. If you didn't know, we have an app. And then also, either in Google Play you can download, or the Apple App Store, or there's also the connection card on the website.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank you for grace. We do not deserve it. You, the great God of the universe, you created us, and you rule and reign over us. And every single one of us rebelled against you. We are all insurrectionists, and you can meet out your judgment at any time you choose. And yet, you, the loving, merciful God of the world, you're long suffering and you're patient with us. You create a way for us to be redeemed and forgiven, a way for us to be given amnesty, and you sent your son, Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and you, the great king of the world, you stooped down, and you became a slave. You became a servant. You took on human form, and you obeyed every single tiny degree of God's will. You obeyed the law.

And then you went to the cross to bear the judgment, the wrath that we deserve for our law breaking. And you died, and you rose on the third day, and you ascended. You're sitting at the right hand of God the Father. And you're offering amnesty to each one of us. We just trust in your work on the cross. If we just ask for forgiveness and you offer us friendship with God, if we reject it, Lord, your word tells us that we will become a footstool for your feet as your enemies. I pray that every single person hearing this word today will accept the amnesty, accept the mercy and enter the kingdom of God. I pray, Holy Spirit, come and regenerate hearts. And for those of us who aren't Christians, I pray today, give us a grand vision of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, as the King of Kings, and the King has given us marching orders to go and share the gospel with everyone. And I pray that you'll continue to bless us as we do that and continue to bless this church. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're going through a sermon series that we're calling Bomb Psalms. It's through the psalter. Bomb, because it's anointment. It's anointing for our souls, and we need it. Our parched souls need this ointment. We desperately need the anointing. We're also calling Bomb Psalms a word play because they're like bombs. They drop down onto our false categories of God to give us a bigger picture of who God is. For many of us, God is too small and we are too big, and God wants us, our vision of him to be expanded. Today, we're in Psalm 47. The title of the sermon is God is King.

Many of you are in positions of leadership. Many of you have studied leadership and read many books on leadership. What makes for a great leader? Perhaps it's the ability to communicate a vision. Perhaps it's the ability to execute on that vision. Perhaps it's the ability to manage people. One of the greatest quotes I've ever read on leadership is by Steve Jobs who said this. He said, "Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do." It's why at your job, you have a manager, and that's why at your job, you get paid because you wouldn't do that for free. "Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could." And I love that quote. I love that.

The greatest leader who has ever lived, and this isn't even debatable, is Jesus Christ. Today, over two billion people all over the world pay homage to Jesus, even nominally. They would say, "I'm a follower of Jesus Christ." Two thousand years after he lived, Jesus Christ is, hands down, the greatest leader to have ever lived. He's the greatest of all time. How did he do it? It took him 36 months to turn the world upside down. How did he do it? He took 12 guys, 12 regular bros working regular jobs, four fisherman, small business owners, a guy in finance, or finance, depending on where you are. What's the difference between finance and finance? About 300k a year. You had a zealot.

You just had all kinds of people. He brings these guys together, just goes up to them and says, "Follow me," and they do it. And they don't just follow him for three years. He dies, he's resurrected, he ascends to heaven, they keep following him for the rest of their days proclaiming Jesus Christ, all of them martyred except for the Apostle John. He inspired them to follow him, to live for him, to witness of him, to die for him. Jesus, how did you do it? Did he just force them? "I'm the king of the universe. I force you to follow me." No, that's not how he did it. He served them. He led with service. He led with sacrifice. The King of Kings came to serve. And that's how he inspired them.

Matthew 20:25-28, "But Jesus called them, the disciples, to him and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be your slave, come on, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many.'" Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords came as a servant. He came as a slave. He served them. He saved them, and this is how he inspired them and gave them the greatest vision for their lives. Don't live for yourself. Don't waste your life. Live for the King of Kings. Serve the King of Kings. That's when you life really matters.

At the root of the word inspire is the word spirit. And Jesus Christ, through his gospel, he saves us. And then when we believe, he inspires us by sending us the Holy Spirit. And that compels us, the Holy Spirit, He compels us to serve Jesus. He saves us, and now we become slaves, but we're willing slaves. We're also doulas. St. Paul would call himself, "I'm a doulas of Jesus Christ. I'm a slave of Jesus Christ. I'm a servant," but he's a benevolent King who loves me. Therefore, I'll do everything that he calls me to do. And also, my king is God the Father. So my King adopts me into his family, and where God reigns, there is Shalom, and we submit to him when we do it willfully. When we choose to obey, that's when blessing comes into our life and blessing comes into the world.

That's what we're talking about today. Psalm 47, it's an enthronement psalm. Would you look at this incredible text with me? "Clap your hands all people. Shout to God with loud songs of joy, for the Lord, the Most High is to be feared, a great king over all the world. He subdued peoples under us and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves. God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God! Sing praises! Sing praises to our king! Sing praises for God is the king of all the earth. Sing praises with a psalm. God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham, for the shields of the earth belong to God. He is highly exalted."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points. First, God is King over everything. Second, therefore, sing to the king. And third, all creatures of our God and King first. God is king over everything. Whenever you study any text, you're going to look at the context. First the literary context, and then the historical context to really understand what's going on. The immediate literary context is that this psalm is wedged between Psalms 46 and 48, and the three together emphasize the mighty works of God on earth as a king.

Psalm 46 concludes, "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth, the Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress." So God is king, and he is our fortress. And Psalm 47:7-8, our psalm, same theme, "For God is the king of all the earth. Sing praises with a psalm! God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne." Psalm 48 continues the same theme, verses one and two, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, his holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the Great King." And then Psalm 48:10, "As your name, O God, so your praise reached to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness. God is king over everything, everything and everyone."

A lot of people hear that you're a Christian. "Oh, you're a Christian. Oh, that's tremendous. What do you do on Sunday? Oh, you're going to church. Oh, that's great. I do yoga on Sundays. You do Jesus, I do yoga. You do Jesus, I do golf. You do Jesus, I go to the beach." God is in the category of preference. That's what you prefer to do. And the psalms say, "No, no, no. It's not about preference. It's about reality. It's about truth. You like it or not, God is king over every single person. Every single person, you either reject him, rebel against him or you submit to him. Say, "Yes, God, you are my king." God is king over everything. That's what the text says, Psalm 47:2, "For the Lord, the most high, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth." Psalm 47:7, "For God is the king of all the earth. Sing praises with a psalm." Psalm 47:8, "God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne."

To whom is this addressed? To Jewish people? To Christians? To Americans? No. Look at Psalm 47:1, "Clap your hands all people. Shout to God with loud songs of joy." God is king over every single person. Doesn't matter where you're from. It doesn't matter who raised you. It doesn't matter why you're in the city. It doesn't matter what you look like. It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter where you go to school, where you graduated from, how many degrees you have. It doesn't matter where you work. It doesn't matter how much money you make, how much money you have, what kind of house you live on, what kind of condo you live in, what kind of apartment you live in, what kind of closet you live in. It doesn't matter what you drive. Doesn't matter what car it is, what scooter it is, what bicycle it is.

None of that matters. God is king over you, and it doesn't matter if you like it. God is your king. Did you get a vote? Nope, just like you didn't get a vote to be alive. God is your king. He's king over you. God is king over your money, over your relationships, over your mind, over your heart, over your hands, over your feet, over your eyeballs, over your ears. God is God over your gender, over your genitals, over your reproductive organs. God is God over your time, your desires, your dreams, your wishes, your hopes. God is king over everything. How does that make you feel? And whatever that feeling is inside, if it irks you, if you bristle against it, that's a good sign that you are not in good standing with your king. So you need to repent, you need to lay down your arms and accept the amnesty that he is offering you.

And once you do accept that, you are to revel in that truth that God is your king. You should be pumped about it. All of the enthusiasm that you can muster, that's what should well up in your heart, all the joy, everything. God is my king and he forgave me. He allows me to be in his kingdom as a citizen forever. Praise God. Some of you take for granted that you live in the United States of America. I do not. I do not take my citizenship for granted because my family comes from the former Soviet Union. And we're here for a reason, because it was terrible back there. In the former Soviet Union, everyone thinks socialism is tremendous. We can have a conversation after about what real socialism looks like.

Everybody got paid the same amount, 200 Rubles. Everybody got the same terrible education. Everybody wore the same clothes because that's the only clothes you could buy. Everyone had the same food. Everybody lived in a little tiny studio in the Khrushchyovka, the ugliest buildings ever built. They were all nine stories with no elevators. And if you want to take a shower, the whole family had to go down into the basement, into the communal shower. So people didn't shower that often. So that's why once in a while, once a month, the whole family goes into a sauna together, the banya. Oh, don't get me started about that.

So I am here for a reason, and every day I thank God that I am in this wonderful country. I do not take my citizenship for granted. Jesus Christ offers us entrance into something even greater, the Kingdom of God. And that right there should pump us up that God is our King. So Psalm 47:5, "God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet." The historical context of this psalm, we talked about literary context. The historical context, this is an enthronement psalm. This is a people that were subjugated to a terrible king. That king is overthrown and now a great king has come, a king who rules with love, a king who rules with perfect justice and a king who loves his people. This king has come, and they are enthroning him with a coronation ceremony. And he comes up with a shout.

The historical context of this psalm mostly likely is when David brings the ark of the Lord from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David, to Jerusalem, to make it God's dwelling the place. The Ark of the Lord was the sign of God's presence, and here's the historical context, 2 Samuel 6:12-15. Verse 12, "And it was told King David, the Lord has blessed the House of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him because of the Ark of God," because of the Lord's presence. So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing. And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal. And David danced before the Lord with all his might and David was wearing a linen ephod. So David, with all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn.

The ark of the Lord is finally where it belongs, in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, and where they bring the ark, that's when Solomon builds a temple, and there's the Holy of Holies. Bu for now, we see that God's presence is back. How does David feel about God's presence being back in Jerusalem? David is pumped. He's rejoicing. He's rejoicing so hard that he starts dancing. And how does he dance? He dances with all his might. What does that dancing look like? When you have to try to dance, that means you're terrible at it. He knows zero moves, just the typical white guy. I got joy, but I don't know how to express it, but I'm going to express it anyway. Linen ephod, I don't even know what that is. So he's dancing. He's worshiping God with everything that he's got.

How do the people around him react? Well, scripture tells us that his wife wasn't really happy about that, his wife Michal. Look at 2 Samuel 6:16-23. "As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked out the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart." Uh-oh. "And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burn offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of Hosts and distributed among all the people the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat and a cake of raisins to each. Then all the people departed, each to his house, and David returned to bless his household, but Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, 'How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of the servants, female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.'

"And David said to Michal, 'It was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above all his house to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, and I will celebrate before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes, but by the female servants of whom you have spoken, I shall be held in honor." And Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child to the day of her death." There's a lot going on in that text, especially in terms of a marriage, marital relationships. We're not going to deal with that now, but what's going on is, David danced to the Lord. And the scriptures say, it's very clear that God approves of David's emotion and disproves of Michal's concern for dignity.

That's why it says this, she didn't have a child, that God didn't bless her with a child. That's the commentary in the text. She had a concern for dignity, a concern for decorum. "This isn't how God is worshiped. God isn't worshiped with dancing. God isn't worshiped with emotion." And for the same reason, for the same concern for dignity, that, for many of us, is the same reason why we worship the way we do, why we're so stoic in worship. And I'll just share from my own experience. I grew up in a Russian Baptist church in New England, in Rhode Island. If you know anything about Russians, they don't really show emotion. New Englanders, even less emotion. Russian Baptists in New England.

You could never clap. That was a sin. That was a grave sin. You can't clap in church. You can't do it because some people might think you're clapping for them, and they might get proud. So no clapping. No emotion at all. My dad taught me, we are like oaks. You worship like an oak. You just stand like an oak tree. I remember I was at a Russian pastor's conference, and one of the pastors said, "Hey." He was asking a guy on stage in a question and answer. He was like, "Hey, I got people raising their hands in my church. What should I do?" And the guy from on stage, he said, "You should lower the ceiling fans." Just savage. Savage.

I'm not saying you got to be dancing like David and worshiping. We're in Boston. I understand. Some of you have Catholic backgrounds or Orthodox backgrounds, Presbyterian, the Frozen Chosen. David worshiped with all his might, and many of us, whatever might we have, our mights vary. Some of us have a lot of might when it comes to worshiping. Some of us have a little less might. I'm saying, whatever might you got, worship with all of it. If you are frozen chosen, and you worship like an oak tree, just give me a little momentum, a little movement, just a little bit. There's got to be emotion. There's got to be emotion when you worship. This is the command, that you sing, that you sing.

And this is point two, therefore, you sing to God. "Clap your hands all people. Shout to God with loud songs of joy." Shout, sing. Why do we sing? Why do we sing? We sing when we're happy. We sing when we're in love. We sing in Fenway Park. I remember, when I got married, my wife Tanya and I, 15 years now we've been married. And for our 15th anniversary, we went to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic because that's where we went for our honeymoon. And I remember at our honeymoon, my wife looking at me. She said, "I've never heard you sing. Do you sing?" I was like, "Oh, yeah do I sing!" And back then, the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out, and they had the Soggy Bottom Boys. And I had that soundtrack. I had the CD of it. I used to listen to them in my car. I love that soundtrack! And I'm not going to sing it now, but I started singing so loud. And I was singing everything I got.

Then all of a sudden, I hear knocking on the wall like boom, boom, boom because it was 7AM, and you don't sing at 7AM in a resort when people are asleep. When do we sing? We sing when we're happy. We sing when we're in love. We sing in adoration, and that's what's going on. We are to sing. We are to worship God. The same phrase about clapping your hands and loud shouts, same language is used twice when kings are coronated in Israel. 2 Kings 11:12, Joash is anointed King of Judah. "Then he brought out the king's son and put the crown on him and gave him the testimony. They proclaimed him king and anointed him. They clapped their hands and said, 'Long live the King.'" When Solomon was anointed king of Israel, 1 Kings 1:39-40, there's "Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, 'Long live Solomon,' and all the people went up after him, playing on pipes and rejoicing with great joy so that the earth was split by their noise."

The earth was split by their noise. Fenway Park, I live in Coolidge Corner. Fenway Park, when there's a home run, and the whole stadium erupts, it's like 38,000 people, I can hear the noise. This is what's going on. Split by their noise. It's a party. It's an inauguration. We have inaugurations of the president, but half the people are happy, half the people are despondent. Imagine an election where everybody votes for this king. This is what's going on. Everybody is happy, and they shout, "Long live the king!" They're not just wishing the king a long life. They're saying for as long as the king lives, as long as I live, I am a subject. You are my king. You're not just the king. You are my king. You are my sovereign ruler.

Psalm 47:5, "God has gone up with a shout, and the Lord with the sound of a trumpet." People are rejoicing. They're shouting. They're clapping. When do we clap? We clap in a sign of appreciation or congratulations or gladness. That's not just what's going on. Yeah, they're appreciating the king, but historical context, in ancient times, when a king comes in and he conquers a people, the people who have been conquered, they come to the throne with their swords. They lay down their swords, they open up their hands. My hands are empty, and they start clapping together that you're now our king. I am not at war with you anymore. I'm not bearing my sword against you. My sword now is yours, and I am at war with you, side by side. I'm at war for you.

The king of Syria called himself a great king, the most high, the same title because he ruled over many nations. God doesn't just rule over many nations. He rules of all of the nations. And since the psalm was written and many kings have come and gone, the Assyrian kingdom, gone, Babylonian kingdom, gone, the old Persian kingdom, gone, Greek empire, gone, Roman empire. In the year AD 250, they were celebrating the Roman empire was around for 1,000 years and as they were celebrating, it was falling apart. Their military plots, dictatorship, barbarian invasion, disease, plagues, economic stagnation, civil unrest. More modern times, got the British empire, gone. Hitler and the Nazis proclaimed a thousand year Reich, gone. The Soviet Union, they were an empire for seven years, gone. And what's true of political power is also true of economic or financial power. It's here and then it's gone.

In 1923, nine of the most powerful tycoons, financial tycoons that were alive back then, they got together for a meeting. If you count all of their money in 1923, they had more money, more resources than the U.S. Treasury, just vast empires. Charles Schwab was the president of the world's largest independent steel company. Samuel Insull, president of the world's largest utility company. Howard Hobson, president of the largest gas firm. Arthur Cutten, the greatest wheat speculator. Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange. Albert Fall, member of the president's cabinet. Leon Fraser, president of the bank of international settlements. Jesse Livermore, the greatest speculator of the stock market. And Ivan Kruger, head of the company that had a worldwide monopoly on the production of matches.

Well, what happened in the 1920s? The great crash happened. And then what happened to these guys? 25 years later, Charles Schwab dies in bankruptcy, lived on borrowed money for the last five years of his life. Samuel Insull died virtually broke after spending time as a fugitive from justice. Howard Hobson went insane. Arthur Cutten went bankrupt and died overseas broke. Richard Whitney spent time in maximum security prison. Albert Fall was released from prison so he could die at home. Leon Fraser, Jesse Livermore and Ivan Kruger all died by suicide. The most powerful people on the face of the earth at that time. And then they're dead. And then you stand before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.

And at that moment, you stand before him as someone who had bent a knee to him during life in humility, repented of sin, or you stand before him as one to be judged in humiliation because you rejected him sovereign reign. And that's going to be the case for every single one of us. Kingdoms come and kingdoms go, but the kingdom of God lasts forever. How do we know that God is the Most High? Verses three and four recount what happened in Israel's history when they entered the Promised Land. This is verses three and four, "He subdued peoples under us and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves." God gave them victory, gave Israel victory, gave them the Promised Land, and he provided for them. He gave them a heritage. And why did he do all that? Because he loves them.

This is the emphasis here. The greatest king that exists, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, he loves us. He's a king that knows me, and he knows my name. I'm not just a slave. He doesn't just force me into subjugation. He compels my heart to love him by first loving me. You ever think about how wild it is that the God of the universe even allows people to rebel against him? Adam and Eve rebelled against him. God could have whacked them on the spot. If you think about it, right now you can go out and sin. You can choose to sin. God's wrath doesn't pour out on your immediately. It's long suffering. He wants you to choose to obey. He wants you to choose to love him, and that's how he rules us. He rules over our hearts. He loves us. He's a king who loves us, and God provides and he protects as a great king. In the wilderness, he provided for Israel on the way to the Promised Land. He provided them with manna and quail and water.

And he brings them to the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. And he said he put the nations under our feet. This is literal. Joshua comes in and fights against the five kings of the Amorites. He gets them, and he lays the kings down. And the leaders of the people of Israel come in, and they literally put their feet on the necks of the enemies of the people of God. He did this. God is a God who gave them victory. Because God is king, therefore sing. That's the point. Psalm 47:5-7, "God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God! Sing praises! Sing praises to our king! Sing praises for God is the king of all the earth. Sing praises with a psalm." Seven imperatives in this psalm.

First one is shout. The second one is clap, and then five times, so that you get the point, we are to sing praises to our king. We're to sing. Christians are a singing people. We're commanded to sing to our God. And we see the same thing in the New Testament. This is why we do worship, by the way, if you're new to Christianity. This is why we sing at Mosaic. It's an important part and it's a value of ours to sing and to sing loud and to sing well, hopefully, but sing loud. And I've been in ministry long enough in the city that I know a lot of us are just head-oriented. We're all about information. This happens all the time. I preach the first sermon, and people didn't do this because I'm watching, and they know I'm watching.

All the time, people time their entrance into the sanctuary for the start of the sermon. And then they leave as soon as the sermon is over. This happens all the time. My response, if you do that, as I see, and so does Jesus, and then my other response is it's not just about knowledge. It's not just about information because theology, true theology, if you really understand theology, it has to lead to the doxology where you can't but worship this great God. That's why we ... Ephesians 5:17-21, "Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine for that's debauchery, but be filled with the spirit." I don't know if you've ever noticed this, then he makes a connection with singing. The same way that people get drunk and they sing, the thing is bar songs, or when I played rugby, there was rugby drinking songs. Everyone gets wasted after the game and everyone's singing.

You got this group of early 20s young men singing random Irish rugby songs. Don't do that, but there's a connection between be filled with the spirit and do what? "Addressing one another's psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and singing and making melodies to the Lord with you heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." Colossians 3:15-17, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body. Be thankful for let the word of Christ dwell in your richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom and singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God and whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord, Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

The more the word of Christ dwells in your richly, the more you want to express that by worshiping Jesus Christ. We gather to worship God because he's worthy and because we ought to. Why? Because Jesus won. Winning feels good. It feels so good, even if it's something stupid like softball. By the way, Mosaic has a softball team. So if you're good, let us know. Years, I haven't done it. And then two weeks ago, my brother is like, "Hey, we're going to forfeit the game. You got to go." So I went. Then I went yesterday, too. Let me tell you something. Softball doesn't matter at all. Is Brian here? Where's Brian at? Oh, there he is.

Brian gets up to the plate and hits the ball. He hit a dinger. I've never seen the softball fly this far. Flew. And he's round... How do you think he's rounding the bases? Stoically? No! No. He is pumped. Rounds it, and then all of us, everybody on the team, everybody's cheering. Everybody's shouting. Everyone's fits bumping. It's awesome. A lot of elation. A lot. Hey, you know what's even better than winning at softball and hitting a dinger? How about overcoming Satan, sin and death? Yeah, Jesus did that. So that's why we worship Jesus. He's the greatest victor that has ever been. He's a conqueror. He conquered our greatest enemy, and he makes us more then conquerors. So that's why we should sing. That's why we sing.

The prospect of victory brings a sense of pure elation. Jesus Christ is the goat. He's the goat. Tom Brady, I love that guy. I love that guy. He betrayed us. He's not the goat. No, he's still the goat. He's still the goat. But Jesus, this is why I raise my hands when I worship, Jesus is just out there scoring touch downs day in and day out. Jesus is the most consistent touch down scorer. And he takes the ball, and he spikes it in the face of Satan on a daily basis. That's why we raise our hands when we worship. Christians should be the most joyful of all people, the most joyful, the most optimistic, the most hopeful, the most full of life, the most energetic, the most positive, the most enthusiastic about being alive.

My youngest daughter is four. She turned four two weeks ago. I have never seen a kid more excited about her birthday. She woke up, huge smile on her face. I said, Milana, how do you feel?" If you've never met Milana, we speak Russian in our home. So her first language is Russian. So she speaks English with a Russian accent. I love it. It's how we programmed her. I said, "Milana, how do you feel?" She said, her whole face, she's like, "I so excited!" A little psychotic. That's a little overboard, but she was so excited all day. We went to the Franklin Zoo. That's what she wanted to do. We just had a tremendous day. And I said, "What do you want to eat?" She said, "I want sushi." I'm raising some bougee girls. I got to stop doing that.

So we had sushi. She had a tremendous day. She's just excited about being alive. How much more so should we be excited about being alive, being excited about life? And not just life, but new life that Jesus Christ has forgiven us that we're in the kingdom of God. Question; what do I do... Oh, first of all, a warning and then a question. Warning; beware of replacing submission to the king with emotion. And this is why a lot of churches are wary of emotion in worship. Be wary of separating bifurcating between submitting to the king and being emotional about the king. I remember I was part of a Christian fellowship in college, and I was from a Russian background, Christian background. I didn't really express emotion.

And I saw this one kid, I was just blown away by how much emotion he expresses when we gather for our meetings. And then I found out, this guy is sleeping with a different girl every single weekend. So his emotion was just fake. It's just hypocrisy. You're just acting. You're just theater. Make sure it's submission that leads to emotion. That's the connection here. Question, objection; what if I don't feel lie singing? What if I don't feel like showing emotion or clapping or shouting? What if my heart is sad or my emotions are dull? Well, obviously, there's different kinds of psalms. There's psalms or lament and sorrow, but still, there has to be an underlying rejoicing in the Lord that he's sovereign even over the situation. Jesus Christ said blessed are those who are happy or those who mourn.

So it's even from a position of joy. And then second of all, this wonderful biblical wisdom, we don't worship God just because we feel like it. We worship God because God commands it and God deserves it, and we ought to. We don't sing because you feel like it. We sing because you can and you should. That's like someone who's married, husband who's married and says, "I don't love my wife." Well, you know what scripture says? Too bad. Love her. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Too bad. And you know what? Feelings follow actions.

So we are to worship. And as we worship, even if we didn't feel like it, God warms up our hearts. Scripture never tells us to base anything on our feelings as to wait until we feel like it. The commandment rejoice, that's an imperative, we are to do it. We are to obey. And third, who is to sing? Point three, all creatures of our guarded king. Everybody, every single person alive. Psalm 47:8 and 9, God reigns over whom? Over the nations. "God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples gather as the people of God of Abraham for the shields of he earth belong to God. He is highly exalted." Shields here, he's talking about power. He's talking about influence. And what he's saying is everything that anyone has belongs to God, and he says, "All the peoples worship," whom, "the God of Abraham. The prince of the peoples gathers as the people of the God of Abraham."

And here, we see the grand vision that God promised Abraham. God promises and made a covenant with Abraham. We just did a sermon series over the life of Abraham. God promised, "In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. This is my covenant with you. You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations." This is the glorious vision that people from every single tribe, race, nation, tongue, people from everywhere are to worship the same God, the one and only God, and to fulfill this mission and this vision, Jesus Christ comes on a mission into the world to be the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Jesus paid for the sins of the whole world, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, the King of Kings comes, stoops down, takes on human form, lives a perfect life, a perfect life of love toward God and toward people, and then he goes and is crucified on a cross bearing the wrath of God that we deserve for our insurrection against God.

He dies, and he's raised on the third day as proof that the sacrifice was accepted. And now, we can be granted amnesty. We just need to ask for it. When John the Baptizer came, his message was, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." And when Jesus came after John the Baptizer, he started preaching in Mark 1:14-15, "Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying," and these are the very words, first words of Christ written in the Gospel of Mark, "'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.'" He says, "The king is here. The kingdom is here. Therefore," what do we do? You ask for forgiveness. God, forgive me for trying to be king over my own life. God, forgive me. God, I repent.

And Jesus Christ forgives. Sometimes you look at all the evil and the injustice and the corruption in the world, and you wonder, Jesus, why aren't you back yet? And we should long. We should long for Jesus to come back. And he will come back, but he's waiting. He's long suffering. He's patient for each one of us to repent for each person alive to repent, but he will come back. And with every day, it's closer and closer to the second coming. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, "For the Lord himself with descend from Heaven with a cry of command with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air so. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words."

Christ is coming back. Revelation 11:15-18, "Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. He shall reign forever and ever.' And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God saying, 'We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations rage, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and those who fear your name both small and great and for destroying the destroyers of the earth."

Right now, Jesus is offering you forgiveness. He's offering you his friendship. If you reject it and you die, you will no longer be forgiven or a friend of God. You will become a footstool for his feet. And we get that from Psalm 110, "The Lord says to my Lord," God the Father is speaking to God the Son, "'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.' For those who rebel against God," yeah, Jesus will put his feet on your neck and say, "You're mine." Now, you're not a child of God. Now you are convicted and condemned and damned. Hebrews 10:12-13, "And when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God waiting for that time 'til his enemies shall be made a footstool for his feet." So don't scoff at the idea of mercy. Don't be cynical. That's what the world wants to do.

Accept the mercy, lay down your arms and submit to the king. Philippians 2:5-11, "Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. Though, he wasn't a form of God, did not count in quality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, doulas, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore, God is highly exalted, him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father."

So either we proclaim Jesus is Lord now in humility bending knee to him, or we will confess that he's Lord as he's judging us, and we're being judged in humiliation. Now, a word to Christians. Once you become a Christian, you're in the kingdom of God. You're a child of God. You're a servant of God. You're a slave of God. What's our primary goal? What are our marching orders? Why are we here? What's the mission? We see the mission in Acts 1:6-11. This is Jesus right before he ascended, the resurrected Christ. "So when they had come together, they asked him, 'Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?'" They thought the kingdom was a political kingdom. "'Jesus, is the kingdom coming now?' He said to them, 'It's not for you to know the times of the seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and all Samaria and to the end of the earth.'

"So when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud too him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold two men stood by them in white robes and said, 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you go into heaven.'" The disciples said, "Jesus, is this the time for the kingdom?" He says, "Nope." "When's the time for the kingdom?" "I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit, and you go and you be my witnesses everywhere. And my name, my word needs to be proclaimed in all of the nations. And after that, then I will come." After his resurrection, Jesus claims that he has all of the authority.

Matthew 28 ends the same way. "Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.'" That's our job, dear Christians. Our job is to be witness, proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is king, and he's offering you forgiveness and amnesty. Accept it. Be reconciled with your maker.

That's why this church exists. By the way, we are in the most strategic places to be proclaiming the gospel because we got people from all nations coming here. This is why we do what we do. This is why we gather. We worship God, we testify to them, and we welcome people into the kingdom of God, repent and believe. How should it make us feel that we're saved? It should fill our hearts with joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength. How should it make us feel when someone becomes a Christian? Same. When you see another person become a Christian, when a soul, an eternal soul is saved forever, that should pump us up a million times more than any kind of victory.

When someone gets up here right before a baptism and shares their testimony, all of us should be just absolutely pumped. Why? Because heaven is pumped. The angels are pumped. Look at Luke 15:7, "Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons that need no repentance." So everything we do in our life, wherever you go, whatever you do, wherever you live, we should orient our whole life around this, around the gospel ministry, around kingdom work because that's ultimately what matters more than anything else.

I'll conclude with this. 95 AD, according to Irenaeus, who was a friend of Polycarp, was a friend of the Apostle John, the Apostle John is the only Apostle who wasn't martyred for the faith, but he was exiled to the island of Patmos. The island of Patmos was 10 miles long, six miles wide. It was a volcanic island. There's nothing there except for rock. So he had a lot of time on his hands. And as he had a lot of time on his hands, God gave him a vision, a vision of Jesus Christ coming back, reigning and ruling. And he wrote that down as inspired by the Holy Spirit in the book of Revelation. It's a picture of Jesus sitting on his throne, casting down his enemies, casting Satan into a flaming fire of sulfur and gathering people into new Jerusalem in all its beauty and splendor, and the people that God had there and the angels and the archangels, the Cherubim, the Seraphim, and they're all... What are they doing? What's everyone doing? What's everyone doing? They're singing. They're worshiping. That's what they're doing.

So right now, friends, we're going to sing. I want to see, can we have just a little more gusto? I won't judge you if you don't. Just sing with all your might. That's the point. That's all I'm saying. When you see this big picture of who Jesus is, that he is your king, that he is worthy of your service and your sacrifice in your singing, you can't but worship. I'll close with Revelation 7:9-10, "And after this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb!'"

Let's pray. God, you're a great king, and we acknowledge that, and we accept willingly your rule and reign in our lives. Lord, if there's any area in our life, any room that we've closed off, put a private sign, a do not enter sign, I pray, Lord, today break down those doors, continue to reign and rule in every single aspect of our lives. We love your reign. We love your rule. We love you, King Jesus, and we worship you, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, and welcome again to Mosaic, good to see you this morning. If you're new, I just want to introduce myself, my name is Shane. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we are so glad to have you with us. We mentioned this earlier. But we would love to connect with you, if you would like to connect with us, the best way to start that off is just to fill that little connection card out in your worship guide. You can either drop that in the little white offering box at the back of the room on your way out this morning. Or if you turn that in at the Welcome Center, we have a little gift there that we'd love to give to you, to thank you for being with us today.

Last week, we finished up our sermon series, Jesus in Genesis season two, we looked at the life of Abraham and Sarah all the way up to the birth of Isaac, and Lord willing, we're going to come back to that series, probably do a couple more seasons, to finish out the book of Genesis someday. But today we're switching gears, we're starting up season two of another popular sermon series, Balm Psalms, that is one that we went through together last summer. The Psalms are something that we as Christians should be really visiting on a daily basis. That's how important the Psalms are.

The Psalms remind us that God created emotion, and language and music and poetry and song, that his word is not just for our heads and our hands, it's for our hearts as well. When we have a true encounter with God, we should feel something. We should feel this kind of pressure building up inside us, begging to be released and to do something, to say something, to express God's worth his glory. One of the most satisfying ways to do that is through song, through singing to him and worship the God you are awesome, and you alone are worthy to be praised.

How many of you, you can't wait to come to church on Sunday, because you just love to sing to the Lord? Like one of my hopes for us as a church, and one of the things I hope we grow in during the series is that we would become a church that loves to sing and loves to sing loud, on key, off key, it doesn't matter. Unless you're on the praise team, then it matters a lot. But for the rest of us, just sing because God is worthy of our praise, and it is right for us to praise him. So with all that being said, it should come as no surprise that right in the middle of our Bibles, we have this huge collection of poetry and songs that we call the Psalms. Music is powerful. We know that music, it speaks and it connects with our minds in a way that moves our hearts. It stirs in our hearts, and actually moves our hands to action.

Today is Independence Day. I was thinking earlier this week of like, think of the courage that it would have taken for those small American colonies to say they were going to stand up to the strongest, most powerful empire on earth. A three pence tea tax. Like, "Are you kidding us?" "No, you can find your tea in the harbor and we will see you on the battlefield." I've been living here for eight years. That's still the only word I can say with a Boston accent. But the point is, you don't mess with people's caffeinated beverages. That's the first point. But secondly, if that wasn't enough, music actually played a pretty crucial role in the Revolutionary War.

The colonies they composed entire song books that were meant to inspire courage and people to stand up to the British crown, and one of the most popular songs of this era, it was a song called Chester, it was actually written not too far from here. William Billings wrote it for the 1770 song book called The New-England Psalm-Singer, that's an interesting title. But listen to these lyrics. This is what he wrote. "The tyrants shake their iron rod and slavery clank her galling chains, we fear them not, we trust in God. New England's God forever reigns. The foe comes on with hearty stride, our troops advanced with martial noise, their veterans flee before our youth and generals yield to beardless boys."

That's like some savage right there and you hear that and you're like, "Yep, sign me up. Give me a musket, I'm ready to fight." Billings just ended King George whole career right there. Jump ahead to the American Civil War. Again, one of the most famous songs from the union during that time period is one we're probably a little bit more familiar with the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Most of us know the first verse, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He's trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He's loose the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword, his truth is marching on." It's a picture of God's judgment coming down on the injustices that were happening. One of my favorite lines, though, actually comes in one of the later verses, and it goes like this. "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, is truth is marching on." You hear that and your heart is like, "Yeah, that is a cause worth fighting for. That is a cause even worth dying for." And historically, more people died for that cause than in any other war in U.S. history.

America's bloodiest, deadliest war, it was fought because young men in the Union they caught a courageous vision that if Jesus had died to make them holy, then they had a duty to fight and to even die to make men free, and hundreds of 1000s of them did just that. To put it in perspective, more men died at the Battle of Gettysburg alone than in the entire Revolutionary War combined. I bring that up because today we are looking at Psalm 29. And Psalm 29 is not a calm, relaxing, meditative, like turn it on and do some yoga type song. Psalm 29 is 150 beats per minute, put your headphones on, the pre workouts kicking in, you're going to the gym, you're going to set some PRS today. That's what we're listening to when we read Psalm 29.

It should get us pumped up, it should get us fired up and inspired, it should fill us with courage to do something, to fight the good fight of faith and to fight the spiritual war that is around us. I like to imagine like, perhaps this is one of the songs that the military choirs of Israel sung as they marched into battle, or perhaps this is one of the songs that Paul and Silas sung in their prison cell after they've been beaten and arrested for preaching the gospel, even better, here's how I want to set this up, just entertain me for a moment.

I like to imagine King David stepping up to the microphone like an ancient rap battle. And he's facing off against the prophets of Baal. He's about to just melt their faces, dropping truth about his God, Yahweh. That's how I'm picturing it. I'm just going to stand up here and try to be the best hype man that I can, if that makes any sense. So, we're going to look at Psalm 29. As is a Psalm of David, if you have your Bibles you can open up or you can follow along on the screen as well. Psalm 29 beginning in verse one. "Ascribe to the Lord O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord the glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders, the Lord over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare and in his temple all cry, "Glory." The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, the Lord sits enthroned as King forever. May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace."

This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning, would you please join me in prayer over today's sermon. God you are awesome in power, you are sovereign over your creation. Your wisdom and understanding are pure, your judgment is perfect, and in contrast, we are weak. We're often ignorant and foolish, and worse than that, we are rebels against your authority Lord, and we're deserving of your judgment. God I pray today that your grace would teach our hearts to fear and that by your grace, our fears would be relieved in our Lord Jesus Christ, that you are enthroned above all, and you've made a way to show us mercy, to bless your people with peace and strength, and we thank you for this. We thank you for your word. We pray that you'd write these truths of your word upon our hearts today, we pray this in Jesus Christ name. Amen.

Three points in today's sermon, point number one, we're going to talking about idol worship. Point number two, idol worship. See what I did there. Point number three, we're talking about ideal worship. Starting with idol worship. At first glance, Psalm 29 looks like a pretty straightforward Psalm. It's actually one of the more controversial Psalm in all of scripture. Controversial because a while back, some critical biblical scholars actually accused Psalm 29 of being plagiarized. They saw that some of the language used in the Psalm especially verses three and nine, three through nine, was similar. It's kind of reminiscent of some of the same language that the Canaanites would use when they would worship their god Baal.

And throughout most of Israel's history, they were surrounded by the land of Canaan, and they were surrounded by the religion and the culture and the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites. And they were constantly faced with this temptation to be conformed to that culture, and to practice their idolatry, and you see them struggling with that over and over in the Old Testament. The Canaanites, they believed in several gods, but two of their more prominent gods were Yam and Baal. Yam was the god of the sea, the sea represented the chaos of the untamed, uncivilized world, and Yam had an adversary named Hadad, who's also called Baal. Baal was the god of storms and rain, and he represented order and fertility and prosperity.

So, when the storms would form over the Mediterranean Sea, and they would move inland over the land of Canaan, the Canaanites believed that when these storms came that it was literally Baal riding on the clouds, the thunder was the sound of his voice. So, scholars would look at these beliefs, and then they would look at Psalm 29. They see, like verse three, that the voice of the Lord is over the waters and the God of glory thunders, and they would make a connection, that kind of sound similar to Ball, and so they would conclude, obviously, David just took a Canaanite song, and he swapped the names out with Yahweh.

The problem with this is that there's no actual concrete evidence that this was the case, these scholars, they're just purely speculating on this. So what seems more likely, is that David is writing this Psalm, but he's also intentionally alluding to the beliefs of the Canaanites that they had about their god, Baal in order to put them in the context of the Psalm about Yahweh and do two things. On the one hand, he is exposing Baal as a fraud, and he is expressing the superiority of Yahweh, the God of Israel as the one true God. In other words, David says he's writing music, and he's doing apologetics at the same time.

So, let's look at how he does this. We'll walk through these verses together. David starts off in verse one. He says, "Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, and worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." He uses this phrase over and over, ascribe to the Lord, recognize, acknowledge and attribute to Yahweh, what is true of his being that he alone possesses power and glory. But look at who David is addressing this to, it's not merely to human beings, he's addressing this to the heavenly beings. Who are these heavenly beings? Angels, but also Satan, demons and the false gods of Canaan, all must ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, because Yahweh is sovereign, not only over the earth, but over the heavenly realms as well.

Now you contrast this to Baal, who even in the Canaanite beliefs, was not sovereign, he wasn't holy, he wasn't righteous, his power was limited, and much like us as human beings, he was a god who was locked in this endless struggle warring against the other gods. As we move through these verses, we're going to see David over and over showing the supremacy of the God of Israel. But we're also going to notice that what is being said here of Yahweh in the Old Testament, is also true of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. So when you look at Jesus in the New Testament, the heavenly beings, the angels worship, and even the demons tremble at the sound of his voice, they were subject to his command.

Likewise, when Christ returns, Philippians, chapter two tells us that when Christ returns, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and Paul there is quoting from the prophet Isaiah, directly that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Yahweh. He is the God of glory. So, every tongue will confess this. So David sets the stage that the God of Israel is supreme, and then he follows this introduction, and he has a perfect number of seven declarations and they all begin with this phrase, the voice of the Lord.

So let's look at these seven declarations together. Number one, it comes from verse three, says, the voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders the Lord over many waters. The gods of Canaan were finite, they were fickle, they were imperfect, oftentimes petty, and they're always fighting and at war against one another. Now in contrast, what we see is that Yahweh is perfect, he has no rival, he has no equal, he is unmatched in power, and in glory. In the ancient world, the sea, it represented chaos, it represented all of those things that fell outside of the control of human beings and of human civilization.

It was something that we as people, as human beings struggled against, but was something that even Baal himself had to struggle against. In other words, everything that is outside of our control, and outside of even the heavenly beings control is not in any way outside of the control of Yahweh. That he is sovereign over the many waters, he is providentially commanding the forces of nature, both to bring about his blessing and his judgment. So now when we turn to the New Testament, this is why in the book of revelations, we see a picture of Jesus sitting on a throne in heaven, and all around his throne, we're told he's surrounded by a sea.

But unlike a sea of chaos, we're told that it's a sea of glass, that the waves are stilled, they're calmed under his rule and authority. Jesus gave his disciples a glimpse of this authority when he walked on the water, when he calmed the sea and his disciples they marveled that even the wind and the waves obeyed the voice of Jesus. That's the first declaration. Declaration two and three comes from verse four, says the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty, power and majesty. Majesty has to do with ... The majestic, it's talking about a King in power, it depicts a King who is able to accomplish his will, more specifically the language used in Psalm 29. It's describing a King who is undefeatable, unstoppable in battle.

The Canaanites, they believe that Baal was the God who brought rain and fertility to their land. But in order for him to do this, he first had to go to battle against another god named Mot, who is the god of death. And if Baal lost that battle, then the Canaanites would face a season of drought. So what we see here is that unlike Baal, Yahweh is a King who does not lose his battles, that nothing in on heaven or on earth can thwart his purposes, and Jesus proved this to us, that he is the one who went out and faced death himself, he died as our majestic King with a crown of thorns on his head, but then he rose in victory, to show that death could not hold him, that the grave could not defeat him.

In his parting words, on the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished, the battle is now won, victory is secure." Nothing can change that. Declaration four, we see in verse five and six. Says, "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars, the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon, he makes Lebanon to skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox." What we're seeing here, there's a geographic progression unfolding in the text, and the picture that it's giving us is that there's this massive, violent storm that has formed over the Mediterranean, and now it is moving inland over Lebanonites, moving inland over the land of Canaan, and it's showing us that God is not only sovereign over the chaos at sea, he's also sovereign over the order of human civilization. He's sovereign over the kingdoms of man, even the kingdom of Canaan.

The Canaanites, they took great pride in the fact that they built their homes and they built temples to Baal up in the mountains, and they built them out of these great cedars of Lebanon, and David points to these temples. He points to the cedars. He says the very voice of the Lord shatters them to pieces. It even shakes the mountain, the foundation that their source of pride was built on, and Jesus did the same thing. Jesus humbled everybody he came in contact with. He shattered the pride of the rebellious and the self righteous alike and showed them that if they were building on any foundation other than him they were building on sand.

This is what Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell and the floods came and the wind blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand, the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

The last three declarations come in verses seven, eight and nine. Verse seven says the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness, the voice shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bare and in his temple, all cry, "Glory." And now we see that the storm has moved even further inland. And as it is, it's consuming like a fire. It's stripping the forest bare, and it's showing us a stern warning of Yahweh's judgment, that he is a righteous judge, and that he will ultimately expose what is unseen, and bring down judgment on what is unholy.

Verse nine says, he makes the deer give birth. When I first read that I think that's like a nice comforting picture in the midst of all of this other language and I started looking into this phrase, and I learned that what it's actually describing is describing this phenomenon which would happen occasionally during incredibly violent storms, where pregnant animals would be so frightened that they would actually give birth prematurely. It's showing us God is going to expose everything, and he's going to bring perfect justice to creation. So if I were to summarize all this and put this into my own words, this is how I would say, that the voice of the Lord is sovereign over both heaven and earth.

He has the power to perfectly accomplish his will. He will shatter our idols and pride, has authority to judge his creation and the ability to reveal what is hidden so that nothing will escape his justice. That's the big idea. Almost, nothing will escape his justice except for what? Except for who? Except for those that we see in verse nine, who have found refuge in his temple. The climax in verse nine it shows us that outside of God's temple, yeah, the voice of the Lord is causing creation to tremble in fear at his righteous judgment. But inside the temple, there's peace. Inside the temple there's safety, that the people of God have been sheltered by his mercy and they cry out, "Glory."

Psalm 29, it shows us that God is just and he will not allow sin off the hook. But he is also merciful. He has provided a way for sinners to be saved. For Israel, this was the temple, the sacrificial system. For us, Jesus is our sacrifice. Jesus is our temple. Jesus is the refuge that shelters us from the storm of God's wrath. We see this again, when David concludes in verses 10 and 11. He tells us this, that the Lord sits in enthroned over the flood. We're going to talk about what that means. The Lord sits enthroned as King forever, may the Lord give strength to his people, may the Lord bless his people with peace. That word for flood there, there's only one other place in all of scripture where that word is used. And it's used to refer to the flood of Noah. That is what David is drawing to mind.

Because, again, the flood was a story of God's judgment, but it was also a story of God's salvation. That outside of the ark, God's wrath, it rained down in this cleansing judgment. Inside the ark, there was peace, that Noah and his family were preserved. Now, when we turn to the New Testament, the New Testament tells us that the story of the flood that David is alluding to and bringing to mind here, it is a story of what was, but it's also a story of what is and it's a story of what is to come. This is what I mean, that as it was in the days of Noah, we're told it will be when Christ returns. I get this from Matthew chapter 24. Jesus teaching his disciples about his return, this is what he says.

Matthew 24, verse 36, "But concerning that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. And two men will be in the field and one will be taken and one left, two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one left, therefore stay awake, for you don't know what day your Lord is coming.

But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what part of the night that thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect and when he does, what we see is that those who are in Christ, just as those who were in the ark, those who are in Christ will be saved, that those who are not will be swept away, taken away for judgment. The flood is a picture of what is to come.

But then, New Testament tells us it's also a picture of what is true right now, and this comes from First Peter chapter three, beginning in verse 18. Peter writes this, he says, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patients waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through water, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into the heavens and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him."

Now, first of all, this is one of the most confusing passages in all of scripture, and we're going to have to save a lot of that for like another sermon on another day. But the big idea here is clear that just as Jesus is our refuge, our temple, Jesus is the true ark, and baptism is a picture of this salvation that he's referring to. He says, "It's not that we're saved by the physical act of baptism, it's not the removal of dirt from the body, but an appeal to God for good conscience." And this is why Jesus commands that every Christian should be baptized, the baptism is an outward action, it's a picture that symbolizes and shows forth that proclaims an inward reality that we have appealed to God's mercy, and we have been saved by grace through faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That Jesus is our refuge, Jesus is our salvation.

And so what this means is that in Christ, you were saved. The moment that you repented of your sin and put your faith in Christ, you were saved. We call that justification, but also in Christ, you are being saved by the power of the Holy Spirit, you have been saved from the penalty of sin, you are being saved from the power of sin in your life. We call this sanctification. And in Christ, you will be saved. Eventually, from the very presence of sin all together and for all of attorney we call this glorification, that we will be raised, resurrected with Christ, to inherit a new heaven and new earth where sin, sorrow, death and decay will be no more. And what the New Testament tells us to do is in light of this, this is why we must run to Christ for refuse, for salvation, without delay right now.

Peter brings this up again in his second letter, Second Peter chapter three, verse nine. And he tells us this, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all of these things are dust to be dissolved." What sort of people are you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God?

Because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolve and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. When we rightly understand God's awesome power and his holiness and when we personally experience God's saving love and mercy, the only rational response is for us to cast down our idols, and to turn to the one true God. We must repent of our idol worship, but that in of itself is not enough. Point two is we must also repent of our idol worship, our vain worship, our, at times, hypocritical worship.

Psalm 29, verses one and two say, "Ascribe to the Lord O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord, glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." And this last phrase here in verse two, it's not referring to God's holiness, although God is holy, it's talking about, we need to worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. It's about how we worship God, it's the idea that we need to worship the right God, and we need to worship him in the right way.

One of the very first stories in scripture was the story of two brothers, Cain and Abel, who were on their way to worship the Lord. In Genesis 4 says, "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain, a worker of the ground." In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and the fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at your door. His desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it."

Pastor Jan preached a really great sermon on this in our first Jesus in Genesis season one series, I think it was maybe the fourth sermon in that series, you should go check that out. But the big ideas that Cain came to God, and he came to give him what he thought he needed to do, what was required of him in order to appease God, in order to keep God off his back. Abel, we're told, gave his gift in faith, he gave his first and he gave his best because he trusted God, he loved God, he had a genuine desire to worship God. And a lot of people, they come to God and they want to come to God like Cain, they want to come and they want to ask, "Okay, what's the bare minimum that I need to do to stay on your good side? Or how far away can I go and tiptoe out into sin before I get on your bad side?"

And really, that's the same mindset the Canaanites brought to their god, Baal. Baal didn't love them. He didn't care for them. There was not a relationship there. He was just this force that they needed to appease for things to go well with them, and when we try to worship God like that, it shows that we really don't know him. We've probably heard this illustration before. When you watch a great movie, when you eat in amazing restaurant, like you can't help but to sing its praises. You want to tell your friends about it, you want to tell everybody what a great experience you had, you want to open up the app and smash the five star review, why would it be any differently with God, when you truly experience God, worship, it comes naturally. You can't but help it giving God the glory that he is due becomes our delight when we know who he truly is.

And so the question for us is that how we come to God and worship? Is that how we are approaching God? If not, the lesson ... actually, the warning here is that you might not be worshipping idols, but your worship might be idol. Your Worship might be in vain. It might be hypocritical. Matthew 15, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah to rebuke the Pharisees. And he said, "You hypocrites." Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, "These people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." In vain do they worship me in idleness, teaching his doctrine, the commandments of man.

And Jesus takes a very hard stance against the Pharisees, and this kind of worship, you got to wonder like, "Why is he so serious about this?" He's serious, because he knows where this leads, it leads to sin. And ultimately, it leads to death. Like Cain, when our heart is not properly in the right place, giving glory to God in worship, sin is right there, crouching at the door, waiting for that opportunity to pounce. Jesus in the book of Revelation, he rebuked the church of Laodicea, for this kind of idol, hypocritical, half hearted worship.

In verse 15, chapter three, he says, "I know your works, you're neither cold nor hot. With that you are either cold or hot, so because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." It's not just a problem for individuals. He's talking to an entire church here, and we see what a slippery and dangerous slope this is. It becomes clear just a few verses later in verse 20, where Jesus continues, and he says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone would hear my voice and open the door, I'll come in and eat with him and he, with me." But what's going on here?

That lukewarm worship and affection has now resulted in a church that has effectively excommunicated Jesus. He's locked outside the door. They won't let him in. Do you think that this happens today? Like what would it look like for a church to lock Jesus out? It looks like a church that sneers at his lordship, a church that scoffs at the authority of his word. A church that defiantly rejects his teaching on morality and repentance and sin in laughs makes a mockery of his cross, and this is where idol worship leads.

Second Timothy three, he warned his disciple Timothy that these days would come. Said, "Understand this Timothy. Then in the last days, there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God." Look at verse five, "Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power."

I pray that we would never be a church that settles for merely having the appearance of godliness. I pray that we would be a church that is content with nothing less than Jesus Christ. We must not give in to the worship of false idols, we must also not give into the idleness of false worship. Point three is, we must instead pursue ideal worship. David says, "Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness." What is ideal worship look like? Jesus answers this in John chapter four. He's having a conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, and in their conversation, she brings up the topic of, "How are we to worship God and Samaritans do it this way, and the Jews do it that way?"

He gives her an answer, and this is what he says. Verse 23, says, "Listen, the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Three things that I want to cover here real quick at the end, that what we see like ideal worshipers worship in spirit, ideal worshipers worship in truth, and ideal worshipers worship incarnate, and I'll explain what I mean by that. But first and foremost, he says, "You got to worship in spirit." So what does it mean to worship in spirit?

Just one chapter earlier, Jesus was having a conversation about the spirit with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a religious teacher and he told him, "Nicodemus, if you want to see the kingdom of God, you need to be born again." And Nicodemus is baffled by this and says, "Jesus, how can I be born a second time? I don't understand." Jesus replies, and this is what he tells him in John three, verse six through eight, he says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marble that I said to you, you must be born again, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit."

I read that I'm like, I don't think that would have been a very satisfying answer for Nicodemus, it kind of sounds like Jesus is just trolling him right here. But what he wants him to understand is listen, just as the wind comes and goes as it pleases, the Spirit gives life to whomever he wills, according to God's good purpose, we can't control that any more than we can control the wind. So worshiping in Spirit, starts by recognizing God's sovereignty over everything, even our salvation.

Now, at the same time, Jesus is trying to compel a response in Nicodemus, he's not expecting him to be completely passive. He wants them to do something, and so, there's a mystery, there's a tension here that we need to embrace. That we cannot cause ourselves to be born again any more than we caused our own physical birth. Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerates hearts, and he does this through the proclamation of the gospel. But when we hear the gospel, we also have a responsibility to respond. That by our own free choice, we must respond in repentance.

I had a professor in seminary that compared it to the sails on a ship. Sails actually can't move the ship, they have no power in and of themselves to do that. They can't cause the wind to blow. But when the wind does blow, they need to be up in proper position in order to be filled, in order for that ship to move, and it's not a perfect illustration. But in order for us to worship in Spirit, God must act on our behalf, and we must respond in repentance and faith, approach him with humility. It's about coming to the Lord, not on the basis of who we are, what we've done, or what we could do for him, but on the basis of what he has done for us through Jesus Christ.

David put it like this in Psalm 51. He says, "Oh, Lord, open my lips, I need you to open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it, you will not be pleased with a burnt offering, the sacrifices of God or a broken Spirit, a broken and contrite heart, Oh, God, you will not despise." When you do come with that dependence, that humility, we need to worship in Spirit, we also need to worship in truth. Isaiah 66, "Thus says the Lord. The Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, what is the house that you build for me? What is the place of my rest? All these things my hand is made, and so these things came to be." Declares the Lord.

But this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble, and contrite and spirit and trembles at my word, a true worship requires that we would tremble at the word of the Lord. It requires a submission and an obedience to God's word. Jesus put it like this in John 10:27. He says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." My sheep hear my voice, and they don't just go off and do as they will. They hear my voice, I know them, and they follow Me. The Canaanites came up with all kinds of perverse ways to worship their gods, they practice temple prostitution, even child sacrifice at time. And in contrast, God's people need to worship in God's way, and they need to worship in Godly ways, according to his truth in scripture.

Just one practical example. There's a lot of songs, modern worship songs out there today, that we're probably never going to sing here at Mosaic. Because there's a lot of songs out there that are rich in production quality, and sadly bankrupt when it comes to biblical truth. The words that we sing about God, the words that we sing to God, those words matter. But this needs to go well beyond just the words that we sing. This has to do with the life that we live, when we hear Jesus voice, we need to submit to it, we need to follow him. What that means more practically, is that when we're reading this book, or reading scripture, and we come across something that offends us, it's not because the scripture is out of line, it's either we haven't understood it, or else we are out of line. And we need to bring our lives into alignment with God's word.

And we do that, because we trust that Jesus is our shepherd, that his word is not only always right, but his word is always beautiful and good. First John five, one through three says that this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Jesus told his disciples in John 14 that if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So, ideal worshipers worship in spirit, ideal worshipers worship in truth and finally, ideal worshipers worship incarnate.

Romans 12, one says, "I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God." Paul says, "In light of everything that I've just written to you about God's, his justice and his amazing mercy and grace. Because of that, therefore, you have to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds." True worship is not something that we can compartmentalize to the songs that we sing on a Sunday morning, it needs to be incarnate. What I mean is, it needs to take on flesh, it needs to permeate our daily lives in a transformative way.

This is going to take strength, this is going to take courage. I think this is why David prays for this at the end of Psalm 29. He says, "May the Lord give strength to his people, and may the Lord bless his people with peace, to truly live our lives, to give our lives as living sacrifices to God, this is going to take a supernatural courage to not be conformed to the patterns of this world." Just to illustrate this, there's a photograph that's gone viral, you've probably seen it making the rounds online, a photo from Nazi Germany.

You see in the photo, a crowd of people, and at first glance, you see everyone hailing, Hitler doing the Nazi salute. But then you look a little bit closer around, if you can see it there, but there's a guy in the middle and he's just standing there like, "No, I'm not on board with this." You can look into this guy, he actually, from what I understand, was arrested because of his resistance, his rebellion to some of the Nazi laws. His rebellion against them costed him dearly. He faced a lot of hardship in his life because he refused to be conformed to the pattern of that age.

I bring this up because this is a good picture for us to contemplate. That takes guts, that takes courage. And more often than not, to give God the glory that he deserves, is going to require the strength and the courage to defiantly refuse to give that glory to anyone, or to anything else. Be it Baal, Satan, sin, government, culture, even our own selves, no matter the circumstances, no matter the social pressures, no matter the consequences we face or the convenience that compromise might bring, true worship, courageous worship says no to the idols, it says no to the idleness and it does so in order to say yes to the Lord.

This is the kind of worship that got Abel killed. This is the kind of worship that got Daniel thrown to the lions. It got Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown to the fiery furnace, that got the apostles martyred for their faith, and this is the kind of uncompromising worship that got Jesus Christ nailed to a cross. See, Jesus is the true ultimate ideal picture of what it looks like to worship the Lord, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself.

He is our strength, he is our peace, he is the reason that we don't need to fear living our lives, giving our lives as living sacrifices, because we know he was willing to give his life as a dying sacrifice for us, he faced Satan, sin and death, he defeated them through his death and resurrection, the battle has already been won. So when we're tired, when we're weary, when we are discouraged and afraid, Jesus is our Battle Hymn, Jesus is what gives us the courage to say, "Wherever you call me to go, I will go, whatever you tell me to do, I will do, whatever you tell me to say, I will say, because you alone are God, you alone are mighty to save, and you alone are worthy of all praise."

We're going to transition right now into time of communion, and communion is a time where we remember Christ and we remember his sacrifice that made this possible. As you came in, hopefully you were able to grab one of these, if not, feel free to just go in the back and grab one or better just raise your hand, one of the ushers will bring one to you. And you can go ahead and open these up. Inside, the bread, it represents Jesus body that was broken. The cup represents his blood that was poured out for our forgiveness, so that we could be saved from the storm of God's righteous judgment toward our sin.

If you are here today, and you're not a Christian, we'd ask you to refrain from this part of the service, it's not going to do anything for you, there's nothing magical about this. And if you're a Christian who is living in unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain as well. Scripture warns us not to partake of communion in an idol, in an unrepentant manner. But better yet, repent right now, put your faith in Jesus Christ, and if you've done that today, we would welcome you to take communion, and we're going to take communion together right now.

So Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. He said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Amen.

Would you please stand, we're going to spend some time in prayer, and we're going to spend some time worshiping and singing to the Lord together. God, you are awesome, you are holy, you are perfect in every way. God, we marvel at your power, we tremble before the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ. In his cross, we see the righteous requirements of your perfect justice unfold display. We also see your tender heart of mercy, your tremendous love for us. We thank you for Jesus, we thank you for the forgiveness that we have in his name, we thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit, we thank you that we have peace through his victory over Satan, sin and death. You alone are good, you alone are God, you alone are worthy of all praise.

Jesus, you are the name that is above every name, and we know that the day will come, when every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that you are Lord to the glory of God the Father, and Lord, we thank you that even now we can praise you, even now we can give you the glory due your name, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can stand before your throne together singing your praise and know that you are here, that you hear us, that you delight in our worship. And so God we come as your children, purchased through the bloody of your Son, Jesus Christ, to thank you and to worship you together. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Well, good morning. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and pastor Jan is getting some vacation time to celebrate his anniversary with Tanya. And so, we're thrilled for him to get that time, thrilled for both of them to get that time after this long season of the past year and a half. Today if you are new, it looks like there's a lot of new faces. We still can't really tell who is new all the time, and praise God, we have that problem. Welcome to Mosaic.

If you do want to connect with us, again, we plug our connection cards. And sorry, if you're a regular and we repeat this over and over, it's because over half of the congregation shows up 10 minutes, 15 minutes into the service. So we're just trying to get those stragglers the news, and we want to connect with you. If you have questions, if you want to build community here, fill out the connection card. You can bring it to the Welcome Center, and we'll have some helpers and a gift for you.

Today, we are finishing our Jesus in Genesis series. We've been here for, I think the past 12 weeks. This is the 12th week. We started at Genesis 12. We're closing with Genesis 23, and we've been trying to pull out all the ways that this first book of the Bible talking about the patriarch and matriarch of the faith, Abraham and Sarah, how Jesus, the name of Jesus is whispered, and sometimes outright just yelling out of the passages of this ancient book. And it points us to Jesus' coming, going to the cross, being our Lord and Savior for us.

We hope this is a good time. I think of my life in forms of periods of Mosaic sermon series. Every sermon series has a tone. Every series hits me in a certain way, and I remember that. I can go back, it was almost 10 years ago this month, that I arrived at Mosaic. And I've been through basically all of them, some from afar as I moved away at some point, but this is a good time in addition to meditating upon today's sermon this week, it's a good time to think about, "Lord, what have you shown me in this season? What have you taught me?" How do I see Jesus Christ being spread, being mentioned, being acknowledged and whispered or typified in this Old Testament book?

And so, today we have a funeral. This is a pivotal moment in the text. Why are we stopping here at Genesis 23? This is literally a pivotal moment in the text. Genesis 22, the last few verses mention the line that formed Rebecca from which Rebecca came, the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son, soon to be wife of Isaac in Genesis 24. And this is the last day that Abraham and Sarah are together. And so, it's fitting that we end the series here. We should be reflecting upon just the work that the Lord has done in them and through them. And I'll do that more as we approach our text.

So with all that said, I'm going to read Genesis 23 and then I'll pray.

Sarah lived 127 years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, “I am a sojourner and foreigner among you; give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.” The Hittites answered Abraham, “Hear us, my lord; you are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead.”

Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land. And he said to them, “If you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and entreat for me Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns; it is at the end of his field. For the full price let him give it to me in your presence as property for a burying place.”

Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of his city, “No, my lord, hear me: I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. In the sight of the sons of my people I give it to you. Bury your dead.” Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land. And he said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, “But if you will, hear me: I give the price of the field. Accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there.” Ephron answered Abraham, “My lord, listen to me: a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver, what is that between you and me? Bury your dead.” Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, 400 shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants.

So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field, throughout its whole area, was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who went in at the gate of his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah east of Mamre (that is Hebron) in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites." This is the word of our Lord.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your Holy Word. We praise you that all of it is for our edification, for our sanctification, for our growth in the faith. And we praise you for this word about a patriarch and matriarch of our faith. We thank you for the season that you've appointed for us to learn from them to learn from about the grace that you showed to them, about the faithfulness that you showed to them and their faithfulness, about the ways that they prefigured the coming of Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray that you imprint the lessons that we need to hear today, and those that we heard already throughout this season upon our hearts as we go forward as sojourners in this land that is not our home.

As we go forth, still facing this death, still facing the thorns and thistles of life that you appointed as the curse for our sin. Holy Spirit, we pray, give us lessons for how we can more faithfully face these challenges as we await to receive our full inheritance that we have through our faith in Jesus Christ. I pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

Well, a month ago, I didn't know I was preaching on this text. I thought I was entering into a calm period. With vacation coming up, my anniversary coming up, my son's five-year-old birthday, my daughter's one-year-old birthday, but the Lord had different things in plan. I had to do Mosaic's officiate Mosaic's first funeral. I ended up purchasing an apartment with my wife, which was labeled by our attorney as the worst closing since 2003. And what was the issue? It was over the appraisal of the property. And you're welcome. You're welcome that I went through that. The Lord put me through that to prepare me for this topic.

But if you haven't been with us, and it's okay to laugh a little bit, Sarah, there is a theme in her life of laughter. We can chuckle, and praise God for that, that he is a God of laughter. And he will get the last laugh. But if you haven't been with us, today we're talking about Abraham and Sarah. The book of Isaiah 51:1-2 talk about both Abraham as the patriarch and even Sarah as the matriarch of those in the faith, those upon whom the Church of Jesus Christ is built.

From Genesis 12, where we began to where we are today, their life has spanned 62 years. They waited 25 years for their son to be born, and now he's 37 years of age. So we've gotten the highlights when they've been faithful to God. We've gotten the lowlights when they've been unfaithful. In their best moments, as I've said, they've prefigured Christ and the role that he will do for us, and going to the cross and bearing our sins on the cross, and paving the way of faith, walking it perfectly.

And we've seen in their low lights, just that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. And the last time today, we're talking about Sarah's death, the last time we heard about her, Isaac was born. Upon her death now she is 127 years old. We don't know anything about her from these last 37 years. And then so, what we have to be asking what then is the point of Genesis 23? What does this passage teach? The scripture zooms in and out of various points of history of redemptive history for specific lessons, and we have to figure that out today.

So today I'm going to break this passage down in three sections. I'm going to talk about Abraham's sorrow, Abraham's sojourn, and Abraham's slice, slice of land. And so first, talking about Abraham sorrow. And notice point three about Abraham's slice that covers verses three through 20, three though the end of this chapter. There's a lot of emphasis on this just engagement between Abraham and the Hittites, and it's a cultural dance as Abraham acquires the land, but we have to ask why is so much emphasis placed on the purchase of this land? So point one, Abraham's sorrow, we have to talk about his sorrow. In verses one and two we read, "Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah, and Sarah died at Kiriath Arba that is Hebron in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went into mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. I just want to make a couple observations about this sorrowful moment. Notice, first, Abraham and Sarah, as important as they were to the fulfillment of God's redemptive purposes, we're not exempt from the curse of death that has come upon all mankind as a result of Adam and Eve's fall.

And this is important because this is a message for all of us who have faith in Jesus Christ. We are not excused from the curses that were applied to Adam and Eve. We inherit them. And what are those curses? We see them in the life of Abraham and Sarah. To the woman, God says, "I'm going to give you pain in childbearing." Your desire shall be for your husband. You're going to try to challenge his headship over you. The husband, you're going to have trouble producing fruit. You're going to have trouble in your labor no matter how much you love your work, no matter how much you love your family, there's going to be toil that is a part of that process.

And Abraham and Sarah, compared to Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve, they represent the fall. They bring us into sin and misery. Abraham and Sarah bring us into blessing and promise, but life of faith that they exhibit is still tinged by death, the penalty for sin, it's still tinged by the thorns and thistles of life, and we still face them today. And particularly as we reflect upon Sarah's death, we have to pause and think that death comes to all of us. And I really have to just force you to think about this today, because we are a young crowd. Some of you here are greying a little bit, but even you are not that old.

A good measure of how, whether a membership of the congregation is prepared to understand death, to face it, is to compare the amount of funerals with the amount of weddings and childbirth. And we did have one. We lost our brother Jim, who we grieved and celebrated his life in the past month, but we are about 30:1, I think when it comes to marriage and child rearing compared to death, and that is not normal. I looked across the internet for urban churches that preached on this topic, you see them preach through Genesis 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25. We don't talk about death a lot, and we don't see it.

We don't engage with people who are older than us. We're oftentimes just younger than us and... I remember I moved here out of college in 2010, and I was here for two and a half years. And in that period of life, that whole time I was in Boston, I don't remember engaging one senior citizen or one child, and that's pathetic. But for a lot of you that is realistic. A lot of you had your first baby, and that's the first baby you've ever touched. And we don't come near... Where we are, we avoid a lot of phases of life. We have to see our church. We have a bias towards youth. And as pastors, we are relatively young, too. And so, we need to be realistic that our perspective is limited, and we need to think about death. And it's reality. It is coming whether we think about it or not, whether we are prepared for it or not, it is coming. Our brother Jim was 30 years old, and he went relatively suddenly last month. And we have to be prepared for it. And I prepared my sermon, I avoided this section. I didn't want to talk about it, but we really need to be thinking about death.

And at Mosaic, we want to be known for good teaching. We want to be known for great life-giving community, care and accountability, membership that builds one another up and loves one another as Christ taught us. But we want to be able to grieve with each other and mourn with each other well. We want to show that to the world. And so, are you prepared to do that if you're honest with yourself?

When you think about, Am I ready to meet my maker? Am I ready to face death? If other people in my life died? Am I prepared for their loss? If somebody close to me had someone close to them die, would I know how to support them? Would I be able to minister to them in the name of Jesus Christ in such a period. And we need to be building ourselves up. We need to be studying this. We need to be asking the Lord for wisdom and preparing our hearts for these moments, these situations. He providentially prepared me for this sermon, and we need to be doing that.

And I am an intense dude. I grew up in a family with a mom who was sick. Before I was born, my dad survived at cancer that one in 30 people survive. Then he had a heart attack the year I was born. I was the fourth child. My siblings blame me. After that, since then, my mom had four bouts with cancer between age zero and 20 for me. I grew up just with this newness, just a lot of sickness, and praise God, they're both still alive and really thriving by God's grace. A lot of you can't say that about your parents who've had similar struggles.

But there's a closeness to death that I actually know. And I actually like to embrace it, and sometimes I can get on the edge of morbidity. Like when you're close to death, you see life as it really is. You see that life is fleeting. That your health is going to come and go, that you can't count on tomorrow. And there's a freedom in that, and it's the emotions that you experience are pure. The grief, the sadness, the fear of it. And to a degree, we need to embrace that, because this is like a valley of vision for us.

When we focus upon the inevitability of death, we see who we are as sinners before a mighty holy God. And there's benefit to staying there, to embracing it. And we need to do that. And when we as those who claim to have hope in Jesus Christ, when we have people who we know loved ones have losses in their family, but they don't have the hope of Jesus Christ. Imagine going through that valley, being in that valley without that hope. And that's where we can step in. The best times in my life of the past 10 or 15 years have been engagement with my family.

That's best periods of communication with my family have been around death. The conversations are not shallow, they're real. And that's a time for us to give gospel hope. And so, we need to be thinking about this. We need to be able to grieve ourselves and to support. As Christians, we should be able to face this grief a little better. And so, I just want to pause and look. Abraham in verse two, it says "He went in to mourn for Sarah and weep for her."

This is a beautiful scene. Here we see Abraham's love for Sarah, and his grief for her loss put on display, and this is after a lot. Remember Egypt, Abraham gave her to Pharaoh. He gave her away to Abimelech. The struggles with Hagar, the struggles getting pregnant, living intense the last six decades. We don't know at this point what happened between them the last 37 years since Isaac's birth. But what we see here is a beautiful picture of them together on their last day, and they made it, and we see Abraham grieving.

We live in a society that places so much emphasis on the first day, but very little on the last day. A key theme of Scripture is that in Christianity, it doesn't matter where you come from, or where you started, but where you're headed in relationship with Jesus Christ. The same is certainly true for marriage. How many of you are working and preparing for the last day together with your spouse? How many of you are working on yourselves as individuals within a marriage in order to help your marriage mature and grow and be prepared for these stages of life?

And singles, you're not excluded. You need to see that the habits, the devotional life, the person you're praying to become in the power of the Lord, all of that work you're doing now could impact a relationship for eternity. And so, it's clear Abraham truly loves his wife. He mourns the loss of his wife. And men, we need to take note here. Who is this guy? He's a guy who charged into battle, a man who has after age 75, a man who is the head of a huge household, a guy who got stuff done. He exhibits that he's both tough and tender. He's okay with crying. He's okay going through the proper grieving process.

Just personal story with one of my earliest encounters with grief was when one of my dogs died. And I remember my dad picked me up from baseball, and we unexpectedly, we're driving a teammate home. And my dad's like, just breaking down, his voice is quivering. I can see him shaking. And I'm embarrassed, my dad hold it together. And he's just crying because our dog died, the family dog died. I was embarrassed at the time, but I'm thankful that as a young man, I had a dad who cried at appropriate times.

As Christian men, we can't be breeding a form of stoicism and women, some women fall into this. But we can't be breeding a form of stoicism. Go to the Psalms, see the balance in the emotions of King David's life. Look at Abraham here. And just with grief, the best approach is, get it out. In the appointed season when you have time, get it out. And if we don't get it out, our grief tends to come out and project itself in different ways. Anger, anxiety, bitterness, fatigue, depression, addiction. So we need to get it out. I know before I get away from talking about the last day, I need to emphasize that we can't be surprised by death financially.

As part of the grieving process, there are a lot of costs and practical elements to funerals, and we just don't process this stuff here at Mosaic that often. Paying for a burial plot, a tombstone, preparation and embalming of the body. If you get cremated, that's a substantial cost. Clothing, transportation of the body, limo services, funeral home fees and services, fees for a service venue, memorial service venue, bulletins, picture pronounce. What's your theology of life insurance? What's your plan for inheritance distribution?

I am saying here, I am not ready with all of this stuff, but we need to be preparing ourselves for that, and that is a part. The more prepared we are, the more we can actually grieve in the moment at the appointed season. And before we leave the section, I have to bring out one really important point. Scripture doesn't forbid us from mourning. That's what I'm hammering home. But the scriptures warn us against grieving as those who have no hope. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 says, "But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do, who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep."

We need to grieve, but we can't overindulge ourselves in it. The best way to just protect against that is grieve within the context of community. Invite loving. Don't be beyond the loving nudges and gentle correction in your period of grief. A lot of people assume a position of self-pity. I don't need to listen to anyone. We need to trust our loving brothers and sisters in Christ as they help support us and coach us in the season, and you can coach them too.

So just Abraham's sorrow, we must process sorrow. He gives us a good example of it here. We want to do so as one who has hope set firmly and our Lord. Next, I'm going to talk about Abraham sojourn. We've considered the sorrow, but verses three and four go into, "And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, "I'm a sojourner and foreigner among you. Give me property among you for burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight."

So the Hittites, they were the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, the land that God had promised to Abraham. And notice that when Sarah died, Abraham had to ask them for a place to bury his dead. He was a 137-year-old foreigner who didn't have a single piece of land in Canaan. Some of us panic. We think about, we're married, we have families here in Brooklyn. We won't have a property for another 10 years. And then what are the prices going to be? God didn't give Abraham a piece of land until later in this passage at 137.

Just what faith, what patience in the Lord. This is significant that Abraham doesn't have land. When we consider the promises that God made to him concerning land. God promised that he would have many descendants. He provided Isaac. God promised his descendants would possess Canaan. But as of yet, he's a sojourn. So the thing to point about Abraham, is that God's promises were enough. Last chapter, the sacrifice scene of Isaac, he didn't get sacrificed, but Abraham was willing to go forward with the sacrifice of his son according to God's command, because he trusted that God could raise him from the dead. That's what Scripture tells us.

Abraham showed he had a firm faith in God's power to raise the dead. And now, just Abraham was a sojourner, an alien. And God didn't give him a piece of land, but he believed his promises didn't end with his wife. Do you believe that? So many of you wait for something from God for a day. I prayed about it. He didn't ask. I'm going to step in and make my plan. I do that. Abraham still waiting, and he believed God was going to do far more for him in the future and eternity. As the author of Hebrews says, "Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, these patriarchs, matriarchs of the church were waiting, they were desiring a better country that is a heavenly one. That's in Hebrews 11:16.

Abraham, he was looking for the city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God. Abraham's faith, he looked beyond the grave to the promises of God to send the Savior and through him to bless the nations. And what's important to point out is that Abraham makes this decision to pursue a plot of land in the land of Canaan while his relatives in his homeland were thriving. Remember last week, the end of chapter 22, there's this seemingly confusing section. Now after these things, it was told to Abraham, behold Milcah, that's his sister-in-law also is born children to your brother, Nahor. Huz his firstborn, Buz his brother, Kemuel the father of Aram."

Ultimately, these verses say that Rebecca was born. But in this piece Scripture, it also reveals Abraham could have gone back to his family, but at this moment, though God's promises haven't come fully true, he doubles down and pursues this grave site in God's promised land in the land that God has provided for him.

Sometimes a lot of us, he's renouncing those ties. This is a final step in saying, God, I am fully on board with you. And some of us we like to leave escape routes in our life. And to go forward in faith we need to just get ourselves implanted. And that we see that every year this time of year at Mosaic with the transience of the city changing of the school year. You're driven by the academic calendar, but if you've been here, the Lord is raising you up. He's maturing you. He's converted you here growing you in the faith, giving you a church community where you're being sharpened and challenged and serving.

I challenge you, get rid of those escape routes, trust him. I can't say that's the will of God. But a lot of us need that challenge. As Abraham was a sojourner, as our father, all of us in Christ are sojourners. I think a lot of us here in Boston get this, but we need to be careful, just being among the minority, the extreme minority of people who believe the Bible that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. We get this, but we spend a lot of time sitting around and licking our wounds, talking about how hard it is, talking about how there aren't any singles to choose from, talking about how raising kids in the faith here is so difficult. I'm guilty of that in the past week.

Listen to Peter's words. 1 Peter two, "Beloved, I urge you sojourners and exile to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation." We don't just seek to accept the position of sojourner begrudgingly. We need to own it. This doesn't mean we're forbidden from acquiring property or building wealth. But it does mean that we're to live in a way on this earth, always aware that this is not our home, where to store up our treasures, not on Earth, but on heaven.

If we get too close and comfortable with the world, we should check ourselves. James 4:47 says, "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?" Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the Spirit that He has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore, to God.

We need to ask God to give us that Dally Grace to abound in every good work for his name for His glory to live in this tension between heaven and earth. And when we accept that there's freedom in that, the expectations, the lofty expectations of keeping up with the world and their expectations for the nuclear family go away. Accruing wealth is not the solution to all of our problems, but an abiding, steadfast faith in the Lord is what satisfies, and just trusting him day-to-day. He cares for the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, how much more will he care for his children?

Lastly, I want to talk about Abraham's Slice. And again, I said earlier, the acquisition of this slice of land in Caanan is described in verses three through 20. I'm not going to read all this out loud again. It's really redundant, which is just characteristic of the language. But the thing that Moses the author of this book wants to highlight, these are only precursors to the story here in this chapter. Notice the respect Abraham show to the Hittites. We have great lessons here to learn how to sojourn from our Father in the faith. There's a nuance to the way in which We sojourn, to the way in which we pursue holiness in God and live in the world.

We can be in the world but not of it. Abraham models this for us. Romans 12:14 says "Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." That's what we're to pursue. That's what Abraham pursues here. 1 Peter 3:13-17 says, "Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good. But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed." Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy. Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do with gentleness and respect having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

For it is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. Christian sojourners are to give a reason for the hope that is in them yet do it with respect and gentleness. Or even have a good conscience in our treatment of the non-Christians around us, and even those who persecute us. Abraham in this verse six, he shows us this, notice the honor that he shows to them, the respect he shows from them, and the honor that they showed to him. Verse six, "Here as my Lord, you're a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choices of our tombs." They view him as a prince of God. They know his reputation that precedes him in the land, and they offer him this generous offer.

No one will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead. And again, in verse 11 Ephron says, "No, my Lord. Hear me, I give you the field and I give you the cave that isn't it. In the sight of the sons of my people, I give it to you. Bury your dead." And this is a bit of a cultural dance. This is haggling at the gate with the elders and theologians do argue over whether these were sincere offers for him to take the field freely. Really, the honorable way for him to respond was not to accept the field for free.

But all the commentaries agree that this treatment that they are giving him, the way that they are engaging him, according to their cultural norms was an acknowledgement of who he was. They were paying respect to the reputation that preceded him. They see him as a blessed man, a prince of God. They saw that he treated him with respect and they therefore treated him as they did. And we need to learn from that, especially in this season where our society is polarized in a lot of different ways and has been for a couple of years now.

There's a narrow path that we as Christians can walk between those poles that we see in the world. We stand on the truth. Notice Abraham spoke with sincerity. What did he say he wanted? He just said he wanted a plot to bury his wife, his dead. We as the church, what do we say we want? We say we want to be able to worship our Lord freely, partake in the elements freely, engage in church disciplines for more holy body freely, and we stand on that. And then we pray that the Lord uses our witness.

We pray that the Lord sees our love for one another, and that we are soft and light where we are. And Abraham is a model for that in his faith. There is this nuanced way of walking. And here's how it resulted. In verse 11 we read, "He bowed down before the people in land, he said, he found in the hearing of the people and but if you'll hear me, I give you the price of the field. Accept it from me that I may bury my dead there." Ephron mentioned named a price 400 shekels of silver. It's hard to know that if this was a good price or not, but very likely that this was an exorbitant price.

But we see here Abraham, regardless of the price respectfully pays to be at peace with Ephron and all of the people of his city. He valued this opportunity to bury his wife properly, and in the midst of his grief, he was by pursuing the tomb this aggressively, he was making a statement I believe in a God who is going to resurrect me and my wife one day. I want to buy this outright to procure it so that you don't trick me later and take it from me. But this is an act of faith for him before the Hittites. This is his witness to them showing his face to the Lord. And he's able to do this peacefully at relatively little cost to him as a rich wealthy man. So think about the ways, how are you engaging with the world? are you engaging in this polarized state? Or are you finding ways to be at peace but still be holy before the world?

And it's hard. And this is, we need wisdom. There's anxiety that just arises when we process what does that look like, especially today, especially in this season, after the past year and a half. But the Lord promises to meet us Dally, and that we need to trust Him. We need to abide in Him. We need to saturate our lives with his word and just keep walking. We can do over activity just trying to enforce our mark in the world. We can be paralyzed under activity, or we can just walk forward with abiding faith, trusting that the Lord will care for us, provide for us, meet our needs, follow through on all of his promises and use us for His glory as we stand on his word.

And so, I think about how does this impact how you engage with the world? And so, Abraham, he does in the end, get this field and this is a very specific description of it. It just emphasizing God gives him a slice. So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was to the East of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it, and all the trees that were in the field throughout this whole area was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who went at in at the gate of a city.

After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah, East of Mamre the same as Hebron in the land of Canaan. The field in the cave that is in it was made to Abraham, deeded to Abraham as a property for a burying place by the Hittite." And so, Abraham at this point, God promised him that his descendants would be like the stars in the heavens, the sand on the seashore, the dust on Earth, nations would come from him. But what did he see? He only saw his son Isaac. He was promised that the land of Canaan would be his. But what did he get possession of? Only one sliver of land to be used as a burial ground.

We could emphasize how little of the fulfillment of God's promises that Abraham saw. But we must also emphasize the fact that the Lord did give him something. He blessed him. He gave him at least a taste of his fulfillment. And you got to think Moses wrote this text before the Israelites were going into the promised land engaging the natives, the locals to conquer this land that was promised to them. God has given Abraham an assurance of, "I am going to follow through and give you your eternal inheritance. I'm going to give you this piece. Your family will get this land." He's communicated to the Israelites, "You will see I gave Abraham this land. I will give you a piece of. I will follow through my promises."

And to us, he's saying to us through your faith in Jesus Christ, you will get there. And this is how God, he chooses to accomplish His plan of redemption and little additions over time, little snippets of history. It's like a farmer sowing seed. God gave the promise to Abraham. It's like a farmer scattering seed on the field and on the earth. And when Abraham sees Isaac, he's blessed to see this fruit come about. Just imagine how exciting, how just any of you who garden, just how invigorating it is to see these little elements of the Lord's promises come true, and how invigorating in the faith to continue to strive forward through the sorrow, through the thorns and thistles of death, of life through the sojourning.

And it gave Abraham hope to continue on and gave the Israelites hope to continue on, gives us hope to continue on. And this is how the Lord has treated us. God gave Abraham a slice. He saw a slice of land, a tiny fulfillment, tiny taste, but the Lord has done the same for us. This is true and that Christ has come. We haven't received our final inheritance or final fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham to us, but he's given the down payment, a deposit Ephesians 1:13-14 says, "In him, you also when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory." And we need to have seen the first fruits of new creation, when Christ rose from the... And furthermore, we have given for all those who know that the Holy Spirit has awakened our heart and hearts to see our sincere need for Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We know that as a deposit of the promises to be fulfilled.

Furthermore, we've seen the first fruits of the new creation, the resurrection when Jesus rose from the grave. The application for us is just like father Abraham. We get to see the new heaven and earth on the last day, and just as he did for Abraham, the Lord has graciously provided us with a foretaste at down payment. When we have our sorrowful days, when sojourning gets difficult, when the reality of death gives us fear and anxiety, we need to believe that the Lord will fulfill those promises. We need to look up from our sorrow and gaze upon the gospel that tells us that Jesus Christ did come and die for us and he did rise from our dead and delivered death its final blow.

While we may face challenges in this life, our eternity in the presence of God is secured. What do we have as a reward for our faith? And what do we have access to right now in a spiritual sense to close. Hebrews 12:18 "For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken, you've come to the presence of God as depicted on Mount Zion. But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels and festal gathering and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous, made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that like our father, Abraham, that your promises would be enough. We pray that we would be encouraged by your generous, just sprinklings of reminders of what our inheritance will look like. We thank you for the courage that you gave Abraham and Sarah to walk faithfully until the end. Lord, we pray, give us courage. Give us faith. Give us a biding faith, trust in you, to guide us day-to-day that we may persevere until the end to your glory. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.

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This media has been available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new, if your visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card either virtually in the app or in the website. If you fill it out, we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week. We also have an app that you can just grab in the back. If you fill it out, just toss it on the white box or leave it at the Welcome Center.

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in the house. Any fathers in the house? Raise your hand. Happy Father's Day. Three. That's many Mosaic for you, many Mosaic. I love Father's Day. I've got four daughters. Praise God. I love Father's Day very much because I don't have to do anything except get one person a gift, and that's different from all the other holidays.

One question word before we get into the sermon. So, when we prepare our sermon calendar, we do it about six months in advance. What's important to us is just going through the text. The text is what sets up our preaching calendar. We just go chapter by chapter, verse by verse. That's what we do. We are not a church that plans their sermon calendar around fake hallmark holidays. No offense, none taken, but we get to Father's Day and we're at Genesis 22, and it's the story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. What does that have to do with Father's Day? You're about to see everything.

I just mentioned that because I see God's divine orchestration and little details like this like when we were at Genesis 19 the week right before Pride Month starts. It's just God showing, "I'm with you, guys. I'm with this church. The Holy Spirit is working in and through you." So, for me, that's really encouraging. I just wanted to share that with you. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good Father and we love you for that. We thank you that your goodness is poured out on us and your grace and your mercy, but not only. You pour out your grace and mercy on us often in a way that doesn't feel like grace and mercy, doesn't feel like a blessing because, often, you train us. You test us in order to train us to make us stronger, stronger in life, stronger in spiritual warfare, stronger when the next battle comes. We are even more prepared. Therefore, we can have greater victories, therefore, bringing you greater glory.

We thank you Lord that you love us so much that you gave your son Jesus Christ for us, that you yourself, you didn't just allow this to happen. You weren't just a passive bystander as your son was being crucified. No, no. You personally evolved, that you put your son to death because that was the only way that we rebels could be forgiven, could be reconciled with you, could be adopted in to your family. It's the only way that the orphans could be named.

We thank you Jesus that you were willing to do that, that you submitted perfectly to the will of God. You are the only one who perfectly did that. We thank you Holy Spirit that you take that gospel, that you take that truth and you make us so alive today that our hearts are on fire. I pray Holy Spirit, set more hearts on fire today. Draw people to yourself. Continue to build your church here in this desolate place. We pray that your kingdom flourishes. Bless our time in the holy scriptures. Pray all of this in the beautiful of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Title of sermon is Faith Under Pressure. A reality of life, a truth of the universe, and a truth of holy scripture that's at the center of everything is that God is. God is. Whether you like it or not, God is. Whether you like it or not, God does what God wills. Whether you like it or not, God is God over you, and God has demands over you. He demands things of you. What he demands of you is faith in him, a true faith that works itself out in true love. He demands faith. He demands love. He demands obedience. Whether you like it or not, God requires our faith be demonstrated to him in particular when it's the hardest, in particular when we are under pressure.

This is the kind of faith that overcomes the world. Faith and obedience are two sides of the same coin. If you believe in God, you have to love God because true faith always leads to true love in God, and you can't say, "I believe in God and I love God," if you don't obey God in particular when it's the hardest. You don't need to exercise faith when things are easy. Thou shalt eat chocolate. You don't need to exercise faith. Thou shalt live any way you want. Thou shalt be the ruler of giving guideline and moral laws for yourself. Thou shalt decide for yourself what is the right thing for you. Thou shalt do what feels good to yourself. Thou shalt live however you want and you will still inherit heaven however you define it. That's not true, and that doesn't need true faith.

Now, true faith is exercised when the God of universe demands that we sacrifice that which we love most, and he demands that we sacrifice ourselves, self-denial, our own passions, our own dreams for ourselves, denial of personal desires, and that's what we have with Abraham.

Abraham begins to understand that God is God, that God is God. I'll give you an SAT word, maybe a GRE, I don't know. God is peremptory, peremptory. God does not allow room for refusing or denying his will. No. If you do refuse or deny his will, he is going to bring consequences upon you. That's where we are beginning, and that's really the only way of understanding what's about to happen. What's about to happen, it seems cruel. What's about to happen, it seems incredulous. How could you God take a man Abraham, promise him a son, make him wait 25 years and then give him that son, and watch him love that son for over a dozen years as the most precious thing, the apple of his eye, and then go to him and say, "Abraham, I want you to take your son and I want you to offer him up as an offering to me."

To really understand this text, you need to understand that Abraham loves God. That's really where we are. Now, what does this have to do with Father's Day? Absolutely everything. I'll tell you just from my personal experience of having a dad and being a dad, four daughters, the absolute most important thing that I can do, the absolute greatest gift that I can give to my daughters is to love God more than them, is to love God more than their mom, more than my wife, is to love God more than anything, and obey him because when I love God and I obey him, they see me making sacrifices because I love God and because I want to obey him and they're like, "You know what, Dad? Your words actually mean something, and I'm going to listen. You have an authority and a respect that you have earned with me, your child, because you are a great child of God the Father."

Absolutely, every fathers, the moms or the dads, that's how you become a great parent by submitting to God the Father, walking with God the Father, and then doing what God the Father does to you with your kids.

With that said, we're going to read Genesis 22. I'm going to read the whole text because this is one of the greatest text in all of human literature. As you read it, it feels like we're standing on a holy ground. Would you look at the text with me? Genesis 22:1.

"After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' and he said, 'Here am I.' He said, 'Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.' So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to the young men, 'Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.' And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, 'My father!' And he said, 'Here am I, my son.' He said, 'Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?' Abraham said, 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.' So they went both of them together.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand, and took the knife to slaughter his son, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, 'Abraham, Abraham!' And he said, 'Here am I.' 'Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.' And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked up, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'

The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, 'By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth bless because you have obeyed my voice.' So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived in Beer-sheba.

Now after these things it was told to Abraham, 'Behold, Milcah also has borne children to your brother Nahor: Uz his first-born, Buz his brother, Kemu′el the father of Aram, Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethu′el.' Bethu′el, father of Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham's brother. Moreover, his concubine, whose name was Reumah, bore Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Ma′acah."

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time: the test, the test passed, and the test rewarded.

In verse one, we're told that God has come to test Abraham, "After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' and he said, 'Here I am.' After these things, after what things? After Abraham has walked with God for two and a half decades waiting for the promised son. Finally, the son is born, Isaac. Here, Abraham and Sarah are laughing. Isaac's name means laughter. They're having a good time. They plant a tree, meaning that they're settling down. They're rooted in their community. It feels like Abraham has retired. It feels like Abraham has finally arrived, has finally passed all the tests that God has for him. No. That was just a setup. That was just a preparation for the ultimate test.

"After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' and he said, 'Here I am." Information about this is communicated to us by the narrator. It's not communicated to Abraham. Abraham doesn't know it's a test. It's not communicated to him that God never really intended for Abraham to actually kill his son, to actually burn his son's body on the altar. We're told that God does test. Why does God test? God tests us. He tests us to grow our faith. There's a difference between testing and temptation.

God tests us to grow our faith. Satan tempts us to destroy our faith. Often, it's the same event. Whatever the event is in our life, God is using, trying to use that event to test us in order to train us, you pass the test, you just got trained, you're stronger now, and Satan is trying to destroy our faith with a temptation. What temptation? To not take the test and say, "God, I don't want the test. It's too hard. I don't want to endure this pain. I want to take the easy way out."

Verse two he said, "Take your son." This is the test. "Take your son, your only son, whom you love." God the Father knows that Abraham is a good father who love this son, been waiting for this son, "whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah." By the way, this just came to me. More teenagers in the United States have cellphones than have fathers. It's a fact. That's a fact, that have fathers that love them. To be a father that loves your children it starts with fidelity to the Lord and fidelity to your wife. That's where it starts.

"Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

None of this really makes sense. This text doesn't really make sense unless you understand the hidden secret in the wording, in the Hebrew wording to show you that this isn't just an account in Abraham's life, that this is the culmination of everything that God has been teaching Abraham.

How do we know that? Because twice God comes and tells Abraham the same phrase, "Go there forth. Go forth." Twice that's used in the Hebrew bible, once when God calls Abraham for the first time in Genesis 12:1 and the second time here in Genesis 22, "Go forth to the land I'll show you." This is Genesis 12:1. Now, the Lord said to Abraham, "Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father's house to the land that I will show you."

In Genesis 22, it's the same exact language. These are the bookends of the biography of the faith of Abraham. This underscores the deliberate use of parallelism here, that God is calling Abraham to do the same thing that he did that time just on a greater scale. Abraham was called in chapter 12 to go from his father's house and not told precisely where. Here, God says, "Go. I'm going to you. Just keep going."

The drama is heightened by a series of terms. In chapter 12, Abraham was told to, "Leave your country." He's told to, "Leave your family and leave your father." God said, "I want to see, Abraham, if you love me more than your family, if you love me more than your country, if you love me more than your father, go. I'll be a father to you." Here, Abraham in chapter 22 was told, "Leave. Take your son, your only son, the son you love. Abraham, do you love me more than your father? Abraham, do you love me more than your son?" That's the test here.

In both cases, we see Abraham responds in faith and was rewarded with the promise of glorious posterity. In both cases, we have the record of Abraham building an altar at the end. The word son is used 10 times in the chapter and together with only son and the son whom you love. It just emphasizes the severity of the test. This is a real test. Abraham understands, understands that he needs to act.

One of the reasons why a lot of people don't understand Christianity is because a lot of people try to take Christianity like they take a class in college that they audit. There's different class levels. So, in my college, there's a class that you take and you're graded. You can also take classes for pass/fail if it's for a grade. Obviously, you're working harder in any class. You're trying to absorb every single piece of information in the class, in the reading because you don't know what the test will try to expose from your knowledge base. You're paying attention to absolutely everything because you know you will have to use this information.

Pass/fail, it would be foolish for you to do slightly more than just enough to pass. Then audit the class, you just go for the entertainment. You just go for the little piece where the professor just goes off the cuff and just tells war stories and jokes and you do that. Then when your mind actually has to focus and you have to do the hard work of learning material, your mind is gone. A lot of people, the problem you don't get what you're supposed to from Christianity, from the faith, and from following God is because you're trying to audit.

You show up to church just for a good time or perhaps you'll meet somebody, and then perhaps you'll get the group of friends, you're trying to audit. Then when God's like, "Hey, auditors, you got to take a test," all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, I wasn't ready for that one," and then your faith, it crashes and burns. So, that's my little rant. You're welcome.

Abraham was ready for the test. He was ready because he's been walking with God for 25 years. The Lord isn't asking him here. He's telling him, "Take your son." How old was Isaac at this time? The word for boy is the same word that's used of Ishmael in the previous chapter in verse five and 12. He's probably older. He's probably 15-17. The Lord says, "Take this son of your old age " life form, the son whose birth was a miracle, the son for whom you're willing to do everything and anything. He's the apple of your eye, the son upon whom you put all of your hopes and dreams for the future, 'You are all my hopes and dreams. You are the fulfillment of everything.'"

God shows up and says, "Take the son. I want you to sacrifice him," to a man who's already lost a son. God's already told him, "Send Ishmael away." So, because of God, he's already lost one son and it looks like he's going to lose a second son. How does Abraham feel? The text doesn't say. It doesn't tell us one detail of how he feels. Obviously, his heart break. Obviously, his heart is torn asunder. Obviously, there's shock and there's numbness. "What on earth, Lord, are you feeling? How can you call me to do this?" Are you calling me to child sacrifice like the Canaanite gods, like the American gods, sacrificing millions of babies in abortion? Is that what you're calling me to, God?"

No, no. Abraham knows deep inside no. No. The first word that God game me, and there's a second word that God gave me, and there's the middle that I just don't understand. The first word that God gave me is it's through Isaac that your offspring is going to be blessed. He is the child of the promised. He gets that. Then he gets to another word and says, "You need to sacrifice the son."

Abraham looks here and says, "I don't understand the connection between the two, but you, God, have always been faithful and fulfilling, all of your promises. I'll do what you tell me to do. You've given me marching orders, and I'm going to start marching." What a sleepless, troubled, tortured night he must have had. God probably came to him in a dream. How did he know it was God? He's heard God's voice. He's walked with God for 25 years. He knows what GOd's voice sounds like. Here, we see Abraham at night, get a glimpse of the awful struggle of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he's under so much duress, so much pressure, so much anxiety of what's about to happen, praying to God, "Let this cup pass from me." So much pressure that the capillaries on his face are bursting, and he's sweating blood. Jesus Christ, he knows what's coming.

He said, "God, don't ask me to do this. There's got to be another way. Not my will but yours be done." In Genesis 22:3, "Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey." Rising early shows promptness, a resolution despite the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking difficult of the assignment, he said, "God told me to do it. I'm going to do it." "Saddles his donkey. Took two of his men and his son Isaac and cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him."

We can see in the order of what's happening how distraught he is. We see a glimpse of his mind. First, he saddles the donkey, then he calls the servants, the young men, and then he cuts the wood. It should be the other way around. It should be you call the to help you chop the wood and then you saddle the donkey. What we see is perhaps he's so distraught he can't think straight or perhaps he's postponing the most painful part of the preparation, but what we don't see here is him pushing back at God. What we don't see here is the Abraham that's debating God, negotiating with God.

When God told him, "I'm going to punish and condemn Sodom and Gomorrah," we don't see any negotiation. This right here, I'm going to give you a working definition of God because everybody worships. Everybody worships. Everybody has a god or a lot of gods. Working definition of god is what's your non-negotiable. What's your non-negotiable? What's that one thing you can't touch this. If God tells you, "Hey, I want you to sacrifice that thing from your life. I want you to cut that thing out of your life. I want you to mortify that thing in your life," and you say, "God, no." Well, that's your real god. It could be sex. It could be power. It could be a relationship. It could be your career. It could be money. Whatever it is, that's your real god.

What we see with Abraham here is God has finally become his non-negotiable. When God speaks, I'm not even going to negotiate. Do I understand? I do not understand, but I do understand that his ways are above my ways, greater than my ways, and often counterintuitive to my ways. God's mind isn't just higher than ours. God loves to do the counterintuitive. God's wisdom is the opposite of human wisdom. So, he does it, and he gets the marching orders and he kept going.

Verse four, "On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar." Just think about this. Just go there. Three days. Three days with your son. You know what you have decided to do. You're walking with your beloved son for three days just having conversations with him about life, about God, "Dad, isn't God so great? Dad, isn't God just so incredible on how much he's blessed us?" Sitting around the campfire at night before they go to sleep while looking at the stars.

Abraham's thinking, "God, you promised me, I'm going to have more descendants than the stars in the heavens, and the one descendant that you've given me, you're telling me to kill."

Having that conversation, savoring the last moments together, protracted, sustain obedience, step after step after step after step. Finally, he gets to this place. We're not told how he knows this. Perhaps divine intuition that God gives him or a sign.

Verse five, "Then Abraham said to his young men, 'Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come back to you.'" You read this and you don't notice much going on here if you just read it from the perspective of the Old Testament, but the New Testament commenting on this verse points out the fact that Abraham had said to his servants, "I and the boy. We together are going to go up to the mountain. We together are going to worship and we together are going to come back." It's not even just faith. It's faith that's morphed in the knowledge, "I know this is fact that we're coming back together, and unless we're together, we're not coming back."

Hebrews 11:17-19, the commentary, "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offspring be named." He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. Abraham, he knew. He didn't know all the details, but he knew God was going to work it out. He knew that even if he actually killed his son Isaac, which he had decided to do in his heart, he knew that God could bring him back. He believed in the resurrection.

This is before he had the witness of the New Testament that God brought his son back from the dead, that God brought Lazarus back from the dead, that God brought people back from the dead. Abraham had no witness, he just had the fact the omnipotent God of the universe can do whatever he wants. He has the power. Also, he's faithful to his word. Abraham had been told by God more than once, "It's Isaac. It's Isaac. He is the fulfillment of the promise, and Abraham's faith was like those of who believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead as Hebrews tells us.

Did Abraham understand what God had ordered him to do? No. He didn't understand at all. He couldn't know what was about to pass, but he knew that God is good and God is great. It's one thing to sacrifice your son, to pierce his heart with your knife because you know that is the most painless way to go. To torch the wood and to see your son going up in flames and with him all of your hopes and dreams. That's one thing. It's another thing of doing, of making the greatest sacrifice that God calls you to make knowing that the resurrection is true, and because the resurrection is true, every single sacrifice that we make for God is absolutely worth. This is the Christian life, trusting God to be true to his word no matter the circumstance, no matter your bafflement at God, "How can this be the plan?" No matter your bafflement at God of how you're managing the things in the world, no matter your ability to explain.

You know who he is. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding. God often does things that are difficult for us to train us, to strengthen us, to make us better servants of him, and he does that because he's good father. He believes in us.

A good father who believes in his kids will make his kids do hard things. It's the father who has no faith in their children and says, "Do whatever you want. I don't care. You want to eat whatever? You eat whatever you want. You don't want to do your homework? Don't do your homework because I don't believe in you." That's not love, that's hate. It's the loving the father.

I was with my daughter. We got four daughters. So, I've been putting this stuff into practice for a while, for a decade, actually, so I've got two PhDs on being a dad. I was with my daughter doing Math and because of online school, her teacher basically stopped teaching. That's what happened. Then they went back from remote and in-person and her teacher said, "You know what? I still don't feel comfortable going back in-person." So, they started piping her teacher into the class and no one learned anything.

So, I'm doing Math with my daughter. We were doing two numbers times two numbers like 22 times 22, whatever. I'm showing her how to do that, and then she said, "Let's do three number times three numbers." I said, "Oh, great."

As soon as we wrote down the number, she starts crying. I said, "Baby," I took a napkin. I said, "Baby, I love you. Look me in the eyes. I love you. Wipe off your tears. This isn't time for emotion. Emotion has nothing to do with Math. Turn off your emotion and turn on your brain."

You know what? It worked. It worked. I always thought because I got raised by a Russian dad. My dad's name is Vladimir Viktorovich Vezikov. I thought his parenting style was just Russian, where he made me do hard things. Five years old, I'm like, "Pops, can I have some money for ice cream?" "No, but you can come paint with me in my painting company," at five years old. "Here's a paintbrush. Here's a little roller. Here's a little scraper." He got me the smallest versions of each. "I'm going to make you do hard things."

I look back now and it's not because it wasn't a loving thing. It was a Christian thing. He knew God the Father. God the Father sometimes, it feels like he's cruel with us, calls us to do things that are punishingly difficult, and then you do them, and you look back and you say, "Thank you. Thank you, Dad."

I think that's what's missing with American parenting, by the way. We cuddle our kids, and then we wonder why when the kids graduate college they have absolutely zero life skills. They're just grown man child, especially with the men. So, free parenting lesson from here. Make your kids do hard things.

Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope." A lot of modern American church loves this verse. This is on so many mugs and bumper stickers. We love this church. God has great plan for us, a plan to prosper for us. It's for our welfare, et cetera.

Hey, by the way, is God blessing Abraham here in the story? It doesn't feel like a blessing, but he is. It doesn't feel like a blessing. Often, God's greatest blessings don't feel like blessings at the moment. One of the reasons why the American church is where it is is because we've got to the point where feelings overrule faith, that if it doesn't feel good, I don't have to believe it. If I don't like it, then I can cut it out of my bible, and now it's feelings that are really God instead of God telling us to believe and that faith is what controls our feelings.

Faith says, "I don't get it." Faith can even say, "I don't like it, but God told me to do it. I'm going to do it because he is God. I'm going to put another one foot in front of the other in obedience nevertheless." Verse six, "Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so they went both of them together." Here, you can't but think about Jesus Christ with the cross, wooden cross on his back and Isaac here is walking with the wood on his back like a condemned man carrying his cross and Abraham walking along side of him carrying the instruments of death, the fire and the knife. You see the father and the son together as they approach the time and place of sacrifice.

Verse seven, "Isaac said to his father Abraham, 'My father,' and he said, 'Here I am, my son,' and he said, 'Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?'" Isaac is thinking. He breaks the oppressive silence and the narrator emphasizes the sacred precious relationship between father and son, where Isaac says, "My father," and these words must have cut and pierced to the heart of Abraham sharper and more painful than Abraham's knife into the heart of Isaac, "My father."

Abraham said to him, "God will provide for himself the lamb for burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar and there laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. We don't know if there was a conversation here, but Isaac is probably a smart guy and he understands exactly what's happening, "Oh, we're building the altar. There's no lamb. Oh, the wood is there. Oh, it's in order. The fire is ready. Oh, there's ropes. Oh, those ropes are for me."

It's fascinating here that Isaac could have run away. We know he's strong enough to run away, old enough to run away because he carried the wood off the mountain. So, if he carried the wood off the mountain, then he's stronger than 100-year-old guy, probably 115-year-old guy. He doesn't do any of that.

I used to wrestle with my dad. My dad loves wrestling. He loves combat sports. He's savage, Soviet savage. That's my dad. We used to wrestle all the time. We used to wrestle all through elementary school, just wrestle every day. Then I started high school wrestling. Then 10th grade, my dad just stopped wrestling me, just done. "Pops, you want to wrestle?" "Nope, nope," because what? Because he understood it's changed. The power has changed.

Isaac doesn't run away and Isaac doesn't fight his dad. Isaac submits to his father because he sees Abraham submitting to his father. That's what's happening here. So, this isn't just for Abraham. This is for God to show Isaac, "Hey, look how much your dad loves me. Your dad loves me more than he loves you."

Now, if you are going to understand what it means to walk with God, you Isaac need to have your own faith where you love me above all else. You see Isaac surrendering himself to death in submission to his father, and in submission to God, and this is nothing short of heroic.

Verse 10, "Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son." Takes the knife, most likely the same knife that he used to circumcise his son eight days after he was born. Takes that knife and he's about to plunge it into the heart of his son. Both of them weeping, Abraham willing to sacrifice what he love most, whom he love most, for whom he love most, and then the culmination of the text, the culmination of this whole episode, the story of Abraham, the greatest moment of Abraham's life, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham," and he said, "Here I am."

The angel of the Lord definite article, other times in the narrative where we've seen this we know it's a theophany. It could be argued. It's a Christophany. It could be argued. This is Jesus Christ himself stopping Abraham as he's about to offer up his son. Abraham's passed the test. Verse 12, "He said, 'Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.'"

Abraham lifted up his eyes and he looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. "For now I know that you fear God." It doesn't say, "Now I know that you love God more than anything." It says fear God because, ultimately, the way that you love God is to fear God. You can't love God without fearing him with this awe and a reverence because you understand who he is.

The more you love him, the more you know who he is. The more you know who he is, the more you fear him. Do you love him? Do you fear him? Do you obey him? That's the connection. Then the key phrase of this text is instead of his son, he takes the ram and he offers it, instead of his son. The ram dies, the son goes free, and this is the very first explicit explanation of substitutionary atonement in all of scripture.

Scripture says substitutionary atonement is one life dying for the sake of another, sacrifice of one life for the sake of another or others. The scriptures are about God's work in the life of people. That's true. The scriptures are about obedience to God's commandments. That's true. The scriptures are about how we ought to live by faith to God and obedience. Even if you're not familiar with Christianity, even if you have never read the bible, even if you think that the first books of the bible are Genesis, exorcism, Leviathan, and do the right thing, and if you didn't laugh, then you really don't know the bible. This just proves it. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy.

You know that Christianity is about morality, doing the right things, right? You know that. Everybody knows that because that's from the sheer volume of teaching of scripture. That's the thing that's repeated more than anything else, but that's looking at a house and saying, "The most important thing about this house is the house." False. None of that matters without the foundation. The foundation of God's divine intervention in the world to save people. God intervenes and there's various ways to talk about God's intervention, salvation of the world, divine election, regeneration of sinful human hearts by the Holy Spirit, consummation of all things at the second coming of Christ, but central to divine intervention is the work of God on behalf of sinful, unworthy human beings through substitutionary atonement.

It's embedded in the religious practices of the law of Moses, of the people of Israel. It was a regular, highly organized essential feature of the Israel's religious life. Sacrifices explicitly for the purpose of atonement to remove sin, achieved through the death of an animal. You literally, you bring an animal to the high priest at the temple and you put your hands on that animal, and you just feel in that moment that this animal is about to be slaughtered because of my sin. You put your hands there. Transfer of guilt goes on that animal that did nothing wrong, did nothing wrong. The animal is slaughtered because of your guilt, because your guilt, your sin, my sin, it deserves death. That's what we deserve. The penalty for sin is death.

Then the blood was taken, sprinkled, splashed on the people. So, just graphically emblazoning on their minds that this is what we deserve. As time passes, revelation of reality of substitutionary atonement is advanced. As it's advanced, it reaches its Old Testament culmination, Isaiah 53, but the suffering servant and it reads as if it had been written beneath the cross of Calvary.

Isaiah 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him singular the inequity of us." So, a historical person who would bear the weight of the penalty for sin of every single person who would trust in him, who in all of human history could do that? Who's that one person who could do that for absolutely everyone? That's our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. The only one who's truly perfect, the son of God and the son of man who came to reconcile us with God.

Verse 14, "So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'" This right here is the first incident of substitutionary atonement that is developed later in Isaiah 53, but, ultimately, we see this culminating in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes, starts as ministry. John the Baptizer, his cousin, points to Jesus Christ and said, "That's the Lamb of God who will take on the sins of the world." Jesus lives a sinless life, perfect life, perfect submission to God, perfect fear and reverence to God and love toward people.

Then he goes and he's crucified because he claimed to be God. He kept claiming to be God. Finally, he's crucified for that claim, and on the cross, Jesus Christ is bearing the wrath of God that we deserve. He is our substitutionary atonement. He is the Lamb of God that dies instead of us. Jesus in my place, that's the heart of Christianity.

So, Christianity isn't what you do for God. That's not where it starts. Christianity is what God did for you. That's always been like that. God goes to Israel and said, "I'm the one that led you out of captivity. Therefore, here's the 10 commandments. I saved you, now this is how to live."

What's fascinating here is Abraham is at the absolute righteousness pinnacle of his life. His faith has never been stronger. His obedience has never been more resolute, and even at his greatest moment, he needs substitutionary atonement, which shows us that every single one, no matter how good you are, you can't save yourself from God's wrath for the sin you deserve by atoning for your own sins.

Even if you say, "From now on I'm going to live a perfect life and I'm going to do everything I possibly can to atone for all my past sins," that's not Christianity. It's not atonement. It's substitutionary atonement. We need someone else to die for us, and the only one who did it perfectly was Jesus Christ. Then we see point three, the test rewarded.

Verse 15, "But the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, 'By myself I have sworn.'" That's fascinating. So, the angel says from the Lord, "The Lord is swearing by himself." Why is the Lord swearing by himself? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you you?" That's going on. "I swear to me." That's what God is doing. Why is God doing that? Because there is no higher authority than God.

God is the highest authority that there is, "By myself I have sworn," declares the Lord. "Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring has possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice, because you have obeyed my voice." That's where the stress is laid here. This is how the text ends. The narrative ends with this, "Because you've obeyed my voice."

Promise of God's covenant had to be claimed by an obedient faith, which is fascinating because you look at this promise. Word for word, it's the same thing as in Genesis 12. Genesis 12, God came before Abraham had done everything and God made him a promise, "I'm going to promise to bless you. I promise to bless your family. I promise to give you a promised child. I promise to bless the nations. I promise." At the end he says, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to do all of that because you have obeyed my voice."

I thought we were saved by grace, through faith, not by works. It's together, friends. If you're saved by grace through faith, then you truly will have works. We're saved grace through faith, but work out your salvation with fear and trembling. The gift is given and it's guaranteed, but you still have to obey and live with obedient faith.

My first job out of college was working for a consulting firm in Washington, D. C. My consulting firm, long story, they hired me, but they hired me when one company bought another company and then they hired. So, CGI bought AMS, and then they fired all the people in the internals of AMS and then they realized, "Well, we can't merge. We need these people back." So, I got hired at a time where my boss is like, "Hey, I got fired and then rehired, and I know I'm going to get fired as soon as the transition happens. They hired more people to help with the transition, but, yeah, I don't have any work for you because we're going to just work for a few months." So, long story short.

So, I had a lot of time on my hands. So, I started, and I got out of school. I started a painting business on the side. I would clock in to work, come in, shake some hands, drink some coffee, and then I would change my clothes, get in to my paint truck and then go paint some houses. So, I had this tremendous little gig going. It's like people getting multiple jobs during COVID because everyone is working from home.

So, I'll just tell you this one story. One guy is like, "Hey, I like you and I trust you. I'm going away. Here's a check for the total amount of what it's going to take to paint my house. It's $4,500. Here's the check right away. I'm leaving. I'll be back in a few weeks."

I'm like, "Okay." I just met the guy two days ago. I didn't have a website because I didn't really register my business with anybody. I was like, "I could literally take this check right now and just put it in my account and do nothing." Then I realized, "No. I'm a Christian. I'm not going to do that."

I think that's what a lot of people do with Christianity. You're saved by grace through faith. Great. I got the check. My turn to be secure. All my sins are forgiven past, present, and future. You still got to paint the house. That's the point. The point is payment is guaranteed. We got to do the work. It's not just because God demands it, but he does, but it's also because the more that we do, the more that we train our own lives, the more people we can bless, and that's what happened with Abraham. That's what happened with Isaac and later on.

The other thing I want to point is where's Jesus in this text. Obviously, Jesus is everywhere in this text. The whole story is a depiction of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Actually, the story doesn't make sense apart from the New Testament and apart from the gospel. Apart from the New Testament, God here telling Abraham to literally sacrifice his child, which sounds capricious. This is all to point to Jesus Christ. Where do I see that? I see it in multiple places, but just talking about geography.

God says, "Go to the mountain of Moriah." Why is that significant? Where do we see the mountain of Moriah in other places of the scripture. Mountain of Moriah is the place King David buys a threshing floor in Araunah for the temple, the site of the temple. He has a dream to build the temple of God himself. He buys the land. He has all the materials ready and God said, "No, you're not doing it. Your son Solomon will do it."

2 Chronicles 3:1, "Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite."

Mount Moriah is the place that King David wanted to build a temple. Finally, Solomon builds the temple, and this is the place where hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of animals are sacrificed, where there were rivers of animal blood sacrifice. Blood was coming from the river. This is the same place where Calvary was, except Calvary was just outside of the gate of the temple.

So, as you see, Isaac going with his father, son and father going up the mountain, you can see Jesus Christ on the Via Dolorosa and he's not just carrying the cross by himself. He's carrying the cross with his father. His father is right there with him.

Why did God have to do this cruel thing to Abraham? Why did God have to do this? He does this to show us the glimpse of God's great love for us, and that he was willing to endure the cruelty of the cross, and not just that, but endure the tension and the relationships, the severing of the relationship in the Holy Trinity.

God the Father, God the Son on the cross. God the Father isn't just a passive bystander. He's the one with the knife over his son, piercing his son's heart. How does God the Father pierce the heart of God the Son? God the Son cries out and says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" God the Father silent. With the silence, he pierces the son's heart and the son dies, and that's the penalty. That's God bearing the penalty that we deserve. We deserve God the Father to never speak to us again and leave us to ourselves in a place called hell. Jesus Christ experienced that for us. Why? Because that's what it took and he was willing to take it because he loves us.

Romans 8:31-32, what then shall we say to these things. If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Jesus Christ goes to the place of sacrifice as a son of God, and there is no substitute for him. There is no ram caught in the thicket because Jesus Christ was the substitute.

I wonder what happened with Abraham and Isaac when they got home. I wonder if Abraham told Sarah any of this. I definitely wouldn't.

"Honey, how was your camping trip?" "Oh, it was wonderful. It was wonderful." Both of them aged 80 years. "It was wonderful. It was great."

You know and I know when all of this was said and done that Abraham looked back and he would have never traded that experience for anything. He wouldn't have traded the experience of him walking up the mountain of Moriah, the preparing of the altar, the preparing of the knife, hearing Christ himself stop him because Christ himself would take the knife himself. He would never have traded those experiences for a few more uneventful days at home.

Difficult as they were, these were the greatest days of his life. What are our favorite stories? My favorite stories are war stories, and not made up war stories. War stories from people who have gone to war, those are my favorite war stories. My dad, all the time, he served in the Soviet Army because you had to, and that's what made my dad my dad. All the time just war stories, not real war, but it's like, "Yeah. You know who still holds the Soviet record for pullups with boots on and a coat? Yeah, I do. Yeah."

I think he does. I don't know. He could have made that up. We never fact checked him, Vlad. I don't know about that. I don't know. You know what it takes to get war stories? It takes going to war. It takes going through events like this. Then you come out and you're stronger. You're just a different person. Pascal said in his Ponce, he said, "There's some pleasure in being onboard a ship battered by storms when one is certain of not perishing."

I think Abraham became a much better dad after this because he realized, "You know what? Isaac's not my son. Isaac is a gift. I need to steward this gift well, and then God will do whatever he wants with the gift." What's most important here and this is the last text, verse 20 to verse 24, what we see here is a transition from the story of Abraham to the story of Isaac, a transition from one generation to the next, a transition not just of life, but of faith.

I won't read the whole text, but I'll just point out verse 23, "Bethu′el father of Rebekah." This is important because Rebekah then becomes the wife of Isaac, but all this is showing us that now there's a transition. Now, the camera is fading from Abraham to Isaac. "Abraham, you've done your job. You've fathered well. You've been a son to God the Father and you've done a great job, and you've fathered your son well. Time for your son to take over."

In conclusion, given the great sacrifice of God for us, what are you just unwilling to sacrifice right now? What is there in your life that you are just clinging on to and you know that God is calling you to sacrifice this? What is it? It might be a sin. It might be a good thing. It might be a dream that God has given you and this dream is from God, but you've begun to love this dream more than God himself. Perhaps you got to sacrifice that dream or that desire or that wish.

What is God's calling you to lay on the altar in obedience to his will, to his plan? He knows best, and the resurrection makes every sacrifice worth it. Few verses from the gospels, and then we'll close with prayer.

Matthew 10:37, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Matthew 19:27-30, "Then Peter said in reply, 'See, we've left everything and followed you. What then will we have?' Jesus said to him, 'Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

Everyone who has left houses,'" with parking lot, with parking space, "'or brother or sisters or mother or father or mother or children or lands, backyards, for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life, but many who are firsts will be last, and lasts first."

If you're not a Christian, if you're not a believer, today we call you. Repent of your sin. Repent of your rebellion, and look to the cross of Jesus Christ where God the Father was willing to do in giving up God the Son, bore the penalty for your sin. Repent of your sin and turn to him in faith.

If you are a Christian, ask now for the Lord in prayer and worship to search in you and give you discernment if there's any area of life that you haven't really offered up to the Lord, that you haven't consecrated to the Lord. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this holy scripture. It seems like we're standing on holy ground seeing Abraham, the pinnacle of his faith, the culmination of his faith, that he was willing to sacrifice what or whom he loved most for you because you're worthy of this love. You're deserving of this love. You're deserving of the greatest amount of love that we can muster. You're deserving of it. By the power of the Holy Spirit, expend our hearts to love you more and to love neighbor as self. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Good morning church, and welcome to Mosaic Boston Brookline. My name is Tyler. As Pastor Andy said in the beginning, I am the teen's director here. And it is an honor and privilege to be preaching God's Word to all of us today. And if you will with me, we're going to go on a quick journey back to get a glimpse into high school Tyler's life. It's a dark and scary place. Only be real quick, we're going to get out real fast, but we're going to go there for a second.

And when I was in high school, I had a good friend, his name was Rich. And Rich loved working out. And he wanted me to start working out with him. I was, at that time, 150 pounds soaking wet, scrawny kid. And he was like, "You like theology, though. So in Revelation, it says that we're going to fight a war with Jesus. And so you need to get buffed for that war." First off, it's bad theology. That's not how bodies work in heaven and that's not how the war works. It says that a flaming sword comes out of Jesus' mouth and all his enemies are gone.

So, that's bad theology, but it convinced me. I started working out. And again, I was super light, just wanted to get working out, wanted to have a good time, get stronger. And I was doing that... Sorry, my mic's falling off, I could tell. And then a friend of ours, Greg, started also coming in and working out with us. And we were having a good time. And he was also about my weight. We were the same size. And so we started competing with one another.

And we set up a benching competition, because we are high school boys, all you care about is benching, you don't care about anything else. And so we were like, "Let's have a competition who can bench the most weight, just straight up most weight. If you do the same weight, then we'll go to reps, like whoever does more reps, then they win." So we give ourselves a week to train. We start preparing. We start working out. He's taking pre-workout. He's taking creatine. He's doing all that stuff. I'm not, I don't care.

And he's a trash talker. I don't know if you know trash talkers. I'm not a trash talker. If you ever want to shut down a trash talker, all you do, you smile, you nod, and you say, "Okay." Trash talkers feed off of trash-talking. If you give it to them, they give it back and they grow and they get amped and they get excited. So my friend Greg, I just said, "Okay, let's see." He's talking trash saying, "I'm going to beat you. I'm stronger than you. I'm better than you," all this. "Okay."

He goes first. I said, "Honor, honor first, you go first." He starts benching. Okay, we're both around 150 pounds. "I know Tyler can do his own weight, so I'm going to do 175, 175, that's what I'm doing." He goes, he pushes one and he pushes two. And he's jacked. He's like, "Yeah, I did two over my own body weight. Let's see you beat that." Now this is going to date myself a little bit. But if you remember the old Tootsie Roll Pop commercials, yeah, I channeled that owl in my reps. I went one, a two, a three. And that's right, I crushed it, I had three reps at 175. I destroyed him by a whole rep.

And my friend Rich who was the one who brought us together was like, "All right guys, come on. Now let's actually work out." And he goes to bench. And I spot him because I'm a good friend. And he starts throwing up to 225 10 reps, three sets of 10 reps. It was deflating. I just spent everything I could doing, the moment there was a week of build up to this moment that I was so excited for. It was a joyous victory. It was a victory, nonetheless. But I was completely overshadowed by someone who wasn't even trying to overshadow us.

And I realized in that moment, yes, I had a victory, but what he was doing was better than what I was doing. And that's really the story of this text that we see. We see a great highlight, a great moment that we are celebrated, but it gets completely overshadowed by someone else. And we will be spending our time in Genesis chapter 21. And it's the story of the birth of Isaac. We have been waiting since Genesis chapter 12 to have this birth happen. We have been waiting for this moment. And it's an exciting one.

But we're going to see that the story is not about Isaac. It's not about Abraham. It's not about Sarah. Someone else overshadows them. Will you pray with me over the preaching of God's Word? Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you now knowing that all is for you, all is for your glory. You are the one, true, everlasting God. In this time, help us to learn and study from your word, your inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. Help us to love it, to cherish it, to see who you are through this text and turn that knowledge and understanding about you and to praise because, Lord, you alone are worthy of our praise. Lord, bless this time and speak through me and to all of us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Again in Genesis chapter 21, it's a long one. So we're going to read it in sections as we go along, but we're going to be spending that time in three points. The first point is God is precise, God is protector, and God is praiseworthy. Again, you will notice there are no points about Abraham, Sarah, or Isaac, because the story is not about them. The story is about God. So will you read with me either on the screens or in your Bibles?

Genesis chapter 21 verses 1 through 7, it says, the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, "God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me." And she said, "Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."

Again, we've been waiting for this moment since chapter 12. Abraham has been holding on to this promise that God has given him waiting for this moment. And we get seven verses. Now I want to be clear, I guarantee you there was celebration in Abraham and Sarah's life and in their family and their household. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying the text isn't emphasizing that. The text is emphasizing the Lord in Hebrew, word order is important, but it's important because the sooner it comes up, the more important it is. If it comes first in a sentence, it's saying this is the important thing, let's pay attention to it.

And to us, the sentence "The Lord visited Sarah," seems, okay, that's just good English grammar. But in Hebrew, it could go any way you want it to go, but the first word is Yahweh, starting the text saying, "Pay attention to the Lord." And five times in seven verses, we get the name of God, we get the Lord. Only three times do we get Isaac. It's saying, "Pay attention to God here, pay attention to God here." And in the Hebrew, the end of verse 2, we say at the time God had appointed, it ends with the word God. It ends with God.

It's making this loop. God was there in the beginning, God is there at the end, he is also there in the middle in case you don't get it. This is all about God. And so the thing we have to be thinking is what can we learn from this text about who God is? What is God revealing to us about his nature? And the first thing we learn is that God is precise. He is precise in his words and in his actions. It says the Lord visited Sarah, as he had said in the exact way in which he had told her that she would be the one to bear a son. God did that, he visited her.

And the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. Again, he had promised this multiple times to them, to remind them, "You need to remember, this is me who's doing this." And he does it. As he said, word and in deed, and specifically, it says at the time in which God had appointed. So this was in Genesis chapter 18 verse 10, God said, "This time next year she will conceive and bear Son." God did everything exactly as he said it. And it's intentional.

God didn't say, "Oh, you have a kid. I said it would be a son but it's really a daughter. I said, it would be through Sarah, but Ishmael is good, you should take Hagar. And Ishmael, that'll be your son." No, Abraham pleads that to God and God says, "No, it's Isaac." He is precise in his promises. And what we see is Abraham's response to God's precision is to be precise back. In verse 3, it says, "Abraham called on the name of his son who was born to him who Sarah bore him, Isaac." Why is this? God told him to name his son Isaac.

Abraham didn't say, "Oh yeah, but I like Abraham Jr. better. So I'm going to go with Abraham Jr." No, he followed God's saying. Abraham didn't say, "Well, I'm not actually Jewish," Jewish people, like he's the founder of it. So they weren't thinking of it. I'm from Chaldeans. I'm going to go to Ugaritic which is my native language and I'm going to call Isaac laughter in Ugaritic, whatever that word may be," because it means the same thing.

No, he is precise. He does exactly what God says. And in verse 4, "And Abraham circumcised his son when he was eight days old, as God commanded." God said eight days. Abraham didn't say, "Oh, eight days is close enough to a week. Seven days, I'll do seven days." No, eight. He didn't say, "Oh, God, I just woke up. It's the ninth day. I'm sorry. I just had a newborn child. I lost track of all time and I don't know what day it is. I thought it was the eighth day. It's the ninth today. Lord, will you forgive me? I'm going to circumcise him." No. No, he was precise in his actions and in his words.

And this is something that our culture of Christianity has oftentimes lost and it's really sad, because God is precise and we need to be precise back. And there's this old story from the 16th century of a pastor named Richard Rogers. I like to think of him as Mr. Rogers. I picture him with a sweater. And he was riding around on a horse, as all pastors do. I'm not a pastor because I'm not up here on a horse. If I was up here on a horse, you would know I was a pastor. That's not true, sorry. He's riding around on a horse with the lord of the land. Oh boy, what time to be alive.

He's riding around with the lord of the land, and the lord of the land goes to him, Mr. Rogers riding on a horse, and says, "Why are you so precise?" He recognized in his language and what he was saying he's being precise about life, precise about theology, precise about God, and Richard Rogers' response is. "Oh, Sir, I serve a precise God. And when we serve a precise God, he calls us to be precise back." And J. I. Packer has a book called the Puritan Papers. And in this he commentates on a lot of the Puritan movement, but he also commentates on that exact story.

And on that exact story, J. I. Packer says, "A precise God, a God, that is, who has made precise disclosure of his mind and will in Scripture, and who expects from his servants a corresponding preciseness of belief and behavior, it was this view of God that created and controlled the historic Puritan outlook." I'm not here to say Puritans are perfect. They all had their issues. Every human being has their issues.

But one thing we can learn from the puritanical movement, he said, they cared about the precision of God's word about exactly as how God disclosed himself to be. And that we should desire to be just as precise in our beliefs and behaviors or in our words and our deeds. Now, what does that look like? That could be easy to say, but what does that look like? Precise in behavior, I think, is the easier one to start with.

A lot of times you ask people about their life, how are they. Oh, I tried to be a good person. Our behavior is we try to be good people. That's very general, it's not precise. As Christians, we can be precise. It's not that we're trying to be good people. We're trying to do the will of the Lord. It's very precise. It's very specific. And we can be precise. And when we want to get even more precise, we don't say, well, when certain situations come up, I try and understand like what do I feel is best to do.

Now, we can be precise. God has given us his word, where he is precise with what we are to do and what we are not to do. And so we can be precise, where do I need to grow in my life, where do I need to change my behavior? Well, what does Scripture say? The Scripture says, "Thou shalt not murder." So good, done, I'm good to go. But it gets more precise. "Thou shall not hate your brother in your heart." How many of us are perfect at that? None of us. We got to work on that.

And so when we want to know how to be precise in our behavior, we go to Scripture, to see what we are to do. Now, how do we be precise in our words? I want to be clear first off wit, this is not. This is not arguing about semantics. In 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 14 and 15, it says, "Remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who needs not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth."

So it's not quarreling over words. It's not semantics. It's not about that. But what it is about is rightly handling the word of truth. Are we handling truth? Are we speaking truth when we are talking about God? When we are talking about spirituality, are we truthful? Are we accurate in our truth? And again, none of us are perfect. But is this even a desire? Is this even something that we are striving for? This is something we have lost and I want us to all grow back. And I need to grow back on this. None of us are perfect but we need to desire to be precise and speaking truth about God.

And when I was thinking about an exact example of this, the first thing came to mind is an example that we hear all the time. And you will see in storefront windows and in signs in front of people's houses, there's usually a sign with a lot of things. It says, "We believe." And it has a lot of things listed. But the largest letters is always love is love. Is that a true or false statement? It's true. It's true. The law of identity says that something is the same thing as itself. Love is love.

I am Tyler. That is a correct statement. But the issue we should have as Christians is it's not precise. It's not precise. And Scripture is precise about what love is. This comes from the Book of 1 John. If you ask anyone, "Describe an attribute of God," or, "How can you describe love?" the first thing most Christians say is God is love. That is true. That comes from 1 John chapter 4 verse 16. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

Great. God is love. That's true. It's also not that precise. But John is precise. He gives surrounding texts to be precise. He says that abiding in love is the same as abiding in God. Those are the same things. Abiding in love, what does that mean? I think that one's pretty obvious and John explains it in the surrounding text. It's to be loving and to understand what love is. He says, by this we know love. So to talk about abiding love is love. This is his definition of love, to abide in God.

What does it mean to abide in God? Again, John is precise. He tells us in the verse before... I hid it until now, so little surprise. But in John chapter 4 verse 15, right before this, he says, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." This is called a parallelism. It's the same exact phrase. It's whoever confesses Jesus is God, the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. Then it's the same thing.

Abiding in love is God abiding in him and he in God. It's the same thing. It's not saying it's good to do both. It's saying abiding in love starts and is foremost confessing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Why? John says that by this we know love that God sent his son into the world to die for our sins. The only way we know what love is, is through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of love, and he showed that love is sacrificial.

And so when we speak of love, we have to understand we are directly speaking about Jesus. We are directly speaking about an attribute of God. So we need to be precise. We need to be precise. This isn't semantics. It's upholding truth. We need to be precise, lest we be found guilty of speaking falsely against God when we speak about his character of love. And I know that this is a specific example and I want you to understand this was just truly faithfully praying about the text, this is what came to mind. I have no agenda with this.

But we need to be precise in our words and in our actions, because God is precise. But we also see that God is protector. God is precise and he is protector. And in verses 8 through 21, we see two big stories of God's protection, two separate ones. So we'll start in verses 8 through 14 where we see the first example. It says, "And the child grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian woman, and she had borne to Abraham, laughing."

"So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring. So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba."

First thing, if you are a father who has an infant who is nursing, just finished nursing, or if going to have a child that is nursing, throw your wife a party. It's biblical. She did a lot of work. It was hard. Throw her a party, celebrate that. But what we see first and foremost here is that God is protecting Abraham's family. But the question if you are like me, first and foremost is, "God, how can you do this to Hagar and Ishmael? You sent them away? Doesn't a child need to grow up with their father?" And the answer is yes.

And what we need to understand is that in Genesis, we are told that when Ishmael is born, Abraham is 86 years old. And when Isaac is born, he is 100 years old. And then Isaac was weaned and it was after this that Ishmael was sent away with Hagar. And so, Ishmael, depending on the time of the weaning and the nursing, culturally different back then, it could be anywhere from a year to three years. And so, Ishmael is somewhere between 14 and 17 years old. This is an adult in that culture.

He's a young adult. He is a child, but God is not abandoning a child without a father. God's perfect sovereign timing works so that way Ishmael can still grow up with a father and then be ready to go. So that's first and foremost, it isn't a harmful banishment, unjust by God. He is faithful even in this. But he is, first and foremost, protecting Abraham's family and specifically protecting Isaac. In the Book of Galatians, Paul gives a commentary on this.

In Galatians chapter 4, it says, "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born according through promise." So, Ishmael is born of the flesh, is symbolic of the flesh. Isaac is symbolic of the spirit, of the promise. And he continues, "Now, you brothers, Christians, like Isaac are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now."

Paul calls Ishmael's laughter persecution. Whether it's just that one laughter, likely there was some sort of mentality that was throughout everyday life where Ishmael was persecuting, mocking, making fun of Isaac. But Paul says that was persecution. And God was protecting Isaac from that. But also this is a message showing forth as Paul's point is that this applies to us today, as Christians, as God's people, God promises to protect us, not just from persecution but in persecution.

It says the as it is happening now, those who are born of the flesh, the world, those who are not of God are persecuting Christians around the world still today. And God promises to protect us even through persecution, not just that God is also protecting Abraham and Sarah's marriage. If you remember, this thing has happened kind of before Hagar ran away the last time because Sarah was mad and was treating Hagar poorly.

Sarah said to Abraham, when Ishmael was born, in Genesis 16 verses 5 through 6, "May the wrong done to me be on you. I gave my servant to your embrace and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with content. May the Lord judge between you and me." But Abraham said to Sarah, "Behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please." And Sarah dealt harshly with her and she fled from her.

This is what happened last time, and it caused division between Abraham and Sarah. She says, "You have done this wrong to me. You have sinned against me, and may the Lord judge between you." She's saying, "We're on opposite sides. I'm the prosecution, you're the defense. There is a division between us." And God wanted to protect their marriage. God did not want division in their marriage. Why, because marriage is a symbol of God's love for his church.

God desires for unity in marriage and God wanted to protect it, but how does God protect this marriage? It's not primarily by sending Hagar and Ishmael away. But what you'll notice is in Genesis 21, God comes to Abraham and tells him what to do. You see, the first time Abraham was passive, when we talked about the failure of him as a father in leading, because he was passive and he's like, "Sarah, she's your servant. You do whatever you want to do." And it led to this division. Whereas now he is displeased, it says he loves Ishmael. Ishmael is 14 to 17 years old.

He loves him. He cares for him. He doesn't want to send him away. But God comes to him and tells him, "It's okay. I'm going to protect them as well. I'm going to protect you. It's okay to send them away." And Abraham, even though it's contrary to his own desires, does what God says. He becomes a leader. We see the change happening in Abraham that he is no longer a passive leader. He is an active leader. He's doing what God has told him to do. And God loves to protect families through men who lead.

And this is what God is doing here. God protects Abraham and Sarah. But it's not just that. God does care for Hagar and Ishmael as well. God is protecting Hagar and Ishmael. This is in verses 15 through 21, where it says, "When the water in the skin was gone, she, being Hagar, put the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off about the distance of a bowshot for she said, let me not look on the death of the child. And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept."

"And God heard the voice of the boy and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what troubles you, Hagar? Fear not for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is up. Lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make him into a great nation. And then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy. And he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran. And his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt."

So again, this is parallel to the passage in chapter 16 where Hagar ran away. And in chapter 16, we are told that she was between Kadesh and Shur and she ran into the wilderness. Well, if you go into the back of a physical Bible or you look online for a map of the time, you will see that directly between Kadesh and Shur and Egypt where she is headed is the wilderness of Beersheba where in verse 14, we are told she is currently. And what likely is happening, she is in the same exact wilderness she was before. And she knew, "God, you came to me last time." And it says she lifts up her voice as she sees Ishmael dying. As she believes Ishmael is going to die, there's no hope, she lifts up her voice, she cries out to God saying, "God, you came to me before when I was here. Lord, will you come to me now?"

And what happens? God answers. And God doesn't just answer and say, "Yeah, I'm here." He answers by showing her, opening her eyes to a well of water that will give her life. Friends, this is the gospel. This is the gospel. Well, in the book of John in chapter 4 verses 13 through 14, Jesus is meeting a woman at the well and he tells her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." This is the gospel.

We recognize that we are sinners and we are dying in the barren wasteland of our sin. We are dying. And we need to cry out to God and say, "God, I need you to save me now. I can't do it on my own. There is no hope. We're both ready to die." And what God does is he opens our eyes to see the well that was already there. It was always there, but we needed God to show it to us. And just in that same way, Jesus is always there. He tells us that he is ever present. He is there with us. Anyone who is in time of trouble, they call on him, he will answer.

If you cry out to Jesus asking him to save you, he is there and he wants to save you. He wants to give you this well of eternal life, not just save you temporarily from thirst and dehydration, but to save you eternally from the penalty of our sins. Where's Jesus in Genesis in this text? Right here, right here. This is the gospel. We all need to cry out to God. He's the only one who can save us. We can do nothing of our own. And God protects Hagar and Ishmael. Ishmael grows up and he lives in the wilderness of Beersheba. He lives in the wilderness of Paran. Paran, by the way, is where Mount Sinai is.

It's just interesting. They stay in a place where God had revealed himself to them. And God continues to reveal himself throughout history. This is where they built their life around. And this is also the after part of the gospel. We don't say okay, "God, I'm saved, I'm good," and do whatever we want. We plant our lives around where he is and where he is spoken to us. We do according to what he has said. We build our lives around Jesus around who he is.

So we see that God is precise. We see that he is protector. And now we're going to see that God is praiseworthy. He is worthy of our praise. And this is verses 22 through the end, where it says, "At that time Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, said to Abraham, God is with you in all that you do, now therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but I have dealt kindly with you so you will deal with me, and with the land where you have sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear."

"When Abraham reproved of Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech servants had seized, Abimelech said, I do not know who has done this thing. You did not tell me and I have not heard of it until today. So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech and the two men made a covenant. Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart. And Abimelech said to Abraham, what is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs that you have set apart? He said, these seven ewe lambs you will take from my hand and that this may be witnessed for me that I dug this well."

"Therefore that place was called Beersheba, because there both of them sworn an oath. So they made a covenant at Beersheba. Then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, rose up and returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines."

So, what's going on? Recap from last week. Abimelech is the king that Abraham was like, "Yeah, Sarah is my sister. You could take her as your wife." So he takes her as his wife and in his sleep, God says, "I'm going to kill you unless you give Sarah back." So Abimelech is like, "Abraham, it's clear God is with you, even when you are clearly in the wrong. So let's make a covenant that you will no longer deal falsely with me so your God does not try to kill me in my sleep again."

That is what Abimelech is thinking. And Abraham is like, "Yeah, sure. I'll do that. I'll swear that. It makes sense. I'll go for it." And it says that we won't deal falsely with each other for our descendants or also the land that we are in. And so Abraham is thinking, he's like, "Oh, we're not dealing falsely about land. Speaking of not dealing falsely about land, Abimelech, your servants captured my well. And I'm not allowed to use it anymore because of them. Can we not deal falsely with each other in this?"

Abimelech is like, "I have no idea. What are you talking about? Yeah, sure. We'll fix this. We'll fix this. I don't want your God to kill me. So yeah, we'll fix it." But the word that I think is really important is in verse 25 it says that Abraham reproved Abimelech. And this word reprove is one that we often think of like rebuking, we think of like telling him he is wrong. But actually, it's kind of the converse of that it means to be found in the right. So it's saying Abraham was found to be right to Abimelech about this well.

So yes, Abimelech didn't know but it came out to be true that Abraham was dealing truthfully with him. And we see, again, that Abraham has started to change. Abraham is being active and leading his family, but now he is also dealing truthfully with others. He is not dealing falsely with them. God has already been working on his heart. And so they're like, "Okay, we settle this. You get your well back. Why are you giving me sheep?" And he's like, "Well, remember all that silver you gave Sarah to prove that she's innocent? I'm giving you these lambs back to be like this is my well, but I'm not holding it against you that you took it. You're fine. We're good now as long as you don't take it."

And Abimelech leaves. Why does Abimelech leave? Because he was there for a transaction. He was there to say, "I don't want your God to kill me. So let's do this thing so your God doesn't kill me." It happens. He's done and he's good to go. Is that how we view God sometimes, as a transaction? As I come to God, I don't want you to hurt me. I don't want you to judge me for my sin. I don't want you to do this or that or whatever. So I'm going to come to you. Can we be good? Can we set the record straight? We're good. And now I'm going to go on. I'm going to leave and do whatever I want.

Or are we like Abraham who sticks around and plants a tree? What's going on with planting a tree, guys? It's not Earth Day. That was back before all this climate change stuff. So he didn't need to plant a tree. Why is he planting a tree? It says he plants a tree in the name of the Everlasting God. And this verse 33, I believe, is the crux. It's the whole thing that this whole text wraps around. There's three distinct stories that in and of themselves you're like, "What is going on here? Birth of Isaac, Hagar, Abimelech, what's happening?" Verse 33 sums it all up.

Verse 33, "Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God." Throughout the Scripture, when people name God, they do so based off of God first revealing something to them about his nature and then responding by calling him the thing that he revealed. Think back to Hagar, again, in chapter 16, in Genesis 16 verse 13, it says, "So she, Hagar, called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, you are a God of seeing, for she said, truly here I have seen him who looks after me."

God revealed to her that he was a God who cared for her, looked after her even when she was running away. And her response is to give God a name, which means you are a God of seeing. So what did God reveal about his nature to Abraham that made Abraham say, "You are an Everlasting God?" Just killed some animals, made a covenant, and then went their way. What is about an Everlasting God? It really goes back to that first statement of Abimelech, where he said, "God is with you in all that you do."

And God loves to use people that maybe we don't even think fear him. Remember, last week, Abraham was like, "You don't fear the Lord, so I deceived you." God loves to use people that we don't expect to speak truth into our lives. And I remember my freshman year of college. I had freshmen roommates because I changed roommates because I'm scared of the first one. But that first one, he told me, he was like, "You need to find the girl you are going to marry by your junior year, otherwise you will never get married."

I was like, "Man, I'm a freshman. I've never had a girlfriend. It's taken me this long I haven't found anyone. I really need to get started now, because I'm going to have no hope of getting married if I don't find her by then." I don't know why I believed him, though, silly. It's not sound biblical. But anyway, so I was worried about my future marriage. And also, I was at that time studying chemistry and my goal was to do forensics to work for the FBI. That's what I wanted.

And I got my first ever D on a test. And I was like, "Oh Lord, I'm never going to make it into the FBI. What am I going to do? I have no hope in my future." And I was complaining about all of this to my friend Jeremy. Jarebear, if you're watching, love you, man. Jarebear. Anyway, but Jeremy is not a Christian. He's not a Christian. He loves to talk about God. We have great conversations, but he's not a Christian. And I was telling him these things. And he said, "Dude, you believe God is going to take care of it, so stop complaining." And then he moved on and started talking about sports and video games. And that was it for him. And clearly, that moment had an impact on me that I remember it today and I bring it up today. And every time I'm stressed and worried about my future, I look back to that moment, because God used someone I didn't expect to speak truth to me, to reveal something about who God is.

God is in control. That is who God is. I don't need to worry. I don't need to be stressed out. I can trust in him. That's what Abimelech does to Abraham. He says God is with you in all that you do. Abraham is like, "Oh yeah, he is. He is." We see the birth of Isaac is important, and it is great and it is huge. But immediately after, we see the hints of Abraham's past failures coming up, and God is saying, "Hey, remember this whole situation with Hagar and Ishmael? Remember when you sinned in that? But also remember the strife it caused in your family? Remember all that? I was still with you then. I was still with you then. Remember that time you pimped your wife off to Abimelech? Oh, and don't forget about to Pharaoh as well. I was with you then. I was with you in all that you did, even when you were wrong and I'm with you. Now, can you believe that I'm with you now? I've given you the son that I've promised you. I've precisely fulfilled my promise. I've been protecting you. Do you believe I'm with you now?"

And Abraham says, "Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I see it." And Abraham is not just looking at the past and in his present, he looks forward to the future and sees, I can see how God is fulfilling his promise to make me a great nation. I can see how God is going to be faithful in the future as well because of how he has been faithful in the past and how he's been faithful right now. So Abraham understands truly God is an Everlasting God. God has always been there. He is there now and he will always be there.

And his response to that is praise. And this is why the points are all about God here is because as we grow in an understanding of who God is, we can grow in praise of him. He is the object of our praise. And so the greater understanding we have of God, the greater praise we can have for him. And Abraham praises God by planting a tamarisk tree. If you don't know a tamarisk tree is, it's an evergreen, it's an evergreen tree that grows in deserts with high salt content in the soil. In other words, where trees aren't supposed to grow, this can grow.

Abraham plants this tree in the desert, it's an evergreen, saying, "Lord, you are an everlasting God. Like this tree's needles that never fade, that never die, that never wash out, you are an Everlasting God, you will never fade, you will always be here. But he also is remembering Sarah, the barrenness of her womb, their barrenness as a couple, they were not able to have child and say, "God, even out of the barrenness of this desert land, you can bring life to this tree. And out of the barrenness of our lives, you can bring life."

God is in control of all things. He is everlasting. He has always been there with Abraham. He will always be there. He's in control of all. And the response is praise. And so, our response, as we grow knowledge of God, is to praise. Have you ever thought about why we sing songs at church? Have you thought about why? It's because just like Abraham's form of praise was relevant to who God is, God, you're an everlasting God, so I'm going to worship you in a form that shows who you are. So, worship through song is a form of praises that is glorifying to God.

In the Book of Revelation, we are told that angels will sing for all eternity to the Lord, but that also we will join them in singing. We will have jobs. We will do work and we will sing songs to praise to God in heaven. So oftentimes, when I talk about praise through song, the pushback I get is, well, I praise God with my life. Good. Hallelujah, praise God, do that. We need to praise God with our life. We will be doing that in heaven. All of heaven will spend working to the glory of God. We need to do that. But we also need to praise in song, because we will also be doing that in heaven for all of eternity.

And if you say, "Ah, I don't Christian music and singing is just not for me," get practice now. We're going to be doing it for all eternity. So let's build it up now. It's not about talent. I am a terrible singer. I am the worst singer in this church. People hear me sing and they're like, "Even Pastor Jan sings better than him." No offense and none taken. But it's not about that. It's about worshiping the Lord. He is worthy of our praise because of who he is. And so we respond in praise in the way that he desires to be praised.

And I want to end with this, verse 34 says, "And Abraham sojourned many days in the land of the Philistines." Every time we have seen Abraham or Lot in this text sojourning, it was followed by sin. It was a story about how they were not trusting God and they were sojourning and they sent... Abraham sojourned in Egypt, he gave his wife to Pharaoh. Lot sojourned, he ended up in Sodom. Abraham sojourned in Gerar, that's what happened with Abimelech. Every time they sojourn they sinned.

The issue wasn't the sojourning. The issue was the not trusting God. And now we see Abraham is trusting God. And now we see he's still sojourning. So the question that we need to be thinking about as we go into next week's sermon is, is Abraham still going to trust God, or is he going to fall back into his old ways of sojourning? And the question all of us need to think about is, as we're here today, we just heard the revelation of God that he is praiseworthy in this text. Are we just going to praise him now or when we leave and we are sojourning through Boston? That's the only way to describe living in Boston, sojourning.

As we sojourn through Boston, are we still going to remain faithful and trust that God is an everlasting God, he is in control of all? Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you encouraged that you have always been you are now and you will always be. Lord, help us to grow in our love and understanding of who you are so we can praise you as you rightfully deserve. In this time, strengthen us, encourage us, stir your spirit in us to lift up our voices praising you because you are worthy. Lord, we love you and we thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. We're the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're new or visiting we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card in the worship guide. The physical one or you can also get the digital version in our app or on our website. And if you fill it out we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week. Happy summer. And happy bring an iced beverage to church day. If you see my last station back there I've got 18 water bottles back there. Stay hydrated my friends. Stay hydrated. Oh, that said would you please pray with me with the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father we thank you that you are good God and you are a great God. Although our sins, our rebellion, our transgressions deserve punishment. Instead, you poured out that punishment upon your Son Jesus Christ. The Lamb of God, the Son of God. Jesus on the cross, you got what we deserved so that you could offer to us what you earned.

We thank you for the gift of salvation. We thank you for the gift of grace that just doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that? You did that because you are God who is love. We thank you for the Holy Scriptures. We thank you for the story and the example of Abraham that often he was not a hero, he was actually an anti hero. And yet you came in and you worked with him and he poured out your love upon him and you kept sculpting him, kept molding him, kept shaping and sanctifying him and I pray that you do the same with us.

If there are habitual sins in our lives. If there is recidivism in our lives where we fall back into patterns of sin I pray today pull us out by your grace and give us a vision for our lives to be people who are a blessing to many. Bless our time the holy word. Holy Spirit we welcome you into the space. We love you and we love your presence. We pray that you today convict us and encourage us where we need to be encouraged. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

We are in a sermon series. Going through parts of the book of Genesis. We're calling it Jesus in Genesis. And we're in particular looking at the story of Abraham and how our story relates to his story and more importantly how his story and our story points to the story of Jesus Christ and our need for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The title of the sermon today is Déjà vu All Over Again. And we see Abraham committing his greatest sin that he's ever committed. And he does it again. In chapter 19 we saw the story of God's punishment coming down on Sodom and Gomorrah. God pulls through the angels Lot out and ends the story in a very hopeless situation. So now we're done with Lot and we'll hear nothing more of him. And after the promise that God made in chapter 18, where Jesus Christ as a Kristoff and he shows up.

He's flanked with angels. And he comes to Abraham and Sarah and promises that in a year you will have the promised son. You've been waiting for over two decades. Probably 25 years but next year he's coming. And what we're expecting after chapter 19, is that in chapter 20 Isaac is born. Why do we expect that? We expect that because Abraham has been winning. He's been growing in his faith. God called him in chapter 12. He said I'm going to bless you, I'm going to make your name great, I'm going to bless those who bless you. And I'm going to bless the nation's through you Abraham. He follows God and we see him early on his walk with the Lord was serpentine. It was wandering. Kind of like Storrow Drive. Just wavering back and forth. And what we see with Abraham is now he's beginning to string wins together.

We see that beginning with Lot and goes to his nephew Lot and he gives him a pic of the land generously. And then after Lot is taken into captivity by a coalition of kings, Abraham the great warrior gets his 318 trained men and they together go to war to save Lot and he comes out victorious. He's recognized by Melchizedek as a man of God. He resists temptation. When the king of Sodom offers him financial profit, the Lord appeared to him twice to reaffirm and elaborate the covenant. And God said here's a sign of the covenant. You need to circumcise yourself. And Abraham in his '90s probably his greatest act of faith promptly obeys, circumcised himself with a flint knife and does the same to 318 trained men. You see just his faith guides everything that he does. Win after win after win after win and apparently he got tired of all that winning. So after Abraham wins, now Abraham sins.

And in chapter 20, Abraham takes his 90-year old wife. He's 100. He takes his 90-year old wife and passes her off to King Abimelech. And she's taken into his harem. He pimps off his 90-year old wife. Apparent grandma was really good looking. I don't know what it was. A different oxygen, different food levels, no GMO, Pilates. I have no idea. But apparently at 90 she was still smoking hot and King Abimelech takes her into his hands. So we'll get into that.

The worst part is. The worst part that as I sat down and I'm like chapter 20. I'm writing this sermon. I'm crestfallen. I'm like, "Oh, no. Not again." The worst part of this whole situation is he's done this before. He pimped off his wife who was a little younger to the king of Egypt back in chapter 12. And God intervened and God saved him. And now he does the same thing again. Big lesson for us is dear Christian sin clings so closely. And time with the Lord does not make you impervious to sin. It doesn't make you impervious to falling back into old patterns of sin. Into tragic recidivism where you relapse. The point of the whole text is Abraham's a sinner saved by grace. Still remains a sinner. He's a saint, he was a sinner and a sinner who's a saint. So never lose sight dear Christian. That we have to be aware of sin and that we are to fight the good fight of faith.

We'll do the same thing we've done in the past weeks. We're going to walk through the text verse by verse. But three big sections. Three points to frame up our time. Point one is Abimelech restrained. Second is Abraham rebuked and third is Abimelech restored. First Abimelech restrained. Genesis 20:1. And from there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur. And he sojourned into Gerar. So Abraham was called by God to go to the land of Canaan. That's the promised land. The first time he sinned against his wife and against God, he went from the promised land to Egypt. Now he goes from the promised land to Kadesh and Shur into Gerar. He's traveling from the extremely southern point of Palestine. Shur was on the border of Egypt. And he visits the royal city of Gerar which is just above the Gulf of Suez on the way to Egypt. Suez we've heard recently in the news. The Suez Canal. That's where the container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. This is the general vicinity where Abraham goes. It's hostile territory.

We're not told why he goes. Perhaps he went because there was famine in the land or perhaps he went because he was afraid of God who judged Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham watched him judge Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps he was afraid of retaliation from the neighbors of Sodom and Gomorrah, that they will retaliate against Abraham in order to retaliate against God or perhaps he was bitter. Later on the text he says God made me go from my hometown to land of Canaan. There's a bitterness. Perhaps it's because he expected that when he interceded for Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah that God would answer him.

And he didn't get what he wanted from God. Perhaps he's... But we're not sure. So now we see him going into hostile territory with his flocks, with his herds, with the people he has with him. He's a chieftain. There's over 300 people with him. So it's a huge caravan. And he's going into hostile territory as a believer. These are different people, they worship different gods. It's kind of moving to Boston from somewhere where it's acceptable to be a Christian. You move up to Boston and you keep your bumper stickers on your car.

You keep the little fish on your car. Why do you keep the fish on your car? Because you're a Christian. That's why. Why'd you put the fish in your car in the first place? Because back in Mississippi when Christian police officers pull you over, they're going to let you go. You're a Christian. Up here no one cares. I remember when Pastor Shane moved up here, he had a little Toyota Camry. And he had a little Jesus fish on the back of his car. And after an evening service, we show up this car and the back windshield was just mis shattered. Someone threw a brick through the back of his car. Why? I don't know. Jesus fish maybe. So if you've got Jesus fish on your car, man congratulations. You are a very bold Christian. And now you have to drive like a hostile territory. He goes there. He knows that he is not like these people. That he believes unlike these people. These are enemies of Israel.

We'll learn later on. The Philistines come from this general land. So what happens? Well, Genesis 20:2. Abraham said of Sarah his wife. So now people are asking, "Hey Abraham. Who's that woman next to you? She's apparently very good looking." And the tradition of that land was the king could take any unmarried woman into his harem or the king could kill any husband of the married woman to take her into his harem. So that's why Abraham said of his wife Sarah. She is my sister. And Abimelech King of Gerar sent and took Sarah. He takes Sarah the wife of Abraham.

First thing Abraham does is exactly the same thing he did 30 years ago. Why? What's he motivated by? Motivated by fear. Fear for his life. And he gives up his dear wife Sarah. Decades they've been married. Gives her up to a King Abimelech into his harem. Now I've been married by God's grace and my wife Tanya. It's going to be 15 years this week. Someone came up to me. Praise... Yea, clap for her. Good job. Thanks, Edgar. And I've made some faux pas. Some mea culpa. Some my bads in my life in my marriage. I have some bad ones. The first one I think is first year married. I forgot it was her birthday. I just forgot her birthday. Show up at home, she's dressed up, makeup on. It's dinner on the table. Beautiful. And I'm like, "What's the occasion? Of course I know. Well, I forgot your present in the car."

So I run down. And I go to the nearest store that was next our apartment building. It was TJ Maxx or Marshalls. And I went to the first thing I could find. And it was a little wooden bucket with soap stuff. And some country CDs. So that's what I grabbed for. I was like, "You're from Ukraine. You like country music." No, she did not. That was a... So still to this day I'm recovering. I've made some bad mistakes in my marriage. But I've never pimped off my wife. Praise God. And the lesson here gentlemen is don't pimp off your wife. That's number one. Number two, is Abraham the great father of the faith does this. And he does it twice. And what's the lesson here? The lesson here is under pressure, under stress, under anxiety. When motivated by fear, it's so easy to relapse the former sins. It's so easy to go back to old patterns of life. So the question for us today is what sins from your past are you prone to return to? Especially when under stress. And when are you prone to return to them?

And you need to know that. You need to reverse engineer your walk with the Lord and you need to know yourself and when you're tempted so that you do not make provision for the flesh. Don't put yourself in positions where your flesh takes over. And instead of walking by the spear you walk by flesh. Speaking of harems. The custom of the land. You have power, you have money, you can make yourself a harem. A harem is just a group of women that you sleep with. Your concubines. Perhaps you don't have the money and the power and the opportunity to build yourself a harem. But we live in a day and age when people are building not physical harems but definitely digital ones. And Jesus spoke right into that. And he said whoever looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Abimelech committed the sin of adultery when he just looked at another man's wife. And so we see Abraham sinned and we see Abimelech sins and there's a lesson for us that we are to fight our sin and protect in particular sexual sin. So the question is what's going to happen? Who will protect Sarah from being defiled? Because God promised that Sarah is going to have a child with Abraham.

God promised a unilateral covenant that he's not going to break his word. That's exactly what we see God coming to the rescue. This is verse three. But God. I love that phrase because that's the same phrase that's used in Ephesians when it says that you are dead in your sins and your trespasses. All of us are on our way to hell but God intervenes but God sent his Son. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you've taken for she is a man's wife. Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me she is my sister and she herself said he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart. And the innocence of my hands I have done this.

God speaks, God intervenes. Speaks to him in a dream. Does God still speak in dreams? Yeah, he does. And sometimes to you, sometimes to your loved ones. This week I was sitting at home in my basement. It was 11:00 PM and I smell something burning. And I run around. I ran upstairs and make sure it's nothing upstairs. And then I ran back downstairs and one of my outlets was on fire. I had to pull out a plug and sparks were flying. I was like, "Whoa, that was weird." The next day my daughter Elizabeth wakes up and says to my wife, "Hey, Mom. I had a dream that our basement set on fire." Sounds trippy. She had no idea.

And I was like, "Did we make it on alive?" She said yeah. I was like, "All right. Praise God." It's just once a month. So sometimes God speaks in prophetic dreams. Sometimes it's just to reaffirm yes, I'm with you. Yes, I'm here to protect you. Sometimes it encourage, sometimes is to sanctify. So God speaks to an unbeliever through a dream. Can God speak to unbelievers? Yeah. God can do whatever he want with whomever he wants. He sovereign speaks to this guy in a dream and says you're a dead man. The same God who set Sodom and Gomorrah on fire, judgment, fire, brimstone comes to King Abimelech who's definitely heard about what went on Sodom and Gomorrah. And he says you are a dead man. I'm going to kill you. Does God have the authority to take our life? Yeah. The God of the universe who gives us life can take it at any single moment. And God says that you're dead. Maybe you've taken another man's wife. Why? Because God cares about marriage. He cares about marriage a lot. Abimelech says I haven't approached her yet. And Abimelech says Lord, that's a great start. Lord, he knows that this is God and he speaks of innocence. He's like, "God, I'm innocent." Actually a relative term. He's sinful in other ways. But from this perspective, he's innocent. He did what he did without knowing the full story.

And Abimelech makes the same argument to God that Abraham made to God as He was interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah. He says will not the just God of the universe do what is right. And he's got a case. What he's really saying is, God I didn't deserve this. If anyone does deserve it, who is it? If anyone does deserve to get whacked for the situation that they're in, who deserves to get whacked? Abraham. God why aren't you coming after Abraham? Why are you coming after Sarah? Who also isn't a total victim. Apparently they played this con whenever they've when because that's what Abraham says later on the text.

I asked my wife. I was still talking about this text. And she's like, "You know what? I bet Sarah wanted to leave." I was like, "Why did you say that?" She's like, "Just imagine you have the option of being a princess. You were living in a tent. Now you get to live in a mansion. She's not completely innocent either. You get a black American Express Card. You get your hair's done and your nails done, your hair done and all that done like everyone's pampering. Who knows. But she went along with this plan." And what's fascinating about this text is Abimelech the pagan king is more righteous. Presented as more righteous in this text than the man of God.

In chapter 18, God said about Abraham. I've called him. He's mine. I've chosen him to be righteous, teach righteousness to his children. And we see the unbeliever behaving more moral than the believer. And that's often the case. Unbelievers are sometimes some of the most moral people just really, really good people. Generous people, caring people, loving people. And then on the flip side, it's the believers that are sometimes the most mischievous and the most sinful. You ever do business with a Christian? With an unbeliever, you got to sign one contract. With believers, two. At least two. Because of the Christian, when they became a Christian, they understand how wicked they are. That's what makes them a Christian. What makes you a Christian is I have sinned against God, I need to repent. It's really bad. Every Christian that you see is a really bad person. But the difference is they know they're a bad person.

Sometimes the moral people are very moral people to get away from God. Abimelech is the moral person in this text. At the end of the text, he's very generous but he never becomes a Christian. He never loves God. You can do a lot of good things. And you can be a very moral person and not be a believer not go to heaven because you are doing all the great things not for God but for self. Back to Abraham. What was motivating him? What motivated him to sin again? It might have been bitterness against God. It might have been just time has elapsed. It's been 30 years since chapter 12 and chapter 20. It might have been that he knows just how lavish God's grace is. Did Abraham deserve to be called by God? No. Did Abraham deserve to get a word from God? No. Did Abraham deserve for God to speak to him and show him the covenant? No, no, no, no. Did Abraham deserve for God to tell him I'm making a unilateral covenant with you even if you break your end of the bargain, I'm still going to hold up mine? He didn't deserve that.

Abraham also knew that God saved him once. I sinned you save me again. You also promised me that within a year I'm going to have a son. So clearly, you are going to work out your plan. And you might not need me in the process. This whole idea of I can sin because God will come to the rescue. This idea is called cheap grace. Where you say Jesus died on the cross for all my sins past, present and future. So why not continue to sin? God will forgive me. It's his job. I think part of that is going on in this idea of cheap grace. And yet God will forgive. Dear Christian, if you are in your sins. If you sin, God will forgive you if you repent of that sin. But it doesn't mean you won't bear the consequences of that sin. And it definitely doesn't mean that God won't discipline you like a loving father. Does God discipline Abraham in this text for this sin? Oh, yeah.

He publicly shames Abraham through Abimelech. And he publicly shames Abraham for 1,000s of years by including this text in the Bible. So we look at this guy like, "You're a loser. You're a loser twice." God does discipline. Look at Hebrews 12:5-11. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline. If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live.

For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them. But he disciplines us for our good. That we may share his holiness. For he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Shows us that we're saved not by a morality. This is what the text shows us. But just by sheer grace. We're saved by sheer grace not because we're better. We're not Christians because we're better. We're Christians because we're saved, forgiven. And we're not saved because we're good. We're not forgiven because we're good. We're saved because God is good. That's really what this chapter is highlighting. That despite Abraham's sin, how great God's grace is to intervene and help him. God intervenes just like in chapter 12 showing you that God is the only hero of the story and of the book of Genesis of the whole Bible.

And God intervenes his work in the marriage of Abraham and Sarah, right? And that's what God is doing. He's exposing sin in their marriage. He's exposing deception in their marriage. A lack of faith prior to the child coming. And this is important lesson that before you have a child, you need to know that whatever sin there is, you got to work through and repent of it and do the hard work because when children come, everything just gets magnified. It's just exponentially harder. Not only does your wife see your sin but the kids see your sin and oh, your sin then impacts your kids. And imagine Isaac wakes up and he says, "Abraham. Dad. Daddy, where's mommy?" And then Abraham's like, "Oh, long story. Hear I pimped her out to King Abimelech. You want cereal for breakfast." That would scar the kid for life.

So God is working on their marriage exposing the sin. So there's repentance prior to when the child comes. Verse six. God speaking to Abimelech. Then God said to him in the dream. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. And it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now then return the man's wife for he is a prophet so that he will pray for you. And you shall live but if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die. You and all who are hers. So I didn't touch her. You wanted to obviously. That's why you married her.

I don't let you consummate the marriage. So God here is sovereign even over sin. He's the one that keeps Abimelech from sinning and the part of the Lord's Prayer is Lord, lead us not into temptation. God I beg you please keep me from sin. Prevent me from sin. And God does that with Abimelech. And then God gives Abimelech a choice. You can either return her and live or if you don't, you'll die. And that's the same choice that God gives every single human being. Either repent and that's turning from sin and you will live. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ. You will live if not, you shall surely die. The decision is yours. If Sarah had stayed even one night with Abimelech, there would have always been a question of is Abraham Isaac's dad? And the other thing I want to point out is this is the first use of the word prophet in scripture. And which is very ironical though.

We're prophets messenger for God. And the first time the word prophet is used is in the context of the Prophet's sin. Showing that every single human prophet is fallible and sinful and it points to our need for a greater profit who's never sinned. And Abraham will pray for you. And at this point, Abimelech is got to be thinking what in the world? The guy sinned against me, lied to me. And now it turns out he's a prophet. And it turns out he needs to pray for me so that I can get saved. It doesn't make any sense. Just from a human perspective from a societal justice perspective. It doesn't make any sense. We'll leave that hanging until point three. Point two. Abraham rebuked. We see this in verse eight. So Abimelech rose early in the morning which is contrast to Lot when God warned him through the angels. Hey, get out of Sodom and Gomorrah because fire and brimstone coming. Lot slept on it woke up had breakfast. Finally, the angels had to drag him out.

Here Abimelech wakes up first thing in the morning. This what he does. Called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. Abimelech fears God. His servants fear God. And yet they don't become believers at the end. They fear God like children fear a stranger. Please I don't know what you're going to do with me. I'm afraid of you. Abraham fears God as a child. There's a difference. There's a loving relationship. Here Abimelech never becomes a Christian. His father's never become Christian. They're just afraid of punishment. Whereas a real child of God fears disappointing God which obviously Abraham did in this situation. So he too needs to grow in fear of God. Verse nine. Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, "What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you?" That's interesting. Because the very first time that the word sin is used in this chapter is from God talking to Abimelech. I kept you from sinning. So now Abimelech has an understanding of sin. That sin is transgressing God's law.

How have I sinned against you that you brought on me and my kingdom of great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done. And here what's fascinating is Abimelech preaches a sermon to Abraham. Abimelech gets everyone to get the whole court together. Puts Abraham in front. It just lights them up with the words that God gave them. So this is God speaking through Abimelech that you Abraham are a hypocrite. Your witness is terrible. Your witness to God. If God didn't intervene, all of us would have perished. You would have brought great sin on me and the kingdom. You did what ought not to have been done. And that's a fascinating term.

Abimelech how did you know what ought to be done? How do you know? God told him. Abraham, did you know what ought to be done? Yeah. So you sinned against me. And this is a fascinating idea. And every single person you ask that's alive and a christian or non Christian. You ask them is the world as it ought to be? And every single person says no, the world is not as ought to be. There's a lot of crime and there's a lot of evil and there's a lot of terrible things in the world. Corruption in the world. The world is not as it ought to be. Are you as you ought to be? No, I'm not. Well, how do you know? Because there's a moral law written on your heart. A moral compass. Is it calibrated perfectly? No, it takes God's word brought in to recalibrate Abimelech's moral compass here. Abimelech's concern isn't just for himself but for his kingdom. Which shows that he's a good ruler and again shows that he's a good person despite the norms of the day. Verse 10, Abimelech said to Abraham. What did you see that you did this thing? Abraham said I did it because I thought there is no fear of God at all in this place and they will kill me because of my wife. So Abimelech is like, "Why do you do this?" And Abraham says I did this because you guys don't fear God.

And here Abraham is the hypocrite of Matthew seven where Jesus says before you pull out the speck in your brother's eye, make sure there's not a log in your own eye. So Abraham to Abimelech. He's like, "I did this because you don't love God. You don't fear God. I did this because you have a toothpick in your eye." As Abraham has a two by four in one eye and a telephone pole in the other. He's just the biggest hypocrite of this whole text. You guys don't fear God. I just knew all of you guys are perverts and sickos and weirdos. You kill me to take my wife. So I decided to pimp her out before you did that. Just the logic is so warped. I knew you were so sinful. So I'm going to sin to prevent you sinning against me. And this just shows a lack of faith. He didn't go into the place on mission to share the gospel. He went to the place selfishly to preserve his wealth, kind of like Lot did when he went to Sodom. And apparently there was more fear of God in Abimelech than there was in Abraham. That's the contrast.

Verse 12. Besides. So now Abraham is... He knows he's caught. But he lawyers up and he just... Oh, what a text. Besides, he pathetically tries to make excuses. He's caught in sin and he's like, "Besides." He's like, "I knew you don't fear God. And besides she is indeed my sister. Cue the country music. She is indeed my sister." Like a pro. Why are you even...? Don't even bring that up. Why did you marry your sister? Oh, because it was easier. We didn't have to change last names. You're a pervert. Don't do that. This is pathetic. It's like you get caught in a sin and then you try to excuse it and the excuse is even worse than the sin. You get pulled over by a cop and the cop is like, "Why are you speeding? Why are you speeding?" And you say, "I swear to drunk. I'm not God. I'm not God." The first service nobody got it. Here, a couple...

The excuses are worse than the sin itself. Kids do this all the time. Where you get caught in a sin and then you just try to excuse it. That's what Abraham is doing. He knows he's caught. He's caught by daddy, he's caught by Abimelech. And then he starts saying this is my sister that I married her. My father though not the daughter of my mother and she became that way. And when God caused me to wander from my father's place that's it. That's the verse. God caused me to wander. When God forced me to wander. Remember last week I was talking about Lot. He got saved but he wasn't happy about it. It's like a high schooler getting saved before they start freshman year in college. And like, "Don't save me yet I want frat parties." That was Lot. That's Abraham. He wants to sin right now. And he's just caught in the sin. And then who does he blame for this whole situation? Oh, God caused it. Same thing Adam did. Adam sins, eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God comes looking for him. Adam where are you? And what does Adam say? The wife whom you gave me. She forced me. You see the past 70. You see he's trying to shirk his responsibility. Pass it off. There's bitterness toward God. And I said to her this is the kindness you must do to me at every place to which we come. Say of me he is my brother. And he's saying this is the kindness you got to do me. This is how you need to love me. That's what we're doing. Instead of saying how can I love my wife and sacrifice myself to protect her, he goes to his wife and says this is how you must love me and sacrifice yourself to protect me. He's just got everything back. And remember last week I was talking about Abraham was a great patriarch and Lot was a soytriarch. Where here Abraham, he's back to soytriarch land. He loses his spine. His faith spine and he goes to his wife and he says I want you to sacrifice yourself for me anti gospel.

What is the gospel? The gospel is Jesus Christ sacrificing himself for his bride. And then Jesus says to husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Abraham is doing the opposite here and technically was Sarah his sister. Yes, technically yes. But it's not the full truth. She was also his wife. His sister wife. A half truth masquerading as the full truth is a full lie. And we need to know this. If you are going to grow in discernment and understanding of reality, you need to understand that this is the thing. People lie with facts. Just like Abraham lies with facts. People lie with statistics all the time. Your head could be in the oven and your feet in the freezer and on average, very comfortable temperature. You're not comfortable. Statistic lie all the time.

If you want to understand politics and you understand the news. You need to understand that people all the time spin one fact and present one fact which is half truth as the full truth. And they do it for click bait and they do it for eyeballs and they do it to persuade us with a narrative et cetera. So we as believers need to grow in discernment knowing that people lie all the time with facts. And this is what Abraham was doing. Abraham's behavior is pathetic, it's an excusable, it's deeply disappointing. He's here no different than Lot was in last chapter. Last chapter Lot takes the angels into his house, shows them hospitality and then an order protect himself and the angels, he passes off his daughters to the gang rapers. And he says, "Hey, take my virgin daughters instead of the angels." He's sacrificing his beloved ones for himself. Abraham's doing the same exact thing here. The worst part he's in the middle of his Christian life. It should be expected that he would do better but he suffers from what something that all of us suffer from is thing called spiritual amnesia.

And once again he falls on his face, fails in his faith. We see cowardice, selfishness, indifference. He stumbles badly. So will his son Isaac. Who will do the same thing. And then his great, great grandsons will sin as well Judah in particular. Abraham stumbled, so have I. And so have you. And this just shows the fallibility of the saints. And when you become a Christian, you're still a sinner. You're a sinner saint and a saint sinner. And the privileged position doesn't preclude him from failure. It doesn't preclude him from floundering. Genesis 20:14. Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, behold my land is before you, dwell where it pleases you. To Sarah he said, behold I've given your brother... Tremendous Abimelech. Tremendous little jab. Behold I've given your brother 1,000 pieces of silver. It's a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you before everyone you were vindicated.

What in the world just happened? Abraham sins against Abimelech. Abimelech is the one giving gifts to Abraham. This makes no sense. It should have been Abraham saying here Abimelech. I'm sorry. My bad man. Here's some animals. Here's some silver. Instead, Abimelech is the guy. He's like, "Take the animals, take any real estate you want. Here's 1,000 pieces of silver. Half a piece of silver was a monthly wage of an average worker. Half. So that means 1,000 pieces is working 167 years. That's like if our average salary is 40 grand. He's given him $7 million. Just incredible wealth. On top of that, this is what Abimelech is doing. This why I think he's a funny guy.

When you get married, the price of a bride was 50 shekels and he's like Abraham I'm not just going to give you 50 shekels. I'm going to give you the price of 20 brides. 1,000 shekels. It's boss right here. And part of what he's doing is, he's vindicating the honor of Sarah. He cares more about her reputation than Abraham did himself. So Abraham was a complete anti hero here. Abimelech takes God's warning seriously. Abraham doesn't. Story continues. These are point three. Abimelech restore. Genesis 20:17. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. Apparently part of what happened with Abimelech was there was a curse put on all the people for Abraham's sin. And the wombs of the people were closed. And what's ironic is... Oh, and this is verse 18. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

The irony is that in order to open Sarah's womb for the promised son, God closed the wombs of many other women. Here the Lord is Lord of Abraham's sin. He's the Lord of Abimelech's non sin and he's the lord of childbirth. And he's the Lord over everything. A question here that I want to wrestle with at the end in closing is why is this text here? Why is this here? It teaches the lesson that we all stumble, that we all fall. We have a proclivity to relapse into sin. But is that all it's teaching us? I think it is teaching us more. Because by the end of the chapter, despite Abraham's sin. Abraham is a better man for it. He's learned from this sin. In a sense he's been sanctified by his sin and he's been blessed through the process of the sin. So there's a deeper lesson going on here. And I think there's a doctrine here. A doctrine that's taught by theologians in their books not often taught out loud. Because of the danger of this doctrine being twisted to justify sin.

The doctrine's called O felix culpa in the Latin. O happy fault. And the phrase goes back to Gregory the Great in the end of the sixth century. And he got it from Augustine. And who got it from St. Paul in Romans seven. That yes, we wrestle with sin undeniably. But at the end, it brings glory to God because our sin... It turns our attention to Christ like nothing else does. Sin is undeniably ugly is disreputable, inexcusable, it's harmful. It's an abomination before God. But sin is also an occasion often to learn the absolute deepest lessons of our lives. Life changing discoveries. Now sometimes you know what true. You know a truth. I'm a sinner saved by grace. You know a truth. And then you sin.

You commit a sin that scares you. Why I did that. And you walk out of that sin by God's grace pulls you out. And you have such a deep awareness of sin like you never have a deeper fear of God. A deeper love for God and more zeal to fight the good fight of faith without the fall, without the sin of Adam and Eve, we would have never had the incarnation. We would have never had the death of Christ on the cross. The resurrection. We wouldn't have had some of the most incredible victories in the spiritual warfare. One theologian says there would certainly have been no display of some of the divine attributes of God had sin not been. They would have been conserved forever and the depth of the Godhead. So in a sense, we get to know more of God, the depth of God, the greatness of God because sin entered the world. And obviously, we can't use that as an excuse to excuse our sin, to justify our sin. God hates sin. Sin is wickedness.

But there is this undeniable reality. As John Owen says the greatest evil in the world is sin. And the greatest sin was the first. And yet Gregory feared not to cry O happy fault which found such a redeemer. And I think we can't deny that. Some of the greatest lesson we've ever learned in our lives about God, about the truth, the reality of good and of evil, of God and of Satan, we've done through the sin. Romans 7:14-25. This is the text that Augustine points to. For we know that the law is spiritual but I am of the flesh sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies closer and for I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from the body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

The logic is irresistible. I'm wrestling with sin. St. Paul says he struggled with sin. If he was always finding himself flat on his face even near the end of his life mourning his great moral weakness then there's hope for me and there's hope for you. His sin pointed him to the glory of the Savior Christ. And Christ gets glory from saving us from sin. And then God uses our sin in the process of sanctification because we realize what it took for Jesus to turn my sin into sanctification. What did it take? It took the cross of Jesus Christ. There on the cross of Jesus Christ, Jesus got what we deserved. Punishment for our sin to extend to us where he earned. Kind of like Abraham and Abimelech.

Abraham sins, God goes to Abimelech and says you're a dead man. Abraham gets what he didn't deserve. And then Abimelech gives to Abraham... So Abimelech gets what he didn't deserve. Abimelech gives to Abraham what Abraham didn't deserve. It's a double imputation. This is what happens when we believe in Jesus Christ. That our sins get counted to him. His righteousness gets counted to us. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. Obviously the danger here is that we can sin as a way to get more grace and Romans six deals with that. And obviously that's false. In Romans two, St. Paul sternly condemns that idea that doing evil may bring about good.

Does God want us to be complacent with sin? Does God want us to sin? Of course not. But this chapter's showing that God is greater than our sin. Whatever the things in your path, God is greater than our sins and God can use those sins as a sculptor. We're all block of marble and Jesus is sitting here with a hammer and chisel and just chiseling away the sinful parts of who we are so that we can be more faithful to him. And the final analysis Abraham is a better man. He's prepared for the rest of his life to live a life of faithfulness. 2 Timothy 2:13. If we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. Did Abraham betray the covenant? Yes, he did. But God did not. Abraham gave God reason to withdraw the promise but God would not. Abraham dishonored the Lord's name, dishonored his word but the Lord not only forgave him not only rescued him but blessed him abundantly with land, with animals, restored his marriage and gave him $7 million. God used Abraham's misbehavior then to create peace and harmony with the people in the land. Now back to the question. Is this fair? Was this text fair?

Was it fair that Abimelech almost gets whacked for doing something that he didn't know he was doing? Oh, it's not fair. Is it fair that Abraham who commits the sin is called a prophet and has to intercede for the guy that didn't do anything wrong? Is that fair? No. Is it fair that Abimelech then gives the sinner Abraham $7 million, land and vehicles? Is that fair? No, it's not fair. Is it fair that Jesus Christ dies on the cross for my sin? That's not fair. It's not fair. God is greater than fair. That's not fair. But that's grace. And that's why grace makes us so... Makes God so great. Look, you might be a great person. Good person. You might be much better person than I am. You might recycle much better than I do. Sometimes a plastic bottle goes in the garbage in my house. It's terrible. You might drive an electric vehicle. You're much better than I am. You might waive the right flags and you might go the right parades and be an activist for the right things. You might be a great moral person.

Being a good person doesn't get you into heaven. It doesn't. That's the point with Abimelech. It's not about being a good person. It's about being a perfect person. And there's only one perfect person and that's Jesus Christ. And the only way we can be reconciled with God and have our sins forgiven is to believe in Jesus Christ and ask for his righteousness to be counted on to us. And that's the beauty of the gospel. That through faith in Jesus Christ, God sees Christ's righteousness in you. It's as if Jesus Christ is interceding for us. Abimelech needed Abraham to intercede for him but Abraham died. So who can intercede for us? There's one who can intercede for us who is not dead. He's sitting at the right hand of God interceding for us. Isaiah 53:12. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with a strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors yet he bore the sin of many. It makes intercession for whom transgressors.

This one means to be a Christian you say God I am a transgressor. I have sinned. God I need you to intercede for me. Jesus intercede for me. And Hebrews 7:25. Consequently, he is able to save the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. If you are not a Christian we welcome you to become a Christian today by repenting of sin and believing in Jesus Christ. If you do that you are welcome and partake in communion. Today for homeless communion it's for repentant Christians. How do you become a Christian? You repent of sin and turn to Jesus Christ is for repenting Christian. So if you're Christian, if you have repented of sin but are currently living in habitual sin, you know that our sins in your life that you have not repented of them you have not turned from then right now is the opportunity to repent of those sins and partake in Holy Communion. If you don't repent today, if you don't become a Christian today, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service per 1 Corinthians 11.

Right now we're going to pray for Holy Communion. If you haven't received a cup and you'd like to partake in communion, raise your hand and the ushers will pass them out as I'm praying. Let's pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for the gift of grace. What a gift it is. We thank you that you are more than fair. That you are also a loving God, a gracious God, a merciful God, a God that's long suffering. A God that longs to bless us not just in our lives but to the third, the fourth, the 10th, the 10,000s generation that comes from us. Lord we thank you for the story of Abraham. We thank you that you didn't give up on him when he was faithless but you remained faithful. In our own lives Lord, we repent of sin and we ask you to forgive us for all those times we've been faithless. And fill us with the spirit to fight the good fight of faith. Continue to sanctify us Lord and make us people who not only wage war against sin but our daily victories over.

Lord Jesus we thank you for pouring out your blood and we thank you for your broken body. And I pray that you cleanse us through your blood and that you heal us through the brokenness of your body. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Take off the first piece of plastic, take the bread and then peel off the second piece of plastic which opens up the cup. And the night Jesus Christ was betrayed he took the bread and after breaking he said this is my body broken for you. Take eat and do this remembrance of me. Then proceeded to take the cup. And he said this cup is the cup of new covenant of my blood was poured out for the sins of many. Take drink and do this in remembrance of me. Lord Jesus we thank you for your intercession on our behalf as you sit the right hand of the throne of God the Father. We thank you not just for forgiveness of sin but that you use even our past sins to shape us and sanctify us and to sculpt us into the people that you have created us to be.

I pray Lord Jesus that you send us the Holy Spirit and fill us and empower us. Give us the wisdom and the power and the strength to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ and use us here in the city to share the gospel with many so that many are saved. Draw the elect into your kingdom. And please use us in the process. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, and welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at mosaic. And if you knew, if you're visiting, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card, either the one that you can get virtually online or in the app, or the physical one, you can get in the back. If you fill it out and then submit it, we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week. Happy Memorial Day weekend. It's not just a three-day weekend. It is an opportunity for us to pause and to remember those who have fallen in fighting for our freedom.

So, here in the beginning, we're going to pray for our law enforcement officers, we're going to pray for the military and those who are in authority over them, as we're told to do in scripture, let us pray. Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a God who has created us and you have created the world with a design, and you've woven into the design the idea of authority, that you are Lord over everything, that you have in innate authority, and then you delegate authority to others. Scripture tells us that you delegate authority even to the government, the governing authorities, and as Romans 13 says, in order for them to further the good and curb the evil.

So, we thank you for those who are in law enforcement, for those who do a great job, for those in the military, and for those who are in authority over them. I pray that you give them wisdom, protect them from the evil one. Protect their lives and guide them as they do their job. We remember, Lord, today, those who have fallen, and the families of the fallen, we pray that you minister to them. Lord, and as they represent giving a life for those who are closest to us, giving life for friends, that is the epitome of love, that's what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross.

Lord, we thank you for this nation. We thank you for the blessing that it is to gather as believers and a free assembly to read the holy scriptures, to read them and to meditate upon them, and to apply them to our lives. Lord, Jesus, we thank you that you submitted to the authority of the father, that you humbled yourself, became a servant and went to the cross, and you did that to forgive us, to provide for a way for us to be forgiven for our rebellion against your authority, our rebellion against your moral authority, where you tell us how we are to live, how are to love, and how we are to serve.

Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. Show us the anti-example of Lot. Make us a people who are less like Lot and more like Abraham, people who believe and actually act on that belief instead of believing secretly in our hearts by allowing our lives to have nothing to do with the faith. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray for the Holy Spirit. We want more of it. Welcome Holy Spirit. We welcome you to this place. Teach us. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, amen.

We're going through a sermon series through the book of Genesis that we are calling Jesus in Genesis. The title of the sermon today is don't grow comfortable with sin. Last week, we saw this incredible example of Abraham, father Abraham, who believes in God. And he knows that God is going to judge the wicked City of Sodom and Gomorrah. And he pleads with God. He intercedes on behalf of Sodom before God. A bright picture that points to Jesus Christ, and in chapter 19, we see just how wicked the City of Sodom was. And chapter 19, we get a vivid, raw, gritty account of the sinfulness of sin.

It shows us how deep sin can get ingrained in a culture. We see a scene that's obscene, perverted. We see moral filth, pervasive debauchery. The big idea of the text is that we live in a sinful world, but we as Christians, as followers of God, we are to be in the world, not of the world. We are to be in the city of Boston would not allow the City of Boston into us, not allow the City of Boston to shape our worldview, to shape our values, to shape our idea of God, of gender, of sexuality, of what matters in life.

Instead, we are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds with the word of God. This is Romans 12:1-2, "I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God," which is a spiritual worship. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you made discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Don't be conformed to this world, in particular, what it says we can do with our bodies, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, with the word of God. Let the word of God shape what you do with your bodies, because your body is a sacrifice.

Today, we're going to walk through the text, the narrative. It's a long text, but I will draw out five lessons or five signs of conformity to the world. As we read the text and look at these signs, we need to be asking ourselves, where am I conforming to the world? The first sign of conformity to the world is you have the same goals as the world. The second is there's a tolerance of sin. The third is you have no spiritual authority. Fourth is a hesitation to sacrifice, and the fifth is the desire to keep a little sin, just a little sin.

Would you look at the text with me in Genesis 19:1-3. "The two angels," these are the two angels that came with Yahweh, with Jesus in bodily form in chapter 18. These two angels came to Sodom in the evening. "And lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, "My Lords, please turn aside to your servants house and spend the night and wash your feet, then you may rise up early and go on your way." They said, "No, we will spend the night in the town square."

"But he pressed them strongly so they turned aside to him and entered his house, and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate." First thing we see is Lot is sitting at the gate of Sodom. By this time, he is one of the leading citizens of the city. The first sign of conformity to the world is you have the same goals as the world. Who is Lot? Lot is the nephew of Abraham. They were living in the Ur of the Chaldeans, a pagan nation, a pagan city, and God calls Abraham, speaks to Abraham, and said, "Abraham, you are mine. I love you. I'm going to bless you. I'm going to bless those who are with you. I'm going to give you a great name and a great nation will come of you. And from your son, there will be salvation to all the world."

Lot hears this call and says, you know what? I want to be blessed as well. Goes with Abraham to Canaan, the land of Canaan. He paused in Haran, goes to the land of Canaan, and he lives with father Abraham. He is blessed with Abraham, so much so, they had flocks and they had herds and he needed more land, more real estate to feed them. So, he chooses the green pastures, the fertile valley right next to Sodom and Gomorrah. The story of Lot is the typical story of an immigrant boy, who grows up in poverty and then makes it big in the city.

It's a story of rags to riches, poverty to power. At this point in the story, he's a chief magistrate in the city, sitting at the gate. They're making decisions influencing the politics of the city. However, he went to Sodom with one goal. He went to Sodom for the same reason other people went to Sodom. He went to Sodom for the same reason most people come to Boston. He came to make a career for himself. He came to make money. He came to enrich himself, not reach the city for God. He had a monetary mindset, not a missionary mindset.

He didn't think about reaching people for God. He didn't think about making an altar to God. He didn't think about the word of God, influencing his neighbors to believe in God. No, he just wanted to make money. Chapter 13, he was drawn towards Sodom. He pitches his tent outside of the city. Chapter 14, we see that he is now in the city owns real estate within the city. By chapter 19, he's one of the most influential people in the city, but when it comes time to stand up for righteousness and stand against evil, because he has been thoroughly compromised, nobody listens to him, and his witness is ineffective.

Like uncle Abraham, in the text, we see that Lot, too, was a hospitable man. Meets these angels, wants to bring them into his house. Same words are used. The fact that he bowed before them, the fact that he wanted to wash their feet, the fact that he created a great feast for them. Later on, we see in the text, he's doing this, not just because he's hospitable, he's doing this because he knows how corrupt the men of Sodom are. He's trying to protect these angels, these men from the men of Sodom.

It would be as if you see angels descend upon Methadone Mile, and they plan on camping out Methadone Mile, and you say, "No, no, no, no, no. We know what happens here at night. No, you are coming with me." That's what's going on. That's why he pleads with them. He was hoping that they would spend the night and then slip out quietly in the morning. Why? Because of verse four. "Before they laid down," so they have this feast, then, "before they laid down the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house." The text tells us that they were entirely corrupt.

All of the men from young to old. So, you have nasty old men and you have prepubescent boys, who most likely were doing what the old men had taught them. The old men most likely molested through acts of pedophilia with the boys to allow them to live like this, to teach them to live like this. Sodom here shows us what the world looks like without God a city, where you're not safe to walk around at night, or else you might get raped. Genesis 19:5, "And they called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them." Not that we may get to know them. It's a euphemism for, we want to have sex with them.

"Bring them out so that we can, all of us from young to old, "rape these men, this fresh meat. We're going to rape them. We're going to gang rape them, Lot. Bring them out." We see the first sign of conformity to the world. Your goals are the same as everybody else and they begin to think that you are just like them and therefore your witness isn't powerful. Then sign two of conformity in the world is a tolerance of sin. A tolerance of sin.

First of all, you need to know Lot, just by his connection to Abraham, does become a believer. He becomes a Christian. How do we know this? We know this from 2 Peter 2:4-8, where Peter, the apostle Peter calls him a righteous man twice, "Where if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, the herald of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes. He condemned them to extinction making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly."

He rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the central conduct of the wicked. For as that righteous man lived among them day after day. He was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. His soul was tormented because of the sensuality in the evil of the city. His witness meant nothing. Jesus Christ told his disciples, "Hey, go into a town, go into a village and preach the gospel there. If people get saved, tremendous. If they don't get saved, if no one responds to the preaching of the gospel, you walk out of that city, you dust off your sandals of that city and you keep going."

Instead, Lot, first of all, he didn't preach the gospel. He didn't preach God's word. And second of all, he was fine living there. His soul was vexed, but not enough to leave the prosperity, to leave the status, to leave the influence, to leave the money. Here we see that he tries to fight back a little bit. Verse six, Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him and said, "I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. He calls them his brothers. You're my brothers, you're my friends. He's known them for over a decade and he knows what goes on in the city. And he says, do not act so wickedly.

What is this wicked, what they were about to do? Were the intentions of the heart? Yes. On what grounds? On what grounds is this wicked? Just because Lot said so? That's why they pushed back. They were like, who are you? You've lived there for over a decade. You're the mayor of the town and you've never said anything prior to this moment, who are you? But what he does next is just unbelievably, and it shows us how far he's gone in tolerating sin, and he has. He's tolerated the sin. Most likely, he had the mindset of honestly, who am I to tell them that this is wrong?

Love is love. They're adults, consenting adults. They can do whatever they want. I have my own faith, that's my private faith. I'm not going to tell them that what they believe is actually evil. So, he comes up with a plan, verse eight, "Behold, I have two daughters," This is just disgusting. "I have two daughters who have not known any man. They're virgins. Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please, only do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof." You want to rape angels, let's not do that. Instead, here's my virgin daughters, raped them instead. That's what's happening.

In his mind, hospitality was more sacred than the chastity of his daughters who, by the way, are also under his roof, who, by the way, also deserve his protection for him. This is where a tolerance of sin warps your worldview so much, where you get to the point where your moral compass is just so way off that you have no idea what is good and what is evil. Yeah, he had a sacred obligation to hospitality, but he had a sacred obligation to protecting his daughters. Why didn't he say, hey guys, let's not rape anybody.

Let's not do that. Let's not rape angels, let's not rape my daughters. He doesn't do that. And we see the incredible contrast between Abraham, the patriarch and Lot here, who does not have the backbone, the spine to say, I am responsible for my ... I'm responsible for my own walk with God to submit to his authority. I'm responsible for my wife. I'm responsible for the faith of my daughters. By God's grace, I have four daughters. And my job as a father is to pastor them in the faith, to raise them up in the Lord, to teach them to fear the Lord and love the Lord, to pastor them, to protect them, to protect them. I will protect them. I will protect them to the death, and I will teach them to protect their selves. I will teach them to fight and I will teach them to shoot pepper spray and a gun.

Why? Because I know there are people in the world that wants to destroy them. That's my job. As a father, I am to protect. We see Abraham who has a son, Isaac, and he cares so much for Isaac's faith and Isaac's family, that he doesn't let Isaac get married to a woman of Canaan. He said, "I don't want you to marry this woman." That's why he waits until age 40 to allow Isaac to get married. He would say, no, no, no. You're going to marry a godly woman. He sends a servant to go find a godly woman and Rebecca, and they finally they get married.

Lot could not be bothered to do that. Not only did he not protect his daughters, but he allowed them to marry, to be engaged to Sodom men, men of Sodom who wanted nothing to do with God. We see, in Lot, a very pathetic man. Verse nine, "But they said, "Stand back." And they said, "This fellow came to sojourn and he has become the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them." Then he pressed hard against the man, Lot, and drew near to break the door down." What's fascinating is, even the most viciously, evil of people are highly sensitive to judgment.

They feel like he's judging them for ... They called this thing that they were about to do wicked. Don't do this wicked thing. They called it fun. He calls it wicked. What they're saying is, who are you to judge us? Honestly, who was he to judge them? He's lived a decade in the city, has never raised a word about the wickedness of the city. Who are you to judge us? Only God can judge us, and God will. All Lot is proposing is they not rape his guests, but they take offense at the implication that he's morally superior.

That's how far gone the society is. Verse 10, "But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door, and they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great so that they wore themselves out by groping for the door." Now we see that the angels, that these people aren't just regular people. They are angels. They have supernatural powers. They blind these people to show how blind they were spiritually, now they're blind physically, and even blinded physically, what are they doing? They're still driven by their lust, groping for the door.

It just show that it's like a zombie apocalypse where these people are so far gone in following the lusts of their hearts, the lust of their flesh, that even being blinded doesn't stop them from trying to do what they had in mind. Verse 12, "Then the men said to Lot, "Have you," the men, the angels, "have you anyone else here, sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city? Bring them out of the place for we are about to destroy this place because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord and the Lord has sent us to destroy it."

In the previous chapter, God, knowing the weakness of the city still extends mercy to them by sending the angels down. The angels are messengers. They're messengers that unless you turn from sin, you will be punished. And instead of listening to the messengers, they try to rape the messengers, and now it's beyond doubt Sodom has to be destroyed. So, sign number two of conformity to the world's a tolerance to sin. We see that Lot just lived there and he tolerated sin, tolerated his own sin, tolerate the sin of his wife, of his daughters, of these people.

Sign number three of conformity to the world is you have no spiritual authority, especially with those who know you best. When you speak on matters of spiritual things, matters about morality, matters from the word of God, do people listen to you or do they mock? Do they joke? Genesis 19:14, "So, lot went out and said to his sons-in-law who were to marry his daughters, "Up. Get out of this place for the Lord is about to destroy the city." But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. They thought he was joking.

Because this is the first this time they'd ever heard him speak seriously, soberly on matters of spiritual things. They think he's joking. The Lord is going to destroy this place and they think he is joking, impending judgment. Lot, sleep it off. We'll talk about it in the morning. He has zero spiritual influence over the men that he was going to allow to marry his daughter. Zero spiritual influence. Compare that with Abraham, compare Lot's spiritual influence and Abraham's spiritual influence. God goes to Abraham and says, "Abraham, I'm going to make a covenant with you. The sign of the covenant is going to be circumcision. So, you need to circumcise yourself at age 90 plus, and you need it to circumcise the other 318 men in your household."

So, he gets that word from the Lord, circumcises himself, and goes to the men in his household and says, "Gentlemen, I have a word from God." "Oh yeah, what's that word, Abraham?" "God said that he loves us and that we are to love him back, and the way that we're going to do that is circumcising ourselves." "Oh, Abraham, what does circumcision entail? And he shows, and the 318 men do it. They do it. The spiritual authority of this man who led by example, how do you get spiritual authority? How do you grow in spiritual authority? By submitting to the authority of God.

The more you submit your life, the more you submit the pattern of your life to the authority of God, the more authority you have to speak to others, that this is the way of God, this is the will of God. Lot has no spiritual authority because he didn't obey God, he didn't submit himself to God. This is why the other men are like, who are you to judge us? You're just like us, bro. You're the mayor of the town. You've allowed this to happen. He has no spiritual authority over these sons. By the way, the sons-in-law, why should they listen to him? He had just offered these guys' fiances to a gang of rapist.

Of course, they're not going to listen to him. He's accommodated his lifestyle to life of Sodom. Sign number four of conformity to the world is a hesitation of sacrifice. To follow the Lord, you are the sacrifice. Jesus Christ tells us, if you are to follow me, you need to take up your cross daily and follow me. So, we are to say yes to Jesus. By saying yes to Jesus, there are things that we have to turn our back on. Genesis 19:15, "As morning dawned," first of all, he waited all night. The angels told them, judgment is coming, flee now. He waits all night. Oh, we need to get rest. We need to wake up, have a nice breakfast, little protein to be ready to run from the judgment. And he waits.

It shows that he has no desire to leave his flocks and his herds and his real estate and his influence. He lingers. "As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, "Up, take your wife and your daughters who are here, lest you be swept away the punishment of the city," but he lingered. But he lingered. I wonder if there's areas of life where you know exactly what God's will is, and you're lingering in sin because you know it's a sacrifice to leave sin. Lot is saved. He's saved. He's barely saved. He's one of those people who's saved, but he's not happy about it.

It's like the guy who gets saved freshman year in college, like the summer before freshman year in college. He's like, ah, why'd you save me now? God save me when I'm 26 and I want to get married and start a family, save me then. That's when I'm going to go and find a nice Christian girl in church. But until then, I don't want to be saved. Lot's that guy. He's not happy about it. And he's lingering, lingering and sin, because to say no to sin, to say no to the comfort of a sinful lifestyle, man, that's painful.

He lingered. So, the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, and the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. Lingered, he was so attached to Sodom. Wouldn't leave. With destruction looming, it just comes down to the angels pulling him out, physically pulling him out. Why? Because he didn't want to make the sacrifice of losing everything he had been working for. Why did he hesitate? In the words of Jesus, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Sign number five of conformity to the world is desire to keep a little sin, just a little sin. "As they brought them out, one said, "Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley, escape to the hills lest you be swept away." And Lot said to them, "Oh no, my Lords. Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I can not escape to the hills lest the disaster overtake me and I die. Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there, is it not a little one? And my life will be saved."

He said to them, "Behold, I grant you this favor also that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Escape there quickly for, I can do nothing until you arrive. Therefore, the name of that city was Zoar." This is just absurd. They're physically pulling him out and they say, "Go into the hills, go live in the woods, away from this perverse people and perverse cities and towns." And he says, "Oh no, oh no, no, thank you." And he says, "I can't live out in the woods in the hills. I'm a city boy. I need access to a Starbucks. I need a walkability rating of at least 9.1." I need museums, I'm a man of culture. No, I cannot go. I want to go to a city, a little city."

"Yeah, the city was supposed to get over thrown just what the others, but have mercy on this little ... It's a little city." God's like, get out of Vegas. And he's like, can I go to Reno instead? They don't have big strip, but they have little strip clubs. Can I go there? That's what's going on here. You see just the absurdity of a man, disaster is looming, judgment is coming, and he's bickering and bartering with the angels who've come to save him. At the most dangerous moment of his life, he's still thinking about worldly comfort. It's like a Christian saying, God, okay, you've saved me, all right I'll go to church. I'll go to church once in a while or I'll go to church on a Sunday, but the rest of the week is mine.

I'll tithe, I'll give you 10%, but I get to do whatever I want with the other 90. You can't call me generosity. Okay, I'll read my Bible once in a while, but I just need to keep a little ... The things you call us to, sexual purity, to not even be named among you, to not look at a person lustfully with your eyes. God, you're being extreme. I need a little sin, just a little sin. That's what's going on. Verse 23, "The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar, then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities and all the valley and all the inhabitants of the cities and what grew on the ground."

The instrument of the structure in here is probably an earthquake that then releases the heat, and the gas is especially a sulfur that were in the ground. But the narrative combines the ultimate cause was the Lord, but the instrumental cause that was burning sulfur by heat from below, or maybe lightning from above and the word for Lord here is Yahweh. It's the same word that's used for when there was three men that came to Abraham, two angels and Yahweh in human form, Jesus. This is Jesus judging Sodom and Gomorrah. I wonder if that changes your view of Jesus.

A lot of people think of Jesus like Mr. Rogers, really nice. He's here to help you in life. He'll give you a good word of advice. He'll bless you when you ask for it, he will heal you when you ask for it, but he never tells you no, and he certainly won't judge. Oh, that's starkly different from the Jesus of scripture who does judge and will judge. He does judge here with the sword and he will judge with a flaming sword when he comes back. In the middle, while we're alive, we still have hope. Hope to turn from sin and to turn to him.

That's what was going on with the angel saying, don't look back, don't look back. You need to turn from that city, turn from everything you love that was sinful in that city and that's what repentance is. When we talk about repentance, it's not just saying, Jesus, I'm sorry. Repentance is actually leaving your sin. Stop sinning. I trust in Jesus. I repent of sin. I leave the sin. Lot did that. His wife didn't. In verse 26, "But Lot's wife behind him look back and she became a pillar of salt." We don't know much this woman. We know that Lot married her. We're not sure the timeline when.

Scripture says when he left Ur of the Chaldeans, it's clear that Abraham had a wife, Sarah. Lot's wife isn't mentioned, most likely, it's because he wasn't yet married. She's not named here just like her daughters aren't named, because she most likely doesn't deserve to be named, to be remembered. Most likely she's not a believer and she was just a woman of Sodom. Most likely he married her only because she was good looking. He didn't care about her character. He didn't care if she was a believer, he didn't care if she submitted her life, God, and she looks back.

They weren't supposed to simply flee for their lives, they were supposed to leave the city behind, drop their pasts with any desire to touch it. Again, and she's looking back, not just out of curiosity, but out of longing, and she gets judged, not for looking, but for longing, for wistfully wishing for what must be left behind. She loved the city. She loved the people of the city. Most likely her relatives, most likely her dad and her granddad and her uncles and her brothers were in this insatiable crowd of rapists.

But it was just fun. It's okay. It was our lifestyle. That's fine. She longed to be back there. She felt more comfortable in that town without God than with God outside the town. Her identification with Sodom, her unwillingness to leave the place explains the behavior of her daughters in the next episode. Young men, single men, Proverbs 31:30 is for you, "Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." When trying to decide whom to marry, the number one priority isn't physical beauty. The number one priority is she love God, that she fear God, will she submit to God in his word?

Husbands, this is our job, is to ourselves, grow in the fear of the Lord and teach our wives. Lead our wives in fearing God and loving him. Single ladies, that's what you need to be focusing on, cultivating fear of the Lord. That's to be praised. I remember when I was figuring out whom to marry back in the day, coming up on year 15 of our university in this next week. I just knew. I knew this is just basic wisdom. I knew that daughters are influenced by mothers. I wanted to marry a woman, and if God gave us daughters, I wanted my daughters to be like her.

By God's grace, we have four daughters. Praise God. They love God, most of them, three of them, definitely. The fourth, I'm not sure she's a little degenerate. She takes more after me than after her mom, but we're working on her. We're working on her. But that's how you need to be thinking about marriage in terms of generations and faith and legacy, etc. Genesis 19:27-28, "And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord and he looked down towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the valley. He looked, and behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace."

Chapter proceeding this one, Abraham beg God, prayed to God, interceding on behalf of Sodom, please, God, save it. And God chose not to. God chose to save Lot and his two daughters. He didn't the city, poured out judgment upon the city. And we, as children of God, need to be like Abraham. And when we see judgment poured out on people who deserve it, we have to say, God is good, and because God is good, he is just. A lot of people push back and say, I can't believe in a God that would punish and a God who meets out justice like this. Really? Really?

God doesn't punish evil, then God is not good, and if he's not good, he's not worthy of being worshiped. The reason hell exists and the reason judging exists is because God is good and because God is loving. Here, we need to take a little excursus. I'm done with my five signs, by the way. So, if you're like, oh, are we still on sign number five? I'm done with those. Little excursus here. Question, why did God punish Sodom and Gomorrah? Why did he do it? Why did he do it? Well, the three major prophets, they comment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Ezekiel 16:49-50, "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor in needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me, so I removed them when I saw it."

A lot of liberal theologians will look at this text and they look at Sodom and Gomorrah and say, Sodom and Gomorrah got punished because of their inhospitality. I push back, like in hospitality, they want to rape the angels. They want to rape the guests. That's isn't hospitality, so that's just wrong. Then they go to this text and they're like, hey, it's because they weren't generous to the poor. That's the main reason. No, that's a secondary reason. They were generous to the poor because they lived for themselves. They lived for themselves, why? Because they were selfish? Why were they selfish? Because they were full of pride.

And those are the bookends in this text. Yeah, they had food. They were prosperous, etc. They didn't care for the poor, But it was because of pride. A pride that says, I am my own. I get to do whatever I want with my life. I am God of my own life. There is no God over me. That's the pride. The pride that says, if I accumulate enough power, enough money, I can do whatever I want against those who are weaker or not as rich. It's a pride that's proud of itself. It's a pride that has hashtags and parades and flags by sin.

The hypersexuality sexual sin, it's an outworking of the pride, the pride that says, I am God. I don't need anyone to tell me what to do and how to live. Isaiah 3:8-9 says, "For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord, defying his glorious presence, for the look on their faces bears witness against them." They proclaim their sin, like Sodom, they do not hide it. Woe to them for they have brought evil on themselves. Proud of the sin. That's the issue.

When society, openly practices sinful sexual behavior and actually promotes it and actually says, this is good, promotes any kind of sexuality that you can think of. That shows a society that's away from God. Scripture teaches clearly that the only sexual activity that God allows is between one man and one woman in heterosexual marriage making a covenant for life. Fornication is a sin, adultery is a sin, pedophilia is a sin, homosexuality is a sin. And when a society openly practices and accepts specifically homosexuality, it's a sign that God has given that society over to degrading passions, and it's the final stages of corruption with judgment looming.

Look at Romans 1:26 and 27. "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves due penalty of their error." Christian, does this text, does this teaching make you feel uncomfortable? If so, perhaps you've grown too comfortable with the sin around you, and perhaps you are conformed to it.

If you're not a Christian, let's just reason together real quick. Is it okay to gang rape angels? I think we can all agree, it's not okay. Is it okay to gang rape humans? I think we can all agree, it's not okay. Is it okay to gang rape an individual? No. Is it okay to rape an individual? No, it's not okay. Is it okay to allow your daughter's be gang raped by a hoard of men. Is that okay? No, no, no, no. Why? Because we are not animals. We're not animals. We're created in the image of God, and that God, the creator of the universe tells us what is okay and what isn't okay.

For the same reason, you can't just say, oh, what matters is consent? As long as there's consent, then that's okay. No, there's no consent from God. And if there isn't a consent from God, then it is sin. We as Christians, we need to know that God of the universe has authority over our life.. the other thing I will mention about this text is, it shows us like the end, the most egregious end of the spectrum of sexual sin. But Where does it start? Where does it start? It starts in the heart. And Jesus said, whoever looks upon another human being with lustful intent in their heart has already committed sexual sin.

Yeah, this has to do with every single one of us. Dear Christian, do you entertain sinful sexual thoughts in your heart? Do you look at porn? Sex ed in public schools, they teach you, this is healthy. Enjoy yourself. No, it's wrong, and it's sinful, and it grows, and it continues to grow. A ship in the water is perfectly right. Water in the ship is not. What this is saying is a Christian is in the world, but we can not be of the world. We can't let the world in. We can't let Sodom in. Jeremiah 23 also comments on this text, "But in the prophets of Jerusalem, I've seen a horrible thing." He's talking to prophets. He's talking to the teachers of the people of God.

"I've seen a horrible thing. They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evil doors so that no one turns from his evil. All of them have become like Sodom to me and its inhabitants like Gomorrah. He's talking to believers who have pastors, who themselves, and not just entertain, they commit sexual sin and they strengthen the hands of those who do it. This is most of the churches in our city, in our very Sodom esque city, where priests and pastors get up, and instead of a cross, they got a rainbow flag outside, and they said, love is love however you define it, as long as it's consensual for now, and as long as with an adult for now. We'll see where that goes.

God calls it out. And then he calls it out because these people haven't submitted their lives to the authority of God's word. Genesis 19:29. "So, it was, when God destroyed the cities and the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived." A lot of people say, if God is like this, if God is a judge like this, I can't believe in a God like that. And what a warped logic that is. No, you should be saying, if God is like this, God is judge and I deserve his judgment. I need to run to him. I need to believe in him. I need to ask for mercy and for forgiveness to be saved.

We're given the impression here that Lot was saved only thanks to Abraham's intercession. What's most fascinating about this account is that Lot is a Christian, and how absolutely unimpressive of a Christian he is. He's the worst I can ... I think I can say this. He's the worst Christian who's ever lived. The absolute worst. He's the guy, like he is the guy in heaven who's as close to hell as possible. He's that guy. He's there and he's like, I have no idea why I'm here. He's probably doesn't even want to be there, and he's only there because God chose to save him because of Abraham's pleading.

Yes, he was a man of faith, kind of, yes, he saw how wicked the City of Sodom was. His soul was vexed, but not vexed enough to leave. He sought to protect his guests from the evil, but he wanted to do it in a very evil way, a more evil way. And we see that Lot, the problem with law is just how half-hearted he was. Knew the truth, but never lived it out. Tried to straddle the fence between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the evil one, and that's the most uncomfortable seat in the house. We see no determination. Abraham was a patriarch. He took responsibility for himself.

When he sinned, he repented. Yes, he committed sin. He had a child out of wedlock. He committed a sin, but he took responsibility for this, and he repented, he turned to God. He took responsibility for his wife, for teaching his children how to follow God. He was a patriarch. And that's what a patriarch does, sacrifices himself for the benefit of his beloved. Beloved wife, beloved children, beloved city, beloved church. That's what a patriarch does. Lot is not a patriarch. Lot is a soytriarch. He does not have the spine, the backbone to say, "God, this is your word. Whatever the sacrifice is, I'm going to follow it." Doesn't take responsibility for himself, for his wife, for his daughters. If Abraham is the father of the faithful, Lot is the father of all who are barely saved. Scarcely saved.

So, friend, are you saved, first of all, do you trust in Jesus Christ? Did you repent of sin? And are you surely saved or scarcely saved? Lot was saved by the skin of his teeth hesitating as he's being dragged out of Sodom by force as death reigns on the city. And what a sad sight. You see Lot dickering with the angels just moments before the death of his neighborhood of his neighbors, in the judgment of his wife. Yeah. He was saved. His wife wasn't. His daughters weren't, his neighbors weren't, his friends weren't. He called these men brothers. They all end up in hell because he had no influence. And he had no influence because he himself didn't really believe, not enough to actually obey.

Would things have ended differently if he moved quickly, if he had done precisely as he was told, if he had showed the proper deference to the angels, if he exhibited proper fear of the judgment that is to come, if he had set an example for his wife and his daughters, of strong faith, of prompt obedience? Perhaps his wife wouldn't have looked back. Perhaps his daughters wouldn't have raped him as we read in the text after. 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 talks about these different levels. Yeah, everyone's saved by grace through faith, but what do we do with that salvation? There's different levels of the faith.

Verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 3, "For no one can lay foundation other than that, which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Building a metaphor, Jesus is the foundation. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation of gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, this right here is the materials of a building, and he's saying, Jesus is the foundation, what materials are you using to build the house of your faith? Do you give God the absolute best that you have, the gold silver, precious stones, or the leftovers? That's the wood, hay, and the straw.

"Each one's work will become manifest for the day, the day of judgment will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone is built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." Question, dear Christian is, what materials are you building with? The best of what you got or the leftovers of what you have, and I wonder if St. Paul had lot in mind with verse 14, "Save, but only as through fire."

It's possibly pulled out of the rubbish heap just in the Nick of time, but you'll end up singed, stripped of everything, traumatized by the severe discipline of the law of the Lord. It's tragic, and what's more tragic is that he lost his family. The same idea's in Amos, Amos 4:11. I overthrew some of you as, when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you are, as a brand plucked out of the burning yet you did not return to me declares the Lord. Brand plucked out, it's a stick that's so near to the fire. It's charred, but not reduced to ashes just yet because you got pulled out. Lot lived a comfortable life for a long time.

Green grass, fat cattle, position of influence. Even when Kings came from the north and took him captive and uncle Abraham saved him, and he goes back to Saddam. After a while, he becomes like the men of Sodom. Lot is the father of all the people whose righteous souls are vexed, but they do nothing about the vexation, and lots of luscious green pastures are laid to waste. And the entire valley five cities turned into one of the most arid lifeless deserts in all of the earth. That's where a life of compromise ends, but that's not really the ending, the ending is even more hopeless.

Genesis 19:30, "Now, Lot went out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar, so he lived in a cave with his two daughters. He asked the angels, can I go to Zoar, goes to Zoar, and now he's afraid to live here. They don't know why. Most likely it's because people of Zoar knew that because of lot and the God of LOt destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. We don't know why he leaves, he goes to live in a cave. The question is, why didn't he go back to his uncle? Why didn't go back to uncle Abraham?

The only answer that comes to mind is pride. He didn't want to go back to his uncle with nothing. Uncle, I need your help again. So, he goes and he lives in a cave with his daughters. Then we see one of the most sorted tales of deceit and incest in the scriptures. Verse 31, "And the firstborn said to the younger, "Our father's old and there's not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of all the earth. Come let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him that we may preserve offspring from our father."

"So, they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she laid down or when she arose. The next day, the firstborn said to the younger "Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also, then you go in and lie with him that we may preserve offspring from our father." So, they made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger arose and lay with him," and he did not know when she laid down or when she arose, thus, both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father." The first born bore a son and called his name, Moab. He's the father of Moabites to this day. The younger also bore a son and called him Ben-ammi, he's the father of Ammonites to this day."

The daughters aren't named most likely, because this is an act of censure on the narrative's part. They don't deserve to be remembered. You can take a family out of Sodom, but we see here that you can't take Sodom out of a family, out of Lot, out of his daughters. They had absorbed the ethics of Sodom. He did not shield his daughters from a godless worldview, where they were sexualized at a young age. He didn't shield them from that, and then with their perversed mind, they concoct this plan, to his credit, he would not have said yes to this plan unless he was intoxicated. That's why they got him drunk.

To his discredit, bro, why are you getting blackout drunk with your daughters? Why are you getting blackout drunk to begin with? I remember in high school, everybody knew, probably every public high school they have this family, where it's like, the family is like, my kids are going to party, they should do under my supervision. I'm going to open up my house and buy the keg. I had people in my high school like that. My parents would never do that. I had a curfew at 9:30. Praise God. Apparently this was a thing. Apparently this was normal, they're like, let's do it tonight. They do it. Then the next night they're like, let's do it again. And he's like, okay. Apparently, this was part of the whole culture of that city.

The substance abuse, where you get so intoxicated that you lose complete control of yourself, get blackout drunk and do the things that your flesh completely wants to do. There's a connection between this. There's a connection between intoxication and debauchery, sexual debauchery. There's a connection, where people drink so much, they want to do these simple things, but they know their conscience is not allowing them to do it so they drink enough to mute the conscience, and that's what's going on here. Totally passive in this affair, just like usual, pathetic, pathetic waste of life. Man, the guy who had offered his daughters to a gang of rapists now, unbeknownst to him impregnates them himself. He was not good to his daughters.

You think they forgot that moment where he offered them up. They did not. He was not good to his daughters because he didn't want the best for his daughters. Fathers, you got to be good to your daughters. By being good to your daughters means wanting the best for them, which is to love the Lord, walk in the ways of the Lord, to care for them to care about the chastity of their sexuality, to care about their virginity. That's that's our job, gentlemen. And daughters, be grateful when your dad tells you put on more clothes. Be grateful when your dad buys you pepper spray, and be grateful when your dad teaches you to shoot and fight, a little jujitsu, a little boxing, be grateful. Say thank you, dad. Thank you. The other thing that you just got to see from this text is that sin grows. It does.

It's restless. It's ever reaching for more. It's never satisfied with mere in your life. It wants to damage the lives of everyone around you. We see a Lot, he chose to go down to the valley. He kept going down and down and down and down until we see him at last with two pregnant daughters living in a cave and his wife as a widower, having watched his wife die of divine judgment, finds himself in poverty with two sons, whom he had sired by his own daughters and his sons don't know whether to call him grandpa or daddy. Pathetic, pathetic ending to the story. It starts out with a flock so large, needed more real estate, ends up as a Lord of a hole in the rock on a dirt floor, destitute, disgraced, pathetic shadow of a man he had once been.

Scripture says, God will not be mocked, whatever you sow, that you shall reap. Are you sowing to the flesh or are you sowing to the spirit? Satan's too clever to show you everything that happens when you sin. A thought is sowed, a deed is reaped, and you sow further deeds and you reap habits, and you sow habits and you reap a character, reap a pattern of life and attitude. Augustan said that sin becomes the punishment of sin. When you want sin, when you pursue sin, God gives you up to that sin and you reap even more sin. The warning of the text is be afraid of sin. The greatest thing to fear in sinning, isn't just what happens immediately after you sin. The greatest fear is that you get put on a trajectory that pulls you away from God.

So, we ought to run from sin and we ought to mortify sin. We are to make war against a sin. From Abraham, who walked with God and obedience, would come most of what is lastingly good and lovely in this world. From lot would come to pagan deprave nations who would appear and then a few centuries later disappear. Some of the wives of Solomon lead him astray. They were Ammonite women. Their religion was so debauched that Deuteronomy 23:3 says, "No Ammonite or mole by may enter the assembly of the Lord even to the 10th generation." None of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever. So, where's Jesus in this text, in this hopeless texts, the story of a hopeless man, an antihero, where is Jesus Christ?

Well, it's fascinating that one of his daughters, the nation led to the Moabites, can't even enter the house of God, the house of worship. The Moabites, that's how wicked they were. God said, you can't even go to church. Until we hear a story of another Moabite, a Moabitess, in the book of Ruth, Ruth was a Moabite, and Ruth meets Yahweh, meets Jesus Christ. When Ruth's husband dies, she goes with her mother-in-law back to Jerusalem. She serves here, she cares for her, and she meets Boaz, a godly man, and they get married, and God blesses their wedding, and they have children. God blesses their child so much so that Ruth becomes the great, great, great grandmother of Jesus Christ, that God takes this bloodline, this wicked ancestor's bloodline that comes from a wicked pathetic man, barely saved, and God brings Jesus Christ out of that.

Then Jesus Christ lives the perfect life, goes to the cross and bears the fire and brimstone, the wrath of God, the judgment of God on the cross in order to be able to offer us forgiveness. He bought himself the justice of God so that when we repent of sin, we can be forgiven, even a pathetic sinful man like Lot, he could be forgiven because of the justification by grace through faith because of the work of Christ in the cross. So, if there's hope for that guy, there's hope for every single one of us.

Turn from sin and turn to Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, and then by grace through faith, by the power of the Spirit, let us follow Jesus so we don't end up like this man. And close of this, Luke 17:28-33, the words of Jesus Christ, "Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom and fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all, so will it be on the day when the son of man is revealed."

"On that day, let the one who is on the house top with his goods in the house not come down to take them away, and likewise, let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife, whoever seeks to preserve his life, will lose it. And whoever loses his life, will keep it." Let us pray. Lord, Jesus, we thank you for your grace and we thank you for this text, the sordid story of sin to teach us to never grow comfortable with sin. We thank you, Jesus, that because of your sacrifice in the cross, whatever we've done, no matter how perverse, no matter how wicked, you're willing to forgive and extend mercy if we just turn from sin and turn to you.

By the part of the spirit, make us a people go who can to war against our sin on a daily basis against our pride. We humble ourselves before you, and we ask for grace, and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card in the worship guide or the one you can get virtually online on our website or in our app. If you submit that, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good father, that you take people who are rebels, reprobate, and you regenerate us and make us children. You adopt us into your family by grace through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you lived a perfect life. You offered that perfect life as a sacrifice on our behalf. You absorbed the wrath of God, judgment that we deserve for our sin. You did that to intercede for us, to be an advocate for us, to reconcile us with God the Father.

We pray, Holy Spirit, for those of us who are regenerated, that you today show us areas in our life where our faith needs to grow, where it needs to be strengthened. Continue to expose self-deception where perhaps we say we believe, and we do not. I pray for those who are not yet Christians. I pray today, make the seriousness of the judgment, the looming judgment... Make it a reality today. The gravity... Make it a reality today, and draw them to yourself. Give them the gift of repentance. Bless our time in the holy scriptures. Lord, we love you. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

We're going through a sermon series that we are calling Jesus in Genesis, where we're looking at Genesis through the lens of the gospel because that's the way you're supposed to interpret all of scripture. You interpret all of scripture with the revelation of Jesus Christ. The title of the sermon today is Caught Off Guard.

You are who you are. The true you is when you are caught off guard, when something happens that you are not expecting, when you are cut off on the highway on Route 90, or you're cut off. You're coming from 93 on Storrow. You're in the left lane. Because you are a good human being, you're going to merge into Storrow, and you're going to wait your place in line. You're going to wait.

At the very last moment, someone, just out of nowhere, comes in, cuts you off. You got to hit the brakes. Then they're driving slowly in front of you the whole time. They got New York plates. That's the worst. How do you react? How do you react when someone steps on your foot? How do you react when you step on your kid's Lego? How do you react when you need your iPad to preach your sermon, and you wake up, and your iPad that you plugged in at night, it's unplugged because your kid unplugged it? You're at 12%, and you got to preach two services. What are you going to do then?

You're caught off guard. What's going to happen? The iPad turns off, and Pastor Jan has to go off the notes. Oh, that's dangerous. What's going to happen then? When people are caught on a hot mike or on a hidden camera, that's who they really are. That's what they really think.

I had a professor in college. I took a business course my first semester. The day of our final exam, we finished the final exam. We passed it in. He got up, and he says, "That was not your final exam. Your final exam, you will take when you have graduated, and you have to make decisions of consequence. That's the real exam."

Someone once said, "Your reputation is what you do when everyone is looking, and your character is what you do when no one sees." That's what we see in chapter 18 of Genesis. What we see is the God who has called Abram to Himself has then since changed his name. He's converted this pagan, this Gentile, and He made him one of His own, made him a child, gave him the gift of faith, and promised him, "I'm going to give you a son."

Abraham believes. He believes. Decades go by. He believes. There were times when he wavered in his faith, but God continues to strengthen his faith. God continues to come, and God continues to bless him.

In our text today, we see that God catches Abraham off guard. In the text last week, He gave him the sign of the covenant, which was circumcision, but that was just an outward sign to show that God demands an inward reality of the circumcision of our heart. God today comes in order to test Abraham. Is your heart circumcised? Do you truly love God? Do you truly love people? That love is really exposed when you least expect it.

In our text today, God comes and catches Abraham off guard, catches Sarah off guard. Then we see Abraham is involved in the intercession between judgment and mercy with Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm going to do what we did last week. We're going to just walk through the text. It's a lengthy text.

I do have three points. Point number one is God tests Abraham's love. Point two is God tests Sarah's faith. Point three is God tests Abraham's love again. The first test of love is a test of sacrifice toward people. The second test of love is a test of love for the souls of the people around him. Do you love people physically? Do you love people spiritually?

Point number one is God tests Abraham's love. Verse 1, chapter 18, "And the LORD," all caps. That's Yahweh. "The Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day." We know it's the Lord. We know Abraham is by the oaks of Mamre. This is the place near Hebron where, ultimately, Sarah and Abraham are eventually buried.

We see that in the heat of the day, he's sitting at the door of his tent. This is a siesta. If you're from another culture, you understand what a siesta is. A siesta is when you work, and then it's really hot out. Then you have lunch with some winesky. Then you take a nap. You take a napsky. Winesky, napsky in the middle of daysky.

I think we should appropriate that in the United States. I think that would be wonderful. That's what's going on. They would wake up at sunrise, work until it gets really hot, stop working. Then he's just resting by the tent. He's enjoying his nap, noonday nap.

Genesis 18:2, "He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him." People, physical. Just said that the Lord appeared to him, and now it says three people. Keep that in mind. We're not sure he recognizes that these men are supernatural in any way.

He just sees them as men, as regular people. Most likely, assumed that they were poor because there's no word of a caravan. There's no word of camels. He sees these three people coming out of the desert in a place where the heat of the day could be 120, 125 just in the shade.

He sees three travelers. They're weary. They're thirsty. They're hungry coming off the desert. They're coming in at the most inopportune time when he's taking a nap. The whole week, over the whole week, when is the best time to take a nap? When is the best nap? Sunday afternoon. That's my vote.

Sunday afternoon, Sunday afternoon. There's just something about it, especially if golf is on. You turn on the golf game after lunch, Sunday afternoon. You're taking a nap. Then the doorbell rings. There's three strangers that you have never seen. What is your reaction? That's what's going on.

What we see is that this is clearly a test, whether Abraham has grown in his faith to not just think about himself, to not just think about his own needs. Every single parent, what you want to do is you want to train up your child to get to the point where the child realizes that they are not the point of the universe, that the parents don't exist for the child, and that the child needs to think about other people, et cetera, et cetera. That's what's happening here.

God has blessed Abraham, has blessed him spiritually, has blessed him monetarily. Now He sends him a pop quiz. Are you going to sacrifice for others even at the most inopportune time? Who are these three men? We learn in chapter 19, verse 1, that two of them were angels.

Genesis 19:1, "The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom." You've got these men who are actually angels. They look like regular people. Scripture teaches us, sometimes you meet a person, and it's a real human being, and sometimes it's an angel.

Two of them, we know, are angels. One of them, we know, we've been told is the Lord. If two of them are angels, then one of them has to be the Lord because it says the Lord appeared to them in 18:1. The Lord here is Yahweh. It's the Lord that comes in physical form.

This is yet another theophany. It's the appearance of God in the text. It could be argued that it's a Christophany. It could be argued that this is Christ in anticipation of the incarnation. It's Jesus that appears before Abraham, flanked with two angels.

They're standing there. They're just standing, and they're waiting. In that Near Eastern culture, to stand before someone's tent means that you're knocking on the door. You want to see if the people are going to welcome you in and show you hospitality.

Look at 18:2 thorough 6. "When he saw them, he ran from the tent door." By the way, he's 99. He's running. Later on in the text, he's kneeling. He's cooking. 99 years old, I think he's on a Tom Brady pliability diet. Avocado ice cream, that's what's going on. What's going on in the text?

He has responded to the test. He's running to them. In that culture, men don't run. You only run when there's a lion chasing you. That's what the Proverb says. You don't go off for a jog. He's running. He's kneeling. To meet them, he bows down to the earth and said, "O Lord." Calls him Lord, Adon. It's not Yahweh. Yahweh is in caps. This is just Adon. It's a term of respect and honor.

"'If I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that, you may pass on, since you have come to your servant.' They said, 'Do as you have said.' Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, 'Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it and make cakes.'"

We see what Abraham... He welcomes them, arms wide open. "Quick. Come in. Please rest, refresh. I'm going to give you a morsel of bread." By morsel of bread, he goes to his wife, Sarah. He promised them a meal, and he can't really bake, so he goes to Sarah. He says, "Please help. Please help."

Six seahs of flour... You're talking about, two gallons of flour is one seah. You got six gallons. That's a lot of bread. Here, Abraham is presented as the consummate host. He is willing to be inconvenienced. The morsel of bread turns into a sumptuous banquet.

Verse 7, "Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds, and milk, and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them. He stood by them under the tree while they ate."

The phrase, hurried, is used three times in verses 6 and 7. He just wants the absolute best for them. This is a lavish meal. Have you ever had fresh meat? I'm not talking about Whole Foods or Star Market. Definitely not talking about Stop & Shop, definitely not. One time in my life, I had fresh, fresh. It's completely different. It's completely different.

I had a conversation recently with someone. This is an ice-breaker. He said, "What's the best meal you have ever had in your life?" Do you have that one meal in your mind? What's the absolute best meal that you have ever had? My answer immediately was my wedding, my wedding.

My wife's from Ukraine. She grew up Ukrainian Baptist. My family is from Estonia and was Russian speaking. I grew up Russian Baptist at a Russian Baptist church. There are two things at Russian Baptist weddings that you do not do. You do not drink, and you do not dance.

Why are Russian Baptists against sex? Because it might lead to dancing. No, no. At my wedding, there's no dancing, and there's no alcohol. What's the only thing left? It's food. That's the only vice that's allowed, sin of gluttony.

At my wedding, it was in a Russian restaurant in Philadelphia. It was a seven-course meal. Bring the first course, like salads, and salmon, and mushroom with cheese over caviar on pancakes. Oh my. Second course, third course... By the third course, my American friends were tapping out. My Russian friends knew. They knew. They had fasted days before. They dieted before this just to make sure there's extra room.

The fifth, the sixth, the seven course... It's all meat. It's all incredible. That's my favorite. This is what Abraham does. He brings out the best. No expense spared, full stop. He just gives them everything he has, lavish meal. These three people, strangers... Treats them as if they were God Himself.

That's really the lesson here for us. Abraham, will you treat these people like the image-bearers of God? Will you show them hospitality as if they were me? Will you do this? This is a tremendous lesson for each one of us, that we are to grow in hospitality. That's part of growing the Christian life, is to grow in hospitality.

This text is applied later in Hebrews 13, where it says, "Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." He's alluding to the text in Genesis 18. Abraham had no idea. Unawares, he wasn't aware that he was entertaining angels as he was caring for people, feeding people, giving people refreshment.

We are to not neglect hospitality to whom? To our friends? To fellow believers? No. Hospitality is to strangers. Fellowship is with believers. When you invite Christians over to your house, that's fellowship. When you invite non-Christians over, strangers over to your house, that is hospitality. We are to show hospitality, not neglect it.

We see this example of godly hospitality and the reward that comes with it, which is a divine word from God. This is an important lesson for each one of us. Where we live in a city, especially transient city, where this is just... A lot of people are strangers. Especially after this past year and a half, now there's a temptation to look at people not just as strangers but as threats to your health.

Here, for Abraham, God is saying, "You treated people as if they were God Himself." That's what God is calling us to. God loves to reward the hospitable. He will come Himself into the home with a blessing. Revelation 3:20 talks about Jesus standing outside of a church. He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me."

Is this even a category in your mind? I should be thinking about inviting strangers over to my home and give them delicious food, really, really good food. It takes sacrifice. It takes financial sacrifice. It takes time sacrifice. It takes emotional energy sacrifice. This is one of the things that we are called to do.

This is part of how we fulfill the mission of God here in the city. We invite people into our homes, open up our lives, and bless them. This also is one of the ways, the demarcators of a Christian, when it comes to the judgment. Matthew 25:35, Jesus says, "I was hungry. You gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me."

That's what he says to the Christian. The Christian says, "When did we ever do that?" He said, "You did that to the stranger. You did that to the hungry. You did that to those in need. It was as if you did that for me." 1 Peter 4:9, "Show hospitality to one another without grumbling."

Oh, that's interesting. Why does he use the word, grumbling, in the context of hospitality? Because it takes work, especially when people show up unannounced. I don't know. It doesn't really happen in the United States, but in other countries, people do that all the time. They show up to your house, ringing the doorbell. What do you got to eat? I'm not saying, do that.

I'm saying if someone does that, welcome them in, just not in my house. Just kidding. Just kidding. This should be part and parcel of our walk with the Lord. The second application of this text where then the Lord reveals that it's Yahweh, it's Jesus, with two angels, and He gives Abraham a promise, it shows that God did come this time around to strengthen Abraham's faith and also, Sarah's.

This is a text I'll read before point two. Romans 4:18 through 22. "In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, 'So shall your offspring be.' He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.”

Part of why God keeps coming to Abraham and keeps coming to Sarah, to strengthen his faith. Part of why God delayed and kept delaying is to strengthen his faith. God wants his children to grow in both maturity and health. He does that through tests.

Point two is God tests Sarah's faith. Here, we see that God is concerned not just with Abraham's faith but also, with Sarah's. Before Isaac comes, the promised child, He wants to make sure that both Sarah and Abraham believe and God does everything that's needed to expose disbelief, to expose self-deception. He does that in this text where God brings in Sarah.

Verse 9, "They said to him, 'Where is Sarah, your wife?'" This is fascinating because first of all, this was against protocol of Near Eastern cultures because a visitor would not ask for the host's wife unless the host first brought her up. He says, "Where is Sarah?"

What's interesting here about this text is, how did these strangers know her name and not just her birth name, Sarai, but her new birth name, her name that was given to her by God, Sarah? That's what happened last chapter. This is really fascinating.

Here, what's happening is Jesus is tipping his hand. He's showing, revealing to both Abraham and Sarah who these people are, that this isn't just a stranger. Where is Sarah, your wife? He, Abraham, said, "She is in the tent."

The Lord said, again, Yahweh, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” Now there's absolutely no doubt about who this is and whose presence they are that they realized, "This is the word of God." This is God Himself speaking truth to them.

There were disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection. They're walking. They're walking. They're really sad. Jesus comes in, and He hasn't revealed Himself to them. The resurrection of Christ is with them. He's like, "What are you guys so sad about?"

Then for two hours, they have a Bible study, which He tells them from the holy scriptures that he was to die, he was to be buried, as prophesied, and he was to be raised to new life. It wasn't until he goes into the house. It says that He took bread, and He broke it. It wasn't until that moment where they finally realized who this was.

Here, because he did something that was familiar to them, and that awakened and opened up their eyes. Here, the same thing is happening. This is exactly what Jesus is doing in the text to Abraham and Sarah. He's revealing to them that this is the same God that's revealed Himself over, and over, and over to Abraham, that next time this year, there's a due date. In a year, Sarah, you're going to have a baby. Abraham, at this time, is 99. We see that Sarah is in her '80s.

"Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him." She's eavesdropping. "Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, 'After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?' The Lord said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh and say, "Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?" Is something too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.' But Sarah denied it, saying, 'I did not laugh,' for she was afraid. He said, 'But you did laugh.'"

That's how the text ends. Whenever a text ends like that, that abruptly, God has the last word, you guys say, "What is going on? There's something that's going on." What's going on is that Abraham, number one, did not lead his wife in growing faith, or he tried to and she would not be led. One of those is going on.

She laughs at the promise of God. Basically, she's laughing at the word of God. She doesn't do it publicly like Abraham did in the previous chapter. Previous chapter, Abraham is just... He's overwhelmed with the absurdity of all. You're going to give me a kid at 99, and you're asking a 99-year-old to circumcise himself, and 318 other grown men, and my son. He's just laughing. This is absurd.

He does it out loud because what he's saying is Abraham laughing is, "God, I don't get it. I don't get what you're doing. I don't get your plan. Help me understand." God does. God deals with him gently. Abraham stands under the word of God. God, help me understand the word of God.

Here, Sarah does not because she laughs cynically to herself. She presents herself as a believer in the word of God. Deep inside, she has doubts. God goes to Abraham, and He says, "Abraham, why did your wife, Sarah... Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child now that I'm old?'" God holds Abraham responsible for Sarah's laughter and not believing.

What's going on here? Either Abraham tried to lead his wife, and she wouldn't be led in believing the word of God, or he didn't even try, and God holds him responsible here. Then God still does work with Sarah. God says, "Why did she laugh?" reiterates His promise. She says, "I did not laugh," but He responds to her, "Oh, you did. You did laugh."

What God here is doing is He's exposing not just her cynical questioning of the word of God, but He's also exposing her self-deception. This is the difference between Sarah and Abraham. Abraham stood under the word of God. Sarah is standing over the word of God.

"Oh, Jesus, that's what you're saying? Yes, I don't believe you because 80-something-year-old women do not have children." She doesn't believe in the promise. She questions. She laughs at the word of God and stands over. I have my own opinion, God. Thanks so much.

Now this is really relevant for each one of us. Where there are places in the holy scriptures where you are not standing under the word of God, you're standing over it in judgment, or you're saying, "I know that's in the Bible, but that's Paul. That's not Jesus. I know that's in the Bible, but I just don't believe that section. I believe all that stuff about grace, and forgiveness, and God is love."

"I don't believe any of the judgment stuff, or the moral teaching, or that God expects me to live a life of righteousness, or order in the family, or no sex before marriage, or that marriage is between one man, and one woman, and one covenant, one lifetime, or that in marriage, that there are roles that the husband is the head servant, that he is to lead his wife, and love her as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, and wives is to submit in everything to their husbands as to the Lord."

You look at those texts. Deep inside, you're like, "Yes, I know that's what God said. I got my own opinions. I got my own theories. I don't think that's what God meant, et cetera, et cetera." That's what's going on here. The cynical laughter... It's the same thing that Eve struggled with in the garden, where Satan comes to her and said, "Did God really say?"

All of a sudden, Eve is standing over the word of God instead of standing under the word of God and being transformed by it. Still, even this interaction where God comes and He exposes sin in Sarah's heart of cynicism, she's been mocking God and His word in deception. What He's doing is grace. I want to deepen your faith, and I'm going to do that by removing sin from your heart. We see that it worked.

Hebrews 11:11 through 12, "By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive." God needed her to believe. He comes, and he deals with her, deals with her doubts, removes her sin, gives her the gift of faith. "By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of the heaven, as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore."

We see here, again, a God who is strengthening the faith of his children: Abraham, Sarah. He strengthens their faith by putting them in difficult situations. You got to ask. It's been over two decades since the initial promise of God to Abraham, "I'm going to give you and Sarah a child."

Why did God wait this long? Why does He wait until they're in their almost 100 and in their 90s? Why does He do that? Number one, to get all the glory because if it wasn't for God, then none of this would have happened. God gets all the glory. He loves doing that.

Number two is to make them stronger. To make their faith stronger, He puts them in difficult situations. I'm a dad of four daughters. Bless my heart, as they say in the South. I'm a dad of four daughters. My job is not to keep my girls happy 100% of the time. I could easily do that. We'll just eat sugar all day, sugar, ice cream, Twinkies. I would buy an ice cream truck. That would be our vehicle. We'll just drive around with clown music. It would be tremendous. That's what we would do.

That would be extremely disservice to their whole life. Just jack up their health and make them people who all they want is sugar and good times, et cetera, et cetera. My job as a dad is to make their life as hard as possible. That's my job. I'm a Russian dad. That's what we do. I got my girls deadlifting and squatting already, aged 12 and 9.

We're going to do long division for fun, just for fun. We're going to do math. Come home from school. We're going to make it fun. We're going to make it fun. That's my job. You are going to know two languages. Why? Because pliability of the mind. You go back and forth. You understand different people, different cultures, et cetera.

You're going to play instruments. You're going to do hard things. You're going to play sports. You're going to study theology. We're going to do hard things. Why? Because I want to make you stronger. You need to be strong to succeed in this world. I want them to be great ministers of the kingdom of God. That's why.

This is what's happening here. God is a good father. He puts Abraham and Sarah in these situations where they get stronger. He tests Sarah's faith. Sarah, by God's grace... Her faith is strengthened. Abraham's love has been tested, his service to physical needs to people.

Then God tests Abraham's love to the spiritual needs of people. Abraham cared for people's physical needs, the first section. Now does he care for their souls? Cared for their bodies. Now does he care for their souls?

God has a conversation here with Abraham. This is a fourth conversation God has, extended conversation with Abraham. On the three previous occasions, it had to do with Abraham individually. You, your family, your child, your promise, the blessing, et cetera.

Here, this is a different conversation. It's a conversation about total strangers to Abraham. In this lengthy conversation, Abraham reveals himself as the true, righteous man of God that he was. Verse 16, "Then the men set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The Lord said, Yahweh, 'Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?'"

Clearly, He's not hiding it because He's saying it out loud in the presence of Abraham. "Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him."

God says, "I've chosen him. I've chosen to pour my love out on him. I've chosen him as a friend. I've chosen him, by God's grace, to walk in a way of righteousness, keep the way of Lord." That's the Hebrew word, derekh. It's a path worn by constant walking.

I've chosen him by grace. He is to walk a path of righteousness to do righteousness that's conformity to God's will and to do justice that's conformity to God's character. You just see this incredible grace, that God invites Abraham into this conversation. God says, "I'm about to make a decision. Am I going to pour out my judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah right now? What do you think, Abraham?" Welcomes him as a friend into the conversation. Abraham was a friend of God.

2 Chronicles 20, verse 5 through 7 is the prayer of Jehoshaphat who, "stood in the assembly of Judah and in Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, 'O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?'"

James 2:23. "And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,' and he was called a friend of God." Isaiah 41:8, "But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend." God chooses this guy, saves him, and makes him a friend, and has a conversation with him about the destiny of Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Genesis 18:20 through 21, "Then the Lord said, 'Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.'” He's saying, "I've heard the outcry," cry of distress because of the sin of the wickedness of the city. Their sin is very grave.

All sin, any and every sin, separates us from God and deserves spiritual and physical death, any and every sin, but not any and every sin has the same degree. Not every sin is the same in terms of gravity. God waits, and he waits, and he waits for a people, for people and for cities, for groups of people. He waits for them to repent.

There comes a time because of the gravity of sin just grow and grows, and it gets worse, and more heinous, and more wicked, that it just gets to the point where these people are not going to repent. God's judgment comes. We see this idea in Genesis 15:16, where God says the people of Israel... They're going to be held in captivity for 400 years in Egypt. Then I'm going to bring them out, and I'm going to give them a land of the Canaanites and the Amorites, but not yet, because Genesis 15:16, "They shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

God is patient, and He's forbearing. He wants to forgive. He's loving. He's gracious, and He gives time. He gives time, and he gives time. There comes point of no return, a point of punishment, as has come with Sodom here. God hears the outcry from a land, from a people against the sin.

When we see the sin and evil, even in our nation, what kind of cry must be going up from the United States today is a result of flood of immorality, a flood of greed, unbridled lust, passion for obscenity, lurid, salacious attitudes that permeate public, private lives. God hears it all. He's still waiting. He's waiting. He's waiting. He's waiting for people to repent, but judgment is looming.

God here has a conversation with Abraham. What are we going to do? Verse 22, "The men turned from there and went toward Sodom." They're going to scope out what's going on, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. What happens with these angels? That's chapter 19. We'll read that next week.

What happens is they go down to Lot's house. Lot sees them, welcomes them into his house. Then all the men of that town surrounded Lot's house. He said, "Bring the angels out so that we can know them." He's going to rape these angels. That's how grave their sin has become. That's how perverse this culture has become.

The angels are going down. Still, Abraham stood before the Lord. Here, what we see is God standing. Abraham is standing before him in the same way that Jesus stood before Abraham before he went into his fellowship. It's as if they were knocking here. Abraham is... As if he's knocking, he said, "God, let's have a conversation about what's happening."

God here initiates this. He gives him an opportunity to intercede for this city. Abraham does. He knows God to be a gracious, loving, merciful God, a God that doesn't take pleasure in the death of a wicked person. Yet He's a God of perfect holiness and perfect justice. What is to happen to the city?

Verse 23, "Then Abraham drew near to the Lord and said, 'Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be it from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”

He says, "God, you're just. I know you are. I'm appealing to you as a God of justice. I know that some people deserve wickedness, but if there are 50 people who are righteous, would you not spare the city?" What's fascinating here is two things. He cares about the city. He cares about the unrighteous. The theology is mostly correct here. The theology is God will not punish the righteous for the sins of the wicked. That's his theology.

In the long term, that's true. In the long term, God will not punish the righteous for the sins of the unrighteous. In the supreme case of Jesus Christ, the only righteous person who has ever lived, he got the punishment that the unrighteous, that the wicked, deserved. God then corrects that later.

What's fascinating is Abraham knows who's in Sodom. Who is he here interceding for? It's not Sodom and Gomorrah. It's Sodom. Who lives in Sodom? His nephew, Lot. Lot, with his wife and their two daughters. What's fascinating here is Abraham doesn't say, "God, take the righteous people out of the city."

He's interceding for the unrighteous as well. God, give us some more time. God, perhaps these people will repent. This is the beauty of what's going on, that Abraham understood the grace that he received. He understood that he himself was chosen by grace, by the grace of God. He himself was from a family of idolaters and pagans. He himself was disobedient to God when God said, "Go from Ur of the Chaldeans to Canaan." He went halfway to Haran.

He himself sinned against God, against his wife, in order to save his own skin, prostitutes her out to Pharaoh, therefore, jeopardizing his marriage. He himself sinned when he committed adultery with Hagar in order to have a child. He knows he's a sinner. He knows he's wicked. Still, the God of the universe is welcoming him into a relationship with himself.

What Abraham is saying, "God, you gave me grace. Would you not give them grace?" You see him continuing to have this conversation with the Lord. You see his audacity, his chutzpah even, as he's continuing to intercede. In verse 26, he continues. God says, "If I find 50, I won't destroy the city."

Verse 26, "The Lord said, 'If I find at Sodom 50 righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.'" Then Abraham starts doing math. He's like, "50. Why did I start off with 50?" There's Abraham. There's his wife. There's two daughters. Now he's continuing the conversation.

"Abraham answered and said, 'Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose 5 of the 50 righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for the lack of five?' And he said, 'I will not destroy it if I find 45 there.' Again, he spoke to him and said, 'Suppose 40 are found there.' He answered, 'For the sake of 40, I will not do it.' Then he said, 'Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose 30 are found there.' He answered, 'I will not do it, if I find 30.'"

He started with 50. He was going down by five's. Then he's like, "This is going to take too long." Now he starts going down by 10s. It's like reverse haggling. If you ever been to market in a different country... I remember in Ukraine, I went to this market where whatever the price is, the sticker price, if it's 100 gryvna, whatever it is, you got to come up... Then your first bid is five. It's five gryvna. I'm going to give you five. The goal is to meet halfway.

This is like reverse haggling with God as he's interceding. He's 30, gets it down to 30. "He said, 'Oh, let the Lord not get be angry. I will speak. Suppose 30 are found there.' He answered, 'I will not do it, if I find 30.' 'Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose 20 are found there.' He answered, 'For the sake of 20, I will not destroy it.' Then he said, 'Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose 10 are found there.' He answered, 'For the sake of 10, I will not destroy it.' And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place."

God starts the conversation, and He ends the conversation. God had already decided what he's going to do. Abraham intercedes. He tries to intercede. Why do we stop at 10? As one theologian said, Abraham has reached the limit of the ability of righteous individual to outweigh the cumulative evil of the community. 10 persons constitute the minimum effective social entity.

Abraham's righteousness here is seen in that he, unlike Jonah, doesn't want the judgment of the city. Remember, Jonah preaches the gospel to Nineveh. He sits back and waits for God to pour out His wrath on the city. Here Abraham intercedes for the city. He has care for them. He wants mercy for them in the same way that he has received.

Did Sodom get mercy? They did not. They did not. Perhaps part of the reason that angels went down to the city is to give them one more chance, one more chance to repent. They did not. There came a point where there was no more opportunity for repentance.

The application here goes two ways. Number one, if you are not yet a Christian, judgment is looming over you. Either you pay the penalty for your sin in a place called hell for all of eternity, or you trust in Jesus. Repent of your sin. Repent of your pride, self-reliance, self-deception. Put your trust in Him. Then the penalty for your sin is poured out on Christ.

The other lesson here for us as a church, as believers, is for whom are you interceding? Do you intercede for the city? Do you pray specifically for the Spirit of God to be poured out upon the city, upon this region in general, but then also, specifically, are there specific people for whom you are praying on a daily basis?

God, save my neighbor. God, save my colleagues. God, save my roommate. God, save this city. Draw many to yourself. Give me opportunities to share the gospel, to share the good news of Jesus Christ. I wonder if that's not more pressing on our heart. I wonder if the reason why that isn't more pressing on our heart is because we don't really believe in the reality of the judgment that it to come. I wonder if that's the reason. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pray effectively for lost souls if you're not convinced that lostness, apart from Jesus, will ultimately result in literal eternal punishment.

A few years ago, John Maclean, the journalist in Scotland, wrote an article on the subject of hell. It was published in the Glasgow Harold of all places. He ends the article in these words. He says, "I've never doubted in the reality of such a place, the hell of deep and lasting darkness, but I've never thought of it in popular terms, as a nasty boiler room run by little men in red tights."

"Hell is ultimately a negative, place of nothing but anguish. This is a place without God and without anything of God, without light, without warmth, without friendship, and without peace. No racks, no pintures, no claws, only the fires of an awakened conscience, the burning thirst of a frustrated ego. The wicked ones of history, they will be there. The killers and the exploiters... They will be there. Libertines and gossips, rapists, and drunkards... They will be there. Those whose gods were sex, or money, or ambition, or power... They will be there."

"Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians... If only their faith was religiosity who had nothing for eternity but denominational adherence, they will be there. In the darkest, thickest corner are all the nice ministers. The benevolent bishops who told people that it was heaven for all and that love was all that mattered, but there is only one way of escape. By flight to Christ in faith in His finished work, living in His service but never looking to such toils for my salvation, but there is the final paradox."

"To believe in this latter end of all things, and to live, and walk in a world that must one day melt in fervent heat, to walk among the living dead with my bright smile and polite talk, and never to challenge, never to warn when we have seen our God and His righteousness, when we have seen the wickedness of humanity. We know that the end must come, but the one who knows the heart of God has the heart of God. It's not the heart of God that the wicked should perish, that they would turn, and repent, and find salvation."

What Abraham does here is foreshadowing of the great intercessor, the great advocate, and that of Jesus Christ. When Yahweh comes incarnate again, and he comes in, takes on flesh, and lives a perfect life, which he then offers as a sacrifice for us, he bears the wrath of God on our behalf. He experiences hell upon our behalf so that we wouldn't have to. On the cross of Jesus Christ, the holiness of God and His love... They coincide.

We see the wrath of God being poured out for our lawbreaking. We see a God who's willing to absorb that same wrath on our behalf. This is the beauty of the gospel, that God remains just and the justifier at the same time. He's just because the law that was broken was punished. The punishment was met. There's forgiveness because He bore that in Himself.

Jesus is the great advocate. He's the great interceder. He's the one that does it for us. If you're not in Christ, repent of sin and turn to him. Judgment is looming. Either your sins will be punished in you or in Christ. Just repent and believe.

I'll send with these verses. Jesus is our great advocate. 1 John 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." 1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

John 8:34, "Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us." Hebrews 8:25, "Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them."

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, what a wonderful text. We thank you for meeting Abraham. We thank you for calling him to yourself, but thank you for strengthening his faith. I pray you do that with each one of us. Give us the gift of faith, and give us robustness of faith where you continue to strengthen us. Make us a people who understand that you are holy, and that you are loving, and that there is evil in our hearts as there is evil in the world.

The only remedy for that is the cross of Jesus Christ. Make us a people who walk daily, basking in your glory, thankful for your grace. Then also, make us a people who care for those who are not yet believers, to care for their physical needs, yes, but more importantly, their spiritual needs, care for their souls. I pray, Lord, pour out your spirit upon us to make us a force, to share the gospel with many, proclaim the gospel, warn that judgment is coming. There is a way of escape, and that's only found in Jesus Christ. Jesus, we love you. We pray this in your name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card, either virtually in the app or on the website, or the physical one you can pick up in the back.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God who loves with a covenantal love, that when you choose to pour out your love on a people, on a person, you love with an unending, unyielding, unconditional love. And we thank you for the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ, on the cross, who loved us to the very end as the scriptures say.

To the last drop of his blood, he loved us, in order to redeem us from all the times we were unfaithful, in word, in thought, in deed, sins of commission, sins of omission. Lord, we thank you for the gift of repentance, and we thank you Holy Spirit, when you give us that gift, you also call us to a life that is worthy of being forgiven, of being reconciled with God, of being a child of God.

Lord, show us today from the holy scriptures that there is no place in our life, no sphere in our life, no crevice in our lives that is off limits to you, that you are God, you are Lord of every single square inch of our existence. I pray you make us a people who'd love that, who love that you get to be God, that you get to be Lord, knowing that you are a loving God, that you aren't a God who keeps us from having fun and enjoying ourselves, but you are a God that keeps us from heartache, heartbreak, and the consequences of sin both in our bodies and those around us.

Bless us as we spend time in the Holy scriptures, and show us in our lives where there are places that need to be circumcised, so to speak. Circumcision of the heart, places of hardness, places where we've been desensitized to you, places where we have idolatrous desires, taking good things and making them God things, and then they're bad things. Bless our time in the Holy Word now. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

Can we talk about Starbucks straws for just a little bit? My go to at Starbucks is a Trenta iced coffee. Sometimes I switch it up with a cold brew, no syrup, light ice. They put way too much ice. I want to get more bang for my buck. I like the plastic straw. It's consistent. From the first draw to the second sip, to the third, it's consistent. You know what you're getting. The pull is the same. Then Starbucks recently, they switched things up, they got the paper straw. The paper straw is fine. It's fine for the first minute, two minutes, and then it starts getting soggy, and then it just ruins the whole experience.

Well, that right there, the plastic straw, that's like our faith. That's like the faith of Abraham. What we see with the story of Abraham, we're in a series that we're calling Jesus in Genesis, and we're looking at how Jesus Christ comes to redeem a people for himself, and he starts with a man named Abraham, an idolater. Abraham, who doesn't have Christian parents, he lives in Ur of the Chaldeans, happy to be an idolater, happy to be worshiping idols and following the desires of his flesh.

He's happy to be doing that. God calls him, God saves him, and we see in Abraham, we see a desire to honor God. He answers the call of God. God says, "Follow me. Walk before me. Be blameless before me." But he only goes halfway in the very beginning. Chapter 11 says he went halfway, from Ur of the Chaldeans, God calls him to Canaan, he stops in Haran. God comes to him a second time and calls him again. In chapter 12, we see Abraham's faith on fire. He comes, he moves his family, he leaves all his relatives, and he sets up a shop, sets his tents up in Canaan, the Promised Land. Famine comes, and we see his faith waiver.

Again, he goes to Egypt, commits sin against his wife there. You can read up on it. Chapter 13, now things start getting better. In chapter 14, he's a warrior. We see unflinching faith of this man, courage, bravery. Chapter 15, God makes a covenant with him. Chapter 16, 11 years have lapsed since God called him at age 75. He's 86 years old, he still doesn't have a son, a son of the promise as God said, and he decides to take matters into his own hands. He couldn't have a child with Sarah, so he gets a girlfriend named Hagar, which was a second wife at that time, because their culture accepted to have multiple wives, but it was against God's will.

We see that the text, it comes in with a commentary of strife in the family, and strife with Hagar, etc, and the sin, and there's consequences. Then chapter 17, that's where we find ourselves. We see a God who comes in and says, "Abraham, I'm going to continue working on your faith, I'm going to continue to restoring you, I'm going to continue sculpting you into the image of Christ, deepening your faith, deepening your desires and affection for God." What God is saying is, Abraham, I love you with a love that is all in. I'm all in on this relationship with you, and I expect a response commensurate to my love, a love that is commensurate to mine.

Abraham now is 99 years old. It's been 24 years since the first promise. Abraham is called father, as was named, is called father, which is bitterly ironical in that people would ask him all the time, hey, does your name mean Abraham? Does it mean father? How many children do you have? For 11 years, he couldn't say anything. I have zero. I've zero children. Finally, he has Ishmael, he has one child. We finished chapter 16 last week. it's been 13 years between chapter 16 and chapter 17. For 13 years, we suspect years that were filled with unhappiness, unrest. The presence of Ishmael in the home ... The son of Abraham by Hagar, we expect endless contempt, bitterness, envy, weariness.

For 13 years, what God is doing is sculpting Abraham, deepening his faith, getting him to a point of desperation to cry out to God. Today, we find ourselves in Genesis 17. What I usually do if you're new, what I usually do, it's kind of cliche already by this point. But what I usually do is I just read the text and I say, this is the inerrant, infallible, authoritative word of God, may he write these eternal truths on our hearts, and I say, here's the three points of the sermon to frame up our time together. We're going to switch things up today. Sounds good? All right. Okay.

Of course, it's okay. I say it's okay so it's okay. This is what we're gonna do, one point, we're doing one point today. The point is that God loves us with a love when he goes all in and he expects a response that is commensurate. This chapter is God working on Abraham's heart, working on polishing it off. Look at a text within Genesis 17:1-2. "When Abraham was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abraham." He appears to him. There's a theophany." "He said to him, "I am God almighty." He comes in with a Hebrew name, "I am El Shaddai, I'm the God who can do the impossible." Why does he say that? He confirms to Abraham, your faith has been wavering. You look at the circumstances, all you see is the impossibility that your wife is in menopause. She was probably 90 at this point. He's 99.

When God shows up, he says, I am God, El Shaddai, God of all sufficiency. Jim Boice, theologian, he talks about the Chinese evangelist, Leland Wang, who had a letter, had every time he sent out a letter for ministry letter, he had a letterhead that said the following three verses, Joshua 10:13, "The sun stood still." 2 Kings 6:6, "The iron did swim." Then Psalm 48:14, "This God is our God." Abraham needed the reminder that God is all powerful. If God is all powerful, and if he is true, then he can do the impossible in fulfilling his promises.

God says, I love you. I am the God of the impossible. Now, two things, be blameless and walk before me. Be blameless and walk before me. Walk before me and be loyal. Live every day as if you understand that God is here, he's present, that God sees. Orient your entire life to God's presence under his eye, his presence, his promises, his commandments. Live that every single step of your life is conscious to reference of God. He says, "Be blameless." It doesn't mean be sinless. No one is, but it means that we fight our sin, that we do everything we possibly can to mortify sin and vivify affections for God or refers to integrity with God, a wholehearted commitment to God.

A recognition that there is no place in our lives that is off limits to God. The Latin phrase, Coram Deo is used by theologians, to live before the face of God, under the eyes of God. He's saying Abraham, don't be double-minded as you have been. Don't be half-hearted as you have been. Don't be hypocritical as you have been. This is a chapter about circumcision. That's what we're going to talk about today. I know you woke up this morning and you're like, oh, I can't wait to hear about circumcision. I haven't heard a sermon on that in a while. That's what we're going to talk about.

But before we get to that physical sign, which is a sign of a spiritual reality, before we get there, God says, Abraham, is your heart fully mine? Are there places in your life that you are holding back, holding me back from? That's what God is saying. Are there areas in your life where you are holding God, stiff-arming God, holding him at a distance. That's where God starts. Verse 3, "Then Abraham fell on his face." It's a bodily response that he knows he's in the presence of God, in theophany, is before him. He worships God with his whole body. "God said to him, "Behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I've made you the father of a multitude of nations."

God shows up, says, I'm going to rename you because you have a brand new identity, a new character, a new purpose, a new destiny. All Abraham could do is fall on his face, worshiping God. It's a physical response. If we haven't met, I come from a Russian background. My parents immigrated in 1989 and I grew up in a Russian church. If you know anything about Russians, they're not very outwardly emotional. There was a Russian church in New England. If you know anything about New Englanders, they're not outwardly emotional. So, you've got Russians living in New England, so our church was the frozen chosen.

You come in, you're told to love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul strength, and mind, but you can't show it. You just got to be stoic the whole time. You have to look like you're not having fun the whole time. That's the way they do church. I've had to grow in expressing my desire of my love for God, and particular just in worship, in worship at church. I remember for the longest time, it seemed so foreign to me to raise my hand. I used to tell people, I don't raise my hands because they're really heavy, like 30 seconds of raised hands, these are really heavy hands.

But I think with COVID, something happened where I missed church so much, I missed worshiping God with God's people so much. Now, I can't but express my love for God emotionally. I get into work. That's why I stand in the back because it's a little distracting. So, it's to say, it's okay to express our love to God physically. We do that at Red Sox games, we sing at Red Sox games. We get into it. We do that when we go see a Pats game, everyone's on their feet, everyone's cheering everyone. It's all to say, heart, soul strength and mind, it's a holistic love for God, and we see that with Abraham. God calls him to a holistic love.

He falls on his face in humility, worshiping God, renaming process. The name Abraham meant exalted father. Abraham means father of multitudes. This became true biologically in that the Israelites came from him. The Ishmaelites, the Edomites, the Midianites, and they became true spiritually, in that, everyone that believes in Jesus Christ is a child of Abraham spiritually speaking. Then also, the Muslims look back to Abraham as their father. So, you look at half the human race alive today, in some way, points back to a relationship with this single man. Verse 6, "I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make you into nations and Kings shall come from you."

Kings did come from him. The great Kings of Israel, king David and Solomon, and ultimately the greatest king of all Kings, the Lord of Lords, the king of Kings, Jesus Christ. Verse 7, "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you." I'm going to be God to you, I'm going to be your God. This is how God explained salvation and eternal life. The greatest thing about heaven is that we get God and we get God's presence. The greatest blessing we can experience is his blessing.

I'm going to be God to you, but not just to you. I'm going to be God to you and to your offspring. Six times in this text, we get that phrase. Whenever a phrase is repeated multiple times in one text, you got to ask, why? Because it's that important. I'm going to be God to you and to your offspring. We live in a society that's paper individualistic. A lot of us we think that my spirituality is mine, my faith is mine, so who am I to tell other people what to believe? Scripture talks about the fact that we are to share our faith and to teach our faith to other people. This is called evangelism. Other people, including our neighbors and our colleagues, et cetera, but then also, our closest neighbors who are our children, if you have children.

God is saying, parents have a responsibility to share our faith with our children, to train up our children in the faith. God wants you parents to believe in God and to honor God, love God, follow God, and also to train up your children to believe him and love him. We have that responsibility, parents. This is a very important word to parents, because we live in a culture that pushes back against this. No, you've got to let your child choose what they're going to believe. You got to let your child choose their gender.

You got to let your child choose their sexuality. This is absurd. We don't let our kids eat whatever they want, but we'll let our kids choose their gender or sexuality. These are demonic lies, and Satan wants to do everything he can to rip children from the arms of God, the father, to not have parents shaped children spiritually, but leave that to public education, or leave that to mainstream media, or Hollywood. No, we have this responsibility. We have a generation of parents who are more concerned with their children getting into Harvard than getting to heaven.

We have this job. We have a responsibility, parents. This is why, at Mosaic, we love children. We invest heavily into our kids' ministry, Mini-Mosaic. Many of you are volunteers in our ministry, and God bless you in that ministry. Thank you for your service. But parents, you need to know that you can't just outsource the spiritual formation of your children to the church. We do everything we possibly can, but we only get kids for a couple hours on a Sunday, a couple of hours a week. At home, we are to be reading scripture to children, praying with children, singing with children.

I can't tell you how many VeggieTales songs I've memorized. I have four daughters. This is what we do. We sing VeggieTales songs, worship songs by Bob the tomato in my car. This is what we do. We talk about God all the time, and consciousness is a natural rhythm of life. This is our job. This theme is repeated in scripture, that fathers and mothers, you were to think about your faith in terms of generations, to leave a legacy of faith.

I'm a fourth generation believer and I've seen the blessing, what it means to have a father and a mother who loved the Lord and raise us in the faith. I won't do the same. I've got four daughters and we're raising them up in the faith. Scriptures are all the time talking about this theme, versus like, from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him and his righteousness with their children's children. "As for me, this is my covenant with them," says the Lord, "my spirit, who is on you, and my words that I've put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth or from the mouths of your children or from the mouths of their descendants, from this time on and forever."

"Let the little children come to me," said, Jesus, "do not hinder them for the kingdom of God, belongs to such as these." The promise is to you and to your children. Believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ, and you will be saved you your household. In the context of God saying, I am making this covenant with you and your offspring, in that context, God's going to bring in circumcision as a sign of that. It's all interconnected, that our devotion to God starts from the heart, we believe in the heart, we love him from the heart, and then that changes everything that we do in life, including our sexuality in our worship, including what we do with our marriage and our children, etc.

That's the context. Verse eight, "And I will give you, and to your offspring after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, from an everlasting possession, and I will be their God." He repeats the same, as in chapter 15:9, and God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout your generation." Abraham, I chose you. I poured out my love upon you. I initiated this relationship. Now, you have an obligation to keep the covenant, to be faithful to the covenant. In one respect, we can't prevent God from fulfilling his promise and his word. On the other hand, we have to prove faithful to God's covenant to enjoy his blessings fully.

Then we get the covenant of the circumcision, the sign of the covenant. This is verse 10. "This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me, and you, and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your four skins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised, so shall my covenant in your flesh be an everlasting covenant."

My wife, when I met her, she was working in a dental office as a dental assistant. She would evangelize the people that were her colleagues. She invited her, the dentist that she worked with, she invited him to church. "Hey, you should come to church. There's a community, great timing to hear the gospel, etc." He's like, "No, I'm never going to church." She's like, "Why not?" He's like, "Because they're going to try to circumcise me." No, no, not of the flesh, not of the flesh, not of the flesh. Circumcision was given as a sign, an outward sign of an inner reality. For us, we have the New Testament. I thank God the sign of the covenant change. When you become a Christian, you become a Christian on the inside.

By grace, through faith, you recognize that you have sinned against God, you recognize that Jesus Christ paid the price for your sin, that repentance is the way that we can be reconciled with God. God forgives us on the inside. We are now circumcised from selfishness, from sin, from a lifestyle that was against God, and that heart transformation, the spiritual heart transplant, so to speak. On other texts, it talks about heart of stone taken out and replaced with a heart of flesh, a heart that beats toward God and lives for God.

Now, the sign of that covenant is baptism. Baptism is a sign that we have died to our former life, have been raised with Christ. It's just a sign. We see signs of the covenant all the time when Noah comes out from the Ark and then God gives them a sign of the covenant. What was the sign of that covenant? The rainbow. The rainbow. Noah got a rainbow, and Abraham, at this point, he was like, hey, God, could we have another rainbow instead of circumcision? Unfortunately, no. Why? Why the sign of circumcision? Why is this the thing?

In order to interpret that, you need to keep two things in mind. Number one, the context. Chapter 16, Abraham commits adultery against his wife, Sarah, even though it was her recommendation, but he committed adultery. From the perspective of God, he sinned. Now he's bearing the consequences. That happened, and then chapter 16, God comes at him with circumcision as a sign. Then you bring in Acts 15. Acts 15, this is the New Testament church first century believers, a lot of whom were Jewish. A lot of the Jewish believers, they understood that Jesus was the Messiah, but they clung on to some of the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, including circumcision.

What they were saying is, in the early church, if you follow Jesus Christ, you're saved by grace through faith, but the outward sign of that is circumcision. These people were called the circumcision party, which is the worst party ever. No one wants to go to that party. That's what's happening. Then Saint Paul comes in, and after preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, and he said, "No, if a person was a Gentile and they come into the faith with not having been circumcised, they don't need to get circumcised."

Because that was an outward sign. The new outward sign is baptism, but he says, but two things, make sure, two things, that you, the Gentile believers who aren't circumcised, but two things make sure they don't commit idolatry and make sure they keep from sexual morality. For Saint Paul, the circumcision, the outward sign was connected with idolatry and sexual morality. That's partially why this was what God chose. He chooses a man who used to be an idolater, who came from a culture where people worshiped sex, came from a culture where people worshiped with the reproductive organ, because that's the thing they lived for, because that's what worship is.

God, when he redeems this man, he redeems a man, and then he says, "I own all of you and I'm going to demarcate in you a mark that you are mine, assign the seal that you are mine, and that all of you belongs to me." Every single square inch of your body belongs to God. That's what God is saying with this sign of the circumcision. He points to an inner reality that says, we belong wholly, holistically to God, and he goes to this place for the sign, because this is a place, that the male reproductive organ, this has the power for tremendous good and a power for tremendous evil.

Tremendous good in that, when a man commits to a woman and is faithful to her, marries her, commits to her for a lifetime, doesn't fornicate, doesn't commit adultery, that tremendous power for good, both for the marriage, and then children, tremendous power for good. Now you have generational faithfulness and blessing. On the flip side, it has potential. It has the potential for tremendous evil, fornication, broken relationships, broken families, broken children. Children being raised without fathers or without mothers.

There's incredible power for both good and evil, and that's why God chooses this sign in particular, to show that either you belong to the Lord or you don't at all that. When we come to God, he gets to be God over everything, and you can't hold them at a distance. This is the God that demands ultimate intimacy. Every day, Abraham would be reminded, to whom do I belong? Oh, I belong to God. I've got to follow his commandments in every single aspect of life. This was also a foreshadowing of Jesus' coming.

There was a bloody sacrament. The blood speaks itself of the pollution of sin. Then Saint Paul talks about the theology of this. Do you need to be circumcised to go to heaven? No, of course not. We have verses like 1 Corinthians 7:18, "Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision." Or in Galatians 5:5-6, "For through the spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness, for in Christ, Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love."

There isn't any outward thing that you can do to make yourself righteous before God. It's only repentance of sin by God's grace. Galatians 6:15-16, "For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation, and as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God." Philippians 3:2-3, Saint Paul says, "Look out for the dogs," that's the people who demanded circumcision for Gentiles, "Look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh, for we are the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God in glory, in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh."

What he's saying is the sign doesn't mean anything apart from the faith. The sign doesn't mean anything apart from a relationship, and that's what he was saying to a lot of the people who grew up in the Old Testament faith, they start going through the motions. Perhaps you grew up Catholic or Russian Orthodox, or Episcopalian, where you know that there's this routine that you go through. You have to go through these particular motions, and you go through the signs, but signs without faith is just routine.

We believe in signs that are rituals, so to speak, well, like Lord's supper, baptism. These are signs that start with faith. Starts with faith, and then that faith is evidenced by the sign. What Saint Paul is getting at in all these texts is, getting circumcised on the flesh without loving God in the heart, circumcision in the heart, is like wearing a wedding ring without being faithful in a relationship, in a marriage. That's what he's getting at. Deuteronomy 10:12-6, this idea of circumcision of the heart, it's not just from the New Testament, it was all over the Old Testament.

"Now, Israel, what does the Lord, your God require of you, but the fear of the Lord, your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of statues of Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good. Behold, to the Lord, your God belong heaven, and the heaven of heavens, and the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart and love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them. You above all peoples, as you are this day, circumcise therefore the four skin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn."

That's what he's getting at, is the stubbornness. This will that isn't yielded to God. God, I know your will, I know what you want me to do, but I won't because I love something more than you. That's the idolatry. Circumcision of the heart, the way that you do that is on a daily basis, you recognize where in my life am I stubborn? Where I know what God's will is, and yet, I stubbornly definitely rebel against it. God, forgive me. God, please forgive me. God, take the scalpel of your Holy Spirit and circumcise this part of my life. Help me cut off this part of my life. Scripture talks about in very graphic terms that we are to mortify the sins in our life, places where we are rebellious against God.

We do that by God's grace, by his Spirit. Deuteronomy 36, "And the Lord, your God, will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul so that you may live." Jeremiah 4:4, "Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskin of your hearts. All men of Judah and habitants of Jerusalem, lest my wrath go forth like a fire and burn with none to quench it because of the evil of your deeds." This is something that every single one of us needs to wrestle with on a daily basis.

Where are those areas of my life that I need God's surgery, that I need to respond to God's call and seek transformation on a daily basis? Genesis 17:14, "Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant." We see the seriousness of this obligation that it's underlined by the threatened punishment. Anyone who doesn't keep the covenant, breaks the covenant in disobedience will be cut off from the covenant. Now, the question here is, is God sovereign over saving Abraham, or is Abraham responsible for his salvation?

Is God's sovereign in our salvation or are we responsible for our salvation? Scripture emphatically says, yes. God is sovereign over our salvation, and we are responsible to respond faith that is obedient to God. Fascinating, Saint Paul, in Romans, and Jesus' younger brother, James, his half-brother, in the book of James, they point to Abraham as the example for both sides. You see Saint Paul in Romans, he says, Abraham believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness. So, Abraham was saved by grace through faith. Then James writes and he says, look at Abraham, look at his works.

His faith wasn't empty, faith without works is dead. He responds to God's covenant and he does what God calls him to do. The answer is yes, if God calls you, justifies you, saves you, we do have a responsibility to then work out our salvation with fear and trembling, to not use his gifts in vain. You see with the story of Abraham, God says, "I will confirm my covenant with you. I will make you exceeding fruitful. I will establish my covenant with you and with your offspring." Then Abraham does respond with faith and with obedience.

Genesis 17:15, "And God said to Abraham, "As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah will be her name." God changes the identity of Abraham. He changed the identity of Sarah. Gives them new identity, new name, and this a fascinating scripture because Sarah is the only in the Bible whose name is changed by God. Meaning that she too has grown in her faith with the Lord, devotion to the Lord. Verse 16, "I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she will become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, "Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is 90-years-old, bear a child?" And Abraham said to God, "O, that Ishmael might live before you."

The first time Abraham falls on his face in humility and reverence before God. Now, he falls on his face because the ridiculousness of this whole situation had caught up with him. I'm a hundred, my wife's 90. We're not going to have a kid. We've been waiting 24 years, and he just starts laughing at the absurdity, because all he can see is his circumstances. God comes, God appears, God speaks, and all he sees is circumstances, and tries to steer God to a more reasonable path, and that's the path of Ishmael, and God says, "No, no, no, no." God deals gently with Abraham. In verse 19, "God said, "No, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name, Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him."

God says call your son, Isaac. He will come. There's a due date. Call him, his name, Isaac, his name in the Hebrew means he laughs. God says, I'm going to give you a perpetual reminder of the fact that you laughed that one time, and then Sarah laughed, and every time you call your son, it's he laughs, just a reminder that God who does the impossible always gets the last laugh. Verse 20. "As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I've blessed him and I will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father 12 princes, and I'll make him into a great nation, but I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year." That's the due day. It's fascinating as Abraham says, "God, take Ishmael. Take Ishmael and make a covenant with him." And God says, "No. I'm going to make my covenant with Isaac."

Showing that God is the one who has ultimate say with whom he makes the covenant. The practical application here is a lot of people would just put off repenting of sins, repenting of rebellion against God, put off a relationship with God, put off a commitment to God. They keep putting it off thinking, I'm just going to have a little more fun. I'm going to enjoy myself in, and then later on in life, then I'll come to God and I'll ask forgiveness, etc. Well, scripture does teach us pattern, that if God woos you and God calls you, today's the day of repentance, and at any moment, God can stop seeking you.

He has the ultimate say. So, you don't get saved when you decide to get saved. You get saved when God says I'm making a covenant with you, your mind. Our responsibility is, if God is calling you to himself today, calling you to repent of sin today, do not put it off. Today's the day of repentance. God was generous with Ishmael, but he didn't make a covenant with him. Genesis 17:22-27, "When he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham, and Abraham took Ishmael, his son, and all those born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their four skins that very day as God had said to him. Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his four skins, and Ishmael, his son, was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin."

That very day, Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. Then all the men of his house, those born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner were circumcised with him that very day. The emphasis is put on that, God you're calling me to do what? Falls on his face, wrestles with this, wrestles with God, and God says you're doing it. Abraham, this is probably his greatest act of faith ever. At 99 years old, he takes a flint knife and he circumcised himself. Then he has 318 trained men in his household. I don't know, I wish Abraham wrote a book on leadership.

How in the world do you go to train soldiers like, hey man, I got a word from God. All right, what's the word? Circumcision. He just led by example. He's like, God said this, I believe, and so he does it, and this is what is really emphasized, is the fact that he obeys God despite his doubts. The point of this whole text, and this isn't the point of Abraham, the point of all of this is salvation is impossible. That, apart from God's miraculous work, salvation is impossible. The chasm between us and God is so wide salvation is impossible.

Forgiveness of sin is impossible. When we human beings sin against the holy God, there's a holy chasm between us. The only way to bridge that, if that God of impossibility, if he acts on our behalf. That's what happens in the story of Abraham. God chooses Abraham and says, "I'm going to bless you and I'm going to give you a great name, and through you, I'm going to bless all the nations, through your offspring." He's not talking about Isaac. He's talking about Isaac's ... He's talking about Jesus Christ, who will come through the line of Abraham. God gave Abraham a son, Isaac, and Abraham raised him up in the faith, and Isaac raised up Jacob in the faith, and it just kept going, and finally, Jesus Christ was born.

The God of impossibility sends his son, the son of God, son of man, fully God, fully man, he's the only one who could bridge the chasm between a holy God and sinful people. Jesus Christ comes, he lives a perfect life, the life we were supposed to live, but didn't, willfully did not, and Jesus Christ goes to the cross to bear the penalty for the sin that we committed. He bears the wrath of God in himself, impossible. In the same way that the birth of Isaac was impossible from the dead, the deadness of the womb of Sarah, and the same way it was impossible of Jesus Christ to come back from the deadness of the tomb.

That what's highlighted in all of this, that it took a miracle of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ, through this whole lineage of Abraham to get to Jesus, it took that to save us, and then on top of that, we need the holy spirit to regenerate our hearts. That's how impossible our sin is. A lot of us, we have a hard time understanding the gravity of the good news because we don't understand the gravity of the bad news of how sinful we are. C. S. Lewis, I really appreciate his quote that he writes in the Letters to Malcolm.

He says, "I've been reading Alexander White. He was a Presbyterian divine in the last century whom I'd never heard of, very well worth reading, and strangely, broad-minded Dante, Pascal, and even Newman, are among his heroes. But I mention him at the moment for a different reason, he brought me violently face to face with a characteristic of puritanism, which I had almost forgotten. For him, one essential symptoms of the regenerate life," that's the life of a Christian, "is a permanent and permanently horrified perception of one's natural, and it seems unalterable corruption. The true Christians nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool."

What a line. Inner nostril, nostril inner cesspool. This is what he's getting at is, when you become a Christian, you realize just how sinful you are. Abraham, you need to realize how sinful you are. What's it going to take to save you, Abraham? It's going to take a blood sacrifice from a male, from the offspring that will come from you. That's what's going on here. We need to understand the ferocity, the tenacity, the abomination, the ugliness of sin, which leads us to this tenacious consecration of Jesus Christ as the only possible savior of sinners like ourselves.

At Mosaic, Mosaic, Boston is one of the only places in the whole city that you can go to on a weekly basis, and someone will stand up here and just tell you how much of a freaking loser you are. You're a loser, spiritually speaking, morally speaking, you are bankrupt. You've broken every single one commandments multiple times over. That's my job. You are so wicked that you are on way to spend eternity apart from God. That's my job. And yet you're so loved that Jesus Christ was willing to take the penalty upon himself. If you turn to Christ, all of your sins are forgiven, your identity is changed.

You get a new name. Now you're a Christian, you're a child of God, and your eternity is secure, but it all starts with recognizing, it's your fault. A lot of people are like, anywhere outside of this, you're told, you're a good person. If there's anything bad in you, it's not your fault. It's a public school, it's your neighborhood, it's your family. It's someone else. It's the other political party, it's not your fault. No, it is your fault. You're a mess and it's your fault. You're a sinner and it's your fault. You need to repent, every single one of us. Trump, sinner. Biden, sinner. Republicans, sinners. Democrats, sinners. Maskers, sinners. Anti-maskers, sinners. Double maskers, double sinners.

Kidding, kidding. But if you drive in your car with double mask, yeah, you are. Vaxxers, sinners. Anti-vaxxers, sinners. Vax ambivalent, sinners. Americans, sinners. Canadians, definitely. Russians, the worst, can't believe I'm saved. Every single one of us, we're all sinners and we need Jesus. I'll close with this. If you've ever been to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, I went when I was five. I don't remember anything, but I've got pictures. I was there. I was there. As you enter the church, on the right side in a small chapel of St. Peter's Basilica, there is Michelangelo Pieta, which means the pity, and it's beautiful.

It's the only work that Michelangelo signed with his name. That's how proud he was of it. It's a marble work that depicts Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding her dead son, draped over her after his crucifixion. Astonishing performance. It's a masterpiece, a performance of true genius. It's lifelike, and you see emotion in Mary's face. You see her right hand holding Jesus up. You see his wounds as a rib cage, his feet hanging midair. It's the marble that comes to life. That's what's going on. Marble has become cloth and flesh. If you go there now, you can see it, but you can't see clearly, why?

Because in May 21st, 1972 on Pentecost, Sunday, a mentally disturbed geologists, Laszlo Toth walked into the chapel and attacked the sculpture with a geologists hammer, banging it 15 times, removing Mary's arm at the elbow, and knocking off a chunk of her nose and chipping off her eyelids. There was an American sculptor there, an artist from St. Louis, who was the first guy to grab this gentleman, and he said, "I leaped up, grabbed the guy by the beard, and we both fell into the crowd of screaming Italians. It was something of a scene."

Onlookers grabbed the pieces of marble, and many of them didn't return it, because they knew it was valuable, including Mary's nose wasn't found, and so they had to reconstruct this beautiful sculpture with a block cut out of her back. After the attack, the work was painstakingly restored returned to its place where it's now protected with Bulletproof glass. From the outside, it looks like nothing happened, no obvious evidence of restoration, but you come closer and you see the cracks, that this beautiful work of incalculable beauty was cracked, then it was restored. This is a beautiful picture of what happens with the human life, that God made everything, and he made everything perfect.

Then sin enters the world and sin takes this hammer and just sledges the beautiful image of God and every single one of us. When we continue down the path of sin, we continue to hammer ourselves and the image of God in us and do the same to other people. This is why we need Jesus Christ. This is why we need forgiveness, and we need his restoration, that Jesus Christ went to the cross and his hands and his feet were nailed at the hammer over and over and over, and he did that so that the image of God in us could be restored by his grace.

When we looked at Jesus, who is the greater Michelangelo, he sits, he rebuilds, he was doing this with Abraham, rebuilding, restoring, and he starts with the heart, circumcision of the heart, a spiritual surgery of the heart, and he does that to each one of us. The question to each one of us is, God goes all in, in his love and relationship with us, will we respond with a commensurate love? Well, are we all in with Christ?

Let us pray, Lord Jesus, we thank you for the holy scriptures. We thank you for this example of Abraham, and we thank you for calling him. We thank you for the honesty of the scriptures, in which we see the vacillation of his faith, ebbs and flows. We thank you that you kept pursuing him, that you kept pouring out your grace upon him, kept deepening his desire and affection and love for you. We thank you that you are a God who does the impossible. If there's areas in our life, where there is a sin, a sin that has taken root and has taken control, God, you're the God of the impossible. Please come in, perform spiritual surgery of circumcision and make us a people who love you with a whole heart, holistic love, of people who are blameless before you and walk before your face, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, we love to connect with you. If you'd like to connect with us, do that through a connection card, either the physical one that you can get in the back, and also, you can leave it there after you fill it out, or the virtual one in the app or on the website.

For all the moms in the house, happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. Round of applause. We love you. Thank you. Congratulations, one of the toughest jobs in the world. Happy Mother's Day to my mom, if she's tuning in. She lives in Rhode Island, but every once in a while, she tunes in and then calls me to correct my theology. Then happy Mother's Day to my wife, mother of four daughters. Great time.

We're going to pray a special prayer of blessing upon our moms. We also know for some people, it's a difficult day in that they want to be a mom or some have lost their moms. We'll pray for the Lord to comfort us. Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a Father. You're a good Father. We thank you that you are a Father who leads us in ways of blessing. Sometimes those ways of blessing don't feel like blessing. Make us a people who build our lives not on feelings but on the facts of reality of who you are, of what you said, of what you've promised. Make us a people who interpret our circumstances, how we feel about our circumstances through your promises, not vice versa, not interpret your promises through our circumstances, through our feelings.

Lord, we thank you for the moms in the congregation. I pray that you bless them abundantly. What a job they have, the hardest job in the world. I pray that you bless them, that you fill them with the Holy Spirit. Would you fill them with supernatural, both physical and spiritual, strength? Protect them from the evil one, from sin, from folly. Bless them abundantly. Make us children who do honor our parents, our father and our mother.

Lord, for those who long to be moms, I pray today, satisfy them deeply. Give them an assurance that you're with them. Like Sarah, perhaps they long to be moms. Perhaps it's not time, or perhaps you have something greater. Remind us that children are a blessing. Physical children are a blessing, but you also call us to make disciples of all nations, to have spiritual children whom we disciple in the same way that Jesus didn't have children and St. Paul didn't have children, but they have thousands, and millions, and billions of spiritual children. Bless them. For those who've lost their moms, I pray you do comfort them profoundly in this day and be close to them.

Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. We thank you for this time you've given us in the book of Genesis. We thank you for the example of Abraham. Thank you for calling him. We thank you for his faith. We thank you for the honesty of scripture, that there are times where his faith was shaken. It vacillated. There are times where he didn't see clearly. He walked by sight, not by faith, and sinned. Sinned against you. Sinned against people.

We thank you, Lord, that you didn't leave him in that sin, that you came as a redeemer. You met him. You met Sarah. You met Hagar in one of the lowest points in scripture. You pointed them to the redemption found at the cross. We pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

The title of my sermon is Don't Listen to Your Wife When She Suggests You Get a Girlfriend. No, that's the secondary title. The title is God's Work Our Way. God's Work Our Way. We're going through a sermon series that we're calling Jesus in Genesis, in which we see the gospel of Jesus Christ in the first book of the Bible where you see it over and over on every single page.

We see the story of a gentleman named Abram, who then becomes Abraham of his wife, Sarai, who becomes Sarah. God calls Abram out of paganism, out of idolatry into a land of Canaan. He promises him, "Hey, Abraham, I'm going to give you myself, the greatest blessing that there is. I'm starting a relationship with you. I'm going to give you this land. I'm going to give you a great name. I'm going to give you a son. Through your son will come blessings for all people."

As soon as Abraham moves to Canaan, he's expecting God to make good on His promise immediately. Years begin to go by. We find him in a text where he's 10 to 11 years since that initial promise. He's getting older and older. He was 75 when God called him initially. Now he's around 86 years old.

God promised him a son. The assumption of the text is the son will come through Sarah. This is where Abraham shakes. He shakes in his faith. God, maybe it's not through Sarah. Maybe it's my servant, Eliezer. That's last week's text.

God comes, and He says, "I'm going to give you a son. It's going to come through you. It will be your son." The assumption there is it's through you and your wife because from Genesis 2, we see that when marriage happens, a covenant happens, two become one. The promise made to the husband is a promise made to the wife as well.

We see Abraham over and over through the text. Through the stories, we see him believing, and then we see him shaking in unbelief, believing, and shaking. Today is the third episode in the series of doubt. Abraham now begins to grow impatient. God, where's my son? Where's my son? Sarah begins to grow impatient. Where's my son?

They attempt to circumvent God's timing. They attempt to do God's work in their own way. They attempt to force God's hand. There's where we find ourselves in Genesis, chapter 16. Would you look at the text with me?

"Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. Sarai said to Abram, 'Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant. It may be that I shall obtain children by her.' Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. After Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife."

"He went into Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Sarai said to Abram, 'May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace. When she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!' Abram said to Sarai, 'Behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please.' Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her."

"The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. He said, 'Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?' She said, 'I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.' The angel of the Lord said to her, 'Return to your mistress and submit to her.' The angel of the Lord also said to her, 'I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.'"

"The angel of the Lord said to her, 'Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. He shall dwell over all his kinsmen.' She called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, 'You are a God of seeing,' for she said, 'Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.'"

"Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi. It lies between Kadesh and Bered. Hagar bore Abram a son. Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame our time: myopic vision leads to mess, vision of God entering mess, and redeemed mess and vision. First of all, myopic vision leads to mess. What a doozy of a text we have before us. One of the reasons this text is here is because this happened. If you were inventing the Bible, if you were inventing a religion, you would not say, "This is the Father of my faith. The Father of my faith did this."

This is what's going on in the text. It's a commentary on a reality that happened. The scripture is true. Therefore, it's honest. In Genesis 16:1, "Sarai, Abraham's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar."

The backstory here... You got to understand this culture, an honor, shame culture. One of the most important things, roles of a woman, that time was to have children. We saw Sarah... Her eyes are locked on her womb. This is where the culture says a woman's worth came from children who were a sign that you were legitimate, certified you as a person.

From a spiritual perspective, this is a sign that God approves of you. We see here, in particular with Abraham and Sarai, God promised them a child, promised them a son of the promise. He hasn't come. It's been 10 to 11 years since that promise, 120 months of anticipating, 120 months of ovulating. He's not coming.

Where is the servant from? Hagar. Hagar was an Egyptian. How did she end up in Abraham's household? We're told in chapter 12 that Abraham does leave his own town. He does go to Canaan, the promised land. God told him to stay there. He sets up an altar, starts worshiping God, telling people about God. What we see is a famine in the land shakes Abraham's faith. He says, "We might die."

He goes down to Egypt. In Egypt, he sins. He sins against his wife by giving her over to Pharaoh and basically prostituting her to Pharaoh, giving her up in order to save himself. God intervenes at the last moment and saves both of them. Then Pharaoh gives possessions and servants to Abram.

At this point, Abram should have rejected the servants. He should have said, "No, thank you. These are people made in the image of God. No, thank you. I'm not going to take them on as my property," in the same way that he said to the king of Sodom, yet he doesn't. He receives them. This wealth then becomes a stumbling block to him.

There's Abram. There's Sarai. They can't have a child. Then there's Hagar, the younger servant. Now Sarai said to him, "Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children." He's prevented me from bearing children. We see a tone of accusation. She knows that God is sovereign. She's just not happy with His sovereignty.

God, you're not good at being God. You're not doing your job right. You promised to bless us. Our current situation, our predicament does not feel like blessing. God, you're preventing me. You're not giving me what I want. You're preventing me. It's not just a sadness. It's a bitterness against God.

This is a very dangerous place to be when you're bitter against God because then, God's rules don't seem as important. God, you're not giving me what I want. Therefore, even if I have to break a commandment or break one of your decrees, I can because what's more important to me is my happiness, blessing as I understand it, than to fulfill your will.

She's blaming God. She comes up with a plan, and the plan is a plan that culturally is acceptable, that a woman who could not bear a child... One recourse that she had was a kind of adoption where she allows her servant to become a wife of her husband as a lower level wife. Then children borne to that surrogate mother would be adopted by the head wife. Very messy, but socially acceptable.

The Code of Hammurabi, which is a code followed by the pagan culture of that day... They endorsed it. Sarah looks around and says, "Everybody is doing this." Everybody who doesn't have a child, they allow for this... There's a second wife, second relationship. Scripture says Abram listened to his wife. This is an understatement. She says, "Go into my servant. It may be that I shall obtain children by her." Abraham listened to the voice of Sarai.

It doesn't get into the emotional commentary of what's going on. The text... It's not there. I will tell you that Abram is not doing his job. How do I know that? Because the same language that's used to say, "Abram listened to his wife," is the same exact phrase that God uses when He comes to Adam, Adam who sinned against God, rebelled against God, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, being led by his wife.

God comes and uses the same exact language. This is Genesis 3:17. To Adam, He said, "Because you've listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree of which I commanded you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life."

In the same way that Adam passively followed his wife, in the same way that Adam did not lead himself to follow God, to obey God, and because he didn't follow himself, he didn't lead his... Because he didn't lead himself, he didn't lead his wife to follow God in obedience. We see this passivity in Abraham where he's at a point in his life where Sarah comes to him with an idea.

I submit to you that Sarah doesn't really want Abraham to do this. How do I know this? I know this because later on, she blames him for following her. I know this, also, because I grew up with three sisters. I have four daughters. I'm married. I know that women don't always mean what they say, and they don't always say what they mean.

"Baby, you want the last piece of cake?" "Oh, no. No, I'm not hungry. You have it." Okay. Then she's mad the rest of the evening. "Honey, what do you want for your birthday?" "Oh, nothing. What can you give me? I have you. I don't need a birthday present."

"Oh, that girl's so pretty. Do you think she's pretty?" Proper response is, "What girl? Didn't notice. Had no idea. Oh, that one. Oh, yes. She's a 1. You're an 11. All right, baby." Conversation's over. That's how you get out of that. Do you think Sarah really wanted Abraham to go get another wife, this younger, pretty Egyptian servant? No, she did not, not deep down inside.

Perhaps maybe this will be the son, et cetera, et cetera. Later on, we see no, no, no, no, no, no, this is a terrible idea. She wanted Abraham at this moment to say, "No, honey. I am faithful to you. We worship a God who loves us with a covenantal love. He loves us faithfully, unconditionally, eternally, in the same way I'm going to love you. No, God is going to keep His promise. Let's keep trusting God. Your identity, your worth, your value are not in a child like the culture tells you. Your identity, your value, your worth is in God."

He should have done that. He did not. We see here, Abraham, a shell of himself, spiritually speaking, passively allows Sarah to take the spiritual lead in the family. This is a word to every single husband in the room.

Husbands, we have a word from God that we are the head of the household. Spiritually speaking, we are to lead our wives spiritually, to disciple them, to know God's word better than them, and to speak it over them, pray with them and over them, and lead them away from folly, away from sin as we lead ourselves.

Fathers, our job is to train our children. We're the spiritual leaders. You are the pastors of the household. You're the spiritual leaders to teach God's word, to obey God's word yourself, repent when you sin, and lead children in the same way. Wives, you are to allow your husband to lead as Ephesians 5 says.

Abraham should have guided Sarah. He did not. She listened to the wrong voice. She listened to the voice of the serpent just like Eve did. He listened to her voice just like Adam listened to Eve. We see this pattern over and over in scripture. Aaron listened to the voice of the people instead of the voice of God. Reuben listened to his brothers about Joseph. Israel listened to the spies. Israel didn't listen to their judges. Israel listened to the other nations. Solomon allows his wives to lead him into idolatry, et cetera, et cetera.

Abraham should have said, "Honey, I see you have an idea. Let's take this idea to the Lord. Let's pray about this." The more important an idea, the more important a choice, the decision, you got to pray. The more important the prayer and fasting is, let's go to the Lord. They did not. If they had gone to the Lord, you know what God would have told him?

He would have said, "No, Abraham. Polygamy is against my will. It's against the design of creation." In the Garden of Eden, God didn't create Adam, and Eve, and Hagar. You have one wife. Jesus Christ comes, and He dies not for multiple brides, for one bride. God is a God who loves with a covenantal love. It's two become one, and not three become one.

That's what God would have said. This is sin. This is scripture commenting on what's going on. We see the Apostle Paul interpreting what's going on in this text. He interprets it in this text in Galatians, in chapter 4 and 5, where he talks about the dichotomy in the Christian life between the flesh and the spirit, that when you become a Christian, it doesn't mean you're perfect. You're justified by grace through faith. Now begins a process of sanctification, but there are times in your life when you are carnal. You are living in the flesh.

He gives a whole list of fruits of the flesh, one of which is sexual immorality, and that's what's happening in this text, and then there's fruits of the Spirit. St. Paul looks at this text before chapter 5, in which he talks about that dichotomy. He looks at Galatians 4: 21 and 25. "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, one by a free woman, but the son of the slave was born according to the," what? According to the flesh.

"While the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. She is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children."

St. Paul says Ishmael is born as design of the flesh, as a result of the design of the flesh. Isaac was born as a design of the spirit. In terms of practically speaking, do you make your decisions out of the flesh or out of the spirit? How do you know which is which? Well, is it done with prayer? Is it done with seeking wise counsel? Is it done with looking at God's word and seeing, do I contradict any of God's laws, any of God's teaching?

Genesis 16:3 through 4, "After Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abraham's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband, as a wife. He went into Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress."

Sarah comes up with a plan, sinful plan. Abraham goes along with the plan because he's tempted by his own flesh. Honey, you want me to do what? You want me to sleep with her? He's tempted, gives into that temptation. Then the rest of the text is a commentary on the consequences of him giving into that sin.

It was a terrible idea. Surrogate motherhood was a common practice at that time, but right away, we're given hints that this is a terrible idea. Sarah took Hagar and gave her to Abraham. It's an ominous callback to Genesis, chapter 3, where Eve takes of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She eats and gives to her husband who is with her, passively. Doesn't protect her from the temptation of the evil one.

Sarah, the same way, takes Hagar as if she's an object and gives her as an object of temptation to her husband. In the Garden of Eden, we had two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Those two trees... Here, we have two women. One, you can eat from. The other one, you can't.

Abraham sins. He's deceived by his flesh and then what happens with Hagar. In a sense, she's sinned against. Did she choose to go along with this plan? We're not told because if a person is in a position of power, has power over the servant. We're not told how she's responded to any of this, but we are told that she herself isn't blameless either since Sarai has sinned.

Then what we see is Hagar looks down with contempt on Sarai. The important word, she despises Sarai. She sees her boss, so to speak, who can't have a child, and she has a child. This child is growing inside now. The baby is showing perhaps, kicking. Now she's looking at Sarah with contempt.

The word is despised her. It's the same word that she uses to curse in Genesis 12:3, where God says, "Abraham, whoever curses you will be cursed by me." She curses in a sense because she understands. From the perspective of culture, she has everything that Sarah wanted. She has the affection of Abraham. She has the embrace of Abraham. She has access to his wealth and finally has a child.

As far as anyone knows, Hagar is carrying the promised child. What we see is now the family descends into misery. That sin leads to dysfunction that leads to misery. It says if two women with kids have one husband they both share, if a husband and wife divorced, and they're still living in the same house as the husband remarries, there's just bitterness, and spite, and heartache, and heartbreak.

Sarah perceives Hagar as a threat against her place in the household. In verse 5, Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you!" She feels sinned against, although it was her idea. "I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!"

What she's saying is, you should have known better. You know what? She's right. Abraham should have known better. Abraham is the guy that's talking to God, that's praying to God, that has access to God, that knows God's word. Sarah blames him. What we see here is this is how sin works. Sin makes these great promises that always over-promises and it under-delivers. Sin never comes to you with a whole list of consequences that will come after the sin. No, it comes with the promises.

Sin is like a medication commercial. You know those medication commercials, those drug commercials on TV? where it's like, this is your issue, whatever your issue is. Now this is the solution. This drug will absolutely make everything better. There's always sunlight. There's always green grass. There's nice music. There's always a bathtub. I don't know. Just in the middle of the field, there's a bathtub of someone just really enjoying themselves.

It's like, this will solve all of your problems, not all of your pain will go away. That's for two minutes, and then it'll last 10 seconds. A guy comes in with rapidfire 3x. He's like, "By the way, here's the side effects. You might have vertigo and nausea. You might get warts growing on your nose, little hairs. You might grow a tail. You might grow grass out of your ears, et cetera. You're going to die. You might die. You can't sue us. Sorry, but buy this thing."

Sin is like that except it doesn't give you the last 10 seconds. It just over-promises, and it under-delivers every time, in particular when it comes to sexual sin. That's why this is at the heart of the story of a man of faith named Abraham.

Verse 6, "Abram said to Sarai, 'Behold, your servant is in your power. Do to her as you please.' Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her." It was Abram's sin that led to this situation. His passivity allowed for it. He didn't take responsibility, not then, not here. He listened to Sarai's sinful advice. Now he allows Sarah to do whatever she wants. You just see a pathetic shell of himself, spiritual speaking, the callous response, "Do to her as you please."

What does Sarah do? She deals harshly with Hagar. Hagar is pregnant. They're living in tents. We don't know what she did. Maybe verbal abuse, physical abuse, maybe demands on her that were just impossible, ultimately so cruel that Hagar just decides to leave, to flee, to go back to Egypt.

Here, what the text is teaching is, it's always a terrible idea to try to accomplish God's plan our own way in our own timing. There's examples of this over and over in scripture. God allows for situations like this in the life of His most faithful in order to grow them in reliance and dependence on God.

Case in point, Moses. Moses knew from a young age, he had a burning desire, the call on his life that he will be part of the liberation movement of the people of Israel from Egypt. He grew up as a Jewish person in Pharaoh's household, got the education, got the training, and then finally says, "Now it's time for me to be the great liberator."

Sees an Egyptian master abusing a Jewish slave. He meddles and kills the Egyptian master with his own hands, buries the body in the sand. When that's found out, he flees. What's going on? He tried to rush God's plan. God's work has to happen God's way. God's plans come complete with His methods, with His timing.

Hudson Taylor said, "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply." Our tinkering only messes things up. Case in point, King Saul, the first king of Israel... Samuel the priest tells him, "Hey, before you go to paddle, you need to understand. We need to sacrifice an animal to get the Lord's blessing. We need to worship God. Don't do anything. Don't go into battle until I come, and I will lead that process as the priest of God."

Saul waits one day, waits another day, waits a week. Samuel's not coming. Samuel's not coming. Saul takes an animal, and he takes upon himself the role of a priest, which he should not have. He sins. Samuel says, "Because you have sinned against God, trying to force God's plan, you will have the throne taken away from you."

Now that's the mess that's created by losing of vision of God's plan, a myopic vision, shortsighted vision. Thanks be to God that God doesn't leave them on their own in this mess. This is point two of vision of God entering the mess.

Now you see Hagar pregnant, no resources, cast out by Abraham, the father of her child and her husband, cast out by Sarah. She's by herself, fleeing 100 miles away from Abraham's camp in Hebron. In the next scene, we see that God doesn't leave her in this forsaken place. He comes to her when she is most broken, most desperate, most heartbroken. He doesn't just come to her. He doesn't just meet her. He calls her by name.

This right here is one of the most shocking parts of the text. This is the only instance, not just in the Old Testament, but in all of Eastern literature, where a deity calls a woman by name. God doesn't even call Eve by name, doesn't call Sarah by name, doesn't call Deborah by name, but He engages Hagar in conversation. Calls her by name as He meets her in the wilderness.

This is verse 7. "The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur." She's on her way to Egypt, stops at a spring of water on the way to Shur. Shur... You have to pass through to get to Egypt. The word, Shur, means wall that hardly anyone passes through. It was that forbidding. It was just unending road of yellow sand and gravel.

She's at this place where she wants to get a little water before she treks on. She knows that her chances of getting through are minuscule. She knows that she needs supernatural help. The Lord meets her. The angel of the Lord found her. The angel of the Lord says in verse 8. He said, "'Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?' She said, 'I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.'" She answers the first question. Doesn't answer the second question.

Where did you come from? I'm fleeing Sarai. Where are you going? I don't know. I want to go back to Egypt. That's the only other place I've known." Is she going to be accepted in Egypt? Probably not. She's single. She's not a virgin. She's having a child. Who's child is it? It's probably a biracial child. She's going to go there and probably be outcast, if not killed.

God intervenes, stops her. He calls her by name, Hagar, servant of Sarah. Hagar is stunned. The gods of Egypt, where gods didn't care about slaves... They didn't care about slave girls. To be noticed by Egyptian gods, you got to be high up on the priest's ladder. You have to coax them, feed them, flatter them.

Here we see the angel of the Lord showing up, speaking to Hagar gently by name. No one's spoken to her by name thus far. Sarai calls her, "My maid," in verse 2 and 5. Abraham calls her, "My maid," in verse 6. Abraham and Sarah... They think of her as a slave, as a foreigner, as a possession, something to be used, abused, as someone to be mistreated, neglected, expendable.

The angel speaks to her and calls her by name. The angel of the Lord speaking to a woman who's not Jewish, at a well, speaking to her tenderly. This sounds like someone else. Then angel of the Lord... Who is that? Who is the angel of the Lord? The angel of the Lord, definite article. It's not an angel of the Lord.

He comes, and He speaks in first person. He doesn't say, "Thus say the Lord. I have a message to you from God." No, he speaks in first person. He speaks on behalf of God as if He is God. Well, the word, angel, in Hebrew just means messenger. This is a messenger of the Lord. Who else is a messenger of the Lord? Jesus Christ is the word of God.

Four times in this text: the angel of the Lord, angel of the Lord, angel of the Lord, angel of the Lord... Whenever that phrase is used with a definite article, this is the only angel, the primary angel of the Lord. This is a Christophany. This is Jesus Christ appearing. In verse 7, 9, 10, 11, it says, "The angel of the Lord."

It's Jesus Christ speaking to her. She knows exactly who's before her. She's in the presence of deity. That's why in verse 13, she says, "I have seen the Lord. The Lord has seen me. I'm spoken to the Lord." Jesus Christ meets her, and the angel of the Lord, Jesus, says to her, "Return to your mistress and submit to her."

Why is He doing that? He's doing that for two reasons. Number one, this is the only place she's going to have safety as a pregnant woman. Second of all, this son that you have, Ishmael, he's going to be a difficult son. He needs his dad. Every child needs their dad. You got to bring the child back to his daddy. Return and submit to Sarai. Promises her that much of the same blessing that was given to Abraham, that both offspring will be so great they can't be counted.

Verse 11, "The angel of the Lord said to her, 'Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction.'" Ishmael means God hears. God heard your pain, your affliction. Verse 12, "He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

Just as Abraham's offspring is promised suffering in Genesis 15, God says to Abraham, "Your children will suffer for 400 years." In the same way, he's saying Hagar's offspring will suffer. The hands of many will be against him and his hand will be against everyone. He's going to go his own way. A wild donkey is a metaphor for a proud individualist. There will be perpetual conflict in his life.

Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick starts the novel, the narrative, saying, "Call me Ishmael," same name. Call me a man who is alone, who is alienated from others. This isn't as much of a blessing as much of a prophecy. This is what's going to happen. Perhaps this is because of the family situation, because of the two wives situation where perhaps Ishmael didn't feel as if he was truly loved in the household, et cetera, because he didn't feel like he was the son of the promise, et cetera.

We know that he was going to live a very difficult life. We see descendants of Ishmael, not just physical descendants, but he has spiritual descendants just like Isaac has descendants, not just physical but spiritual. The Muslim people claim that God actually promised the land of Israel to Ishmael, and that the Jewish people stole it, and that the Bible is a big Jewish lie. That's why there's still struggle in the Middle East. It all stems from this.

If we ever have a picture of the longevity of sin, we see it here. This is what the text teaches us, that we are to look at our decisions not just from our perspective or perspective even of our lifetime, but generationally speaking, will this decision lead to blessing to people and will leave a legacy of blessing, leave a legacy of pain?

God continues to minister to Hagar. This is point three: redeemed mess and vision. God brings in redemption into a situation. Verse 13, "She called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, 'You are a God of seeing.'" She knows this is God who spoke to her, right? She calls on the name of the Lord who spoke to her through the angel of the Lord. That's how we know that this is Jesus. "'You are God of seeing,' for she said, 'Truly I have seen him who looks after me.'"

What floors Hagar more than anything isn't just the blessing or the promise. It's the fact that God sees, that God has seen this whole situation. He's seen every blow that Sarah has inflicted. He's seen every single blind eye that Abraham turned. He's seen every injustice. She's blown away that God cares for those who are outside this people, hears their cry, sees their tears.

She realizes that she was viewed as expendable. God views her as a daughter. He speaks over her, calls her by name. She's beloved by the Lord. She says, "You are God of seeing." What's fascinating is she is the only person, all of scripture, male or female, that gets the name God. She looks at him, and she said, "You are God El Roi. You are the God of seeing. You see me."

Abraham lost sight of God. Sarai lost sight of God. Hagar lost sight of God as well, but God did not lose sight of them. Even when they are faithless, He is faithful. God comes to them.

In Genesis 16:14, "Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi. It lies between Kadesh and Bered." That verse doesn't mean anything to us except we see the word, beer, there. Then we're like, beer, a well beer. Wow. That's amazing. It's not about beer, obviously.

There's an incredible theological significance in what's going on here. This is the well of the seeing God and et cetera. It's between Kadesh and Bered, Kadesh and Bered. Kadesh means holiness or holy. Bered means judgment. Between the holiness of God and the judgment of God is a well of a God who sees, a well of the living one who sees.

Hagar begins the journey to the wall, Shur. She ends up at the well. At the well is where she is met with her beloved. This isn't the biblical pattern that we see. The biblical pattern is every time a woman is at a well in scripture, in the stories, in the narratives, she encounters her beloved.

We see this with Rebekah. She was proposed to at a well. Rachel meets Jacob by a well. Zipporah meets Moses by a well. There's another story, of course, of Jesus Christ meeting a woman at the well, the Samaritan woman. He goes, and He meets with her. He asks her for some water. They have a conversation. Then finally, He says, "You know what? I don't need your physical water. I have spiritual water, water that wells up to eternal life. I am offering you a water that truly satisfies."

Then He explains to her who He is, that He is the Messiah. He explains to her that she's been living a life where she's been seeking waters of satisfaction in relationships with men, five husbands. She was living with a guy at the time that was not her husband.

He explains to her, "You're seeking something that can never be satisfied physically. You're seeking a spiritual satisfaction. You're seeking to be fully known and fully loved, that only God can do that."

We see Abraham, and Sarah, and Hagar... All of them were seeking this deep satisfaction. They couldn't find it. Finally, Hagar meets Jesus Christ at a well. She realizes, "You are God who sees everything. You still meet with me, and speak to me, and call me by name. You see everything," which sounds great when we do great things. How about when we don't?

It sounds great when we are sinned against. God, you see everything, but it doesn't sound great when we sin against others. Hagar realizes, "You see everything. You saw when I was being sinned against. You saw how I responded with sin against Sarah. You see everything, and you still call me by name?"

How can God do that? God can do that because He meets us at the intersection between two wells. He meets us at the well of grace between holiness and judgment. Where else do we see holiness and judgment coming together? We see at the cross of Jesus Christ. At the cross of Jesus Christ, we see the holiness of God poured out on his Son, in terms of wrath for taking our sin upon Himself. It's the holiness of God that leads to the judgment of our sin.

We see Jesus Christ forsaken from the Father's House, and we see that Jesus Christ goes. Though He is forsaken by the Father on the cross, He says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why was Jesus Christ forsaken on the cross? So that we would never have to be, so that we could be sought, seen, wooed, embraced by God, so that we could have a vision of God that satisfies us like nothing else.

St. Thomas Aquinas is called one of the top three Christian minds to have ever lived. Called the Doctor of the Church for centuries, wrote over 80 books, all massive. It was beginner's theology. It was about 3,500 pages. When he was writing his masterpiece, his magnum opus, writing his masterpiece, he had a vision of God in prayer. In that vision, God says, "You've been faithful. You've been faithful to me. What do you want?" All he said was, "I just want some more of God." Then he died not long after that.

After the vision, his stenographer with whom he wrote said, "Why did you stop writing?" He said, "After what I've seen, all that I have written is straw." He saw a vision from God. He understood who God is. He understood that God proves that He does care for us, that He does loves us, that He does want to bless us, and He proved it on the cross of Jesus Christ.

Hagar returns. How couldn't she? She got a new vision from God. Because of this new vision, she continues to obey the Lord. Abram changes as well. We see him finally taking responsibility. In this text, he took his son, and he names him. Verse 15, "Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram."

Abram repents of his sin. In 1 John 1:8 through 10, it says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

Do you have sins? Do I have sins? We do. We need to confess our sins, ask for forgiveness, repent of our sins, and believe that at the cross of Jesus Christ, our sins are paid for when the judgment of God is poured out on Jesus Christ. When we repent, God does forgive.

How do we know that Abraham repented? Because we see a pattern of changed life afterwards, that he continues to wait on God. He names his son, and he continues to raise his son. He loves his son. How do we know that Abraham loved Ishmael? Because later on, when God comes to him, he says, "Hey, I'm going to send you the son of the promise now, Isaac." Abraham says, "Could you make him the son of the promise? I really love Ishmael."

We see a change of heart in this man who finally takes responsibility for his actions. What we see at the end of the chapter is, and beginning of the next chapter, we see a gap of another 13 years. Now in these 13 years, yes, there was strife, and disagreement, and bitterness, and jealousy, and heartache. More than any of this, what we see is that Abraham continued to grow in his reliance and dependence on God. That's where true faith is grown in this area where we understand we could do nothing apart from Jesus Christ.

Every single one of us, we need to constantly reassert our dependence on God. God, I need you. God, I need a new vision, a fresh vision of who you are, a fresh vision of what you've called me to do. Give me the power of the Holy Spirit to do that, to live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for this text. We thank you for the honesty of the text and showing us an episode in Abraham's life where he did sin. There was a sin of passivity and not leading himself spiritually, not leading his wife spiritually, Lord.

For those of us men who are in this room, if we struggle with the sin of passivity, I pray today, give us the gift of repentance, that you make us a people who boldly lead in following you on a daily basis, lead ourselves, lead our wives, lead our children. Lord, continue to fill each one of us with the Holy Spirit so that we don't make decisions out of the flesh but make decisions out of the Holy Spirit and continue to bear the fruit of the Spirit. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting, I'm so glad you're here and we'd love to connect with you. We'll do that through the connection card, either a physical one or the worship guide in the back or the one in the app. Quick announcement for all the members or those becoming members today, we have a members meeting, quarterly members meeting today at 3:00 PM. So you can go have some brunch or lunch, take a nap and come back.

Tremendous planning in coming to the first service, very smart. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word? God, we thank you that you are a trustworthy God. Whatever you say, whatever you promise, you deliver upon. And we can build our lives upon this sheer foundation, upon this anchor for our souls. We thank you for the story of Abraham, we thank you for calling him. We thank you for making a covenant with him, showing us that you are a covenantal God, you are a God who promises to love and you make good on that promise no matter what.

And even when we fall, even when we are faithless, you still come, you pursue seeking to save the lost and make us a people who build our lives truly, practically, build our lives on the sure foundation of the gospel, that we can lean the whole weight of our existence upon this foundation, that we can practically make daily decisions based upon this truth, that you love us, we're called to be yours and that everything will work together for our good.

And remind us today that you are a God that doesn't just love us individually, you do, and you love us individually and personally, but you love us collectively, make us a people who are selfless, recognizing that God is patient and we are to endure evil and sin in this world because you were patient. You patiently wait, you are long suffering and waiting for all to repent.

Lord, bless our time in this holy word. We pray, encourage us where we need to be encouraged, convict us where we need to be convicted and do strengthen and activate our faith. And we pray this in Christ's holy name, amen. So we're going through a sermon series that we're calling Jesus in Genesis. It's season two, season one was 2016, you can find that online.

And what we're doing is we're looking at the first book, the book of beginnings and we are showing that Jesus Christ is on every single page, every single page, every single paragraph, every pericope, every single sentence is pointing to Jesus Christ. And the context of the story started with Genesis 12 where God calls a pagan, a Babylonian, Abraham from the Ur of the Chaldeans.

And he calls him to himself, starts a relationship with him, gives him the gift of faith because that's what faith is, it's a gift. And what we see is God is taking that gift, that dormant gift of faith and he is placing Abram in a position, Abram who then becomes Abraham, puts them in the position where he has to exercise his faith, he has to activate his faith.

Faith is kind of like a language, it's a way of articulating, communicating, understanding reality. If we haven't met, I'm originally from the Soviet Union. My family immigrated here in 1989. I was about six years old. So my first language, my native language is Russian. And I grew up speaking Russian at home. Well, if anyone that is an immigrant that comes here as a young age, what you know is your language is kitchen language.

It's what mom and dad speak in the kitchen, that's it. That's the level, that's the extent of your language. And all my education was in English, but I did have a love for Russian. So I did a study abroad when I was in my junior year in college, Study Abroad in Moscow. Now I'm thrown into Russia, I'm thrown into a place where I have to use my... I can't but use my... And Russia is very different from Europe.

In Europe, you go, you can get by on English, Russia wasn't like that back in 2004. Now on a daily basis, I'm in university level classes learning real Russian, using, forced to use my... And I remember coming home every single night and I remember being just brain dead, just absolutely exhausted because of just the using your brainpower all day. And by the end of the four months, I could truly hold my own where people didn't really understand that I didn't grow up in Russia.

Faith is kind of like that. Especially if you grew up in the faith, for many of us it's dormant. And what God does with Abraham, and he does the same thing with every single one of us. He puts us in a position where we can't but use our faith. We can't but activate our faith in order to understand all of reality. So in chapter 12, Abraham does leave everything and goes to Canaan, there's a famine.

He doesn't exercise his faith, doesn't stay there, instead goes to Egypt and then he's thrown into all kinds of temptation and goes into... He sins against his wife by basically prostituting her off in order to save his own skin. And then he repents, they come back and then chapter 13, we see his faith exercised where he looks at the land before them and he says to his nephew Lot, "Hey, there's too many of us. We're too rich. You go one way, I go the other."

Lot goes to Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham trusts God and he remains in the land of Canaan. Chapter 14, this is pastor Andy preached on this last week, we see that Lot is captured in war by four kings that come to war against the five kings, the coalition of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now we see Abraham's faith being exercised. He sees his nephew, his brother, in Hebrew words, kinsman, sees his brother being taken into captivity.

Does God tell him to act? God does not. But Abraham believed, God promised Abraham, "I'm going to give you a son, and through your son, I'm going to bless the nations." Abraham looked at himself, looked at his wife, doesn't have a son yet and he says, "Until I have a son, I am invincible. I am immortal. Saddle up your camels gentlemen," 318 trained men of war. And Abraham pulls a Liam Neeson where he makes a phone call.

And he says, "I have a set of certain skills I have accumulated over a very long career and it makes me a nightmare for anyone that comes against me and my family. I'm going to look for you, I'm going to find you, I'm going to kill you." Abraham does that, he acts upon his faith. And a lot of people look at scripture and they're like, "Oh, patriarchy. We got to dismantle the patriarchy."

We've got to dismantle the bad patriarchy, the sinful patriarchy, sinful masculinity, that which is toxic masculinity. There is a good masculinity, a godly masculinity that's consecrated to God that says, "I live for God and I live for legacy for generations." And that's what Abraham does. And God blesses him. He comes up with a strategy. He's going up against thousands of soldiers, waits until it's night and he divides his forces.

They come from two different sides at night, which is very disorienting to a military force and he wins. But the story doesn't end with Abraham being praised for his military IQ or for his courage, the story ends with Abraham professing faith in God, Melchizedek, a priest, a high priest, blessing God as well. And why is that important? It's because it wasn't Abraham. The power, the victory didn't come from Abraham, it came from God, but Abraham believed.

So we have this interplay from the beginning of scripture, that God is sovereign, God gives faith, but we have to work, we have to activate our faith. And it is a gamble. You're betting your life on the premise that God is, that his word is true and whatever he said will come true. And that's what Abraham does. And that's why he's called the father of the faithful and he exercise victorious faith in a hostile world.

Today, we're looking at Genesis chapter 15, and Genesis 15 is about this faith, but we see Abraham doubting. We see him vacillating, which usually happens after incredible spiritual victory. We see this all throughout scripture, incredible victory and then Satan comes to tempt. We see this with the prophets, we see this with Elijah where he has incredible victory over the profits of Baal. And then he doubts, he says, "God kill me. Why am I even alive?"

We see this with Jesus Christ. He gets baptized, the Holy Spirit descends upon him and then Jesus goes into the desert to be tempted by the evil. And so we see Satan coming to tempt Abraham away from God. This is one of the most important chapters in all of holy scripture. It's alluded to 14 times in the new testament. So would you look at the texts with me today? We are in Genesis chapter 15.

After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, "Fear not, Abraham. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great." But Abraham said, "Oh Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus." And Abraham said, "Behold, you've given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir?"

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, "This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir." And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." And he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.

And he said to him, "I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess." But he said, "Oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" And he said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon." And he brought him all these, cut them in half and laid each half over against the other but he did not cut the birds in half.

And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abraham drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham and behold dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." And when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed through these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, "To your offspring, I give this land, the river of Egypt to the great river to the river Euphrates the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaims, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame of our time, a promise given, a promise believed and a promise guaranteed. First, a promise given. After Abraham comes back from war God meets him again in this place of exhaustion, a place of doubt, he's searching and God says, "Fear not for I am your shield, your reward shall be very great." That's verse one.

The word of the Lord comes to God again. Was Abraham asking for the word, was he searching for the word? We're not told, but this shows us the pattern that God uses in order to speak to people, in order to initiate relationship, that God is the God who forges relationship with the people. He's the one that takes initiative. Adam and Eve sin, do they go seeking God? They do not. God goes and he says, "Adam, where are you?"

Noah, did Noah know that a flood was coming? No, God comes and he says, "Noah, I'm going to use you as an agent to save, to save humanity." Did Abraham know that God existed? No, he's an idolater, he was happy to be so. And God meets him and God calls him to relationship with himself. It's no different. It was like that in the year 2000 BC. It's like that in the year 2021 AD in Boston, Massachusetts.

It doesn't matter if God speaks through a vision, it doesn't matter if he speaks through a sermon out of the pages of scripture, out of conversations with friends, the effect is always the same, that God is the one who initiates the relationship and what's required is for us to trust and obey. God initiates, we need to respond. The first thing that God says, which is good. If you meet God, if you hear the word of God, God's in front of you, oh boy, it could go one of two ways.

If God met you right now, I came up to a guy today and I was like, "Hey, I know what you did last night." Just for fun, just to see the fear in his eyes. How do you know? Oh I know. If God meets you and God knows you, all of your sin, everything you've done and God meets you, it could go one of two ways. And that's why God says, "Fear not, fear not. Fear not, I'm not here to judge, I'm here to bolster your faith."

He says, "I am your shield. I am your very great reward. You will get a reward." Two beautiful images, the word shield is the same word that Melchizedek uses in chapter 14, verse 20, where he says that God gave them up, the enemies, into your hand as deliverance, a shield. That God is the one that shielded you, protected you in battle in the same way God is your shield. How does that apply to us today?

Well, we're not physical war, we're a spiritual war. If you are to understand reality in 2021, you need to know we are in a spiritual war. There is God, there is Satan. There are angels, there are demons. There is good, there is evil. There is truth, there are lies. Scripture talks about the fact that we do not wage war against physical, but we do against Satan, the demons, the principalities.

Satan doesn't want us to trust God, he doesn't want us to obey God, to honor and worship God. So we need a defender against an enemy that is greater than us, and that defender is our God. He's our protector, he's our shield. We need to be underneath it. Are you underneath the shield of God? Is God your shield? Or do you trust in yourself? Do you trust in your finances? Do you trust in your accomplishments so your career, your education?

Is God your shield from enemies greater than you can handle? And God says, "I am your shield, Abraham, fear not." And God sees the Abraham was a faithful soldier of the Lord and God wants to reward his service. He says, "Your reward will be great." Why is this important? Because Abraham just gave up a massive plunder. He goes, he conquers four kings and takes the plunder that they stole from the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And at that point, Abraham has a decision to make, what do I make with this loop? What do I make with this money? What do I do with these people? He could have kept it all for himself to enrich himself, but he understands that this is unseemly gain, this is sinful money. This is blood money. And he understand that the politics involved with the king of Sodom and Gomorrah is not going to just allow him to keep everything he had.

King of Sodom and Gomorrah comes and he says, "Hey, keep all the money. Give me the people." Well, what's the mindset? This is geopolitical strategy going on. And he says, "I need people. I need my soldiers back. You can keep the money. You give me my soldiers and then when you're asleep, I'm going to come at you with my soldiers." And Abraham says, "No, thank you." He has the wisdom of God to say, "No, thank you," to this unseemly gain. You keep everything. I never want you to say that, "I made Abraham rich."

He trusts in God. He gives up this unseemly, sinful reward and God says, "You, because you've done this, because you've said no to temptation. You've said no to an attempt." That's part of growing in the faith, activating the faith, saying no to temptation, saying no to cutting corners. And I was meditating on it last night. This wasn't even part of the sermon. And it's always dangerous when I go here, but it's fun. So I was wondering how the forbidden fruit tasted, that's what I was meditating on.

I wonder what it tasted like. And you know what? I think every single one of us knows what it tasted like. It was entrancing, it was euphoric. There was a rush of adrenaline, eyes opening. We've been a place like this. And Abraham, he does not do what Adam and Eve did, he does not give into the temptation. He shows that he's activating, exercising his faith. And God comes to him and says, "I will give you a great reward." But Abraham looks at his life and says, "Where's my reward? Where's my reward?"

And God emphasizes to him by even coming to him again, "I am your reward. I'm the greatest reward that there is." He's offering a friendship. They're having a conversation. It's a friendship. Obviously it's not a conversation between equals, he's God and Abraham's human. There's a great gulf between the infinite God and the wisp of human beings but God's stoops down, they have a conversation. This is what makes Christianity utterly unique.

Christianity doesn't just teach people about God or tenets about God or commandments from God. Christianity says it's not just about knowing about God, it's about knowing God, that you are not alone in the universe, that there is a God who created you and knows you better than you know yourself, and that's what God is offering. He's offering a relationship of love, of communication, of loyalty, of prosperity. This isn't offered in Islam, it's not offered in Buddhism or any other religion or philosophy.

All the others say you need to serve, you need to do something for God in order for God to accept you. You need to ingratiate yourself into relationship with him. And God comes, initiates the relationship, has a conversation and talks to Abraham. And Abraham feels so loved that he feels comfortable enough to talk back. Now, whenever anybody talks back in scripture, that's usually a bad sign.

When I tell my kids to do something, the very first thing out of their mouth is not the word, "Yes, daddy." I know I'm going to have to deal with some drama with their eyes. Okay, fine. No, it wasn't me, it was my sister. I didn't... she should clean. And so I'm like.... What's fascinating is that God engages and allows Abraham to have a conversation. In verse two, the verse begins with the word but, but...

So God's like, "I'm your shield, I'm your reward." And Abraham's like, "But, God, but." But Abraham said, "Oh Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless and the heir my house is Eliezer of Damascus." Abraham talks back, which is a sign that he is doubting. Now there's a difference between doubt and unbelief. There's a difference between doubt and unbelief. And the reason I say there's a difference is because how does he address God? Oh Lord God.

He doesn't just say Lord, he doesn't just say God, he says, "Oh Lord God." What he's saying is, "Oh, sovereign Lord, oh Lord Yahweh, you are preeminent. You are exalted. I know you're God and I know I'm not but I don't understand. I've got a question. You promised to bless me. I look at my life now, it doesn't look like blessing as I define it." Here's a difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt wants resolution, doubt draws near to God, doubt wrestles with God like Jacob wrestled with God. That's doubt.

Got questions, I know you've got answers. I trust you, you're Lord God, I don't understand but I know that I will once you help me. Unbelief says this, "You haven't given me what I want, you haven't given me my son, I'm leaving. You haven't blessed me as I define blessing, as I define the blessed life, I am leaving." You turn your back and you walk away. Abraham here doesn't act out of unbelievable but out of doubt. He's doubting, "Oh Lord God, what will you give me? Thanks for being my shield, thanks for being my reward, thanks for the reminder. But can I trust you?"

It's been years, perhaps decades since the initial promise in Genesis 12. So Abraham is facing the facts of reality. He's older, his wife is older, his wife is barren. God promised a son, he promised a child through Sarah. He sees the facts of reality, he interprets the facts of reality, but he also knows there's another fact, also fact of reality, it's not seen, it's the fact of God. Now through the fact of God, he interprets physical reality, interprets circumstances.

Verse three, and Abraham said, "Behold, you've given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir." Scripture doesn't come to us with the emotion of the text. That's now the Holy Spirit needs to bring that up. But I want you to go in that moment. I want you to look at Abraham who's been following God for decades. God, you promised a son, you promised an heir. And this phrase, I don't know about you, but it hits me in a powerful way because I've been a moments in my life where I have not received what I thought God was promising.

And he says, "You have given me no son." You take the word son out of there and you fill it in with something else. And that's the emotion that Abraham wrestling. God, I love you. I know you love me, but you have given me no, what is that? What's that for you? You have given me no spouse, you've given me no house. You have given me no wealth, perhaps it's health issues, you have given me no. I'll tell you that right there, that right there, this area of life, whenever you have questions like this, Satan comes in and he just presses into that pain.

And you need to fight that. You need to fight that the same way Abraham did. That God, you are my shield and God, you are my great reward and I know that you are trustworthy and you haven't given me this yet, perhaps because you will give it to me later, perhaps because it's just not the time yet because I'm not in a place where I can handle that level of blessing.

And I love how God is just patient with Abraham and allows Abraham to ask these questions. And the promise is given, what does Abraham do? And this appoint two, there's promise believed. And God comes to him and reiterates the promise. In verse four, behold, the word of the Lord came to him that this man shall not be your heir. He's not going to be your heir. Your very owned son shall be your heir.

The word behold here looks and draws you into the narrative. The narrative's telling you this is really, really important. You will get your son, I promise you. Verse five, and he brought him outside. Abraham's probably in his tent, God brings him outside, "Let's go for a walk." He says, "Look toward heaven, look toward heaven. Number the stars if you were able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

Usually this is how God deals with our doubts, deals with our questions, deals with our pain, deals with our suffering. He wants to draw our attention away from ourselves. Navel gazing never helps. Yes, internal work, yes, it's important. But nowhere in scripture does it say, "Okay, you need to look in deep within yourself, that's where all the answers are." That's false.

Whenever I start looking into myself, deep down inside I'm like, "Ah, I don't want to see any of that." God says, "Look away from yourself. Look away from your sin. Look away from your struggles. Look to the sky, look to the sky." And God brings it to look at the sky, first of all, to wow him. Wow, God created all of that. I can't believe that God who created all that is talking to me. And second of all, what God is saying is, "I want you to realize Abraham, that your life is not just about you. I'm going to send you a son and you will have so many offspring from this son, it's going to be more than the stars of heaven."

Is that metaphorical? Most likely if your number stars of heaven. What he's saying is, "Abraham, it's not about you. It's not about your blessed life here. It's about through you I'm going to bless many people. And that's the greatest blessing that I can give you to be useful to me, to live for my glory." And that's not necessarily going to make it comfortable here in this life. But from the perspective of eternity, you're going to look back and say, "Praise God. God, thank you for that gift of suffering. Thank you for the gift of struggle. Thank you for that gift of the season of doubt."

God speaks, he gives this gift of faith, he bolsters the gift of faith and he promises that Abraham will have offspring that number more than stars in the heaven. He's not just talking about Jewish people. He's not just talking about Jewish people. This is really important. And people like, "I thought Abraham was Jewish." Was he? Was Abraham Jewish? He was not. He was a pagan from Babylon.

He becomes Jewish, we find out later through his greatest... I submit to you the greatest act of faith he ever committed, it was circumcising himself with a flint knife, greatest act ever. He becomes Jewish by faith. And this is how God actually from the beginning of Abraham, this is how God works in the world. By faith, we become children of God, not from our genealogy, not from our ethnicity, not from our parents' religion. We become children of God by believing in God, by trusting in God.

This is why Galatians 3:29 says, if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. And that's why I think it's so important to understand that's probably why God's sovereignly brought us into the temple of Beth Sholom, praise God, just to remind us that's where it all started. It all started with Abraham, but you've got to keep going. You've got to read the sequel.

I had a Jewish roommate who's like, "I believe in everything except not the sequel. I don't like the sequel." But I'm like, "The story continues, the sequel's so much better. It's so good." So it starts with Abraham, Abraham believes and God offers that entrance to the family through faith. God speaks, Abraham responds in verse six. And this is the most important verse, probably in the old testament because we see imputed righteousness, justification by grace, through faith in the old testament.

Saint Paul, we see this in Romans, we see this in Galatians at the most critical junctures of his theology of justification by grace through faith, he points to this verse. And he believed, Abraham believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. He didn't just believe the word of God, he believed the God of the word. God, you speak, I believe. I believe not just in what you said, but I believe you. I believe you, I know you.

And it says he counted it to him as righteousness. He believes, he trusts him. He lives accordingly and he believes. A lot of people are trying to incorporate the philosophies of the world into our faith. For example, scientific rationalism says I don't believe until I see, I need to see then I'll believe. And this isn't how God works, God says you will see once you believe. First believe, first believe. This is the most important presupposition of our life. Is there a God and can I trust him? And Abraham says yes.

And God promises to him that you will be made righteous. This is what the phrase, he counted it to him as righteousness, he counted to him as righteousness. This is language of justification by grace through faith. Abraham, you're not righteous. You have sinned, you will continue to sin. But you trust in God. You are building your life on the foundation that is God, you are justified by grace through faith. This is second Corinthians 5:22.

It says he, Jesus Christ, who knew no sin became sin on the cross, when he took the penalty for our sin upon himself. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. God is saying, "Now you're mine, now you're covered by the righteousness of the one who is to come." The Lord made a promise to Abraham that you will have a son, not just a son, but a great host of descendants. Abraham believes this despite his old age, himself, his wife and the Lord considered him righteous because he believed, because he was willing to build his life on the foundation that is God.

I wrote this in my newsletter, but one of the most mind blowing things I've ever seen is I was walking down the street, visiting my parents in Jamestown, Rhode Island, walking down the street, I'm looking at this massive house, I'm looking at this huge house. And I look and I can see through the first floor, there was no basement, there was no foundation. The house was just lifted up, it was hoisted up.

And what they were doing, is they were replacing the old foundation that was crumbling and then they were rebuilding a brand new foundation, the hoist up the house, take out the old foundation and rebuild a new foundation. And that's what God is doing with Abraham. And Abraham and then from here begins to build his whole life on this new foundation. And we see this same language in Hebrews 11:8 through 16, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

He went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of the promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him, with the same promise for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. He says, "In this world, I'd rather live intense in this world on a foundation that is sure, sure in this world and sure in the next that God is a builder, that God is the designer."

Verse 11, by faith Sarah received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having knowledge that they were strangers and exiles on the earth for people who speak thus, make it clear that they're seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God as he prepared for them a city. What he's saying here is that Abraham was saved and he's saying that we are today. Abraham believed and the old testament saints believed that God will send the Messiah who will die for their sins, atone for their sins as a physical bodily sacrifice, pouring out his blood to atone for the sins of everybody.

Abraham looks forward, we look back. Abraham waited for the first coming of Christ, we wait for the second coming of Christ and we have a decision to make every day. Will we, we know the promises of God in the holy scriptures, will we believe in the same way that Abraham believed? If not, what do you believe? If not, what are you building your life on? What is the foundation for your life? Who do you trust to tell you the truth about life? Who do you lean the fullness of your existence upon?

Is it God and his word or is it yourself? Or is it people? Those are the options. Is it God or is it myself or is it people? From people, authority, this person's in authority. This person must know more than I know. I need to take this person's word as truth, maybe. I believe in total pravity, I believe every single person that speaks whatever the words are is tainted with lies. I was talking to brother after church and he's like, "Great sermon." I'm like, "Well, all of God sermons great."

And he's like, "Yeah, I pay more attention to the word of God in your sermon than I do your words, no offense." And I was like, "That's right, that's the way to listen." What's God's word say? What's Pastor Jan say in the stuff he's thought of, thought through from his notes? And then when he goes off, it's fun, but you never know what you're going to get, shouldn't expect.

So other people, can I trust people? Kind of. Show me the evidence, show me the data. And the data is probably biased because who's paying your paycheck. So it's either God, either people or is it yourself? I'm going to trust in my reason, I'm going to trust in my faculties of reasoning. And this is why a lot of people don't believe in God's word as the inerrant word of God. Why do I believe that God's word is the inerrant word of God? Because God's word tells me it's the inerrant word of God.

And people are like, "That's circular reasoning." I was like, "How do you know that's circular reasoning?" And they're like, "My reason tells me that's circular reasoning." That's circular reasoning. It's either you believes... Either it's just you in your mind, circular reasoning, or you need a word from the outside. And is that word from the outside coming from people or is that word coming from God? Abraham trusted God.

And point three, a promise guarantee. And I love this part of the text, verse seven. And he said to him, "I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess." The Lord comes, he reminds him who I am and our relationship, what's he doing here? This is a typical language that begins in making ancient covenant. Let me remind you who you are, let me remind you of who I am.

And this is the same brief prologue that proceeds when God makes a covenant with his people on Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. What's God doing here? He's making a covenant with Abraham. And we think of God making covenant with his people and when we think of that, we think of God, Moses, Mount Sinai, the 10 commandments making the covenant, but that covenant just came to serve the original covenant, and the original covenant is this one.

Look at Exodus 2:23, 24. During those many days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God and God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew. So the Mosaic covenant, the covenant gave through Moses is just given to serve the original covenant.

Exodus 6: 2 through 4, it says the same thing. God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob as God almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also establish my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, land in which they lived as sojourners again, bringing in Abraham." So the covenant Sinai isn't a different covenant, it's simply renewal. It's an elaboration, it's an amplification.

God then amplifies the covenant again by giving David a covenant. Second Samuel 7, where he says, "I will send a king who will sit on this throne, the Davidic throne forever." And Psalm 72 written by Solomon said that this is going to be the Messiah, all the nations will be blessed through him. So that original covenant, then we have it reiterated over and over and over finally fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So when Christ is born, we see the same language used in Zechariah's song, the Benedictus in Luke 1:72, 73, to show the mercy promise to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father, Abraham, to grant us.

Mary in the Magnificat says the same thing in verses 54, 55, Luke 1, he has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers to Abraham and to his offspring forever. And I bring all that to say this, that all of this is interconnected, that the whole history of scriptures, one meta-narrative, a meta-narrative is God created everything perfectly, we rebelled against him. God is a loving God who does not let us go, but provides for a way for his justice to be satisfied and for his love to be extended to us, and he does this through the gospel.

And where do we see the gospel? In verse eight. And he said, "Oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it or this land? How shall I know that you will fulfill your promise?" What he's saying, again we see the doubt. He's wrestling with God, "God, are you going to keep your word? God, can I trust you? And what happens if I screw up?" Abraham's absolutely honest. He knows he's a sinner. He knows sometimes when temptation comes, he wins, sometimes he loses. God, if we do make a covenant, if you'd make this promise, what if I screw up? What if I sin? What if I transgressed? What if I break it? What happens then?

So God continues, verse nine, and he said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove and a young pigeon." And he brought him all these, cut them in half and laid each half over against the other. And he did not cut the birds in half and when the birds of prey came down the carcasses, Abraham drove them away. What's going on here?

Three animals that he slaughters, cuts them in half and the birds he didn't cut in half and most likely kills them as well. What's going on here? What we see is what happened from the very beginning. God said, "Adam and Eve, if you sin, on the day that you sin, you will die." Because that's the penalty for sinning against an eternal, infinite, glorious holy God, they sinned. Did they die?

In a sense, they died spiritually. But did they die physically? No, because God was gracious. In order to forego the wrath that they deserved to be poured out upon them for death, what does God do? God clothes them with what? With animal skins. Where'd he get the animal skins? Gods slaughters animals because the penalty for death is sin. And there is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood as Hebrews 9 says, that's Adam and Eve.

And we see the same thing with Noah. Noah gets off the ark with the animals and what happens is God says time for sacrifice, time for a new covenant. And this is what Abraham does, is he prepares the animals properly, implying that he understood what's about to come. And then we see birds, what kind of birds? Predatory birds. We see vultures coming in and you say, "What's going on here?"

And he's knocking them off, they want to eat the carcasses. What's going on here? This is a symbol. Scripture says the birds, some birds in scripture are a sign of demonic activity. Jesus does this in the parable of the sower. The sower goes and sows seeds and then one of the seeds is eaten by the bird. So you see the animal striving, fighting against the covenant, fighting against the covenant even being made.

You see this is later on with the cross of Jesus Christ. We see the struggle. We see the enemy at work. We see the darkness in the world. A practical application here is whenever you make a covenant with God, there will always be temptation. There will always be a war. Tell us about anyone that gets baptized. This next week is going to be rough, I'm telling you. You just need to know this.

Anyone that gets married I tell them, "Look, you made a covenant with God and with one another. God wants to bless you and protect you. The enemy wants to do everything that he possibly can to break the covenant." And that's what's going on here and we see Abraham fighting. In verse 12, the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Now Abraham's going to sleep, this is reminiscent of God's way of bringing in Adam.

Adam, when God gives Adam a wife, he puts him to sleep in order to create Eve before the covenant of marriage. Verse 13, then the Lord said to Abraham, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400 years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

Abraham, you wanted to know the future? You wanted to know about your kids? Well, I'm going to tell you. You wanted to know, they're going to suffer, they're going to suffer for 400 years." Why did God tell him? Because he asked. And then God will lead them out, the promise is made, he will lead them out with gifts, great possessions, this is what the Egyptians loading them down with gifts just to get them out.

Verse 15, "As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in a good old age and they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Not yet Abraham. You're not going to get the land yet. There's people in this land and I love them too. And the crest of their sin has not yet come, the sin hasn't crested yet. The pinnacle isn't there yet, but I'm going to be patient with them, giving them opportunities to repent, giving them opportunities to turn to God."

And God's tolerating evil here, tolerating sin here. A lot of people ask if there's a good God in the world, why is there so much sin and evil? Because God is long suffering and he's patient. He wants people to repent and turn from sin. Because if they don't, what's the alternative? It's eternity apart from God in a place called hell. So God's waiting and he's waiting. He waited with the Amorites.

Same thing with Noah. He goes to Noah says, "Flood is coming, build an ark." How long does it take Noah to build the ark? 120 years. For 120 years, Noah with his life is proclaiming, "Repent or shall perish." Waiting and waiting and waiting. And the Amorites, if you study what they did, they were wicked, wicked people with all kinds of sexual deviancy, and didn't have abortion back then.

So what they did was they gave birth to the kids and then was sacrificed them to the red hot arms of Moloch. And God just waited, and he just waited, he just waited and until the time has come and he's waiting now, he's waiting now. A lot of people were like, "Where's God? I sinned and there's no punishment. I sin and there's no punishment." God's just waiting, he's waiting for you, repent, turn from sin to turn to him.

Verse 17, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot, and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. So just in your mind's eye, go here. He cuts these three animals in half, they're dead. He makes a little pathway in between, there's blood in the middle of the path soaked with blood. The vultures are here, he's knocking them all off. Then he falls asleep and it says a smoking fire pot, flaming torch passed through.

What's going on here? Back then, it wasn't a written culture so they didn't write contracts. So this is how they made contracts. So the contract, the memory of the contract is emblazoned on your mind because you were there, you saw it, it was gory and you smelled it and this is what's going on. You're making a colony, you're a making a contract with someone else. And you say, "May this, what happened to these animals, may this happen to me if I do not keep my end of the bargain."

And you walk through and the other person will do the same, "May this, may I be quartered like this, may I be slaughtered like this if I do not keep my end of the bargain." They would walk through. And what you're doing is it's a self curse. It's a self maledictory. It's an oath of self destruction. If I won't make good on my promise, kill me. And I will do everything to make good on the promise, even if it kills me.

And that's why in the Hebrew to make a covenant, the phrase is actually to cut a covenant. You're cutting through these animals. And that's a covenant with equals. Usually covenants were made when a conquering king would come into a people and he would not walk through animals. It was assumed that this king is going to keep his end of the bargain. He would make his people, the people that he had just conquered, walk through, walk through the blood, get blood on their sandals, smell everything just to remind them, "If you will be loyal to me, I'll be loyal to you. If you won't, I will slaughter you like we slaughtered these animals."

So what's going on? And we see the fire, the pot and the flaming torch walk through, and that's a sign of God's presence. And we see that in Hebrews 6 and Joshua 24 brings in the same interpretation. God walks through then Abraham follows. No he doesn't. Does Abraham follow? No, he doesn't. What's Abraham doing? Abraham is sleeping. What's going on here? This is one of the clearest pictures of the gospel in the old testament right there from the beginning.

God says, "I will be responsible for both sides of the covenant. If I commit a sin, if I'm not faithful to you, may this happen to me. May I die, may I be cursed. And if you don't keep your end of the bargain by believing and trusting in me, may I still be slaughtered. I'm taking the penalty that you deserve upon my self. I'll pay the penalty for your covenant breaking out, I'll pay the price that you were supposed to pay."

The animals are three years old, Jesus was crucified after a three-year long ministry. The animals are split in two so was the veil inside the temple as Jesus took his final breath. Abraham was in a deep sleep as every single one of us is in a deep, dreadful sleep of sin. When Jesus died, a dreadful darkness came upon the land, as Abraham's asleep, the same thing is happening. Why did Jesus have to die?

Did Jesus disobey the covenant? Did he not keep his end of the bargain? No, he was dying because we did not keep our end of the bargain. Every single one of us, every single one of us has sinned against God, rebelled against God. We're all idolaters, we're all law and commandment breakers. So Jesus Christ goes to the cross because God promised Abraham, "I made a covenant with you," and Jesus makes good on that covenant on the cross of Jesus Christ so that when anyone could... you just got to repent of your sin.

God forgive me for my... please forgive me. God, forgive me. And God does because Jesus has paid for your sin. All you need to do is ask God, please forgive me. I forgot my rings today, I usually wear my rings and my wife was mad at me this morning for forgetting my rings. And I texted her, "Can you bring my rings?" She doesn't like when I preach without my rings. She was on her way. So I forgot my rings.

So this is what I always do, whenever I'm home and take my rings off. I always do that because I type faster without my rings, I do everything around the house better. So I put my rings in the same spot every single week. My daughters play the violin and they got this little triangle thing, what's that called? The metronome, the metronome. We got the little metronome, it goes tick-tock, it's so annoying. That tick-tock, it's not as annoying as my kid's violin playing. No, I love it. It's a wonderful...

It goes tick-tock, tick-tock. And I'm going to look for my rings the other day and I only find one. I said, "Where's my other ring?" Searching the whole house. Oh, by the way, backstory, I wear two rings. The United States, you wear in your right hand, in Russia you wear in your left hand. I'm doubly married to one wife. So I'm looking at my second ring, I can't find my second ring. And then I my youngest daughter, "Did you see my second ring?" And she says, "No."

And I say, "Are you sure?" And my wife said, "I saw you..." Tremendous trick if you're a parent, "I saw you." And all of a sudden, she starts balling and she starts screaming out, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me," in Russian, which is so much cuter. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Friends, she took the ring and she put it in this little gap in the metronome and it fit right in perfectly.

And I go to the metronome and it's in there. I don't know how long we're going to get it out, but it's in there and we finally did get it out. But what hit me was... and I laughed at the whole... what hit me was the consecration of heart, just the contrition of heart. Please forgive me, please. I'm like, "Of course, of course." God is a good father and he's provided for a way for our sins to be forgiven. We just need to ask."

This is the beauty of the gospel, this is the beauty of God's word, this is the beauty of Christianity, you just need to ask. God has provided for everything. And it ends with Genesis 15:18 through 21. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, "To your offspring I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaims, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, the Jebusites."

And what's going on here is the land, the borders of this land are far greater than Israel ever possessed even under David and Solomon. And what God is saying is, "I'm giving the promised land, offering the promised land to everybody. Anybody who would just believe in Jesus Christ." Jesus offers us not just a relationship, but a friendship. James 2:23 said, and the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. That's what God is offering us, stays offering us forgiveness, blessing friendship, a relationship.

And today is the first Sunday of the month. And every single first Sunday of the month, what we do is celebrate Holy communion. And Holy communion is given to us as a gift to remind ourselves, to stir our memory of what God did. That God is a great God who created us, we fell, we sinned and he did everything that was necessary for us to be forgiven and he does that through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.

And Jesus on the cross, what did he do? He made a new covenant. And it wasn't the blood of animals that was spilled, it was his own blood. And before we go into Holy communion, I'll just read this text, Matthew 26:26 through 29 and look at the last supper. Now, as they were eating, God took bread and after blessing it, he broke it and he gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat, this is my body." And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, "Drink of it all of you for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom." Would you please pray with me over Holy communion? Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a loving God, a covenant keeping God, we thank you that you welcome us into this new covenant thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus, we thank you that you were slaughtered on the cross, quartered on the cross so that we would not have to be.

You did that for us in our place. We thank you that you never sinned, that you never rebelled against a Holy God and then you present your righteousness as a gift to us taking our sin upon yourself. I pray, Lord, if there's anyone who's not yet a Christian here today, call them to yourself, awaken them from the slumber in the same way that you awakened Abraham and welcome them into the fold.

Bless our time in the Holy communion. We repent of sin, we repent of self-reliance and of idolatry and we repent of faithlessness, of disbelief and we come to you. We bring to you our full heart, consecrated and contrite, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. For whom is Holy communion? It's for anyone who is repenting of sin and turns to God. So if you're not a Christian, if you have not repented of sin, if you have not humbled yourself before God, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, instead, meditate on what you've heard.

If you are a Christian living in known sin, that you have not repented of, we also ask that you refrain from this part of this service. If you are repentant of sin and coming to God in humility, you're welcome to partake. The way that we do it is you open the top, grab the little piece of bread, then open the bottom tab and get the cup. And the night that Jesus Christ betrayed, he took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me."

And proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This is the cup of the new covenant of my blood poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink and do this in remembrance of me." Jesus, we thank you for loving us so much that you gave yourself. Heavenly father, we thank you that you love us so much that you gave us your son. And Holy Spirit, we thank you that you love us so much that you've sealed our hearts with your presence. Pray you continue to use us, empower us and thank you for building this church, continue to build it even more. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

So, let me pray over the preaching of the Word, and we'll get started.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for who you are in your majesty and your holiness, and your spender. We praise you that you are not a God who is far off but you are a personal God. Lord, we are weak, we are humble, we are sinful beings, yet you want to be in a relationship with us. Lord, we praise you that we are, like Abraham, we are recipients of your Word and all its power. And Lord, I pray that it would just fill our minds with wonder, with joy about who you are. And we would be inspired to trust it as we hear preach today. Lord, but we know that only you can make it alive for us in our hearts, in our minds, and we pray the Holy Spirit do that now as we dig in to your Word. I pray, feed us well today. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

While many of you, some of you who are here regularly, you might notice this is the first time I'm wearing glasses up here. So, it's my public appearance, and I'm actually wearing them. They're not just a prop for my little illustration in a second. Actually, struggle to see the text when I read up here often, and it's good to actually see some faces. I just have a slight astigmatism that makes my vision weak. So, I'm wearing these glasses today and I'm the type of person that I have good vision. I can walk around, I can function without glasses. But when I wear them, and look at things, especially like the flowers on the trees that are blooming right now, the flowers in the gardens; just... I didn't know it was blurry, all of a sudden become super clear. And I can see details that I can't see.

And I'm amazed. I'm brought to awe, I'm brought to wonder. And I want to know more, and often this is part of my daily worship, just thinking, "Wow, think of the God who made that." And this Jesus and Genesis series, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make a lot of connections. We're in the first book of the Bible, and 2000 years before Christ's life on earth. And we're taking you through Genesis and pointing out chapter after chapter, all the shadows, the types, the symbols that direct us to Jesus Christ this early in God's special revelation to us.

And we don't want... Sometimes you hear Pastor Jan, Pastor Shane preach, and I'm just in awe about the connections, the faithful connections that they make. I'm just more impressed with them than I am at the Word itself. And, we don't want you to just come here and being in awe. We don't want you coming just being, saying, "Wow, that's impressive." We want you to be in awe of the verses, of their relevance, of their purity, of their truthfulness. And just look at them with a different reverence.

There's a famous church document, The West Minister Larger catechism, question four. It says, "How doth it appear that the scriptures are the Word of God?" And it says, "The scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God by their majesty and purity, by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation. But the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with the scriptures in the heart of man is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very Word of God."

So, just it's really powerful to read one piece of scripture, especially a New Testament piece of scripture to see how relevant it is to your life. But even more powerful to see how relevant all of scripture is, just points to the redemptive story that God created man in his image, to walk in perfect relationship with him as his son. And, as his sons and daughters, and man sins, and at the heart of this story, begin with Genesis 3. The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the seed of the serpent.

God gives us the beginning of his rescue story. And here in the past couple weeks we started Genesis 12. The seed gets more clear. Who is God going to work through? Abram. And how does God tell Abram that he is going to work through him? He gives him his holy Word. So, we're trying to bring you to the point of wonder and awe of this holy God who has preserved this Bible, 66 books, written by 40 authors over approximately 1500 years. He's written this story for us to know a way back to him through faith in Jesus Christ. And it's when we see the unity, when we see the consent of all the parts, the majesty of it, the purity; we should we brought to wonder at the power of God to use man to write these scriptures and to preserve them more perfectly than any book in ancient history.

And, we should be amazed that God is a personal and loving God. We should be brought to wonder in this series, and when you're brought to wonder you see that this, the Bible, is not just a book. It's God himself talking to us. A lot of people say, "If I were like Abram and God spoke to me audible, like he did in chapter 12 when he first told him to go. If God appeared to me like he did Abram, then I would be a Christian. Then, I would walk more faithfully."

But no, we want to show you that no, the scriptures themselves, reveal themselves to be the very Word of God. We should approach them with reverence, with awe. And not fluctuate between criticism and skepticism and weighing it against the whims and thoughts of the world. And, we just want to inspire you to that, and when we talk about these things we're engaging with exactly what Abram himself had to deal with.

Abram received a special word from God, and he had to decide, "Am I going to trust it?" In Genesis 12, God says to him, excuse me. Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred, and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I'll make you a great nation, and I'll bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

God targets Abram graciously. There's nothing special in him compared to any other man. And he gives him his word, and the story that we're following today is how is God going to save humanity, bring peace between himself and humanity through this man? And there's really exciting parts, he goes right away and he goes to the Promise Land, travels hundreds of miles for Chapter 12. Next, Chapter 13, and by the end of Chapter 12 he goes down to Egypt when he first faces hardship. But last chapter we see him, he repents of going to Egypt, not trusting God to bless him.

He repents of selling his wife to the Pharaoh and profiting from it. And we see him now trusting God at his Word. So today, we're talking about Abram and his peak, in a moment of peak faith. He fluctuates, and the comfort in that is that all of us do that. That points us to God's grace towards us and our sins, but Abram fluctuates. We're at a peak moment, and we look at the story today from Genesis 14, and it gives us a pattern of what does active faith look like?

When we have full confidence in who God is, and the truthfulness of his Word, how should we act? So, we have Abram him, and pulling of strength. And this is good for a lot of people. I speak, I do the baptism seminars. My God's grace, we have new Christians coming to Mosaic constantly and asking, "I'm a Christian, now what? What do I do? How do I engage the world? How do I engage my non-believing friends, my believing friends, my family? How do I apply the Word of God in my life? In a meaningful way, how can I be of service?"

And if a lot of you, who are seasoned believers, you're constantly wrestling with this. In this new phase of life, how do I do it? Or I feel like God called me to this, but I'm just drained. I am dying. How do I know if I'm in God's will for my life right now? Where do I invest the scripture of guidance for how Christians should spend their time when they turn their faith to action?

So, I'm going to talk about Abram. We're going to learn lessons when he was at a high point in his faith. We're going to learn faith leads to action, action leads to refreshment, and refreshment leads to faith. Now, I'm going to begin faith leads to action. The first 12 verses, they set the context for Abram's actions. So, I'm just going to do my best to get through these names, and talk you through the context.

So, in the days of Amraphel, this is the Word of our Lord. In the days of Amraphel, King of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goyim, these kings made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). So, these are kings of city states essentially. Kings, might not be huge nations, and there's four kings aligned with Chedorlaomer. He's the big boy. He's basically the ruler of all of these kings. There's four kinds lined up against five. The five are from the area of Cannon, where Abram lives.

So, when they had squabbles they'd make coalitions, they'd make alliances, and this is what's happening right now. And all these joined forces, the five kings in the Valley of Siddim (that is the Salt Sea). The five kings closest to Abram, they meet and they say, "In the 12th year, they had served Chedorlaomer. But in the 13th year they rebelled."

So, they meet. They say, "We're going to band together and protest giving tribute to Chedorlaomer this year. And if he comes our way, we're going to fight together." So, this is what they planned. They're attempting Chedorlaomer to come, and he does. Verses five through seven illustrate the power of Chedorlaomer as he travels almost 1,000 miles from where Southwest Iran is today to this land, to these vassal states of his.

In the 14th year Chedorlaomer, these verses reveal his power. In the 14th year, Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came at the feet of the Rephaites and Ashteroth Karnaim, Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim and the Horites in their hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran in the boarder of the wilderness. They turn back and came to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and defeated all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who were dwelling in Hazezon Tamar.

So, this king is sweeping west and sweeping south to the land of Khanim. And then, the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zora) went out and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim. So, the five kings near Abram go out to battle with Chedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goyim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar. Four kings against five. Now, the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled some fell into them, and the rest fled to the hill country.

The kings, the five kings, on their home land, they go to war against these four kings. We don't really know how even the numbers were, but they fall into these bitumen pits. Some translations say slime pits, but they're really like tar pits. It's petroleum slime that oozes up from the ground, and it's sticky and it's flammable. So, it's kind of confusing. They're on their home ground. One translation says they went down into the slime pit, so maybe they didn't fight the enemy, they just let them pass. And in verse 11 the enemy... so the enemy took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their provisions and went their way. They also took Lot, the son of Abram's brother, who was dwelling in Sodom and his possessions and went their way.

So, regardless of what happens in these pits, Chedorlaomer wins. The point to note is they also took Lot. Lot, Abram's nephew, remember? Abram doesn't have a son, he has this nephew right now. He's a knuckle head, he's a thorn in his side. He's always making bad choices. Abram gave Lot the chance when their flocks got too big in their family to take them to his choice of land. Lot chooses land that looks more beautiful, more fertile, in the direction of Sodom. And Sodom, known for its sinfulness, and Lot just goes in that direction.

Here we have Lot going further to Sodom. He gets caught up in this war. He gets pulled, gets captured as a prisoner of war. This is where Abram gets involved. I want to focus faith and action, what does Abram do?

The one who had escaped came. Then, one who had escaped came and told Abram, the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks at Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshkol and Aner, these were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive he led forth his trained men born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night. He and his servants and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus.

Then, he brought back all the possessions and also brought back his kinsmen, Lot, with his possessions and the women and the people and just went reveal in Abram's face. So, in the past, he had God's Word, he faced the challenge in the famine, he went to Egypt. This time he has God's Word. What does God's Word say in Chapter 12? God's going to curse those who curse him, and he knows that. He's now in a phase where he's trusting God's Word. He trust that it'll come true in physical reality. And he takes 318 men. Apparently he himself had... There was a nomad essentially. He had a large household and 318 men of war, and immediately goes to war.

God gives him an incredible victory. All the build up was to say, "Look at this opposition that is heading Abram's way. This is an insurmountable enemy, force." And Abram takes 318 men and beats him. Clearly, this is God's Word reigning true in Abraham's life, and Abram trusting him. So, he might have stumbled in Egypt but he's now taking God's Word as face value and just what faith he has. Remember, he's 75 years old. I don't know if you know any 75 year olds willing to mount a camel in the middle of the night to go and pursue of an army. But that's next level.

My dad, he's mid 60s and he set up a scaffolding on top of a picnic table last week to fix his shed roof. And I thought that was hardcore. Abram's a next level man with faith. We should look at him in awe in this story. We see he has this special Word of God, and he acts, but really our situation is no different. We have seen the Old Testament prophecies pointing to Christ come true. We've seen, we have the revealed will of God in its entirety, so how should we act? And this is a big question. Where do we start? Not every Christian has to ride off and fight wars. So, where do we start? How does Abram decide to put his faith into action?

Now, this is... It's when his family gets involved, verse 14. When Abram heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth and his trained men. This kinsmen word could often translated brother. Lot's his nephew but there's this element that he calls Lot his brother a couple of time in Genesis, and he's also, scripture, the New Testament tells us, Lot is righteous. Though he's a knuckle head, by grace he seems to have been saved. Christ's righteousness was accounted to him it seems from scripture.

But Abram, he sees this force gathering, the news of war was probably spreading in the land. And he's deliberate about when he gets involved, and that's Christians. How do we know in our position as God's people, how do we know how to engage with the world around us? And it's family. This text guides us to family. There's a lot of wisdom here, not getting involved in something not related to you, your family and those closest to you. And there's this element, this ambiguous element where it's spiritual family and biological with Lot.

Proverbs 26:17 captures this. Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears. This is the ultimate Brookline, Massachusetts verse. Maybe the Hebrew word for dog is fur baby. Like everybody in Brookline knows you do not grab a dog passing by by its ears. You're just asking for trouble, and in Brookline that parent of that fur baby, you'll have to face their wrath.

But, as Christians, do we know not to meddle in matters and affairs that do not impact us? Our family, our close loved ones. Can everyone here say they don't sprinkle on their social media posts just to stir the pot? I don't think so. A lot of Christians go looking for wars. They go looking for activity. They busy themselves with conferences, with studies on topics that are no where near close to them at the cost of addressing matters that are right next to them.

So, Abram, this is a righteous cause. This is his family member. So, he's acting naturally going to save his family member. And, a lot of people, it's hard. Actually engaging family is really difficult. We'd prefer not to touch the sore spots, poke the bruises because it can open up a whole plethora of challenges. But that's the element. That's why we need to be discerning about what we involve ourselves in. Abram, he goes to rescue his kinsmen. He gets involved in a really long trek north, probably a couple hundred miles. He captures, he wins the battle. He gets the former prison, gets Lot, gets the former prisons. The booty of war, and now, he has the added responsibility of stewarding all of that well in a way that glorifies God.

So, as Christians, when we just begin with family, scripture says to love God. Christ says love God, love your neighbor. There's this element where we focus on being right with God. We wake up every day and we acknowledge God, thank you for being gracious to me and my sin. And we fix that vertical relationship so that on a horizontal level we can bless, we can love, truly love the people closest to us. And there's this element that it's neighbor, it's close biologically. People close physically, relationally, and this is just counterintuitive to our society right now. There's expectation that we have to involve ourselves in issues.

If something happens in the middle of Arkansas, we are expected to make a post. We're expected to give a statement. We're expected to care, show our simply, our empathy for those who face injustice. And of course, we hate injustice. God defines that for us. He gives us the absolute truth to actually provide a basis for calling something that. But we can't busy ourselves. We have to be discerning and allow margin for the way that we spend our time.

This modern approach of being involved with every issue, making a statement, "here's what I have to think". It's overwhelming and we miss just the test that God places right before us, particularly with our family members. And so, who are family members? It's your church, it's your biological family, in Mosaic it's your community group. How often are you in the week spending time thinking about the great issues of society when you know a brother or sister in Christ said at prayer time that they're struggling this week. Well, just imagine a community, a church, imagine how we can truly be salt, be light, be a city on a hill, focused on the people around us.

And just this kind of church, this kind of family mindset, a lot of people think in the Old Testament it was Israel. Come and see this righteous nation with God's law. And then, Jesus gives us the great commission, "Go and make disciples of all nations in the New Commandment." Yes, we want to make disciples, but they're always tethered to a local church under the care and accountability of a local church. They're not lone rangers going out evangelizing people, converting them and not making sure they're in a local church.

In the New Testament church we care about our brothers and sisters. John 13 says, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." And James 5 shows us the importance of pursuing brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the hardest part about going to church. You have a brother or sister who's in sin, who is not admitting it, and they don't want your care, they don't want your love and you are called to go and pursue them. How many of us easily just pivot away from those situations? James says, "My brothers, if anyone among you wonders from the truth, then someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins."

So, how do you put your faith into action? Are you busying yourself with fights that are not your own? Are you engaging in fruitless dialogue on social media? Does that ever accomplish anything? Or are you spending time building up the brothers and sisters closest next to you? Are you engaging your believing and non-believing family members and neighbors that God has put you next to? You are the person, though you might feel unequipped, you know their situation best. You can relate to their situation best. God has equipped you to pursue them like Abram pursued Lot.

So, we need to be faithful with the big and small tasks that God naturally, organically places in our lives. Just it honors God. It's a means to following Christ's basic commands and with my next point I want to make the claim, in turning our faith into action, stretching ourselves for his glory in these situations, we're positioning ourselves to be fed more by Christ. So, action leads to refreshment.

There's some biblical, paradoxical about this. Acts 23:5 taps into it. "In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord, Jesus Christ, how he himself said it is more blessed to give than to receive." We don't have a tank where we serve and our tank gets empty. There's something different in that we can serve and still have a full tank. A lot of Christians don't believe this. The message that we're hearing a lot right now is self care. Care for yourself so that you can care for others. Christ says lose yourself for my sake, and that's the means to find yourself.

And I see this in our text. We stretch ourselves, our faith is like a muscle. We stretch and extend ourselves, just like when we stretch and push a muscle. The more we do it, the more we enjoy it. We like that burn. We like the benefit that we gain and derive. We can, we're capable to do more activity. That's what faith is like.

In verse 17 in our passage, after Abram's return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kinds who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King's Valley) and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed him and said, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand." So, Melchizedek, we could spend weeks talking about Melchizedek.

His name means king of righteousness. His name is king of Salem, probably king of what was then Jerusalem, king of peace. He serves bread and wine. He blesses Abram. He blesses God. He is this, but he comes out of nowhere and scripture leads us to believe that since Noah, all of man, when God wiped of man from the earth with the flood, we have this impression that there are not many true God worshipers. And yet, this Melchizedek arises. There's a lot of debate, as if Jesus Christ himself, a Christophany, is this a type of Christ? You can talk about Melchizedek forever.

But what I want to focus on is that how he is a type of Christ in a way that Christ, as our high priest meets us and cares for us, and sends his spirit to us in times of need when we are stretching ourselves for him. So, what does Melchizedek do? He meets Abram after Abram's contending for the faith, he's contending for righteousness in pursuing his captured nephew from this evil king. Melchizedek provides refreshment.

Why? One, because he knows that Abram is weary and is spent from going on this task. Scripture shows that when servants of the Lord contend for the faith, believers can expect the Lord to meet them there. Think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego on the fiery furnace. Think about Daniel in the lion's den. Christ comforted them with his presence. I think those were a Christophany. This is a little different.

Charles Spurgion once said about Christ meeting us, "As in the building of Jerusalem in trouble less times", he's referring to in Nehemiah, "they had the sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. So our Lord, Jesus Christ, while he teaches us to use the sword, takes care to edify and build us up in the faith at the same time. He understands that warriors require strengthening meat and that especially when they're under stern conflict they need extraordinary comforts that their souls may be stayed and refreshed. The martyrs protest that they've never had such communion with God anywhere as among the caverns of the hills or the swamps of the woods, to which they were exiled for Christ. And that even on the rock, an extremity of torture or even upon the grit iron in the heat of the fire. Even there, the sweet presence of Christ has been overpoweringly delightful to them so that they almost lost the sense of pain.

Spend your strength for God, brother, for when fainting seems inevitable then shall come such a sweet renewing of your strength that like an eagle you shall stretch your wings and mount aloft to commune with God in solitary joys. Christ, your Melchizedek will meet you in your conflicts if he never did before." This is just radical stuff, just thinking it's when we stretch and extend ourselves that we will be fed. A lot of us, a lot of Christians get fear that stepping out in faith to support a brother and sister, acting on a faith, acting on a calling that just seems insurmountable, they just fear that physical exhaustion. Or they do step out initially and it's challenging, it is draining, and upon that first feel of challenge, they fall back to the crutches that they leaned on. That the old man weaned on.

The habits, the patterns, the self soothing, the escape. For a lot of Christians, I think a lot of us are really, if we're honest with ourselves, we're living vacation to vacation to vacation to vacation. Those of us who can afford to live here in a place like Boston, take those comforts, take those patterns that you've grown up with, those leisurely activities out of your life. And would you trust God to satisfy you? Now, it's hard, but scripture says he's going to show up. Melchizedek does that for Abram after this battle.

The New Testament taps into this. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. The Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction. It's more theologically correct to not say... I don't want anyone to think that Christ is just going to keep popping up in your life physically. The Holy Spirit, John 14:26, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

So, we have the Holy Spirit. Christ has ascended and his spirit pours out upon us, and he comforts us just on the field of battle. And furthermore, it's not just comfort, it's not just tender soothing love sometimes. Sometimes it is a hard poke. It's a strength and it's a fixing, a recalibration that Christ's presence offers to us. And just in our text, it's subtle, verse 20 B says, "And Abram, he meets Melchizedek, receives his blessing and Abram gave him a tenth of everything." Hebrews 7:4 comments on this. "See how great this man was to whom Abram, the patriarch, gave a tenth of the spoils."

Verse 7 says, Hebrews 7:7, "It is beyond dispute that the inferior, Abram, is blessed by the superior." So, Abram, he's this king, this victorious king that just captured this enemy, who's just bossed everybody in the region around for the past decade. Abram is met by Melchizedek and what does he do? He offers a tithe. This isn't tribute. Abram's the victor. Abram sees something in the regal character, the awesomeness of this priest king, and he worships. He's brought to a point of humility. Maybe this is God offering when we're victorious, there's that tendency when we stretch ourselves when we're in faith, there's that tendency to get pride, to well up, to get over confident, to think that we won the victory.

Or sometimes when we're not so victorious, when we're still in the battle, and it's challenging and it feels like we're losing; bitterness, anger, entitlement towards God starts growing. And what is the best way to counter that? It is God's presence himself. So, we have... there's nothing that humbles us more, comforts us and humbles us more, than the presence of God himself. And the Holy Spirit, when he comes to us, he gives us these little corrections.

I want to hold a grudge against my wife about something, thinking probably she's being childish right now. But, what does the spirit do in such a moment? He reminds me, just little reminders, "You think she's childish? Look at you before your Heavenly Father, look at the way you complain, look at the way that you gripe." He has been gracious to you, you be gracious to her. Pursue reconciliation for my glory.

And the Lord meets us. He doesn't just comfort us. He corrects us, and this is like Isaiah, this sort of shock present that we fill in the presence of God. Woe is me, for I am lost. I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. We get the sense Abram's experiencing something like that. He is taken to worship, and taken to service to his God, when he... this replenishment rekindles his faith.

My last point, replenishment leads to faith. And the king of Sodom said to Abram, "Give me the persons, but take the good for yourself." But Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I've lifted my hand to the Lord, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours. Less you should say I have made Abram rich. I'll take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me. But Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre take their share."

Abram, he receives the replenishment of the Word, and he's prepared to step forward in faith once again. He's prepared to turn his faith into action, and he has to be swift because what happens? The king of Sodom, this guy who just lost the war, Abram rescued him. He tells him, he's this complete opposite of Melchizedek. He says, "Take the spoil. I want my people." Abram, and this is just what happens, why we need the Lord to meet us in moments because when we often have victory for the sake of God's kingdom, who sweeps in? Satan himself.

And a lot of the commentators, they say this is Abram's ultimate battle in this chapter of faith. The physical war, sometimes physical battles for God are easier to face than the spiritual battles. Abram's confronted unexpectedly by the enemy to trust God. And what does he do? He's saying he's caught between choosing taking God's word, his promise of blessing and we're taking this short cut. He rightly deserves this booty, the riches that he recovers from the war. And he chooses God, the presence of Melchizedek says he raises his hand. He's making a pledge. "I've lifted my hand to the Lord, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours. Less you should say I made Abram rich."

And so, this is Abram. Whatever you thought of him in Chapter 12, when in his first trial he went to Egypt and sold his wife, prostituted her to Pharaoh to protect himself. Abram is at... You see the growth here. You see he's willing to forgo really all the pleasure that these riches had to offer. This temporal pleasure to trust that God would fulfill his greater promises.

Furthermore, he sees through that this treasure will not satisfy him. It won't deliver like this Lord can, this great God who has graciously revealed himself to him and wants a personal relationship. Abram's holding on to God's promises, though he doesn't see them coming through in fruition right there and then, he trust that God will deliver. So, that's... And he's more prepared because he doesn't stumble. When we lose these battles, when we stumble, it's almost like we have to regain that strength again. We have to regain that cycle, that trust in God.

Abram's at a point of strength, he's getting gains. And we can have that in our Christian life. Do you believe that? Do you pursue that? Or are you just constantly just going to those little sources that are going to soothe you, give you temporary satisfaction? Abram places his trust, his satisfaction in God himself and ultimately scripture tells us he finds it in eternity. And by our faith in Christ we, like Abram, have access to the Promise Land. We, by faith, have access to the great treasure, a home in Christ's mansions.

And when we're facing this question, am I going to trust God, his promises? Am I going to be honored even to receive his word? And serve him? Or am I going to take the ways of the world? We have to follow our father Abram. Christ himself, his ministry is taking off, Satan approaches him and he takes him to a mountain and he says, "I'll offer all of this to you, the kingdoms and cities of this world, and all that they have if you follow me." Christ said no. What did Christ do in his life? He left his heavenly perfection of Father, Son and Spirit, begotten from the beginning, existed in the trinity. The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. He left a perfect wealth, perfect joy, and splendor and he went to the depths of hell to redeem us.

And we, like Christ, we, like our father Abram, we need to make the same choices. We need to choose God, choose his riches, choose his presence over the world's. Will you do that? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are gracious to us. Often we don't deserve your presence. We don't deserve you meeting us in the moment, for we are wondering, we are straying, we are turning away from you intentionally. But Lord, you pursue us, and you give us the chance to turn away, to turn and repent, turn towards you and faith time and time again. I pray Lord, help us to stop the cycle. Help us to stop the cycle, help us to go on an upward trajectory of gains and the faith. However, we just feel the burn and attention of the moment we don't turn to comforts. We don't turn to the things that the world and say, no. First, we turn to you and are fed, and satisfied. Lord, help us to stay faithful until you return. We get to enjoy you in all of your perfect glory. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Good morning, welcome to Mosaic church. Somebody this week, started on Instagram, a Mosaic memes page. I don't know who it was, but there's some quality content in there. My favorite thus far, was a meme of Bernie Sanders, where he says, "And now I am asking you again, please fill out the connection card. That's me every Sunday." So if you are new, welcome, please fill out the connection card. Either online or the physical one you got in the back. With that said, would you please pray with me with preaching of God's Word.

God what a great God you are. You created us for the paradise of your presence, that was the greatest thing in Eden. As a fact that Adam and Eve could walk with you in the cool of the day. Lord, and we gave that up. We believed the lies of the evil one who said we could have paradise without the presence of God. We wanted to banish you God from the garden for which you created us. Instead, we got banished. And we thank you Lord, that you didn't leave us in the state of banishment, or state of ostracism. Instead, you sent us your Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus, you came and you've lived and you called us, you called your disciples and you're calling us. Hey, follow me. You're calling us into that blessed paradise of your presence to walk with you. And we fall short of that Lord so you fulfilled the walk perfectly, and you went to the cross and you died and you were buried. And you rose on the third day in order to offer us redemption, offer us healing, offer us restoration, offer us reconciliation. We thank you for that, Lord.

And we thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us today. We feel your presence. We want more of your Lord, we want more of your power. We want more of your presence in our lives. So we welcome you here now. Holy Spirit, take the Holy Scriptures and ignite our hearts, make our hearts burn with the scriptures. We love you and we pray that you bless our time with the holy word. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is lift up your eyes. We're going through a sermon series in the book of Genesis. Jesus in Genesis, we're calling it because all the scriptures point to Jesus Christ. He is the word at the center of the word. He's the living word at the center of the written word, which is also living. And we last week looked at Genesis 12. Today we're in Genesis 13. And we have a text where we see that two people are making choices. So much in life, so much of what we do is based on choices that we make. And the more gravity a choice has the more intentionality we need to have and coming to that decision and making that choice.

When you figure out what you're having for lunch, there's not much gravitas there. The answer is always Los Amigos. That's always the answer. When you're deciding where to plant your life, that's a more weighty choice. When you're deciding whom to partner with, who will be your spouse, with whom will you fulfill the calling that God is calling you to, there's more gravity therefore, there must be more intentionality. And it really comes down to calling, what is God calling us to? And that's what we see in Genesis 12. With the story of Abram, who then becomes Abraham. It's a story of calling. What is God calling me to? That's the question I need to answer.

And then when I know, when God has made that clear, I have a choice to make, will I fulfill the calling of God? And what's most important from this text, that we're going to look at today in Genesis 13. It's not what a person chooses, it's how a person chooses and why a person chooses. What's the end goal? This is what reveals who we are inside, like nothing else reveals our priorities, our desires, what we want most in life, what we value most in life.

We see two men, two very different choices, two very different outcomes. One man is blessed. His children are blessed. He leaves a legacy of blessing. The other person is cursed. His family is cursed. He leaves a legacy of curse. The context is about 2000 years before Jesus Christ, so 4000 years removed from us. Jesus saves a Babylonia named Abraham. And he calls him to himself, to his mission, to a promised land. God promises I will bless you, and I will make you a blessing. And from you will come one who will bless all the nations talking about Jesus Christ.

So God calls from Ur of the Chaldean to Haran. He goes to Haran and then to Canaan. And when he goes to Canaan, we read about this last week. In Canaan, he sets up an altar. He sets up a church. This is a place that we will worship God. Abraham said, me and my family, everyone around me, my friends, we're going to worship God in this godless pagan place, and nothing's going to stop us. And then something did. There was a famine in the land. What happened is, Abraham started losing money. Abraham's prosperity started waning. Abraham's stock portfolio was in the red completely.

And he decided I need to leave this place of calling, I need to go to Egypt. He goes to Egypt and he knows he's going to get killed because apparently his wife who's 65, his wife or sister, whatever that was, she apparently was really good looking. And then Abraham knew that my wife is going to get taken from me, I'm going to get killed. So he concocts this plan that he's going to sell Pharaoh, his wife. Basically, pimps her up, basically prostitutes his wife so that she can save him. We see all of that. And before Pharaoh consummated the marriage, before all that God intervenes and saves him from this mess. And then this is where we are in the text today. Would you look at the text with me Genesis 13.

So Abraham went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had and Lot with him into the Negeb. Now Abraham was very rich in livestock and silver and in gold. And he journeyed on from the Negeb, as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abraham called upon the name of the Lord. And Lot who went with Abraham also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together. For their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together.

And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abraham's livestock and herdsmen of Lot's livestock. And at that time, the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land. Then Abraham said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me. And between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsman.

Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus, they separated from each other.

Abraham settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the Valley, and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord. And the Lord said to Abraham, after Lot had separated from him, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I will give it to you."

So Abraham moved his tent, and came and settled by the Oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord. This is the reading of God's holy and air infallible, authoritative word may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The four points we're going to look at today to frame up our time. First, choose to repentance and worship, choose to resolve conflict, choose God over prosperity, and choose to walk with the Lord. Choices that lead to blessing. First, choose repentance and worship.

Look at verse one. And Abraham went up from Egypt. It's the language in Scripture, not just of movement, it's also the language of spiritual movement. Chapter 12 it says he went down to Egypt. Chapter 13:1 he's coming up. So God is lifting him up. And then the text says he and His wife, what did he tell Pharaoh? So Pharaoh that's my sister. And then God rebukes Abraham through Pharaoh speaks through Pharaoh and says, "How could you lie to me? You're supposed to be a man who knows God." So now Abraham, he feels conviction of the Holy Spirit. He knows he sinned, he and his wife. And by God's grace, God gives them the gift of repentance, rekindles his faith, and by God's grace, Sarah forgives him.

And God keeps Abraham and Sarah together because God is a God who cares about covenant marriage. So we see a man who's changed, he changes directions. And that's what repentance is. Repentance isn't just feeling bad about your sin or the mistakes you've made. Repentance is actually making a change in life, a direction change. And he leaves Egypt behind goes up back to Faith back to obedience, back to rich relationship with God. And we also see in verse one, that Lot went with him.

In Genesis 12, what happens is God tells Abraham, you need to leave your family. Leave everything behind, because your family are pagans, and they're going to keep you from the Lord. And this guy, Lot his nephew, he says, "Abraham, I'm going to come with you, because I heard that God's going to bless you. And I want to ride the coattails, so to speak of your blessing." And Abraham disobeys God by taking Lot. This is something that the text doesn't give a direct commentary on but what we can discern from the text.

So Lot was with him, he was with him in Egypt now he's with him again. Verse two. Now, Abraham was very rich in livestock and silver, and gold. So he had livestock, he had silver, he had gold, but he got more from Pharaoh. So he commits a sin and still from that sin, there's a windfall, and he gets to keep that windfall. And you say, "how does that work? I thought, if I sin, God punishes me. If I do righteous things, God blesses me. Well, that's not the economy of Scripture. The economy of scripture doesn't work like that, because the economy of scripture includes a thing called grace. And what Grace says is that God is much more gracious, much more loving, much more generous with us than we deserve.

We don't deserve his blessings. And here, we still see that God treats him with grace. Verse three, and he journeyed on from the Negeb, as far as Bethel, to a place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and AI, to the place where he made an altar at the first. And you see in the Scripture, this emphasis at the beginning. This is where he started his spiritual journey. He came to the land of the promise, the promised land in Canaan, and he built an altar, a place where people could worship God. This is where God met him at the first and there Abraham called upon the name of the Lord.

He eventually returns to this place where he started signaling that he returns to a life of loving God, a life of faith where God is now a priority again. And there's so many lessons here for us. There're ebbs and flows in the Christian life, you know this, I know this. There're times in your life where you feel God is in the room, that God's voice is pulsating in your heart. And you just know, you know that God is, you know that God has a plan for your life, you want to obey. And then there're times that, it says if you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death I don't feel God. There's a dryness, there're weariness there.

And Abraham, what does Abraham do when he felt that weariness? He goes back to where he had met God, I don't know about you. But there're places in my life where I know that God met me. And every once in a while, I got to go there. I think of this retreat center in Ashford, Connecticut. I grew up in a Russian Baptist household. And this is where all the youth events happened. And it's like, this is a place where you know that the Lord moves partially because so many people prayed over that place, it was a holy place. And every once in a while, you get to go back to places like that, in your life where God meets you.

So now God gives him a restored relationship. He sees again, he's regained spiritual sight. And now there's again language of this altar. And let me just pause here and mention the altar. I mentioned this last week and now it's in the text over and over and over. An altar in the Hebrew, if you just do the linguistic analysis, but also the theology behind it, it's a place where you go to meet God. It's a place where you go to worship God. It's the place where you go to bring sacrifices to God. It's a place you go to hear from his word and sync to him and pray to him. And have fellowship with him to tell God your sins and receive repentance from God.

It's place where people who messed up their lives can come and confess their sins and find reconciliation with God and find restoration. And this is how God works. And in the Old Testament people who know God love God, know his word, they build altars. In places of godlessness and paganism. And we see the same thing happen in the New Testament, where the apostles go and they make disciples of all nations by planting altars or churches. And this is where church is. The church is an altar. It's a place where we go and we meet God.

And this is crucial for every Christian to understand. That when you come to know the Lord, when you have your sins forgiven, God calls you into a community of faith. He doesn't call you to be out on your own, he calls you into a body of believers, so that you become a member of that body of believers. And I love this altar, I love Mosaic. I love that we are in a place of godlessness and paganism, where very few people know the Lord. And you're here you're serving, you're listening, you're giving and praise God for that.

And this is what the text emphasizes. The importance of the altar in our spiritual lives. It should be a priority in our lives. We should make our decisions around the church that we will be a part of, not as just a secondary decision. So that's where the text emphasizes. That's where we start that Abraham has reconciled with God and then Abraham as he's worshiping God. He realizes I need to be reconciled with my nephew Lot. I realize there's sin between us, there's conflict between us. So this is point two. Choose to resolve conflict. Verse five. And Lot who went with Abram also had flocks and herds and tents. So that the land could not support both of them dwelling together. For their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. For there was strife between the herdsmen of Abrams livestock, and the herdsmen of Lots livestock. And at that time, the Canaanites and the Perizzites were dwelling in the land.

So God blessed Abram, and just by virtue of Lot being next to Abram, Lot gets blessed as well in his own right. He's sharing the blessing that the Lord has bestowed on Abraham, and that blessing becomes a point of strife in their relationship. They had flocks and the flocks became too large to occupy the same space in the central plateau of Canaan. They're semi nomads coming into foreign land, they don't own any of the land. So they just try to go where they're allowed to go. And what happens is, they start competing with one another. They're family, Uncle Abraham, nephew Lot, huge age difference in an honor shame society, where the younger is supposed to honor the older, and now they're competing.

And Lot knows that he's been blessed because of Abraham, because of God is making Abraham a conduit of blessing and Lot is still competing with his uncle. First thing I just want to point out is, sometimes, when we ask for God's blessings, in particular with prosperity, the reason why we don't receive prosperity when we ask for is because we're just not ready for it. Our character is not ready for it. This is partially why God allows Abraham to go down into Egypt. He allows Abraham sin and folly to be exposed to himself of how dependent he must be on God. God allows that to happen. And then he allows him to come back travel hundreds of miles, meditating on the fact that I'm such a wicked sinner. That I'm so selfish. I love myself more than my wife. I love myself more than God and what he's called me to.

And God restores him gives the gift's repentance, and then he comes back and blesses him. And we see with Lot, his character hasn't caught up to the prosperity that God has sent him. So what does Abraham do? So this is really important to emphasize. Lot should not have been competing with his uncle. Lot should have gone to Abraham and say, Hey, man, I don't know what our herdsmen are doing. You know what, I'll just back off a little bit or let's share, let's come to an agreement, something needs to happen. The younger one does not initiate, he lets the conflict fester. So who initiates the process of reconciliations? It's Abraham.

Verse eight. Abraham said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me, between your herdsmen and my herdsmen for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand then I will go to the right, if you take the right hand then I will go to the left. This is basically saying you choose and I get the leftovers. And this is absolutely unexpected in this culture of honor, where you must honor your elder, you must honor your family, who's older. It's counter to every customer of that day. Abram was older, he's richer. Abram has received a direct promise from the Lord. And Abraham is the first.

So what this is showing is Abraham came back from Egypt a changed man. He's more generous, he's wiser, he's more noble. And he comes to the situation says there's conflict, and he thinks about himself third. First he thinks about God. Does it honor God when there's strife between brothers and sisters? No, it does not. So he thinks about Lot second, you know what, how am I going to handle this strife? I want to be generous to my nephew. And he thinks about himself third. And when you do that, guess who thinks about your needs? When you put God first, the Kingdom of God first, the calling of God first and others second, you put yourself third, who cares about your needs is God.

So he comes to Lot and he says, "Hey, man, we're kinsmen." And the word if you've probably got a footnote in your Bible, it says, "We're brothers." And this by the way, this isn't the word that you use for uncle and nephew relationship. He's saying, We're literally brothers. He's bringing himself down to the level of his nephew. We're brothers. I've got nephews, I love those guys. We've wrestled sometimes. Every once in a while when we wrestle, I pretend we're equal. I pretend we're equal. And after a while, I stop pretending when the second one jumps on. When the second one jumps on, I just stop pretending. Abraham is doing this, he's like I'm coming down to your level. And this shows incredible work of God in his heart.

The scripture talks about strife in a Christian community in 1 Corinthians 6. And Abraham was doing what St. Paul said to do in 1 Corinthians 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, St. Paul is addressing Christians who did business together. And one of the Christians shafted the other Christian. Just stole from him, ripped him off. Promised the service or product, charge him twice as much and took twice as long. And so the other guy wants to sue this guy for finances, right? That's the issue. Church is church, business is business.

And God goes to this guy, the guy who has been, who's at a loss, who's been injured financially, and God says to that guy, Hey, why not be wronged? Why not be wronged? Do you believe that God is sovereign? Do you believe that God is judge? Why are you suing that guy? Why not be wrong? Why not rather be cheated than bring disrespect upon the name of the Lord. And that's exactly what it is. It's disrespect on the name of the Lord. When we think Yeah, love God, love your neighbor, except when it comes to push them to shove. Yeah, love your brother, love your sister, except when it comes to business and money. No, true love comes especially in that place of conflict.

So this is what Abraham chooses. He's like, fine, I'll take a financial loss. You can make more money than I'll make as long as I don't disrespect the Lord. My relationship with you, my peace with you, my peace with God is infinitely more important. In chapter 12, Abraham risked everything to obey God, time passes, he loses his faith. And then he sins himself by becoming more selfish. Lot here and chapter 13, Abraham's faith has recovered, and he lets Lot makes the first choice.

Do you not think that Abraham already knew the character of his nephew? Of course, he did. Of course, he did. He knows his nephew is a scoundrel. He knows he's going to choose the best one. But Abraham is showing his faith and action. He says, You know what? Fine. God's with me. God loves me. God promised to bless me. And whatever you decide, God is going to superimpose by his sovereign will a situation where I will still be blessed. And Lot should have said, You're my uncle. He should have said, I've heard the promise you decide for us. So his modesty shows a deeper sin and that sin is selfishness. It's greed. He's opportunistic. He's a financial opportunity. He prioritizes self interest. Lot chooses what's best for Lot and let's see what happens.

And this is point three choose God over prosperity, meaning don't do what Lot did. Verse 10. And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere, like the Garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. In parentheses, just a little note. So both are standing at Bethel, which is about 3000 feet above sea level, and Lot looks and he sees the magnificent Green luscious Valley that's east to South East. He could see the green from a distance. He saw the green. And then there's a phrase that just brought in like the Garden of the Lord.

He lifts up his eyes and he sees a land that's like the Garden of the Lord. What's the garden the Lord? It's Eden. He sees something that looks like Eden and he lifts up his eyes. And whenever scripture talks about lifting up your eyes, it's not just talking about physical eyes. It talks about the eyes of the flesh or the eyes of the heart, it's talking about desire. Scripture talks about lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, the pride of life. There's a sense where we follow our eyes, when we love what we see and our hearts follow what we see.

And he sees paradise. And his soul is tugging him at paradise. And this is deep down inside every single one of us, we want paradise. We want to recreate paradise, a place with this perfect rest of perfect beauty, perfect acceptance. And this is what he's longing for. Every single person on earth is looking for heaven. We're looking for paradise. We're trying to get back to Eden. We're trying to get to the place of perfect satisfaction, perfect joy, perfect love, perfect acceptance. And every single one of us we have an idea of what it is. We have this idea. And it usually has to do with real estate. There is such a thing as Zillow, there is, that's a thing. That's a thing, where just for fun, you go on Zillow, and like, Hmm, what could I afford in Wyoming? What could I afford in Idaho? Coeur d'Alene it's calling my name. What could I afford?

I can afford acres. There's this idea, it has to do with real estate partially because we want to create a home. Like there's an idea of a forever home, we have that idea. That's a thing. You have this. I remember going to Arizona, Scottsdale Arizona with my brother in law, he's a builder is connected with a builder. And we got to tour this house that's getting built in a mountain. It's been carved in a mountain.

And they're given us a tour and we go to the bathroom, there's a literal gold tub. Wow. And the guy's like, this is just one of the 14 bathrooms or whatever, it was just something absurd. And you're like, just pulling. This is the paradise on earth, we want to create paradise on earth. The problem is, when we try to create paradise on earth without God, when we try to create heaven on earth without God, there's no such thing as heaven without God. The without God turns anything into hell. And this is what Lot is wrestling with. He sees this fake version of the garden. You could put this into the language of Genesis 3:6 where Eve is tempted by Satan and then she looked and she saw that the fruit was good.

And translate that with Lot. When Lot saw that the land east of the Jordan was good for food, and that it was delight to the eyes and that it was to be desired to get back to the garden of God. So he moved there and he ate. By the way, just to set the context, Lot knew that God spoke to Abraham. Lot knew about the call on Abram. This is why Lot came with Abram. Abram you're going to be blessed I want to be next to you. I want to get some of that even if I get leftovers.

He knew about the call of God. He knew about the mission. He knew about the plan. He blatantly chooses to live outside of it. Calling something that isn't the Garden of the Lord, the Garden of the Lord. He chooses the fertile plain of Sodom, the beautiful farmland prime real estate, and he leaves behind Abram. He leaves behind the altars. He leaves behind covenant community.

Verse 11. So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley and Lot journeyed East thus they separated from each other. Abraham settled in the land of Canaan while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners. He goes further east. What's fascinating is, it doesn't say before this decision, Hey, Abraham, maybe we should pray. Hey, let's go to the altar. Let's think about it. Let's meditate together. Let's ask God, what God wants or where does God want me to live. And he also doesn't visit the town. He doesn't visit the town to see if there's any righteous people.

And what's fascinating is there weren't any righteous people, because before God brings down fire and brimstone, sulphur upon Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness has just reached the level that God couldn't tolerate anymore. There weren't 10 righteous people. So meaning before, and the only ones that got saved was Lot's family. So meaning before he made this decision, he didn't ask, Hey, is there a church there? It's a prime real estate, but is there a church there? Who's my wife going to be friends with? Because whoever my wife is friends with, they're going to shape her. Where are my daughters, he had two daughters, where are they going to go to school? Are they going to have Christian friends? Are they going to do that?

Perhaps Lot thought, online church is enough for me and my family. Before we move somewhere else, we look for churches so that we know when we get there, this is the wise thing to do. We're going to be in a church, a physical church, with physical people. Because those physical people are going to shape me, they're going to shape my family, they're going to shape my children. You don't say before I go somewhere else, I'm going ... I don't need the church. I'll just watch Mosaic online. I'll just watch another church online. We don't do that.

However, with this pandemic, some of us have gotten to a point where online church is enough. Online church isn't enough when your daughter's go to the high school of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the mascot is a literal Satan. We need the church physical Christians in our life. Worshiping online is great, singing online is great, we did it for a long time. It's great. It's not as good. Seeing Vlad on the drums come on, bro. Holy Spirit just every time with his little drumsticks. Every time is online, not as good. Not as good. That's my brother by the way, the drummer Vlad. Ladies and gentlemen, that's my bro and everyone else. Everyone else I can just do that to my brother.

It's like I'm telling you, have you ever been to Hibachi? On my birthday we went to Osaka Hibachi. Hibachi is awesome. They're cooking right in front of you. You feel, like you see the joy the people. I'm going to eat, I'm going to eat, it's awesome. There's a show and there's a fire and then you eat and you eat together. Yeah, the food's good by yourself but it's so much better together. It's awesome. Online church is like getting Hibachi grub hub. It's not as good.

And I say this with all love. I understand that some people just can't go, I'm just setting us up. New Hampshire lifted the mask mandates, what's going to happen to Massachusetts lifts the mask mandates. Are we going to keep at this, that's what I'm saying. I'm planting that seed, that's how I lead the church. I plant and then I water, and then I pray for the Holy Spirit to bring fruit. Amen. Hallelujah.

The scripture doesn't say that Lot made a bad choice. It doesn't say that. But it does bring in this comment about the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's foreshadowing the destruction, foreshadowing that this was a foolish decision. Sodom was prosperous but it was wicked and wicked in the real sense. We're going to stick at home from school centers wicked strong family, awesome. We wicked awesome. No, and then we call cows holy, holy cow. No, God is holy cows are delicious. Awesome is awesome and wicked is wicked. They were wicked people. They hated God. They hated any idea of the principles of God over their lives.

So Lot had a decision to make. There's two men, there's two choices, there's two different sets of priorities, there's two different ways of looking at life. And we see one man is wise and one man is foolish. One acted like a believing man should and one act like believing men never should. And that's because Lot prioritized his god over God. He prioritized his god and his god was money. That was his god, that was his idol and that's how he made decisions.

Lot saw the fertile plain, he saw the grass, he saw how fat his sheep will get. He saw how fat his cattle will get and they will be grass fed, which is the best way to do it. And I understand there's debate there. So Abraham settles in Canaan. Canaan is the promised land and Lot moves out of the promised land. And he sacrifices his relationship with Abram, he sacrifices his relationship with the covenant community, he sacrifices his relationship with God for grass. Because he asked where will I be most materially fruitful, not where will I be most spiritually fruitful? That's really the difference. That's what we got to ask, where will I be more spiritually full? Meaning, where can I be used by God more than anyplace else? Where can I serve more than anywhere? This is why it's so important to gather together as a church.

You're like, I can get the content online. Yeah, you can. Are there people that you can serve there? Like really serve hug, kiss, minister to, pray over, lay hands upon. He prioritized the riches that he could see over the riches that he could not because he was blinded by what the world could offer. That's why in Genesis 3:10 it says, This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse 13. Again, that emphasizes the men of Sodom are wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

St. Paul, in 2 Timothy talks about this guy named Demas who was one of his disciples. He poured into them, he taught him. And then St. Paul writes that Demas has deserted me having loved this present world. He doesn't say that Demas got this present world, he says he loved this present world. He doesn't say he got it. And Lot's choice lead to destruction. Abraham is going to have to rescue Lot twice from Sodom once in the next chapter. Again, in chapter 18 minutes before God destroys Sodom.

And Lot compromised here. And then we see the compromise growing. And chapter 13 he moves next to Sodom. Chapter 14, he's actually inside Sodom. Chapter 19 now he's one of the most respected people in Sodom. Perhaps he thought, I'm going to change Sodom through politics. And he joins whatever the board was. Instead of saying I'm going to change this city through church, through worship, through the gospel, through the Holy Scriptures, and we see this downfall. And the point isn't that Lot went to live to a sinful place that's everywhere. We're in Boston, one of the most sinful places.

The point is that he went there with no intention of worshiping God and serving God and actually reaching these people for the Lord. And finally, his dragged out of this place, by angels, with his two daughters, and his wife, who had grown so in love with the materialism of Sodom. She turns around, and she dies. And his daughters are influenced into perversion by Sodom and they commit incest with their father. He starts off as a greedy businessman ends up with nothing a dead wife, and two daughters that committed incest, while Abraham kept prospering. Kept being blessed by the Lord.

CS Lewis says, when we put first things first God multiplies the second things. And when we put second things, first, we lose not only first things, we also lose the second things. So Abraham allows Lot to go, and Abraham remains and he walks with the Lord. So choose to walk with the Lord. Verse 14, The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you."

Lift up your eyes, same phrase. And you see the commentary from the text. Lot lifts up his eyes, and he only sees with the eyes of his flesh. Of what he can gain, of only material wealth. And God comes to Abram and says, lift up your eyes. Lift up the eyes of your heart and see with faith, what I'm going to give you. I'm going to give you more of me. That's really the greatest blessing of this text. God shows up again, God sees that Abraham is a change man. He's repented, he does the right thing. He's seeking reconciliation and God shows up again. Lift up your eyes, Abraham, see, filter reality through your faith not through sinful desire. Abraham thinks after my thoughts see reality as I've defined it.

And it gives a more specific promise of what would someday be his. Lot's lush Valley would soon be barren desert tar pit smelling of sulphur. And here, God says, I'm going to bless you and bless this land. Abraham walks with God and that's what scripture actually ... The commentary of walking the Hebrew word is hâlakh. This is a relationship with God.

We see Adam and Eve walked with God. We see that Enoch walked with God. We see that Noah walked with God. Jesus Christ then comes and what does he say to his disciples, follow me, walk with me. This is the greatest thing that God can offer us is himself. Question is, did Lot walk with God? Was he a Christian? Scarcely. Like, barley. He was a barely Christian. How do I know he's a Christian? Because the Holy Spirit comments through St. Peter in 2 Peter 2:7-8. And it says this, If he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

Peter calls Lot a righteous man. We don't see him doing many righteous things. Even after we're like, okay, he was disturbed and vexed by the sin around but he didn't do anything about it. And we are never told of one spiritually minded thing that he does anywhere else in scripture. And then even after the destruction of Sodom, he remains a pathetic figure in scripture, with such as the grace of God. God chose this guy, says this guy is mine. Scripture comments on situations like this. 1 Corinthians 3:15. If anyone's work is burned up, that means if you haven't done anything for the Lord, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

So apparently Lot was saved. How? If you believe that we're saved by workspace salvation, what we do for God, how can you say he was saved? Well, we don't believe that, we don't believe in workspace salvation. And the Old Testament doesn't believe in workspace salvation. It's only by grace through faith. The story of Lot is the story of the fall. Genesis, the Fall is repeated over and over and over. God gives an explicit command, the command is broken, judgment comes and people are cast out of God's presence. That happened with Adam and Eve, that happened with Cain that he's cast out after killing his brother. It happened with the Tower of Babel where they tried to create paradise on earth apart from God and they were cast out from each other and from God. And with Lot heard an explicit command of God, left he was expelled.

So how did Lot get back to God? How was Lot considered a righteous person? Hmm, Well, this land where Abraham was called to, is a land that then later is going to have another garden. Scripture talks about gardens often. In the beginning there was a garden, the Garden of Eden. In the end there's a garden. Revelation 20 new heavens and new earth, there's going to be a garden, a well water garden. But for us to get from here, we're cast out. Now how's God going to save us? How's God going to save a person like Lot? How's God going to save a person like Abraham who also sinned, or like one of us? And get us to that garden, the garden that we're really longing for. How are we going to get there, from this garden to that garden?

Well, there's two other gardens in Scripture. The first is the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane is crying out to God, My God, my God, if there's any other way, let this cup pass. The cup of condemnation wrath poured out on me for the sins of everyone including Lot including every single one of us. But let not my will but yours be done because I want to give everyone heaven. I'm going to go through hell to give everyone heaven.

And then Jesus Christ goes to the cross and he does, he experiences hell literal hell, this is being abandoned by God. He cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why was he forsaken? Because, he took our sins upon himself. And then he dies and after he dies, the soldiers come up to him, and they were going to break his legs in order to be done with the crucifixion. And they saw that he was already dead. So they speared his side and blood and water come out. He's taken down from the cross. And then Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus come to him, and they take his body. Where do they put it? John 19:41.

Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had been laid. He was placed in a tomb in a garden, you get death in a place of life. Adam, the first man entered the garden alive and he left it dead on the inside. He brought death into the garden of God and Jesus entered the garden of God dead because of sinful loss of hearts like ours, and through his death, he brought life back into the garden.

The whole point of this is that Jesus Christ is the garden. Jesus Christ is Eden, Jesus Christ is paradise. Lot was chasing a garden, outside of God. Abraham, he's in a barren desert and God comes to him, now there's a garden because God is paradise. This is the point that Jesus is The Promised Land. So how can we get more of the Promised Land, the more of the presence of God into our life. It begins with repentance. Repentance and faith, Jesus says, but repentance and faith is two sides of the same coin.

Because true repentance and faith isn't just oh yeah, I believe in Jesus. True Faith assumes repentance and you say something like, I believe I crucified Jesus, my sin, my selfishness, my greed, my lust crucified Jesus. That's what repentance is. And you ask for forgiveness and you ask for the Holy Spirit, and then you asked for God to give you strength to honor him and follow him and walk with him.

Lot, okay, you got saved, bro. You got saved. But your life was a legacy of curse and destruction. And some of you perhaps may be saved and perhaps you're on the same path was like, Yeah, I believe. Yeah, I follow Jesus but I love the things of this world more than Jesus. Repent of that sin, turn back to the lord, walk with him that's where the true blessing is.

What's fascinating is that this text begins with the worship of God and ends with the same thing. Verse 18, Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, and there at Hebron, there he built an altar to the Lord. He goes to another place where God called him and he plants another church because that's what he does.

What's fascinating is, oaks of Mamre is 20 miles south of Bethlehem. And this is close to the place where Abraham bought the only property, the only real estate he ever got in his life. He bought it here. God promised him the promised land, Abraham ends up with only a little tiny piece for what, is the burial cave of Machpelah. All he got, the only real estate that he got is where he was buried. Incredible commentary. That God promised him the promised land, takes him to the promised land, doesn't give him any of the promised land, but only gives him himself because God is the promised land. And he only got the piece of real estate that he was buried in. And that's ultimately the only piece of real estate we ever get.

So we need to be as people thinking, what comes after this? What comes after this real estate? What comes after is the promised land in heaven and the presence of God if we believe Jesus Christ. Every day, we're faced with the same question. Will I follow Jesus today? Will I take up my cross and follow Jesus today? Will I make every sacrifice necessary to obey Jesus today? Consider carefully before you choose. Trade, trace each alternative out to its end.

Look to Abraham who walked with God, and got God, which is the greatest blessing. And look to Lot who left God to enter Sodom and all he received was destruction and pain. But praise be to God, we have forgiveness that he offers us that we can turn even if we went on the path of Lot. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for this text. What a text, what a rich text. We thank you, that you blessed our time with the Holy Scriptures. By the power of your spear we thank you for this community, we thank you for this altar, so to speak. Where we can come and we can worship. We can sing to you, we can pray to you, we can honor you, we can sacrifice to you. We can be transformed by you. And we're here so that those around us also are served by us and come to know you. Continue to build your church here in this place and we thank you Jesus that you are our garden, you are Eden and you are paradise and pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm with the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. If you're new or visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you either through the connection card in the worship guide, the physical one, or you can get the one online on our website or in the app.

One quick announcement, we are celebrating baptisms today after the second service, so if you weren't planning on coming back, now you can go to brunch after the service, come back, and we're celebrating two people getting baptized as a testimony to what Jesus did in their life by saving them. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a faithful God, that you are immutable; the same yesterday, today, and forever more. And because you are the same, when you promised to pour out your love on us; by the power of the Holy Spirit, when you draw us to yourself, you make an eternal covenant and you never turn your back on that. We thank you that you're faithful even when we are faithless.

Lord, we don't just acknowledge, we repent of areas in our lives where we have not obeyed you fully, where we have not been faithful to your word, to your commandments, to your will, to your desire. And we haven't just broken commandments, we've broken your heart.

We pray today that you show us from the example in the story of Abraham that you are faithful to your relationship with us and you call us to do the same. As a spouse, you love us with a sacrificial, eternal, unending, unconditional love.

We pray, Holy Spirit, come into this place today and show us that when you come, when you call, when you summon us, we have no choice but to follow, but to do your will, and that's where blessing is found. We pray that you bless our time with the holy scriptures. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Today, we are starting a new sermon series called Jesus in Genesis Season 2. One was Season 1; Season 1 was in 2016. You can get those sermons online. And what we're doing is we're looking at this ancient text and we're showing that it's actually incredibly relevant to our day and age today.

One of the reasons why it's so relevant is despite that world is changing materially, it hasn't changed spiritually. The same God, the same Satan, the same spiritual principles either for blessing or for curse. And the same principles that we see operating in Genesis, when we take those principles and we apply them to our life, God uses that incredibly.

Today we look at the story of Abraham. He's one of the two or three most consequential people, men, to have ever lived. Jesus, Saint Paul, and then it goes Abraham. Three of the main world's religions revere him; Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

He is the great patriarch of Biblical history. He's the great exemplar of faith and of faith by grace, that faith is a gift, salvation is a gift. We know more about his life than anyone else in Biblical history except for Moses, David, Saint Paul, and the Lord Jesus himself.

What made this man so remarkable that God would call him a friend? He's a friend. He's the father of all those who believe in Jesus Christ, scripture says. Jesus even said that Abraham was a believer in him even in his own lifetime. Jesus said, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day and was glad."

Paul uses Abraham's life as the crowning illustration and demonstration; this is what the life of a Christian looks like. This is what it means to believe and to be saved. God himself, when he introduces himself, he says, "I am the god of Abraham. I'm that guy's God." Incredible.

Great though he be, in the very first text where we are introduced to this man who leaves everything to follow God, to obey God, in the same text, he disobeys God so egregiously that it's actually shocking that this text was included in scripture; where he sells off his wife to Pharaoh in order to save himself.

What's the lesson here? The lesson here is that there's a tug of war for your soul, and that tug of war is between heaven and hell, that's how precious your soul is; God and Satan are vying for it. And God calls Abraham and says, "That guy's mine. He belongs to me."

The very next text, Satan comes and tempts him; tempts him with doubt, temps him with unbelief, tempts him with disobedience. And what we see here is that there's a so-called spiritual schizophrenia that on the one hand, we see incredible juxtaposition of faith and doubt, obedience and betrayal, heroism and cowardice, we see it in the text.

And the reason why, this is how I'm framing the text, it's because we see it in ourselves. One day you are on fire for God, you love him with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. The next day it's as if you've never met him, it's as if you are, spiritually, practically an atheist. So how do we deal with that today?

Well, this is what we'll talk about from Genesis Chapter 12. Would you look at this incredible text with me? Genesis 12. "Now, the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you; and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the Earth shall be blessed.'"

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai (his wife) and Lot (his brother's son) and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.

When they came to land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the Oak at Moreh; and at that time, the Canaanites were in the land. "Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land.' So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him."

"From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going through the Negeb."

And there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt, to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, "I know that you are a beautiful woman in appearance. And when the Egyptian see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.' Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake."

When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake, he dealt well with Abram. And he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, "What is this you've done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, 'She was my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go." And Pharaoh gave orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.

This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May write these internal truths upon our hearts. What in the world is going on here?

The first thing I was meditating on this week is the conversation that Sarah and Abraham had as soon as she was released. When he looks at her and says, "Is this going to be a 20-minute fight or is this a week-long fight? I don't know what's going on."

My wife when she gets mad at me, she hits me with two hands. I think that's what was going on there. We'll deal with that. What's going on in this very sordid text? And what's fascinating is this text is the beginning of the Christian faith, not just the Christian faith, but Judaism.

And Islam looks to Abraham as the father of their faith. So what is going on this text? What can we learn? And how can we apply this to our life? Three points: tremendous faith, tremendous faithlessness, and tremendous faithfulness.

First, tremendous faith. God shows up and he speaks to Abram, and this is how God reveals himself to each and one of us. He's always revealed himself like this, through speaking through his word. The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you."

How did the Lord speak? How did Abram hear his voice? We're not told. God speaks in different ways, communicates to human hearts in a myriad of ways; sometimes it's in dreams. We hear about this from the Muslim world that God, Jesus himself, appears to people in dreams and saves them miraculously even today.

Most often, he speaks to people through his word. When you're reading his scripture, you hear his scripture read or preached and you feel like God himself, the voice of the living God is speaking to you. Abram, here's God, and for him it's enough. It's the self-authenticating word of God. And God comes and he doesn't just say, "Go." It doesn't say, "Come." It's not an invitation. It's, "Go." It's a commandment.

God reveals himself, offers Abram a relationship... By the way, the names, if you're not familiar, Abram later will be changed to Abraham. But it sounds weird so I just keep Abraham. Sarai becomes Sarah. And that's to show that God has, he has authority to change our identity by changing our name.

So God calls Abraham, speaks to him. What we see here, what's fascinating is there weren't many faithful people to God in that day. One guy we do know is Melchizedek, in chapter 14 we meet him. So there were other faithful believers in God, but this one is special because God, through this one, through Abraham, God promises to bless all the nations by sending the Messiah.

So he meets God, he changes absolutely everything. This is awesome. And you look at this and you say, "This guy had an encounter with God. Where did he come from? What did he do to deserve this? Has he always loved and sought after God? Is he being rewarded for his faithfulness?" And scripture says no.

Scripture says, in Joshua 24, that actually Abraham and his family were all idol worshipers. So he doesn't come from a Christian family, he doesn't come from a faithful family. He comes from a family that wanted nothing to do with God. They worshiped creation rather than the creator.

And that's the problem that every single one of us wrestles with until God calls us, is we're all living for something and for something that we find to be worthy of our time, our energy; be it pleasure or comfort or significance etc., it's physical things. We're worshiping physical things, we're worshiping creation instead of creator. So what changes his mind? What changed the trajectory and the nature of his life? He heard the voice of God and he obeyed. He didn't just hear God, he heard God. He didn't just listen, he heard God and he obeyed. And this is how the Christian life begins, with God speaking, our listening, our obeying and trusting, believing. And this is how we continue to grow in the Christian faith.

What's fascinating is I love how real the story is, did Abraham obey immediately? Did he obey immediately? Is he like, "Oh, God just told me, now I'm going?" Well, actually, I don't think so.

And we can get this from Genesis 15:7. "And he said to him," in 15:7, "I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess." So God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans, which is Babylonia at that time. So Abraham wasn't Jewish yet. He was a pagan, he was a Gentile. God calls him out of Ur of the Chaldeans.

So he's living in Ur of the Chaldeans, God calls him out. And then what we find fascinating is in Genesis 11:27-32, we see that he's not living in Ur of the Chaldeans. Look at the text. And this is the genealogy of Abraham.

Now, these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. So remember that; Haran is the father of Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, in the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah, and the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

Terah took Abram (his son) and Lot (the son of Haran), his grandson, Sarai (his daughter-in-law), his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. And the days of Terah was 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

So there's two Harans here. One Haran is a name, this is Lot's dad, and then Haran is a place. So here we see that they live in Ur of the Chaldeans and they were on their way to Canaan, they were on their way to the promised land, and they get to a place called Haran and they stay there. They stay there.

And you connect that with Genesis 15; Genesis 15, God said, "I called you out of Ur of the Chaldeans." So God called the whole family of Abraham, including Abraham's dad, including all his brothers. "I'm calling all of you from Ur of the Chaldeans, pagan, idolatrous city, to this promised land in Canaan." And they're going, they're on their way. They obeyed. And then they get to this place called Haran, and scripture says they settled there.

They're called, they go, they stop halfway. God comes again to Abram a second time, by the grace of God, and says, "I didn't call you to Haran, I called you to Canaan." And Abraham, at this moment, finally obeys. And I love this as an illustration for faith today, that there has to be growth in the faith, growth in obedience; but you can't just settle, you can't settle for halfway obedience or halfway faithfulness. That's not where God's blessing is found, so Abraham finally obeys.

What's fascinating is when God saves us, he doesn't just save us from sin, he saves for something. What he saves us for, is for his mission. So he saves us from our sinful life of idolatry and he wants us to go to this place, whatever this place is for you, in order to be part of the mission of God.

He saves a guy and says, "Go," and continued to bless. And that's verse 2, "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing." God is a God who loves to bless, he loves to be generous with us. And the greatest blessing that he can give us is himself, the blessing of his presence in a relationship.

So God is saying, "Go," but he's also saying, "Come and follow me to this place." But in order for us to experience the fullness of the presence of God, God first tells us to leave things behind that don't glorify God.

Verse 3 says, "I will bless those who bless you; and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the Earth shall be blessed." He uses the word 'blessed' in these very few verses five times. Why is that important? Because in Genesis 1-11, scripture uses the word 'blessed' five times.

So in a few verses, we have a trajectory changing a few verses to show that God hasn't left people in their sin. So Genesis 1-3, everything is perfect. Genesis 3 comes the fall; and then the fall is Genesis 3-11, is just the regression of people from the purpose of God. And God finally says, "No, I'm not leaving you in your sin. I'm going to come, I'm going to bless."

So Abram goes, verse 4, "So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran." Leaves everything, closes his eyes so to speak, takes the hand of God and goes.

What's he leave behind? He leaves behind family, friends, most likely his business, most likely accumulated property through generations. And he goes, leaves everything behind to follow God at 75. My parents immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1989. My dad was 30 years old, my mom was 27. 30 years old, zero English. My dad thought he was going to Germany, so he studied German. Now, zero English, shows up with three kids, fourth on the way, because he felt like God said, "Go."

I look back at him, I'm 38 now, I look back, "30 years old, you did that. That's nuts." Abraham was 75, seventy-five. That's 10 years into your retirement. You're chilling. What are 75-year-olds thinking about? They're thinking about, I don't know, vacation, relaxing, rest. They're not thinking about starting a brand new purpose in life, a mission in life.

Granted, years were different back then. Because we find out that Sarah was 65 and apparently she was really good-looking at 65. I think food was different; no GMOs, it was all organic. They lived a lot longer. I don't know. The aging might be different, so 75...

The point here is he's set in his life, he's set in his patterns. 90% of people that come to faith as Christians come to faith before the age of 18, why? Because after the age of 18, it's hard to change your patterns of thinking. God comes and he saves a guy who has no Christian background, no Christian friends, no Christian parents, and he saves him and just converts him radically, and it shows just the grace of God.

A quick chronology of Abram's life; 75 he's called, he enters Canaan. 86 is the birth of Ishmael. At 99, he gets the covenant sign of circumcision. At 100, Isaac is born. Between 115 and 125, he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac. 137, Sarah died. 140, Isaac was married. And 175, Abraham died.

So Abraham does obey God, he leaves everything in chapter 5, and Abram took Sarai (his wife) and Lot (his brother's son) and all their possessions that they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem to the oak of Moreh. At the time, the Canaanites were in the land.

So Abraham doesn't go from one idolatrous pagan center of worship to a place where there were believers, no, he's the only believer. There's no Christians in Canaan, there's no Christians in Ur of the Chaldeans.

So God saves this guy and sends him as a missionary into this place where there's pagans. And this is why the place at Shechem and the oak are mentioned. Why are you mentioning an oak? Because the oak was the place where the pagans worshiped their tree gods because they thought they connected them with Heaven and these were their fertility gods, and that's why there's a prohibition law of Moses against planting trees like this in the temple precinct.

So Abraham goes to the place, he passes through Shechem, a Godless place, and then verse 7, "The Lord appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will give this land.'" He says, "Do you see this land? This land full of pagan worshipers, people who don't love God, who love sin, who actually hate God because they love sin. I'm going to give you this land."

So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. Why is Shechem important? Shechem has been this place where God has his people make a decision.

Abraham, in the same way that you made the decision are you going to obey God or not, the people of God had to make a decision at Shechem a few times. At Shechem, the people of God had to make a decision between the mount of curse, Ebal, and the mountain of blessing, Gerizim.

At Shechem, Joshua gives a final address to the people of God and says, "Who are you going to worship from this day forward?" At Shechem, Solomon's kingdom was divided. And God brings Abraham to Shechem in the very shadow of the Canaanite shrine to idols and he promises him, "I'm going to give you this land." And what Abraham does is he builds a defiant declaration to the fact that God called him through this altar that, "We claim this place and we will worship the Lord here."

Remember in verse 8 and 9, "From there, he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb."

What's fascinating is he leaves, most likely, a luxurious life. And I say luxurious because we see that he had a lot of cattle but I also say luxurious because Sarai was barren so they didn't have kids. So if you're in 75 and 65 and you've been working your whole life without kids, you've got a lot of disposable income.

So a luxurious life, most likely a huge house. Now he goes and he pitches a tent. And this is a sign that this is by the grace of God. "I'm going to live here, an impermanent structure." And before he pitches that tent, he builds something, he builds an altar to the Lord.

And this in the Hebrew is a play on words. He pitches something, an impermanent structure for himself, and builds a permanent structure to God here in the altar, so we see his priorities. And then scripture says, "And they called upon the name of the Lord." And this isn't just, "I'm going to pray to God." They had a corporate worship gathering.

So Abraham, what he's doing is he actually started a church, he planted a church in a Godless place, in a place called Shechem, and he said, "Here, this is our place, this is our town, this is our city, and we are going to worship God here and declare God." So I see incredible faith. Abraham, this is incredible. You left everything.

I hear stories of missionaries that leave everything and they go to the Middle East to preach the gospel. You left... That's awesome. So you have this incredible faith, that's point one.

And I want to just pause there and say, praise God for Abraham's faithfulness, praise God. Abraham, when I get to heaven, man, high five, good job. Thank you for obeying God, awesome. And then, all of a sudden, there's a change in the text, and this is point two: tremendous faithlessness.

Verse 10, "Now, there was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land." Egypt was a typical place of refuge when there was a famine, why? Because the Nile provided water, so food, Egypt.

Did God, Abraham, tell you to go to Egypt? No, he did not. God told you to go to Canaan, he actually told you twice, "Go to the land that I will show you." So there's no reason to think, in the text, no reason to think that Abram thought he was free to leave the land. And when scripture is silent on something this big, that's of significance.

God doesn't tell Abraham to go to Egypt. Abram then when he does go to Egypt, he doesn't do what he's done already twice, is build an altar to God. Something's shifted with Abram. Was the famine real? Yes. Did God tell Abram to go to Canaan? Yes. But in Canaan, he experiences trouble, he experiences obstacles.

When God calls you to something, when you know that God called you to something, you need to know that you will meet difficulty. Because if God calls you to something, that is his will. And there is an enemy who hates God's will, and he will challenge you with everything you have.

Where in the world do we get the idea that ease is a sign that you are in the will of God? Where in the world do we get the idea that comfort is a sign that you are in the will of God? Smooth sailing is a sign that you are in the will? Where did you get that idea? Joel Osteen, that's where. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true.

Actually, if you study the lives of believers in scripture, the more committed they are to the will of God, the more trouble there is, the more obstacles there are, the more suffering there is, Abraham. Because when God gives you the gift of faith to do something incredible for God's glory, God is going to allow that faith to be tested, so that it can be strengthened.

So Abraham goes down to Egypt, he went down. And it's fascinating, in the Hebrew it says 'down', he went down to Egypt. And then when he comes back in Chapter 13:1 it says, "Abram went up from Egypt." And yes, this is a way to describe travel a common way, but scripture also uses this language to describe spiritual movement.

He came down as he left the place where God called him, and then he goes up when he leaves the place that he wasn't supposed to be. So you see the temperature shift in his spiritual life and spiritual health. Scripture also says that he went to Egypt to sojourn, which suggests that he was planning on living there for a significant period of time, and he stayed there long enough to accumulate great wealth. So afraid for his safety, afraid for his comfort, afraid for his prosperity, he goes to Egypt; first compromise.

As soon as he gets to Egypt, we see a second compromise, where he's willing to actually lose his wife, lose his marriage. When confronted with trouble, it's as if his faith deserts him. God promised, God said, "I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make of you a great nation. I'm going to make your name great." Which that promise assumes that no one's going to kill you, not yet, not until you have a kid.

"And whoever curses you, I will curse," God said. So God promised that, "I will be with you." And Abraham, he makes a decision as if God had never spoken, as if God isn't there. And he disobeys God and that begins with disbelief. It's a thing called spiritual amnesia, and every single one of us we struggle with this. And I know every single one of us struggles with this because I struggle with this.

Good Friday comes, Easter comes, wonderful weekend, everything's amazing, everything's tremendous. And by Tuesday, I'm like, "Did Jesus come back from the dead?" Yeah, he did. "Pastor Jan, go online, listen to your sermon again." Yes, he did. Jesus came back from the dead. God is with us. God still loves us.

And this is why we need the word of God, this is why we need time with God, in order to remind ourselves; because our predisposition, our set mode isn't to believe in the Lord.

Verse 11, "When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, 'I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance.'" Great start, Abraham. "And when the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'This is his wife.'" That's true. "Then they will kill me, but they will let you live." Why is this? Because we know this from archaeological accounts that Pharaoh could take any sojourners' or immigrants' wife or children.

So he says, "Say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. Say that you are my sister." What's weird is that it's technically true. That's weird. It's his half sister. Technically it's true, but he's hiding that truth with a lie, so technically it's true, so let's just say this.

And by the way, this says a lot about... So people are like, "Abraham, Father Abraham, he's the father of our faith." He did some weird stuff in Haran. Apparently, this was allowed in Haran. And what does Haran mean in the Hebrew? It means West Virginia, where you can marry your half-sister, so that's just weird.

And by the way, this is incredible proof of the veracity of scripture. Because if I were inventing a religion, I would not say that the founder of our religion married his half-sister, that's weird. And then in the law of Moses in Deuteronomy actually says you can't do that, that's actually forbidden. So Abraham didn't know... It's to show that this is actually true.

But Abraham, he knows that he is risking death. So he enters into Egypt and he says, "Okay, go along with this," and she does. And she does.

And verse 14, "When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house." The words "taken into Pharaoh's house" assumes already a formal relationship, perhaps marriage, so she's included in his harem.

And then later in the text it says that Pharaoh already called her his wife, so we see a progression in the text. And verse 16, insult to injury, "And for her sake, Pharaoh dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, ox and male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels." And this is suggesting that Pharaoh pays Abraham off.

So basically he bought... Abraham sold his wife. There's other words for that. But basically this is sexual trafficking, selling his wife. This is as bad as it gets. In order to save himself, and in order to get prosperity, in order to get comfort, he is willing to give up on his covenant relationship with his wife. This is as dark as it gets.

But God, praise be to God, he doesn't leave him here. He doesn't allow this to happen in verse 17, "But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abraham's wife." God intervenes, that's the point here. God rescues Abraham's marriage.

It's as if the Lord is saying, "I'm more invested in your marriage than you are. I need you married because I made this promise." So God intervenes. God is faithful when we are faithless. It doesn't say how Pharaoh connected the fact that there was a plague with Sarah, it doesn't say, but clearly the plague had to... It was clear that this plague is on account of Sarah. We don't know what there is, but clearly there's something there. And obviously, in some way, the Lord made it clear.

So Pharaoh calls Abraham and says, "What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, 'She is my sister,' so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go."

Genesis 12:20, "And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had." And that's how the text ends. Starts with this incredible crescendo of faith; this man leaving everything to follow God, and it ends with darkness and despair and gloom, period.

Thanks be to God, that's not where the story ends; because, thanks be to God, Jesus Christ redeemed this story as well. And this is point three: tremendous faithfulness. You can ask this question, "How is Abraham even in the Bible after this?" Every single time God enters into covenant with a person, you just need to know that God promises, "I'm entering the covenant with you." Every single time the covenant is betrayed from the people's side.

As soon as God makes a covenant with Noah, Noah betrays that covenant with sin. No sooner that God makes his covenant with Abraham, Abraham throws the entire covenant to jeopardy with his unbelief. And the point here is that we all are like Abraham, that's why he's the prototype for the believers, this is why he's the prototype for what it means to be a follower of God.

We start in this place of God-forsakenness where we have been unfaithful to God, that one day we believe, the next day we're a sniveling coward and seeming to not believe at all. Every believer, every single one of us, we suffer from this spiritual schizophrenia, this mixture of spiritual sanity and loss of one's spiritual mind, faith and unbelief, courage and cowardice, obedience and flagrant disobedience. At one moment, Abraham has this incredible trust and then turns his back, and this happened with every single person in scripture. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Hezekiah, Josiah, Judah, the Apostle Paul himself, the great Apostle Paul who saw Christ. Christ, the resurrected Christ, revealed himself to Saint Paul.

And Saint Paul tells us himself that throughout his Christian life, through all his years of following Jesus Christ, all his days and nights and various Roman prisons, through all his stonings, throughout the beatings, throughout the scorn, throughout the humiliation, throughout all the hard work, throughout all his victorious preaching and missionary work, evangelism and church planting, throughout all of it, he was sick to the heart because of his own sin.

And he writes this in Romans 7:14-25, "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin, for I do not understand my own actions; for I do not do what I want, but do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me; for I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing."

"Now, if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am."

This Saint Paul, end of his life, has done so much great things for God. He's a believer for decades, he says, "Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." Saint Paul said this. This is tug of war between flesh and spirit.

David could have said this. When we talk about King David in scripture, which King David do we like? Do we like the King David who fights Goliath by incredible faith? Yeah, I love that King David. The King David who writes the psalms? I love that King David. The King David who just defeats a military with his army, I love that King David.

But then there's another King David, the King David that commits adultery with another man's wife and then kills her, the King David that neglects his own family so much so that it tosses the house of Israel into disarray for centuries; there's that King David.

Or which Peter, which Peter do we love? I love the Peter that falls down at the feet of Jesus Christ after the haul of fish when he obeyed Jesus and says, "Wicked man that I am, Jesus, depart from me." And we struggle with the Peter who, right before the crucifixion, in pure unadulterated cowardice, denies Jesus Christ three times.

Same thing with Abraham here. In the face of danger, he's willing to give up his wife because he disbelieves in God. He struggled with the same thing. So Abraham himself needs a savior. So where do we see Jesus in Genesis here? Where do we see Jesus in chapter 12?

We see it in chapter 12:3, "In you, God promised him, in you, all the families of the Earth shall be blessed." How? And I love this because God here doesn't leave humanity on their own in their sin. The God of the Old Testament is a missionary God, saving people, on mission to bless the Christ, the gospels and the missionary Messiah. The Holy Spirit of the book of Acts is a missionary spirit. The church of the New Testament is a missionary church.

In this verse right here he says, "In you, all of the nations will be blessed." How is this working? The deeper sense here is the promise in Genesis 3:15 where God says, "I'm going to send a seed. I'm going to send an offspring, one who will crush the head of the serpent. Through this seed, through the Messiah who will come in human form, all of the nations will be blessed."

And the reason Abraham could be called, spoken to, forgiven time and again, the reason why he's called righteous is because of Jesus Christ who came through his genealogy, through his line. Jesus was faithful, because Jesus was faithful, because Jesus never obeyed halfway, never compromised in the face of greatest temptation and pressures, in the face of even death itself. Jesus Christ went to the death for his bride, which is the church, because he loves with a covenantal love. Jesus was faithful to the death.

And Genesis 12:7, I don't know if you caught this in the text, said, "The Lord appeared to Abram." In verse 1, it said that God spoke to Abram. Here it says the Lord appeared to Abram. "To your offspring, I will give you this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him."

Whenever a word is repeated twice in a sentence in the Old Testament, you're gonna go like this is important. He appeared to him. How did he appear to him? Perhaps in a vision, or perhaps this was a Christophany. This is perhaps, perhaps, Jesus Christ himself.

And you say, "Where did you get that Pastor Jan?" Hold on. Hold on. And you should be very skeptical. Is it from scripture? Is it from scripture? I'm going to show you a couple of places that makes me think maybe, maybe.

In John 8, Jesus Christ is having a conversation with the Pharisees and he says this, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad." That's an interesting, interesting turn of phrase. But on first reading, what I'm thinking is, "Oh, Abraham, by faith, believes that he'll see by faith that Jesus will come," right? That's the first reading. But is that how the audience understood it?

So the Jews said to him, "You're not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham?" So the original audience, when they saw that Abraham will rejoice to see my day, how they interpreted, how they understood what he just said is: "You're telling me you saw Abraham?" And what's the response? Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." Because he's God. And they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Did Jesus see Abraham? I think so. I think so. And this is the reason why Abraham can be called the father of faith, can be called the righteous, because he knows that he, in and of himself, has no righteousness; but there is one who, through him, will come to save him, and Abraham believed. So what made Abraham great wasn't just his faith, because it shows that he was also a sinner, it was his faith in Jesus Christ, knowing that he will be forgiven despite his sin. Galatians 3:7-9 gives us something similar, "Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture foreseen that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham."

So God preaches the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, "In you, shall all the nations be blessed." So then, those who are of faith, are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. The beauty of Christianity is no matter how back and forth we are in the faith, God always remains faithful. He will continue pursuing you if you are his.

And Jesus has made the church into a family so numerous that it's impossible to count. This is the nation that he's talking about. All the nations will be blessed, exceeding all borders, nationalities, ethnicities, social classes, etc. Thanks be to Jesus that when you repent of your sin, when you respond to the voice of God, the word of God, when you turn to him, you are justified at that very second.

And Martin Luther used the phrase "Simul justus et peccator", "I'm simultaneously justified, although yet a sinner." And that's all of us. And the way that we grow in our faith is by receiving the word of God, listening to the word of God, obeying the word of God.

I'll close with this; Abraham was called a friend of God. Abraham was called a friend of God, even though Abraham turned his back on God in this text, and turned his back on his wife. Abraham did not understand covenantal love, not yet, but he did afterwards when he understood that God did not leave him even when he turned his back, that God loved him with a love that he didn't even love his wife with. And Abraham is called a friend of God. And I find that fascinating because if you... He should be called a sinner, a coward, a person that gave up his wife, but he's not. And what's fascinating is that God views us through the grace of Jesus Christ, that's the beauty of it.

And I'll just connect that with Job. Scripture says, "You have heard of the patience of Job." You have heard of the patience of Job. What's fascinating is that you read Job, and he's not very patient. For 38 chapters, he's just whining, and for good reason. But God looks at Job through the work of Jesus Christ and says, "Look at the patience of Job."

So how can God call Abraham a friend? Because he looks to Abraham through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that's why he can be called a friend of God. Why all of this? Because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And that's why when he is faithful, he's faithful to the end.

I'll close with 2 Timothy 2:11-13, "The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself."

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are faithful you are faithful to the end, that when you chose to come and save us, even in the face of great suffering, you went to the end. We thank you Jesus that when you call us to yourself, you give us the power of the Holy Spirit. And we thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us.

And if there's any vacillation in our faith, any of this to and fro, I pray that you, by the power of the spirit, solidify us in the gospel. We thank you for the example of Abraham. We thank you that he was faithful in responding to the call. And even when he was faithless, you remained faithful and you came and saved him from himself, from his sin. And I pray that you do that with each one of us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, Happy Easter.

Happy Easter.

More accurately, Christ is risen.

He's risen indeed.

Praise God. Christ is risen.

He's risen indeed.

Christ is risen.

He's risen indeed.

Best news ever, hallelujah. Praise God. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that with all the forces that the evil one tried to marshal against you, it wasn't enough. They couldn't keep you down. We thank you for that. We thank you that you rose victoriously to open the door for us to a relationship with God, a life giving relationship with God. Today unlock our minds and our hearts. And I pray that you the living God meet us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank You, Jesus. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is locked doors and minds. This has been, and what a year, what a year it has been, the phrase lock down has been used over and over. So what comes to mind when you think of things that are locked or locked doors? We lock the doors on our homes, you unlock to come in and you lock it as soon as you're in automatically. Door on your car, same thing you lock once you're in. Why, why, why? For security, for safety, to keep the threats out or locks on businesses, you pull the door and the door is closed, it's not business hours or a locked door representing confinement, a prison, detention center where the doors clang ominously as they shut.

Again, the person that's locked up in a prison, for example, is locked up for our safety, driven perhaps by fear. Two basic reasons to lock a door to keep someone out keep something in, keep someone or something out, keep someone or something in, same motivation for both. It's a fear of a real or perceived danger. On Easter Sunday today, as we look at Luke 24, we also see the disciples behind locked doors. Why? Who locked the doors? They did. Why? Why did they lock the doors? For the same reason that we do, keep danger out. They're on edge, why? The Lord has been arrested, Jesus Christ in a mockery of a trial has been executed brutally. The Lord has been crucified, and no one comes back from that alive.

And the disciples think they might come for us as well. They're afraid for their lives. They're reeling, they're cast into fear and to despair, and they also feel guilty. Their consciences feel guilt and shame, why? For having abandoned their Lord and Savior at his greatest moment of need. They're numb, they're deflated, they're defeated, they're miserable, they're confused, they're also skeptical. They don't believe anymore. They don't believe everything that Jesus has taught them for three years. They don't believe that the miracles were real, that he had real power, they don't believe because it seems like he's been defeated. So not only did they lock their doors, they locked their minds. And that's where we find ourselves in Luke 24, what a text, what a chapter.

Would you look at the text with me, Luke 24:36. "As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace to you.' But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.' And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took and ate before them.

Then he said to them, 'These are my words that I spoke to while I was still with you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled," then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, 'Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Behold, I'm sending the promise of my Father upon you to stay in the city until you were clothed with power from on high.'

Then he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God." This is the reading of God's holy in our infallible, authoritative word, may you write these beautiful, eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points, first one is unbelieving. The second is unbelievable. And the third one's blessed to bless, unbelieving. The context is that Jesus just came back from the dead. And what happened in chronological order? In the morning, he appears to Mary and some other women. In the afternoon, he found Peter and spoke to him. What a conversation that must have been as he restores Peter into faith with the Lord. Then he appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and in the evening, he appears to the 11 disciples minus Thomas. He meets with Thomas later. So the disciples are in the room, they've locked the door, and when they hear a bang, it's the disciples from the road to Emmaus that met with Jesus Christ, the resurrected Christ, and they're sharing with the disciples, "Hey, Jesus just met us. Jesus just unlocked our minds, our hearts burned as he explained the Scriptures and they still didn't believe."

Same thing the women had told him, he had told them that Jesus came back from dead, the tomb is empty, they still didn't believe. And then out of nowhere, as they're talking about these things that someone said that there were sightings, someone said that Jesus came back from the dead. Jesus himself stood among them and said, "Peace to you." He does not open the door, and the Gospel of John it says that they locked the door for fear of the religious leaders, for fear that they would be crucified as well, for fear of death.

And here Jesus shows up and says, "Peace to you," what an understatement. Peace to you, I'm bringing you peace. They're startled, they're frightened. And it's one thing to know the supernatural, so much different to encounter it. What's fascinating is, as you read the Gospels, there's hardly any details of the scorching. There's hardly any details of the crucifixion. It just says, they crucified him. And there's hardly any details of the resurrection. How did it happen? Did Jesus roll away the stone himself? No, he didn't need to. He had a perfect resurrected body with features that our bodies do not have. He could walk through material things, the stone wasn't rolled away for Jesus, it was rolled away for us.

It's utterly unexpected that that would happen. That's where I want to start. And I want to start there because in the 21st century, we think that we're so much different than the people that came before us. We just do. We think we're so much smarter than the people came before us, we just do. Who's smarter, you or your mom? Trick question. Don't look at it. Who's smarter? Who's smarter, you or your grandparents? They didn't even have an iPhone. Who's smarter? One of the things we think, we think the disciples, they were so dumb, they believe that Jesus came back from the dead. No, they didn't. That's where I want to start. They did not believe it. He's before them. He is in front of them and the resurrected body and they do not believe it.

Verse 37. They were startled and frightened and thought that they saw a spirit. Their first response is fear, not faith. Why do they believe that this was a spirit? Not because he was some shadow we barely material figure. When Mary saw Jesus, she thought he was a gardener, so he looked a little different, but he still looked human. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, they had no doubt that they were talking to a human being. He was a little different. Why? He had a perfect body with no aging, no decay, no imperfections, it's the glorious resurrected body.

Why did they think they saw a spirit? Because that was the only category they had in their mind. And Jesus comes in and he busts these categories. They believe as we do that the spirit continues to live on after death. We believe that. We believe that dying is not the end, we believe that there's something else. When someone dies, no one stands up at the funeral and says, "They're gone, period." Nobody says that. What do they say? They're in a better place. They're in a better place. Why? Because we believe that the spirit lives on, and the disciples didn't believe. And I wonder if that's where you are today.

And I do want to acknowledge that most people around us in a city like this do not believe that Jesus came back from the dead because they don't believe that people come back from the dead. Perhaps you believe that the story is a fabrication or you believe that the disciples stole the body, that this is a myth or perhaps it's just teaching theological truths that because Jesus theologically, or metaphorically rose from the dead, that there's hope for us. And one of the reasons why this is the case in a city like Boston, is because we've assumed the false premise that intelligence and faith are at odds, that smart people do not believe things like this, as if intelligence gets in the way of believing in Jesus, as if intelligent people only believe what is true, as if intelligent people are purely rational. They're not. We're not, I'll be nice, we're not.

We're not purely rational. I can give you a million examples. We are not purely rational, we hold biases. We're not just creatures of thought, and truth, we're creatures of feeling and emotion and desire. We hold biases and the biases cloud our judgment, that's always been a reality. More than 2000 years ago, Cicero observed that there's no ideas so ridiculous that it hasn't been believed by some intellectual or another. I was having conversation with a gentleman who is a dean of a university. And we're talking about the idea that to come up with a PhD, to get a PhD, to write a PhD dissertation, nowadays, you can't just say, especially in theology, you can't publish anything that's true because that's already been done. So you had to concoct a brand new idea, brand new idea. And that's what gets you published.

In our time, Paul Johnson observed about Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell, by the way, was an atheist and he was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. And his friend Paul Johnson, and his work To Hell with Picasso says this Bertrand Russell was the only philosopher I've come across who always conveyed his meaning clearly, and because he did, you could debate the merits of his conclusions, and they were usually wrong. Nobody disputed Russell who had a powerful brain, but equally, no one in his or her senses would go to him for advice on anything that mattered.

Intelligence actually sometimes gets in the way of us seeing reality as it is because intelligence sometimes can lead to self-deception. The more intelligent you are, the more prone you can be to self-deception where you ignore evidence, twist logic, lash out lie as a means to justify the end we hope is right. And sometimes what gets in the way of us truly seeing reality as it is, is the mind locking desire or emotion of fear. A lot of intelligent people, you fear that you've been wrong, therefore, you do everything not to look at the evidence. Fear gets in the way. And psychologists can tell you, you can just google this, the mind locking power of fear, perhaps is fear of change when we think of God.

Fear of what God could require of you, fear of difficulty, fear of giving up what we love, fear of losing control, fear of standing out, fear of what people will think, fear of men, and to a very great degree people believe what we want to believe, what's easy to believe because fear gets in the way. And I think the main fear when it comes to God was the disciples, you're in that moment, what's their fear? Their fear, I'm talking past the fear of getting crucified like Jesus, past the fear of dying, I think the greatest fear as they see Jesus Christ materialized in the flesh before them. I think their greatest fear is that of punishment. It's a fear of guilt and shame. We've abandoned you Jesus, we've denied you, Jesus, we betrayed you, Jesus, Jesus is here to punish us. That he is here to reveal our guilt, to expose our shame.

God did not create the world with fear. In the garden of Eden, there was no fear, in paradise there was no fear. When does fear enter into the world? After the fall. Adam and Eve sin, they reject God, they rebel against God, and God comes looking for Adam. He says, "Adam, where are you? Where are you?" And what does Adam say? He said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. I was afraid." The disciples that moment on Easter morning, the emotion that they felt was fear. Jesus is in front of them, and they fear. Jesus, are you here to punish us? And you know what Jesus says? The first words, peace to you. I'm here to bring shalom. I'm here to bring reconciliation. I'm here to bring forgiveness. I'm here to take your guilt and your shame from you, peace to you.

They were unbelieving. And then Jesus gives them more evidence to the point where they can't believe this is true. And they go from unbelieving to unbelievable. And he says to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet, and while they still disbelief for joy, and were marveling, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat? And they give him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them."

What I found fascinating about this text is he keeps building a case for them. You don't believe, see, look, you don't believe, touch, feel, you don't believe, hey, you got anything to eat? This is one of my favorite things about Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. I love to eat. My family loves to... We come from a family where we're fast eaters, and the reason why we're fast eaters, I have four siblings, and whenever there's a meal before us, who gets the most food? Whoever eats the fastest. And with my kids, I've got four daughters, is the same thing. I made four bags of chicken wings yesterday, chicken wings, and I got three. I had three left because my kids are smart, they grab as much as they can onto their plate and they shield it.

I love that Jesus eats here in a glorified body, meaning in the glorify body, in the resurrection, in heaven, it's a real material thing. It's a physical reality and we in heaven will eat and calories do not matter, praise God, hallelujah. Percentage body fat, everyone gets 4%, everybody, because we don't have to store anything, praise God. Jesus is here eating, why does he do this? He's building a case for them. Not only that, not only that, he's showing that the glorified body is different. The resurrection is different.

Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, not on his glorified body. Lazarus came back from the dead only to die. His body still succumbed to sickness and death. Jesus comes back, and he says, "Here, it is I," not just it is I, it is I myself. It is I myself. Why does he say I and myself? The Word of God, the living Word of God, when he speaks every word matters. What is he saying? He says I myself, but it's a new self, it's a renewed self, but it's still me. The fact what kind of fish do we got here? What kind of fish? It's broiled fish. That's an interesting little adjective that's included. Why? Because this is true, it happens. Eye witness account, eye witnesses just remember weird details. This wasn't made up.

And Jesus says, "Why do doubts arise in your hearts?" And he eats, and he eats not just to prove that he has a resurrected body, he eats with them because in ancient cultures, food was a sign of fellowship. There's a sign of acceptance and meaning I forgive you, I accept you, peace be to you. Let's eat together. Why does he do all of this? Because he knows where their faith is. Their faith has crumbled. Three years they spent with Jesus Christ, and it feels like everything was for nothing. They're gutted, and Jesus meets them in this place of hopelessness, faithlessness, doubt. And not just in the Gospel of Luke, in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 28:16-17, this is right before the Great Commission, some of the last verses of the Gospel of Matthew. "Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted." After everything, there's still doubting. Why? Because that's our natural predisposition.

So what overcame their doubt, what overcame their doubt was new evidence. And it's intellectually dishonest and actually foolish not to reassess your beliefs when you're presented with brand new evidence. And that's what happened with the disciple. See my hand, see my feet, touch, see, why hands and feet? Why hands and feet? Why not shoulders? Why not knees? Why hands and feet? Why? Because they get the wounds. That's why. So he's not just overcoming their minds, he's overcoming the doubt in their hearts. I have died for you, I'm proving it. I love you, I'm proving it.

Now the disciples have a decision to make, they're thinking. You can almost see the thought bubbles, and they're thinking, what are they thinking about? New evidence, resurrected Christ. Now I got a decision to make, is this believable? And not just in the sense of a theory, is this is believable in now I'm going to change my life because of this reality. Augustine in Predestination of the Saints says, "No one believes anything unless one first thought it believable. Everything that is believed is believed after being preceded by thought. Not everyone who thinks believes, since many think in order not to believe, but everyone who believes thinks in believing and believes in thinking, they're thinking, there's evidence."

Jesus is building a case in order get them to a place of believing and true belief is something where we actually change our lives based on this reality. Will we believe? The disciples are thinking that we are sinners. Will we believe that we're such great sinners, that the Son of God had to die for us? Will we believe that we are so loved that the Son of God would die for us? Will we believe that this is truly God, and believe so much that we will bend our lives to this reality, believe in such a way where we submit to the King that's risen from the dead, yield is authority, believe in a way where we actually do what he says, whatever he says.

In past years, I've made the case for the resurrection that Jesus really came back from dead. Factually, historically, I've done that. What I found is that's kind of boring for a lot of people. You can do that, you can go back, you can look at the primary documents, you can study N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, it's like 1,100 pages. It's tremendous. It's tremendous. This year, I want to turn the tables. Oh, how the tables turn, Turntables, Michael Scott. I want to flip it around. I want to flip it around, not how do I prove that the resurrection happened? Instead, I want to ask, how can you explain the world if the resurrection did not happen? How do you explain? How do you explain that alien nature of the Christian message, a message about God entering the world as a man, dying for our sins, rising to a new and everlasting life.

And not simply that this is a new message, not simply that this is not the message that the Jewish people would have expected about the Messiah. No, it's the flat contradiction of everything that the Jewish people who were the first believer in Jesus Christ, that the Jewish people believed the Messiah would do, it's the opposite. Why did the disciples have such a hard time believing as Jesus is in front of them, why? Because they could not believe that the Messiah who was supposed to come and conquer and reign, they couldn't believe that he would suffer and die. He was supposed to destroy the wicked not be destroyed by the wicked. He was supposed to establish the kingdom of God not fall victim to the kingdom of man. That's why the disciples struggled to understand what Jesus was saying when he predicted suffering and death, and he told them over and over. So what changed their minds?

What would it take to change their minds? And not just their minds, but that of the 500 plus as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that saw Jesus come back from there. What would change the mind of Saul of Tarsus, who then became the Apostle Paul, one of the intellectual titans of human history, what would turn him from persecuting Christian, murdering Christians as he did with Stephen to actually dying for the faith? What would have happened to actually make them so convincing that hundreds and thousands of other people would believe to start a movement that transformed the world? Where do they get the museum to sacrifice everything, risk everything? What turn them from being cowards, fearing, closing the door to opening the door and then saying no matter what, you crucify me, fine. What in the world would do that?

And Peter actually was crucified upside down. Why weren't the enemies of this message capable of shutting them up? What would have done it? What would it have taken? And then what would have led them to change their day of worship? What day is today? Sunday, Sunday, why are we worshiping on a Sunday? And one of the commandments actually says keep the Sabbath day holy. For the Jewish people, it was in their bones that Saturday was the day that they worship, there was a sacred character of the Sabbath that was fixed deep in their bones. Saturday had been the Sabbath, since the beginning of the world, they were Sabbath keepers. And then all of a sudden they start worshiping on Sunday, why? What would it take? And on top of that, how did Jewish believers just change the character of God?

Remember, World History you studied the religions in ninth grade. And one of the things that monotheistic religions, monotheistic religions, Judaism, monotheistic religions, one God, and all of a sudden the Jewish believers believe that this man Jesus Christ, is God. And he sends the Holy Spirit. Now there's a trinity, one God, three persons, what would it take? And I would submit to you, it would take the resurrection of Jesus Christ to harbor all of these changes. And how does he do it? He does it by blessing them when he blesses them to bless, and the blessing, the first one is the blessing of Scripture fulfilled.

Jesus Christ in verse 44, has a Bible study with the disciples here as he's eating the fish. Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Jesus takes the whole Hebrew Scriptures and he explains to them in all the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible, the three divisions, law of Moses, the prophets of the Psalms, he explains them that everything is about me. That's the hermeneutic, through which he says we are to read all of the Scriptures.

For thousands of years, God has been revealing himself in the Scriptures, in the law. He launches the old covenant with his people, with the blood of the sacrificial animals and he said, "That is the point to a new covenant of Jesus Christ." The daily sacrifice is pointed and begged for ultimate atoning sacrifice, the Passover lamb. The Passover lamb pointed to Jesus Christ in his sufferings, the prophets, talking about Scriptures like Isaiah 53, about the suffering servant or Hosea 6:2, when the Psalms 22 talks about his hands and his feet being pierced centuries before crucifixion was even invented. Hosea 6:2 talking about that he would come back. Psalm 16 talking about that God wouldn't let his holy one be left in the grave. Why? Why does Jesus do this?

Jesus to prove his resurrection, stands before them, shows him his hands and his feet, eats a fish. And he says, "That's cool. Now open up your Bibles. Let's have a Bible study." Why does he do that? Because there's power in the Word of God. He didn't want them to root their beliefs in just experience or feelings. As great as that is, he wanted them to root their faith in the Holy Scriptures. The Living Word of God is opening the written Word of God and showing that the written Word of God is as alive as the Living Word of God. This is why we do what we do at Mosaic, what are we doing? We're opening the Scriptures, we're opening the Scriptures and explaining.

Someone asked me, "How in the world did you start this church? How did you start this church?" And the person he's in the business world, so he understands how organizations work. So how did you start this church? Because starting a church is like starting a business except you've got a product that no one wants. We've got a product where the thing I stand up and say, everything that I stand up and say you are winking sinners. You're so terrible. You're awful. There's no hope for you, there's no hope. That's where we start every time. And then we go to Jesus every time, every time, every time. How? Because of the living word of God.

In 2021, we do the same thing that they've done through the centuries, we open up the Word of God, we open, we do what Jesus did. And Jesus doesn't just read the Scriptures, he reveals the Scriptures, and that's verse 45, then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." Has Jesus told them this before? Yes, he has.

On two occasions of the Gospel of Luke, he tells them that he was going to die and rise from the dead. And on both occasions, it said, "It was hidden from them," Luke 9, so they did not grasp it. And Luke 18 disciples didn't understand it. Its meaning was hidden from them. And Jesus Christ here, it says, "He sovereignly opens their minds." Their minds have been closed, there's a spiritual blindness and the Holy Scriptures now are illumined by the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, in the same way that he passed through the walls of that house. They didn't ask for it. He passes through the walls of their mind, and he does it through the Scriptures. How does he do that? How does he plant faith in their minds? By overcoming their fears. Fear of being punished, fear of the unknown, fear of the negative sides of life, the fear, fear, fear. Why did the resurrected Christ do this to his disciples? Why did he do it to them? Why only them?

This is a fascinating question, this is a fascinating thought experiment. If you want it to grow Christianity as quickly as possible, and you are coming back from the dead to whom would you reveal yourself? You're the resurrection of Christ, you can reveal yourself to absolutely anybody. Why are you going to reveal yourself to some fishermen and tax collectors, insurrectionist, and the disciples, why would you do that? Why didn't the resurrected Christ appear to Herod or Pilate or Caiaphas or the Sanhedrin? Why didn't he appear to Tiberius in the Roman Senate? Why didn't he do that? Why did he reveal himself to these people? Why?

Part of the reason was it was an act of judgment. The religious leaders rejected Jesus Christ. And when you reject Jesus Christ, and you get to a point of no return, you'll get rejected by God. That's part of the gospel message that you can get to a point where you reject God. A lot of people say Jesus Christ died for everybody. He died for those who would believe. If you do not believe this message, there will be a point where you get rejected, that's part of this message. His appearance to unbelievers wouldn't have made a difference. And Jesus gives us this theology in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16, where it talks about the Lazarus who goes to heaven after he dies, and the rich man does not.

And verse 27, the rich man's speaking to the Lord, "Then I beg you, Father, send him, Lazarus to my Father's house, for I have five brothers so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment. And Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' And he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

Here is Jesus saying that our minds are so locked from God in of ourselves, even if Jesus Christ would come in, show himself in the flesh, we naturally do not believe, why? Because evidence is never the issue. This is what a lot of people think, "If God just showed up, then I believe in him." Believe how? Believe that he just exists? That's not true faith, that's not the faith that Jesus Christ is demanding. True Faith is a faith that yields to his authority, where you shape your life around the fact that God is and he is who he says he is. People who crucified Jesus had seen miracle after miracle. They knew Jesus had resurrected Lazarus a few weeks before his crucifixion. So it's not evidence that make someone a Christian, it's not. It's not evidence, it's not intelligence.

In second coming, the Scripture says that Jesus will come back, and there will be a group of people who will try to fight him, who will try to raise up armies against the living God in futility. And Jesus appeared to these hardhearted, to Pilate, to Caiaphas, to the Sanhedrin, to Tiberias, you know what they would have done? They would have tried to crucify him again. So he doesn't appear to them. So this brings us to a point where this is so crucial. To become a Christian, to see God for who he is, you got to beg him to unlock your mind, to soften your heart, God, please, please let me see the truth. He has to illuminate your darkened mind. To believe, to know the truth, you need to embrace the fact that you can't do it on your own, you need to embrace the gift God, please save me.

That's part of the repentance message that we need to repent of our sins. And part of the sin is willful disbelief. Stuart Jackman wrote a book called The Davidson Affair, The Davidson Affair. And this is a little while back, but he imagines Jesus coming back from the dead in the modern era, and he is an investigative reporter, and he works for no television station. So this gentleman is called Cass Tennel. He's sent by his network to cover the story of the purported resurrection of Jesus Davidson, the son of David, Jesus Davidson.

So Tennel goes and it's in the modern era, and he goes and he interviews everyone who was involved. He interviews first Pilate, and Pilate says, "Oh, yeah, they stole the body." And then he goes, and he interviews Herod, is the same thing, the grave robbing store, then he interviews Thomas. And Thomas says, "I didn't believe but then I saw," and then he interviews Mary Magdalene and, and the other disciples and he hears their electrifying testimonies. That they've really changed, that they really believe that they saw Jesus Christ. And the story begins taking on a completely different character. And try as he would Cass Tennel, the hard bitten reporter begins to become persuaded that Jesus did come back from the dead. And he starts putting the documentary together with the hope that he can get others to believe what he believes that this is true.

And as he puts this together, one of his bosses says to him, "No, no, no, you got to get this idea out of your head that you are going to convince anybody," and they're having this conversation. And the boss says, "Even if Davidson has come back to life, Cass, these people don't have a chance." And Cass says, "I think they do." No Cass you know they don't, you can't change the world with a handful of wise sayings, a seasoning of compassion and a miracle or two, even if one of the miracles is a dead man coming back to life.

And the boss says, "Come on Cass, it's been long day, time we went home." Cass said hopelessly, "But the world he promised them the freedom," and the boss says, smiles with the tired smile and says, "It's no use, Cass we like it in prison. We don't want to be rescued. We like it in prison, we don't want to be rescued." Part of the gospel message, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that Jesus came to rescue us, came to open the doors, to set us free. He said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, free from lies, free from sin, free from the captivity of the enemy, free from fear. He wants to replace our fear with faith.

So if you are a Christian, for us today, we rejoice in the glory of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, and we need to bless God from the bottom of our hearts for unlocking our minds and our hearts. Bless him for making your heart burn with his voice and truth. And if you're not a Christian, or if you're not sure that you're Christian, I plead with you to plead with God. Saying, "God, please unlock my mind. If this is true, help me understand, give me eyes to see, give me a heart to love and to receive." He did that for the disciples. He's done that for me. I hope he does that for you as well.

Luke 24:47-49. And Jesus says, "And that repentance for the forgiveness of sins." That's our message, repentance for the forgiveness, "It should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I'm sending you the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." This is the message this is the Gospel, Jesus died for our sins, he died the death that we deserve to die because we wouldn't live the life that he called us to live. And when we repent, he forgives us. And how can we believe this? How do people believe this? Because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus says, once you believe our job is to proclaim it. That's why this church exists. That's why Mosaic exists. That's why 12 years ago at the age of 26, apparently I'm still a millennial, whatever that category means. I'm like an early millennial, at the age of 26, I went to seminary 24. You know what most young men do in their 20s? Not go to seminary and definitely not playing churches. And we had this audacious vision of coming to Boston, one of the godless cities in the whole world. Not just non-believing but anti-God. We just had this vision to start a church. How? By the power of the Holy Spirit. God started saving people.

The first person that we baptize is right here today, Vaughn, right up there, Vaughn there you are. Stand up, Vaughn. Stand up, bro. He's the man. Oh, he's so humble. He didn't stand up completely. We baptize in the YMCA pool, the YMCA in Huntington Avenue. Why, why? Vaughn, why did you believe? For the same reason why I believe, why did I believe? Because God said your mine. I'm unlocking your mind and your heart and you are safe. That's how we do it. This is our message, and we do this by the power of the Holy Spirit.

"And then Jesus led them out," in verse 50, "As far as Bethany lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And while he blessed them, he parted from them, was carried up into heaven, and they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God. He blesses them, he blesses them with joy, and then they return the blessing to God. They bless God." Early on, when we started the church, one of the first members of the church was a nice lady named Susan and Susan Hawking and I really connected, our families connected because she had studied Russian. And Susan lived in an assisted living home because Susan had many disabilities and one of the disabilities that she had was when she was two years old, she had cancer in her eye and her eye was removed.

And we met Susan and one of the things that we did and I look back now, in her 20s, my wife and I would go and we'd drive to Susan's assisted living home in Brighton and we drive her to church, and she liked church. And she liked the fact that we had food after services. Back when we were starting we would bribe people with food. It was very godly because Jesus did food, we did food. And Susan and I just we maintain a relationship and for the past few years, she hasn't been able to go to church, because she got that sick. And Susan would call me, she would call me all the time. I have 16 voicemails from Susan that aren't open on my phone. And we have that set up a time. I said, "Susan, I can't just answer the phone anytime, let's schedule a time to have a conversation."

And every Friday afternoon she would call me at 4PM. Last Friday, she called me and I had never heard her voice that weak. And Sunday, she called, I wasn't preaching, Pastor Shane was preaching last Sunday. I wasn't preaching. And she calls me I'm like, "Susan never calls me on Sunday." And she calls me and she said, "Yana, I'm in hospice." And she said, "But they're telling me that I'm going to be released soon." And then she said, "Yana, what's the Russian word for Sunday?" I said, "I can't remember what the Russian word for Sunday." I said, "Susan's was [foreign language 00:44:07]." And she says, "Isn't that the same word for resurrection?" I said, "Yes, Susan, it is." And then she said, "Will you visit me?" I said, "Yeah, I'll visit you soon, hopefully."

And on Wednesday, I got a text message Susan passed away. Susan, loved Jesus Christ. She loved the Lord. And Susan today is in the presence of Jesus. I told my daughters as Susan died, one of my daughters started bawling. My other daughter comes in and says, "Why are you crying? Susan's dancing with Jesus, and Susan has two eyes." She does, and a glorified body. This is what we believe. So the disciples, what changed them from being locked in a room afraid of death to saying, "Crucify me." If you're going to come at me and you're going to crucify me for the message, come at me. What changed is this truth, this truth that Jesus Christ died [inaudible 00:45:09], that Jesus Christ has the keys of death and Hades.

So on Resurrection Sunday, what do we proclaim? We proclaim that Jesus Christ, they tried as they... With everything, they had tried to lock him down, they couldn't. The Gospel can't be locked out. Jesus is the key to life. And Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life and anyone and everyone who believes in this message that Jesus Christ is the key to life, he is life, he is the resurrection and the life, if you believe that, though you die, you shall still live a resurrected body." So there's literally as Christians, nothing to fear.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this gospel message. We thank you for this truth. We thank you that You rose from the dead, that you defeated Satan's sin and death, and you did it to give us life. So Lord, if there's anyone who's still not a believer listening to this message, I pray unlock their minds, sovereignly unlock their minds, give them the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, the gift of new life, the gift of eternal life. And we do thank you, Holy Spirit for building your church, the church of Christ, and continue to use us to proclaim this message and we pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word. Oh God, you are a great God. And there was nothing that we can offer you on this Good Friday. There's nothing that we can ever offer you to bridge the chasm between Holy God and a wicked people, and that's who we are. But praise be to God that you did not leave us in our sins, that you are the Son of God. You broke into reality. You took on flesh. Lord, as we look to the cross, I pray Holy Spirit that you press the severity and the gravitas of this moment upon our souls, pray that we realize the judgment that we deserve. Why would they do that to you? I pray that question turns into why did we do that to you?

And I pray that question turns into why would you let that be done to you? I pray Lord that you today melt our hearts with your grace. Remove any tinge of hardness. As we look to what you went through, what you experienced, pray that we walk out of this place reveling in the cross of Jesus Christ, loves us that much. I pray for those Lord who are not yet yours, not yet awakened, have not yet repented. Pray that you today let them feel the justice, the judgment that is awaiting, and it's real. And I pray, draw them to yourself so that they do not experience, that we do not experience that judgment. Instead, that we ask like a thief on the cross that we ask Lord, remember us when you're in your kingdom, what a great king you are, what a great Lord you are, what a great savior you are. Holy spirit bless our time in the Holy Scriptures today, we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Tell the sermon is three crosses.

And today we gather to remember a God on the cross. Niche scoffed, even at the idea, ridicule the idea. Many today ridicule the idea of a God on a cross. And instead of we do not ridicule, we revel in this truth. We worship this God who was executed on our behalf. We worship Him because He's worthy. And when you meditate on the idea of a God on the cross, and once you meditate in a way that truly seeps into, not just mind but your heart, you realize that there's no other God but the one on the cross. I could not worship any other God because there is no other God, no other God makes sense of the reality that we live in a world of suffering, a world of real pain and real tangible loss, heartbreaking loss, and a world of evil.

And evil, there's more Machiavellian than anyone could have imagined. It is evil. And how could a God be immune to that? A God who is great and a God who is good, how can He just allow us to continue suffering, continue experiencing pain? Where is this guy? Where is the king? Where is the judge? And today we remember a God who's twisted and tortured, left as a corpse on a cross, nails driven through his hands and feet, hatred driven through his heart. His back lacerated, his limbs wrenched, brow and head bleeding from the beating and the scorching, the thorn pricks pierced into his head. His mouth dry, He's intolerably thirsty, his face swollen, plunged into God forsaken darkness. This is our God, a God who laid aside any immunity to pain and to suffering, a God who took on evil head on and one.

He entered our world of flesh and blood and tears and death. He entered space and time and He suffered, why? In order to battle evil. He suffered so that He could read evil without reading the world of us. He suffered to save us, and thus defeating the greatest enemy, Satan, sin and death. Today we'll look at Luke 23:26 through 43. Would you look at the text with me. "And as they led Him away, they see seized when Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for Him.

But turning to them Jesus said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children for behold the days are coming when they will say blessed are the barren and the wounds that never bore in the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us until the hills cover us for, if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry? Two others who were criminals were way to be put to death with Him. When they came to the place that is called the Skull there, they crucified Him, and the criminals; one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." And they cast lots to divide his garments.

And the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him saying, "He saved others, let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God his chosen one." Soldiers also mocked, mocked him coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself." There was also an inscription over him. This is the King of the Jews. One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him saying, "You not the Christ, save yourself and us." But the other rebuked him saying, "Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?" And we indeed justly for we are receiving the due reward for of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And he said to him, "Truly I say to you today you will be with me in paradise."

This is the reading of God's Holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points; we'll look at the king crucified by criminals and the king crucified with criminals and the king crucified for criminals. First, we see the king crucified by criminals. Jesus Christ entered into this world to wage a holy war against Satan. Satan wanted power over God. And he uses people who want power over God. And Satan has craftily orchestrated this plot. He rolled out the plot through his agents, Judas who sold Jesus by betraying, and Pilate who cowardly tried to wash his hands of the judgment that he cast. Herod, who knew that Jesus was innocent, instead he gives up everything to protect his power and position and pleasure. And Caiaphas who was making money off of religion and keeping people from worshiping God.

The political religious leaders, they colluded. They had nothing in common other than their hatred for Jesus and their love for power. And through a series of trials done at night in darkness, on the cover of darkness, they do everything to legally justify the murder of an innocent man. He's not just a man. He's God. They're trying to commit deicide. They're trying to murder God. It's the absolutely worst crime ever committed. They tried to slaughter the Son of God, murder the author of life creatures, killing the creator, why? What were they motivated by? They were motivated by something that many of us are motivated by. May I say most of us, all of us. They were motivated by a love for self and a hatred for anything and everything that threatened their self-interest. And that is a satanic diabolical urge desire.

This is what Jesus told the Pharisees. We thought they were children of Abraham and Jesus tells them, "You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he's a liar and the father of lies." When the fall happened, God promised Eve that from you a child will come. A son of man will come and He will bruise the head of the evil one as the evil one bruises his heel. It's a prophecy about Jesus Christ, Son of man, Son of God, putting his heel in the head of the evil one as the evil one is piercing him, meaning behind every single one of these characters is Satan. Satan exacerbating the sinful desires of our own hearts as he fills his own desires in our hearts. Judas, it says that Satan entered him.

You see Satan behind the scenes, Pilate. What is truth? Obviously the father of lies wants nothing to do with truth. And you see the same with all of the actors here, but let's just pause with Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate tried to remain neutral when it comes to Jesus Christ. He tries to say, "I have nothing against Christ. I'm washing my hands of this man." And God warned him. God tried to warn him, in particular through his wife, we don't see her name here in the scriptures, some call her Claudia, some Procula. In Matthew 27:15 through 19 it says, "Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had been a notorious prisoner called Barnabas. So then when they had gathered, Pilate said to him, "Whom do you want me to release for you? Barnabas or Jesus who is called the Christ? For He knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered Him up.

Besides while he was sitting on the judgment seat his wife sent word to him, "I have nothing to do with that righteous man for I have suffered much because of Him today in the dream." Pilate does not listen to her. In a tragic and cowardly act he is swayed by pride, by a desire to protect his position and power and pleasure. I wonder what was in that dream that caused Pilate's wife so much pain. One common idea that has been given over the course of church history is that she heard her husband's name on the lips of Christians for thousands of years, not praising Pilate for his leadership or lauding his military exploits, instead professing that Pilate crucified their God. The Nicene Creed says this, "For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The only name in the Nicene Creed of a human other than the Virgin Mary. As Adam's name is forever linked with original sin, Pilate's name is forever linked with the crucifixion of Christ.

But Pilate didn't intend to crucify Christ, Jesus was brought to him already beaten by the Jewish authorities. Pilate wanted to bring Jesus to the brink of death and keep Him alive so he has him scourged. And when the gospels are written, people didn't need details about scourging and crucifixion because they saw it on a daily, on a weekly, on a monthly basis. They knew all too well the horrors of scourging and crucifixion. What happens is they would strip the prisoner and then tie his hands, bind his hands high on a column so that the skin on his back is tense. His arms are held up and as his wrists are tied to a ring and the pillar and then to professional seidths, two professional executioners would take the tool, a cat of nine tails as it was called with either lead balls or pieces of rock or pieces of bone at the very tips of the strap. And one after another, they would wail on the back of the criminal.

The first blows would leave long livid marks and then blue bruises would appear beneath the skin. And then after a while, the flesh would begin to tear, and Jesus's flesh was already sore from sweating blood in Gethsemane, and then from being beaten. And with each stroke, his body gives a painful shutter. The skin breaks, and soon his whole back is a red surface and his blood is scattering like rain. He's scourged. And lacerations would tear and they would grow until skeletal muscles would produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh. Obviously He couldn't carry his cross. He wanted to. He was determined to, but He couldn't. That's why in our texts it said, "As they led Him away, verse 26, they seized one Simon of Cyrene who was coming in from the country and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus." What do we know about Simon of Cyrene?

We know that his children became Christians. From the Gospel of Mark, his sons were named Rufus and Alexander. Perhaps this was the day that Simon of Cyrene became a follower of Christ, how could you not, carrying his cross for him? And there followed Him a great multitude of people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for Him. Most likely not professional wailers or low mentors, because nobody knew that this was going to happen because the kangaroo court happened at night. So they start weeping and wailing. We're not sure why, perhaps they knew Jesus or perhaps they just see what has been done to Him. They're weeping over the situation, filled with sympathy and compassion.

And verse 28 it says, "Jesus turning to them said, daughters of Jerusalem do not weep for me, but we for yourselves and for your children, for behold the days are coming when they will say blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed, then they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us and to the hills, cover us for if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Don't weep for me. What's Jesus talking about here? Even in the midst of his own agony, He pauses. Think of Christ in this moment. Think of his face, virtually unrecognizable, swollen, racked with pain from the beatings he'd received from the soldiers, the cuts in his forehead by the crown of thorns, exhausted by everything. On top of that, the emotional trauma, knowing that He's about to be separated from the father and as determined as he may have been to carry everything, He stumbles along the Via Dolorosa and He stops.

And as He sees everyone weeping, what does He do? He says, "Do not weep for me." A lot of people miss the gospel and they miss salvation because this is where they stop. They look to the cross of Christ, they look to the Son of God suffering and they weep. You feel bad for Him. He says, "Do not weep for me because I know how superficial your tears are. Don't weep for me and weep instead, weep for yourself." Because weeping over Jesus, feeling bad for Jesus, sympathy and empathy toward Jesus it does save. He says, "Weep for yourself. Weep over your own sins and the sins of your children." Because that's why Jesus is where he is. Jesus in particular was talking about very particular judgment.

And Luke 21 in the Olivet Discourse, He talks about a judgment that is coming through Titus and is coming through the Roman empire, where they come into Israel in the year 70 AD and they reduce the city, one of the greatest cities in the history of the world, they reduce it to rubble. The Jewish state was extinguished not to appear until nearly 2000 years later, a judgment so severe and you can do the racers Josephus the great historian writes that people suffered from hunger so much as they were barricaded in the city, that they would start eating their own children. And Jesus says, "Do not weep for me. A judgment is coming. A judgment is looming." They staggered under the way of that, even of that idea.

Luke 23:31, "If they do these things, when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" What's he saying? He's saying, if they do this to the innocent Son of God, what awaits the guilty? It's an impending judgment. That's what he's saying. Weep over your own sins because if you do not repent over your sin, it will be judged in you instead of in Christ. Why does Jesus pause everything as He staggered, as He's barely walking? Why doesn't He ... And He knows exactly what's about to happen. He's not even focused on that why, because He knows the judgment that's coming for Him and He wants to keep everyone from experiencing that same judgment. Israel had rejected the Messiah and judgment was coming for them. And the same way that if we reject the Son of God, dying on the cross for our sins, judgment will come for us. Jesus here is saying, "Lay down your arms, stop fighting with God. Instead, accept the gift of grace and embrace his loving arms."

This reality on Good Friday, we must pause. And before we get to the great news of Jesus dying for our sins, we need to pause and say, "Jesus is dying." Why is he dying? He's dying to absorb the wrath of God that we deserve. That's why. Before the cross of Jesus Christ is a sign of salvation and forgiveness and mercy and grace, it's first and foremost the sign of God's judgment poured out on the Son of God. Many of us we are now moved by the reality of salvation and forgiveness of sins, because we do not understand the gravity of the reality of the judgment that's coming. Jesus knew the judgment that was coming. He knew it so well. He knew that God is a Holy God and a Holy judge, and a Holy God and a Holy judge will not be compromised. Jesus was about to experience the judgment and He tells these women weep not for me. Weep for yourself, weep over your own sin.

Jesus crucified by criminals, the king is also crucified with criminals. Luke 23:32, "Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with Him." The word criminals here is an insurrectionist. They want to throw off the power of Rome. And verse 33, "When they came to the place that called the Skull there, they crucified Him and the criminals one on his right and one on his left. Apparently the hill where the crosses were set up, it looked liked like a skull with three crosses. And here we see the dividing line of history that there's a cross of redemption. And also there's a cross of repentance and a cross of rejection. There's a line right in the middle of separates all of humanity; are we going the way of repentance or are we going the way of rejection?

Isaiah prophesied centuries before the servant of the Lord, Jesus would be numbered with the transgressors in his death. Isaiah 53:12, "Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many. And He shall divide the spoil with the strong because He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors." And all it says in the text is, they crucified Him. That's all they needed to say. People knew all too well the crucifixion wave was Jesus with his torn back is placed upon the rugged cross. And then the soldiers begin to, nails into his hands, into his wrists, ripping through the median nerve in the wrist. The same nerve that causes the excruciating symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. And then once Jesus Christ is raised on that cross, the only way He can breathe is by trying to lift himself up off his nailed feet.

And He starts breathing and laboring to breathe. It was impossible to adequately inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide. And eventually the legs get depleted of strengths, experienced severe muscle cramps and spasms begin to overpower the body leading to unrecoverable fatigue. And usually the criminal would die of his fixation. If the criminal would not die, the soldiers would break his legs so that he would. Jesus had already died before the breaking of legs in order to fulfill the prophecy. And John records that blood and water flowed from his womb once a soldier pierced with a lance his side as a result of the sacks surrounding the heart rupturing. And as Jesus Christ died, before He died what does he do? He's still ministering. He's still on the cross and He's still paying attention to the eternal soul there before Him.

He still cares for them as He is dying, as He is breathing with all of his strength, trying to get a gulp of air. Luke 23:34, with his last breaths what was He saying? He says, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." And as he's preaching a sermon, father forgive them, the across turns into a puppet. The king still cares for his servants, the same ones who are crucifying Him. The same ones who have turned this into a game, casting lots for his garments, which garments? Is the garments that Herod gave Him mocking Jesus kingship. And Jesus says, "No, father forgive them. Don't let their judgment fall on them. Let their judgment fall on." How did the people respond? Verse 35. "The people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at Him saying He saved others let Him save himself if He is the Christ of God his chosen one. They admit that He performed Miracles. He saved people. They use that fact against Him.

Verse 36, "The soldiers also mocked coming up and offering Him sour wine. Apparently this was a joke because it was accompanied by a challenge, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself." Luke 23:38, "There was also an inscription over him, this is the King of the Jews." This is Pilate's way of getting back at the Jewish leaders that forced him into this position that he didn't want to be in crucifying Jesus Christ. He didn't want to do it. He was forced to do it, because of his own pride, because of his fear he gave in. So now he's getting revenge on him by saying, "This is your king, this is the King of the Jews." They begged him. No, no, no, have it say, He said he was the King of the Jews. This was a prophecy that Jesus really was the King of the Jews. He's the King of all of us.

Verse 39. "One of the criminals who were hanged railed at Him saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us." The thief, one of them begins to pick up on the same taunts as everybody else. He's angry and he's better in his lashing out his nearest target. In and the other gospels it says both of the criminals taunted Jesus Christ. Both of them started off by taunting Him, by ridiculing him, by mocking Him. Something happens in one of the thieves, one of the insurrectionists, one of the rebels. Verse 40, "But the other rebuked Him saying, "Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. Suddenly there's a burst of spiritual moral clarity. He realizes the callous hypocrisy with which he is mocking Jesus Christ.

And he realizes that Jesus is innocent. And he realizes this through Jesus prayers, through way that Jesus is dying with his very last breath, He's still trying to save. This is the third time and the account that Jesus has proclaimed, acknowledged innocent, once by Pilate, once by Herod and here. Verse 42, the thief says this, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And he said to him, "Truly, I say to you today you will be with me in paradise. What in the world the thief do to be saved? What did he have to do? First of all, what did he have to offer? He couldn't offer past obedience. He couldn't offer restoration, I will change my life. He couldn't offer any good works. He could offer Him nothing. What did he do to get saved? All he did was acknowledge, I deserve this death. He does not.

And he realized that Jesus Christ is truly dying for his sins. He realized that Jesus Christ has a kingdom and Jesus Christ is the King. He is the King of Kings. He's the Lord of all Lords. He is the true Messiah, the Son of God and the Son of man. He realizes and he believes, but what a crazy request, what a bold, what an audacious request. I've done nothing to deserve heaven. I've done nothing to deserve forgiveness or grace or mercy. I've done nothing. I've actually done everything to be here. I am receiving inept myself, condemnation. Would you forgive me? And I don't want just to disappear. I don't want my soul just to be annihilated because I was created for eternal life just like everybody, so I'm asking for paradise. I'm asking for your kingdom. I'm asking for heaven for all of eternity. And what's crazier than the requests that Jesus Christ grants it; today you will be with me in paradise, in heaven a final place of bliss, immediate pleasure, perfect peace and joy.

Two criminals ending with completely different eternities. Both equally bad, both start by cursing and mocking Jesus Christ. Both would love to be saved. One of them even says, "Save yourself and us." One understood his guilt. I am guilty. One understood his condemnation, and the only thing he could offer Jesus Christ was a broken and contrite heart. And that's all you need. That's all we need for complete forgiveness. One sees the king and begs for pardon.

Point three Is the king crucified for criminals. This was an execution, not just an execution. This was a sacrifice. Jesus Christ, after He completed his work what does He say? "It is finished." What's finished? The sacrifice. It's completed. The Lamb of God took the sin of the world. The world shook. The Son blocked darkness, not the crucifixion but his cry, cry confessing that He has been forsaken by God, that God forsakenness that right there is judgment. That's hell, because on the cross Jesus Christ isn't just battling Satan sin and death, He's battling all those, but it used also absorbing the wrath of God. He has everybody turn on Him. His disciples betrayed, deny Him. Everybody turns on Him, including his heavenly father, why? Because He became our sin.

On the cross Jesus became the greatest sinner who has ever lived, the greatest murderer, the greatest adulterer, thief, rebel, blasphemer. Jesus became Peter the denier, Paul the persecutor, David the adulterer Adam the sinner. Why? This defies all reason; God, why would you do this? Why would you allow this to be done to you? For the immortal, infinite God, just to empty himself, just to become one of us. That's unimaginable love and humility to begin with but He doesn't end there, He leads down his Life. John 10:18, "No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my father." That's fascinating. I thought Satan is the one who crucified Jesus. I thought Pilate was on the crucified Jesus. I thought it was Caiaphas. I thought it was Herod. I thought it was the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus. Yeah, they did.

And behind the scenes, Jesus has taken the greatest evil act has ever been done, He's orchestrating the whole thing. He lays down his life in order to pick it up. He's not crucified powerlessly. That's why he says, "Don't weep for me. They're not doing this to me. I'm allowing this to be done." He's crucified, not powerlessly but powerfully. Jesus, what is He motivated by? Love and hate, the strongest emotions that there are. Jesus, what is He motivated by? Love and hate; love for God, love for people. Hatred towards sin, Satan, and death. And as Jesus hung on that cross, a corpse on a cross. As the hatred of all these people breaks his heart, He's motivated by what? By love for us.

Jesus is looking down, these same people, He created them. Every single one of them, every single person we just named, He created every single one of them. He gives them every single heartbeat. He gives them every single ounce of energy with which they are crucifying Him. He knew them before they were born, before they were conceived in their mothers womb. He watched them grow up. He watched them live their life. He knew everything about every single one of these people, and He is allowing the gifts that He had given them, He's allowing those gifts to be turned on Him to crucify him. Jesus, why?

Jesus gave them their heartbeat, gives you your heartbeat. I'm giving you a next heartbeat and they're hammering hatred into his heart. Why? This is the power of evil. It's a stranglehold of evil over our hearts. And when God comes into the world, we do everything we can to try to kill Him. It started with Satan. Evil is an intrusion into the world that's alien to creation, and Jesus Christ allows Satan to do this. And as Satan tries to do this, Jesus defangs, Satan snatches captures from the jaws of hell. Satan acts out of pure spite. He knows he can't win. He's just trying everything he can to beat the Son of God. And the Son of God will not be ... He use the enemy's power against him.

Peter Craft refers to the cross as judo. When your enemy comes at you with all he has, you use his against him. And at the cross, evil is conquered by evil, by dying Jesus disables death. Colossians 2:13 through 15, "And you who are dead in your trespasses and the uncertain decision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with this legal demands, this He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Him, the king defeats Satan, sin, and death trials."

That brings us to the decision that every single one of us has to make. Mercy has a cost and the cost is the cross and we deserve the cross. And Jesus offers us forgiveness of pardon. He offers us a resurrection. And what's fascinating is after this story about two criminals, one on the left, one on the right, one of them who repents, the other who rejects, after this story in Luke, we get another story of two other criminals, one criminal repents, the other rejects; it's Peter and Judas. One denies, one betrays.

Luke 23:54 through 62, one of the most heartbreaking texts in all of scripture says this, "Then they seized him, Jesus, and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house. And Peter was following at distance. And when they enkindled the fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely and said, this man also was with Him. But he denied saying woman, I do not know him. And a little later, someone else saw him and said, you also are one of them. But Peter said, man, I am not. And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted saying certainly this man also was with him for he too, is a Galilean. But Peter said, man, I do not know what you are talking about.

And immediately, while he was still speaking the rooster crowed, the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly. I wonder what Peter saw in the eyes of Jesus Christ at that moment, you can imagine, there was pain and there was love. Judas did something worse than denying Jesus Christ. He betrayed Him after spending three years with Him, seeing the miracles, seeing Lazarus brought back from the dead, seeing Jesus, his power and authority, he sells Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and he to recognize what he did. There's a difference. Peter accepted the mercy and he got heaven. Jesus rejected the mercy and he got hell.

Judas betrayed Jesus Christ and then he denied the mercy, the spared in his sin and he stayed there. He knew he had sinned. He regretted betraying Jesus. All he needs to do is repent, ask for forgiveness. Jesus would have forgiven him. Jesus, on that resurrection Sunday would have treated him to breakfast on the sea of Galilee, would have embraced him, would have restored him. The difference between Peter and Judas is this, Peter denied Jesus, but Peter did not deny sinning against Jesus. Peter denied Jesus, but he did not deny that he was a sinner in need of forgiveness. Judas did. Not only did Judas betray, but he also denied his need for sin. Judas didn't go to Jesus. Therefore, Good Friday did nothing for Judas. And I pray that that's not the case for you.

Good Friday does nothing for you unless you weep over your own sins, unless you mourn in broken heart and bring your broken heart to God and say "God, forgive me." To claim mercy you must first claim your sin, ask for the mercy, receive the grace. There is mercy today if we ask for, if we choose to accept it. I pray that Good Friday is a great Friday for you as you repent and believe in Jesus Christ. At this point, we are going to transition to celebrating Holy Communion. Holy Communion, Jesus Christ is reversing the curse of the evil that descended upon this earth. Sin comes to Adam and Eve and he tempts them and he says, "Take and eat." And they take and eat that which is forbidden. Jesus Christ comes to reverse the curse by giving his body, not taking by giving his body as a sacrifice for us in the Lord's Supper. He tells us, "Take, eat. Take, drink."

Saint Paul tells us that we are to celebrate Holy Communion by remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And he warns us in 1 Corinthians 11, that we are not to do it without repentance. So for whom is communion, communion is for those who have repented of their sin, for those who believe in Christ and turn to Him. If you have repented, if you have asked for forgiveness and mercy and grace, you're welcome to today. If not, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, instead meditate on the gospel.

(Silence)

Let us pray before we partake. Oh, heavenly father, we thank you for this Good Friday. And I pray by the power of your spirit minister to us right now with grace and mercy, we come to you with repentance and we repent of pride and selfishness and self reliance and self-interest. We repent of all too often loving ourselves and our power and position and pleasure over you. We pray that you today accept our broken hearts, our contrite hearts. As we focus on the cross, as we see the body of Christ that was broken for us, as we see the blood of Christ pouring down, shed for us, not just for us, but in our place, in our stead. We pray that you bless us as we partake in Holy Communion now. We pray this in Christ's name. And the night that He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and after breaking it He said, "This is my body broken for you, take, eat and do this in remembrance of me."

(Silence)

Then proceeded to take the cup and He said, "This cup is the cup of New Covenant of my blood that was poured out for the sins of many, take, drink and do this in remembrance of me.

(Silence)

Jesus, we worship you, a God who was crucified. We worship you Jesus that you were crucified, not just by sinful criminals, not just with sinful criminals before sinful criminals, and that's every single one of us. We are all insurrectionists and rebels. We have all rebelled against your divine and Holy authority. We asked for forgiveness. We ask that you let us enter the kingdom of God, not because of what we've done, but because we trust in what Jesus has done on the cross for us. Jesus, we thank you that you died, that you were buried, but you didn't stay there. We thank you that you rose triumphantly, conquering Satan, sin, and death. Therefore, we worship you. We worship you Jesus because you alone a worthy of all worship. And we pray this in your name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome again to Mosaic. It's good to see you this morning. If you're new, welcome, my name is Shane. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and so glad to have you with us. As we mentioned earlier, we would love to connect with you. The way we do that is through a little connection card. You should have gotten one of those with your worship guide on the way in. If you fill that out for us, you can just drop it in the little white box back there at the back of the room on your way out this morning, and we'd love to follow up with you this week and just send a small gift to you in the mail to thank you for being with us. You can also fill that out online or in our app as well.

Before we start, happy Palm Sunday to everyone. This is the first day, the beginning of a holy week. We have a couple of special service times coming up just to remind you of before we jump into the sermon. First of all, this Friday we're having a good Friday service at 6:00 PM here at the temple. Childcare will be provided for kids up through fifth grade, and so if you have kids that want to participate in that, just jump on our website and fill out the little registration form, that way we can know how many children to prepare for, but looking forward to that. We'd love to see you back here Friday night for that service.

Then Easter Sunday, this is really important. We're having three services, and as we've mentioned in the last couple of weeks, they're all going to be at different times than usual. Our first service is going to be at 8:30. We're going to have a full-blown mini-Mosaic program and Mosaic teens at this service, so families with kids, this will be a great option for you. Second service is going to be at 10:15. This service is also going to have childcare mini-Mosaic up through fifth grade. We're anticipating this is going to be our largest, most popular service.

If you're planning to come on this one, you might want to come early to make sure that you get a seat. Really, the reason we're expanding to three services, we just really want to make sure that with all the distancing requirements, that we don't run out of space next week. But our final service is going to be at 12 o'clock noon. Go get brunch, come and join us at 12 o'clock if you want to join us for that third service. Really, whatever service you're able to attend is great and just look forward to celebrating with you next Sunday morning. But with that being said, let's pray before we start the sermon this morning.

God, we thank you for this amazing section of scripture and the time that we've been able to spend in the sermon on the mount over the last several weeks, and Lord, we thank you that you have spoken to us through your son, the living word, and Jesus Christ, and you've also spoken to us through your scriptures, the written word. As we look into your word again today, Lord, we ask that you would humble us and give us ears to hear what you have to say, our minds and hearts that are open that are humble to you. God, your word is good, it is perfect, it is without air, and it is authoritative, but also beautiful and beneficial.

It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, and so Holy Spirit, we ask that you would come and illuminate this path for us, so that we can stay on this narrow way that leads to life, following after Christ, following that path that he has blazed on before us. We pray all this in his name, amen. Today we're wrapping up our sermon series on the sermon on the mount. We're going to be looking at Jesus conclusion to the sermon on the mount. If you've ever studied homiletics, if you've ever studied public speaking, you know the importance of your introduction and your conclusion. These are the two most important parts of any address that you make.

They're kind of like the takeoff and the landing. In your introduction, really, you're earning the right to be heard by your audience. Right now, you're here. You're about to sit down and hear me talk for the next 40 minutes or so, but I understand that just because you can hear my voice doesn't mean you're actually listening to what I have to say. I got to earn that right to keep your attention. It helps a lot, if in your introduction, you can give people some kind of hook that's going to show them that what you're about to say is worthy of that time and attention.

Even before I start preparing for a sermon, I like to keep this phrase in mind, don't preach because you have to say something, preach because you have something to say. A good introduction, it lets people know that you're about to say something that's worth saying, something that is worth hearing. In Jesus' introduction, he gives us this little hook. It's like a bombshell of a statement. You remember what He said when He starts the sermon, He says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

It's really unexpected, and yet, it's powerful, it's intriguing. It's maybe even a little bit perplexing, but all right, Jesus, you got my attention. I want to see like where you're going to go with this. Not only is it a really good hook, it's really relevant to everything else that he has to say. It's almost like this is the key that unlocks the rest of the sermon on the mount. Now, if you understand what Jesus is saying here, you're going to get the rest of the sermon, but if you don't, a lot of what Jesus is going to say that follows is going to be puzzling.

Jesus had a great take off. What about his conclusion? Well, how does Jesus land the plane? That's what we're looking at today. It lands like ... You've probably heard sermons that nose dive and crash and burn on the landing. Not here at mosaic, but at other churches perhaps. Jesus lands, it's like an atomic bomb, just boom explosion, fire everywhere. He walks down the mountain like an action hero. Doesn't even look back at all the minds that he just blew behind him. How does he do this? He does this by turning to his listeners, turning to us, and asking us, how are you going to land the plane?

How are you going to land, not the plane of the sermon, how are you going to land the plane of your life? Every single one of us, from the moment we're born, we are on our descent, and we're flying through the turbulence of life, and the runway of death is coming closer and closer with every moment. This is what we need to consider. This is what we need to ponder. When the rubber hits the road, are you going to make a smooth, peaceful landing, or are you about to crash and burn? How much time do you spend thinking about eternity?

What do we expect to find on the other side of death? Where do we go when we die? These might sound like cliche questions, but these are the most important questions that anyone could ask, and these are the questions that Jesus wants us to consider today in the conclusion to a sermon. If you have your Bibles, open up to Matthew 7, I'm going to be looking at verses 13 through 29, the end of Jesus' sermon. As we work through this text today, I want us to focus on these three points that Jesus drives home here in His conclusion. First of all, there are only two paths. There are only two directions.

Then thirdly, there are only two destinations. Read along with me. If you don't have a Bible, you can follow along and the words will be up here on the screen as well. This is Matthew 7 beginning in verse 13. Jesus says, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the disease tree bears bad fruit. Healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a disease tree bear good fruit."

"Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father, who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?" And I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me you workers of lawlessness." Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock."

"The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock, and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it." When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. For he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes."

This is the reading of God's Holy word for us this morning. Point number one is that there are only two paths, and Jesus begins by telling us, you need to enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. There are two identical Proverbs in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 14:12, and 16:25, and they both say this, "That there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." What are these two paths that Jesus is talking about?

Well, let's start out by what is the path that leads to life? What is Jesus talking about there? If you were here last Sunday night at our prayer service, one of our members, Nathan Young, he brought a great message on this from John 14:6, where Jesus tells His disciples that, "I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me. Peter and John preached this in Acts 4. They said that, "This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone," in verse 12, "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven among men by which we must be saved."

Jesus is the narrow gate. He is the only path to salvation. What that means is that the broad road to destruction, that is anything and everything else, and we hear that and we say, that's so exclusive, and it is. Jesus acknowledges that. Jesus says the gate is narrow. But before we can begin to object, we have to first ask, what are the alternatives? Romans 3:23 tells us that, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 6:23 says that, "The wages of the sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord, that Jesus being the only way, it sounds exclusive, it is exclusive, but the alternative is that there is no way. No way at all. That we are all sinners, we are all guilty and we are all incapable of saving ourselves.

We have all sinned again and infinitely just, and Holy God. The chasm that we need to cross is infinite. Think about this, only Jesus, in his complete perfection and full divinity was worthy and able to pay the penalty that our sin and rebellion deserved, and yet only Jesus, because of his full humanity could stand in humanity's place to be that atoning substitution. There could be no other way. It had to be Jesus. For Jesus to say, I am the way, I am the only way. I'm the truth. I am the life. I am the narrow gate. It excludes any other means of salvation, and yet, at the same time, it is more inclusive of any other alternative because the gate is narrow. But entering through this gate is open to all. It's free.

That the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, offered to all, to any who would repent and put their faith in Him and cry out to Christ for salvation. This is what scripture says. We know this, John 3:16, one of the most famous verses in scripture, "That God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Romans 10:11, the scripture say, "Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

You don't have to be born into a certain ethnicity. You don't have to have a spiritual, a pedigree. You don't have to go and achieve self-actualization or enlightenment. You don't have to climb to the peak of some holy mountain to offer sacrifice or maintain a life of perfection to be saved. You simply call on the name of Jesus and you will be saved. Believe, confess, cry out to Christ and say, no matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, you will be saved. Look at verse 14 again. It says that, "The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

This is important to understand. Jesus acknowledges the gate is narrow, and yes, it is free to enter by that gate, but the road that follows is not going to be easy. Jesus says, it's going to be hard, that the Christian life is hard. If it's not hard, then perhaps you're not actually on the path that you think that you're on. We've heard this phrase, that salvation costs us nothing, and yet discipleship costs us everything. This is Christianity 101, that we are justified freely by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, and yet, the lifelong work of sanctification of putting our flesh to death, it's hard.

The lifelong work of engaging and carrying out the mission of God and living our lives as witnesses to the gospel and the kingdom of God, it costs us a lot. Following Jesus comes with trouble, tribulation, persecution. It takes perseverance. It takes patience. It is not a broad easy road. It's a road of self-denial. It's a road of self-discipline. It's a road of laying down your life and picking up your cross daily and following after Jesus. It is all of those things, but it's also worth it. It is the road that leads to life and there is no other way.

What this means is that, if we are walking this path as Christians, we should stand out and seem very distinct from the rest of the world around us, as if we are walking in a complete opposite direction against the flow of everything that surrounds us. We live in a world that follows this cultural mantra of like, you only live once, and so have a good time all the time, get the most out of life while you can. In scripture would put it like this, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. We say things, we hear things like, life is about the journey, not the destination. To go with pastor Jan, false. That's a false statement. Not true. If it is true, if life is really only about the journey, then yeah, go spend your life on yourself, get the most out of this life while you can, because this is all you'll ever get.

You can do this in a number of ways. You can do this through living a life of rebellion and sin of just seeking self-gratification and earthly pleasure. Or you can do this the way the Pharisees did this through practicing your righteousness before people. Not because you love God, but to be honored and respected by others, that they'll look and say, oh, look at that person. They're so virtuous. They're so right. Jesus would say, to either of these approaches like, great, but you've received your reward in full, that whatever satisfaction you got out of that is all you will ever get, and your best days will now forever be in the past.

Jesus calls us, as his followers, to a different kind of journey, a journey that doesn't begin with discovering ourselves, with finding ourselves, but with losing ourselves. It begins with humility. It begins with repentance and faith, and acknowledging that Jesus paid it all. So, all to him I owe. I am not my own, but I belong body and soul to God and to my savior, Jesus Christ, and therefore, my life, my time, my talents, my treasures, these are not mine to be spent on myself in this life. These are mine given as a steward from God to be invested for the sake of the next.

Knowing that in Christ, the best is always yet to come. Now, we heard this a few weeks ago. Jesus put it like this in Matthew 6:19. He says, "Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal." Now, if we live this way, apart from faith, this kind of investing in eternity, it doesn't make sense. It seems foolish. Right, you're denying yourself something right now and you're betting your life on something that you can't even see.

From the perspective of the world, it seems like folly. Jesus talks about it like this, that the kingdom of God, it is like a treasure, but it's like a treasure that's buried in a field, and not everybody can see it, but once you discover it, once you see what's there, you're willing to go and sell everything you have to acquire that field, because you know what's inside it, and everyone else might look at you and think you're crazy for the price that you're willing to pay, but you know the return on that investment.

Imagine like this. Imagine I had a time machine right here and I was willing to sell you a ticket, but it came with some strings attached. First of all, you could only use it to go backwards in time. Secondly, you could only stay there for five minutes. Third, it's only capable of bringing you maximum like 10 years into the past. Then finally, this ticket is going to cost you everything that you have, every penny to your name. You would probably think, well, that sounds very novel, but it's probably not a good investment. Not worth the cost of that. But let me remind you, 10 years ago, you could convince your former self to buy Bitcoin, which was like less than a dollar at the time.

If you could scrounge $10,000 $15,000 to go, you would be a billionaire today, and so yes, of course I would make that investment, but this is what I'm getting at, that the kingdom of God is a better investment than that. This is not financial advice. I'm not your financial advisor, but this is spiritual advice. I am a spiritual advisor of sorts. Jesus is talking about eternal stocks here. Don't miss this opportunity to invest in eternity, is a sure bet, and it's hard. It's going to be costly. It may cost everything you have, but you're investing in something that will never tarnish, that will never fail.

This is why 2 Corinthians 4:16 sells us that we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to think things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are seen are eternal. There are only two paths. Point number two, there are only two directions. Jesus continues in verse 15. He tells us, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You'll recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the disease tree bears bad fruit."

"A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a disease tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?" And I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me you workers of lawlessness."

In this passage, we see that these two paths results in two very different destinations, and so therefore, Jesus, here in the middle, wants us to be careful that we not lose our sense of direction, that we make sure that we know where we're going, to not only know what the right path is, but to know how to know when we are on that right path. Some of you might be too young to remember this, but way back in the day, before smartphones, before Google Maps, before big tech was tracking our every move, if you were going on a road trip with your friends or something, like you had to have a physical map made out of paper in order to figure out where you were going.

What you would do is you'd go to the gas station or something, you would buy a map of whatever area you were trying to travel to, and you'd jump on the back of your Brontosaurus and you'd take off on your journey. It was great. The map could show you what was there, but the map could not show you where you were in relation to what was there. The map could not tell you what road you were on or what direction you were going. You had to figure that out for yourself. What that meant is you had to like look out at the road and look for the signs along the way that say, this is the road that you're on, and this is the direction that you're going, North, South, East or West.

What that meant is there would be these times, it's never happened to me, but maybe it happened to some of you, where you would be on the right road. You thought, I'm on I-80. I'm good to go. I set the cruise control. I can kick back and relax. Then like an hour later, you notice, hey, that sign says there's an I-80 with a little E on it. I was supposed to be on I-80 with a little W after it. I've just driven a sixth of the way across the country in the wrong direction. If it wasn't for the sign, I wouldn't have known that I'm actually lost.

How do you know when you're on the right path? That's what Jesus' wanting us to get at here. What are the signs to look for? We're going to talk about that in a minute, but first, Jesus warns us that, if that's not bad enough, there's false signs out there pointing in the wrong direction. He says, "Beware of false prophets." There are people trying to lead you astray, telling you that this is the way to go and actually pointing you in a way that is the opposite. This was a problem back then, this is a major problem today.

We live in a day and age where, because of things like social media, anybody and everybody can have a platform and gather a following. On the one hand, this means there's a lot of good, useful content out there, Christian teaching available online. It also means there's a lot of horrible, deceptive, false content out there, false prophets, people who are claiming to present the truth with authority, and yet they are leading people in the wrong direction. Some of these people, they can be religious. Some of these people are irreligious. Churches used to worry a lot about the false teachers that people would see on TV, the televangelist, the snake oil salesmen, the charlatans preaching their prosperity gospel.

That's something we need to be concerned of and discerning about and look out for as Christians. But today, we don't honestly see many people being deceived by the cookies, people that we see on Christian television. Instead, what we see is there's a lot of people are being led astray in other ways, the political causes, activists, personalities, celebrities, talk show hosts, influencers, even teachers and professors, and Jesus warns us that it's not always going to be obvious who these people are. Don't assume that you know what they're going to look like, because they're going to look like sheep on the outside. When you look up a little closer, you see that they're actually ferocious wolves.

He's warning us, you need to be cautious, you need to be careful who you follow. You need to be wise and discerning so that you can tell the difference. Now, you're going to need community around you to help you with this. You're going to need to know God's word and filter everything through that. We have a great example of this in Acts 17. Acts 17:10 tells us that, "The brothers sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now, these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so." On the one hand, they're open, they're teachable, they're eager to learn, and that the other hand, they're discerning.

They're taking everything they hear from Paul and Silas, and they're filtering it through God's word to see if these things are so. We need to do that as Christians with everything that we hear. Galatians 1 gives us this warning in verse six, and Paul tells the church, "I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be cursed."

Colossians 2:8 says, "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of this world and not according to Christ." Jesus says, watch out for false prophets, don't be fooled by false teachers. But secondly, He's also telling us, don't even be fooled by yourself. Don't be self-deceived. This is where things get kind of scary. Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven. Not everyone who calls me Lord or even does ministry in my name is actually a Christian."

Some people are going to go through their life self-deceived thinking that they are serving Christ, and when they stand before him in the judgment, He's going to say, "I never knew you and depart from me." This is sobering. This should cause us to examine ourselves. Now, as Christians, this doesn't mean that we should live in doubt of our salvation, but the alternative is not to have this carefree, blind assumption that we are saved either. What are we to do? Scripture doesn't want us to assume our salvation, but what it wants us to do is to seek assurance of our salvation.

What does that mean? How can we have a surety that we are truly saved? That's what Jesus is getting at here. He says, you want to know the tree? You got to look at its fruit. If there's evidence of the Holy Spirit's work in your life, that's a pretty good sign that you've been truly born again, that God has saved you, that you are a new creation. Now, if you don't see that, if these signs aren't here, maybe you're saved, maybe you're not. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're not saved, but it doesn't mean that you lack assurance of your salvation.

How do we find this? What are we looking for here? A couple of passages of scriptures to help us out, 2 Peter 3, 2 Peter 1:5-10, and Peter says this, "That for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

"For whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fail." When you identify this trajectory of growth in your life, that's a good sign that you're heading in right direction, that you're confirming your calling and election.

Galatians 5:16-24, the apostle Paul talking of the fruit of the spirit. He says, "I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."

"But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the Lord with its passions and desires." Are you growing in the fruit of the spirit? Notice, he doesn't say fruits of the spirit, plural, this is not like an a la carte, pick and choose which ones you want to grow, and this is an all or nothing. You don't have to be accrued in order to have a bit of self-control or to show a bit of kindness. One or two of these things does not give us assurance of our salvation in and of themselves.

Our assurance grows when we see that all of these things, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, they are growing in tandem, not because of our own willpower, or the work of the flesh, but because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. The big idea here is that Jesus doesn't want us to be doubting, but he does want us to be discerning, because we can be deceived by others. We can even deceive ourselves, but God is not deceived. He knows the state of our heart. Galatians 6:7-8 says, "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows that he will also reap. For the one who sows to his on flesh will, from the flesh, reap corruption."

"But the one who sows to the spirit will, from the spirit, reap eternal life." 2 Corinthians 13:5 tells us, "To examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith." Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves? That Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you fail to meet the test." If Christ is not in you, then that's where you need to start, right? You don't start by trying to tuck healthy looking fruit onto a dying tree. Instead, you start by calling out to Jesus and asking him to make you a new tree, to change you from the inside out to give you a new one heart and a new desire by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Now, if you examine yourself and you do see this, you see the Holy spirit at work in your heart, you take heart because of that, know that you are on the right path, and that, even if that path is very difficult at times, it doesn't mean that Christ is not there with you. He is with you and he's ensuring that you will arrive at your destination. We see this in Philippians 2:12. It tells us, "To work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." A chapter earlier, in chapter verse six, Paul wrote that, "I am sure of this, that he who began and a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

There are only two paths, there are only two directions, and point number three, there are only two destinations. Jesus concludes in verse 24 with this, says, "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock, and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

"When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes." Many of you know I was born and raised in Illinois, and in the Midwest, thunderstorms are like a very real thing. They're very long, they're very loud, they're very violent, and they always came with this looming threat of tornadoes. As a kid, I was simultaneously fascinated and completely utterly terrified of tornadoes the entire time growing up. You'd hear those sirens go off in your neighborhood, and everybody knew you had to stop what you're doing and you had to get to shelter.

You had to find someplace stable, someplace safe, and that usually meant you need to get down into the basement, into the foundation of your home for safety. Notice that Jesus doesn't say that, if you hear these words of mine and you do them, that you will therefore avoid all of the storms of life. No, he says the storms are coming, they're coming for everyone, and that they come in many forms. A family member gets sick, a job gets lost, the economy tanks, or relationship falls apart. Even if we dodge these smaller storms of life, there's always that one storm looming on the horizon.

Now, the biggest storm is the storm of death. It's one that none of us can escape. It's coming and it's getting closer with every breath. How are we going to weather that storm? Jesus says, it doesn't matter what you build. The only thing that matters is where you build, what you build on. He says, if you're building your life on me and on my teaching, you're like a wise person who's building on an unshakeable foundation. I hope you understand this. As Christians, we have this piece. It's like an anchor for our soul. It transcends the circumstances of life and death, because we know that, even if the very worst were to come true, our worst fears were to be actualized, if everything was lost and death was at our doorstep, even then, our hope is not in this life. Our hope is in the next.

Our soul is standing on a foundation that can't be shaken, that can't be moved, that will not give way. We know this because Jesus proved this through the cross. On the cross, Jesus faced our biggest, our darkest storm. Not a storm of life, not even a storm of physical death, but of total death. The fierce storm of God's wrath toward rebellion and sin was poured out and absorbed by Jesus on the cross. The scripture tells us, the sky grew dark, that the earth quaked on the day that our savior died, but it was through this, his death, that we were granted eternal life.

It was through this storm that he faced, that we are able to weather the storm ourselves, because through his death, Jesus defeated Satan, sin, and death. That God, the father, three days later, raised him up in victory and just vindicated him from the grave, glorified him at his right hand, and in doing so, he proved that he can and he will do the same for us, for all those who build on this foundation. Well, where does this lead us? Jesus is calling us to make a decision, decisive action. There are only two options. There are only two paths. There are only two destinations. This is what he's saying, you're either going to build on me, on this foundation, or you're going to continue trusting in the sandy shores of self-righteousness of worldly pleasures of living for yourself.

Sermon on the mount, in the very beginning, in Matthew 5:1, we're told that, "Jesus saw the crowds and he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and taught them." Then here at the very end of this section, we're told that, "When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes." Perhaps you have been standing in the crowd, observing Jesus from a distance.

Right now you realize that it's time to leave the crowd and to draw near to Christ as one of his disciples. Jesus had a lot of fans in the crowd. He was never interested in fans. Fans come and go. We're reminded of this a bit today because today is Palm Sunday, and we can't prove this, but it's easy to imagine that the probability, that there were some in the crowd on Palm Sunday crying out Hosanna, who later that week were in the crowd on Good Friday crying out, crucify him. There's a fickleness to the fans that ... Jesus wasn't after that. He doesn't want people who are self-deceived.

He's looking, not for fans, he's looking for followers. He's looking for people who are ready to enter through that narrow gate, to take up their cross and to follow him down that hard path, but to follow him knowing that it is the path that leads to life. If you're here today and you're ready to become a follower of Jesus, the way you enter through that narrow gate is simply to repent, to put your faith in Jesus Christ. You can do that right now. If you do, we would love to talk to you, we'd love to pray with you after the service and talk more about what this decision means. If you are a follower of Jesus, understand, hopefully you understand this, that you can't walk this path alone.

You need people around you to help you, to encourage you along this way. If you're in a community group, be faithful to that community group, invest in those relationships. If you're not, we would love to help you get plugged into a community group today. It's one of the best ways where you can do this for one another and go on this journey of following Jesus together. If you're interested in that, just mark that on the back of your connection card. or stop by the welcome center, we'd love to help you find a community group today.

Then finally, one more thing before we close, next Sunday, Easter Sunday, and so who do you know that maybe needs to come and stand in the crowd with the hopes that they hear the teaching of Jesus, and they see that He is one who taught with authority and they themselves lead the crowd and become a disciple as well? We're going to be praying for those people this week. If you have opportunities to invite them and bring them along next Sunday, we'd love to see them here worshiping with us on Easter Sunday. With that being said, would you please join me in prayer? And then we'll continue and worship together.

Jesus, we thank you for giving us this sure foundation for being our solid rock. Lord, we thank you for this week, where we are reminded that you did conquer Satan, sin and death, that you took our sin upon yourself on that cross, and then you Rose in victory on Sunday morning. I thank you for this good news that we have because of you and what you've done for us. Father, I pray that you would make us wise, that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit, that you'd give us the strength to faithfully continue down this hard narrow path of discipleship, to keep our eyes focused on Christ, the founder, the perfector, the trailblazer, the pioneer of our faith, and to fervently pursue him until that day where we stand before you in judgment.

Not to hear those words, depart from me, I never knew you, but to hear those words, well, done, my good and faithful servant. Come, enter into the joy of your master. We long for that day, and we pray, until we get there, that you would, by the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to be faithful witnesses to you. We love you, we praise you, and we give you all glory, in the name of Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic. My name is John I'm with the pastors here, along pastor Shane and pastor Andy. If you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you. Do that through the connection card in the worship guide, either the physical one or the virtual one in the app or on the website, you fill it out and then get it to us. We'll get in touch with you over the course of the week.

Quick announcement; April 2nd is good Friday, we have a service here at 6:00 PM. Easter, we have three services, 8:30, 10:15, and noon. Just keep that on your calendar. Then also, plan to invite some friends to one of, or all services. They'll be tremendous, by God's grace. Also, we have another prayer service tonight, the second of three. Tonight and then next week, that is at 5:00 PM. Love to see you at that as well.

That said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly father, we thank you that you though being a holy God, did not leave us in our sins, though that's what we deserved. That you could have damned us for all of eternity. You could have sent us on our way. That's where we were headed, to spend eternity apart from you in a place called hell. That's what we deserve. We recognize that, we own that. We sense that that's the bad news. It's terrible news. But we thank you for Jesus Christ.

Jesus, we thank you that you came, you lived a perfect life. You lived that perfect life, so that we would not have to bear condemnation. Because you did that on the cross for us, you were condemned, you were damned, you were canceled. And you did that in order to cancel the record of our indebtedness to God. We thank you for grace. We thank you that we can be saved. We thank you that we can be forgiven. We thank you that we can be redeemed no matter what we've done.

There is always hope for redemption while our heart is beating. We thank you for that. I pray that you make us a people who receive that grace and extend that grace, that graciousness. You are a God who is loving and you're slow to anger. You are patient and you're steadfast, in your loving kindness. We thank you for that. Make us the people who receive it and extend it in the same way that Jesus extends it to us. We pray this in Christ's Holy name. Amen.

If you're new, we are in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever preached, that's Jesus Christ himself, the son of God, son of man. He doesn't just give us wisdom, he doesn't just teach us how to live, he also extends grace to us and the Holy Spirit that empowers us to live this brand new life. A life that is to the full, a life of loving kindness, a life of discernment and a life of grace.

Today, we are in Matthew 7:1-12. Next week, we'll finish off this sermon series. The title of my sermon is, Don't Cancel People. We live in a censorious culture, people getting canceled left and right. JK Rowling, Gina Carano, Mike Lindell, Goya, Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss and Jemima, Uncle Ben, cancel, cancel, cancel. Donald Trump, canceled. Four years' president, disappears. You can't even say his name, without feeling uncomfortable in the room. Cancel, cancel, cancel.

How do we respond to the cancel culture? The natural response is, "You cancel me, I'm going to cancel you twice as hard." That's the natural response. What's the Christian response? The Christian response goes like this, "We recognize we all deserve to be canceled. We all deserve to be damned. We all deserve to be condemned, forever. But thanks be to Jesus Christ who came to uncancel us."

Jesus called canceled people his friends. The people who were ostracized by society, written off. You are dead to society, if you were a prostitute or an adulterer or tax collector or a pagan. Jesus befriends these people. His closest circle of friends included the worst of the worst, the guiltiest of the guilty. He befriends them, he forgives the outcast, the misfit, the leper, the liar, the adulterer.

He refused to dismiss the dismissed. He refused to reject the rejected. He accepted them. He forgave the denounced. He pardoned. He gave grace. Jesus Christ, how did he do that? How can God, a Holy God, just forgive? He can't just forgive. Because he's just. Jesus Christ comes and on the cross, he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why did God, the father, forsake God, the son. Because God, the son, took our condemnation upon himself. God, the son, was canceled on the cross, in order to cancel the record of our indebtedness against God. He's taken away, nailing it to the cross.

It's from that perspective, that we look at Matthew 7, where Jesus gives us some of the most famous verses from all of scripture. But it's from that perspective, that he tells us to be careful in how we judge. Today we're in Matthew 7:1-12, would you look at the text with me. "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounced, you will be judged. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," when there is the log in your own eye. You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."

"Do not give dogs what is holy, do not throw your pearls before the pigs. Lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives and the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened."

"For which one of you, if his son asks him for bread will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a serpent. If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children? How much more will your father who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him? Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this as the law and the prophets." This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, authoritative word. May write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame over time. Christian judging, Christian asking, Christian loving.

First, is Christian judging. Jesus goes from addressing our attitudes toward money and possessions, that's the past two pericopes, the paragraphs. Now, he transitions to talking about our attitudes toward people. "Judge not, lest you be judged." What does that mean? Does that means we get rid of teachers? Does that mean we can get rid of grades, coaches, umpires, referees, cops, judges, courts, accountability, responsibility? Is that what he's saying?

Can't be. Because even in this text he says, "You're hypocrites." That's a judgment call. Call some people pigs and dogs. Judgment call. Jesus had very choice words for the religious elites and for politicians. Herod, he calls him the fox. Pharisees, whitewashed tombs, brood of Vipers. Those are all judgment calls. He had very hard words for hard hearted people, to wake them up to the reality.

He's obviously not saying don't make judgment calls. He's not saying don't practice this sermon because there's no way around it. Even if someone comes to you and says, "Hey, you're in sin," and your response is, "Don't judge me." That person at that second, is judging, your judging of them. You can't get around it. He's not saying, "Don't judge." 1 Corinthians 10:15 says, "I speak to you as sensible people, judge for yourselves, what I say." We are to judge. We are to make judgment calls.

He doesn't say, "Do not judge ever," in terms of discernment. Here we get into linguistic analysis. What does judge mean? It's a Greek word, krino, has two definitions. The first one is condemnation, to condemn. The second one is, to discern. He's not saying, don't discern, he's saying do not condemn. Condemnation without the hope of redemption. That's what he's saying.

Matthew 7:6, "Do not give dogs what is holy. Do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you." Dogs here are not pets, dogs here, he's talking about wild, unclean, filthy animals. And the priests who go into the temple and part of the sacrifice he'll present to God, that's the holy part and part the priests would eat. The Holy part is that which is given to God. You don't take that and give it to a wild dog, because that would be an abomination. That would be desecration.

Same thing with the pig. The pig, you don't throw a Pearl to a pig, because the pig does not sense its value. The dog does not sense the value of the holy part. Jesus here is talking about animals that don't sense the realities, other than the physical. They're only driven by appetites. They don't see the beauty. They don't treasure the treasure. Jesus in other parts of scripture tells the disciples, "Go preach the gospel. If you go to villages where people just reject you, they don't want to hear the message of redemption, because they don't sense a need for being forgiven, because of self-righteousness, because of pride." He says, "In those cases, shake off the dust from your feet of that village."

Meaning, those people who have had ample opportunity to hear, receive the good news and have decisively, even defiantly rejected it, we need to have a discernment of when pushing the gospel on people, isn't really helpful. It's discernment, some spiritual sensitivity. We are to be discerning. Matthew 7:15-20, few verses below our text, Jesus says, "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You'll recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits."

We are to be discerning. We are to know the truth, know the scriptures, know the gospel and have a spiritual sixth sense, so to speak, that goes off when we hear lies, and when we see that the fruit isn't a fruit of the spirit. Hebrews 5:14 says, "But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil." We have to grow, we have to train our discernment.

Scripture talks often about judging that's lawful and that's required in the word of God. There's ecclesiastical or in the church, judging. Matthew 18, if a brother or sister sinned against you, you go to them, you have a conversation with them. You call out their sin. "Hey, you've sinned against me. Let's have a conversation. Ecclesiastical judging. The civil government judges, Romans 13 talks about that. Private judging, where in family and relationships, you help one another fight the good fight, by calling out sin, speaking, truth and love.

There are times to judge. What's Jesus talking about here, when he says, "Do not judge, let's do be judged?" The word hypocrite is used. Do not do it hypocritically. That's really the whole context of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus over and over and over and over and over says there's two paths. There's the authentic, spiritual, gracious, humble walk with the Lord, and there's the prideful, lies and hypocritical, inauthentic, mask-wearing.

Matthew 5:24, "I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Jesus, in his mind, he has a group of people, the Pharisees. The Pharisees who have taken God's law and they turn it upside down, instead of loving God and loving people, they've loved self and used God and people. Matthew 21:26, he says, "Do not get angry, like the hypocrites, but love like Jesus." The next text, "Do not lust like the hypocrites, but be pure in heart, like Jesus."

Then he says, "Do not divorce like the hypocrites, but be faithful to your spouse, like Jesus. Do not lie like the hypocrites, but always be truthful, like Jesus. Do not retaliate like the hypocrites, but seek reconciliation, like Jesus. Do not hate your enemies, like a hypocrite, but be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Do not practice your righteousness like the hypocrites, but be righteous, like Jesus. Do not give to be seen like the hypocrites, but give to meet needs like Jesus. Do not pray like the hypocrites, do not fast like the hypocrites, do not lay treasures up like the hypocrites. Do not be anxious, like the hypocrites."

Then we get to text, "Do not judge like the hypocrites, that you be not judged, like the hypocrites." The Pharisees, thought highly of themselves. They held utter contempt for those on the outside, for those who weren't as righteous as they were, for those who weren't as virtuous as they were. They judged, not to help people seek redemption, but in order to demean.

There's a parable that Jesus gives of the Pharisee and the tax collector. They come into church together. And the Pharisee prays out loud and says, "God, I thank you that I'm not like that guy. I thank you, that I fast twice a week and I tithe and I am a good person. Thank you for that. I'm not extortioners, unjust, adulterous or even like this tax collector."

The tax collector comes in and he can't even look up and be judged. "Condemn not," see there it's clarified. "Condemn not and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven." John 7:24, "Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment." John 8:15, "You judge, according to the flesh, I judge no one." Then we're told don't do it hypocritically and don't judge from a position of God, where you cast this person out as if you're God.

God is merciful, God is gracious. While we're still alive, there's still room for redemption. Romans 14:4, "Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld. For the Lord is able to make him stand." We're not to judge in the position of God, we're not to judge hastily or rashly. We're to give people the benefit of the doubt. They're sinners, we're sinners.

Proverbs 18:13, "If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." This discernment that we need, we need to gather the information, before jumping to conclusions. Really, the emphasis is on the hypocrisy. Romans 2:1, "Therefore, you have no excuse oh man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself." Because you would the judge, practice the very same things. That's the issue.

We're sinners. Before dealing with our own sin, we start sinning others, that's what he's getting at. Francis Schaeffer, a great apologist of the 20th century, he said, "All God needs to condemn us 1,000 times over, is to hang a tape recorder around our neck and judge us with the same standard that we have for other people." We do have standards for other people. We judge all the time.

Our culture, it's promoting judging. There's ratings and reviews for absolutely everything. We've got a one star review. Our church got a one-star review two weeks ago. I know the person that gave it, because I just had a conversation with that person. I go home and I get an email from Google that we got a one star review from that person. If you gave us, I'd really appreciate a conversation. Please retract it. Because now we're at 4.9.

For the rest of you, do a very simple evangelistic work today and go on Google and give us a five star review, please, and leave a little paragraph and things like that. Everyone's just out to judge. It's the hypocritical judging that he's getting at.

What happened to David and Nathan, David commits adultery with Bathsheba, murders her husband. A year passes, and he's just so blinded by his own sin. Then Nathan, the prophet, comes to him. Tells them a story, about a rich man who had lots of sheep. He goes to the poor man, steals his sheep in order to entertain his friends. Nathan comes to David, tells him that story. David's anger is kindled. He says, "That man will pay four times. Four-fold for his sin."

2 Samuel 12:5-7, says, "Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man." He said to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and because he had no pity." Nathan said to David, "You are the man." You are that guy. This is what Jesus is getting at. He doesn't say we can't discern. He doesn't say we can't have judgment calls. No. There's no way around that.

But Matthew 7:3-5, this is what he's getting at. "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye and do not notice the log that is in your own eye." This is an illustration from a carpenter's workshop. The spec is just the sawdust and the plank or the log. This is a beam. Meaning like a weight bearing beam, load bearing beam. It's like a telephone pole.

You're saying you want to help someone who's got a little speck in his eye, when you've got a big, massive log coming out of your own eye? What's that spec? How can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your own eye, when there's a logging and your own. You hypocrite, first take out the log that is in your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."

What is the spec? We understand that's a sin. Every single one of us, we have specks in our eyes. That's sin. And Jesus says, "But be careful, that you do not have a log." What's the log? Separate from the spec, the log here is the thing that keeps you from seeing reality as it truly is. In the context of about pigs and dogs, the log is what makes the spiritual, imperceptible. The log is what makes you relegate it to just physical appetites. What is this log?

This log is the only sin that God cannot forgive. What is this log? What is the sin that God cannot forgive? It's the sin of pride, self-Righteousness, where you think you're better than others, and that's why you judge. "You're not as good as I am. No redemption for you because I don't need to be redeemed, because I have done enough good." That's the log that's in the eye of every single person. And the more good things you do, the bigger that log is. It's your resume of virtues.

The more you do apart from God, the bigger it gets and the more you judge other people, because they're just not as good as you. Self-righteousness, that's what's at the root of canceling people, literal condemnation. "You're worthless. I'm through with you. You are dead to me." It's self-righteousness. There's no grace, because you don't see your own need for grace. Matthew 7:24, "With the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

There's two options here. Two options in this text. Option number one is, you say, no one can possibly live up to the standards of Jesus, therefore, let's get rid of them. The other option is, no one can live up to the standards of Jesus, I need to repent of my sin, where I do not live up to the standards of Jesus. I need to ask Jesus to take out the log from my eye, the plank from my eye.

I do that by recognizing, it's that plank of pride and self righteous. It's those two planks that Jesus Christ was crucified upon, to take out the plank from my eye. When I realized that, now, I'm in a position where, there is hope for redemption. There is forgiveness, there is mercy, there is grace, and I can change. Instead of changing God instead of changing his rules, because I can't live up to them, instead of throwing them out and writing our own rules and trying to create heaven on earth, without God. Instead of doing that, I recognize his standard is holy. He is righteous.

I can't change God. He's immutable. I need to ask for forgiveness. The standard is still the standard. I do my best on a daily basis, receiving grace by the power of the spirit to live up to the standard. I never do it perfectly.

Driving the car yesterday, my wife was talking about my oldest daughter. My oldest daughter is 12. I got a 12 year old at my house. That's challenging. Our 12 year old is at the point where she has a tremendous memory. When we say things that she should do, and we don't do those things, she has a record of all the things that we don't do. She called mom a hypocrite. I was like, "Oh, that's fascinating. You're a 12 year old. You wouldn't even be here, if it wasn't for us."

Then she said, "How about you, dad, are you a hypocrite?" I said, "100%. I'm barely a Christian. I'm a by accident, Christian. I look at myself, I'm like, I can't believe God saved me." There's other people I look at, I'm like, "I could see that God of the universe had died for you." For me, "I wouldn't die for me. I can't believe it."

We're all hypocrites. We're all unrighteous. We're all self-righteous. That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 7:5, "You hypocrite." You're like, "Ah, that doesn't feel very good." But it's true. It's absolutely true. You're a hypocrite, I'm a hypocrite. We're all hypocrites. "First take out the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly take the speck out of your brother's eye." He says, you do it. You take out the log.

This is what Christianity says, is you do it. As you try to do it, you realize just how painstaking this, and you can do it and you need Jesus. Ever got something in your eye? It's the worst feeling ever. The smallest thing, the worst thing. You can do everything you possibly can and you can't get it out. Then who do you allow to do it, someone you really trust.

That's really what becoming a Christian is. It's, "Lord, please take this out." Then that's justification. Sanctification is, when we on a daily basis, look at our own life, is there a log? Is there a spec? You apply the judgment that you apply to other people. What he's saying is, the way that you judge other people, apply that same standard to yourself, 100 times more meticulously, then you'll begin to understand what he's saying here.

The way that we do it is, we can be brutally honest with ourselves about our own faults. We can be brutally honest because, there's always grace. There there's always redemption. We don't have to hide it from Jesus Christ. This is what the gospel is. We haven't met the standard, Jesus has. He gives us grace for our sin. We're all dogs, and wild pigs in of ourselves.

We don't sense the beauty of spirituality. We don't sense the beauty of God in of ourselves. We have cold, hard hearts and we're just focused and preoccupied with physical appetites. We're all pigs. Jesus is the pearl. When we look to the cross and we realize that Jesus Christ was thrown to the pigs, he was thrown to dogs, he was crucified on our behalf. He did that for us, that's when we begin to see the value of Christ, that he was crucified on our planks and our beams, in order to save us.

We love the concept of forgiveness. We love the concept of grace. We love that. But the concept of forgiveness assumes judgment. And what our culture has done, we've tried to get rid of the moral code, although it's still written on our hearts. We try to get rid of that. There's no standard, there's no judgment, but there's only grace and forgiveness. I know you can't have forgiveness without the standard. God offers us the forgiveness, but first we need to realize, that we have sinned and we have the spiritual cancer.

If you have cancer and you go to the doctor and the doctor says you have cancer, is he judging you? No, he's not. He's diagnosing you. That's what the gospel does. That's what Jesus does. When you realize that's what he does for us in order to heal us in order to forgive us, we receive the grace and now, we can help others do the same, from a position of humility. "I'm not better than you."

Every single one of us, we are wicked sinners, deserving hell, but Jesus saved me. You know what? I think he could save you. You got to repent of your sin, of your self-righteousness. Practical applications here, in terms of judgment, first, we got to check yourself, you got to check your own spiritual eye for a plank, for a speck. 1 Corinthians 11:28, talking about communion, "Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup."

Examine. Self-examination. What sins in my life are just... They're there. They're lodged in my eye. I need to repent and to leave that sin. James 4:16, "Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power, as it's working." We need to confess our sins to God and sometimes it's helpful to confess them to others, when it's just lodged in their habitual sin, "I can't get rid of it." Find a brother and sister whom you trust and share it and confess and fight the good fight together.

Also, we need to learn how to take judgment. As Christians, as brothers and sisters, we need to learn how to receive truth. We're to speak truth with grace. We are also to receive it and not be like a dog biting back or a pig on the attack, when people come to us and they point out a sin in our lives. What's the first reaction? Is it defensive? Putting a guard, "Who are you to judge me?"

Or, is it from a position of, "I am a sinner. Thanks for pointing that out. Let me think about that. That's really important. Psalm 141:5, "Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me, It is oil for my head. Let my head not refuse it yet. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds." Proverbs 9:8, "Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you." Proverbs 27:6, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy." Proverbs 25:12, "Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold, is a wise reprove to a listening ear."

Also we are to learn, to give truth to people with grace. It's truth with grace. When you do that, there is a potential for you to be canceled, dear Christian. When you take a stance for Christ, for truth, you will be persecuted and more and more so in our culture that is growing more and more godless. We aren't to be surprised by that, at all. We need to expect it. That's what Jesus said, "I have been hated, you will be hated as well on my account by some. But others will hear it and will be regenerated by the Holy Spirit."

Because of our witness, eternally changed for that person. That's why it's worth it. It's worth it. We'll take the hate. We'll take the persecution. But there are some who will be drawn to Christ and it's worth it, 100%.

Second is Christian asking, Matthew 7:7-11, "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For anyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds and to the one who knocks, it will be opened." Ask before we seek. It assumes humility. Instead of first pursuing whatever it is you want, you need to ask. Lord, is this good? Is this right? Is this is from you? There is growth. Ask, before we seek, seek before we know.

Then he says, "Which of you, if his son asks him for bread will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father was in heaven, give good gifts to those who ask?" This is an argument from the less to the greater. If a human father, who is sinful and selfish as we all are, we are.

I used to think I was a selfless person before I got married and then realized how selfish I was. Then just progress with every kid. I thought I was a selfless person. Then I had a kid. Here's the thing about having a kid? You have the kid, so cute, but you just give up all of your naps forever. You will never have another nap. It's gone. But even with our sinful, selfish natures, we care for our children's needs. That's what he's saying. If sinful, human fathers do, how much more will a perfect and infinitely loving father, provide for our needs, give us what we need?

Not necessarily we always ask for, because how terrible the thing would it be if God always gave us what we ask for? It's fascinating how Jesus just slips in, in this context of like, "Do not judge," he calls us hypocrites and calls some people dogs and pigs. Then he also calls us evil here. He just slips that in. Because he's the king of the universe. He brings in, "You are evil," slips that in as the most obvious and incontestable fact. We're all evil, even at our best.

Humans are at their best when they're providing for children. Even at our best, we are evil. We are dogs, we are pigs. We deserve nothing by condemnation. We can't stand before God on our rights, on our moral record, on our virtues, on the basis of anything. We're unfit for blessing. From this perspective, we can now begin to understand blessings. It absolutely changes your life. When you understand that you deserve nothing but hell and condemnation, everything else in life is icing on the cake.

I'm alive today. I'm breathing. Had some coffee. I'm going to have lunch later. Incredible blessings. It just changes your perspective. I get to live in Boston and share the gospel with people. They're going to bite. They're going to kick. They're going to fight back. Well, I deserve nothing... It changes absolutely everything. God is gracious to us. Instead of getting offended, that Jesus called me a hypocrite, instead of getting offended that I'm evil, instead of getting offended, that I got a big log in my eye, instead of getting offended that I'm a dog or a pig, instead, take that as grace from God to wake you up, to change you from the inside out.

There's a story in Matthew 15:21-28, a very controversial story, where Jesus calls a woman a dog. And here's the story. "Jesus went away from there and withdrew the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, "Have mercy on me O Lord, son of God. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon." This is a mother at her best, saying that her child is being possessed, is suffering under demonic possession. Comes to Jesus asking for help.

But he did not answer her a word. His disciples came and begged him saying, "Send her away, for she's crying out after us." We see the persistence. He answered to her, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Then Jesus answered her, "Oh woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly.

I saw this TikTok, I'm old enough for that to be funny. I saw this TikTok of a pastor. Apparently this pastor is on TikTok. Certain kind of pastors are on TikTok. This guy read this text and he said, "Jesus is a racist." Jesus sees a woman of another race and he's being racist to her. Then she points out the work that he needs to do to fight his racism, like internal work, and then Jesus repents and he changes and now he's no longer a racist.

False. False. That's false. Jesus is never sin. Perfect son of God. He's not a racist. You can't read scripture through these lenses of you judging God. It's not going to end well. Jesus here, what's going on? It's not about race here, it's not about pedigree. Because Jesus said, "What makes a person unclean is the heart." We're not dogs because of race, that's not what's going on. We're all sinners. We're all dogs.

She doesn't assert her rights. She doesn't come to Jesus demanding, "Jesus, you owe me. You owe me." Even on the basis of her suffering. A lot of people come to God on the basis of their suffering. "God, you owe me." God doesn't owe us anything. We are degenerate sinners. We deserve nothing but hell. She comes to them and she acknowledges, humbly. "I am a dog. I'm not a child. I have sinned. I have allowed evil into my life. I deserve nothing."

And she doesn't walk away, discouraged, and she's hanging her head. She recognized, "I am unworthy and you're merciful. I am unworthy, but there's enough bread on that table, even for me. I don't deserve a crumb, but I know who you are. You're a gracious God." And she gets what she desired. "Be it done for you, as you desire." This text is not just about our prayer life, that's part of it. But it's about our posture before God. That we are to come to God with humility.

"God, I don't deserve anything. God, I am a rebel. I'm not a child. But because of Jesus Christ, I can be adopted into the family of God and I can come to you and I can pray, persistently." Scripture talks about praying with impudence, shamelessness, unblushing persistence, relentlessly, audaciously, tenaciously asking God. And God honors that persistence.

My daughter Milana, she's three, almost four. She's born with this persistence. Whenever she wants something... By the way, our family has four kids. Wherever we go, it's a crowd. To get your voice heard, you need to persist. Whenever our families get together, my sister has four kids, my other sister has two kids. I have four siblings. Whenever we get together as a family, it's the persistent and the loudest person that gets heard.

My daughter Milana, she learned that. She learned that cheat code to our family. And she will nag you and persist. She has the same forehead and eyebrow thing that I do, where she gives you all of her emotions with her face and she's like, "Papa, papa, papa, I need this thing." I'm like, "Fine. Take it. Just get away from me. Leave me alone." That's kind of how God says that we should pray, nag him, persistent in prayer. He honors that persistence and the expectancy. "I expect you to answer. I expect that you will give me what I need. Not necessarily what I want. I expect."

So prayer is more than just asking for stuff. It's asking for more of the presence of God, because when you persist, when you keep at it, you're getting more of God. Jeremiah 29, 11-14: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "Plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you and you will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you," declares the Lord.

Our most fervent prayers should be not just to God, but for God. "God, I want more of you." That's what Luke 11:13, the parallel passage, that's what it ends with. "If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children? How much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" What's the greatest thing that God can give us? It's more of himself. A greater measure of himself. More of his presence, more of his face. When we ask, when we seek, when we knock, as we do, we are to ask and seek and knock, for more of the Holy Spirit.

Three, is Christian loving, Matthew 7:12. "Whatever you wish that others would do to you do also to them for this is the law and the prophets." This is all of Christian ethics, all of Christian morality, in one verse. By the way, this is how Jesus ends the ethical section of the whole Sermon on the Mount. After this text, he talks about a saving relationship with God. Here, he ends all of ethics, all of the ethical stuff, with saying, "Whatever you wish that others would do to you do also for them."

This is the greater righteousness that Jesus expects from his disciples. The statement, in its negative form, is found in lots of ancient writings. This is why if you study Christianity and world religions in high school and college, this is what they say, "Oh, Jesus didn't really say anything unique. All other religions have it." They have it in the negative form. The negative form is, do not do to others what you wouldn't want to be done for you."

We see this from Athenian philosophers, the Jewish rabbi, rabbi Hillel said, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow creatures." It's found in the teachings of Confucius. And so, in human beings, we're creating the image of God. The moral code is written on our hearts. We know what is required of us, in the negative form. And the negative form, you don't want to get robbed, don't Rob someone. You don't want to get cussed out, don't cuss out other people. You don't want to be hated, don't hate other people. We know that.

What is unnatural to us, is the positive form. It's absolutely unnatural. It's supernatural. It's higher, it's more proactive. If you enjoy being loved, love others. If you enjoy being encouraged and appreciated, encourage and appreciate others. If you enjoy generosity, then give to others. It's really an elaboration of Leviticus, 19:18, it says, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." It's unselfish love to others, to strangers.

Bishop Ryle said this, "It settles 100 difficult points, which in a world like this, are continually arising between people. It prevents the necessity of laying down, endless little rules for our conduct and specific cases. It sweeps the whole debatable ground, with one mighty principle. This is the operating principle and it should be for every situation of life.

For marriage, it's the key, it's the secret to marriage. If you want a back rub, if you enjoy back rubs, give your spouse a back rub. Scratch hard with the nails, like that. Do that. With children, raise your children, do onto them as you would have them do onto you. It changes every situation in life. At work, on the T, on the highway, on the street, it changes dating, it changes marriage, it changes parenting, friendship, church membership.

And it changes judging. That's why he starts with that and he ends with that. Think about how you want to be treated, how you want to be judged when you need correction, then treat others the same way. It takes a certain wisdom. It's not natural. It takes wisdom. A lot of people talk them about nowadays emotional intelligence. All emotional intelligence really is, is pretending you're the other person. Putting yourself in their shoes, recognizing, understanding, sympathizing, empathizing with their situation. "How would I want to be treated?" And treat them the same way?

Anyone who's really tried to live like this, knows how punishingly difficult it is. Because we are all vain and proud and selfish and self-centered. How much time did you think about yourself this morning? All the time. You spent all the time thinking about yourself. Thinking about what you're going to eat and thinking about how you need to fix your hair, thinking about whatever. And being able to put yourself in the position, that's what he's saying. We can't do it on our own.

How can we become more selfless and more humble and more sincere, through the gospel, recognizing that the only person who's really done this completely, of putting themselves in my place, the only one that's really done that, is Jesus Christ. He 100% put himself in your place on the cross. When you realize that, "On the cross, Jesus put himself in my place in order to forgive me and change me," that's selflessness. Now, we begin to understand, I can now put myself in another person's place.

Then how else? Through prayer. By asking, seeking and knocking, for the more important blessings. Not just physical stuff, of God to change our hearts and change our characters. The golden rule can only be understood in this context. We pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors. Forgive us as we forgive others. You've forgiven us, now I can forgive others."

It's generous judgment. When we see people in sin, when we see people who were trying to cancel us, there's a generous discernment and judgment where we leave the door open for redemption. Redemption that was given to us. Kanye West once said, "I've been canceled before they had canceled culture." Cancel culture goes back much further than Kanye West. Cancel culture goes back all the way back to when Jesus Christ stood before Pilate. And Pilate, after looking at all the facts, he says, "I've found no fault in this man. I've examined him in your presence. I found no fault in him. He's done nothing deserving of death." And the mob, what did they cry out? "Crucify him! Crucify him!." Cancel him. He is dead to us. They did that to the greatest person who ever lived.

And Jesus allowed it to happen. Why did he allow this to happen? Why did he allow evil to triumph? Because this is the only way for him to triumph over evil. This was the only way for Jesus to forgive us of our evil. This is the only way of Jesus not condemning us, by taking our condemnation upon himself. Psalm 22, written centuries before crucifixion was even invented as a means of execution. Psalm 22:16, "For dogs encompass me, a company of evil doers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divided my garments among them and for my clothing, they cast lots. But you all Lord, do not be far off. Oh, you might help come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs." Dogs who didn't see the treasure that was before them crucifying him.

And Jesus cries out and he says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." They're still guilty, even if they don't know what they're doing, but forgive them. Jesus Christ was canceled by our sin, to cancel our sin. He was canceled by our guilt, to cancel our guilt. He was canceled by our condemnation, to cancel our condemnation. He was canceling the power of death to give us life. If you're not a Christian, we today invite you to become a Christian by repenting of your sin and turning to Christ. Leave your sins and leave your self-righteousness at the cross of Christ. Receive his grace. As Christians, may you know the joy of sin forgiven by the Lord, Jesus Christ, amen.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for being a great God and a gracious God. We thank you that you never look at us and say, "You are absolutely hopeless." While we're alive, there is hope. I pray that every single person who's heard my voice, I pray that they become your adopted children. In of ourselves, we are evil and we are hypocrites and we are dogs and we are pigs, but you welcome us into your family as adopted children. Thanks be to Christ for that, in whose name we pray, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. This is the time that we find out who the faithful Christians of Mosaic are. Anyone who shows up when we lose an hour of sleep, halleluiah, you got extra reward in heaven. Your spiritual Venmo just went cha-ching, welcome. If you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card, either the physical one that you can get in the back or the virtual one that you can get in our app or on our website.

One quick announcement. For the next three weeks starting today, we have prayer nights, 5:00 PM today and the next two Sundays. The structure will be we'll have prayer in the beginning. We'll have some worship. And then we'll have a 20-minute sermon or so from a brother in the congregation who's discerning the call to full-time vocational ministry. And then we'll have some more prayer as a congregation. Why are we doing this? Primarily to set our hearts on Lent, to prepare ourselves for Good Friday. That's April 2nd. And then also Easter, which is April 4th. Easter, we will be having three services. All the information you can get online or I think it's in the worship guide.

Easter is one of the best times of the year to invite friends to church, friends who perhaps had some exposure to Christianity and then walked away or friends who just haven't been in church for a while or friends who don't know much about Christianity, but you say, "Hey, this is part of my tradition. If you respect me and my faith, you should come to church with me. We will just preach the gospel and pray for people to get saved." So, plan on inviting friends and praying about that.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good God. You are a good father. You are perfect, Father. You're a father who is great and you're a father who is good. Great in that you are all powerful and good in that you enjoy to give us good gifts. You enjoy to meet our needs. You enjoy to provide for us so that we glorify you, to satisfy us so that we are satisfied in you. Lord, we thank you for Jesus Christ.

Jesus, we thank you that you came and you met our greatest need. You lived the perfect life that we would not, could not live. You went to the cross to die of the death that we deserve. You died in our place in order to reconcile us with the God of universe. Therefore, meeting our greatest need, that of reconciling us with God, that of forgiveness, that of justification, that of imputed righteousness. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are real, that you are with us, that you are a person, that you love us and you long to fill us and lead us and seal us.

I pray, Holy Spirit, come to this place, lead us, prepare our hearts, enlighten our minds, illuminate our hearts, our souls, and feed us from the Holy Scriptures, and teach us that we as the children of God have nothing to worry about. Our eternity is secure. Every single detail of our lives is under the control of a sovereign God, who is great and who is good. We love you, Lord, and we thank you for that. Deepen our trust in your faith, in our obedience and allegiance to you. Take away any burdens that we are carrying that we should not be. We cast them upon you, because you are God who cares. We pray that you bless our time with the Holy Scriptures and pray this in Christ's holy name, Amen.

If you're new, we're going through the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher to ever preach, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the son of man. He came to show us that there's nothing that we can do to be saved. There's no righteousness that we can do. There's no path that we can follow in order to make ourselves right before God, just before God. Therefore, we need to repent of our sin.

We need to acknowledge our spiritual bankruptcy. We need to believe in Christ. The very moment that we repent and believe, we become children of God. At that moment, we go from just being creation, just being image bearers of God who are sinful and broken and ostracized from God, we now become his children. As his children, he wants us to live with the richness of the title of a child of the God of the universe.

Last week, Jesus commands us and shows us that we are not to store or hoard treasures here on Earth. Instead, we are to have an eternal perspective on this life, on material things, on money, on everything that we have. Instead, we have to lay up treasures in heaven. What that does is sets our priorities that God is first, heaven is first, eternity is first. Everything else that God gives us here is for our stewardship. We had to steward it well for his glory and to serve our neighbor. A failure to view riches or possessions from proper perspective promotes anxiety. That's what God wants us to meditate upon today.

My wife and I, we've been here for about 11 years, I think, coming up on 12. Our second apartment was in Cleveland Circle on Lanark Road. It was a one-way street. We're on the second floor. We love that place. One of the things that we loved about that place is the magnolia tree outside of our window. If you know anything about weather in Boston, spring lasts about three days. It goes winter, spring for about three days, and then it's summer. Fall is nice. But every spring, we would look forward to the magnolia tree blooming outside our window. The flowers were white and purple. It was glorious.

If you know anything about weather in Boston, it could be spring one day, and the next day, it snows. So, don't get too happy about the weather. It was like 70 this week. We might still get a snowstorm. Who knows? So, the magnolia tree blooms. And then it snowed. It was winter, nasty, heavy, wet snow. It just covered this magnolia tree and the branch is just drooping, just cracking. They started breaking under the pressure of this snow. So, I went outside. If you know anything about Boston driving, you got to have a shovel in your car. You always have to. In the trunk of your car, you have to have a shovel.

So, I got my shovel, I go outside, and I started cleaning off the tree. As the snow fell, you saw just the tree almost sigh a breath of relief, just breathe a breath of relief. The weight is gone. The burden is gone. Well, I like that image to show that's how we look when we are burdened by anxiety. In this past year, it's been a year of the pandemic. This past year, you've seen just the physical effect of stress and anxiety on people as if they're just walking around with concrete blocks on their shoulders of stress, anxiety, worried, thick with anxiety, worrying about what?

What are you worried about? What have you been worried about for this past season? Perhaps it's your health. Perhaps it's the economy, where's it going, politics. Perhaps it's school grades, GPA, loans, job, career, your looks, weight, your hair, your clothes, school, grade, et cetera, succeeding, doing something that's actually meaningful or valuable or meeting someone, relationships, meeting the one, marriage or having a family, providing for your family, raising children that love Jesus in a world where it seems like everything is against that. All of that can be summarized with fear of the future. We don't know what's coming. So, we fear the unknown.

Someone said that "Worry is a conversation you have with yourself about things you cannot change." That's what Jesus wants us to focus on today. He delineates between concern, things that we can actually change and work on and worry, things we can't and things that we don't give up into the hands of God. We all fear and the root of anxiety is fear. The most frequently uttered commandment in Scripture is, "Fear not." The way that we fight fear of the future is with faith in a God, who is your Father. Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we have adoption as children of God. We can become sons and daughters of God by grace through faith. Therefore, we can trust him to provide for all of our needs.

So, today, we're Matthew 6:25 through 34. Would you look at the text with me? "Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

This is the reading God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time, do not be anxious; second, focus on your father; and three, seek after the kingdom.

"Do not be anxious," he says that in verse 25 and then repeats that at the end of the pericope. He says, "Therefore I tell you do not be anxious about your life." First thing I want to point out is there's different kinds of anxieties. Some of them God-given, some of them are not. There's a God-given emotional anxiety, given as a response when we are in danger, the flight or fight response, when we are in danger perhaps at night, when we're in danger perhaps you're in the woods, when you're in danger on the mean streets of Brookline. As Pastor Shane once said, "When you're getting chased by a turkey, they're mean. Stay away from them. Even in your car, they will attack your car."

There's an anxiety that comes or there's a natural anxiety that mother feels or father feels when an infant is sick or an infant needs to be fed. Those are God-given. Disordered physiological response, a clinical anxiety, which is a chronic condition that perhaps soldiers get or first responders or victims of abuse, that's not what Jesus is talking about here. Sometimes there's also natural consequences of sin. If you rack up gambling debt through sin and folly, you should be anxious about paying that off, et cetera. When we bear the consequences of the sin in our life and our body. Today, Jesus is talking about different kinds of anxieties. He's talking about the sinful response to physical things in our life in terms of God's providential care.

When we do not trust him to provide for our needs, that's what Jesus Christ is talking about here. He isn't saying to not work. He isn't saying not to provide for yourself and for those around you and not to have enough to be generous with us. That's not what he's talking about. God expects us, his people, to work hard and be amongst the hardest workers and to be responsible. Some Christians have taken these words of do not be anxious and used that as an excuse to justify laziness or irresponsible behavior. I had an uncle who would rack up credit card debt and any debt he could. He wouldn't pay it off, because he said, "Jesus is coming back soon. Don't worry about it. Also, Jesus said, do not be anxious about anything."

That's not what Jesus is talking about. You got to interpret Scripture through other Scripture. We do need to be responsible. You do need to wear a seatbelt. There are examples like that where you do need to care for yourself or your family or others. Jesus isn't saying don't plan, because we have the parable of the tower where Jesus says, "Do not be like the foolish builder, who starts a project. He didn't sit down to the very beginning before the project to figure out, "How much do I need to have in my account before I embark on a project like this?"

There's the parable of the general. You don't go into war if you don't have enough firepower, manpower to take on the other army. Jesus isn't forbidding sowing and planning. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about the difference between proper caring and concern and fixation on physical things on those matters. He's not saying, "Don't worry about your job. Stay at home. God will take care of your food. He'll send you Uber Eats." That's not what he's talking about. What he's talking about is don't be fixated on the material things of life, the food, the clothing, the housing, et cetera.

James talks about, "Hey, when a hungry person or person in need comes into your community, you can't just tell that person, 'Oh, be warmed and filled. Go therefore and be blessed.'" That would be sinful for us not to do what we can to provide for people's needs. You can't just tell that person, "Do not be anxious about food," when they're hungry. We are to care. He's not saying, "Don't worry, because there's an absence of problems in life." No, there's not an absence of problems in life. He's not saying that your life can be free from problems. He's saying that your life can be free from worry despite problems. Your life can be free from anxiety despite the problems of life.

There's a difference between anxiety and concern. Concern is when you can do something about it, you're concerned about it, then do something about it. Anxiety is when you can't do anything about it and you don't want to leave it up to God. Robert Frost said that more people die from worry than from work because more people worry than work. That's what he's getting at here is focus on this anxiety that's paralyzing. Jesus' concern here is with our priorities and what flows out of that. He uses the phrase "Do not be anxious" as an imperative twice in this text. He used the word 'anxious' or 'anxiety' six times in this text. Marimnao is the verb. Merimna is the noun.

Other places in Scripture, God talks about being careful to not let physical concerns pull us away from the more important concerns, which are the spiritual ones. Matthew 13:22, the parable of the sower, "For what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares..." That's the noun, merimna. "... of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves on fruitful." It's all about priorities. He's saying, "When you seek first the physical things of life at the expense of the spiritual things of life, the Word of God bears unfruitful."

Luke 21:34, this is talking about the second coming of Christ. "Watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down by the dissipation and drunkenness and cares..." Again, merimna. "... of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap." If you look at seven blocks of a city and you see fog come down, the fog can be 100 feet thick. But if you take all of that fog and you put it and you turn into water, it'll fill just one glass. So, from God's perspective, that's what our worries look. They fog up our sight. They fog up everything around us. But God says, "Hold on, hold on, view these things from an eternal perspective." Do not be anxious is a commandment from the Lord. Therefore, anxiety about material things can be a sin.

Worry can be a sin. Therefore, we need to repent of that sin. Worry's foolish on many levels. Worry never solved the problem, never dried a tear and never lifted a burden and never removed an obstacle and never made bad things good and never made good things better. It's foolish. Philippians 4:5 and 6 says, "The Lord is at hand. Because he's at hand, because he's with us, therefore, do not be anxious about anything." Worry kills joy. Worry causes stress. When we assume the position of God, we say, "God, you're not doing your job. I'm going to do your job better than you're doing your job. I can control things better than you do," and we assume that it's never productive.

So, instead of that anxiety, instead of being anxious, he says "Don't be anxious. Instead focus on your Father." Any parent knows this, when a child has an object that they're fixated on that will cause them harm like a knife, if a child grabs a knife, you can just take the object away, but then there's a meltdown. The wise parent is prudent, understands two steps ahead, four dimensional chess. If you're on baby number four, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know what happens right after you take the object away, there's a meltdown. So, what you got to do is take the object and replace it with something else. And then you sell it to them. You got to market to them. Oh, look at this wonderful thing. And then you get rid of the other object. This is the trick that got Jesus.

Don't be anxious, but there's a vacuum. You can't leave it in the vacuum because then you're going to get anxious about not getting anxious and getting worried about not getting worried. So, you got to fill it with something else. What he's talking about is perspective. Don't be focused on these things. Be focused on these things. So, focus on your Father. God is your heavenly Father. God will take care of your food as a believer. That's Matthew 6:25. "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on."

Don't be anxious. The present is imperative. It's constant and continuous. You got to fight this on a daily basis. You got to tell your heart, "Oh, so, why are you restless. Heart, why are you restless? Why are you worried? Why are you stressful?" You got to preach to yourself. You got to ask questions like Jesus is asking some rhetorical question, "Isn't life more than food?" Of course, it is. You need food for life, but life is so much more than these things. And then he goes, "Hey, look, if I don't worry about the physical things of life, who will?" Tremendous question. Jesus says, "Your Father, your heavenly Father."

Matthew 6:26, "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" I love this verse for many reasons, particularly because we get a theology of ecology or environmentalism from one verse. In our world today, there's a worldview that's being pushed that humans are equally valuable with animals and with the planet. From Jesus' perspective, that's just not so. Birds are great. They're industrious. They care for themselves in many ways, but they don't feed themselves. They don't plant crops. They don't harvest. They don't store them. It's God that feeds them.

Jesus emphasized them that it's not in their heavenly Father. God isn't father of birds. He's not father of dogs. He's not father of cats. He's not father of animals. He's God over them. He's creator over them. He doesn't say, "Their heavenly Father." He says, "Your heavenly Father." Meaning you are special. Humans are special. So, in terms of caring for the environments, we should, et cetera, it's God's creation, but there's priorities that humans are infinitely more valuable than animals or even creation itself.

We're created in the image of God, your heavenly Father. You're created through Jesus Christ, and then God has bought you dear Christian through the blood of Jesus Christ. So, you are doubly his and doubly precious, infinite and value worth to your heavenly Father. Food here, he talks about food. He starts with food. Food is a wonderful servant to sustain life. It's a terrible, debilitating idol, that we are not to be consumed with what we consume, with food. Particularly, Jesus did teach us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," but only on a daily basis. God does meet those needs.

The other thing I just want to point out here since we're talking about the environment, talking about becoming children of God, this only applies to Christians. If you are not a Christian, you are not a child of God. You're a creation of God. You are not yet a child of God. In and of ourselves, we are so rebellious and wicked and sinful that in and of ourselves, we are not children of God. We are rebels. God needs to send his Son, his ultimate Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life that we would not live and to die the death that we deserve.

We deserve that death for our wickedness, our disobedience, our preoccupation with material things, our idolatry. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, so that we could be adopted into the family of God. On the one hand, that sounds so exclusive. It is exclusive. If there were another way, God would provide another way. There was no other way. We're so sinful that that's what it took, the Son of God to die on the cross, but he's so loving that he was willing to take it. It is exclusive, but it's the most inclusive, exclusive truth in the history of the world. Everyone can become a child of God.

So, if you, today, you're not sure, am I a child of God? You should be worried. If you're on the fence, you're not sure, you should be worried. Jesus here is saying, "Don't sweat the small stuff," but he's not saying don't sweat the soul stuff. You got to know where your soul is. Are you reconciled with God? Are you saved by grace through faith in Christ? Are you a child of God? If so, do not be anxious and focus on the Father. If not, repent of your sin, become a Christian today, a child of God by receiving God's gift of salvation, becoming adopted into his family.

He goes on. He says, "Oh, as a child of God, God will take care of your life." That's verse 27. "And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?" In the original, in the Greek, it's talking about, "Can you add a single qubit to your height?" Obviously, you can't. It's a metaphor for life. Can you add a single minute? Can you add a single second to life? The point is that worrying is fruitless. It's foolish. It's pointless. It can't lengthen your life. It could actually shorten your life. Doctors tell us this all the time that stress has all kinds of physical implications. Worry effects not just the length of life, but also the quality of life.

Here, we get into the sovereignty of God and his deep theological waters, but hang with me because I know you can, because you came to the early service when we lost an hour of sleep. We're going to talk about it real quick about the sovereignty of God over every single minute of our life real quick. God is sovereign, over everything, over every single detail of life, including the very second that we are conceived, including the very second that we are born, including the very second that we die. It's all predestined by a great sovereign God.

Job 14:5, "Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass." You have appointed his limits that he cannot pass. I'll never forget I was at a funeral of a family member and I heard a sermon on this text. They were saying, "There's nothing you can do to add a second, pass the second that God has allotted for you." He knows the very beginning. He knows the very end, limits that he cannot pass.

Psalm 139:60, "Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." Every single day of your life is determined by God. This is something that you need to meditate on. But I'm telling you, once you do, once you realize that God is in charge over every single moment, every single second of your life, there's a freedom that fills your soul. Fear of death is absolutely removed. There's a fearlessness not in a responsibility, not a recklessness, but a fearlessness in that God has appointed for me a purpose in life.

He's designed me in such a way to fulfill that purpose. He will give me the talents and the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill that purpose. But the very second that I'm done fulfilling his purpose, he's taking me home. So, if you're still here, you have a job. You have a purpose to do. You have something to accomplish for God. So, he's saying this in the perspective. You can't lengthen your life. So, why worry? Worry is a sign that you don't adequately know the sovereign God. You don't adequately trust him. You haven't yielded to him.

We are in the hand of God the Father. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John, "There's nothing to pull us out of his hand," but we try to. We try to pull ourselves out of his hand. We try to take the wheel from God into our own hands. He says, "Don't do that." He also said, "God will take care of your clothing."

Matthew 6:28 through 30, "And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" How often you think about clothing? Well, you thought about clothing today or you made a conscious decision about what you're wearing today.

In my household, my wife and I, we don't just have to think about what we wear. We also have four little human beings, female human beings, little girls. We think about what they wear the night before, put all their clothing. They plan out their outfits. It's all very sweet. My daughter Elizabeth asked me today, "What are you preaching?" I said, "Not to worry about your outfits." We know, we think about this all the time. We think about clothing all the time. We're programmed that way. We're programmed that way through marketing.

How big is the clothing apparel industry in the US? $368 billion. What's the size of the secondhand resale market? $28 billion, that's people getting rid of their stuff. What's the size of storage in the US? This is my favorite, $90 billion dollars, $90 billion when people don't have room in their place and then they go and rent space for their junk and they pay money for on a monthly basis, which doesn't make any financial sense to me. Take that, go put in a secondhand store, and then buy new stuff. We're worried. We're worried.

Jesus says, "Don't be worried about the clothing. Look at the flowers, they don't work. They don't buy or earn in terms of their beauty. They just grow. They grow and God blesses them." Jesus brings in King Solomon. Even in the time of Christ, Solomon's royal regal opulence was proverbial. Everyone knew that he dressed well. Will he not much more clothe you? Of course, he will. He provide for us.

Here, Jesus brings them in. This is the punchline. This is how he lands things, "O you of little faith?" This same phrase is used four other times in Matthew, little faith. Once where Jesus with the disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and storm comes and they're freaking out as he's taking a nap. He gets up and he said to them, "Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?" Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea and there was a great calm. He also told Peter when Peter wants to walk on water. He's going great. As he's focused on Jesus, he stops focusing on Jesus. He starts staring at the winds and the waves. He panicked. Jesus said, "O you of little faith."

Jesus provided miraculously in terms of bread. He drove out demon of a little boy. Every time he's saying, "you of little faith, you of little faith." So, worry is fed by a little faith. So, meaning that the opposite of worry isn't just tranquility. The opposite of worry isn't just optimism that things will work out. The opposite of worry is faith. Faith on this side, the opposite of faith is worry, anxiety. Faith, lack of faith. So, actually worry, anxiety is equal to a lack of faith. It's practical atheism. At that very moment, you're practically not trusting that God exists. Or it's deism that God can't do anything. He's there, but he doesn't care. Or a finite theism, he doesn't have the power to be counted on.

Jesus says here, "You're little in faith." You need to grow that faith. That's what he's getting at. The reason that you worry or you're anxious about material things is because your faith is little. It's there. That's great. As a child of God, God gives you the gift of faith. Now, we as children of God, we need to exercise that faith. We need to put pressure on that faith. We need to test that faith. It's like a muscle. You need to grow it by exercise, by using it with weight and reps. So, here, the question is, you got to ask, "Do I believe in God? God, do I believe in you? Do I believe that God is great and that he is good? Do I believe that God is greater than my greatest problem? Do you believe that God is bigger than your biggest problem?"

Some of us, we have big faith, but because of a wrongheaded theology, we believe in a small God who's not sovereign, who isn't great and who isn't good. Big faith in a small God leads to anxiety. I'd rather have small faith in a big God. That small faith when exercised becomes a big faith. George Mueller, the great prayer warrior and minister of God said, "The beginning of worry is the end of faith. The beginning of faith is the end of worry." Mark 5:36, "Do not fear, only believe. God will take care of your needs."

Matthew 6:31 through 32, "Therefore do not be anxious, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all." Again, do not be anxious. He puts anxiety on the level of being a pagan, a non-believer in Christ. Pagans, people don't trust in God, don't believe in God. They got a laser beam focused on the physical things of life, of having enough, of storing up, of making more.

What he's saying is that these believers, the pagans, they're actually believers in that they have misplaced faith. They don't believe in God. They believe in something else. They believe in themselves perhaps, or they believe in having enough money, or they believe in having a correct career. In this sense, Jesus is saying that we are all believers, every single one. You can't but believe. You can't live life without exercising your faith. Every single one of us do. If you don't believe in God as ultimate, then you will believe in other things. You will believe in government. You will believe in politicians. You will believe in what the government tells you, what the CDC tells you, what the who tells you, what the people in authority in your company tell you. We believe these.

You can't live without faith. Every time you get into an Uber, you trust that person. Every time you get in an airplane, you trust the pilot. Every time you go to a restaurant, you trust whoever prepared that food. That's faith. He's saying in this case, the pagans, they trust in themselves to provide for themselves. In a sense, they're living as orphans.

Jesus is saying, "Stop, stop living as an orphan. Stop thinking, craving, desiring like the world. Don't seek after these things. Instead, seek after your Father. Stop living beneath the privilege of being a child of God. Stop living beneath the privilege of being a child of the King of the universe." I'm not saying the privilege is the financial stuff. I'm saying the privilege is greater than that. The joy, the freedom, the satisfaction that is ours in Christ Jesus, we experience royal freedom.

There's two ways that you can ask a question about God and help. You can ask, "Will God help?" or you can ask, "How will he help?" If you ask, "Will God help?", you know that question. We've asked that question. That's a question riddled with anxiety and frustration... God, where are you? Do you even care? ... with despair. But when you are a child of God and you know that God is good and God is great, he will provide for you. You say, "How will he help?" I'm excited. It's filled with anticipation, confidence, eagerness, gladness. I can't wait to see how God will help. It completely changes the way that you live on a daily basis. So, look to God the Father.

Third, seek after the kingdom. So, this is how Jesus really lands a whole section. This is Matthew 6:33, but contrast that with everything else, worrying about stuff, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." It's about priority. What are we seeking first? Are we seeking material things and then secondarily spiritual things, or are we seeking first God, this kingdom and his righteousness? This is a question of living by faith or by sight. That's why he said, "O you of little faith, increase your faith." If you increase your faith, now, you begin to see life as you should, from internal perspective, spiritual perspective.

Physical isn't all there is. Faith knows that worldly possessions and pleasure are temporary. Faith knows that worldly possessions and pleasures, they crowd out love and service to God. Faith knows that you need not worry about having enough for life because God our heavenly Father always cares. And then the other thing that he's use doing here is he's saying there's two ways to live. That's why he says, "They seek after stuff. You seek after spiritual things, God." There's only two ways to live either for your kingdom or for God's kingdom. So, we as God's children, we have to seek his role and his reign in our life.

God, where am I not submitting to you? First thing in the morning, God, how can I serve you today? How can I honor you today? How can I further your kingdom today? Stop worrying about your little kingdom. Start seeking God's big kingdom. The word 'seek' here is zeteo in the Greek. It's a word that's used for a hunter, a hunter that's not hunting for sport, hunting for food. It's a hunter that every single one of his sense is on alert, focused, always on the lookout, bow and arrow ready. He's saying, "In the same way, Christians should be thinking, seeking."

God, how can I further your kingdom? God, what can I do today to honor you as a servant of your kingdom? How do we overcome love of the seen with a love for the unseen God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Trinity? How do we do that? How do we get away from seeking stuff to seeking God's kingdom and trust God for taking care of all of other stuff in terms of priorities? How can we get rid of that? We get rid of that through the gospel.

Whenever you see that in your heart, priorities are out of whack, you look to the gospel and you look to the cross of Jesus Christ. You say, "What's happening at the cross?" What's happening at the cross is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is meeting your greatest need. You don't have a greater need than to have your sins forgiven. You don't have a greater need than to have the debt of your sin forgiven. You don't have a greater need than the wrath of God being absorbed in the Son of God, so that you don't have to bear that wrath for all of eternity.

When you look to the cross and you see what Christ did for you, because he loves you, will he not with that give you all things? Of course, he will. If he cares that much about your greatest need, he obviously cares about your lesser needs as well. This is what allowed the first century church to grow as it did. A lot of people look at Christianity and they're like, "Prove to me that Christianity is actually work of God. Prove to me that it's true." I just point to the growth of Christianity despite persecution. Islam grew the way it did by the sword. Christianity grew the way it did despite the sword. The early Christian, every single one of the disciples of Jesus Christ, except for John, who was exiled to Patmos, every single one of them, they went to the death, because they knew this is true. They knew that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead. They saw him with their own eyes and that they were willing to testify to the death.

The early church was persecuted by Nero and by Caesars, et cetera. Despite the persecution, the early church grew by 40% per decade. So much so that by the fourth century, when Constantine's in power, he says, "How do I solidify? How do I consolidate my power? I'm going to pretend that I'm a Christian." No one really knows if he's a Christian. I think his wife became a Christian. But Christianity grew despite persecution. Why? Because they knew this was true. First of all, the eyewitnesses and then Christians later experienced the work of the Spirit in their heart. They knew that there was a treasure beyond the treasures in this life.

Look at Hebrews 10:32-34. "But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened," after you became Christians, "you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. What's going on in that text? That means people who persecuted them for the faith said, "We are going to take everything you have unless you recant, unless you turn from Christ." They joyfully gave it up, because they had a treasure that was greater than that stuff.

What in the world could do that in your hearts? The gospel of Jesus Christ, where you understand that no treasure is greater than of Christ. So, devote yourself to the gospel, which now begins to transform you. That's how we seek the kingdom and his righteousness, folks, in the Gospel. Love the gospel. Recognize what God has done for you through the gospel. We do that through Scripture. We do that by abiding with Christ by reading Scripture and prayer on a daily basis. Seek first.

Before you do anything else on a daily basis, seek first the kingdom of God. You wake up. First thing you do, seek first the kingdom of God. Before coffee, with coffee, with coffee. We're not extremists here, with coffee. With coffee, you grab your Bible, you pray, you meditate, you worship God, you meditate upon God.

Luke 10:41 through 42, this is Mary and Martha. "The Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious,'" marimnao, "'and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.'" I bring this as an illustration because there's two concerns here. There's two anxieties here. There's two worries here. There's two seekings here. Martha is anxious and seeking about the physical things. It's a good thing. She wants to meet the needs of Christ and his disciples. Mary is concerned about the spiritual things. Jesus, teach me. Jesus, I want to set at your feet. Jesus, what do you have to say to me? I say that to set up the next text.

This is Second Corinthians 11:24 through 28. This is St. Paul, who tells us in Philippians, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, present your requests to God." That same guy who says do not be anxious about anything, that same guy in Second Corinthians 11:24 through 28, he shows us every single thing that he's worried about, all of his persecutions that he experienced.

He says, "Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false prophets; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from all the other things..." That phrase is a set up. This is my greatest challenge. "... there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety," merimna, same word, "for all the churches."

So, a guy that tells us, "Do not be anxious about anything," is telling us that he's anxious about the churches. This is what it looks like to seek first the kingdom of God. You care more about God and his cause and his kingdom and his churches, because that's how the gospel goes out that this is God's plan of reaching the world, to plant churches. You care about that more than physical things. Churches and planting churches, et cetera, serving other Christians that you know that you're committed to. I say that 1 Corinthians 12:21 through 26, this text is perfect. If anyone is wondering why churches practice church membership, why does Mosaic practice church membership?

Read 1 Corinthians 12. "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require.

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members," of the local church, of the body, of the local body, "may have the same care," marimnao, same word, "for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together."

Part of seeking the kingdom and seeking the righteousness of God is also seeking, "How can I meet the needs of my brothers and sisters?" This happens in Mosaic naturally through community groups. We do our best to cultivate and we pray that God continues to do it, but this is something we need to ask ourselves on a daily basis, "Whom can I serve in my family? Whom can I serve in my local church family on daily basis?"

Philippians 2:19 through 21, testament about Timothy, "I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned," marimnao, "for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ."

Timothy's seeking the interests of Jesus Christ. How? By seeking the practical interests of the believers in Philippi. I want to serve you. Jesus, I want to serve you. Jesus, I want to honor you. Jesus, I want to love you. Jesus, I want to care for you. Jesus says, "What have you done for the least of the least?" That's what's going on in that text. He says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added on to you." That's fascinating. It's fascinating because if you compare that to the teaching of Buddha, Buddha said, "Seek first the kingdom and you will need none of these things." Jesus says, "No." Jesus is realistic. He understands that we need physical things. We need food. We need clothing. We need a place to live. He knows these things.

These things will be added on to you by the Father. If you care about the Father's priorities, the Father will take care of your needs. If you care about the Father's glory, he'll take care of your satisfaction, and not just your needs. This is fascinating, because in Philippians, it says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, present your request to God, present your requests." The Psalmist says, "Delight yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart." We have desires, unmet desires. Delight yourself in God. Seek first God. God's like, "I want to meet a desire. I want to meet a request," not a need, a request every once in a while.

Sometimes he says no. The mother of James and John, Mrs. Zebedee comes to Jesus and says, "I request. I want you to meet this request before I tell you what the request is." Give me a blank check. He says, "What do you want?" She says, "I want my sons to sit at the right and the left of you in your kingdom." He said, "You know what you're asking? Can they suffer the way I suffer?" She says, "Yes, they can." "Okay, they will," he said, "but it's not it's not for me to..." He doesn't give her that.

But then I think about Cana in Galilee where Mary comes to Jesus and they're at a wedding. She's like, "They're out of wine." Tell me, is wine a need at a wedding? Only if there's dancing involved, then wine is definitely a need. You can't have a dry wedding and dancing. You can't do that. It's either both or nothing. Is it a need? It's not a need. It's not a need. Just have some more water. Jesus is like, "Okay, here you go, a miracle." Every once in a while, but the point is that God is a good father. He'll provide what we need, not necessarily luxuries. But every once in a while, he blesses us beyond.

Matthew 6:34, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." This is fascinating, because he doesn't say there's no trouble ever. He's saying this trouble today. He recognizes. He recognized that today, there's unavoidable worry. He recognizes this. Today, there are things that you are concerned about. You should be concerned about, that you're responsible for. You should work to take care of those things. What he's saying is by saying, "Sufficient for the day is its own trouble," let's limit the concern and the worry for today. We only live in today. Stop being so focused on tomorrow, because we never live in tomorrow. When tomorrow comes again, it's today. Let's focus on today. That's what he's saying.

Be responsible for today. By the way, this is a life hack. If you do what you need to do today, if you focus on taking care of everything you need to focus on today and you wake up and you say, "Today, I'm going to focus," and you just keep going, that leads to a very productive life for Christ. Let your requests be known to God. I thought he already knows them. Of course, he does. Prayer isn't about informing God. He already knows. Prayer is about releasing, releasing our burdens, casting them upon him.

1 Peter 5:6 and 7, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." So, do you have anxiety? Do not turn to diversions. Do not turn to diversions. Instead turn and direct yourself to God, your burdens to God. The way to fight anxiety is with the promises of God. Romans 8:31-32, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"

I'll give you some promises from Scripture that you can use to fight anxiety. When you worry about what people might do to you, look to Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" When you worry about being too weak, recall 2 Corinthians 12:9, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." When you worry about future decisions, recall Psalm 32:8, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you." When you worry about whether God will fulfill his promises to you, recall Hebrews 6:8, where it says, "It's impossible for God to lie."

When you worry about your loved ones, recall Matthew 7:11, "How much more will the Father give what is good to those who ask?" When you worry about physical sickness, recall Psalm 103:3, "He heals all your diseases." When you worry about getting old, recall Isaiah 46:4, "Even to your old age, I shall be the same, and even to your grain years, I shall bear you." When you worry about failing and falling, recall Philippians 1:6, "For I'm confident of this very thing that he will begin a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." Amen. Let's pray.

God, we thank you that you are a great God and a good God. I pray that you strengthen our vision, our understanding of your greatness, of your sovereignty. As we look to a big God, I pray that you take our little faith and you expand it, that you make it more robust, that you solidify it. So, we become a people who never question your sovereignty, never question your character, never question your power, never question your love. You prove to us both your power and your love on the cross of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Jesus, for that. Because you met our greatest need, we thank you in advance for meeting the rest of our needs. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning and welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy, and if you're new or if you're visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card, either the physical copy you can get in the back or the virtual one you can get either in the app or on the website.

One quick announcement: Back in November, we had evening services focused on a meditation on God's Word for about 20 minutes and then prayer the rest of the time, so we had three weeks like that in November. We're restarting that next week, we'll do three weeks again, so here, 5:00 p.m. It's 5:00 p.m. No one's correcting me, so it's 5:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. starting next Sunday, and that's to focus our time on the coming of Christ, why He came, and the last days of His life on earth, and that'll bring us to Good Friday and Easter.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy Word. Heavenly Father, what a great God you are, that you, not forsaking us in our sin though we rebelled against your Kingship, you sent your Son Jesus Christ, who came to serve us. Our Lord came to serve us, humbled Himself to the point of becoming a servant, making Himself nothing to the point of even going to a cross. We thank you, Jesus, that you, the greatest treasure of the universe, God the Father gave you a name that is above all names, that you, the greatest treasure of the universe, you decided to sacrifice yourself in order to redeem us, to make us your own.

I pray today, show us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, as you illuminate the Scriptures for us, enlighten our minds, I pray that you show us that, all too often, we give up our greatest treasures: our health, our time, our energy, our passion, our talents. We give it up for lesser treasures, idolatrous treasures that promise us if we serve them, they will save us, save us from mediocrity, save us from insecurity, save us from a lack of control, save us from a lack of comfort. And they never, they never, they never produce, they never give us what they promise, and we just keep sacrificing, keep giving, keep chasing, only to end up more dissatisfied and empty inside.

And, Lord, show us that you came to save us from sin and from dissatisfaction and from an attempt to control our own lives. You came as a Savior to save us, and as you save us, you call us to serve you. And when we serve you, and when we give all of our energy, passion, desire, when we give everything to you, that's when we are most satisfied here in this life, and we get rewards in heaven. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, convict us where we need to be convicted, encourage us where we need to be encouraged, and we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

So, we are in a sermon series through the Sermon on the Mount. This is Matthew 5 through 7, in which the greatest preacher who has ever lived, Jesus Christ, preaches the greatest sermon that has ever been preached. And in this sermon, Jesus Christ gives us the greatest paradigm shift that has ever been taught. Before Jesus Christ came, every single world religion, every single philosophy, everything in this world hinged on this paradigm: serve this, serve this god, serve this teacher, serve this politician, serve this rabbi, serve this thing, and it will save you. Serve to be saved. Do good works to be saved; that's every religion. How do you get into heaven in Islam, how do you reach nirvana in Buddhism or Confucianism, how do you get... In terms of politicians, they do this all the time: "Serve us, we will give you a brand new future. Serve us, we will save you from your current lack of salvation."

And Jesus Christ comes in and says, "There's nothing you can do to be saved. Your situation is so hopeless, the world is so hopeless, there's nothing you can do to be saved, to save yourself. Instead, accept the salvation that I offer you freely, the salvation that I earned. And once you're saved, now serve me."

So, the Sermon on the Mount can be misinterpreted to be read as, "This is what you do to get into heaven." Jesus Christ comes in and He says, "No, no, the kingdom of God is at hand, therefore repent. I'm offering you salvation. Repent." He's not denouncing us, He's not condemning us, He's actually inviting us to receive salvation: "The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and receive." So, once we're in the kingdom, now God says, "This is how you serve me. You've seen in me the greatest treasure that there is; now live for this greatest treasure a life to the fullness."

So, Jesus Christ is a loving Lord and a powerful Savior, and what happens is, even as believers, we forget about this paradigm shift, that we serve because we have been saved, we serve because Jesus is already our Savior and Lord, so we need to be reminded that everything else is an overbearing lord and an impotent savior. And in particular, Jesus Christ wants to talk about money today. He wants to talk about treasures, that treasures and money themselves, it works on the old paradigm shift, that if you serve money, it will save you. It will save you from mediocrity, it will save you from discomfort, it will save you from a lack of security. "Serve me, serve me, sacrifice to get me, sacrifice your life, your power, your energy, everything you have. Delight in this treasure, and then, if you delight enough, then you get it." And Jesus Christ wants to show us it's a false idol. It never satisfies, it never delivers on what it promises.

One of the things I say about Christianity is, a lot of people, when they're new to Christianity, they think Christianity is just something you add to your life. So, you tell someone, "Yeah, I'm a Christian, I go to church on Sunday," and they're like, "Oh, cool, you go to church on Sundays, I go to yoga on Sundays. You go to church on Sundays, I go play golf on Sundays. That's great." It's just an addition to your life. And I tell people, Christianity isn't like yoga or golf, where you add it to your life. It's like oxygen or gravity; it affects every part of your life.

And this is why Jesus wants us to focus on money today, and He often focuses on money, because money is just the thing that's always around; it impacts every single aspect of our lives, and in particular, in a city like this, in a region like this, where the prices on everything are ridiculous. Prices on housing are ridiculous, prices... Just to exist here costs like three times more than anywhere else. I look at the housing prices here, and I look at the housing prices in Texas, and I'm like, "Oh my, what in the world is keeping me here?" It's the call of God, that's why we're still here.

So, Jesus Christ talked about money more than faith, more than He talked about prayer, more than He talked about heaven or hell combined. That's how often He talked about money. Over 25% of the recorded words of Jesus in the Gospels are devoted to money. There's 28 passages. There's over 800 verses in Scripture discussing money. And the big idea of what Jesus wants to say to us today is, we either worship money or we worship with money. We either love money or we love with money and both God and neighbor.

So, today we are in Matthew 6:19-24, Matthew 6:19-24. Would you look at the text with me? "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Where your treasure is... "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, the whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. Look at the power of money over the heart, the powerlessness of money in satisfying the heart, and the power of the gospel over money by satisfying the heart. So, first, the power of money over the heart. If you read the whole metanarrative of Scripture, the whole council of God, in terms of looking at its teaching about money, one of the things you walk away with is almost the bipolar nature of the teaching on Scripture on money. On the one hand, there's Scriptures that clearly denounce money in terms of its hold on us, it warns about the dangers of wealth. And then you read passages where you become convinced that wealth ought to be pursued. It extols the virtues of wealth.

I'll give you just an example. If you look at Solomon's Proverbs, the book of Proverbs, one of my favorite books in all of Scripture, 10 times, the word "wealth" is used in the Hebrew, 10 times. Half of the uses of the word "wealth" prize it, that we are to pursue it, and then half, the other half, are about how we are not to trust it. The issue isn't money, and this is what Jesus is getting at, the issue is the heart. Where is our heart in terms of wealth and materialism?

Matthew 6:21, He says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Did the treasure follow the heart, or does the heart follow the treasure? The answer is yes. It's interconnected, and that's why it's so dangerous. Matthew 6:24, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."

So, Jesus says money attempts to present itself as a savior on par with Jesus Christ, a savior who is Lord, and He says that's why it's so dangerous. Jesus is saying, "Be careful of money's sway over your heart. Be careful of its siren song, its mesmerizing." When you imagine having wealth... And I think it's funny in a day like this, where people are getting rich off of stonks and off of cryptocurrency, and you're like, "Oh, did I miss the boat?" And then all of a sudden, stock market drops, and then it's back, and it's like, "Oh," and you see people just all over social media, just sharing their wealth, "Oh, yeah, I own this Ferrari outright, yeah, just made in bitcoin last week," and you're like, "Oh, wow." It just so mesmerizes that realities can just change, your life can change so radically if you had X dollars, and so easy to just imagine "If I had this..." It is mesmerizing.

And Jesus here, He's not just talking about money, He's talking about treasure in general. And what does it mean to treasure something? It means to fill your heart with it, fill your imagination with it, that this is of value. This is worthy of me. It's worthy of my life, so I'm going to pursue it, and it is going to add worth to me. It's going to make me somebody.

Now we're getting into identity issues, that this is going to make me human, it's going to make me the person that I want to be, and this is why it's so powerful. And Jesus says, and this is the teaching of Scripture, whatever you ultimately treasure, that this is essential, that this is basic to reality, that this is the core of why I exist, whatever you treasure more than anything, you'll be enslaved by. Whatever you serve more than anything because it promises you salvation, it becomes a master over your life. So, you're willing to pay whatever price it takes to get X, Y, and Z, and you're willing to sacrifice whatever needs to be sacrificed, even if that means a relationship with God, even if that means a relationship with family, a relationship with friends, et cetera.

And you might say, "Money's not really an issue. I have defeated greed in my life." Okay, first of all, you're probably struggling with pride and lying, that's number one. Number two, look at where your money goes freely, because it exposes your other idols. This is what money is so... It has such a powerful effect on us, because it promises other things. It promises experiences, perhaps sinful experiences. It promises a lifestyle, it promises significance and comfort and security, like, "If I have this, then I can control everything." It promises freedom. Freedom to do with my time whatever I want.

This is what you've got to be careful of. That's why it's a parallel lord, it's a competing lord, because Jesus Christ, He offers us freedom, He offers us salvation, He offers us the most important things in life. So, look at your money, where it goes most freely, because often, we spend effortlessly and easily on things that are truly at the center of our existence. It might be clothing, it might be experiences, it might be an image that you want to create on social media, et cetera. It might be having people view you as having achieved things, et cetera. Now you're getting into acceptance. So, these are all the heart issues. For some people, they want money to control their world; therefore, they don't spend. Other people want money to get things that give them acceptance from people; therefore, they do spend, perhaps, on clothing or on their beauty or on attractiveness, et cetera.

What is it about money that makes it so dangerous? Well, it's because it promises us things at the heart level that are so seductive, like security, power, comfort, and approval, beauty, purpose. It has a power to seduce the human heart because it has a power to seduce our desires, our dreams, our imagination. So, Jesus doesn't treat money as just neutral, though it is. Money is just neutral. But He knows that the power is so powerful over us, He treats it as benign so that we start asking ourselves not just "Am I greedy?" or "Am I materialistic?" but we are to ask ourselves, "How greedy am I? How materialistic am I?" That's the position from where Jesus starts.

So, Matthew 5:22 and 23, there's kind of two verses that seem like they're out of context. He's talking about "Don't lay up treasures on earth, lay up treasures in heaven, you can't serve two masters, God and mammon," but in the center, He says this: "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"

What's the connection between eyes and light and your body and money and treasures? What's going on here? He's saying, in the same way that eye health helps you understand the world around you, helps you understand the reality around you, He says in the same way, there's an eye of your heart that, if it is darkened, you begin to misunderstand life and the reality of life. And you can call that heart eye, you can call it devotion, or you can call it ambition. In the same way that our eyes help us see through vision and perspective everything around us, so ambition affects our entire life.

And what He's saying is, a single-minded ambition to God helps us really see the world as it is, helps us see what really matters, helps us see what to devote our life to. And a single-minded ambition to serve self with money, all of a sudden, it blinds us, it distorts the way reality is, it distorts our understanding of the things around us.

We know at the end, anybody at the end of their life on the hospital bed, they never say, "I wish I had earned more money. I wish I had spent more time on my career." What do they always say? "I wish I had spent more on my relationships and invested more." It's like, at the end of their life, they begin to see life clearly, but during your life, you did not. And this is really the eye and the vision, the spiritual vision that Jesus Christ is talking about, and the reason why the mind's eye gets clouded, gets fogged up is because of pride.

And this is really why money is so dangerous and nefarious. What made Satan Satan? What made Satan Satan was pride. He all of a sudden thought that he was so great that God should worship him, that God should serve him. It was pride. So, Satan then tempts Adam and Eve with the same thing, with pride: "You will be as gods." And then Satan comes to us with money, and this is the temptation that every single one of us is susceptible to. He says, "If you have money, you will be like a god. You will have everything. You will have control, you will have security, you will live the life that you want to live. You will be in charge of your own destiny."

And when you get money, the pride is fed, and you think, all of a sudden, "You know what, I am self-reliant, I am independent of God," perhaps, and you become overconfident in your own powers. Bernard of Clairvaux said, "To see a man humble in the midst of prosperity is the greatest rarity in the world." New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg calls stewardship of material possessions "the most important test case of one's profession of discipleship." He says, "Materialism is the single biggest competitor with authentic Christianity for the hearts and souls of millions in our world today."

So, we talked about the power of money over the heart, and now I want to talk about the powerlessness of money in satisfying the heart. Everyone knows that the love of money is the root of all evil. There's even memes out there like, "No, it's not money that's the root of all evil, it's the love of money." We all know that. Everyone will say that money can't buy true happiness. Every religion teaches its adherents that you can't buy with money what you're really looking for. Every philosophy of any consequence taught the same thing. Seneca in the first century, a Stoic philosopher and moralist, he said, "It's not the one who has too little but the one who desires more who is poor."

In Luke 16:14, talking about the Pharisees, it says, "The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed Him," Jesus. The Son of God is before them, and the Son of God is teaching about the way of life, and they're so blinded by their love of money that they ridicule Him. Does money satisfy, does it give peace and tranquility? No, of course not, because you always think about, like, "I just need a little more, a little more, a little more." And then, if you start getting into investing, and then you start thinking about opportunity costs, like, "If I buy this thing, then I can't invest the money, and I can't make interest on the money," so then, all of a sudden, you're like, "No..." And you're just thinking about more, more, more, "I could make more"; it has power over you.

Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus says, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." So, now Jesus is giving us two perspectives on life. The first perspective is that the material is all there is, this life is all there is, and life is short, so you should make the most of it and get the most out of life. And Jesus says, "No, no, no, this life isn't all there is. There's an eternity before us in two places, either heaven or hell, and what we do here in this life impacts our eternity, and not just our eternity but the eternity of others, so we should lay up treasures there, not on earth."

The pronouns in verses 19 and 20, where He says "for yourselves" and "you" and "your," those are plural, so, we as a community need to remind ourselves of this truth. And then, in verse 21, it's singular: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." It's very direct, it's very personal. He's just asking, "What about you? Is your heart wrapped up in earthly treasure and the pursuit of it and laying it up," that's the emphasis here, "and storing it up and gathering and hoarding? And how do you know that this is a problem? Because you just want to accumulate more and more and more for this life and for yourself." That's the emphasis here.

He talked about moth and rust, that they impact our treasures, and He is talking about the impermanence of wealth, it comes and goes, the insecurity of it. The rust, it's not the ordinary word for rust, it's more like decay or rot. If it's not used, it rots, and there's all kinds of examples of this now. Apparently we're printing another $1.9 trillion, and we just printed $1.9 trillion; I think we're up to around four, so what's that going to do to inflation? I don't know. Gas prices are up, grocery prices are up, real estate prices are... I have no idea. That's moth and rust.

And thieves from the government, that's the other thing here. It's in the Greek. Back then, there weren't banks, there was no FDIC, so the way you stored money was in strongboxes you bury in your floor in the ground of your home. Excavation of large homes in Pompeii uncovered strongboxes, small fortunes. But what Jesus here is saying is, when you put your trust in impermanent things, that trust is fickle, it's not going to deliver.

That's what Jesus is saying; what Jesus isn't saying, He isn't saying "Don't work and don't save." He's not saying that. We see in other passages that if you don't work, you shouldn't eat, and that if we are to work... So, there's a passage in Thessalonians that a thief comes to salvation, and St. Paul writes to him and says, "Hey, let the thief no longer steal. Let him work so that he may share with others." So, we are called not just to provide for our own needs, but work in such a way where we have an excess to be generous with others.

And Jesus isn't forbidding accumulation of wealth; Deuteronomy 8:10, "You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day." And Christ also isn't forbidding saving for the future of you and your family. St. Paul talks about, it's parents that need to save for their children. Proverbs talks about, the wise man doesn't just save for his children but his children's children. Proverbs 6:6-8 says, "Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest."

So, He's talking about this industrious nature that every single person should have, every single Christ in particular, where we wake up to work, not because of our manager or our boss, we wake up to work because we have a greater boss, and we're going to work for Him from the heart, not as for men. So, we're taught to provide for self, for others, we're taught to provide for relatives. So, if you start a family, or even before marriage and children, parents and extended family, Scripture says whoever doesn't provide for his relatives is worse than an unbeliever. They're saying, "How can you say you love God and you love neighbor when you aren't caring for your closest neighbor?" And our closest neighbor is our family members.

And Jesus isn't condemning enjoying things. He's not calling us to asceticism, as was taught in the early church and the Catholic Church as well. 1 Timothy 6:7, "As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy." So God is a good God, and He's a Father, and He does give good gives to His children, sometimes just because. "Just because you're my kids."

Yesterday, my wife and my daughters and I, we went to Crane Beach, one of my favorite places in all of New England, if you haven't been, you got to go, and then walked to the mansion. And then after, you know what, we stopped at Nick's Pizza and Subs in Beverly. Why? Because they have the best calzone in the North Shore. It's not even up for debate. Why do we like calzones? I don't know they're just... It's a glorious food. It's terrible for you. But we talked about fasting last week, so you fast, and then you go to Nick's. But why did I buy them calzones? Just because. Because I like watching their little pudgy... My youngest I can say that about. Little pudgy face down a calzone, because it brings me joy, that's why. God loves to give good gifts to His children. You see that all throughout holy Scripture.

So, it's not about... He's not condemning work, He's not condemning making money, He's not condemning wealth, He's not condemning savings. He's condemning trusting in those things. He's condemning making those things central, because the core of why you exist, the basic reason of why you do everything you do, it's not about wealth, it's about loyalty. It's about devotion. And a wealthy person can be devoted to the Lord's cause, while a poor man can be utterly indifferent. It's not about money, it's about our heart.

And Proverbs 30:7-9 says, "Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' and lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God." The question is, "Does this pull me away from God," and that could be either poverty or riches that pull you away from God, "or does this life situation I'm given to steward by the Lord, do I use that in order to deepen my affections for God?"

Sometimes when you have wealth and you give to the Lord, to the Lord's work, you give to the needy, there's such a blessing that fills your heart, and that's why Jesus Christ said it's more blessed to give than to receive. Just thankfulness, Lord, thank you for giving me this opportunity to give, and thank you for giving me this opportunity to bless another person, and it just reminds me of how much you have blessed me.

Psalm 62:10, "Put no trust in extortion; set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart on them." Scripture does not forbid that we seek the kingdom of God. We are to seek the kingdom of God. It does forbid that we seek the kingdom of us, where we build a kingdom for ourselves, where we are the king and we do as we please.

Ecclesiastes 5:10, "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity." So, money's value, it's limited. It can't stop death, it can't stop tragedy, it can't stop heartache. It's not God. Money can't buy... It can buy medicine, but it can't buy health. It can buy a house but not a home. It can buy companionship but not friends. It can buy entertainment but not happiness, it can buy food but not an appetite, it can buy a bed but not sleep, it can buy a crucifix but not a Savior. Money can buy the good life but not eternal life.

And Jesus is speaking about treasure from this perspective. Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth primarily, but use your treasures on earth to lay up treasures in heaven, either financially or other treasures that we have, like health and time and our talents, for the kingdom of God, because ultimately, that's what lasts. Jesus is saying, in view of eternity, in view of judgment day, in view of two different destinies in the world to come, view Scripture, view treasure like that.

Bernard of Clairvaux, who spent a lot of time meditating on riches and treasure, he said, "There are no greater miseries than false joys." And what he's talking about is loving things that aren't going to love you back, and giving your life to temporal things of no ultimate consequence. Joys that don't last and also distract you from eternity are the most false joys of all. The greater problem isn't that you can't take your money with you. That's what a lot of people say: "Invest in relationship because you can't take your money with you." That's not the greatest problem. The greatest problem is, when you devote yourself to money and to the things that are temporary, the material, without repenting of the sin of making that central, you are incurring the wrath of God. That's really the biggest danger of money, is that it sets you on a path away from God, and that path leads to an eternity away from God, a place called hell.

That's why Jesus, in a parallel passage on treasures, Luke 12:15-23, talks about the rich fool. "And he," Jesus, "said to them, 'Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.' And he told them a parable, saying, 'The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, "What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?" And he said, "I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said to him, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.' And he said to his disciples, 'Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.'"

He was rich toward himself but not rich to God. God blesses him with an abundant harvest, and instead of building greater barns, destroying the old ones, building greater barns, he should've thought, "What can I do to further the cause of God, the kingdom of God? With whom can I be generous with this excess that I do not need?" That's what it means to be generous toward God, rich toward God, by taking surplus that God gives us and just knowing that God gives us not just for ourselves, not just to increase our standard of living, but to increase our standard of giving.

1 Timothy 6:9-10, "But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." 1 Timothy 6... And by the way, this is a test of... Many of you are very successful in our careers, and you will only become more successful in your careers. So, really, the question here is, "How does this impact, how does my career, how does my job, how does my wealth impact my relationship with God? Does it draw me closer to Him? Does it make me more devoted to Him? Do I want to participate even more wholeheartedly in what He is doing, in the building of His kingdom, and furthering the common good?" That's the emphasis there in verse 10, that they walked away, wandered away.

1 Timothy 6:17-19, "As for the rich in the present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasures for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life." So, money is temporary, vulnerable, it rots and rusts and disappears; it doesn't satisfy the heart.

And then, point three is the power of the gospel over money by satisfying the heart. So, when God does bless us with wealth, how can we make sure that that is a blessing to us and blessing to those around us? It's by seeking heart satisfaction in the gospel, in the Lord. Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." Doesn't say "Blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for blessing." It doesn't say "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for satisfaction." It doesn't say "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for money or wealth." "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." So, when we hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Jesus Christ that He gives freely, and then hunger and thirst to live out that righteousness by the power of the Holy Spirit, that's where satisfaction comes.

Matthew 6:31-33, a text we're going to look at next week, dealing with anxiety, in particular about physical things: "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Seek God first, primarily, with everything that you got.

And by the way, this... Practically, seek God with your first fruit of your energy of the day. First thing that you should be doing isn't checking Robinhood or your Coinbase when you wake up, or Twitter, whatever, or your bank account. First thing you should be doing is seeking the face of God. And by that, that just reminds you that God is primary, the kingdom of God is primary, and then you set your heart on God through Scripture and prayer, and you say, "God, how can I seek your kingdom today in everything that I do? In my job, how can I be a blessing to my employer and the people I work with? How can I be a blessing to them? How can I further the common good? How can I do this to the glory of God? How can I be faithful in discipling people? How can I be faithful in evangelism?"

Seek first the kingdom of God, to glorify God and His righteousness, and He says, "All these things will be added to you." What things? The physical things. God knows what you need before you even ask, and God does provide, as a good Father, all of your needs. And by needs, He's talking about our basic needs of food and clothing. In Hebrews, it says, "Keep yourself free from the love of money." "Keep yourself free from the love of money, for God says, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" God the Father will always provide when we rely on Him, seek the kingdom of God first.

And that's really the conversation here, is how do we overcome the love of money? How do we overcome the consuming power of consumption? You do that by recognizing that Jesus is King, and I am not. Jesus is King, and I am not. I cannot build a kingdom here on earth when Jesus calls me to submit to Him and enter His kingdom. So, this is the first thing about becoming a Christian, if you're not a Christian, if this is new. You need to recognize that I have sinned against a holy King, I have sought treasures that are above Him as the greatest treasure. I'm not in the family, I've sinned against Him. I have coveted, I have been greedy. This stuff has consumed me.

And this is what Jesus says: "Accept my salvation. Repent of your sin. The kingdom of God is here. Accept my salvation." We do that by repenting of sin. And then Jesus, once we're saved, He gives us entrance into the kingdom of God, and now He says, "Now serve me," and this service is what gives you the deep satisfaction that you're looking for. This is the way that we enter the family, and Jesus tells us how we are to grow in the family.

Matthew 6:27-30, "And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" It's about faith. Are we rich in faith? If we're rich in faith, we'll be rich in everything that matters, we'll be rich in satisfaction. If we're poor in faith, then we'll never be content.

So, how do we break the power of money? We worship God, that's how. We worship God, He fills our heart with love for Him, love for people, and now we don't have to use God to get money, we don't have to use people to get money. We use money to love God and to love people, and that's what He gets at in verse 24: "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."

Jesus offers us two options, very categorical. There's one way to heaven; all the other, the rest of the ways lead to hell. One way to have your sins forgiven, to have eternal security; that's by repenting of sin and loving God as your King, as your Savior. Therefore, He says, are you devoted to God, or do you despise Him? And if you're like, "I'm indifferent to God," or you're like, "Yeah, I'm not really sure," then you're in the despising category. It's one or the other; He gives us two options. If you don't love Him, you hate Him; you're either devoted to God or you despise Him. Devotion given to either money, ultimately, or God in this context.

I'll give you two test cases from Scripture, two test cases about the hold of money on people and how that hold can be broken. The first test case is the story of Judas. At the Last Supper, Jesus says, "One of you is going to betray me," and the disciples don't all point to Judas and say, "Yeah, he's the one," although they spent three years with him. You ever find that fascinating, that they had no idea? And Judas, the guy who sold Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver, he was the treasurer. You ever find that funny, that Jesus Christ allowed this guy to be the treasurer? Why did Jesus allow that?

I think Jesus allowed that as a test. "Judas, I'm going to test your heart. Do you really love me above treasure? Am I a greater treasure than treasure for you?" Jesus puts a thief in charge of the money bag. He could've put Nathanael in charge of the money bag, Jesus called him "an Israelite indeed in whom there was no deceit"; or John, the disciple whom Jesus loved; or Levi, who had extensive financial experience. It was Judas. He put Judas in charge of it, who then, Judas, after the Last Supper, goes and sells Jesus Christ, betrays Him and shows us the heart-hardening, the heart-blinding, the heartbreaking effect of treasuring the wrong thing. He was in the presence of the Son of God for three years, and the Son of God was less of a treasure for him than what the Son of God could give him, and ended up leading to his destruction and his suicide.

The other example is the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was an arch tax collector. He was a tax collector above all the tax collectors in Israel. Israel was oppressed by the Roman Empire; the Roman Empire siphon off wealth from Israel, tax them heavily, and they did that by selling licenses to be a tax collector to the people of Israel. People in Israel could buy these licenses for an exorbitant amount of money, and then whoever bought this as a tax collector could go and force people of Israel, his own brothers and sisters, his own people, to pay exorbitant taxes, and they had the full power of the military to do it.

And, by the way, it was a business opportunity; they didn't just go and say, "You know, I bought this license to collect taxes for 100 grand; I'm going to get 110 grand." No, he would go and collect 400 grand, four times more than what he paid for. So, Zacchaeus was hated by his people, he wasn't satisfied with what he had, and then he hears about Jesus Christ in Luke 19:1-10.

It says, "He entered Jericho," Jesus entered Jericho, "was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up on a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way." And by the way, this was extremely humbling, humiliating for a man in Israel to climb a tree.

So he climbs a tree, "And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.' So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled," that's the Pharisees, "'He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.' Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, 'Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.' And Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.'"

Zacchaeus was lost. He was lost because he had followed the siren song of wealth, and he was willing to sin in any way possible to get as much as possible, realized that he did not get from wealth what it promised. Wealth told him, "Serve me and I'll save you." Zacchaeus realized it did not save him. Jesus Christ comes and says, "I'm offering you salvation. I came to seek and save that which was lost." He offers him salvation, offers him forgiveness of all sins. That changes Zacchaeus' live, it changes his heart, and now he becomes generous, exorbitantly generous, promised to give away 50% of his income, four times what he had stolen, incredible generosity. Zacchaeus did not... He wasn't generous to get salvation. This isn't how he earned salvation. Jesus comes into Zacchaeus' life, He says, "Now you're saved. I've forgiven you. I see your heart, I see your repentance," and that leads to service of Jesus Christ.

How can Jesus just save us? How can He just forgive our sins? Well, you can't just do that. This is why Jesus Christ came, and He died on the cross for our sins. The greatest treasure of heaven comes down, and He dies for us because He treasured us. He realized that there is one sure investment. There's one sure investment, and that investment is into eternity, and Jesus invested all of Himself into eternity in order to give us access to eternity by dying on the cross for our sins.

If you make anything other than Jesus your greatest treasure, it will drive you, it will control you, it will demand that you sacrifice and die for it. But Jesus is the only treasure that dies for you. He died to get you, and when you see that, you will be transformed, and He becomes the greatest treasure in your life.

Romans 8:31-32, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" And 2 Corinthians 8:9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." Jesus Christ's grace breaks our love for the material world, for things, so money can be a vehicle to love God, to build His kingdom, and love the people around us.

That said, we are going to transition to celebrating Communion. We celebrate Communion at Mosaic the first Sunday of every month. For whom is Communion? Communion is for repentant believers in Jesus Christ. So, if you are not a Christian, if you have not repented of your sins and trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service; it'll do nothing for you. Unless you do today repent of your sin and trust in Jesus Christ and follow Him, then you're welcome to partake. And then, repentant Christians, so if you are a Christian who is repentant of sin, you're welcome to partake. If there's sin in your life that you have not repented of, that you have not decided to leave, that you're still clinging on to, we ask that you refrain from Communion; instead, focus on repentance. But if you do repent, you're welcome to partake.

The way that we take part in Communion is we have this little cup with the little bread on top. If you have not received one and you would like to partake, raise your hand, and one of our ushers will bring you one. At this point, as you open up the top, take the bread, and open up the other top, I'll pray, and then we'll partake in Holy Communion.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have loved us so much that you gave your greatest treasure, your Son Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins. One of those sins that you died for is our greed and our covetousness, our desire to build our own kingdom, our idolatry, and often when we treasure things above you. We repent of that. We repent of how susceptible we've been to the lie of Satan, that if we pursue finances, we can create a reality where we are free from you, independent from you and gods ourselves. We repent of that.

And we ask, Jesus Christ, that you forgive us, and we thank you for offering us a way of forgiveness by dying on the cross for our sins. You experienced the wrath of God on behalf of us, and this is why you cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus, you were forsaken by the Father so that we would never have to be, because all we have to do is trust in you and our sins are forgiven. You save us. As you save us, you call us to serve you. We don't do it perfectly, and when we fall, you offer us more grace, and you pick us up and say, "Follow me." Holy Spirit, we thank you that you are with us today and bless our time in Holy Communion. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

On the night that He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, and after breaking it, He said, "This is my body, broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." He then proceeded to take the cup, and He said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me."

Jesus, we thank you that you are our greatest treasure. We pray that you continue, by the power of the Spirit, to remind us over and over and over that there's nothing in this world that will satisfy other than you. And make our heart's eye focus on you, be devoted to you, so that we take everything that you've given us and every single day, full tilt, live to the glory of God and the joy of all people. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy, and if you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. Do that through the connection card, either the physical copy that you can get at the door, or the virtual one that you can get at the website or in our app.

That said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you sent Jesus Christ, the Divine Word of God, the law God through whom you created absolutely everything in Jesus, you came. And you lived a perfect life, a life of perfection as decreed by God the Father. And you did that in order to present yourself as a substitute, as a sacrifice for our sin, for our lack of perfection, or even a lack of desire to pursue moral perfection. And Jesus, we thank you for the sermon on the mountain, which you show us the way into the kingdom of God is not through anything that we do. It's not through pretending to be righteous. It's through repentance of the fact that we are not righteous. That's how we enter.

And then you do call us to the same standard of perfection. And we do understand that there's a gap between our performance and your standard of perfection. And we have two options with that gap of what to do. Either we can pretend that we have met that gap with our own righteousness, or we repent and keep going. Let us be at people who, like Saint Paul said, "Not that I'm already perfect or have attained perfection, but forgetting what lies behind, pursuing what lies ahead, I press on to seek the goal of the upper call of Christ, of God in Christ Jesus."

Holy Spirit, come in to this place and show us how to fight hypocrisy on a daily basis by rooting our identity in you. We are accepted because of the sacrifice of Christ. We are yours. You know every single one of our sins, past, present, and future. And Jesus, you died on the cross for those sins. Everything was exposed there on the cross. Therefore, there's no need to cover up our sin, our lack of righteousness. There's no need to pretend. We can come to you, we can repent, and we can receive grace to keep going. And I pray that you bless our time with the holy word today and we pray this in Christ Jesus' name. Amen.

Today, we are dealing with everyone's favorite topic of hypocrisy. We love hypocrisy, especially anyone else's hypocrisy. We love pointing out other people's hypocrisy, and we have lived through a day and age where hypocrisy has been evident. There's a spotlight on hypocrisy in all kinds of realms. I'll start with the easiest one of politics. The politicians who say put your masks on, they got the mask on, camera turns off, mask is off. Politicians who say, "No, you can't get your haircut. No haircuts for you, haircut only for me. Salon opens up just for me." Politicians who say, "No indoor dining except for me and my 15 closest friends and without social distancing." Politicians who say, "No travel, you can't travel, no vacations for any of you." And then they come back from Mexico with a nice tan.

We see that in politicians. We see that in leaders in academic and all kinds. I think the most dangerous kind of hypocrisy is that of spiritual hypocrisy. Why? Because it has the greatest consequences, eternal consequences, not just for ourselves, but also for our testimony to others. When people see that we proclaim Christ with our mouth, but our lives are far from that profession of faith, it shakes people to the core.

So one of the things I want to talk about today is how Jesus talks about hypocrisy. He doesn't talk about hypocrisy of do as I say, not as I do. That's the hypocrisy that we see in politics and in all kinds of realms. Jesus isn't talking about the hypocrisy of do as I say, but not as I do. He's not talking about that. He's talking about the hypocrisy of this is what I do. But in my heart, things are very different. It's not a disconnect between what we say and what we do. It's a disconnect between what we do and what we really want to do. It's a disconnect between what we do with our hands and what we do in our hearts. And Pastor Shane preached a masterful sermon last week landing, closing off Matthew five. But Jesus drops a bomb in Matthew 5:48 with this conclusion. He says, "Therefore you must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

So as children of God the Father, we have to emulate God the Father, who is absolutely perfect. He's holy, we are to grow in holiness. The goal is perfection. We're always to be pursuing perfection, full tilt, not that we'll ever attain it. But we always need to be aspiring to it. Obviously, we'll never achieve it. But there has to be growth, there has to be forward momentum. But the challenge is, what do we do with the gap, with the missing piece between our reality and the reality that God calls us to? Our reality, where we are now in our walk with the Lord and the perfection that God calls us to? What do we do with this gap, with this missing piece?

Do we pretend that it isn't there? That's what Jesus is addressing today. Do you pretend to be better than you are? And do we cover it up with a mask of hypocrisy? And all of us do this to an extent. No one shows everybody just how sinful we are. It's too scary. We don't reveal our greatest struggles to everyone, but we should reveal them to God. And we should reveal them to ourselves. And that's where true transformation happens. You have a choice of what to do with that missing piece. You can either pretend that it's not there or you can repent and be honest with yourself and be honest with God.

C.S. Lewis, talking about prayer, he said this. He said, "May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real thou I speak to." It's about being real with God. And that's how we fight religion works righteousness. There's a difference between religious righteousness and real righteousness. Religious righteousness focuses primarily on behavior. Just change your behavior. Just fix how you act. Real righteousness is all about the transformation of the heart. It's about embracing that what God is calling us to in the heart, God I love you, and I love your standards and I want to pursue moral perfection and I know I can't do it enough myself. Forgive me, give me grace, give me the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's what transforms you from being religious to being a real follower of the Lord.

Religion is all about what you do. Real Christianity is why you do it. Purify the why, and the what will take care of itself. And this is how we develop true spiritual character, not just grow, and being and playing the role of spiritual characters. So today, we're in Matthew six, one through 18. I'm going to read the whole text here to set up our time, and we'll dig right in. Matthew six, one through 18. "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. That's when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. So that your giving may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray at the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their award. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father, who is in secret. Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points just to frame up our time. First, we look at hypocritical mercy, prayer and fasting. Then we'll look at authentic mercy, prayer and fasting. And then we'll dig into the motivation for authenticity.

First of all, hypocritical mercy, prayer and fasting. So Jesus demands perfection. It's hard to pursue perfection so instead of pleasing God the Father, in pursuing perfection, we often settle in pleasing not God the Father, but the people around us. So that's why verse 48, 5:48, Jesus says, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Command, and then the very next verse, he says, "Be careful to not practice your righteousness in front of people." Be perfect. Be careful. Why? Because Jesus is fully aware of our propensity, our heart's propensity for self deception.

So this is verse one, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you." This can be metaphorical or literal. The Pharisees would actually hire musicians to go on ahead of them to say, "We're handing out money. So everyone meet us at the crossroads intersection.", in order to draw attention to themselves, "As the hypocrites do in the synagogues, in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they've received their award."

Verse five about prayer, they're praying in the street corners and synagogues, "That they may be seen by others." So their primary prayer life is public that they may be seen. How do you know that you are a hypocrite in prayer? You know you're a hypocrite in prayer when perhaps that community or with a group of other Christians, you pray to God, but when you are with God one on one, you have nothing to say. And you're bored with God. God has become a friend of a friend. When there's someone else there who knows God better, you can connect with God. But when you're on your own, you don't have a living relationship with Him. It gets kind of awkward, you have nothing to say. It's hypocrisy there.

Verse 16 talks about fasting. "When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others." So their goal, hypocritical spirituality, hypocritical piety is to please people. And here we are faced with a question. Honestly, what is more valuable to you, people's opinion of you, or God's opinion of you? People's approval and acceptance of you, or God's approval and acceptance of you? Do you fear people more than God? Fear of people, fear of God, the age old question.

And this is really important, because we crave attention, acceptance, approval. We are approval junkies, so to speak. We do things for the proverbial slap on the back. So people notice, and people give you encouragement, kudos, good job. And how does this apply? So my wife and I were talking about how does this apply in real life, because no one's walking around and praying on streets. No one's walking around with a trumpet and saying, "Hey, come to this intersection, and we'll give money." No one's really doing that.

Well, one of the places this hypocrisy really applies is within the church community itself. And that's what Jesus, the Pharisees were in that religious community. And that's kind of where to play. And how does this work out in real life? I'll just give you a few examples. When a guy sees a really great Christian girl who loves the Lord, and he wants to pursue her in dating or courting or dating or marriage, whatever, and all of a sudden, now he's in community group. Now he is serving. Now he's carrying his Bible around with him. Now he's memorizing Bible verses. Now he's really worshiping. Now he's really getting into loving God. It's great if that's real and vice versa. It could be a gal pursuing, getting attention.

Sometimes it's husbands and wives, you want to score points with your spouse. And you do that with morning devotion and coffee, "Baby, I made you coffee. And by the way, I'm reading scripture." And all of a sudden, she's like, "My spouse is so spiritual." It could work that way. Children and parents, parents with children, we want our kids to think that we are sometimes better Christians than we really are. So we pretend around them and kids definitely, with parents, if you grew up in a Christian house, you know exactly how you need to act with your parents in a way for them to get off your back with your with your Christianity, so that you can do what you really want.

I've seen this play out and I was like this is my favorite thing. It's not my favorite thing. But I see it too often. It's comical to me. Every September, every September, some college student comes up to me to introduce themselves, and they make an effort for me to remember their names. And I'm like, "That's weird. Never met you before. Cool." The very next Sunday is parents' weekend. Their parents fly up from Texas, from Georgia, and then they bring their parents to me, "Hi, Pastor Jan." And I'm like, my first two years of ministry, I had no idea what's going on. And then after that, I never see him again. I was getting played. I was getting played by hypocritical Christian college students.

So does this apply to us? Yes, yes. Why? Because we want people to think good, it feels good for people to think that we are good. It feels good for people to think that we are doing the right things. And like there, then you would ask why the desire to do good. Why the desire to be approved of doing good because there's a moral compass in every single one of our hearts, and we know that it's better to be good than bad. And for many non Christians, this right here, people's approval is also a hang up for two ways. First, you say as a non Christian, why do I need the gospel? Everyone around me thinks I'm a good person. I'm already a good person, because I have the approval of the people around me. And here, what Jesus is getting at is the approval of the people around you doesn't matter as much as the approval of God.

What does God think of you? What's the point of getting approval from fallen people who have lowered the standards of God? Or sometimes with unbelievers, you're interested in the Gospel, you understand your need for grace, you understand your need for God in your life, you understand your need for repentance, but you understand also that if you devote yourself to God, if you become a Christian, you will lose the approval and acceptance of the people in your life, perhaps the people in your office or your family or your community.

John 12:42-43. "Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him but for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be pulled out of the synagogue for they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God." This ravenous hunger for the approval and praise of people was the besetting sin of the Pharisees, and often it's the besetting sin of ourselves. We crave the approval of people. John 5:44, "How can you believe when you receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

Jesus here says several times do not do as the hypocrites do, but he doesn't just say it like that. He says, "Do not be like the hypocrites.", verse five, in verse eight, "You must not be like the hypocrites, do not be like them." Now he's getting not just at action but at identity. He's not just saying, "Do not do what the hypocrites do." He's saying, "Do not be like the hypocrites." He's getting at identity. What were the hypocrites rooting their identity in? What were they? They were rooting their identity in what people thought of them. Look at them, they pray so well. Look at them, they give. They're so generous. Look at them, they fast. They're so self controlled. They're so righteous. They're so godly. Their identity was being rooted in the approval of people. And Jesus says, "Do not be like them. Don't root your identity in people's approval. Root your identity in God's approval."

What is a hypocrite? Basically, in Greek, the word means actor, acting consciously or unconsciously, where the outside contradicts the inside. And you're so much better on the outside. The facade is so much nicer than the inside. Hypocrisy and this is what I'll just say because a lot of people are like, "Christians are all hypocrites. I don't go to church because there's too many hypocrites there." And my answer to that is join the club. There's plenty of room. Welcome. We're all hypocrites. So in one sense, we all struggle with it.

So what is hypocrisy? Hypocrisy is not failing to live up to standards that you set or that God sets. That's not hypocrisy. That's human frailty. We're all sinners. We're all broken. And we are to pursue perfection through repentance. So hypocrisy isn't failing to live up to the standards that you aspire to. It's pretending to meet them, while failing to embrace them with your heart. It's pretending to meet the standards of God, "Yes, I've arrived or yes, I'm pursuing these standards." But deep in your heart, you're not. Deep in your heart, you're pursuing other things. And we talked about this in terms of imagination. Well, God doesn't captivate your imagination, something else does. So in your heart, you can be a wicked sinner pursuing wicked things. But on the outside, you look like everything's wonderful.

That's the hypocrisy Jesus is talking about. It's not the gap between what we say and what we do. It's the gap between what we do and what we love. That's what Jesus is getting at. The other thing I want to point out here is three times Jesus says when you, when you give to the needy, when you pray, when you fast. He's not saying if but when, meaning this is expected. This is expected of the Jews at the time, that was basic Judaic piety. It's actually Muslim piety, five of the pillars, these three are three of the five, including the other two are visiting Mecca, pilgrimage to Mecca and reciting the creed. So people of all religions, people of all religions and nations and creeds, we know that it's good to be generous, it's good to help the needy, and it's good to pray and it's good to fast.

The assumption is we do these things. We know these things are good. And most people want to be generous and want to be known for giving. Most people pray. Very few people I've ever met who say, "I have never prayed." Even as an unbeliever, there are those situations that you get into when you're vulnerable, when you feel weak, when you feel helpless, that the natural cry of your heart, something just inside calls out to the supernatural, we can't but pray. And this is our heart's witness to the existence of God. And many people even today fast. Fasting has been a fad as of late. People talk about intermittent fasting, extended fasting, fasting from social media, fasting from entertainment, fasting from alcohol, sober October. So these things are part and parcel of our lives.

So Jesus says when, we do these things, there's a way to do it that's right. And there's a way to do it to feed your ego. And Jesus said, when you do it for the approval of people, you have received your award, you get what you're after, but that's all you get. He's saying there's two rewards. There's rewards that you get from people and there's a reward that you get from God, approval from people and delight of God.

So this brings us to the second point, authentic mercy, prayer and fasting. Authentic giving or mercy in verse three says, "When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. So that your giving maybe in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." One of the things that comes to mind immediately is if you've been attentively reading the Sermon on the Mount, you'll all automatically you ask, "Well, how do I reconcile this with what it says in Matthew 5:14 through 16, where Jesus says, 'You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a mat, a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.'"?

So on the one hand, Jesus is saying you need to do good work so people see them so they glorify God. On the other hand, he's saying there are things that you need to do so people do not see, so they do not glorify you, but they glorify God. So what's he saying? A.B. Bruce puts it like this, "We are to show when tempted to hide and hide when tempted to show." Jesus has a separation between our good works and our personal piety, our personal devotion to God. Our good works, that can't but be public. Our spiritual disciplines must be in secret and the end goal is the glory of God. Why giving and prayer and fasting in secret? Because that right there is something that glorifies God when no one else sees it. What about our good words? Well, when people see the good works, they glorify God. So the end goal is the glory of God. Our good works have to be visible, but never for the sake of making it visible.

The phrase, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, it's an overwhelming metaphor. If you help someone with your right hand, your left hand, in some sense, doesn't know what it's doing. It's not just about not telling others. It's almost like not telling yourself. If you give to someone, and then you don't even think about it. You don't glow over the fact that you help this person, there's a state of unself consciousness, like you don't give with the hand and not with the heart. And Jesus is saying, be careful, because your heart is so porous, that you turn mercy into vanity.

So there is a sense in which we set up how much we can give in our generosity and you can budget this out. But there's also a sense where you don't count it. You don't count how much you've given to others in the name of Jesus Christ. There's a sense where that number is never in your mind because you understand that that wasn't even yours to begin with. Matthew 6:6, And when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father, who is in secret." Is Jesus denouncing public prayer? No, of course not. What he is saying, he is denouncing public prayer when you don't have private prayer. When the only time you pray publicly, when you pray is publicly. In secret before God one on one, that's the essence of prayer.

Psalm 27, seven through nine, "Hear o Lord, when I cry aloud. Be gracious to me, answer me. You have said, 'Seek my face.' My heart says to you, 'Your face, Lord, do I seek. Hide not your face from me.'" So there is to be a place for private prayer in your life, where on a daily basis, you have a place you go to in secret, and he talks about closing a door. So it's a space that you devote to. It's almost like an altar on a daily basis. Lord, this is the place I'm going to meet with you. And when you pray, he says in verse seven, "When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him."

He says don't just repeat over and over and over simple prayer. In different Christian traditions in the Russian Orthodox tradition and many Catholic traditions, it's all about repetition. It's all about what you say, how many times you say it. This is how you show God your devotion. And Jesus says no, no, no. It's a conversation. It's a relationship with God the Father. You talk to me, you bare your heart before me. You can't strong arm God into doing what you want by sheer volume. Sheer volume of words isn't a critical factor. Jesus, sometimes he pray with brevity, we just pray quick little prayer. Sometimes he'd spent a whole night in prayer.

So it's not about that. It's just about not thinking that we can force God without repetition. Ecclesiastes 5:2, "Do not be rash with your mouth nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on Earth. Therefore, let your words be few." So the volume of words isn't important but the sustained prayer is important. So Luke 18, Jesus gives a parable of a widow that goes to a judge and she's begging for justice, begging for justice, and the judge only because of her impudence, her sustained coming to him, he gives to her.

So when we long for something, when it's on our heart to ask God for something, we are to ask and ask and ask, the emphasis on the sustained coming to God, not necessarily on the repetition. And that's Luke 18:1, "He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray not lose heart." So how are we to pray? How are we to have a private prayer life? Jesus gives us not the prayer that we should pray, but the template by which we should pray.

That's why he says in verse nine, "Pray then like this.", not specifically pray this. And a lot of traditions have really misunderstood this text. They think if I just pray this over and over and over on a daily basis, multiple times a day, God's going to do what God wants, what he wants me to do, that's not what's going on. He says, this is the template and the template goes like this, our Father in heaven. And I just want you to see the emphasis on the second person plural, first person, the second person, plural is you together, our Father, he's not saying my Father, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day.

So before we get to our needs, what are we focusing on? God. We're focusing on God, Jesus Christ, but tell me this, why did Jesus Christ pray as often as he did? He's God incarnate. He can give himself anything. He can create miracles and meet all of his needs. Why did Jesus Christ pray? What did Jesus Jesus Christ get from prayer that he couldn't give himself? You know what he got? He got time with God the Father. That's why we pray. And this is what fights the hypocrisy in the inside, where you get on your knees before God, you said, "God, you know all things, you know all of my struggles, you know all of my needs. And before I talk about my needs, I need to focus my attention on you. You are my father, you are our father, the community's father, hallowed be your name. May your name be holy, may your transcendent name be holy."

And you're also personal because your father, may your kingdom come. Not my kingdom, but your kingdom. May your will be done. Before I talk about my needs, I'm going to talk about your will being done on earth as it is in heaven. And then we get to our needs. Give us this day our daily bread. You're not just praying for your own needs. It's God, everyone in the community of faith. Give us this day our daily bread, not give me bread for tomorrow or next week or for a month, just today. Give us this bread for the day.

And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. There's this connection between forgive us because we've forgiven and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Lord, I can't overcome temptation on my own, I can't overcome temptation from evil, help me. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespass.

This text could be misread, to say the only way that you can have your sins forgiven is to make sure that you have forgiven everybody, as if forgiving others is the price of being heard. And I've been in churches where that's what's been preached. But that doesn't fit in the context of the sermon of the Mount. That doesn't fit in the context of the gospel of Matthew, or the context of all of Scripture. He's not saying you have to do this for God, for God to do something for you. He's saying, asking for forgiveness for yourself, while not forgiving those who have sinned against you, is the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

So if you ask for forgiveness, just know God's expecting that you forgive those who have sinned against you. And he brings us in in the prayer life because he understands that if we don't deal with other people's sin against us, that that is going to absolutely destroy us from the inside. And then he gets to fasting, true, authentic fasting, Matthew 6:17 through 18. When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in heaven.

Jesus assumes that his disciples will fast, that this will be a regular cadence of our spiritual walk. The Pharisees fasted, we know from Luke 18:12, twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. Most likely it was sun up to sundown, that was their fast, so most likely skipping two meals, like a 20 hour, 24 hour fast, and the Pharisees fast. When they fasted, they had glum expression, they looked miserable, they went unwashed, unkempt, they would even sprinkle ashes on themselves to be seen by others.

And by the way, if you know someone that fasts on a regular basis and does extended fasting, it's kind of impressive. Wow, you have control over it, you can skip a meal, you can skip two meals, you can do a full day without food. That's really impressive stuff. And the Pharisees would use this to build up social capital in the community where they would let people know so today, it would be like posting on social media. There's all kinds of fasting apps that shows how to start and stop and you can put all your measurements in there and people share on social media, "Oh, I just finished a five day fast." And everyone gives them kudos. That's basically what the Pharisees were doing.

And they had received their reward. But that doesn't mean, because they were doing it wrong. Jesus does not say therefore never fast. He still expects that his disciples fast on a regular basis. John the baptizer fasted regularly even often. And the disciples of Jesus did not, while Jesus was there, but it was expected when he left, Matthew 9"14 through 15. "Then the disciples of John came to him saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast."

Jesus does expect that his followers fast and fast on a regular basis. Jesus started his ministry by fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. He did that supernatural by the power of the Holy Spirit. But there is an expectation for us to fast and Jesus fasted for 40 days. So it's a struggle, even with the idea of fasting for 40 hours. Jesus is expecting this as part of our life. First of all, you do need to meet with your medical professionals, your doctors to see how and if. And it's not just with food, what is fasting? Strictly speaking, it's a total abstention of food, but it can be legitimately extended to other things.

And what's the point? The point of it is the nice self, humbled before God, and where we pursue God in that state of humility. Psalm 35:13, "But I, when they were sick, I wore sackcloth, I afflicted myself with fasting. I prayed with head bowed on my chest." Sometimes in Scripture, fasting is connected with repentance, where you are repentant over sin and you are humbling yourself with God and you bring in fasting to deepen that humility. Nehemiah did that with all of the people. He gathered all the people and with fasting and sackcloth, they stood and confessed their sins.

When Jonah goes to preach in Nineveh, they repented Jonah's preaching and they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth. Daniel sought God by prayer and supplication, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes and prayed to the Lord is God and made confession for the sins of people. Remember Paul, when Paul meets Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, for three days and three nights, he doesn't eat because he is in such repentance over the fact that he pursued Christians and killed Christians, persecuted Christians.

Sometimes fasting is used to ask the Lord for future mercy, or blessing or guidance. God in this season, I don't know what to do. Where are you leading me? Where are you guiding me? And we see that Moses fasted on Mount Sinai immediately after the covenant was renewed. We see Queen Esther, before she took her life into her hands to go before the king, she asked Mordecai and the people that Mordecai knew, the people of God too fast on behalf of her. Ezra proclaimed a fast before leading the exiles back to Jerusalem, but he says that we may humble ourselves before our God and seek from him a straightway.

So if you're in a season where you are pursuing God's direction, fasting is always recommended with prayer. In the early church, the church of Antioch before Paul and Barnabas were sent out, they fasted. Paul and Barnabas before appointing elders in every church, they prayed and fasted. And fasting is also used for self discipline, because saying no to eating one appetite gives you power to say no to other appetites.

I've noticed this in my own life and perhaps you have as well. When I have self discipline in one area of life, it translates to self discipline in other areas of life. When self discipline increases here, it increases everywhere else. I Corinthians 9:24 to 27, "Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified."

So practically speaking how to incorporate fasting in your life, if you've never done it, you got to do, you got to ease into it. Perhaps push back a meal in the morning, push back breakfast, ease into it or or cut out a certain category of foods, et cetera. I can give you all the practicalities of it. I went through a season where I wanted to learn everything I could on fasting. I read every single book on fasting that I could find. I think it was over like 100 books that I read through. The way I read is I go in, I find out the 40 pages that got the book published and I'm done. I'm out. Next book. And that's the way you should read as well.

And so I know at this part of the sermon, I'm like I can get into the way I fast. But Jesus said this part of your life have to be secret. So I'm not going to. We can talk about that in secret. And then when you say that, then that brings attention to yourself. So I still struggle with this part. But yeah, in secret, I'm not going to tell you everything because I want my reward in heaven, not from you. Thank you very much. Point three, motivation for authenticity. Where do we get the motivation? We have to figure out what's the motivation for authenticity. We have to figure out what is the motivation for hypocrisy. If you can isolate the cause, then we can easily find the remedy Why is the hypocrite? What's the hypocrite motivated by? What is the hypocrite obsessed with? Acceptance from people. And if you get acceptance from people, that's not really what you're going for. What you are really obsessed about isn't just the acceptance of people as much as how that feels inside for yourself.

So really, you're not motivated by pleasing other people as much as pleasing self. So if you're motivated by pleasing self, and that's why you pray, that's why you give, that's why you fast, that's what leads to hypocrisy. Because getting pleasure from people is much easier than getting delight of God, much easier. Because all you got to do is fake it.

So it comes down to what you love most. Do you love most self or God? Ultimately, the only reason that people please others is to find pleasure for self. Why? Because we're insecure. We're self conscious. We need someone else to tell us that we are good, because we know deep inside we are not. We need someone else to tell us that we are righteous because we know deep inside we are not righteous, that there are sins that we cannot expose. So what's the remedy? The remedy is to find your security in God, find your remedy in God, find your acceptance and approval in God. Be secure in the fact that you're loved by God the Father. How can I be sure that I'm loved by God the Father? Look at what God the Father gave for you.

It starts with giving to the needy. Well, God gave to the needy us. He gave his beloved Son. Why would God give his beloved son for God so loved the world, that he gave his beloved Son, for whosoever believes in Him should not die but have eternal life. God gave his greatest treasure for us, because he knew that we were good, because he saw that we are righteous.

No. Jesus Christ came and died for sinners. And Jesus Christ on the cross, died for every single one of your sins past, present, and future. Therefore, it doesn't even make sense for us to hide our sin from God. Because as a Christian, your sins have been paid for on the cross, absolutely exposed by God, the Father on the cross, as Jesus Christ is bearing God's wrath for those sins. So there's absolutely no need to hide. And we know that when we come to Him, we repent of the sins, not pretending to be righteous, he forgives us of all of our sin, and gives us the power to live a transformed life.

And this is where the transformation happens. When you understand how much God has loved you, then your heart begins to grow in love for God. And that's where the true essence modification happens, not just behavior modification, Matthew 6:4 through 5, "So that your giving may be in secret and your Father who is in secret will reward you and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love." That right there, that's the heart of the hypocrisy. And when you understand what the heart of hypocrisy is, then you begin to understand what the heart of authenticity can be. "For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they've received their award."

They love getting attention from people, because they loved the pleasure it brought to self. Matthew 23:5 through 7, "And they do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and fringes long. And they love the places of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace and being called Rabbi by others." They loved it. So we struggle with hypocrisy. This is why we all struggle with this. Because we all struggle with self love. We all struggle with pride.

And this is what sin is. Sin is loving anything more than God. So how do we fight the hypocrisy? You fight the hypocrisy with love of God, and you grow in love of God by growing and understanding how much God loves you. And the other way that you practically grow in the self discipline, the spiritual disciplines, of giving, of prayer and of fasting is the phrase that we see in all three of these sections. Verse four, "So that your giving maybe in secret and your Father who sees." That's Matthew 6:4, "And your Father who sees." Matthew 6:6, same thing. "And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." And then verse 18, "Your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

Every single child, every single child deep inside, what do they long for? They long for the undivided attention of their father, of their parents. "Daddy, look at me, look at me, look what I can do." And I remember as a kid I was meditating on this this week. When I played sports, my dad never came to any of my events because I played baseball and he's like baseball stupid. He's a Russian Soviet guy. He's like, "I don't know baseball. It's not even sport." That's the only reason I was tremendous is baseball. That's why they called me the crushing Russian. And I remember the only reason I wrestled, and wrestling is just a dumb sport, I never really enjoyed it. My dad thought it was this manly sport. That's the only reason I did it. And my greatest performance is when my dad would show up and just watch.

And there's something about making sacrifices for the delight of your father, and just his undivided attention is reward enough, how much more so when our Heavenly Father, he sees our sacrifices that no one sees. He sees our sacrifices of giving to others, of taking from self and giving to, God the Father sees it, and there is a reward. What is the reward? We're not told. What's the reward for prayer? We're not told. What's the reward for fasting? We're not told, well, I think God seeing is reward enough. God sees and He draws you closer to Himself.

Why did Jesus pray? Because he got more of the Father. Why did Jesus give? Because he got the delight of the Father, "This is my Son, in whom I'm well pleased." Why did Jesus fast to get the delight of the Father? Jesus prayed, gave fast for an audience of one. How can we give? We can give because Jesus Christ, he who was rich became poor so that we might become rich in him. How do we know that our prayers are heard because Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed a prayer that was rejected. :et this cup pass from me, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Christ says on the cross, his prayer was rejected. He was rejected from the presence of God as He bore the sins, our sins upon himself so that our prayers can be heard. How can I fast? Because I have a treasure greater than food, I have the bread of life.

And the Pharisees focused on the letter of the law, which only led to outside righteousness. Jesus focused on the heart of the law, which can only be met from the heart. And this is where we need Jesus Christ. We need Jesus Christ to give us a brand new heart. A lot of people today justify their sin by saying, "I was born this way." Jesus Christ comes and he says, "Yeah, everyone needs to be born again. We're all sinners, we all need a heart transplant. We all need our heart of stone taken out and replaced with the heart of flesh. And that's done by humbling yourself before Jesus Christ, coming to him and saying, "Jesus, I am a hypocrite. Jesus, I'm not righteous. Jesus, I'm not perfect. Jesus, forgive me of my sins, and give me the power of the Holy Spirit to live the life that you have called me to live."

I'll close with Psalm 139:1 through 2, and then 7 through 12, one of my favorite Psalms, in which the psalmist talks about and meditates on the fact that God is everywhere, and the God sees, and that should be motivation enough for us to repent of sin, and then grow in authentic following of him. Psalm 139:1 through 2, "Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, and you discern my thoughts from afar. Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. And the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you."

Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for the reminder that there's nowhere we can go where you are not. Your presence is always before us. And I pray that that motivates us to turn from sin and turn to you, and on a daily basis to pursue perfection as you were perfect and not do it in a way where we pretend we're better than we are. But to do it in a way where we repent when we fall short of the standard of perfection, and then get up and continue following you.

We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you that you forgive us of all of our sins, when we turn from sin and turn to Christ, and continue to make us people that do pursue the spiritual distance of giving makes us generous people, pursue time of prayer with you, because there's nothing more rewarding than spending time with God the Father, and to fast from things that pull us away from you, and to discipline ourselves so that our flesh doesn't take over, and that we continue to walk by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we thank you and we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome again to Mosaic. If you're new, welcome. My name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic and we're so glad to have you worshiping with us today. We would love to connect with you while you're here. The way we do that is through the connection card. Hopefully you grabbed one of those on the way in. If you did, you can fill that out with us and give us some information about yourself. On the back, there, you can also check off to receive more information from us, or if you're watching at home online, you can also fill that out on our website, but if you do, we'd love to just follow up with you this week.

Send you some information about Mosaic and also just send a small gift to you in the mail, to thank you for being with us today. And if you are just joining us, we are currently going through a sermon series on Matthew 5 through 7. This is the sermon on the mount. Maybe you didn't know this, but the reason that this is called the sermon on the mount is actually because, for three chapters, Jesus preaches a sermon on a mountain, and as he does, he's painting a picture of what his kingdom looks like.

And what it looks like when his kingdom breaks into our world, into our lives, and into our hearts, and it's radically different from everything we're used to. Everything that his disciples were used to. He's preaching, he's teaching ideas that are going to change the world forever. And speaking of changing the world, Elon Musk has been in the news a lot lately. Not at all trying to compare him to Jesus, but when you think of that person, you think of his name, what comes to mind? When you hear the name Elon Musk, maybe you think brilliant genius. Maybe you think mad scientist. Maybe you think richest man on Earth.

Maybe it makes you think of Bitcoin, or the doge. He's got so many things going on, right? He's building rockets, he's colonizing Mars, he's hard wiring monkey brains. Among all of these things that he's doing, it's easy to forget about his work with Tesla, but one of the things that he's been working hard on is trying to crack this code of driverless, autonomous vehicles. And I imagine one of the most difficult things about this is, with drivers of vehicles, you're trying to replicate human intuition in a robot, in a machine.

And what that means is that the vehicles, they need to know how to adapt, how to react, and how to make split-second value based decisions in a variety of contexts and in a variety of different conditions and circumstances. You can't just download the driver's ed textbook, and then turn the key, and you're good to go. Even if you could program the car to follow the traffic laws completely, with perfection, 100% of the time, the first time they met a Boston driver, they would get wrecked. We know this.

One of the things that we're going to notice as we go through, and that we have noticed as we go through the sermon on the mount, is that Jesus is repeatedly challenging this kind of robotic, rigid, rote spirituality of the rabbis, of the Pharisees, of the teachers of the law, because they have created this religious system that looked good maybe on paper, it looked good on the outside, but it was ironically and tragically keeping them very far from God on the inside.

They developed kind of an almost textbook relationship with God, a strict adherence to the letter of the law, which, on top of that, they had kind of started adding their own traditions, their own rules, and yet none of it was enough. Something still wasn't right because in real life they were still getting wrecked. When it came to the actual purpose of the law, and the spirit of the law, they were a danger to themselves, and they were a danger to everyone else around them, and so Jesus is very critical of these teachers, of these Pharisees.

We see this over and over, and in Matthew 15, Jesus was speaking of the Pharisees when he said this, Matthew 15:8, "That this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men." A few chapters later in Matthew 23, again, he says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites, for you tithe mint, and deal in cumin, and have neglected the way to your matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faithfulness."

He says, "These that you ought to have done. It's good that you're obeying the law. You ought to do that. You ought to tithe, without neglecting the others," he said. You blind guys, straining out a gnat, and swallowing a camel. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisees. First clean the inside of the cup and the plate that the outside may also be clean."

He says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness, so you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you're full of hypocrisy," and Jesus actually says, "lawlessness." Jesus had so many run-ins with the Pharisees that today, when we hear that word Pharisees, we immediately think, "Bad guy, yeah. Those are the bad guys."

But we need to understand that in the first century, this was not the case. People loved the Pharisees, people looked up to them. They respected them. They were kind of the hope for our people, for our society, for our civilization. They were the pinnacle of righteousness and morality. If they were alive today, they would have a blue check next to their name. Right? They would be the ones who could tweet storm with the best of them, they could virtue signal with the perfectly timed clap emojis, and they were the epitome of what it meant to live on the right side of history in the eyes of the people.

But in the eyes of Jesus, he saw right through their self-righteous hypocrisy, and in calling them out, he really shows us just how deep our problem of sin really goes, because we are in the wrong, we sin when we do wrong. We also sin when we do what's right, when we try to do what's right, when we aim for what's right and we think we're doing what's right, we have this sinful tendency to get proud, to get arrogant, to get smug, and self-righteous, and we put these good deeds on like a mask. We wear our righteousness like a cloak and we parade around, and all the while we're concealing the darkness that is still there lurking beneath the surface.

And so what does God think of these disguises that we wear? Isaiah 64:4 tells us that all our righteous deeds, they're like filthy garments. They're disgusting. They're repulsive. The reason that Jesus is so stern with people who trust in their righteousness, who think that they're good, with self-righteous people, is because self-righteous people are self-deceived people. He needed to shake them to wake them up and to understand that the law is good, the law is very good, but knowing it is not enough. Our feeble attempts at keeping it is not enough. Cleaning up the outside is not enough. And impressing the people around us is not enough.

Our biggest problem is not with the way things look on the outside, our biggest problem is the way that things actually are deep on the inside, and the good news is that this is why Jesus had come. Jesus had come to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 36:26, and he says, "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." The things that Jesus calls us to do in our passage today are some of the hardest things that we will ever have to do.

Actually, by the end of the passage, what he calls us to is he calls us to perfection. He says, "You must be perfect." That is the standard that he sets. If we don't understand this simple truth, we can misunderstand the entire sermon on the mount, because Jesus calls us to perfection. Not in order that we might become children of God, we can't earn our way into his kingdom. That's not how it works. He calls us to perfection because in him, children of God is who we already are.

He gives us a new heart, a new spirit, a new identity, and then he calls us to just a totally new way of living life, of doing life, in his kingdom, and so as we start we need to understand what Jesus is calling us to do today is impossible, and yet at the same time with God, all things are possible. We need his grace, we need his spirit to live this out, and so before we go and really jump into the rest of the sermon today, let's just take some time to go to God together and pray.

Father, what we are about to read seems so far beyond our reach, and we know, however, that you are with us, and so we ask, Lord, we pray, that you would give us grace, that you would give us power, that you would fill us with your spirit to be the salt and the light that you have called us to be, and to press on toward this standard that you're calling us today. And Lord, we thank you for these words of Christ, we thank you for your word. Your word is holy, it is inerrant, it is infallible, it is authoritative for our lives. We pray that you would write these words, these truths, upon our heart today, so that we can live them for your glory, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we're actually going to be looking at three small passages today, and with that we're going to be looking at three points in the sermon today, so what we're going to see is that citizens of Jesus' kingdom are called to humble integrity. This is Matthew 5:33 through 37. Are called to merciful justice. This is verses 38 through 42, and then finally, they're called to prayerful peacemaking. This is 43 through 48, so point number one, citizens of Jesus' kingdom are called to humble integrity.

Matthew 5:33, Jesus says this, he says, "Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all. Either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the Earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Do not take an oath by your head, for you can not make one hair white or black, that what you say simply be yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil."

As we've seen over the last few weeks, when Jesus says you have heard that it was said, he's not quoting or critiquing the written word. He is referring to the oral traditions of the rabbis, of the Pharisees, of the teachers of the law who had attempted to interpret the written word, and so this comes from multiple passages in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 23, Leviticus 19, Numbers 30, Exodus 20, even the wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes 5, and so what is Jesus critiquing here?

Again, he's not critiquing the scripture. He's critiquing these traditions that had kind of started to distort God's word and the intention of his law. In the first century, making these kinds of vows, these kinds of oaths, was very common. People would swear on all kinds of things, and it got to the point where the rabbis had started to distinguish between which oaths were binding and which oaths were not, and so the idea was the greater or the more holy the object that you swore by, the greater the obligation you had to keep that vow, and obviously this is wrong. There's two really big problems with this that I want us to look at.

First of all, this is a problem because it's hypocritical. It lacks integrity. Jesus, in Matthew 23, was critiquing this again, and he said, verse 16, "Woe to you blind guides who say if anyone swears by the temple it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple he is bound by his oath. You blind fools. Which is greater, the gold, or the temple that has made the gold sacred?" It's like, on the one hand, it really doesn't matter what you swear by. Everything belongs to the Lord. The heaven is his throne. The whole Earth is his footstool.

But worse than that is this mindset, it carries with it this idea that some oaths are binding, which implies that some oaths are not, and so it's taking this teaching about vows, and it's using it to justify dishonesty. It's using it to justify breaking the command, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." And Jesus says this comes from evil.

Words matter. Words are powerful. Words are revealing. Our words are powerful, we know this. They can do great good. They can also cause great harm. But our words are also revealing. A person's words reveal a lot about a person's heart, and so if our words can't be trusted, we can't be trusted. If our words are misleading, then our persona is misleading. In other words, who we are on the outside, is not the same as who we are on the inside. We lack integrity. We are by definition a hypocrite. Our outer self and our inner self, they're not integrated, and so we know this. We know that lying is wrong, and so if this is the case, why do people do it?

Why is it a temptation for people to be dishonest, to be deceptive? And I would say most of the time, people lie in order to present a false reality that is going to somehow benefit them in a way more than true reality, and so people will lie to manipulate others for the sake of gaining comfort, for gaining security, gaining respect, gaining control, and this is why Jesus calls this evil, and as citizens of his kingdom, we have no reason to be doing this. Right? Why would we need to concoct a false reality if we are already living in the reality of grace?

If we're already living in the reality that God already knows the real us, inside and out, he knows the darkness that is inside, and yet he still loves us. He still accepts us. He came to save us from that darkness inside, and so as Christians we don't need to lie to cover up the darkness. We need to take the darkness of our hearts out into the light of God's grace where we can deal with it and put it to death. This is part of being salt and light in the world, and he's being salt and light to yourself. Preaching the gospel to the darkness of your own heart.

Jesus is calling on us to be people of integrity, men and women of our word, people who really don't need to swear an oath, to make a vow, because our reputation is our guarantee. Our word is our bond that what we say is what we do. We are reliable, trustworthy, faithful people. That's what he's talking about here.

And so the practical question, then, does this mean that Christians can never make vows? Is that what Jesus is talking about? Is he saying that you should never sign a business contract or you should never come under oath in a court of law, or make vows at a wedding ceremony? That's not what Jesus is saying. Jesus was put under oath during his trial before the high priest. We see examples of vows being made in the books of Acts and 1st Thessalonians. That's not the point. What Jesus is trying to hammer home is this idea of integrity matters.

That actually this is a key aspect of his kingdom's culture, and so as citizens of that kingdom, we need to be marked by honesty, by integrity, by faithfulness, as well. So Jesus corrects that lack of integrity. The second problem is this is also, this interpretation, it's prideful and it lacks humility.

Jesus says, "Don't take an oath at all," verse 34, "either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the Earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king, and do not take an oath for your head for you cannot make one hair white or black." In other words, who are you to swear by anything? Nothing is yours. Everything belongs to the Lord, and even the hairs on your head are outside of your control. We can't control the future. We can't control the passage of time. Therefore, be careful. Don't boast about your plans or make promises that you can't keep.

James, the brother of Jesus, talks about this in James chapter 4. He says, "Come now, you who say today or tomorrow. We will go into such and such a town, and spend a year there, and trade, and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time, and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil."

And so we need to be humble, we need to be honest about our limitations. This doesn't mean we don't make plans, it doesn't mean we don't set goals, but we submit those to the sovereignty of God, and we understand that in Jesus' culture, Jesus' kingdom is marked by a culture of humble integrity. Point two, secondly, citizens of Jesus' kingdom are called to merciful justice. This is verse 38 through 42.

Jesus says this again to his disciples, he says, "You have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."

Those of you who know me know I grew up in a small town, and most of my friends that I grew up with, most of us all went to the same school. Most of us all went to the same church. And it was right there in our neighborhood, and we spent a lot of time playing there. We'd ride our bikes in the parking lot. We'd play roller hockey. There was a yard that we played soccer, football at times, and I remember when I was in like 9th grade, we were in the churchyard playing tackle football.

Right at that age where we were probably too old to be playing football without pads, and yet we were too proud and too tough to admit that, and so things got kind of crazy, and it would get kind of rough sometimes, and I remember we were there, and I tackled one of my friends, and I don't know if it was just a rush of adrenaline or what came over him, but as we get up, he's visibly angry, and the next thing I know he winds up, and he just punches me right in the face.

It was one of those moments you're like, "Did that just happen?" And I look at him again, and I realize he's winding up to punch me again. It's one of those moments where time just kind of slows down, and so right there in the churchyard I had to kind of take a deep breath, and calm myself down, and I just kind of mustered up every bit of strength that I had, and then I punched him in the stomach as hard as I possibly could, and knocked the wind out of him, and he went down, and the fight was over. Was that the right thing to do? First of all, in my defense, as the wise sage Mike Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face."

You never know what you're going to do in a situation like that. Also, we were teenage boys, which meant by the end of the game we were friends again. It was not a big deal. But is Jesus saying that it is never permissible for a Christian to defend themselves? Is he saying that Christians need to be total pacifists, doormats to injustice? That we should never take a stand against evil or come to the defense of the innocent? Should I have just let my friend keep wailing on my until he got that all out of his system? When I first became a Christian, I thought that's what Jesus was talking about here.

Now, I don't think that anymore, but before we kind of get to what Jesus is saying, I think it might be kind of helpful to clear up what he's not saying, because if Jesus is commanding absolute pacifism, if he's prohibiting a self-defense in every situation, that poses a couple of problems, and first of all one of the problems that it poses, is this would appear to contradict other passages of scripture, and even other examples from Jesus' own life, and so did Jesus ever use force to accomplish a goal? He did. On at least one, possibly two occasions, Jesus went to the temple, and he said, "I'm here to flip tables and whip fools, and I'm all out of tables."

And he made a whip, and he started chasing people out of the temple. This was premeditated use of force, but it was not sinful. Now, some will argue, "Yeah, but Jesus is God and his judgment is perfect, and it is his temple, and so that doesn't apply to us." And I would say, "Yeah, that's actually a fair argument." But there are other scriptures that we would need to consider as well. To be a consistent pacifist would require us to apply that not only to individuals, but to police, to governments, to militaries, and that would be a very clear contradiction of scripture. This is made clear for us in Romans 13.

When Paul says, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God, therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who was in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer."

This doesn't mean that governments are always doing God's will, that they never abuse their power. We see in Revelation and other places that they often do, but in general this is true, that God is a God of justice, and he has ordained that human governments have the authority to bear the sword as a means to punish evil, as a means to uphold and carry out his justice in a fallen world.

And so Christians can serve in the military, and can be police officers, and things like that, but what about individuals? Are we as citizens of heaven permitted to exercise our rights as citizens of Earthly kingdoms in order to defend ourselves or defend the innocent around us? Again, I think scripture shows us that we are. In Acts 22, the Apostle Paul appeals to his Roman citizenship in order to defend himself against the infringement upon his rights by the local authorities. Acts 22:25 says that when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, "Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and un-condemned?"

And when the centurion heard this, he went to tribune and said to him, "What are you about to do? This man is a Roman citizen." So the tribune came and said to me, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" And he said yes. And the tribune answered, "I bought my citizenship for a large sum." And Paul said, "You know, I'm a citizen by birth." And then they all freak out because they realize that they had been breaking the law by doing this to Paul as a Roman citizen, and so it is at times okay to exercise our rights as the citizens of Earthly governments, but in Luke 22 we also see Jesus tells his disciples that there may be situations, there are times, that they needed to be prepared to defend themselves in certain situations.

Luke 22:35 says that he said to them, "When I sent you out with no moneybag or nap sack or sandals, did you lack anything?" And they said, "Nothing." And he said to them, "But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a nap sack, and let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one, for I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me," and he was numbered with the transgressors, "for what is written about me has its fulfillment."

And they said, "Look, lord, here are two swords." And he said to them, "It is enough." And so what's going on here? Clearly, Jesus isn't trying to plan some kind of armed revolt. They only had two swords and Jesus said, "Yeah, that's going to be plenty. That's enough." But you still have to ask, what were Jesus and his disciples doing carrying swords around to begin with? Because a sword is not used for daily tasks. This isn't something that they needed to cook, or to clean, or anything like that. The only reason that Jesus' disciples would've been carrying swords around as they traveled was for self-defense.

And so we need to be careful here, because later Peter pulls out his sword in the garden and attacks one of the guards who had come to arrest Jesus, and Jesus tells him, "Put it away. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." That was not its purpose, but it does seem there is reason to believe that reasonable self-defense is permissible at times, while at the same time we understand that Jesus' kingdom is not advanced by the sword at any time.

John 18, Jesus, standing before Pilate, told him, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world." And so on the one hand, we see self-defense, permissible in certain situations, with the right motivation, yet at the same time as Christians we don't live by the sword. The kingdom is not advanced by the sword. As followers of Jesus, our proclivity is love.

Our prerogative is mercy. Our first inclination is to show meekness, and if it feels like maybe that's a little ambiguous or unclear, I think it's because it is. This is part of do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. You need to trust in the spirit to show you, to tell you, to know what's right to do in one situation which might be different from another situation, and there's a tension here that we need to live in between justice and mercy.

We don't want to be vengeful, we don't want to be wrathful, but we don't want to be the crazy saint that Martin Luther talked about who let the lice nibble on him, and refused to kill any of them, on account of this text maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil. That's taking it to the point of folly. If you see evil, if you see injustice happening, and it is within your means to stop it, then you should aim to do so, but you should aim to do so by the means that God has ordained under his authority, and so oftentimes this is going to mean involving the authorities, calling the police, but there are also going to be times where you are the highest authority, and perhaps the spirit will lead you to employ the use of force to defend yourself or to defend an innocent person in a reasonable manner.

John Stott put it like this, "If my house is burgled one night and I catch the thief, I employ force to knock him out, tie him up, whatever, it may well be my duty to sit him down and give him something to eat and drink while at the same time telephoning the police." That's the tension that we want to embrace of wanting to uphold justice, but also wanting to show as much mercy as we can.

I mentioned there that there was two problems with this kind of pacifist interpretation. The first is it seems to contradict other scriptures, it seems to contradict Jesus' example. The second is that this interpretation, I think it misunderstands Jesus' use of rhetoric in this passage, and it therefore misunderstands his meaning, what he's actually teaching us here. When we get bogged down with these technicalities, it is easy to miss the forest from the trees.

Jesus isn't primarily trying to teach us, "This is how you need to react if you see somebody being mugged or if an intruder breaks into your home." He's actually calling us to do something that is far more common, far more practical, far more relatable, and so therefore it's also arguably far more difficult as well. Like the rest of the sermon, Jesus is illustrating his points as he goes with a rhetorical device known as hyperbole. It's where you use an extreme, almost ridiculous example in order to grab your audience's attention so that they listen to what you say, and really think deeply about what you're communicating.

And so throughout the sermon on the mount, Jesus says these crazy things. He says you need to pluck out your eye, you need to cut off your hand, don't ever let anyone see you praying. You need to pray in your closet with the door closed, or when you give, don't even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. If we take these things literally, we miss the point of what Jesus is talking about, and these things don't actually solve the problem that Jesus is talking about, either, but when you understand what Jesus is saying you know what he means, right?

We need to take what he's saying seriously, we need to check out hearts and give thought to what he is saying, because it's important, and so when we look at this text and Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, when he tells us to go the extra mile, the point is not to start arguing about, "How do we rigidly apply this to extreme hypothetically situations that we're likely never going to face?"

The point is you know what he means, and in real everyday life, when someone insults you, when someone takes advantage of you, when you feel that you have been used, or slighted, or wronged, or made to look the fool, do not retaliate. Don't throw more fuel on the fire. React, and as much as you can, react mercifully. React in a way so that as much as it depends on you, you're able to respond in a way that deescalates that situation, that puts out that fire in order to leave room for redemption, to leave room for reconciliation and to make peace.

In our flesh, this is not what we want to hear. This is not what we want to do. Our normal, sinful response is to get angry, say, "That's not fair." To lash out, to try to even the score, retaliate, get our revenge. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But this is not how things work in Jesus' kingdom. Paul in Romans 12:17 through 21, he tells us this, he says, "Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."

"To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." And so when a friend betrays you, when a peer insults you, when a coworker throws you under the bus, when you feel like your boss is taking advantage of you, when your neighbors are being just totally inconsiderate, when someone's wronged you, when you feel like slandering them, when you feel like flaming them on Facebook, and canceling them on Twitter, and just totally executing them socially, you need to remember who you are.

You are a sinner, and you are a sinner who's been saved by grace. You are a sinner who has been saved by grace and called to be salt and light in a dark and twisted world, that we as followers of Jesus, we're called to be radically and sacrificially generous with the mercy that we extend to others because God has been radically and sacrificially generous with the mercy that he has extended to us.

Citizens of Jesus' kingdom are called to humble integrity, called to merciful justice. Finally, they're called to prayerful peacemaking. This is verse 43 through 48. Jesus again said, "You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sins rain on the just and on the unjust."

"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect." The bible teaches us to love our neighbors. The bible never teaches us to hate our enemies, and Jesus corrects this false teaching, and he cuts to the heart of the matter, and the heart of the matter is this: if we are children of God, then we should expect the world to treat us the way the world treated God's son Jesus Christ, and if we are children of God, then we are expected to treat the world the way that Jesus Christ treated us.

John 15, 18 through 19, Jesus tells his disciples, "If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." Jesus promises to be with us, he promises his holy spirit, but Jesus never promises us health, or wealth, or comfort, or power, or influence, or success in this life.

What he does promise us is this, John 16:33, he says, "I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart, I've overcome the world." He promises us peace, he promises us victory, and he also promises that before the victory there will be tribulation. Following Jesus will be hard, and we should expect that the world is going to treat us the way the world treated Jesus, but Jesus expects us to respond to them the way he responded to us, and how has Jesus responded to us? We see this in Romans chapter 5.

Paul writes in verse 6 that, "While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God, for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

This command to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, this is one of the most radical, extreme things that Jesus ever commands us to do, but when Jesus commands us to love our enemies and when he tells us to pray for those who persecute us, he's not commanding us to do anything that he himself hasn't already done for us. He was betrayed, beaten, mocked, and he turned the other cheek. He went the extra mile. He gave us the shirt off his back. He took our ragged, filthy, soiled garments, and put them on himself, and in exchange he clothed us with the robes of his own righteousness.

He loved us while we were yet his enemies, and as he hung on the cross, he prayed for his persecutors. "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." The perfect, sinless son of God laid down his life so that enemies of God could become sons and daughters, acquitted, forgiven, reconciled, made new, and adopted into the household of God, and now, as God's children, we are called to do the same. To love our enemies, to pray for their salvation, and to understand we were once enemies of God who have been reconciled to him through the blood of Jesus Christ, and that's what we want for them as well.

As Jesus concludes this section of the sermon so far with this command in verse 48, it says, "You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, because the standard that I'm calling you to is perfection. That's the calling, that's the goal. Be perfect. That is the what of the sermon on the mount so far." As your heavenly father is perfect, that is why, that is the reason, that's the motivation that we have, that we press on towards this goal of perfection in Christ because we have a perfect heavenly father who's loved us, and just like any child, we want to be just like our dad when we grow up.

This is what God is like, this is what our king, his son Jesus Christ, is like, and this is what we want to be like as well. If you're here today and you're not perfect, welcome to the club. You need Jesus. Repent. Put your faith in him. If you're here today and you are perfect, you are a self-righteous liar, and you really need Jesus, and repent, put your faith in him today, and understand that the bad news is bad. You are bad. You are really bad. You're worse than you really even know, and there's absolutely nothing that you can do to make things right with God, that your good deeds are never going to be enough to outweigh the bad.

The good news is that's not the way you enter the kingdom of heaven. From the very beginning of the sermon, Jesus made it clear, Matthew 5:3, when he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The way into God's kingdom, you don't begin a right relationship with God by appealing to a list of righteous deeds and qualifications. You begin with a contrite heart, with a broken spirit that acknowledges your weakness and cries out to God for help.

Scripture tells us if you repent, if you turn from your sin and put your faith in Jesus Christ, and call on his name, that you will be saved and you can do that today. If you want to do that today, we would just ask that you'd come and talk to us. We'd love to talk to you about that. We would love to pray for you. Come find us after the service, or you can mark that on your connection card, and we'd love to just follow up with you this week, and talk more about what this means and what the next steps to following Jesus would be, and with that being said, would you please join me in prayer? And we'll spend some more time in worship together.

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Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane, and Pastor Andy, and if you're new, or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that either through a connection card in the worship guide that you received on the way in, or the virtual connection card in the app, or on our website. If you fill it out, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week.

Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good God, and a good Father. And we thank you, Lord that you, before the foundation of the world, you imagined us into existence. That we are a product of your imagination, that in your heart, you foresaw who we would be and you made us so.

And we thank you that you created us in your image with an imagination, and you have given us this imagination so that we use it for good to imagine realities of how we can serve people, and do good, and further the common good instead, Lord we've sinned. And so often our imaginations are used as a weapon for evil and sin.

And Lord, we thank you that you did not leave us in our sin, but you sent Jesus Christ, the perfect image of the invisible God. We thank you Jesus, that you lived the perfect life, that you never sinned against anyone, and not God, not people. You love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your imagination. And you love neighbor as self. You never treated anyone as an object, and you never dehumanized anyone with sin.

And you went to the cross and Lord, you bore the weight that we deserve, the punishment that we deserve. You experienced hell being forsaken by God, so that we would not have to be. And we thank you. Holy Spirit, that you give us access to the gospel by grace, through faith. And I pray today Lord, give us a deep faith for your Word, that when you say something is sin and that something leads to pain and depravity, and shame, let us believe it.

And when you say that we can be free of sin because where the Spirit is, here freedom is. Let us believe it and act upon that faith. Bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, we love you, and we pray all this in Christ's name, amen. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Perfect, perfect day for a nice sermon on lust. And that's what we're talking about today. The title of the sermon is Lust and Imagination.

As we're going through a Sermon on the Mount, the context is that Jesus Christ is King, and he says, "The kingdom of God is at hand. The way that you enter into the kingdom of God is by repentance through faith." And once he gathers his disciples who have repented of sin, he explains to them this new order of life. It's a manifesto he's given us of the christian life of how we as Christians are to live. And he's given us the same standard that God gave in the very beginning.

And just a word here on theology to set a meta narrative of what we're talking about, the theology of creations that God created everything by the power of his word. And he created us humans in his image, and he created us to enjoy him primarily, him first and foremost, secondarily creation. He gives us good gifts in creation to be used according to his guidelines, according to his laws.

And he created us in such a way that the more we live according to his will, the more we glorify him, the more satisfaction we experience. Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they find the rest in you." It's like there's a missing piece in our hearts, and that missing pieces is Jesus, it's worshiping God, is being in trance with him. It's adoring him, loving him, being captivated by him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

It's like those security websites. When you get on some of these financial websites, and they show you the puzzle, and there's a puzzle piece that you need to move into the empty spot. And on a daily basis, God is saying, "Jesus is that piece that we need to be filled with satisfaction." So God created us with a need for him. And the other thing I want to connect that with as he created us in his image and were a product of his imagination.

So he imagined us, and created us in his image. So the fact that we're in his image is we have an imagination. It's an incredible gift from God to have an imagination, and that imagination... And if you just think about how much of life you live in your imagination, two thirds, more? As you're sitting, especially if you get good at your job, you could be all day without even thinking about your job. You're just doing your job, and you were imagining realities. Every time you think about the past, and memories, that's imagination at work. Anytime you think about a better reality here, anytime you think about future realities, it's imagination at work.

And one of the things that scripture teaches is that every single part of our person has been marred. The image of God in us has been marred by sin, and therefore imagination has been marred by sin. So that imagination which was created to do good and think of better reality, that imagination is sinful. So this is what Jesus Christ is talking about today, and he talks about lust, and he talks about this deep desire, he's talking about the capacity to imagine good things and act upon them, or imagine bad things and act upon.

And this is a very relevant sermon for everybody. The latest statistics say that 95% of people struggle with lust. The other 5% struggle with lying. It's everybody, every single one of us. As my wife says, "Everybody have dirty mind, everybody." We all need Jesus. We all need cleansing. We're all on level playing field there. So that's the context with it. And we'll look at this text from the perspective of, is your imagination captivated by God? And that's the only place you'll find satisfaction. If not, there's things we have to do by grace through faith, with repentance, fighting those areas in order to be faithful to the Lord.

With that said, would you look at the text with me? We're in Matthew 5:27-32, "You have heard that it was said, 'you shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away for it is better that you lose one of your members then that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members then that your whole body go into hell. It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual morality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

This is the reading of God's Holy and fallible authoritative Word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First, what's the big deal with lust? Second, lust is never satisfied just physically. Third, fighting lust with faith, and forth, we'll talk about marriage and divorce. So first of all, what's the big deal with lust? And I asked this because from our cultural perspective where you, and this is a secular humanist worldview, where humanity, humans, people are at the center of the universe and there is nothing above them. So, whatever you do, as long as you're not harming anybody that's good.

So, why the radical language that Jesus is using. First in verse 27, I'll point out that Jesus emphasizes the heart. Verse 28. "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in heart." It's the heart. We see in the 10th commandment "Thou shall not envy. Thou shall not desire your neighbor's spouse." We see the desire there in commandment number 10.

Jesus here goes into commandment number seven and says, that's the same thing. "Thou shall not commit adultery." It begins in the heart. The other thing I want to point out here is that from the perspective of Jesus. Jesus, primarily talking to his disciples, primarily talking to men. Men, you need to listen. You need to heed this commandment. And obviously it doesn't apply just to men, but he's talking to his disciples, so it applies to everybody.

The assumption here is behind this commandment, behind this call to purity command to purity of the heart is the assumption is that sex is a lot more powerful than you know. It's mysterious, it's an untamable power. That's the assumption here from God's perspective. That's why Jesus uses such strong language and giving a prescription of how to deal with it. How to deal with it. This is verse 29. "If your right eye causes you sin, tear it out, throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell."

And he uses the same language with the hand. "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell." Jesus, why are you bringing hell into this? We're talking about lust, we're talking about adultery and Jesus says the consequence for this is hell. It's being forsaken by God forever. Why such strong language? Why this importance, this gravitas of lust. And partially other times I've preached this sermon and I'm like, look at the wisdom behind God's commandment. God cares about the individual. And God also cares about other individuals. And God cares about the family and God cares about society. So there is divine wisdom and fighting lust then leads to more blessing.

That's not how I'm dealing with it today. Basically what Jesus is saying is, "I'm God, and I'm telling you how to live. And if you do not obey my Word, there are consequences, you are liable to judgment." That's how Jesus talks about. Back when I started my ministry, when people come to me, and say, "I'm struggling with lust and Pastor Jan, can you help me?" And I would give them like practical things to do. "Hey, put some filter on your computer. And if it's your phone, that's causing you to sin, get a flip phone, and get an accountability partner, and all that." Now, whenever anyone comes to me and says, "I'm struggling with sin." I say, "Pluck out your eye. Cut off your hand," because it is that serious. Obviously Jesus isn't talking about doing this physically literally, it's a hyperbole.

But it's hyperbole, in a very arresting language, in a very extreme language. Hyperbole to say this radical measure is an index of how radical, and dangerous this sin is. In order for you to overcome this sin, you need to first understand that God hates it, and that there are dire consequences over it. And God is a God not just over your actions, but over your desires. God is a God over your imagination. That God has jurisdiction over the realities that you imagine, over your fantasies. And here he brings in the word hell, and it's Gehenna.

And Gehenna was the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem where the fire would just keep burning. And he says, "That's a metaphor for what hell is." He's not saying that's exactly what hell, it's a metaphor. And whenever God uses a metaphor to describe hell, sometimes it's darkness, sometimes it's this fire that can't be quenched. The reality is always worse than the metaphor.

So what are you saying is the reality is of this lust. If it keeps burning, and if you don't deal with this now, and then you die, and we are eternal beings. Well, if you have been forsaken by God in this world, then you will be forsaken in the next world and this fire just keeps on growing. And the assumption is that sex isn't just an appetite, that it is powerful, it's like a fire. And the right context in marriage to one man, one woman in covenant for a lifetime. It can lead to goodness, and a blessing from God. In the wrong context, can lead to devastation, just like a fire in a fireplace leads to light an ambiance, warmth, wrong contest, devastation.

And that's the problem with our culture. We have mishandled this. We have absolutely mishandled this because we assume it's just an appetite, and we don't take God at his Word because we think it's just an appetite. Well God says, "No, it's not just physical, it has all kinds of spiritual manifestations, and consequences." And Satan's temptation here is the same temptation that he brought in the very beginning. The temptation is even as you're listening right now, even as I read the text the temptation is, is it really that bad? Is this sin really that bad? Did God really say? Did God really say that if you eat of it, you will die. Did God really say that?

And what Satan did with Eve the very beginning, by tempting her to eat the forbidden fruit, he does today in terms of lust, and sex. Did God really say, and does God really have jurisdiction of this area of your life? And basically what Satan is doing is it's a power play. You don't have to submit to God. You can be your own god, and you decide what's good, and evil. You decide what's blessing, and what's cursing.

He comes in and he attacks the imagination. Just imagine a world without God. Imagine a reality without God, with no consequences for your actions. This is John Lennon's signature song. Imagine a world without God. Imagine a world without God, without religion. Imagine that above is only sky. If we imagine such a world, one lacking country's, possessions, when we imagine all the people living in peace, unity, happiness. I think what John Lennon did was trying to create this flower power paradise that has no basis in reality.

Nietzsche was more right. "If there is no God, and people do whatever they want, it leads to absolute chaos, and nihilism, and just abyss." But this is what seeing does is imagine. Imagine a world without God. Well, okay. Let's imagine that world without God. Most people live as if there is no God, and how's that going? Look at the consequences of sexual sin in our culture. I want to flip that around, and say, imagine a world where people obey this. Imagine a world where people will obey the sexual ethic of Christianity, of the gospel, of Scripture.

Imagine a world where people understood the power of sexuality. Imagine a world of people would fight lust, and not have sex unless it's in a committed relationship of a husband and a wife. The greatest pandemic in the world today is not COVID. The greatest pandemic is fatherlessness where men do not submit to God, do whatever they want, and now everyone bears the consequences of that. You know this cliche, when a man has a daughter, and he's like, "Oh, now I understand. Now I understand that I've been objectifying women my whole life. Now I'm going to protect my daughter. And I will protect my daughters. I got four of them. If anyone ever tries to objectify my daughters, I've got guns my left, and my right. And I have a permit to carry those. I will absolutely obliterate everyone in Jesus name."

No, but imagine viewing every single person, the way God intended you to view each other, as image bearers of God, not just an object of gratification. And that's what Satan comes in and he perverts our eyes where now we view people as objects instead of image bearers of God. The other objection is to the sexual ethic and lust is, if I don't express myself sexually, then I'm not being true to myself, and understand that if self is all there is, that's a fair objection, but self is not all there is. There is a God and you are not central, he is. And if there is a God and his Word is true, then being true to yourself is actually a terrible idea because what does it mean to be true to yourself, to act on every single impulse from the inside that's false.

Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately seek who can understand it." Their sin inside, and we can't act upon single inclination that we have. Genesis 6:5. This is the text right before the flood. God says this, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually." Intention of the thoughts is an imagination of the thoughts. That sin starts in the heart, and it captivates the imagination. And if it's not dealt with here, it leads to all kinds of brokenness.

The other objection I hear from young people when it comes to lust and sexuality is, "I just need to get this out of my system. While I'm young, I need to get this out of my system." That's false, that's like pouring gasoline on fire. You're just jacking up your system, and that you're creating memories that can never be removed and heartache that you're going to deal with for years to come. The other objection is, "I'm not harming anyone." Well, that's false, there is a God. And when you break his commandments, you're not just harming yourself, you're harming others, and you're breaking the heart of God.

Lust adulterates you, it adulterates the people around us. So that's what's the big deal because God says it's a big deal. So second, lust is never satisfied just physically. Let's define our terms. What is lust? It's the Greek word, (speaking in foreign language). It's used 62 times in the New Testament, only twice it's used for sex. What does it mean? It means not just desire, but inordinate desire. It's desire out of control. It's when you take a physical thing and try to get from it, transcendence or spiritual satisfaction. You take a good thing, and you try to get from it only what you can get from God.

So in this sense lust is more than just in the context of sexuality. If sex is your ultimate desire, you'll never have sex enough. If money is the ultimate desire or fame, or acceptance, or things, or attention, or food, or cars, or drink, or success, security, beauty, you will never have enough if this is the ultimate thing. And how do you know you're making something the ultimate thing? It's when you look at the commandments of God, and say. "No, getting this is more important than obedience to God."

Now it becomes an idol, and it begins to control us. The more you try to satisfy lust, the more this desire grows. And if you try to quench lust with sex only, it'll just continue being unsatisfied, and grow. And this is why there's rehab centers for sexual addiction. And you go to these rehab centers, and ask people, how did this start? You don't wake up addicted to illicit sex. It starts little, by little, by little, and the fire keeps growing, and growing, and growing and all.

The other thing I want to point out is, on the one hand our culture says, "Sex is no big deal, have a good time." On the other hand, we know that the consequences are grave. We know that there's shame and a regret. We know that people do things that should not be done. We know this. We know when people get caught on Zoom for doing things that they should not be doing. Our culture condemns that. Why do we do that? Because we understand it's written on our heart that this is wrong. There's a lot wrong with it.

Lust is a black hole that's never filled with just sex, or things. And this is why we need the gospel of Jesus Christ. What we're desperately longing for isn't just a physical experience. We're longing for intimacy, we're longing for a true love, we're longing to be filled deep inside, and only God can do that. That's why the gospel of Jesus Christ is so powerful. When you look at Jesus Christ who never committed a sin with his eye, or his hand, and never lusted in his heart. And then he goes to the cross, and on the cross, he dies for our sin.

He bears the penalty as if he had lusted. As if he had committed adultery, and he's dying on the cross. And he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" What's he talking about? He's going through hell. He's experiencing God forsakingness. And which is hell, why does he do that if he was perfect, he's not dying for his sin. He's dying for our sin, and when you realize that this is how much you're loved, that despite all of your sin, despite lust, despite everything, you are still loved, and God died on the cross for your sins, you accept forgiveness. Now you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fills us, and now we have the power to overcome the sin. And now we have the power to take every single one of our imaginations and take them captive.

Okay, real quick imagination audit. We're going to do a little imagination audit. How's your imagination? How are you doing with... And am looking at less from the perspective of imagination to show you that it's a lot wider. The scope is a lot wider than just looking at porn. Porn's included, but it's a lot wider. It's when we fantasize realities, and create these realities that are forbidden by God.

So imagination audit, what are you feeding your imagination on a daily basis? And are those things leading to satisfaction of the soul, or are they creating a dissatisfaction, and a fire that's pulling you away from God? What are you looking at? What are you listening to? What are you reading? And the visual input is really important. Jesus connects lust here, it starts with the heart. And then he says that it leads to adultery in the heart. Lust in the heart, adultery in the heart. And then you look.

The looking is a third part. What he is connecting is less than the imagination with images. And there is this deep connection. So as Christian, we need to be very careful at what are you looking at? What do you spend your time looking at in TV shows? This is movies. This is social media accounts, and content. What are you feeding? And I will tell you, the smarter you are, the more careful you got to be with that stuff. The better memory you have, the more you gotta be careful with that. So what are you listening to in terms of podcasts, in terms of music, how much of pop culture and pop music is built around inflaming people's lust?

And then it goes deeper than that. It goes deeper than the stuff we consume on a daily basis. What about memories? What memories, dreams, or mental pictures have been particularly vivid in your mind that you keep going back to, and you know you shouldn't be. How have they been impacting you? How did they make you feel? And which of these mental pictures have been encouraging, and life-giving, and how do these mental pictures stack up against God's Word?

When you're daydreaming about the future, are you daydreaming in a way where your God is in those daydreams? God is in those fantasies. Is God in those realities? Or are you doing this in order to escape God, escape obedience, escape God's Word. And it has to do with people, not just realities. It has to be dreaming about doing things with other people. Do you find yourself daydreaming about a person, or interactions you wish to have with that person that you shouldn't? Do you reach out with hopes of getting specific response? Would you be embarrassed if that person knew about your fantasies, or imaginations about them? Would you be embarrassed if the people closest to you knew the things that you were imagining?

Are you building up expectations about how things are going to turn out? Are you spending a lot of time analyzing past interactions, and to the point where it's idolatrous. And the big idea here is that once you become a Christian, you come to the cross of Christ, you repent of sin, you got to make it a practice of putting off old imaginations, and putting on the new. We need to practice fighting back against evil imaginations. And just real quick, the easiest way to do that is the very second you have a fantasy, or imagination that you know you shouldn't, an image pops up, you need to repent of that, and ask for the Lord's forgiveness, and ask for the Lord to purify the heart.

And Scripture says that those who are pure in heart, they see God. How do we see God? With our minds eye, with our imagination. Third point is, how do we do this practically fighting lust with faith? When you believe in Jesus Christ, you believe in way that captivates your whole being, that's true faith. It's not cerebral in the mind. We are called to believe with all of our being. And when we come to the Lord, we repent of all of our sin. The Lord justifies us and the Lord justifies us and says, "You're acquitted and you're not guilty, you are forgiven of all sin." And if you are a true Christian, you have a desire to fight sin.

So justifying faith is lust fighting faith, where you want God above all else. And this is how the gospel redeems our imagination. Romans 6:14, "For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace." So when you come to God, you realize that he loves you so much, that he gave his son. He fills your heart with a great love. Once you experience the Holy Spirit, once you experience the cleansing power of the blood of Christ, once you experience all of that, you want to do everything you can to stay as close to him as possible.

This why lust is so dangerous because it pulls us away from God. But once you've experienced that, he's re-calibrated the taste buds of your soul, and you want to do everything you can to be as close to him as possible. It's like when you know real food, when you know delicious food and you know exactly where I'm going with this, when you have a steak, a delicious ribeye with asparagus, if you'd like. When you have like this is real food you have that, it's not that easy to go back to junk. Yesterday we took our girl, Tanya, took our girls to just walk around Beacon Hill, and we walk them by Upper Crust. And my daughter Milan, my youngest one, she stops and she goes.

She's got my nose, which I'm really sorry about. And the flaps go and it's just so cute. And then we're like, "No, we're not having pizza. We're going to be good." My wife made Borscht at home, because that's what we do she's Ukrainian. So my daughter's like, "Oh, no." So then we keep walking, and we go to the Boston Common, and then we're walking by the McDonald's. And then my third daughter stops, and she goes, and I knew at that moment we're going to McDonald's.

And when you go to McDonald's, you know what you're doing. You know like you are sinning, you are breaking all kinds of commandments. And as you eat, it is so good. Then you're like, "Ah, yeah." And then you know you're going to hate yourself as you doing it. You're going to hate yourself five minutes later. And then five minutes later goes by, and you're like, "I just consume like 4,000 calories. I still feel a little hungry, and I hate myself." That, that right there.

So something like that happens on the spiritual level. When you taste God, taste, and see that he is good. That's love for God, that fills your heart, and that gives you power to fight lust. You know where this is going to lead, plus it's going to pull you away from God. You know it's not going to satisfy. So your heart is filled with love for God. And that gives you power to fight lust, and not love that lust. That's why Jesus in verse 28, he emphasis on the heart. "But I say that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Then progression is heart then adultery. Then the look, then the action.

You're loving something more than God. So how do you fight that? You fight that desire with a greater desire, you fight that fire with a greater fire. You fight the lust with the love. One of my favorite quotes on this topic is, Thomas Chalmers, the 1840s, and the famous sermon called the Expulsive Power of a New Affection. He says, "The only way to break the hold of a beautiful object on the soul is to show an object even more beautiful."

So true change for lust doesn't come from the outside. That's not where it starts. It doesn't start with self-discipline. It starts from the inside, repentance, and faith and God fills your heart with love, and then on the outside. So, it's a clean heart that leads to clean eyes, and clean hands. The other thing that you got to believe God's Word, you got to believe that his Word is true about the importance of fighting it.

The other thing you have to believe is that you can be free. I mean, so many Christians, when I counsel them on this topic, they're like, "It's impossible to be free of lust. It's possible to have victory over the sin." And that right there, that faithlessness always leads to defeat. Do you even believe that you can be victorious over this lust? Do you have this vision for your life? In the imagination, can you right now imagine being free of lust today? Let's string the wings together. Can you imagine having freedom from lust tomorrow? Do you have that? Can you imagine that? And as you imagine that, ask for the Lord's help, and fight the good fight, and be free of lust tomorrow. Can you imagine being free for a week?

Can you imagine being free for 21 days? And that's what they say. It takes 21 days to break any addiction in 30 days, whatever it is. Can you imagine this new reality for yourself? Do we do it perfectly? Of course not. But it's got to be like we look at the charts of the stock market, stocks always keep going up. You go up, up, up, up, down, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and you keep going. A year goes by five years, ten. It just keeps going up. That's what growth, and righteousness must look like for every true Christian.

One of my favorite illustrations of this topic is Augustine of Hippo, struggled with one of the greatest minds that ever existed, struggled with lust as a young man. And then one time after his conversion walks by, he's walking through town, walks by a former sexual partner, and he doesn't acknowledge her. And then she turns, and calls out, "Augustine it is I." And he turns and responds. "Yes, I know, but it is no longer I. The transformation at the core, that changes your identity. Once you're baptized into the faith, by the Holy Spirit, and baptized with water, there is a baptism of the imagination that needs to happen.

Scripture says, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." And Augustine writes about his conversion so poetically, he says this, "Late have I loved you, O Beauty..." He's talking about God. "so ancient, and so new, late have I loved you! You were within me and I was outside and I sought you outside and in my loneliness fell upon those things that you have made. But you called to me, and cried to me and broke my deafness. And you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness, you breathe your fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and now I pant for you. I tasted you. And now I hunger, and thirst for you."

Like that true relationship with God. That true spiritual connection with God through prayer, through meditation, upon Scripture, through silence, through solitude, through fasting, that's where the victory begins. Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." So that's where you start love for God. I believe in you, I love you. He fills your heart with that love. And you want to honor him and delight him as you delight in him. But you can't, that's not just where it stops.

There are things you got to do in terms of mortifying the flesh. Love for God, and mortification of flesh are the one-two combination of knocking out lust in your life. And the mortification of the flesh means, you have to take physical actions. As Jesus says, like it was a hyperbolic, "Pluck out your eye and cut off your..."

But you have to take radical actions where you know that the things are causing you to sin, and stoking up lust in your life, igniting that. You need to cut that out of your life. And you see the one-two combination, Colossians 3:1-5, verse five, "Put to death therefore, what is earthly in you." But it starts with filling your imagination with God, Colossians 3:1, "If then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds."

And this is what he's saying, imagine, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." That's the imagination. That's your heart filled with, you're in trance with God, and then "Put to death therefore." So you will stop there. "Therefore." Based on all of that, "put to death therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry." Put it to death.

He's not saying incrementally choke the life out of it. He's using this language of crucify the sin in your life. Galatians 5:16, "But I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." To feed the Spirit weakens the flesh. The other really just practical point is make no provision for the flesh. Make no provision. Don't put yourself in places that stoke the flesh, and lust and put yourself in places that draw you near to God, and give you a desire for purity. This is Romans 13:13-14.

And by the way, I've said it before, oh 2020, 2021, our present day. This is the hardest time to ever be sexually pure, and fighting lust and et cetera, et cetera. I don't think that's true in the Roman Empire, Saint Paul is writing things like this, "Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness." It's not talking about 2020, he's talking about the year like '70. So this has always been an issue, "Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual morality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires."

So simply he's saying, don't put yourself in a place where you will be tempted, simply stay away. The father in Proverbs 5 tells the son to not go near the door of temptress, because she can't tempt you, if you can't see her. She can't tempt you if you're not in a place where you can be tempted. You know yourself, and you know the situations that cause you to lust, stay away from those situations, and pursue righteousness. Job says in 31:1, he says, "I've made a covenant." Meaning I made a decision. Ironclad decision. "I made a covenant with my eyes. How could I gaze at a Virgin?" Another translation says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl." And later in the same chapter, Job admits that God would judge him if he had given in to the temptation, Job 31:7-9.

"If my step has turned aside from the way, and my heart has gone after my eyes." So sometimes your eyes go after your heart, and sometimes your heart goes after your eyes "If any spot has stuck to my hands then let me sow, and another eat and let what grows for me be rooted out. If my heart has been enticed toward a woman and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door." So he's saying the sexual sin has to be cut out, stamped out before the temptation can take a foothold in the mind.

The other way that Scripture talks about dealing with lust is this language of putting it to sleep, and awakening it. Meaning we have control over this, Song of Solomon. "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases." That you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. So there things that we do with our imagination that awakens things that should not be awakened. Speaking of imagination, Satan attacks our imagination by showing us the worm of whatever the action is. And the way that we can fight that is by imagining the consequences. So Satan definitely wraps the stain of sin, with a tasty worm. The wiser prudent Christian can see through the worm. And this takes a little practice. You can see through the worm to see the hook where you know...

Think about the consequences, think about how this is going to hurt you. Think about how this is going to potentially become a new rhythm. Think about how it might impact the people in your life. Either people who are close around you now, or people who will be in your life in the future. James 1:13-15, "Let no one say when he's tempted, 'I'm being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it's conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death."

The emphasis there of responsibility is not on someone else. O someone else caused me to sin, or someone else tempted me. No, it's from the heart. Therefore, we bear responsibility, and when God tells us to not sin, and put to death, he's telling us we have power to do it by the power of the Spirit. The famous illustration in Holy Scripture of this is King David. King David doesn't go to war with... When he was supposed to go to war, he's on his roof of his palace. And he sees Bathsheba bathing. And the issue there wasn't that he saw that. Scripture says that he gazed on her. "She was beautiful to behold." He saw and he continued to see, and that led to all kinds of brokenness.

So, the question isn't like, "Are we going to see content that's going to create lust in us?" The question is, are you going to gaze? Or are you going to fight it? We have control of our eyes. We have control of our ears, what we hear, what are you going to focus on? And finally here in this just practically, Christians are good at repenting of sin. We run to Jesus after we sin. We also got to learn to run to Jesus before we sin.

When you're tempted, as soon as you're tempted run to God, and ask for forgiveness, and ask for cleansing of the Spirit, and the power of the Spirit. Finally, marriage and divorce. The reason why Jesus talks about lust and adultery in this text, and then he connects to the marriage is because it's all intertwined. That's important to note. And then Matthew 5:31-32, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual morality, makes her commit adultery. Whoever marries a divorced woman, commits adultery."

What's Jesus talking about? He said that you have heard it that it was said, he's not talking about Scripture, which is what he would have said. "You have read what is written." And he's talking about the interpretation of the rabbis, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the lacks interpretation of the law when it comes to faithfulness, and loyalty in marriage. According to the rabbis, a man could divorce his wife for basically anything. If you look at the Mishnah, if you liked another woman better, if his wife spoiled the dinner or if she was barren, and if he consider her lazy, if he didn't like her looks, basically at any point, he just divorced her if he choose to. Now, that was the interpretation of the rabbis.

And what happened was... And basically that's how marriage, and divorce works in our day. We fell out of love, and that's it. And the rabbis took the biblical understanding of marriage and flipped it on its head. The Bible understanding of marriage is a covenant. It is a covenant between one man and one woman for life. And they turned into a contract and in a contract, here's your terms, you're going to meet your terms. Here's my terms, if you don't meet your side of the bargain, where out, there's no more contract. And within covenant, you do what God does with us. God made a new covenant with us, and he says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." And that's the intention of marriage to be a picture of God's love for us.

And this is exactly what the rabbis did. They flipped it into a contract. Whenever I officiate a wedding, I say the same thing every time, "Dearly beloved we're gathered here today in the sight of God on this face of this company, et cetera, et cetera." And then I say, "What we are witnessing here today is a miracle. We're gathered to witness a miracle. And the miracle isn't a confession of past love, and it's not a profession of current love. It's a promise of future love, no matter what, until death do us part." That's the miracle of marriage and that's God's intention for marriage.

And the rabbis came in and they realized that that's impossible. God's standard of marriage is impossible. So we need to lessen the law. And the clarification of this text happens in Matthew 19:3-9. "The Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?' And he answered, 'Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning, made them male and female and said, 'Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.'

And they said to him, 'Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce to send her away?' And he said, 'Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual morality and marries another commits adultery.'" So it was the rabbis looked at the law and like to become one for life? Ah, we can't do that. They lessen the law, and Jesus comes in and says, "No, this is the standard. Divorce isn't allowed." And the reason why people divorced because of hardness of heart, and this is as real as it gets. And if you're married, you know exactly this hardness that comes. You got to deal with it.

And the way that we deal with it is through the gospel. You audit your heart. Is there bitterness or hardness of heart toward my spouse? Go to the gospel, receive grace and mercy and that softens the heart. In terms of divorce, the reasons for divorce that are permissible in Scriptures, death, then you're separated from the spouse and so you can remarry. Adultery or sexual morality and desertion, that's 1 Corinthians 7. So in these cases, divorce from a biblical perspective is permitted though it's not desired. Reconciliation is to be saw instead, but it's permitted.

Why such a high standard of marriage? Because it's sacred from God's perspective. If anyone remarries for any reason, other than sexual morality or desertion or death, that sin, however, our God is gracious and forgiving and whoever repents and confess his sin is forgiven immediately. So if someone remarries, or divorces and remarries for any other reason other than these three, the new marriage is initially adulterous, but not perpetually if there is repentance and if people seek repentance. And then if someone does remarry and seeks repentance, and you're like, "Oh, I shouldn't have remarried. I'm going to go back to my former spouse." No, once you're married, that's God's will for you.

Finally, I'll close with this. In terms of imagination, in terms of what we're imagining about our past and present and future, one of my favorite texts is Philippians 4:8-9. It says this, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you."

Don't just think about and imagine whatever, instead think and imagine about whatever's good and true and beautiful so that we can live lives that are good and true and beautiful and image forth the glory of God, amen. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for this Word that you've given us. Lord and Jesus, we thank you for you are King and that you are King over every single square inch of our lives that you call us to faithfulness and fidelity in the same way that you are faithful to us. Lord, we pause right now to ask for forgiveness, if there's any hardness of heart in us, and if there's any place in our life where our imaginations have been captivated by things that they should not be captivated by, and we pray, forgive us and cleanse us. And by the power of the Spirit, ignite our imagination to think about you and love you and think about how we can do good work and how we can further the common good for your glory and our joy. And we pray this in Christ's Holy name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are a loving God. We thank You, Holy Trinity, that You are a relational God. And we thank You, Lord, that You have created us in Your image for relationship with You and with one another, and we do confess and we repent of the fact that we have sinned against You, therefore that relationship has been broken. And we've sinned against each other, and we do have broken relationships, but through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through the grace that You offer, through the forgiveness that You offer, there is potential for reconciliation. Show us today the ways of reconciliation, the ways of forgiveness, the ways of mercy and grace. Show us from Your Holy Scripture, Jesus, that You fulfilled the law, that You were never unrighteously angry, that You never insulted anyone, You never insulted in a way to hurt their humanity. Instead, Lord, You taught the ways of life. And show us, Lord, that if we have broken relationships, if there is sin in our relationships with one another, there is definitely sin in our relationship with You, and that we are to lay down our offerings, lay down our worship even, and go and seek reconciliation.

And Lord Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, continue to make us peacemakers seeking peace with You, seeking peace with one another, and extending peace to those who are not yet at peace with You. Bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

We're going through the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever preached, Jesus Christ. And here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, after calling His disciples to repentance and to follow Him, He shows us how we enter into the Kingdom of God, which is through confessing that we are spiritually bankrupt, poverty of spirit, and mourning over our sin, and growing in meekness, which is submission to God in His Word, and then also hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Jesus shows us how we can be reconciled with God. And then, in this text, in our text today in the Sermon on the Mount, He shows us that we are to seek reconciliation in our relationships with people. Loving God, "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind," we get it. That's great. Loving God. He's awesome. He's perfect. Loving someone who's perfect, steadfast, immutable, He doesn't change, not fickle, okay, we get that part. And then, God tells us, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Oh no. God's never living in Boston. That's the hard part. People are great. When our relationships are great, when things are going great, it's great.

And then, when they're not, it's awful. It's heartbreaking. Today, we're going to talk about this connection between anger and hatred, and insults in terms of our relationships with people. Do people ever make you mad? Do you ever get fed up with people? Do you sometimes wish that certain people just weren't? Just didn't exist? Stalin famously said, "No person, no problem." And he also said, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." That mindset of, "I wish this person were not," that's the incipient form of genocide. That's where it starts. And this is exactly what Jesus Christ is talking about is talking about today. This is the first of six paragraphs in which Jesus takes a moral law and He says, "You have heard that it was said by those of old," and then, He brings in the true meaning of the law, the fullness, and this is part of what it means that Jesus fulfilled the law, that He absolutely, completely obeyed it, and He also brought the fullness of the Word. He kept the law, and He told us that, if we are to be followers of His, we are to repent of our sins.

And one of the ways that we know we're true followers of the Lord is that we want to fulfill His commandments. You have a deep desire for true, better obedience than that of the Pharisees. And what He does in these six paragraphs is He sets up a righteousness that the Pharisees were teaching, a righteousness that's common to people, and then a true, deeper, more abiding righteousness, the righteousness that Christ fulfilled, but it's also a righteousness that he demands of us and He doesn't just demand it. He works it into our hearts and our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what we talked about this week. He gives us this law and we realize we can't fulfill it. And then, that brings us to asking Him for grace. He gives us that grace, which now empowers us to live according to His law. And no one does it perfectly, therefore we need Jesus, who does empower us.

This whole segment, my wife and I yesterday were talking about the sermon, and she's like, "What are you preaching on?" I said this, and she said, "Ha, good luck." And I said, "Can you please help me with this?" And she said, "Oh, great." We sat for a good hour and she told me about, "This is how you do it. Don't get angry with people. And when you say bad words, you've got to repent right way." And then, like an hour goes by and I hear her screaming at my kids, because it's bedtime now and they don't want to go to bed. In the Russian language, calling children the names of livestock, that's just a thing, you just do that. My parents did that, so we just do that. And I was like, "Baby, you can't just call them goats. We just talked about this. You can't." I can go into more graphic detail when she's not here. The first service, I'm like, "Yeah, I've still got to live with this person." But I also preached the sermon, and she's got to apply that, too.

Okay. That's the cycle. Perfection, you can't do it. Jesus, grace, back, back. This is what we're talking about today. Matthew 5:21-26. Would you look at the text with me? Matthew 5:21-26. "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; and whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put into prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May we write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame our time. First, we'll talk about love and law. Then, we'll talk about how lovelessness is equal to murder, tantamount to murder in the heart. And then, three, that love takes the first step. Love and law. Matthew 5:21. "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.'" Jesus does not say, "You have read what is written." He says, "You have heard what is said." Why is that important? Because whenever Jesus quotes the Word of God, He said, "It is written." He says that over and over. "It is written." That's the Word of God. Here, He's not saying you have read it was written. He says, "You have heard what was said," meaning He's not contradicting the Word of God, He's contradicting the interpretation, the oral tradition from the rabbis and the Pharisees over the previous centuries. And what the rabbis did was, they would look at God's law and they would say, "This is impossible to fulfill, so we're going to make it a little more approachable, a little more doable," and they would interpret in a way where the heart wasn't even necessary to fulfill the law. Love wasn't necessary. You could fulfill the law according to the tradition of the Pharisees just through outward behavior.

For example, this commandment, it's not as visible, but we'll get into it later. They would say, "You shall not murder. Period." Meaning, if you do not kill a person physically, then you have not contradicted this law. Period. What they didn't understand was, and what they didn't want to understand is when God gives a law in the negative, this is a law that says don't do a certain thing, He assumes, He enjoins and it entails that you do the positive thing. "Thou shall not kill," but the positive side is, "Thou shall care for life and stand for life, and thou shall love your neighbor as yourself." It's not as visible here. We'll get into that. But it is more visible in Matthew 5:43. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" You have heard that it was said. Well, where is it written, this whole sentence? Well, the first part written, "You shall love your neighbor," is Leviticus 19:18. But not once in the Scriptures does it say, "Thou shall hate your enemy." That's a rabbinical tradition, interpretation because they said, "Oh, the law tells us to love my neighbor, but what if my neighbor is my enemy? Well, if my neighbor is my enemy, then I can hate him." That's a human idea foisted upon the text.

That's why Jesus comes in and He contradicts this rabbinical interpretation, pharisaical approach, because the pharisaical approach was to always take God's Word and to lessen it, to relax the true demand of the law, which is love, and to make obedience a little easy, a little more accessible, a little less demanding. That's what we see, if you go throughout church history, this is a pattern that we see over and over and over. A lot of people would look at the church and say, "We've got to grow the church. We've got to get more people inside, and the way we're going to do that is to make the message more palatable. Let's not talk about the hard stuff, let's just talk about the easier stuff." And what happens is, they emphasized the easier things and they minimized the harder things, the things of the heart. So, they did that here with do not murder. If you didn't actually take an innocent person's life, then you fulfilled the commandments. If you didn't stick a knife into a heart, then you're good. If you didn't pull the trigger, then you're good.

And they did the same thing with the next paragraph, which we'll get into next week, that if you didn't actually sleep with someone who is not your spouse, then you didn't commit adultery. And Jesus comes in and says, "No, it's not just about outward behavior. If you have lust in your heart for a person who is not your spouse, you have broken this commandment," and that's what Jesus does with this one. The murder. He says, "Do you have anger in your heart or hatred in your heart?" And what Jesus is doing is going deeper into every dark, shadowy crevice of our hearts. The Pharisees wanted to worry about sins, just breaking rules. Jesus wanted to worry about sin. He wanted people to worry about sin. A lot of people worry about what they do with their hands, and Jesus said, "It's not just about the hands, it's not just about your body, it's about your thoughts." You can contradict God's law in your thoughts and your desires. That's where Jesus is going.

And the other thing that the Pharisees did is they would create this merit system to counterbalance their sin. This is why they loved rules and they would invent rules. If you broke God's commandment of, "Thou shall not commit adultery," well, if you do enough other stuff, if you give enough to the temple, if you make enough sacrifices, if you do enough of the cleansing and the ablutions of the Old Testament, then you're good. And if you can accumulate more good stuff than bad stuff, you're fine. That's where we are as a culture. "Are you going to Heaven?" "Well, yeah. I think so. I'm a good person. I've done more good than bad." That mindset, that pharisaical mindset, and this is why Jesus hammered the Pharisees all the time, that mindset gets you to a point where you don't need Jesus. Why do I need a redeemer to die for my sins? I'll just do more good than bad to get into Heaven. And this is the way that we tame sin in our culture. Most of us haven't killed anyone. Most of us haven't stolen anything major. Most of us haven't slept with anyone's spouse or never lied in court. And Jesus says, "What about the heart? Where is your heart?"

And this is Matthew 15:19. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, and murder, and adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person." Eating with unwashed hands, these are manmade rules that they would add to the law of God, and they would focus on the manmade rules because I can do that, but the heart, that's impossible. Focusing on the heart gets me to a place where I realize that I am a broken sinner and I need repentance and forgiveness. Jesus cared about the spirit of the law, not the letter, because the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

And I start here, where Jesus wants us to get to the point where the law is to bring us to a point where we realize our heart is full of sin. And it does that by showing us that the heart of the law is love, and I have not loved God perfectly, I have not loved people perfectly. That's where Jesus starts, and He contradicts the pharisaical mindset of just doing the outward thing, because if you can approach the next part of the text pharisaically, where Jesus says, "If you call anyone a fool, you are liable to the fire of hell." You can look at that pharisaically and say, "Okay, I won't call anyone this specific word, fool, but I've got a lot of other words that I can call anybody." Yeah, you get it. So, Jesus here is fighting the pharisaical mindset of, "I've done enough," and He wants us to get to a point where we really do look at the depth of the darkness of our heart, which is to bring us to the cross of Jesus Christ.

The sixth commandment, it does prohibit premeditated murder, but that's not where it stops. "Thou shall not murder," that's the sin of commission. Don't commit murder. But also, there's sins of omission. Do not omit, what? To care for people and love people, and stand for life, and be pro-life from the womb to the tomb. Same thing with the other commandments. "Thou shall not steal." The positive side of the commandment is, "Thou shall care for the belongings of others, and thou shall be generous, and thou shall provide for those in need." The law wasn't just to prevent bad behavior, but also to promote good behavior. When it comes to, "Thou shall not murder," we ask, "Why is this commandment here?" Is it just because people are important? It's more than that. Why is this commandment here? People are important. Why are people important? Why does God say that people are important? Because people are created in the image of God. People image forth God. So, what God is saying is, "Every single person is Mine. They're created in My image," therefore, when you dehumanize someone with words, or with anger, you desire that they were not. What you're doing is, you are marring the image of God. You're trying to get rid of an image bearer. That's why that commandment is so important.

When we love people, we are loving the God in whose image they are created. That's why point two is lovelessness is equal to murder, tantamount to murder. In verse 22, "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; and whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire." The modern standard of goodness, when you try to share the Gospel with someone, you're like, "I'm a sinner. You're a sinner. We're all a sinner. We all have transgressed the commandment of God," and people push back and they say, "No, I'm a good person. I've," what's the next sentence? "Never killed anybody. Never killed anybody." And this is actually very convenient, because Jesus says, "Actually, no. You have. You are a homicidal maniac in your heart every time you get on 93 and 95. Every single time." Some of us, we have committed genocide in our heart by being angry at just nations of people, or races of people, or ages of people. This is what Jesus is saying. In the heart level. This is where God is judging. He's not just judging the act, He's not judging what you've done, He's judging the things that you hope for in your heart.

So, it's actually possible to kill someone in your heart, or with your tongue, and no one around you ever even knew that you disliked the person. He's talking about murder in the heart. Murder with the tongue. Why is this important? Because anger is incipient murder. That's a seed form. What kind of anger are we talking about? There's two words for anger in the Greek. There's thymós. Thymós is the quick burst of anger, anger that surges and then subsides. When you lose your temper, but then you regain everything, that's thymós. That's not the word that's used here. The word that's used here is orgē. It's the deep-seated animosity that seethes. It's something that you feed. It's a long-lived anger over which you brood. You nurse this anger. It's anger that you fan into flame by reminding yourself over and over how this person has hurt you, how they've wronged you, how wrongly you've been treated. This is the anger that Jesus is talking about, where we devote energy and intense activity to this. And this anger is destructive. It's murderous in character. There's people in your life that, after a falling out, you haven't talked to for years, but you think about them daily.

There's perhaps family members with whom you haven't spoken in months or years. This is the anger that leads married couples to a place where you can't but divorce. It's an anger that has a corrosive effect on your heart and on your health. And it starts young. The whole bullying endemic, or pandemic, this is a big deal where kids learn that words hurt, and they throw words at one another, hurtful words, like daggers, in order to hurt. Anger in and of itself isn't necessarily evil. It's not always wrong to be angry. Sometimes it's wrong not to be angry. There's legitimate forms of anger. God Himself is indignant with evil. Psalm 7:11. "God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day." This is Jesus Christ making a whip and tossing the tables of tax collectors and moneychangers. Theologians say He probably did this twice, once at the beginning of His ministry, and once at the end. Nor is it wrong for humans to be angry at those with whom God is angry at the things that they do. It's healthy to feel moral outrage at injustice in the world, at racism. We are to be angry at racism, as we are to be angry at abortion.

Our problem is our indignation and anger is not at sin or injustice, but usually it's when people offend us. It's a personal anger. It's when someone does something to slight my ego, and that's where my anger takes on. When Jesus was personally offended, He made the whip when He was offended for God's glory, there's an indignation against God's glory where these moneychangers weren't allowing people to come in and worship God. They were inhibiting people to worship God. He was doing that for God's glory. But when He Himself personally was offended, He didn't become angry. When He was unjustly arrested, when He was unfairly tried, when He was illegally beaten, contemptuously spit upon, crucified, mocked, what came out of His parched lips was, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." I Peter 2:23. "When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly."

Martin Luther said, "An anger of love, one that wishes no one any evil, one that is friendly to the person but hostile to the sin." Jesus is referring to that kind of ... That's the righteous anger. He's referring to an unrighteous anger. He says, "Whoever is angry with his brother," and then He goes from anger to insult. They're interconnected. Anger to insult. And here, whoever insults, it's the word rhaka, it just means nobody. It means indifference. It means good for nothing. It's demeaning, denigrating, disdain, contempt for the other person. And you're not just saying, "You're a nobody," that's not the spirit of this word. He's saying, "I wish you were not." That's what the word means. This is what it means to insult is, this is the absolute worst form of hatred, which is indifference. I am indifferent. I wish you were not. And you're like, "I've never really done that," well, every one of us has. Every single one of us.

My first year of marriage, my wife and I, we've been married now 14 years, my first year of marriage, this is the way that we would fight. She's from Ukraine. I'm from Estonia, former Soviet Union. We are really good at Cold War fighting. Cold War fighting is, you just don't talk to each other. We would do this for days on end. Just not one word. And I would look at her. I'm like, "You're so good at this." And we're at a point now where it's like, we're 15 years in and we don't have the energy to do that, or to seethe with this indignation. Nah. I'm sorry. You're sorry. We're all sorry. Okay. Let's keep going.

I remember one time, my sister was, I think first year of college. I was a sophomore. We decided to buy a car together. We decided that it's a good idea to go splitskies on a car. We got a Nissan Ultima. Dark green. Still remember it. And the idea was she would use it part-time, I'll use it part-time. And it turned out that she used it like 99% of the time and whenever I needed it, she couldn't get it to me. I got so livid at her, and she wouldn't change, that one time I came home and I wrote her a note. I taped this note on her door to her bedroom. I wrote, "Have a nice life. Meh." And we didn't talk for like a year. That's the anger that He's getting at, where it's like this person does not exist. You might not do that to an individual, you might do it to groups of people. In Boston, people pretend children don't even exist. I feel like people treat dogs better than children when you're out and about. People call dogs, "This is my son, and I'm a dad to this." Don't do that, because words matter, and that's your dog.

Ageism, where it's like a certain age of a person, now you no longer like. "You are not a category of a person to me." That's the dehumanization that he's getting at by saying the insult, rhaka. And then He says, "If you call someone a fool," mōros, what does Jesus mean here? Because Jesus often calls groups of people fools. He calls the Pharisees fools. Matthew 23:17. "You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?" Luke 24:25. "And He said to them, 'O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!'" Jesus does use this term, fool, but then He says, "Don't call your brother a fool." What's going on here? Well, like I said in the very beginning, it's a matter of the heart, the posture of the heart. Is your posture of heart in saying a certain word towards a certain person, is the posture full of love or hate? Are you hoping to be helpful or hurtful? Jesus is saying, "I want to help you Pharisees. I want to turn you from the way of folly to the way of wisdom."

The whole book of Proverbs is about this, about groups of people who are fools, that it leads to brokenness of life. He wants to turn them from that by calling a spade, a spade. It's all about the heart. Heidelberg Catechism says, "I am not to dishonor, hate, injure, or kill my neighbor by thoughts, words, or gestures," important to emphasize that, "And much less by deeds." This is what Jesus is talking about, this anger that leads to insults that leads to name-calling, verbal abuse. Did you know that murder is not one of the deadly sins? Which doesn't really make sense. Why wouldn't murder be one of the deadly sins? Murder isn't, wrath is. It's this anger that gets you to the point where you don't want this person to exist, and Jesus says, "Be careful," because that anger that's a hellacious anger, and that's why He connects all this, anger, hatred, insults, calling someone a fool, He connects it with hell. Liable to judgment. And then, He talks about fires of hell. Hell of fire, Gehenna. What He's referring to is a garbage heap outside of Jerusalem. Famous garbage heap. At one time, this is where human sacrifices were made to the pagan deity, Moloch, and then King Josiah comes in, makes religious reforms, and now it was just a garbage heap.

But even at the time of Jesus, when the Romans decided that a person was unworthy of burial, they would bring the person to this garbage heap and they would be burned. Jesus is saying, "This is a visible representation of hell, of a place of eternal conscious suffering where, if you do not repent of this sin, if this sin wasn't paid for on the cross of Christ, this sin will be paid for for all of eternity in hell." Why does He say that? He's talking about words, calling someone a fool, insulting a person, anger at a person. The penalty for that is hell. And Jesus says, "Yes, because in insulting an image bearer of God and dehumanizing a human, you are sinning, transgressing against a holy God, in whose image they're made." This shows us the importance of repenting of our sin and turning to Christ.

And it also shows us that we've got to be very careful with our words, because you can break a person with words. Proverbs 18:14. "A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?" There's warnings all throughout the New Testament about this kind of anger. Galatians 5:19-21. We have the fruit of the flesh. "Now, the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God." Meaning, if you struggle with these fits of anger, that is a sign that you potentially are not yet a regenerated believer, a sign that you do not have the Holy Spirit, and it's a sign that you need to repent of sin and turn to Christ. Ephesians 4:26. "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil." He's saying, "This anger, unrighteous anger, if it's allowed to fester, it gives Satan the opportunity to come in and stick his finger into it, exacerbating that anger, leading to more brokenness in relationships."

Ephesians 4:31. "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." James 1:19-20. "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God." Angry thoughts, insulting words may never lead ultimately to murder, but in God's eyes, they are. They're tantamount to murder. I John 3:15. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Hate is the acorn of murder that, when fertilized and nurtured, can lead potentially to even murder. And the difference is only quantity, not quality.

Here, at this point in the sermon, I'm going to ask you some heart-searching questions. And whenever I listen to a sermon and the pastor says, "I'm going to ask you heart-searching questions," I'm like, "Oh no. Please don't. Two X. Two X. Four X." This is important. Have you ever wished someone were dead? Even yourself. Even anger at yourself. Desire like, "I never asked for this." It's like when kids throw this around, "I wish I were never born." Right there, that is anger toward self, and it needs to be repented of. Suicidal thoughts, you are thinking of killing an image bearer of God. Or even angry thoughts with yourself. Or perhaps it's a relative, or someone close to you. Do you ever say anything just to hurt someone because you know this will hurt? Do you ever take secret satisfaction at another person's misfortune? That's usually a sign that there's an anger or hatred toward them. Do you have an enemy? Someone you are out to get? Do you want to make someone pay for what they've done? Do you ever get so angry that you are out of control? And really, the thing you've got to look for, the canary in the coal mine, is words. Words. When you want to speak things out loud about certain people, that's a sign that there's things going on in the heart that need to be repented of.

Finally, point three is, love takes the first step. What are we to do with that? We are to repent of that anger, the desire to insult. But then, also, the flip side is, we are to make sure that we don't provoke people to anger. There's two things going on here. Don't be angry with another person, but also don't provoke. And that's what's going on in verse 23. "So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put into prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny." The second part is a metaphor where He's going from it's an argument from lesser to greater. If the severity of human punishment is so great, how much more so is punishment of God? He uses that metaphor.

The other metaphor that He uses is one of worship. One legal system, one of worship. And the urgency is so important. Both urgency. If you're going to court, if you're getting sued, you settle so you don't have to pay the ... Especially if you're guilty. And then, with worship, as you're worshiping God, as you're doing the most important thing that we are called to do, there's nothing more important than worshiping God, as you're worshiping God, if you realize that someone has something against you, you are to drop everything, everything and the most important thing, and go and seek reconciliation with the person. Reconciliation isn't guaranteed. As far as it depends on you, you go and you seek reconciliation. Note several things here. It's not a question of whose fault it is. That question is irrelevant. Jesus doesn't single out the guilty party. He insists that both parties take initiative. That's what He's doing here. Each is responsible to make the first move. This is really important.

Whenever I do premarital counseling, I tell every couple, "You're going to get in fights. You're going to get in so many fights. Here's what you do. And listen, this is very important." And they're like, "No, we're getting married. We love each other. We are going to be the exception to the rule. We are going to do it." And I'm like, "No, you're going to get in fights." I do that thing, and after a while, I'm like, "They'll come back for me. We'll chat." This is what I say. I say, "Husband, you are the leader. You. The onus is on you. Jesus, when He saw that we had sinned against God, Jesus, He was perfect, but He's the one that comes and seeks reconciliation. But whenever I do that," and my wife loves listening to premarital counseling, because she's like, "Oh, good. You needed that reminder," but when I do that, I'm like, "Oh, next fight, I've got to be the first one to say I'm sorry. But it's her fault. It's always her fault."

But then, this text, I found out there's a loophole. Men have to lead. Husbands have to lead, but the responsibility is still on both. Man's got to lead, yeah. You've got to do that. You've got to do it. But when the man isn't leading, when the husband isn't leading, the responsibility is on the wife as well. And I see that from Matthew 5 and Matthew 18. Matthew 5 is, "If someone has something against you." You're not even sure. Did I sin against you? What did I do? You go and you deal with it. Matthew 18 is, "If your brother has sinned against you." On the one hand, you have offended, and I'm going to go deal with it. On the other hand, I have been offended. On both sides, whatever happens, the responsibility is on whom to go and seek reconciliation? On you. That's really, whenever you get in a fight, on whose responsibility is it for reconciliation? Me. I am to initiate reconciliation. That's what's going on. And obviously, the hope is both of you are tremendous Christians and you're filled with the Spirit, and you got in a little fight, and then you meet halfway. That's really the hope. And you hug and kiss, and everything's fine. But usually, it's going to be one or the other.

The other thing I just want to mention here is, as we look at this law, as we look at these rules, you have to feel the weight of the impossibility of it, and that's kind of intention. The intention of the law is to be like a mirror where you look into the mirror and you see imperfections, but the law is helpless to fix the imperfections. This is where the law is to bring us to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins. He saw that we are not reconciled with God. He comes and He dies on the cross for our sins. Why did that need to happen? That needed to happen because we insulted God. Remember when I said that to insult someone is to so dehumanize them, you wish they were not? Well, every single one of us has, at some moment, at some point, wished that God were not, which is the greatest insult to God. To wish that He were not, to wish that He were not on His throne, to wish that He were not King, to wish that perhaps He didn't create you, to wish that He did not have moral commandments for you. We have insulted God that much.

And most people, we live as if God doesn't exist. That's how indifferent we are to God. That's how calloused we are to God. God seeing that, that we insulted Him, God comes, and for the people that insulted Him, for His enemies, He lives a perfect life, Jesus Christ, for people that want to murder God. He goes and He lives a perfect life. And then, on the cross, He actually, physically allows people to murder Him as He bears the weight for our sin. The wrath of God. Why does Jesus Christ do all of this? Why does He say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?" Why does He do that? To forgive us. To give us mercy. To give us grace. The very moment that we repent of our sin, of our anger, of our insulting people, of our insulting God, that very moment, He forgives us completely.

Now, if you are a Christian and you know that I've insulted God, but He forgave me, and while I was still an enemy, He died for me, as you see what's happening on the cross, next time someone wrongs you or sins against you, you look to the cross. Yes, this person has insulted me. Yes, this person has sinned against me. How much more so have I sinned against God? So, you go back to God, you get some more mercy, and then you extend mercy to this person. That's how the Gospel gives us strength to keep going.

A few other questions here at the end. If someone has something against you, is it because of something you've said or done, or is it because of something you shouldn't have said or you shouldn't have done? Am I to blame? Have I taken sufficient steps to be reconciled? And if not, am I willing to humble myself and make contact before I take part in Communion today? This is what Jesus has before us. Before we transition to Communion, I said that when God gives us a commandment there's a negative part, do not murder, there's the positive part, love your neighbor as yourself.

And here, I'll end with a quote from Martin Luther, who said this, "This commandment is violated, not only when a person actually does evil, but also when he fails to do good to his neighbor, or though he has the opportunity, fails to prevent, protect, and save him from suffering bodily harm or injury. If you send a person away naked when you could clothe them, you've let them freeze to death. If you saw someone suffer hunger and do not feed them, you have let them starve. Likewise, if you see anyone in similar peril, and do not save him, although you know ways and means to do so, you've killed him. It will do you no good to plead that you did not contribute to his death by word and deed, for you have withheld your life from him and robbed him of the service by which his life might have been saved."

Heidelberg Catechism. "Is it enough then if we do not kill our neighbor in any such way? The answer is no, for when God condemns envy, hatred, anger, He requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to show patience, gentleness, mercy, and friendliness toward him, and to prevent injury to him as much as we can, and also to do good to our enemies."

That said, we transition to Holy Communion. Holy Communion is given to us as a reminder of what Christ did on the cross for us. For whom is Holy Communion? Holy Communion, Lord's Supper, is for the repentant. It's for those who have repented of sin and turned to Jesus Christ by grace through faith. If you are not a Christian, if you have not repented of sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It'll do nothing for you. But if you do repent of your sins today, right now, in prayer to the Lord, you can partake. And then, it's for the repentant Christians, or Christians who have repented of sin. If there's any unrepented sin in your life, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or repent of that sin today in prayer.

Before we take part, I'm going to give us an opportunity to pray. And pray in particular about people whom, perhaps you have hurt, or people who have hurt you, and we can pray about that and seek reconciliation from the heart. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank You for grace. We thank You that, though when we were enemies, You died on the cross for our sins. We thank You for the mercy that you extend to us, and we pray, Lord, if there's anyone in our life now that comes to mind whom we have hurt, perhaps with words or with deeds, we repent of that sin and we ask that you send reconciliation to that relationship, healing. Or perhaps, Lord, there's people who have hurt us, and we hold a grudge against them. I pray, Lord, take that weight or that grudge from our shoulders, from our hearts, and give us a freedom, freedom to forgive them, since You have forgiven us. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You died physically on a cross, bearing the weight of our sin, and that Your blood was poured out in order to cleanse us from the inside, to gives us new hearts, hearts that beat with love and obedience to You. Bless our time in Holy Communion now. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

If you haven't received one of these cups and you'd like to partake in Communion, just raise your hand and one of the ushers will help you. One in the back here. Two in the back right there. And for the rest, you can take the top little piece of plastic off. Grab the bread, and then pull the second piece of plastic off. "On the night that He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, and after breaking, He said, 'This is my body, broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of Me.' He then proceeded to take the cup, and He said, 'This cup is the cup of new covenant of My blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of Me.'"

Jesus, thank You for the grace that You extend to us, and I pray that that grace is not in vain, but as Saint Paul said, he worked harder than all of them. It wasn't him, but the grace of God in me, so we pray that You give us strength to fight the good fight, and to work out our salvation and love our neighbor as ourself by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you and do that through the connection card, either in the worship guide or in the app or online. If you fill it out, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week. With that said, would you please pray with me with the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a God of revelation, that you reveal yourself to us through creation and that you reveal yourself to us through the word of God, the holy scriptures. And the holy scriptures point us to the culmination of world history of the scriptures, which is Jesus Christ. We thank you, Christ, that you're the son of God. You came and you fulfilled the law of God.

You, the word of God, fulfilled the word of God. And we thank you for living a perfect life, a righteous life, a holy life as you fulfilled the law. And we thank you for dying on the cross, paying the penalty that we deserve to pay for our law breaking so that when we repent and turn to you by grace, through faith, you extend to us the blessing that you deserved for your law abiding.

We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us today, that you have written these holy scriptures. We pray, reveal them to us and make us a people who live according to your will because we have new hearts that desire to honor you, new hearts that are filled with gratitude for the work that you've given us, new hearts that are filled with love for you.

We want to honor you, and we want to worship you with our lives and make us a people who are truly salt and light, who influence the corruption in this world and the darkness, and make us a people who are used by you to extend your kingdom and draw many into the kingdom of God. And we pray all this in Christ's name, amen. So SNL had a little skit last night, it was called What Still Works. That's what it was called, What Still Works.

And the correspondent was sitting there and then she had guests come in about what still works and the first one was a guest representing the government. And the guest comes in and well, does the government still work? Clearly two seconds in, no, the government does not work. She leaves. Then the next one was does social media still work? And it was Mark Zuckerberg and the Twitter guy, what's his name? Jack Dorsey.

There's a second sermon, the brain's not as fresh. Holy Spirit, please fix that. Jack Dorsey, they come in, or are actors playing them and then obviously social media definitely doesn't work. And then they're like, "Does the stock market still work?" And the majority owner of GameStop shows up and she's like, "Hey, shouldn't your stock represent the value of your company, which is like $17?"

He's like, "No, it should be $400." And she's like, "What do you guys do?" They're like, "We sell video games, physical video games." Does anyone buy physical video games? No, they download them all. Are you good at what you do? No, so he leaves. Then Tom Brady walks in, what still works? Tom Brady comes in, played by John Krasinski, love that guy. Tom Brady comes in, sits down and she's like, "Tom Brady, you're going to your 10th Super Bowl."

Now, if you don't know me, I'm a big fan of Tom Brady. We had a little falling out when he left New England Patriots. But I clearly learned that my love for Tom Brady is there because I believe in fidelity. And by the way, Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl when I was a freshman in college. So that tells you something. So he comes and she's like, "Tom Brady, you clearly still work, what still works? You work, Tom Brady works."

And so he gets into that whole thing. And as she did that, that's kind of beside... the reason why I bring that up is because I remember listening to the interview of Tom Brady because I'm fascinated with really successful people and learning about their mindset. And in one interview they asked him, "Why are you so good when there's two minutes left in the game, moments of greatest pressure, why do you show up?"

And you know what he said? He said, "I remind myself of who I am." He said, "I tell myself, you are Tom Brady, be who you are, do what you do." And that mindset is so powerful in particular for the Christian life. And this is what Jesus Christ does in this section of the Sermon on the Mount. We're in a series in the Sermon on the Mount that we are going through till Easter. And this is the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever preached, Jesus Christ.

And so in the first section in the beatitudes, in the first four of the beatitudes, he showed us how to enter the kingdom of God through repentance, poverty of spirit, mourning over sin, growing in weakness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness and then he showed us how we grow as disciples. But here, this section is crucial because he here gives us an identity.

He says, this is who you are, you are salt and light. And in the rest of the series, the rest of the sermon, he's going to show us how that looks like practically. Here he speaks our identity over us, you are salt and light. And why is this important? It's important because he here is telling us that we have a job, this is our job description, and our job description is to influence the world around us.

We are salt, meaning we are thrown into social decay around us and we need to fight the putrefying effect of sin on our society. The world is prevailing in darkness and we, as Christians are called to illuminate society showing a better way. And I say that because a lot of Christians in particular, when they move to Boston, they realize that they are one of the only Christians in whatever sphere they're in.

We have a temptation to back off, we have a temptation to say, you know what? I'm just going to focus to make sure I don't lose my saltiness, my saltness. I'm just going to focus on myself, on my walk, on my private relationship with Jesus so my light isn't snuffed out. And this mindset of just mere survival is not what God calls us to. In particular, in this place, God has called you here to Boston, Massachusetts. This is a place of particular darkness, spiritually speaking, particular societal decay and we have a job to do, and that's what the text is all about. So would you look at the text with me? This is Matthew 5:13 through 20, Matthew 5:13 through 20. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets, I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does them and teaches them, will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never or enter the kingdom of God. This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to bring up our time, talking about good workers, salt and light, great worker, that's the law fulfilled and three good work, law and lifestyle. First of all, good workers, salt and light. Jesus calls his disciples to himself through repentance, they repent. He says, "Follow me. I will make you fishers of men." They're now the disciples of Jesus Christ and he gives them an identity, marching orders, if you will, that's verse 13.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. What does it mean to be salt? It's not to be confused with being salty like in New England. There are a lot of people, we're all salty in New England, just a little irritable, just a little angry, just mad at something all the time, salty. We had fresh snow this week, it was wonderful. My girl, they love snow, they love it. We're out in the park. After I finished my day where I took them to the park, the Rose Garden here off of St. Paul, I got my youngest in the sled. I'm running around with her. She is having a ball, the time of her life, obviously screaming because she's a Vezikov girl, they're loud.

A lady comes, crosses the street, comes up to the fence, "Excuse me, sir. Could you tell your kids to keep it down? I'm trying to have a nice dinner." I did not know her name, but we all know her name. Then she says, "I can call the cops on you because you're in the park after dusk." At this moment, my wife starts pulling me away. Why? Because she knows that my natural reaction to saltiness is to respond with saltiness, not saltness.

Jesus is saying, he's not saying you're the saltiness of the earth, he's saying you're the salt, you are salt. What does it mean that you are salt? Well, salt had two main purposes in the ancient times, flavor, make things taste good, but also more importantly preservation. They didn't have refrigeration, that was only meant to be a hundred years ago. They canned foods, that was about 200 years ago.

So preservation, to keep specifically meat from rotting. So the disciples of Jesus Christ, Christians are to have a preservative effect on culture, to keep culture from rotting. Yes, we are to delight culture. There needs to be a flavor that's different about us that draws people to us in the same way that people were delighted by Jesus. And then Jesus, that's the love, but then Jesus will speak truth, grace truth.

And the truth was to keep the society from rotting. Here he says that salt can lose its salinity if it loses its taste. Pure salt can't lose its salinity if it's chemically stable. But the salt in Judea, Galilee, it wasn't pure. The way that they derived or harvested salt was to take water from the Dead Sea and they will put in a pit and let it evaporate and then they would take the salt out of it.

And because it took so much work to get salt, salt was very valuable, even used as a medium of exchange. We kind of take salt for granted. But Jesus here says, this is who you are, you're salt. He also says you are the light of the world. Verse 14, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house.

Jerusalem was perched on Mount Zion, Rome was built on seven hills, which cities he's talking about, we're not sure. But the best cities were always high up for security purposes. And when people are living in the city, there's lights and that light emanates in the same way with in a house, he's saying that you light a lamp and you don't hide it, you don't put it in a basket or under a bowl. Why?

What's the point of light? It's to illuminate, it's to make visible, it's to shine into darkness. And certain lights also provide growth. Sun, sunlight can tan skin and stimulates the formation of vitamin D and sets biological rhythm. It's used in treatment of disease and depression. It energizes, cheers, reflects, brightens, it disinfects. And it's fast, we talk about the speed of light.

The point here is both are indispensable. We need salt and we need light. And the rest of the sermon, Jesus explains how to be salt and how to be light. Here, he's speaking identity to his disciples, he's speaking a powerful word of identity over them. He's not saying you should be salt, or you should be light. Think this is who you are. It's a powerful word of identity.

And by the way, this is an incredible parenting hack if you're a parent, for all the parents in the room. And not even... this is like a human hat, you got to speak identity over the people... I do it with my kids all the time. My youngest, she's three. She's one of the hardest, she was the hardest. But this is what I speak over her, "Milana, you are the most obedient girl. You are my most obedient daughter. You are so obedient. You will listen to everything your dad says."

And I speak it into it, it's kind of like brainwashing or programming, but everything else, brainwashing or programming, so I want to do the good thing. That's what parenting is, you actually got to teach your kids stuff. And this is how God... where did I learn that lesson? This is how God actually, he tells us to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Why? By speaking truth. This is who you are, now be who you are.

And what's fascinating is if you study languages, some languages like English or German, word order is important. Other languages like Russian, word order isn't important. That's why Germans are very organized and meticulous and they care about details. And Russians are like, "Man, whatever goes." And language, it was kind of like it's fluid. Like in English, you can't... it's I love you, it's not love I you or you I love, that's weird.

In Russian, you can go "ya lyublyu vas", "kogo ya lyublyu", "lyublyu ya tebya". Greek is like that as well. And the way it's so fluid and the way that you emphasize stuff in written Greek is you put it first. And here he says in verse 13 and verse 14, you, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. That's who you are. It's not the Pharisees, it's not the scribes, it's not people of other religions, it's not politicians. That's how he changes is the world ultimately, it's you Christians.

Christians change the world, be who you are. Light can't but illuminate, salt can't but preserve and season. He doesn't say, bring salt with you, bring light with you. He says, this is who you are, and wherever you go, you are salt and light. You live a life that looks different, that tastes different and don't lose your savor, don't lose your difference. Because as soon as you lose your difference, you lose your influence.

We influence because we're different. Salt is not meat, that's why it's so effective. Light is not darkness. A lot of churches today have absolutely zero influence on the world because they are the world, they have no salt, they have no light. And what's Jesus saying here? He's saying the world is decaying and it's dark.

There's corruption in the world, there's rot in the world and there's a deep darkness that you can cut through with a knife. And here I add this whole section written out by statistics about darkness and corruption, perversion, sexually in our culture people just addicted, absolutely addicted to sexual pleasure and others making so much money off of it. Obviously they want us addicted, darkness, financial darkness and corruption, political darkness and corruption.

It's all around us. And God says, you are salt and you are light. And the answer to the rot and rotting of the human light, the darkness is be who you are. That's his answer. Sometimes people come to me like, "There is so much darkness in the world, what do we do, how can we fight this?" And Jesus answers be who you are, be salt and be light, be distinct, think different, act different, dream different live different.

Our difference from the world gives us influence in the world. When people live... so he talks about salt and light and then afterwards in a sermon, he gives us practical examples in the most important areas of our life, how we can be different. And then in this context, he says, you are a city set on a hill. And what he's saying is you are a city within a city, you're a people within a people, you're a kingdom within a kingdom.

Which is just tricky because we live here, we navigate with people around us and some people around us are in the kingdom of God and some people are not. We're resonant aliens, we're citizens of the kingdom of heaven, but we're still here as ambassadors, as change agents. And what we do is by living the life that he calls us to live, we influence the people around us as a city set on a hill.

And what do we do? We need to let our light shine, this is Matthew 5:16. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. So how do we bring salt? How do we bring light into the world? In the same way Jesus did. What did Jesus do? He, through the incarnation, came and lived. He lived a certain life, he spoke truth, but he also lived a certain life.

That's how we shine the light. That's how we attract attention to the glory of God, through our good works. Now here, I need to pause because a lot of people think when they hear good works, they hear good deeds like a one-off every once in a while. Like if you're at Dunkin' Donuts and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to do a good deed. I'm going to pay for the people behind." That pay it forward. Or, "I'm going to go work at a soup kitchen, I'm going to do something good, I'm going to do a good deed." That's not what he's talking about.

Because the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, he doesn't say, here's what the good deeds look like, give someone money, et cetera. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount is about a lifestyle, about a life you live. God doesn't need your little one-offs to pay him off and get them off your back. He said, no, you're part of the kingdom. You are a servant of God. You're an ambassador of the king. You are a change agent. I want you to live a certain way.

As a lifestyle, this is your good works, this is the way you shine the light of Christ. John 8:12, Jesus himself is the light. Jesus spoke to them saying, "I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." This is what it means to follow Jesus. You will follow me, you will walk with me and you will walk in the light. And the purpose is to attract attention to God, not to parade our own virtue or virtue signal.

Titus 2:10, so that in everything, they may adorn, dress up the doctrine of God, our savior. The point is not for us to be praised for our life and our good works, but the point is to create legitimacy to our words. When I speak of words of Christ, people believe them because they see my lifestyle. I've created a plausibility structure with my life. That's what Jesus is calling us to.

Here Jesus pauses from the good workers and we get to the greater worker. He brings it in gospel of the law fulfilled. So you are salt and light, we do that through your lifestyle. But before I tell you that you must live like that, I want you to know that you must live like that because you are part of the kingdom, and you're part of the kingdom because I fulfilled the law.

We are saved. We're in the kingdom, not because of our righteousness, but because of his. We are not accepted because we were righteous, we are accepted because he is righteous and we repented of our sin and righteousness. So here he gives us the gospel, which then just is the motivation for our good works. So the greater worker, law fulfilled, Jesus Christ came to work.

Verse 17, do not think that I've come to abolish the law over the prophets. I haven't come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Jesus Christ came to work. Jesus Christ was the greatest worker who ever lived. And by work, I mean fulfilling the will of God. The disciples would come to him and say, "Jesus it's time to eat." And he says, "I have food that you do not know of, it's to do the work of God. While it's still day, I'm going to work" Jesus' work.

What's fascinating is Caleb read the passage in Matthew 11:20 through 30 where it says the words of Christ, come on to me all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest, rest for your souls and take up my yoke upon you, take my yoke upon you. It's so fascinating. Yoke is two animals harnessed, harnessed for what? To plow a field.

So Jesus is talking about rest in the context of work. Come, I will give you rest and I'm going to give you a job because he is yoked to do the will of God. And we find rest for our souls when we're working with God, doing the work of God. And that's what Jesus came to do, to fulfill the law and the prophets, not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.

By law and the prophets, he's talking about all of the Hebrew scriptures. This is how the religious leaders of the day talked about the Hebrew scriptures. The legalistic Pharisees and scribes accused Jesus, because Jesus talked about grace and forgiveness, they accused Jesus of abolishing the law.

And Jesus here is saying, "I didn't come to abolish, I came to fulfill." What does that mean? What does that mean? Because it doesn't say obey, he doesn't say, I've come to obey. He doesn't say, I've come to keep. He says, I've come to fulfill. It includes obey and keep, but it's more than that. Fulfill means more than just obey and keep. So what does God mean, what does Christ mean by saying I fulfill?

Because this is important and you need to have a theology of grace and law, especially in the new testament, because a lot of Christians do not. A lot of Christians believe, oh, I'm saved by grace through faith, Jesus forgives me of my sins, I can live any way I want, come back to him anytime I need forgiveness and continue the cycle and then I end up at heaven. That's a false, false theology of law.

Christ is king of the law, obviously because he's king. And he demonstrates there's a certain sovereignty over the law in the old testament. For example, on some occasions, he cancels the law from the old testament concerning the clean and unclean foods. And this is important because a lot of people who reject an inerrancy of scripture, they say, "Well, Christians are inconsistent because they say homosexuality is wrong, that's from the law of God, but they eat shrimp and pork, which isn't allowed in the old testament."

And they just combine all of the laws into one category of it's all law. Well, what every Christian needs to know is there're three kinds of laws in the old testament. There's the civil law, the civil code given to Israel as a nation state under God. Are we Israel as a nation state under God? No. So that law does not apply to us. And the second part of the law is the ceremonial law which had to do with the dietary codes and also included the sacrificial laws given to us and all of that, the sacrificial laws and the diet, that all was typology pointing to Christ, and Christ fulfills that law.

They pointed to Christ, like the Passover lamb. If you had the blood of the Passover lamb over your doorpost, the angel of death passed over your household. Well, that was a sign of Jesus Christ, the lamb of God who died on the cross for our sin. And if we are in him by grace through faith, then condemnation passes over us. There is no condemnation who is in him. So Jesus fulfills, he fulfills that part of the law. That's what it means, I came to fulfill it, I came to die as a sacrificial lamb.

And then the third part of law is the moral code, the 10 commandments. And every single one of the 10 commandments is still enforced for Christians because every single one of them is repeated in the new testament except for the fourth commandment about keeping the Sabbath because Jesus Christ is our Sabbath.

The principle of Sabbath is there and we are to celebrate the Sabbath and keep it, but we do that on Sundays as Christians because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that part of the law, Jesus fulfills in that he perfectly obeyed it. And Jesus obeyed that law perfectly, a moral code, the 10 commandments, he fulfilled it perfectly because we could not and we would not.

And then he goes to a cross to die as a penalty for our sins so that he could offer to us when we repent of our sins, the righteousness that he earned, the blessing that he earned for law keeping and he took upon himself the curse that we deserve for our law breaking. First Corinthians 7:9, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.

So Jesus came to fulfill the prophecy and the ceremonial law and to fulfill the 10 commandments because we did not, could not. And then Matthew 5:18 for truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. What's Jesus' view here of the Hebrew scripture? He believes it's God's word.

What's fascinating here is the word truly, in the King James Version, it's the word verily. And Jesus often would say, verily, verily, I say unto you and people are like, "What's he doing?" In the Greek it's the word amḗn, amen. And I remember doing a deep dive in seminary study, why did Jesus Christ put amen at the beginning of his teachings, at the beginning of his sentence, not at the end? Did anyone else do that of the teachers of the age? No.

Jesus was the only one who would speak this way. And he speaks like this often. In Matthew, this occurs 31 times, in John it's 25 times. Why is that important? Because the prophets in the old testament, they came and they said, thus, saith the Lord, this is what God says. Jesus Christ doesn't come saying, "This is what God says." He comes what? I say. Truly, I say. What's going on? He is God.

And what does God believe about the Hebrew scriptures? That not one iota, not one dot, not one of the smallest letter, not one of the smallest marks of all the holy scripture will ever pass away, meaning it's eternal. God's word is eternal. Even when the world will come to an end, the holy scriptures will not, they're permanent. That's why at Mosaic we believe that the holy scriptures are God's word, inherent, infallible, authoritative.

We love God's word because Jesus loved God's word. And then Jesus believed that about the old testament and then Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit that inspires the writers of the new testament to give us the holy scriptures. So because of what Jesus did on the cross, when we believe in him and repent of our sins, we enter the kingdom of God.

And when we enter the kingdom of God, now he gives us a work to do, he gives us a new identity, you're salt and light, and then he tells us what that means, and that's point three, good work, law and lifestyle. So be who you are. It's not just about one off. Okay, I'm going to influence someone here or I'm going to shine a little light on this conversation. No, it's about a lifestyle. And that lifestyle is to keep the commandments, that's God's will for our life.

Matthew 5:19, Jesus says whoever relaxes, therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. First of all, I want to point out there's levels in the kingdom of God, levels of obedience, levels of usefulness, levels of influence. There's great and greater, and then there's lesser.

And that doesn't feel good to our egalitarian sensibilities, but it's just the case that if you are not an obedient Christian, you're not very useful. And God says, "Yeah, okay, you're not a useful servant." It's just like with kids, I was meditating on this. You can't love one kid more than another, or at least you can't say it out loud. So I don't rank them in that, but I do rank them in obedience.

And I know who the easiest one is and who the hardest this one is. And here's what I don't want you to get from this. I don't want you to read this text and say, "Oh, I can be disobedient and still remain in the kingdom of God." Because you can get that from here. You're still in the kingdom of God, but you got to balance that out with other scriptures like Hebrews 12, where God is a good father and when his kids are disobedient, he disciplines them.

And if you're just obedient, you don't get less of the attention of God, the father, you get more, but the attention is the attention of discipline. That's the first thing I want to point out here. The second thing I want to point out is that there are weightier matters in the law and less weightier matters in the law. The commandments concerning the care... in the old testament, the commandments concerning care of people and of birds. And Jesus says you are more important than the birds.

In verse 20, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So he just talked about disciples who are obedient, they're greater, disobedient, they're lesser. And then he talks about the Pharisees, that your righteousness needs to be more than the Pharisees who are not in the kingdom.

So there's three categories here. There's obedient people in the kingdom, disobedient people in the kingdom and the Pharisees who aren't even in the kingdom. What's going on here? Why aren't the Pharisees in the kingdom? The Pharisees were the religious elites and the Pharisees believed that the way into the kingdom of God was to earn it, was to be obedient to God's law.

So this is what they did. They were meticulous observers of the law's requirements, in particular, of the letter of the law. They simply followed the regulations governing outward behavior. They poured over the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible and they found 613 commandments, 248 positive, do this, and then 365 negative, don't do this. And they took those commandments, they dissected them without end and they then create collateral regulations, or they took the commandments and they built a fence around it with their own regulations.

And this is what the Mishnah is, the compilation of these unending regulations. And they focused on the superficial parts of the law, the easy stuff to fulfill. So for example, with the tithe, God commanded the tithe. They said, "Okay, we'll tithe." And they tithe so scrupulously that Jesus says, "You tithe of your till and your cumin and of your spice rack, but you forgot the foundational weighty matters of the law is faithfulness, love and mercy."

So they were fulfilling the letter of law, not the heart of the law, because their heart wasn't with God. They weren't in the kingdom because they did not have a heart of flesh, they had a heart of stone. And this is what Jesus says. He's saying you cannot enter the kingdom of God through your own work. No matter how righteous you are, you become a child of God, you become a citizen of the kingdom by repenting of your sin.

And the moment that you repent of your sin, God forgive me for my law breaking, God forgive me for not doing your will, God forgive me for choosing sin over you, God forgive me, when you repent, God gives you a new heart, a heart of flesh. So even if as a baby Christian or when you're unhealthy spiritually, when you are being disobedient to God, you still have that heart and you're still in the kingdom.

And what happens is even those people, God continues to work on you and fills you with the Holy Spirit. And as you do, as you grow in that, you begin to grow into faithless. In Matthew 5:16 he says, in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. It's your father, God's your father.

God adopts you into his family. And he will work on our obedience. And the more obedient we are, the better we make our father look, and more attention we attract to him. First Peter 2:11 and 12, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passion of the flesh which wage war against your sin. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

We are to attract... And this is all to say, why does Jesus do all of this before he gives us all of the rest of the teaching? What he is saying is you can't earn your salvation by keeping the law. You can only be given salvation by trusting in Jesus Christ, but then after you do the law is still in place. And the law is in place to guide our lifestyle, to show us how to be who we are, how to be salt and light.

This is very important because this is what the Pharisee said and this was a lot of people said to that. The Pharisee said, "No, no, no. You can't just be saved by grace through faith. You can't just be saved by repenting of sin because then people won't keep the commandments." That's what a lot of people say today. You can't just say that you're saved by repentance and faith. Because Christians, they won't keep the commandments.

And Jesus is saying, no, you don't understand what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a Christian is to become a new creation, to be a child of God, to become a citizen of the kingdom where you can't but be who you are, which is salt and light. So that's what happened there. And then so the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us what the transformed life looks like.

Jesus tells us what it means to be salt and light. And what he means is that new heart that God gave you, you live that out. So with the commandments, you live out the heart of the commandment, the spirit of the commandment, not just the letter. So for example, he starts with the commandment, you've heard it was said, don't kill anybody.

But I say to you, whoever, whoever even attacks a person with their tongue, whoever hates a person, I'm telling you already killed that person because you killed their humanity. Now you see the weight of this. And the next one that you've heard that it was said, thou shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman or upon another person with lust for them in your heart, you've already transgressed that commandment, you've committed adultery.

So as we see that, we're like, "Ah, that's the life we're supposed to live. But ah, I've transgressed this so many times." At the same time, the Sermon on the Mount shows us the way of Jesus and shows us our need for Jesus. Jesus, I can't live like this apart from you, please forgive me. He forgives us, fills us with the spirit and gives us power to live like this. That's the cycle.

He talks about marriage and divorce, that God's will for marriage is one man, one woman, one covenant and one lifetime. And it's not God's will for a divorce to happen. He talks about monogamy fidelity. He talks about our words, don't swear by anything. You've heard that it was said do not bear false witness. I say to you speak, yes as your yes, no and no. Speak as if you're always under oath. That's what God cares about truth.

He talks about retaliation and loving your enemies. If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek, and we'll talk about that. He talks about generosity and mercy ministry. Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing so that you're not virtue signaling what a good person I am. You do it to help the person because God has helped you. God's given you generosity, you give generosity to others.

He talks about prayer and fasting. And we do it not so people think we're righteous, we do it because we love our father and we want to have a conversation where we desire God more than anything and more than even food. He talks about possessions, not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but in heaven. Where's your main portfolio, where's your real wealth? It's in heaven, now, it's in ministry.

So we see everything's upside down, this is the upside down kingdom. Anxiety teaches us, don't worry in its command. There's good anxiety where we worry about the kingdom of God and seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness instead of worrying about food and clothing, et cetera. This is what he means by be who you are. He saves us, we're in the kingdom, we are salt and light. This is what it means to be salt and light, be who you are.

Acts 1:8, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Sumeria and to the end of the year. God fills us with the Holy Spirit as Christians and we now are his witnesses. So be who you are. And we witness the truth, the voracity of God by living it out with our own life. People do not see God, they see God through us. They don't see the light of God, they see the light of God through us.

So the Sermon on the Mount tells us, put your life where your mouth... put your money where your mouth is, put your life where your mouth is. Are you a Christian, are you're a follower of God? Then be who you are. Benjamin Franklin used to go to the big rallies of George Whitfield even in Boston. In Boston Common, George Whitfield had 30,000 people that he was preaching to.

And Ben Franklin would show up and people would ask him, "Ben Franklin, are you a Christian? Do you believe what George Whitfield is saying?" He says, "I don't come because I believe what he's saying, I come because I believe that he believes what he's saying. He speaks with such conviction, he believes what he's saying." Christians, do you believe this? If so, be who you are.

And it all starts with loving the law of God just like Jesus loved the law of God. Psalm 119:97, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. C.S. Lewis says the order of the divine mind embodied in the divine law is beautiful. What should a man do but try to reproduce it so far as possible in his daily life. Why do we love the law of God? Jesus did, but it's also the law, his word is a reflection of himself. We love him, we love it.

And it shows us how to be holy as he is holy and to love God is to be like him. Today or this week, in conclusion, when you have some steak, you take the salt shaker and you pour salt onto the steak or Brussels sprouts or together, those two together, a match made in heaven, and you pour salt on it, I want you to be reminded of the fact that's who you are. And you have the light on, obviously no one eats delicious steak in the dark.

You have the light on, be reminded that you are the light of the world. We're not pepper, we're not sugar, we are salt called to preserve and fend off decay, called to heal and soothe, called to bring flavor, enhance other flavors. And we're light, so let us walk in the light as children of the light, showing the world a better way, the only way, the way of Jesus Christ, the way of the gospel.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the reminder that you have given us a new identity, that we are children of God, we are servants of the king, we are ambassadors of God, ministers of reconciliation, and we're also change agents called to influence the corruption, decay, the darkness of this world by living out our identity according to your holy scriptures.

And Jesus, we thank you for this incredible sermon. We thank you that you have come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it, and you call us to live according to your word, in a manner worthy of the gospel. I pray that you give us strength to do that. And I pray Lord that through us, through each member of this church, through each listener of this word, I pray you continue to use us to influence this dark and decaying area and transfer many into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of your beloved son, Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you would like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning and welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic and if you're new or visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here and we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card, either in the worship guide or you can get it online or in the app. Fill it out, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week.

With that said, would you please pray with me of the preaching of God's word.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are God and that you are in control. You're absolutely sovereign. There is not one detail in the history of the universe that is not under your control. We thank you for that. We thank you, Jesus, that you are king. You are king of kings and you are lord of lords. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that it is through you by your power that, God, you reign. Lord, we thank you that you are in control and we thank you for the blessing it is to live in this country. We do pray for this country. We thank you for the peaceful transition of power and we do pray for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. We pray for them because you told us to pray for our rulers and our authorities.

We pray that you infuse them with your wisdom. We pray that they are agents of good to promote good and to curb evil and not vice versa. We pray that you give them your super imposing sovereign, holy spirit as you guide them. Holy Spirit, in the scriptures, you tell us that the hearts of kings and rulers and those in authority are like water in your hands. I pray, guide them to do your will. I pray, Lord, that remind us that our citizenship, our greatest citizenship, isn't here, it's not in the United States, it's in heaven, that we are citizens of a greater kingdom, serving a greater king. And Lord, Jesus, you are king over us and I pray that you grow our submission to you, not a submission that comes through drudgery, but a submission that comes through delight because we love you and thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins, to save us from our sins. Bless our time. The holy scripture is right now. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We, today, are starting a brand new sermon series through the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher to have ever preached, Jesus Christ. One of the unfortunate lapses in the American church is that most of our theology as Christians is taught us in Sunday School and then past Sunday School, past graduation, we don't really read our own Bibles, we don't really study theology and the language that we are given in Sunday School is language that we continue to use when we think of God. And one of the most unfortunate phrases is, let Jesus into your heart. Very unfortunate phrase.

By the way, in the Russian church, there is no such thing because they read the Bible. No. Jesus not once says to anybody, individuals, please let me into your heart. Please. Pretty please. One time in the Book of Revelation, Jesus is standing outside knocking, outside of what, a person's heart? No. Outside of a church. Jesus is standing outside of a church that forgot Jesus. They left Jesus outside. They started flying different flags, not the flag of Jesus. Jesus never says, "Hey, please let me into your heart so I can be your personal savior." He never does that. How does Jesus call people to salvation? We learned that last week. What does he say? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent because the king is here. Jesus never said, please let me into your heart. Instead, Jesus said, "Enter into my kingdom." And you do that through repentance.

Christianity is actually life of submission to the king fueled by gratitude. God, you my great king died for me. You saved me. We're fueled by gratitude and love for the king. That's how Jesus talks about entering into a relationship with him, by entering into a kingdom where, yes, it is a realm, but it's also under the reign of Jesus. That's how Jesus talked to Nicodemus. Nicodemus said, how can I get to heaven? How can I have eternal life? Jesus said, "Unless you are born again, you can't see the kingdom or you can't enter the kingdom." Born again and repentance, that happens together. Jesus is a super natural king. When you become a Christian, when you repent, you enter into his reign and in that reign is a new administration.

Just like with the new president, we have a new administration. New policies. 17 new executives orders. That's what happens when you become a Christian. Sermon on the Mount, Jesus issuing his executive orders. And he doesn't have to go through Congress or the Senate, because the king of God is not a democracy. We don't vote. He's the king, he tells us what to do. That's what the Sermon on the Mount is all about.

Today, we're going to look at the beatitude. It's called the beatitudes because it's from the Latin, beatus, it means blessing. We're going to look at the blessings of what it means to be in the kingdom of God. Here he gives us characteristics of a Christian and we are to look at these characteristics and these traits and say, "Am I growing in these?" They are kind of like Paul's nine fruits of the spirit in Galatians. "Am I producing the fruits of the spirit by the power of the spirit?" Today, we're looking at the Sermon on the Mount. We're in Matthew 5:1-12. Matthew 5:1-12 where Jesus gives us the introduction of what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of God. Would you look at the text with me?

Matthew 5:1-12. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called, sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in Heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

This is the reading of God's holy and errant infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. We look at the blessing of citizenship. We'll look at entering the kingdom and then grow as a citizen of the kingdom of God, blessing of citizenship. If you don't know, I wasn't born here, I was born in the Soviet Union. When my parents immigrated here in 1989, they had to get naturalized as citizens, five years in the whole process, and they kind of forgot to file the paperwork for me. When I wanted to travel and get a passport, when I was out of high school, I had to apply for citizenship of this country. I had to go through the naturalization process. I had to take the test. I had to learn about the rules. I had to learn about some of the facts. How many stars are on the flag? 50. How many stripes? How many stripes, citizens?

13.

Very good. Representing what? The colonies. Very good, you are. You had to go through a process to become a citizen. In the same way, Jesus, here first, before he talks about becoming a citizen, he gives us the benefits of being a citizen of the kingdom of God. And the benefits are the blessings. He gives us the blessings. Here it's blessedness. In Aramaic and Hebrew, this is an exclamation. It's not just stating a fact, it's exclamation that this is what it means to live the blessed life, like in Psalm 1:1. Asherē this is the same exclamation is used. Blessed is the manner. Oh, the blessedness of a person, of a man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers. They are not simply statements, they are exclamations.

Exclamations because they are shocking in that they are full of such rich theology and also the blessedness of the presence of God. In the Greek, blessed is makarius. Cyprus was called the island of makarius. The island of God-like joy, they talked about it. It's an island that was lovely, it's rich, it's fertile. People that lived there, lived a perfectly happy life. That's the same word that Jesus used here, makarius. It's fortune, it's joy, it's gladness. It's much deeper than just happiness. It's untouchable. It's self-contained. It's independent of circumstances unlike the very flimsy American English word, happy. The root is hap, which means chance, like happenstance. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about something much deeper. He's talking about that for which everybody is pursuing, this deep joy, gladness, blessedness.

One of my favorite quotes about happiness comes from Blaise Pascal, the great 17th century Frenchman of letter, mathematician, philosopher. He was also Christian. And in his ponce, he writes, all man, all people seek happiness. This is without exception, whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end, the cause of some going to war and others avoiding it. It is the same desire in both attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves. Seeking happiness, seeking this blessedness. We don't even know what this is, but we seek it. We use the word happiness, it's deeper than that. Happiness is dependent on changes and chances. Whatever life gives, life can take away. Blessedness is untouchable, it's unassailable, because it's grounded in something immutable. Happiness is emotional, it's mental, it's subjective. Blessedness is a condition of one's life. It's objective.

Happiness is about getting to a position in life. If I get the job, if I get the career, if I have enough money, if I have the house, if I have the spouse. If I have the lifestyle, that's happiness. It's a position of life and blessedness is a lot deeper. It's not a position of life, it's a posture of heart, which then gives us a disposition toward life that allows us to handle whatever comes. And that's why Jesus talks about joy so often, a joy that no one will take away. John 16:22. Also, you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you. Blessedness isn't a state of mind, it's a state of soul. If you get your soul in this place of blessedness, no matter what happens in your life, you can get through it. You have the spiritual resources to get through it. You can have joy in the midst of pain. Joy which sorrow lost, pain, grief, or powerless to touch. Nothing in life or death can take it away.

Happiness is grounded in circumstances, blessedness is grounded in the source of blessing, which is God. The greatest blessing is God and growing in blessedness is growing in proximity to God, getting closer to God, knowing God. Being rooted in God, who is immutable therefore your joy is immutable. You know immutable means, unchangeable, therefore your joy is unchangeable, no one can take it away. This is the greatest thing that God offers us. It's not just forgiveness of sins and now you get out of hell free card. No, the greatest thing that God offers us, is himself and we get him by having our sins forgiven and then also growing in virtue and that's what the Sermon on the Mount is, how we can grow in virtue, grow in holiness, grow in proximity to God.

The formula that we have here in the beatitudes is two parts. You've got condition, blessed are the poor in spirit and then you have the result, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. What a disciple is and what he obtains. And the first part, it's shocking because it seems so negative, it seems like there is a cost, that there's a sacrifice, that there's loss, and that's true. There is loss when you become a Christian. There is things you've got to deny to get something much greater and it is worth it. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Are you in the kingdom of Heaven? If not, you can have it. You can enter the kingdom of Heaven today, right now. Theirs is not, theirs will be. It's not future, this is present. You can have the kingdom of God now. How? How do I get it? How do I get it?

You've got to enter the kingdom. How do I enter the kingdom? That's the first four beatitudes. The first four beatitudes are how you enter the kingdom and you've got to grow in them as you enter the kingdom. And then the next four are what you need to grow in as you're in the kingdom. The first four is enter the kingdom. How? By being poor in spirit. By mourning, by growing in meekness and by hungering and thirsting in righteousness. We saw in verse three. Verse three. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. What's he talking about? He's talking about realizing that you, in and of yourself, are spiritually bankrupt. Zero.

Last week I paid off my credit card bill. I never carry a balance on my credit card. I only do it because I get the two percent cash back. Financial wisdom for a different day. But i paid my credit card balance with the wrong account. I've got two accounts. My interest rates were higher for that one, but whatever. I paid with the wrong account and my balance, I went to look at my balance and it was negative. I've never even seen that. I've never seen a negative balance and I was immediately crestfallen. My heart sunk to my heels. I am bankrupt. That's what it felt like. Spiritually, this is what Jesus is talking about. You realize your poverty of spirit. I have problems beyond my ... I can't help myself, I can't save myself, I can't transform myself. I'm poor in spirit. My greatest problem isn't political, it's not financial. It's not psychological, it's not mental. It's spiritual, that's my greatest problem. I'm absolutely destitute. I'm a beggar before God. I'm poverty-strickened, bereft of any spiritual resources so I can only rely on the Lord, not myself. It's a poverty of spirit. It's not weakness of spirit.

It's not a weakness of spirit. You actually have to be strong, spiritually, to admit your poverty of spirit. I have nothing apart from God. It's not a material poverty. The Lord does elsewhere say that for those who are materially wealthy, rich, they have a greater difficulty admitting their spiritual poorness, but that's what becoming a Christian, that's where it starts. Where you come before God and you say, "God, I'm spiritually bankrupt. My account is negative. I have debts that I cannot pay off myself. Poverty of spirit." And that's how you get into the kingdom.

In the 80s when Harvard University invited Mother Teresa to give a commencement address, she was shocked and she took issue with the gracious invitation, with the wording in the invitation to describe her. This is what Harvard wrote about her. "The most famous person in one of the world's most poorest nations to address the world's richest nation." That's how they welcome people to a commencement. And Mother Teresa said, "No, India is not a poor nation. India is a very rich nation. She has a wealth of riches, true spiritual riches. America is not a rich nation. She's a poor nation. In fact, a desperately poor nation. She slaughters her own unborn children." Poverty of spirit, personally, and also as a nation. We recognize. That's what repentance is when we come before God and, "God, I can't pay off my debts. I need someone else to do that." That's where Jesus begins.

God, I did not fulfill your law. I did not do what you called me to do. I have not done the things you called me to do and I've done things that you've told me not to do. Jesus begins with repentance in the Sermon on the Mount because the Sermon on the Mount is the reissuing of God's law. That's why he's on the mount, like Moses. Moses goes and gets the law, the decalogue, the 10 commandments from God. This is the moral law that God has for everybody, a law that's written on our hearts. Jesus, before he goes into every single one of these laws, this is how you're supposed to live as a human being, but you haven't, therefore you need to repent, acknowledge that you're poor in spirit. Now you enter the kingdom and because of the power of the Holy Spirit, you can now live the way that we ought to live. Here, I just want to set up, the Sermon on the Mount, it's laws, it's commandments that go actually deeper, they go to the heart of the commandments, of the 10 commandments. And here, I just want to speak a few things about the law. God gave his law for three reasons. God gave his law for three reasons. Number one, to restrain sinfulness of mankind. Every single one of us, we are born sinners. We have a sinful flesh and God gives us the law, the 10 commandments, writes it in holy scripture and writes it on our hearts to restrain the sinfulness of humanity, to suppress the rebellion of human hearts, to keep us in bounds as humans.

The second purpose of the laws is to convince sinners of a need for a savior. When we look at the law, when we see that God's standard of righteousness, we realize we have not met it, we cannot meet it. When he gives us the law, and then in the Sermon on the Mount, you should be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Who has met that standard, nobody. And it's to break us, break our sinful hearts so we fall on our knees and tell God, I am spiritually bankrupt. I repent all my sin.

Romans 3:20. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. It's through the law comes knowledge of sin. And that's what Paul talks about. He said, before I had the law that told me, thou shall not be envious, he said, I didn't know I was envious. And then the law comes and they realize that that's a sin. Romans 7:9. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, when I realized it, when I was under it, sin came alive and I died. The law taught Saint Paul. It teaches us the hopelessness of our situation. We realize that we have no righteousness in and of ourselves that would allow us to enter the presence of God. The law of God is to drive us to Christ.

Now, when it does drive us to Christ? When we repent of our sins. When we are in the kingdom of God, then we get the third purpose of the law, which is to guide our Christian life, but we are fueled by gratitude to God and we demonstrate our love for him by living according to his will. He desires for us to live according to the standards in Sermon of the Mount. Do we do it perfectly? Of course not and there is always grace, we get up and we continue following Jesus, it's his will. It's his good and perfect will for us. And why does God give us the Sermon? Why does Jesus do this? Because he loves us. He forgives us of our sins and he wants us to stop sinning because he wants more happiness for us. He's like a good dad who has rules for his kids.

I want the best for you so I do have rules for you. And this is exactly what this is. It's God wants the blessedness in our life, which is his presence and we do it by repenting of our sins and turning to him. When you try to fulfill the law, when you try to be good, you realize just how bad you are. This is a non-Christian, I'm a good person, I've never killed anybody. And then if you become a Christian, you're like, ah, Sermon on the Mount. I am disgusting. I am wicked. I am such a terrible human. Good, good. You're trying now to be good. The harder you try to be good, the more you realize how bad you are and the more you realize you need Jesus and the more you realize how brilliant the gospel is. The more you realize that the law of God isn't a burden, the law of God is actually a blessing. The law of God, it's like saying that wings for a bird are a burden, and they are not. The wings for a bird are not a burden, these are so heavy. They are blessing, now I can fly. That's what the law is.

Matthew 5:4. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. If you're poor in spirit, you enter the kingdom of God, you are in. You have the kingdom of God. Then you mourn. You mourn over what? You mourn over your sin. Yes, I am poor in spirit. Yes, I have sinned. Not just I've made mistakes or hurt myself or hurt people, I've sinned against the holy, perfect, loving God. You mourn, it's a sadness that leads to true joy. It's when you realize that yes, I am truly sinful. The story goes that G.K. Chesterton saw that in the London Times, they had this contest where you had to write in a letter, an essay, of what is the biggest problem in the universe. What is the problem with the universe?

People wrote in, the wrong politicians are in power, we've got to change that. Or the economic system doesn't work for everybody, we've got to change. G.K. Chesterton wrote in and he said, this is what he wrote. He said, "The problem with the universe is me. It's me. It's my sin. Each one of us." And the gospel allows us to own it, that the biggest problems aren't philosophical, sociological, theological, they are spiritual. My problem is my sin. If you don't believe in total depravity, if you don't believe in depravity of every single person, that we are sinners, all you have to do is go work customer service for one day. Phones, where they can't see your face. Work customer service and I will tell you, you will realize how wicked people are and you will turn to Jesus faster than anybody. Work customer service. We need to know that we are sinful and we aren't to blame others, blame family or upbringing or genes. No, we have to mourn over our own sinfulness. And Jesus says that's when we will be comforted. Also, mourn over sin in the world when we see sin. When we see evil, we are to mourn over it. The sins and blasphemies of our nation. We are to mourn over the erosion of the very concept of truth. What is true anymore? I don't know whom to believe other than Jesus Christ, other than the holy scripture. We're to mourn over greed and cynicism and lack of integrity.

Psalm 119:36. My eyes shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law. Once you realize you are spiritually bankrupt, you mourn over it, you turn to God and you ask for forgiveness, your salvation. This is where you grow in meekness. Matthew 5:5. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Meekness is not weakness, it's strength under control. In the Greek, it's used for an animal that's been tamed, where meekness is a form of submit. You realize, I'm to submit to Jesus. I am to submit to his yoke. I am to be meek like he is. Jesus was meek. Matthew 11:29. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me for I am gentle. That's the same Greek word for meek. And lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Jesus has a yoke. Whose yoke is upon Jesus? The yoke and the will of God, the father.

That's why in the garden of Gethsemane he said, "Please, Father, let this cup pass from me. If there is any other way, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, yours be done." Part of entering the kingdom is to realize I'm not the king, he's the king. I'm to take the yoke of the king upon myself, but Jesus is the one who carries most of the weight of the yoke. I'm yoked together. Do you know what yoke means? Not just you worked out a lot and you're yoked. It's the yoke of the animals. It's a harness. I'm harnessed with Jesus. We're going in the same direction. This is what it means to be meek. I'm submitting to him.

Psalm 37:11. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace. This phrase of the meek shall inherit the earth was used in the Old Testament. It was used in the Old Testament to talk about what? That the meek, those who submit to God, shall inherit the promised land. Well, what about us, the meek shall inherit the earth? I've been praying this for years. Lord, please, I just want a little plot of land that I can call my own as a parking spot that I don't have to pay for on a monthly basis. I'm meek, meek. Can I have a little piece of land? And that's not what it's talking about. What it's talking about is the new heavens and the new earth, that when Jesus comes, returns, we will, as believers, followers of Christ, citizens of his kingdom, we will inherit the earth.

Verse six. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Part of repentance is, God I want righteousness. I hunger and thirst for righteousness. And there is a satisfaction that comes with hungering and thirsting for the right things. If you hunger and you thirst for money, you shall not be satisfied. If you hunger and thirst for fame, you shall not be satisfied. If you hunger and thirst for pleasure, you shall not be satisfied. This promise is if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will be satisfied. What is righteousness? Righteousness is holiness, but it's deeper than that. Righteousness is rightness. Rightness with whom? Rightness with God. I have a relationship with God where I am accepted by God, received by God. This is what righteousness is. Righteousness allows you to be accepted by God. What's the most important rightness? It's with God. Am I right with God? That's what repentance is.

You realize, I'm not right with God. God is displeased with me, and not just displeased, he's angry at my sin. There is a wrath of God for my law breaking. Lord, I repent of my unrighteousness and I hunger and thirst the deep desire for true righteousness, the true holiness. And I realize I don't have a righteousness of my own. This is what Saint Paul said. I realized I don't have a righteousness of my own. I need the righteousness of Christ. He says, everything else, I counted as lost so I repented of my righteousness. Yes, we have to repent of our sins, but we're also to repent of our righteousness, which is tainted and leads to pride and we are to take on Christ's righteousness. And this is the double imputation that on the cross, he who knew no sin, Jesus Christ, became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. The very moment you repent, you enter into the kingdom, you have a righteousness that's not your own, that's Christ's, but we have to grow into it to make it our own and we do that by hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

We get this new identity, we're now in the kingdom through realizing our poverty of spirit, mourning over our sin, of realizing that we need Christ and to grow in meekness, et cetera, and then once we're in, we're to grow as citizens and this is what a transformed life looks like. Blessed are those who are merciful, who are pure in heart, those who are peacemakers and they will ultimately be persecuted. Verse seven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. This is how I think about grace and mercy from God's perspective.

Grace is when God gives us that which we do not deserve. He gives us the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He gives us entrance into the kingdom. Mercy is when God does not give us what we deserve. Grace is when he gives us what we don't deserve. Mercy is when he does not give us what we deserve, which is eternal separation from God in a place called Hell, when we trust in the gospel. But here mercy isn't from the perspective of God, it's from the perspective of people. To be merciful in this context, is costly compassion. Costly compassion. Christians need to grow in this desire and grow in compassion toward people. True compassion. And then act on it, which is always costly. And I'll give you two examples of this mercy. It's a human mercy that mirrors a divine mercy.

The first example is Matthew 18. This mercy entails forgiveness. In Matthew 18, Jesus gives the parable of the king who has a servant that owes him 10,000 talons, which is millions of dollars and he forgives him. The man asked for forgiveness. The king forgives him. It's compassion. He had compassion on him and it's costly. Why is it costly? To forgive means the king has to absorb that loss. The king pays for that debt himself. That's what happens through the gospel when we trust in Jesus, God forgives us of our debt. Why? He doesn't just forgive, we have to be paid for, in order for God to remain just and Jesus paid for our debt. Part of that mercy is this costly compassion of forgiveness so we as Christians, we are to grow in forgiveness.

Are there people in your life that you know that you need to forgive, especially after the political season is over. You've got to forgive some people. The scripture says bear with one another. That's talking to Christians. It also says, do not bite and devour one another. That's a very interesting phrase from the Book of Galatians. Forgive each other. We're to grow in this forgiveness. Also, we are to grow in the costly compassion of doing good to those who need it. And this is the story of the Good Samaritan.

The story of the Good Samaritan is, he had compassion on this person who was hurt and it's costly because it took his time and it took his money. The mercy, we're to grow in mercy in terms of forgiveness and in terms of doing good deeds to those in need. And who is my neighbor? Love your neighbor. Who is my neighbor? It's a person who comes across your path who is in need, that's your neighbor. That's how Jesus defines it. In Matthew 5:8, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. You have a new heart and it's a heart that is to grow in purity. Jesus doesn't call us to himself to make us nice people. He calls us to himself to make us new people. We have a brand new heart and it's a heart that is to be pure. What does the word mean for pure? It means unmixed. It means undivided. It's the opposite of duplicity. You have a heart that has an undivided love for God. It's pure. It's not mixed with anything. There's not love for God and love for idols. It's pure.

Psalm 24:3-4. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his place, he who has clean hands and a pure heart who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. Purity from idols. As you grow in purity, he says you're going to grow in clarity of vision and seeing God. I love the connection here between morality and faith. How we live impacts how we believe. The more you pursue moral purity, the virtues of the life of the Sermon on the Mount, the stronger your faith gets, the more clarity you have about truth, about God. And when you begin to incrementally sin, get pulled away from God, you now grow in doubting. They always grow together. If you want to know that this is true, God is true, Christianity is true, holy scripture is true, are you desiring to grow in faithfulness to God? Faithfulness always deepens our faith. Purity is the path to seeing God and seeing him more clearly. Hebrew says we see him who was invisible, but there will come a time when Christ returns or when we go to him when we will literally see the God of the universe.

And then in Matthew 5:9, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Once we're in the kingdom, now we have a new purpose. now we have a new direction in life for each one of us. We are to be peacemakers. What does the word peace here mean? Is it peace like the opposite of anxiety? No, that's not what's going on. It's peace as in the opposite of war, of hostility. We are to be peacemakers in that we bring the message of peace to those who are at war with God. That's how Christianity talks about becoming a Christian, becoming a believer, becoming a follower of God. It says, when you're not a Christian, you are at war with God. Why? Because you are trying to be your own king. You're trying to build your own kingdom and then Jesus Christ comes and says, no, no, no. The kingdom of God is at hand. I'm the king. How was that message received? I'm the king. How is it received?

Well, a couple hundred people said, that's a great message. Okay, I'm going to submit to you. Everybody else said, we're going to kill you and that's how Jesus died. Jesus Christ is king. And when people are like, I'm not hostile to God. I might be indifferent, I'm agnostic. Because you haven't read his commandments, because you don't understand what he demands from you and the consequences for that. When you really understand if you break the moral commandments, if you don't turn to God, you will spend eternity apart from God in a place called Hell. When you understand all that, that God gets to tell you what your gender is, God gets to tell you what to do with your sexuality, and God gets to command all of that, then you realize, oh, that makes sense. Yes, we are at war with God. That's how scripture taught us.

Look at Romans 5:1-11. Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our lord, Jesus Christ, through him we also obtain access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope for the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have been justified by his love, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son much more now that we are reconciled should we be saved by his life.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our lord, Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. We were at war, God sends Jesus and says, I'm offering amnesty. Amnesty. I will forgive you of all of your sins. You need to receive that amnesty, if not, you are still an enemy of God. Romans 8:7-8. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. For those who are in the flesh cannot please God. What is enmity? Enmity Is our natural condition before God, it's our warfare. And the proof of this is, the very one time that God made himself vulnerable by being a human being, what do we do with him? We killed him. That shows us that we are at war with God.

History isn't man's search for God. History is our attempt to get God off our back because we don't want to submit. Deep inside our rebellious nature, we don't want to submit, even to the God of the universe. Which, if you think about it, is the greatest folly ever. The greatest folly ever. When people go against the government, I'm going to take on the government. You're going to die. You're going to take on God? You're going to take on God? You're not going to take on God. You're going to die and you're going to die for eternity. So, turn to Jesus Christ, that's the whole point. But whenever I talk, the temperature in the room just when bleh, it just went terrible. Here's why I did that, because he goes from talking about peacemaker to persecution.

You guys are peacemakers and now we're talking about persecution. That's Matthew 5:10-11. Why? Who was the prince of peace? Jesus Christ. He's the prince of peace. Why did he get killed? Because he came and he said, you're at war with God and God is going to send you to hell for all eternity. Receive the reconciliation. When you tell people that, they don't like it so you're going to get persecuted. That's the point here. That's the connection between verse nine and verse 10. Look at verse 10. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when other revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in Heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The more you do peacemaking work by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, sharing the law of God, that we've broken the law of God, the more you explain to people exactly what true reality is, of where their eternity will be a part of, the more you speak that truth, the more you will experience persecution. It's true. So if you have not experienced any persecution, you're like, my Christian life is great. No one reviles me for the name of Christ, not persecuted, perhaps you're not doing your job as a peacemaker. Perhaps you're not sharing the gospel when God calls you to share the gospel. Perhaps you're not living a life of righteousness that when people see your life of righteousness and they realize that their life isn't as righteous and that your life is actually a testimony to their condemnation, if you're not doing that, then you're not going to experience persecution. This is part and parcel of the Christian life that when we speak to people as ambassadors of the kingdom that they are at war with God, there will be persecution sometimes, but others will be awakened and be brought into the kingdom of God so we bear with that persecution.

In John 15:8-20, Jesus Christ says that if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember, the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. Philippians 1:29-30, for it has been granted to you a gift, for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him. That's one gift. The other gift is, but also suffer for his sake, engage in the same conflict that you saw I had and now here I still have. 2nd Timothy 3:12, indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, so prepare. As a Christian, don't be surprised when you're persecuted for righteousness sake, for the name of Jesus Christ. Get used to it.

The other thing I want to point out is the Sermon on the Mount isn't just given to an individual, not to individual Christians, it's given to a community. He's got his disciples before him. His disciples sat down. And I saw that because we need one another. We need the community of believers in order to help one another live like this, in order to help one another bring the mission of peacemaking to the world. That's why the word brother is used eight times in this text. The other fun fact I will bring in just as here in conclusion really quickly. I got this from Peter Craft in a book that he wrote in 1992 on virtue. He says that the attitudes are actually the opposite of the seven deadly sins and I've never heard that and I was fascinated by it. You can meditate on that. He says the blessings of the beatitude, the virtues of the beatitude is how we counter the seven deadly sins. He says pride is countered by poverty of spirit, of humility. I like that.

He says greed is countered with mercy. Greed is more stuff for me. Mercy is more stuff I can give to others. Envy is countered with mourning. Envy is, I want everything they have. Mourning is, I'm going to mourn over that sin. That one, I think he's kind of wedging it. I don't know, we can meditate on that. Wrath, the opposite of wrath is peacemaking. That's good. Sloth, the opposite of that is hunger and thirst for righteousness. I think that works. Gluttony, the opposite of gluttony is bearing persecution. Gluttony is, I'm just going to eat. Appetites grow. Persecution is, you're not even getting the bare necessities. Maybe that works. You can meditate on that.

In conclusion, Galatians 3:15. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. The greatest blessing of the beatitudes, the greatest blessing of the being in the kingdom is obviously being in proximity to the king. How can we have these blessings, because the king wants these blessings. Why are we rich and why is the kingdom ours? Because Jesus became poor. Why are we comforted? Because Jesus mourned inconsolably. Why do we inherit the earth? Because Jesus lost everything. Why are we filled? Because he cried out. I thirst. Why do get mercy? Because God, the Father did not show him mercy. And why can we see God? Because on the cross, Jesus Christ did. This is great news of the gospel.

If you are not in the kingdom, enter into the kingdom by repenting of sins and turning to him. And if you are in the kingdom, let us continue growing as citizens of the kingdom. Let us pray. Lord, Jesus, we thank you for the holy scriptures. What a rich word this is. Jesus, we thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. We thank you for claiming the truth to us. We thank for providing for a way for us to be reconciled with God though we were hostile to him. And I pray, Lord, as we enter your kingdom, let us live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ on a daily basis, pursuing the righteousness, the holiness and perfection, fighting sin and continuing to pursue you and continuing to grow us and as a church to be ministers of reconciliation, to be peacemakers, to proclaim the gospel and give us opportunities to do that. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you sent your son Jesus Christ to be amongst us to live a human life. We thank you, Jesus, that you promised that you will build your church and the gates of hell will not overcome it. Pray today, show us from the holy Scriptures of how you build the church, what the building blocks of your church are, what the basics are, what the fundamentals are, and make us a people who are focused on the fundamentals of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who don't know you, calling people to repentance as we repent ourselves.

Remind us that we are called to make disciples who make disciples, that we are to commit our lives to that, orient our lives around the great commission, and remind us that we are to serve people in deed and in word. Send us the Holy Spirit to speak to us to prepare our hearts, our minds, and our wills to continue to live for the glory of God. We pray this, in Jesus' name. Amen. If you're new, we are in the Gospel of Matthew for the foreseeable future, but probably until Easter. Next week, we're starting the greatest sermon that has ever been preached.

We'll expose it through that. It's the Sermon on the Mount preached by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as he just called his disciples. Today, the text right before the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus Christ making disciples. This is how Jesus Christ transformed the world. The most influential person in the history of the world was Jesus Christ. We know that, and that's to be expected because he's the God man. If God comes, becomes a person who lives amongst us, obviously, he's going to be the most influential person who ever lived. That's not a miracle.

We understand that. What is a miracle? Is that after Jesus Christ leaves, the church grows, the church grows, so much so that the church transforms the world. This morning, millions, dare I say, billions of people are worshiping Jesus Christ around the world. He transformed the world, not just through his own work, but through the work of his followers by the power of the Spirit. One of my favorite quotes about the radical influence of Jesus Christ in the world is by the Emperor Napoleon who, at the end of his life in exile, he came to the following conclusion about the King of kings.

He said, "I know man and I tell you, Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial mind see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires. On what did we rest? On what did we rest the creations of our genius upon sheer force? Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love." At this hour, millions of men will die for him.

Every other existence, but that of Christ, how many imperfections? From the first day to the last, he is the same, majestic and simple, infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. He proposes to our faith, a series of mysteries and commands with authority that we should believe them, giving no other reason than those tremendous words, I am God. Clearly, Jesus influenced the world, changed the world, transformed the world. The greater miracle is, how did his followers do it? How do we, today, continue to do it?

How do we bring that radical life transforming force into the lives of our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, into the lives of the people in this city and beyond? That's what we're going to talk about today. Matthew 4:12 through 25, would you look at the text with me? Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the city, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned. From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. He said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there he saw two brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. He went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

His name spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them. Great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame of our time. First, repent and preach the gospel. Second, follow Jesus and make disciples.

Third, serve people in word and deed, the basics, the fundamentals of Christianity, of our faith. All too often, we complicate things in life, including our own faith. We forget about the basics, the fundamentals on which everything is built. Even professionals in sports, they need to get back to the fundamentals every once in a while. That's why you need spring training for baseball. That's why you need a preseason in football. We didn't get a preseason this year in the NFL, and that's why the Patriots stunk. That's the only excuse. That's the only reason.

Tom Brady had nothing to do with it. We're going to get back to the fundamentals. Last week, I had to write a check. First of all, I haven't written a check in months, maybe a year. I had to write a check. I had to go find the checkbook. I had to find the payment. I take the pen and I start writing. I realized, I haven't written with my hand in a very long time. It felt foreign. It felt like, what am I doing? I don't even know how to write. I feel like I'm in kindergarten. I feel like my daughter, Milana, has better writing than I am. Get about the fundamentals. We need the fundamentals.

We need the fundamentals in the Christian faith. That's why we need this text, which is the text preceding the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus here makes disciples and then he teaches his disciples. We need to learn how to make disciples, just like Jesus did. The first point is repent and preach the gospel. Some time has elapsed between verse 11 and verse 12. Verse 11, Jesus Christ was in the desert and he was getting tempted by the evil one. He resisted the evil one. The angels then came and ministered to him, most likely with food. Some time passes between verses 11 and 12.

Jesus continues his ministry in Judea, Jerusalem, concurrently with John the Baptizer, whose ministries reported in the Gospel of John. Then in Matthew 4:12, it says, now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. John, who? This is John, Jesus' beloved cousin, who was only six months older than Jesus. John's ministry was predicted in the book of Isaiah, seven years before he was born. In the book of Malachi, 500 years before he's born. Centuries before, prophesied. He will come.

He will prepare the way for the Lord by proclaiming the gospel, the gospel of repentance. Then his ministry lasts only 18 months. Fascinating. It's kind of weird point. I've been meditating on this week. We never know how much longer God will give us. Yes, in our lives, but also in our ministry. John serves and he serves and he serves. It's grace of God to be used by God. Whenever we get tired of ministry, tired of serving God, we can never forget that it's a gift to be used by God. That gift can be taken away at any moment, just like it was with John.

What happened with John, he was arrested. What was he arrested for? He was arrested for speaking truth to power, not just truth to power, we hear that phrase all the time. God's truth to power, truth about morality to power. He spoke to King Herod and he said, "No, it is not right for you to take your brother's wife." He speaks God's moral truth to those in politics, to those in influence, which obviously destroys the argument that says, no, no, no, you can't talk moral truth to non-Christians. Moral truth, the 10 commandments only has to do with Christians.

No, it's God's law for everybody. God is king over everybody. John the Baptizer, he speaks truth, God's truth to power. He's beheaded. First arrested, then beheaded. As Jesus learns that John has been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He goes to Galilee. Galilee was a very important place because it was a crossroads. There are lots of roads going through Galilee. Judea, one commentator said, is on the road to nowhere, Galilee is on the way to everywhere. Jesus chooses a place to do ministry, started his ministry, a place where people come and go, a place of transfer of ideas.

He doesn't go to Jerusalem, which is to be expected. He defies expectation and goes to a place where people come and go. In Verse 13, leaving Nazareth, that's his hometown, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. Nazareth, small, insignificant town, Capernaum, which is part of the Sea of Galilee, bustling town, sea in the region of Galilee. That's where he goes. Why did he leave Nazareth? He leaves Nazareth because he was rejected in his hometown.

In Luke Chapter 4, it's recorded that he preaches in the synagogue, takes the scroll of Isaiah, and says, today, this prophecy is fulfilled in your midst. They pick him up and then carry him to the edge of a cliff and they want to kill him for proclaiming himself to be the Messiah. Did Jesus have a hard time doing evangelism? Yeah. Jesus had a hard time doing evangelism in his hometown. No one believed him. He then goes to Capernaum, spend significant amount of time in Capernaum. It becomes his home base, base of operations.

Then by Matthew 11, Jesus brings down a woe on Capernaum, woe on you, Capernaum, woe on you, Chorazin. For if the work is done and you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have believed and repented a long time ago. They rejected him as well. He brings the light. They reject the light, because it doesn't matter how great the light if you're blind. That's what the people were, blinded by their own sin, by their own pride, by their own selfishness, and rejected the Messiah. Matthew 4:14, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

He goes to Galilee, Zebulun, Naphtali. He goes not because King Herod had arrested John, but because Jesus need to fulfill the prophecy. In verse 15, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned. From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here." Zebulun and Naphtali, the 2 of the 12 tribes of Israel, they're the smaller tribes.

They were given land that was farther away from Jerusalem. That's why it's called Galilee of the Gentiles, because it had a mixed population of Jews and Gentiles. Because of the mixture of Jews and Gentiles, people from Jerusalem looked down on people from Galilee. Once again, the Lord is choosing to associate himself with the lowly, the despised, not the high, not the mighty. He goes to a place where it's absolutely clear that the Messiah is the Messiah, not just for the Jews. God has sent the Savior not just for one ethnicity, but for absolutely everybody.

Every single person alive, no matter your ethnicity, no matter your skin color, no matter your country of origin, no matter your socioeconomic status, no matter where you're from, who you are, what you've done, we all need. Jesus. Doesn't matter if you're from the United States, you need Jesus. Doesn't matter if you're from Canada, you definitely need Jesus. Doesn't matter if you're from Russia, you definitely need Jesus. Everybody needs Jesus Christ. This is the point of him going to Galilee, not Jerusalem. Jesus hasn't come as a Messiah just for the Jews.

He's come as a Messiah, as a King of the world. This is what Matthew was telling us, the magi coming, the magi of the Gentiles. They're coming to worship the king. This is why Matthew ends with the great commission, the last verses of the book, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the light. He is the Savior. He's come to seek and save that which is lost, the light that shines in the darkness. How does Jesus Christ shine the light? This shows us how do we shine the light into our world.

How can we shine the light of Christ? We are the salt. We are the light. How do we shine the light? That's a tremendous question. I'm glad you asked. Jesus answers that in verse 17. This is how he shines the light. From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." You hear that and you're like, that doesn't sound very lightful. That doesn't sound like full of light. A message of repentance. Well, it is because sin is darkness. Sin pulls us away from the source of light, which is God. Proclaiming this gospel of, hey, you can repent.

You can return to God is a message of light. This message sounds familiar. Who else preached this message? John the Baptizer, Matthew 3:1 through 3. In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Verbatim. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight." John the Baptizer preached this message. Jesus preached this message.

Jesus, when he sent His disciples on the first preaching tour, told them, Matthew 10:17, proclaim as you go, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Meaning the king is here, therefore repent. St. Peter, this is after Jesus' ascension, on the day of Pentecost, as he's filled the Holy Spirit, proclaims the gospel, preaches a powerful sermon, that people are deeply affected, and they cry out, "What shall we do?" This is what Peter said in Acts 2:38, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. St. Paul, speaking to the elders in Ephesus after finishing his ministry there, he said, he summarizes the ministry by saying, in Acts 20:21, testifying both to Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Later in his defense before Agrippa, Paul summarized his preaching in Acts 26:20, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem, throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.

Performing deeds with keeping with their repentance, fascinating. Because many of us, when we think of the gospel, we think I repent, I believe in Jesus Christ, period. I'm saved. That's it. I don't have to do anything. St. Paul preached, no, are you bringing deeds, performing deeds keeping with your repentance? John the Baptist preached the same thing. Matthew 3:8, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. That's fascinating. He's saying prove that you're saved, prove that you have repented. Make your election and calling sure says St. Peter.

Prove it. This is why we don't do ... You know how some churches do? By the way, this is how I think I got saved. I don't know. We don't do the walking down the aisle thing. Raise your hand if you're from a church where they did the walking down the aisle if you want to get saved. You know what I'm talking about it. I went to a youth conference at 13 and they said, "This is how you get saved." By the way, Russians, they know how to manipulate. They had a girl with a violin and there was someone playing in Oregon.

They're singing a song about like, what's going to happen if you die today? Are you really going to go to hell? I'm like, ah, I don't want to go to hell, 13, and I walked down the aisle like, I'm saved, I'm saved. I walked down with my best friend. We walked down together. Afterwards, I'm like, "How do you feel, man?" He's like, "I feel saved." I was like, "I feel saved too, man. That's great." We don't do that. We don't do that. You know what I say? When someone's like, "I think I've trusted in Jesus," I'm like, "We'll see." We'll see.

A week will pass, two weeks will pass, are you growing in the faith? Are you bearing fruit with repentance? Tremendous. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? We need to see some kind of track record, if you're saved by the Savior. This is how Jesus Christ talks about repentance, that there is transformation. We repent and believe in the Gospel because the kingdom is at hand, meaning the king is now the one whom you follow. There's life change. The centrality of repentance also stated negatively by Jesus in Matthew 11:20 through 21.

Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Meaning if you do not repent, there are consequences. Matthew 12:41, the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

A lot of people misunderstand repentance. They think repentance is either remorse or reformation. I will submit to you that it's not just remorse and it's not just reformation, it's actually returning to God. A lot of people think repentance is remorse, that you feel sorry, you feel deeply sorry for your sin, most likely, because you're sorry of the consequences of your sin. There are consequences. A lot of people think it's just self-reproach, it's self-loathing. This is what Martin Luther, before finally reading the book of Romans and seeing the gospel in the book of Romans, he suffered from what he called navel-gazing, where he would just focus on his own sin, on sinning against God.

He was focused on himself. That remorse never led him to Christ, never led him to God. It was actually very selfish. It's a self-concentration. I feel so bad that I did X, Y, and Z because it's impacting me in the following ways. Paul says that remorse or worldly sorrow left by itself and leads to death. Judas. Did Judas repent after selling Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver? Did Judas repent? He was remorseful. He brought the money back and he threw it at the feet of the Pharisees. He did not repent. Committed suicide.

Others said repentance is just moral reformation, that you just change your life. Well, you go to Christianity and change your life. I go to AA to change my life. I go to rehab to change my life. I go to therapy to change my life. Repentance is more than just turning over a new leaf. Reformation is changing your behavior. It's on the behavior level. People can do that without God. Repentance is on the heart level. Repentance is when you realize that you have sinned, not just against yourself and not just against people.

Repentance is when you realize that you have sinned against a holy God, God who has created you, God who has given you everything that you have and continues to give and sustain, starting with the very breath that you take. In the Hebrew, the word repentance means to turn. In the Greek, it's to change one's mind. It's a returning to God, a turning to him, turning away from sin, and turning to God. There's two parts, recognition of sin, God, I see how sinful, odious, filthy my sin is against you. I turn away from it and I turned to you.

It's a godly sorrow for sinning against God, of offending the God who loves you, of offending the Christ who has made a terrible sacrifice for you, of offending and grieving the Holy Spirit who has shown you the way of eternal life. It's a fear of God mixed with a love of God that turns you from sin to him. That's why Jesus says, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here. It's the establishment of God's rule. The king is here. His will is clear. We are to live according to it. What does fruit of repentance look like? I'm glad you asked.

In Chapter 5, Jesus Christ sits down and he begins to teach his disciples. This is what fruit of repentance looks like, and he gives us the Sermon on the Mount. Definitely come back for that as we start the Sermon on the Mount next week. It's the transcript of the life of repentance to repent is to live a new life. It's a new way of life. Repentance is how you grow in the faith. It's the means by which you become a Christian. It's the means by which you continue to be a Christian. It's the means by which one is always a Christian. Humorously, I tell people that I get saved every day.

When did you get saved? This morning. I was saved this morning. I say that tongue in cheek, but it's true. Because I mean I repent every day of being a sinner before a holy God. I need God's grace every day. Yes, my salvation began with justification. There was one day when that's the beginning of it. You continue in sanctification with repentance on a daily basis. Our Christian walk begins with repentance, continues with repentance. We are also then called to preach the gospel to others. That's the second point.

We preach the gospel to others by making disciples, by being fishers of men. In terms of your own life, if you look at your own repentance, repentance has to do with life change. Are you repenting because the kingdom of God has drawn near? Is repentance a characteristic of your life? Are you changing in direction of Christ's example teaching commandments? Are you markedly different from a year ago? The world definitely is, but are you? Are you different from a year ago in your spiritual walk? Are you different from two years ago?

To be a Christian means you are alive and you're growing and you're thriving in repentance. Point two is follow Jesus and make disciples. Verse 18, While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. He said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there he saw two brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.

Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. A few comments here. Sea of Galilee is actually a lake. The Galilee and industry was actually very prosperous. A lot of us, when we think of Peter, Andrew, James, and John as fishermen, we think that they're poor. Not necessarily. They probably did actually really well. They had a small business and the two families, Peter and Andrew's family and the family Zebedee, James and John, they had a partnership. They worked together. Fishermen were not educated according to the pharisaical teachings in Jerusalem.

They weren't educated. A lot of people, when they read scriptures like, oh, fishermen, that means you guys are idiots. Being not educated does not mean you're dumb. Because education does not add IQ points. A lot of people have bought into the lie, that you need formal education for intelligence. Those two are very different. That's why a lot of people, when they read the epistles of Peter, I remember in seminary, reading liberal theologian commentator, they're like, "There's no way that Peter could have written this because a fisherman can't write this well."

Well, how do you know? How do you know? Maybe he was a very intelligent fisherman. He didn't have to get a PhD from a school to confirm his intelligence. He was just gifted with intelligence from the Lord. Then there's the Holy Spirit that actually adds IQ points, praise God. They were fishermen. What do we know about fishermen? It was actually a very dangerous profession. People die all the time. These are people who are familiar with hard work. They're familiar with hardships. Jesus sees them.

As he sees them, two of the brothers are fishing, two of the brothers are mending nets. Jesus chooses these guys who are industrious. They know hard work. They know hardships. They know what it means to be on the brink of death. He picks these brothers who have known each other, they love each other already. They've been working together. There's a camaraderie. What else do we know? Simon is a Hebrew name. It's a Jewish name. Peter is his Greek nickname. There's a mixture of the cultures there. Andrew had a Greek name.

That reflects the mixture of the cultures as well. Jesus Christ calls them. Twice we see the word immediately. They left everything immediately. Was this the very first time that they met Jesus Christ? Probably not, as we see in the Gospel of Luke. They had met with Jesus in the gospel of John. Andrew is actually a follower, a disciple of John the Baptist. Then he met with Jesus. He went to check things out, and then finally called Peter. They knew about Jesus. They had time to consider the teaching of Jesus. They had time to consider the mission of Jesus.

They had time to count the cost. Then finally, Jesus comes to them at a moment, he says, "Now is the time you make a decision." Today, right now, follow me. Follow me. This is what it means. This text is right after the text where he says, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Now he's giving us an illustration. This is what repentance looks like. When Jesus Christ comes to you and says, follow me, follow me. This is what it means to be a Christian. This is what it means to be a disciple. This is what it means to bear fruit, keeping with repentance. Follow me.

Follow Jesus Christ. You see that they leave everything immediately. They had jobs. They had family responsibilities, people that depended on them. They leave everything. We know for certain that Peter was married. He had a wife and he had a mother-in-law. He didn't leave them forever, but his priorities changed. Now his greatest priority in life is Jesus Christ and His mission. There's definitely a disruption in their lives. Then also now, they're on a path. Follow me. Means I'm putting you on a brand new path.

Did James imagine that he, at this moment, is exchanging a peaceful life as a fisherman for dying brutally, way too young? Did Peter imagine he was taking his first fateful step to being crucified upside down 35 years later? No, they had no idea. St. Paul, when he was called to Jesus, he says, "I suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Christ." What did St. Paul lose? He lost a family. To study Gamaliel, you have to be at least 35 and married. Most likely, Paul was married at some point. Most likely, when he followed Christ, his wife refused to follow.

Then he endured stonings and shipwrecks and beatings. He left a career where he was enjoying incredible rise to fame. Instead, he traded in for becoming a laughingstock of his former world, although, by the grace of God, he becomes the most influential, the greatest mere man who ever lived because they understood what it means to follow Jesus. To follow Jesus, yes, it begins with information. You're a disciple. You're learning things, but it also entails obedience. I'm not just following a rabbi, I'm following a king. The king tells me what to do.

That's what it means to follow him. It's to live like he lived, to follow in his footsteps. 1 Peter 2:21, to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. The phrase follow me is used 25 times in the Gospel of Matthew, because that's the essence of Christianity. Are you a Christian? I don't want to hear, yes, because I go to church, yes, because I watched church online, yes, because I read scripture. No, no, no, no. Yes, because I follow Jesus Christ. Right now, today, I am following Jesus Christ.

I'm following his commandments. I'm doing what he taught me to do. What he teach us to do at the very moment that he calls these guys to himself, he calls them to his mission. It's a double invitation. It's not just follow me and enjoy the perks of being a Christian. It's follow me and I'm going to make you fishers of men. Drop everything. I'm going to make you disciple makers. You follow me, you abide in me. As you do, you are transformed to be a fisherman, a missionary. You're transformed to be a person that summons others to God.

The phrase fisher is used in Jeremiah 16:16 where God says, behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they will catch them. Afterward I will send for many hunters, and they will catch them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. In Jeremiah, God speaks of fishing for people as God's judgment. The nets were God's judgment. When Jesus Christ comes, he talks about being fishers of men as God's salvation from judgment. That Jesus Christ came and he himself was caught up in the nets of God's wrath for our sin on the cross.

Jesus Christ was hunted by the wrath of God for our sin. He dies on the cross, so that he can extend to us now nets of salvation to pull us out of the sea of the wrath of God that we deserve for our law breaking. That's why God says, repent, return to me, so that you are now not under the wrath of God, but under the love and mercy of God. That's what it means to make fishers of men, is to call people to God, to call people to grace, to call people to faith in Jesus through repentance. This is how Jesus Christ changed the world. Jesus Christ, did he write any books?

The only thing I think Jesus wrote that we know of, is one time he wrote in his finger in the sand. Did Jesus Christ build institutions? Were there any monuments created to his life and work in his lifetime or immediately thereafter? No. How did Jesus change the world? He chose 12 men, poured his life into them, taught them to be disciples of him who make disciples. That's what discipleship is. A lot of people think discipleship is we're going to sit together and read a nice Christian book and talk about it and that's discipleship. No, that's a book club.

Discipleship is when you make other disciples of Jesus Christ. That's the ultimate goal of discipleship. Discipleship isn't just reading the Bible. It's not just memorizing scripture. All of that is important, but to culminate in sharing the gospel with someone else and they become believers in Jesus Christ. This is the whole goal of the church. This is why I want to talk about like the basics, the fundamentals. We can't forget, this is our job. This is why we're here. If you move from here, your job stays the same. Just the location has changed. We're called to be fishers of men.

We're called to make disciples of Jesus Christ. The question here at the end of point two is, am I following Jesus? Am I making disciples? Am I a hard worker and making disciples? Am I bold in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ? We should be. Did Jesus Christ proclaim the gospel boldly? Did everyone gets saved when he preached? No. Nazareth, his hometown, rejected him. Capernaum rejected them. He said, all right, great. I'm just going to go to the next town. I'm just going to go to the next city. You proclaim the gospel. When you do, the elect will come to faith.

That's what we trust in, is in the sovereignty of God. Point three is serve people in word and deed. That's what Jesus does ministry, not just of serving them in deed and not just the word, but it's both. Matthew 4:23 and 25, and he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. His fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them.

Great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. First, Syria here is not the modern country of Syria, but an area north of Galilee. People are traveling to see Jesus as his fame grew. What did he do? It says, he spends time teaching in the synagogues. That's the religious centers for Jewish people, preaching the good news of the kingdom to everybody, and healing people of their sickness, of their affliction, of their demon possession. Jesus Christ is the second person of the trinity of the triune Almighty God.

It's inevitable that Jesus performs miracles. He's the maker of the world. He's the Savior of the world. He's the one who created sight, therefore he can give it to the blind. He created the hearing so he can give it to the deaf, et cetera. Jesus is the God man, the maker of heaven and earth. We should not be surprised that he does miracles. We should expect it. We should expect it. It's more of a surprise that Jesus died, then that he rose again. The resurrection should not be a surprise. He's the God man. Of course, he comes back from the dead. Surprise that he dies.

You expect creation from the creator, that he has creative power, the one who gives life can restore and resurrect. Perhaps, that's why the gospel writers, they present the miracles very nonchalantly. Yeah, Jesus walked around and he resurrected this guy and gave sight to this guy. Yeah, because he's the God man. That shouldn't be an issue. The question is, why did God give us these miracles? The scripture says that they are signs. Acts 2:22, men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.

They're wonders and signs, meaning God gives them to point to a greater truth and a greater reality. Nicodemus, when he came to Jesus by night in John Chapter 3 says, "Rabbi, we know that you are sent from God, because no one can perform the miraculous signs that you were doing." For Jesus, the miracles weren't the point. Because miracles do not change hearts. That's why in Matthew 11, he says, "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For signs done in you had been done." They saw signs, they didn't get saved.

That's why Jesus, whenever he did signs, the miracles were given to bolster faith, not to create faith. Faith is only given to us as a gift from God. Mark 1:32 through 39, incredible passages where Jesus heals people and then stops. That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. The whole city was gathered together at the door. He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. He would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

Rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place where he prayed. Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, "Everyone is looking for you." He said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns." Everyone is looking for you to get healed again. More people want to get healed. "Everyone is looking for you." He said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out."

He went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. What's Jesus saying? He's saying, I can heal you of your sickness. If you do not repent of your sin, you are desperately sick. What's the point of you physically getting healed? Then time passes and you die, and you are spiritually sick for all of eternity in a place called hell. What's the point? Jesus focuses on the gospel, that this is the greatest news. This is the only hope for the world. This is the only thing that can transform us. He does do miracles.

There are miracles that point to the greater miracle. The greatest miracle of all, is that God resurrects people from spiritual death, that God gives the gift of repentance, gives the gift of faith, gives the gift of obedience, the gift of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus feeds the 15,000, it's a sign that he is the bread of life. When he heals sick, it's a picture of him delivering us from the sickness of sin and death. When he drives out demons out of the possessed, it's to show that he has power over Satan.

When he speaks to a paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven, now pick up your bed and walk, he's showing that the greatest paralysis that you have is that of sin. The second is the physical paralysis. Physical healing is a sign. Forgiveness is a reality. We live in a world where more than ever, in this season, we've been thinking about death and people getting sick. That's why it's more important than ever for us to not forget our job. A lot of Christians, I think, have taken a little vacation from the great commission. Why? Pandemic. That's an excuse for everything, pandemic.

No. We still have a job to do, which is the great commission of Jesus Christ, to go and make disciples. Let us not forget that. So that when people do die, which is inevitable, we're all going to die. We go to a better place because of your faith in Jesus Christ, because of repentance, because you are a disciple, because you follow him. Think of Lazarus, I always think of Lazarus. Lazarus came back from the dead. That's awesome. Comes back. Live in life. New lease on life. You ever have a near death experience and then for a week, you're a much better human being. It's awesome.

Lazarus comes back. Oh, this is incredible. Life again. Wow! Then years go by, I don't know how many years, a decade, maybe two. Then he's on his deathbed again. Tell me how he feels. Most likely, he's pumped. I'm so glad to be done with this dump. Mission accomplished. I'm going to heaven. I'm spending eternity with Jesus. I can't wait. That's how I feel about it. I tell my wife all the time. She's not enthused by that. I was like, "I can't wait to go to Jesus. Jobs done. I'm going to heaven." She's like, "You still got four kids to raise." I'm like, "Yeah, that's right."

That's why I'm here. It's better for me to stay for a little while longer. When you believe in Jesus Christ, that's the assurance you have, that's the truth you have, that Jesus Christ brings light and life to the whole person. He can forgive anyone and everyone of all sins. He can heal any emotional heartache. He can free from any deep addiction. He can heal any physical disease, any broken heart, any struggling families. If you're not a Christian, come to Jesus Christ. If you are a Christian, come to Jesus Christ as well.

If you missed any of the points, repent and preach the gospel, follow Jesus, make disciples, serve people in word and in deed. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time in the Holy Scriptures. We love the scriptures. They don't just teach us and illuminate our minds, but they feed our souls. We thank you for the reminder, that we are to repent of sins and follow you and to make disciples and to serve people on a daily basis in both word and deed. We pray, continue to send us the Holy Spirit, continue to embolden us to speak the truth of the gospel.

Continue to give us opportunities to speak the gospel and call people to repentance because they've offended a holy God, but he's also a merciful God who sent us Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins. For that, we thank you. In Jesus Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card. Either the physical one the worship guide, or the one online. Or in the app if you fill it out, we will get in touch with you over the course of the week. That said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good God. And you created this world to be a good place and we rejected your goodwill. We gave into the temptation of the evil one. When he doubted your goodness, he sowed the doubt in our minds.

And we began to doubt your goodness. As if your commands are in place to keep us from that which is truly good, which is false. It's a lie. Jesus, we thank you that you came and you taught us that Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy. But you came to give life and give life to the fullest. And you came to dismantle the corrupt works of the evil one. And we thank You, Jesus that you came and that you took on Satan and head on. And as he tempted you over and over and over. You vanquished his temptations with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. We thank you for doing that for us. We thank you that your substitutionary atonement on the cross was perfect. It was blameless that sacrifice was without blemish because you never gave into sin

And we have Lord and we repent of our sin. We repent that all too often we have given into the temptations of the evil one. To find satisfaction apart from you, to find significance apart for you, success apart from you. And your Word tells us that there is nothing good apart from You. Lord, we ask for forgiveness. And we thank you for the grace that you offer to us. And we pray that you send us the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, we thank you that you have given us the Holy Scriptures. And that we are filled with the Spirit when we are filled with the scriptures.

And I pray that you show us that we can be more than conquerors in Christ no matter what temptations that the enemy brings before us. I pray that you bless our time in the Holy Scriptures. And that you give us a love for the Holy Scriptures, a desire, a longing for the Holy Scriptures. Because your Word tells us that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We need it for our souls, for our famished souls. I pray satiate us today and we pray all this in Christ's Holy Name. Amen.

Well, Happy New Year, everyone. All of our problems just disappeared. You just flipped the page, they're just gone. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Actually feels like December 41st 2020. That's what it feels like. But we're still here, God is still on the throne. We still have a mission. He still has a Holy Spirit for us. Just to give you in a timeline what we're doing. We're going to be in the Gospel of Matthew. We started Matthew for Advent. We did that for four weeks. And we celebrated Matthew, and then we continued in Matthew three and today we're in Matthew four.

We're going to continue through Matthew up until Easter. So that means we'll finish chapter four next week and then we are going to begin the Sermon on the Mount. The greatest sermon that has ever been preached. By the greatest preacher that ever preached and that was Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, himself. Today we are in chapter 4:1-11. The title of sermon is When Satan Tempts Me. And the context is that Jesus Christ is beginning his ministry. Last week we studied, Tyler did a great job studying the text where Jesus Christ comes and he is baptized by john the baptizer. Did he need to get baptized because of his own sins? No, of course not.

He was blameless, he gets baptized to identify with us and to fulfill all of righteousness. And as he is baptized with water, he's also baptized with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descends from heaven upon him, as if like a dove. So you see the Holy Spirit, you see the Son of God, you see the two members of the Holy Trinity. And then the third member of the Holy Trinity, which is the first member of the Holy Trinity is God the Father and He speaks and what does he say? He says, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." These are the words that every single child longs to hear from their parents.

This is my beloved I love you. This is my child, and I'm pleased with you. And God the Father speaks that to God the Son in that it shows us that's what our souls long for. That's what true satisfaction is, true success, true significance is to be a child of God by grace through faith. And when God looks at us through the work of Jesus Christ, he's pleased with us His Beloved. John Milton wrote a phenomenal work called Paradise Lost. It's considered one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It masterfully tells the story of the fall in poetry of Adam and Eve as they're tempted by the evil one. And as they succumb to the temptation and they sin and the fall. And the darkness and the brokenness and the corruption all that's unleashed when they reject the Word of God. John Milton then followed up with a sequel, a brilliant sequel. Who knows the title, AP English anyone? The title of the sequel? It begins with paradise. Paradise not lost paradise...

Found?

Close, that'd be smart, oh so smart Adam. Regained, paradise regained. So if you are John Milton, and you wanted to create a sequel, beautiful poetry, etc. What story in scripture would you go to, to say this is where paradise was regained? Would you go to the beautiful Christmas story, the nativity scene where this is God and incarnate. He is here. There's angels, there's shepherds, there's the Magi, there's Joseph, there's Mary. Is that where you would go? Or would you go to Jesus beginning his ministry. Teaching the gospel, he's healing people he's feeding people, he's ministering to people. Is that where you would go? Or would you go to the gospel itself? Would you go to Gethsemane? Would you go to the cross?

Would you go to Jesus suffering for our sins? Then he's laid in the tomb resurrected on the third day? Is that where you would go? That's not where John Milton went for Paradise Regained. He goes here to Matthew four. He goes here to a desert. Paradise was lost in a garden. It's regained in a desert, where Jesus goes to war against Satan. Why does he go here? Well, because ruin came in the garden. When temptation was given into. And redemption comes in the desert, where Jesus does not give into temptation. He fights tooth and nail when he's physically weakest.

After being emaciated, famished for 40 days. After 40 days of fasting, this is where victory is provided. The entryway into regaining paradise in this conquest. The regaining of paradise is assured. This text is like D-day in Normandy. This is the allies in World War Two landing on the beach head. And if they take this beach head, the war is over. There's still another year of war coming. Bloodshed for another year battles to come. But if we can take this beachhead, if we can overcome evil here, victory is guaranteed. That's what Matthew four is like. So today, we're in Matthew 4:1-11. Would you look at this incredible text with me?

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting, 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God throw yourself down, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you. And on their hands, they shall bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone."

And Jesus said to him again, "Again it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test." Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, "All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me." And Jesus said to him, "Be gone Satan, for it is written you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve." And the devil left him and behold angels came, and we're ministering to him." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

The main idea of this text is not how we overcome our temptations. Although we can glean those truths from this text. The main idea of the text is that Jesus Christ did not give into temptation, so that he could remain a sinless sacrifice for our sins, for us. Meaning when we give in to temptation and we can go to Christ who forgives us. When we ask for forgiveness, when we repent of sins because he never sinned. But we will look at Satan's top three temptations from the text. First temptation is satisfaction without God. Then he offers us success without God and third significance without God. Another way to think about this is he offers us food, wrong forbidden food.

And he offers us fame, forbidden fame. And he offers us forbidden force or power. 1 John 2:16 says, "For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh. The desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. Is not from the Father, but is from the world." The world, scripture says is under the authority of the evil one. And this is how he tempts us with the desires or hypothermia in the Greek which is lust. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life. And we see all three temptations here. The first is he offers us satisfaction without God is lust of the flesh.

In Matthew 4:1-4, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter came. He's the devil. The, there's a definite article, diablas, he is the one. He is the personification of evil, he is the arch enemy of God. And there's the devil and then he's also called the tempter. That's what he does by his nature. He tempts us with things to pull us away from God. And the context is that Jesus has been baptized with the Spirit and now there's a Spiritual battle.

There was a voice from heaven and now there's a voice from hell. The voice from heaven spoke love, truth, reassurance spoke once. Satan comes and he speaks over and over and over in a sinister whispered. Pulling Jesus away from God attempting to. And there was comfort now there's conflict, there was refreshment and now there's famishment. And the gall of Satan even to attempt to take to tempt Jesus Christ. He's trying to tempt the Son of God. He's so hates God, he's so hates the Holy Trinity. And he's so hates us. He wants to destroy the plan of the gospel and redemption from the very beginning. One thing I do want to say here, a lot of people when they're tempted.

Oh it's Satan. Famous phrase says, "Not today, Satan. Not today." When you're tempted with like a second slice of cheesecake. That's probably not Satan, statistically speaking. Why do I say that? Because Satan is not omnipresent. He's not everywhere at the same time. His resources are limited. He's tempting Jesus here because Jesus is on his radar. Why? Because Jesus is doing the work of God. Does Satan himself tempt us? Maybe. Are you on his radar? Are you doing so much effective gospel work for God that you're on Satan's radar?

If not, he'll send just his minions, his demons to come and do his work. That's first of all. Second of all, is Satan real? In past sermons, I would sit back and I would prove to you that Satan is real. How do you explain Auschwitz? It's not just people. Like the idea of we're going to put human beings in ovens. That idea is so evil. It's so diabolical. And we're going to do so systematically 6 million people. How do you explain the gulags? How do you explain all the worst parts of human history? And usually the same camp that says, I don't believe in Satan.

Is actually a Satan camp that says, I believe that human beings are basically good. You can't have it both ways. If you don't believe in Satan, and then all of the evil that's ever been done is just on people. So then you have to believe in a total depravity. People are so evil that it was scare John Calvin himself. So is there evil in the world? Yes, of course. But then I don't even have to do... My new apologetic for just Satan exists is 2020. 2020 happened, yes Satan does exist. Yes, of course Satan exists. If Satan didn't exist, then Jesus Christ wouldn't need to come down to this world.

Jesus Christ would not need to fulfill the commandments of God. Jesus Christ would not need to die on a cross in order to destroy the works of Satan, sin and death. But Jesus did all that. Jesus is God. He knows everything. Does Jesus know that Satan exists? Yes, of course. I saw this comedian named Sarah Silverman who was not very funny. She had this quote where, this was just recent, where she wanted to convince people that hell doesn't exist. And it was on her podcast and she gets out and she says, "For all of those listening to me who believe in hell I just want to release you from that. I promise you." she says, "I promise you this, hell does not exist. I believe it with my whole heart that hell doesn't exist."

What is that based on? Am I going to base my eternity on your feelings? Just feelings. It's a faith statement based on your feelings. Yes, I do believe Satan exists. It's not based on feelings. It's based on the Son of God that came into this world as a historic figure. Lived a perfect life died on a cross and comes back on the third day. That's how Christianity started. 500 people saw Christ come back from the dead. To prove that everything he had said in all of his life was actually truth. Did Jesus believe in Satan? Yeah, he went to war against Satan. Look how crafty Satan is in the text.

He waits until Jesus that is at His weakest. That's a Matthew 4:2. He waits until Jesus is potentially at His weakest, Spiritually because Jesus came from the highest high. He comes from this baptism. And Satan knows that when people at the very top they're most tempted. Scripture says, "Whoever thinks they stand be careful lest you fall." So Spiritually, Jesus at the very top. Physically, Jesus is at the very bottom. He's absolutely weakest. Matthew 4:2 said He fasted for 40 days, and 40 nights, he was hungry. Now, if you've ever fasted for an extended period of time, I'm not talking about four hours. I'm talking about days you know, after day two or three, hunger dissipates. And you don't need to eat, you feel satisfied. But then after a while, the longer you keep going at some point, your body just says I don't have enough fat stores.

And hunger comes back, and it's ravenous. And it takes over you feel like... You almost feel like an animal. You can't think about anything other than food. And that's exactly where Satan catches Jesus and he comes to him. Verse three, the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God command the stones to become loaves of bread." Why does he come in with that question? What's the last thing that Jesus heard? He heard God the Father speak, "You are my beloved son." Satan comes in with a question. If, you are the Son of God. His questioning his identity. That's number one. And then he tempts him with something very basic command these stones to become loaves of bread.

Aren't you the Son of God, you can do anything right? And God could Jesus do it? Of course he could do it. And as he's looking at these stones obviously, the temptation is there. Nice loaf, another nice loaf, another nice loaf Jesus could do it. My daughter asked me what's your favorite miracle in the whole Bible? I was like, you have to ask me? Canaan Galilee Jesus at a wedding. Give me all the water bottles. Give me all the water foom, foom, foom Cabernet, sauvignon. What kind of... Whatever you want. Pinot Grigio I'll give you that. Jesus could do that he had the power to do that. Is it a sin for him to do that? Well, apparently yes if this was a temptation. Most likely God the Father gave Jesus a job to do.

Jesus you will fast for 40 days. You will fast until I tell you to stop. And it's to show that you have power over the physical body. It's to show that your desire for God is greater than your desire for food. Satan comes in and he comes in with this question. He turns the fact into a question and he makes a basis for sinful action. What do I mean? He's saying well, aren't you the Son of God? Then why you suffering? If God is a good father, and he cares for his son, why is he allowing his son to suffer? Why is he allowing his son to hunger? Sons shouldn't suffer? That's the implication here. Is that true?

That's not true. God allows his children often to suffer and go through extended periods of suffering, prolonged suffering in order to strengthen us. In order to draw us near to Him in order to refine us. But Satan comes in and says well, God's not meeting your needs, maybe he's not good. Maybe he's not loving. So meet your own needs, satisfy yourself. You don't need God to... Obviously he's not he's not doing it. So satisfy yourself, get around God. And by the way, that was the very first temptation. The very first temptation was, Satan comes to Eve and says, is God good? I think God's keeping something from you. God's keeping God likeness from you.

This is Genesis 3:4-5 "And the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open. And you will be like God, knowing good and evil." He's saying, God's been lying to you don't trust me. He's keeping good from you. And by the way, it always starts with physical appetites. Temptations always come with physical appetites of something that's forbidden. Might be food. But usually, it's something else, like lust. Oh, God's keeping this good thing from you. Get rid of God. You don't need God. Take, eat. I'm allowing, God's forbidding you? I'm allowing you.

That's what's going on in Genesis 3:6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food. And that it was delight to the eyes get lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes. Here, you got to take a step back and say, how did Jesus end up in the desert? Did Jesus Himself choose to go into the desert for this fast. You see, in verse one, it says Jesus was led up by the Spirit. Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Who led him into the desert it was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lead Jesus into a place where Jesus can be tempted. Does God tempt us? He does not.

He does not. But he does test us. And that's what the Greek word peirasmós actually can be translate either way, temptation or testing. So something that Satan uses for temptation God uses for testing. So God the Father initiates this by the power of the Spirit, for Jesus to go to be tempted by the evil one, why? First of all, overcome Satan. But second of all, so that he can help us in our temptations. So that he can sympathize with us and that he can help us perfectly. Hebrews 2:18, "For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted." And I say this because a lot of Christians are great at repenting after they've sinned.

You're tempted you give in, oh Jesus, please forgive me. Please forgive me. We need to get better at turning to Jesus before you give in. When you are tempted when in the thick of the temptation. Turn to Jesus Christ say Jesus helped me and he's able to help. Hebrews 4:15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. But one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted. This was a temptation that he could not avoid. One of the ways that we grow in the Spiritual faith is by growing in Spiritual wisdom. And one of the ways we do that is to avoid situations where we are tempted.

Scripture says don't make provision for the flesh. We need to know ourselves. What causes us to be tempted? What places or situations and avoid those. We can avoid watching things that cause us to be tempted. Listening things that cause us to be tempted. Job said I made a covenant with my eyes, not to look lustfully at a girl. We can refuse places and situations of temptation. But there are some temptations that we cannot avoid. And this is a lesson here. And the lesson is that we need to know that when we're brought to a situation that can't be avoided. That God does provide a way out for us. We're taught in the Lord's Prayer to pray the following.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Does that mean that God will never lead you into a place of temptation? No, that's not what that means. What that means is, Lord don't lead me to a place of such temptation that I will give in 1 Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man." God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure. Why does God lead us into ways of temptation? Number one, to strengthen our faith. Number two to destroy our pride. As you grow in the faith as you get stronger, you might begin to think, oh I've overcome this temptation. And that one, and that one, and then God surprises you.

That no, we actually need God more than we think. It teaches us to wage Spiritual warfare to treasure, the help that Christ alone can give us. The other thing I want to talk about real quick here is that temptation for satisfaction, is strongest in isolation. When we are by ourselves. Why is Jesus in the wilderness by himself? Why did this occasion happen before he chose his 12 disciples, why? It's to teach us that no one else can believe for you. No one else can fight the good fight of faith for you. No one else can resist your temptations.

Someone once said that who we are, who we truly are Spiritually. It's when we are alone with God, and with Satan. That's who we truly are. Moses fasted twice for 40 days. Elijah once for 40 days. Paul spent three years alone by himself in the desert in preparation. And we know that community is important. Jesus needed James, John and Peter to pray for him in the garden in Gethsemane. Pray for me pray for me He pleaded with them. And they kept falling asleep. We need others to pray for us, to hold us accountable, to spur us on. To show sympathy, understanding, share lessons of past experiences. But at the end of the day, no one can be faithful for you.

No one can obey for you. No one can trust for you. No one can wage Spiritual warfare for you. We must battle our own sin. Sin of the flesh, sin of the world and sin of Satan. So yes, Christianity there's a social aspect. But yes, there's also a solitary aspect. And in our hectic lives, and with our relationships. Lives full of people, husbands, wives, children, sisters, brothers, friends, workmates, solitude's missing. And one of the reasons why we're not growing as we should be in the faith is because we don't spend enough time alone with God. Just you, God, Holy Scripture and prayer and meditating. Praying, being with God developing a conscious awareness of the presence of God.

The thick presence of God. That His Spirit is in the room. His Spirit is ministering to us. Matthew 26:41, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How does Jesus respond to the tempter, to this temptation? Verse four, "But He answered, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." He responds with the Word of God. Everything Jesus spoke was the word of God. But Jesus specifically takes verses from Deuteronomy that he's been meditating on.

And he speaks it as the Word of God. Did Jesus believe that Deuteronomy was the word of God, that the Old Testament is the word of God? Yes. So why do we believe the Word of God is the word of God? Because Jesus believed the Word of God is the word of God. And what does he say? Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. This is what he's saying. As important as food is, as important as bread is carbs, very important. As important as that is to our physical nourishment. God's word is even more important for us to live. Now, do you believe that? Do you believe that with your life?

Just think about how much time you spent thinking about food. I love food. I'm such a big fan of food. I have a love love relationship with food. I could spend all day thinking about food, all my favorite foods. And the way that I want to prepare them, or the way that I want someone else to prepare them. And think about how much time we think about food, meditating on food. Going to the grocery store. Coming home, packing everything in the fridge. And then cooking and then eating, enjoying it and then cleaning up. And we do that multiple times a day. Food is important. What God here says is, God's word is more important.

For the life of our soul. And God's word isn't just information. It's nutrition for our soul. Do you want to be healthy as a Christian, healthy Spiritually? You need God's Word to take in God's word, study God's word, love God's word. God's word is an extension of Him. This is how we fellowship with God. When he speaks, His Word is an extension of him. When we obey his word, we obey Him, and when we trust his word, we trust him. When we love his word, we love him. John 14:23, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word." Its power, its food. And this is how Jesus overcomes the evil one.

Point two, Satan comes and tempts Jesus with success without God. And this is verses five through seven. Then the devil took him to the holy city. And setting him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, again, question, throw yourself down for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you and on their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against the stone." And Jesus said to him, "Again, it is written You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." So what's going on here? What's going on is that Satan's very intelligent, he's brilliant.

He saw that Jesus quoted scripture to rebuke him with the first temptation. Satan comes in second temptation with Scripture. He comes in and quotes Psalm 91. Calvin said that Satan is a cute theologian. Jonathan Edwards said Satan was trained in the best divinity school in the universe. He comes in with a blatant misuse of Psalm 91. Psalm 91 is incredible. It says, if you trust in the Lord, if you take your refuge in Him. He will care for you provide for you, he will protect you. No matter what situations you find yourself in. Satan takes that and says, Jesus put yourself in a situation where God has to protect you by sending angels. And he tempts him actually with suicide.

To takes him to the Pinnacle 300 feet up, says jump. You're the Son of God, right? So God's going to protect you. So jump down, and then the angels will come. And now all of a sudden, everyone realizes that you're amazing. You're the son of God. And now you have this incredible following of people who recognize you for who you are. You have fame. What he's offering Jesus Christ is the crown without the cross. Could Jesus have done this and gain a following? Yeah. But Jesus doesn't want a following a fans. He wants to wants a following of worshipers. And that's a completely different way. That's a completely different method.

So just Satan here is enticing Jesus Christ with a defiance of God. That's why Jesus responds to verse seven, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Don't presume on God's goodness that God has to protect you, when you put yourself in a situation that actually contradicted his law. When you do something that he forbid. When you're attempting to force God to act. He's offering Jesus Christ success as defined by the world. How does the world define success? Fame, notoriety, money. Jesus Christ says, no that's not the path that I'm choosing. I'm not choosing the path of the crown.

I'm choosing the path of the cross. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching. For reproof, for correction for training and righteousness. That the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work. What's true success? True success isn't when people say we're successful. It's when God says well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master. Jesus didn't care what people thought. Jesus doesn't care about success as defined by Satan. He cares about success is defined by God.

2 Peter 1:21 for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along from the Holy Spirit. We need a robust definition of success in every area of life as defined by God. What does God think about my work? Is my work successful? Well, do you do your work to the glory of God not as to men, but from the heart? What does God think about my family? And what does God think about how I treat money, and generosity etc. And we look to Scripture not to Satan for definition of success.

Joshua 1:8 the book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. So that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and you will have good success. And then finally, Satan tempts Jesus with significance without God. Matthew 4:8-11 again the devil took him to a very high mountain. And showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you fall down, and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve."

Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. What has Jesus called the devil here? He's been the devil, he's been the tempter. What does he call him? Satan, the adversary. Satan you are the enemy, you're coming, in order to draw me away from God? First question you got to deal with here is. Does Satan have authority over the kingdoms of the world. Does Satan have authority over those in political power? Well, in some sense he has a derived sovereign authority. It's under the authority of God. But in a sense, he does have authority over the nations. Jesus calls him the prince of this world.

He calls him the ruler of the kingdom of the air. St. Paul calls him the god of this age. And Satan is offering Jesus Christ a shallow political salvation. You can be king over everything under me. So fall down, and worship me. And Jesus says, no be gone, Satan. For it is written you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. It's fascinating Jesus could have said, no, I don't need all of that from you it's all mine anyway. He doesn't do that. And he could have said, the worship you? You should be worshiping me. He doesn't say that either. He goes to the Word of God.

He goes to the very first commandment, he goes to the Holy Scripture. And he says, no you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Genesis 3:5 this is what Satan tempted Adam and Eve with. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open. And you will be like God, knowing good and evil. You can be like God, you can be ruler over your own Little Kingdom. Just don't worship God worship me. And that's what Satan wants for each one. God creates us in His own image. Satan wants to create us in his own image, where Satan doesn't obey God, he worships himself. So he offers to us, hey, you don't need to worship God, you can worship yourself.

And I will give you everything that you want. And it's always a lie, and always leads to destruction. So Jesus rejects Satan with the Word of God. And what's fascinating here is, Satan said in the second temptation jump off the pinnacle. Angels will come into minister to you, he doesn't do that. And here he rejects Satan, and what happens? The angels come and they begin ministering to him. I always wondered what how do they minister? And if you study a long fast, there's a very particular way of breaking a fast. So I wonder if the... Angels obviously know that.

So I wonder if there's an angel that shows up with bone broth. For like one bowl and a second bowl. You could do that for a couple days. And then you bring in some vegetables and a little rice and then finally a little meat. And you got all these angels ministering to Jesus. And it's not just angels in Mark 1:12 and 13 talks about animals. The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness 40 days, and being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. So he wasn't completely alone. He had company with animals on all kinds of animals. And then he has angels. But the main truth of this last text is that Satan tempts us with worship.

He tries to pull our heart away from worshiping God. And it's just a question of desires. What do we love more than anything else? That's what worship is. It's when our hearts begin to become attached to things or people or experiences. And they get pulled away from God and that's why we need God's word. God's word helps us discern. Well, what is it I'm loving? What is it I'm coveting? What is it I'm thinking about meditating on more than God himself? Is it money, is it career, is it a person? Is it relationships? What is it? That's why we need God's Word to do Spiritual surgery.

Hebrews 4:12-13, "For the Spirit of God is living an active sharper than any two edged sword. Piercing to the division of soul and Spirit. Of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." So as we read Holy Scripture, it's reading us. It's discerning us, it's cutting through the thoughts and tensions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight. But all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him, to whom we must give an account. So as we read God's word, we need to allow God's Word to read us. What is it saying to me? What is the saying about me?

Scripture says that our hearts are confused. They're anxious, they're restless, they're rash, deluded, troubled, they're broken by sin. Jeremiah 79, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can understand it?" So we need God's Word to discern. What am I worshiping? What am I desiring? Where are the affections of my heart? Matthew 15:8-9, Jesus said, "These people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me." Teaching his doctrines the commandments of men. So where is our worship? Is my heart connected to the heart of God? Or is it straying from the heart of God? And is my worship just lip service to God?

Or is it from the heart and this is something we need to train ourselves in. To do the hard Spiritual work as we read Scripture. In 1 Timothy 4:7-8 says, "Have nothing to do with irreverence, silly myths, rather train yourself for godliness. For a while bodily training is of some value. Godliness is a value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life, and also for the life to come." So just practically, how did Jesus overcome the temptation? He knew God's word. He studied God's word. And I'm not talking about he just read Bible verses to Satan. He knew exactly the tactic that Satan was taking. He knew the idea that Satan was bringing before Jesus.

And Jesus could discern the idea, and counter that idea, with ideas from the Word of God. 1 John says, "Test the Spirits to see whether they are true." So meaning test ideas to see what kind of Spirits or demons are behind them. Is this idea from God? Or is it from Satan? Satan is the master of disinformation, of false narrative of propaganda. And he comes to us with false narratives. False worldviews, and we need to know Holy Scripture so well. That we have the gift of discernment as can counter these ideas from the Word of God. So how do you do that? Honestly, the best way to do that is read your your Bible. Study Holy Scripture, make a plan to read Holy Scripture.

I've never met a Spiritual person who's growing Spiritually, who does not know their Bible inside and out. And who does not read Holy Scripture in a systematic way. Not just you pick it up oh, what am I reading today? It's, I have a plan. I know exactly how many chapters a day in the Old Testament in the book of Psalms. In the Book of Proverbs in the New Testament, you need a plan. There's a million plans out there grab a plan, grab some brothers and sisters from community group read Holy Scripture together. That's important. And also whenever I start talking about reading scripture in a planned way, methodically. People are like ah, it's not very Spiritual. False, let me show you from Holy Scripture. To be Spirit filled means to be scripture filled.

They're one and the same. The Holy Spirit wrote the Holy Scriptures. It's one and the same. So if you want to grow and being Spirit filled, Spirit lead, Spirit empowered. You got to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I'll tell you this, in conclusion. Ephesians 5:18 says, "Be filled with the Holy Spirit, be filled with the Spirit." It's imperative, you got to do it. But it's a passive, I can't do it. So you got to put yourself in a position where you are filled. And then you go to the parallel passage in Colossians 3:16. Instead of saying, be filled with the Spirit it says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." So do you want to fill the Holy Spirit, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. It's in you, you know it, you're studying, you're meditating upon it.

And this is how we can overcome the evil one. Here at the end, I want to read Matthew 27. I'll tell you why. The fall happened where? In the garden. And then paradise was regained where? In the wilderness. But then there was another garden, and then there was another wilderness. The second garden that we see is the garden of Gethsemane. Where Jesus Christ in that garden, he goes to war with Satan again. That's why he asked his brothers Pray for me, as he's under such anxiety. That the capillaries in his face are bursting, and he's sweating blood. He's at war with Satan. And then from that garden, Jesus Christ goes to another wilderness. Outside of Jerusalem, what's that wilderness? It's Golgotha.

It's where he's on the cross. And Jesus Christ goes to the cross. And finally he destroys evil. He destroys Satan for once and for all. By dying, by being buried, by being raised again. Why does he do that? He did that for all those times when we gave into our temptations. When we sinned against God. When we sought satisfaction apart from God. When we sought success or significance apart from God. When we sinned. So when we go to Jesus Christ, and we asked for forgiveness. We know we will be forgiven. How do we know that? Because he didn't come off the cross.

Satan comes with the same exact temptations with which he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. He comes to him Matthew 27. And see if you don't notice them, verse 32. "And as they went out they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means a place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with Gall. And when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified Him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."

"And two robbers are crucified with Him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "You would destroy the template and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself." If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priests and the scribes and the elders mocked him saying, "He saved others, he cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel, let him come down now from the cross. And we will believe in him. He trusts and God let God deliver him now if he desires him. For he said, I am the Son of God." And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way."

"Now, from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?." Which that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And some of the bystanders hearing it said, This man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge filled it with sour wine and put on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait till we see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his Spirit."

"And behold the curtains of the temple were torn in two from top to bottom. And the earth shook and the rocks were split. And the tombs were also opened. And many bodies of the saints would fallen asleep were raised and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection. He went to the holy city and appeared to many. And when the centurion those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake, and what took place. They were filled with on said, "Truly, this was the son God." The reason that we know that when we come to Jesus Christ and ask for forgiveness of our sins. And he does forgive the reason we can be assured of that.

It's because he didn't give into the ultimate temptations when he was hanging on the cross. To come down, and to save himself from the wrath of God that he was to bear for our sins. But Jesus went through all of that in order to save us. So if you're not a Christian, we welcome you today to turn to Jesus Christ. To turn from sin, to turn from the ways of Satan. And to turn to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You can do that now, with a prayer of repentance. And as we turn to Holy Communion, we remember what Jesus Christ did and what he did for us. That his body was broken, so that we can be healed and that his blood was shed so that we can be cleansed from our sin.

So if you take your little cup, we welcome everyone who is a repentant believer to partake in this. If you are not a Christian, or if you are living in unrepentant sin. We ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Instead, just focus on everything you've heard. If you are a repentant believer, you're welcome to partake. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread. After breaking, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat and do this in remembrance of me." (Silence) He then proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This cup is the cup of the New Covenant, my blood was poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink and do this in remembrance of me."

Holy Father, we thank you for sending your son Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you for bearing the penalty for our sin on the cross. After living a perfect life where you never gave in temptation. Holy Spirit, we thank you that you are with us today. Focusing our attention on the Holy One. And we do take this time to repent of sin. To repent of any time that we've given into temptation. I pray that you make us the people who fight the good fight of faith. Who take up the sword of the Spirit on daily basis. And wage war against the evil one against our sin and flesh and the sin of the world. Continue to bless us and lead us and guide us and we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning church. Welcome to Mosaic Boston. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler Burns, I'm the teen's director here and it is an honor and a privilege to be worshiping with you this morning and to be proclaiming God's word to all of us today. And we are going to be continuing our series through the book of Matthew in Chapter 3:13-17. You heard that right, it's only five verses. And as I started to prepare and see, okay, what is this text going to reveal? What are we going to be preaching on today?

As I was studying, God revealed the depths of the greatness in these short five verses and I just got excited. So I am really glad to be worshiping with you all today. And this text is a text that I'm sure most of us have heard before. It's the story of the baptism of Jesus. Many of us have heard this story before, but what I want us to think about today is what is at the heart of this story. At its heart this is not a story about baptism, at its heart it's not a how to baptize people, at its heart this is a story about identity.

And the thing about identity is that we all understand what it's like to want an identity, to struggle with our identity. To see maybe I want something a little bit different about myself, or maybe I want something affirmed about myself. We all know what it's like to think about our identity. And I remember growing up, the biggest part about my identity was sports. Not because I was any talented, but because I love to play and I worked hard at it.

And I remember that part of my identity in sports was, I'm going to outwork anyone on the basketball court or anyone on the soccer field. And that was who I said I was. Now just think about it, if I go up to you today or in any context, and I say, "Hey, I'm a harder worker than you," or "I'm going to work harder than you today." What would you think of me? You'd be like, man, that guy's an arrogant jerk, I want nothing to do with that guy. But the thing is I still wanted it to be true.

And so I remember a specific day, my senior year of high school. I was on the varsity soccer team. That's right, backup goalie. And as the backup goalie you know you never get to play. And so we were having this one game, it was awful, we were losing miserably. It wasn't good. And the second half my coach says, "Tyler, you're going in." So I go, I grab my gloves and I go up and my coach says, "No, no, you're going in at striker." Now, if you know anything about goalies deep down inside, the heart’s desire of every goalie is to score a goal themselves. They spend their entire time blocking shots, defending the goal to just have one opportunity to make a goal yourself. Oh, there's no greater joy.

And so I was excited. I said, "Coach, I'm ready to go." And he says, "Tyler, what I want you to do, is I want you to go and run around like crazy." He said, "I want you to tire out the defenders that they are so tired they can't run anymore because they're chasing you everywhere." So I go, "All right coach, I can do that." So guess what? I go out, I run around like crazy, like a chicken with my head cut off. And if you know anything about soccer as well, you also know that's not how to play soccer. And so I go and we don't score a single goal. Nothing good happens. We lose the game miserably by like six goals or something like that. It was bad.

And so my coach sits down the team after the game and he starts yelling at us and I'll never forget what he said. He said, "Tyler's out there running around, working so hard and he's not even any good." I had never been so offended and proud at the same time in my life. You see, something about my identity, I wanted people to recognize was that, I was the hardest worker there. And my coach recognized that, but what he was really saying was, you all have talent. If you even try, you're going to do better than what Tyler did. And so it was offensive, but I will still remember this fondly because he gave me an identity that I wanted it to be true.

He said that Tyler is the hardest worker. It wasn't my mom who said that. It wasn't my mom who's probably watching this, "Hi mom," in her high heels and pompom saying, "Tyler is the hardest worker, yay." No, it was my coach. It was the coach who saw how I worked and saw how my teammates worked and said he is the hardest worker on the field today. And the reason why I share this story is because there's something inherent about all of us, where we distrust what people say about themselves and we want to have it affirmed by others. Like it's one thing for you to say something is true about you, but you're biased about you, to someone who knows you say the same thing about you.

And so as we're reading our text today, what I want you to be thinking about is that this is a story of people, of those in the know identifying who Jesus truly is. But then having an understanding that once we know who Jesus truly is, that inherently changes our identity. We have a new identity. So with that, will you pray with me for the preaching of God's word.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you and we thank you that we are able to come together to gather, to worship you, to praise your name and to study your word. We ask that in this time, your spirit is moving, is using your word, is using me to proclaim the truth of your word, that you can convict all of us, challenge us, strengthen our hearts to love you more and to see our true identity, our value and our purpose in you. Lord, we praise you and we thank you through Jesus name we pray, amen.

So again as I mentioned, our text for today is Matthew chapter 3:13-17. And it says, "Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him saying, "I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water and behold the heavens were opened to Him and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased."

To frame up our time today, we have four points, that's right, five versus four points. I wanted to go the perfect five for five but God said, "Have mercy on you all." So we're only doing four points. And so the first point for today is that John, John the Baptist identifies Jesus. Then we see the Father identify Jesus. And once those identifications are made, Jesus chooses to identify with us. And because of the work of Christ, the Father then identifies us.

And so on this first point that John identifies Jesus, this is the first two verses, 13 and 14, specifically where John says that he's going to prevent Jesus from being baptized by him saying, I need to be baptized by you. Now you might be like, well, he didn't say who Jesus is there, how was this John identifying? If you remember from the text from last week that Pastor Andy had preached on, it said that John the Baptist is the one coming to prepare the way for the Lord. This is his purpose. This is why John is alive on earth, to prepare the way for the Lord. But that he specifically prophesied that there's one coming after him who is greater than he, who is going to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

And when we study biblically, John, these are the only two baptisms that are ever associated with him. The baptism John does, water for repentance and this one who is coming after him who's greater than him that is baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire. So by John saying, Jesus, I don't need to baptize you, you need to baptize me. He's clearly identifying to everyone, Jesus is the one I was saying is coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. That is the only other baptism that John would need.

But if you're like me and you're skeptical and you're like, well, that's us reading back at the text and having all the context. And so that's good. But what did the people that were there that day think? What did they hear when this was spoken? They heard the same thing. And how do we know this? The gospel of John, John the apostle wrote a more detailed account of the events at the baptism of Jesus and in the gospel of John chapter 1:29, it said, "The next day he, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him and said, "Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said after me comes a man who ranks before me because He was before me, I myself did not know him, but for this purpose, I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel."

What do we see here? John explicitly stated to those who were there that day, this is the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sin of the world. There was no ambiguity about what John was saying who Jesus was, it was explicit. It was clear, but also there's a really important detail in that first part of that verse where it says the next day. Why is that important? Well, because what it's saying is that John the Baptist prophesied, gave the greatest sermon of his life so much so that it's written down in scripture saying there is one coming after me who is greater than I, who is going to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, going to take away the sins of the world.

And the people who were there and they're like, wow, this guy is good. I want to hear him again. You see the thing was, where was John preaching? It was in the wilderness. You don't just go to the wilderness for an afternoon, you go there to hear him and you stay there. And actually there's archeological evidences and sites that show that camps were built around where John was baptizing so that people could stay and hear him preach. So what we know is that the majority of people who heard John prophesy, there's one who is coming who is greater than I, were there the very next day when John said, "It's Him. This is that man."

And this is powerful and I don't want us to underestimate how powerful it is specifically that John makes this identification. When I was thinking about this, I immediately thought of the movie, The Matrix. If you haven't seen it, it's a 20 year old movie, come on, what are you doing? Spoilers are coming. I'm a little sorry, but not that sorry. To be very general in the movie, The Matrix, the premise is that all of humanity is under control of the system called the matrix.

And everyone, well, not everyone, the people who understand that they are enslaved to the system want to break free from the system. There's a group of people called Zion. She's trying to make sure you understand, there's biblical references here. And it's saying we're trying to break free. And they're following a guy named Morpheus because Morpheus has heard that there's a prophecy that there's the one, the one who is to come to set the people free from enslavement to the matrix. And Morpheus's right-hand woman, the Trent named Trinity is there as well. Really just beating us over the head, pay attention. There's biblical references here.

But the movie is following a man named Neo to see is he the one who is going to save humanity from the matrix? Spoiler alert, he's the one. His name is an anagram for one, Neo, one. It's the same anyway. So Neo is the one, but when is the first time that he is identified as the one? Who identifies him as the one? I watched a clip to make sure I had this right because when I was like, it's Morpheus. No, it's actually not. It's Trinity, Trinity identifies it first, but there's a reason why in my mind and in probably most of your minds, you're like yeah, Morpheus is the one who identifies Neo as the one. I think I had a Freudian slip where I said Jesus, instead of Neo, but anyway.

Morpheus doesn't identify in first, the Trinity does. And why does she identify him as the one? Because she knows, but no one cares. The movie itself doesn't care. I don't remember it. The movie stays exactly the same. Nothing happens. Nothing changes after she says, "This is the one." But then a minute after she says it, Morpheus is standing over here and he does a dramatic turn just almost to the camera and says, "He is the one." And as those words flow out of Morpheus's mouth, the instrumentals crescendo, they pick up, the drum beat is going, your heart gets pumping and Neo starts doing all the crazy stuff that you expect in The Matrix movie, stopping bullets with his mind.

Well, why does it happen then? He has already been identified as the one. Why now? Because Morpheus was the one in the know. And Morpheus was the one who had gained a following, giving this message of hope that one is to come. And so the people were following Morpheus saying, "Who are you going to say it is? Morpheus, who is it going to be?" And he says, "Finally, it's Neo," and the people rejoice. And that's in a movie.

This is the same thing that is happening when John identifies Jesus, our hearts should be stirred to excitement and joy should overflow from us because John is the one in the know. John is the one who has gained a following by promising there's one coming. There's a message of hope. He is coming to take away the sins of the world and it's him, he's here now, this is who Jesus is. John identifies Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and it should cause us joy.

But if you don't want to take the word of one man, God's like, "I'm going to make it abundantly clear to you who He is." The Father then chooses himself to identify who Jesus is. And this is the second part of our texts in verses 16-17, it says, "And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to Him and He saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased."

Explicit language. Jesus, He is the beloved son of God. That's who He is. There's no doubt that's who He is. But this language and this imagery actually calls to mind a different text. It calls to mind when the angel came to Mary and prophesied to her that she was going to have a son. I want to read it for us. And then I want to see if you guys recognize the similarities. In Luke chapter 1:35, it says, "And the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God."

Two really important things here. First our text, the baptism of Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy, right? Yes, Mary has already had a son Jesus and that part of the prophecy was true. However, it says that He will be called the Son of God. Where is Jesus called the Son of God? Here, the Father proclaiming, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. That is the fulfillment of the prophecy given before Jesus's birth. But also, both cases are making identifications of who Jesus is, right? The text when the angel came to prophesy to Mary was also the fulfillment of Isaiah 7, the prophecy that he will be Emmanuel, God with us. What we have been talking about in the advent series.

And both times at the identification of Jesus as Emmanuel, as God with us, as the Son of God, we see the whole Trinity and I love this part. At the baptism of Jesus, we hear the voice of the Father proclaiming who Jesus is. We see the Holy Spirit descending and we see Jesus the Son rising out of the water. We see all of the Trinity here in the baptism. But also at the identification in the story that the angel gives, we see the Trinity as well. We see the power of the Most High and the Holy Spirit coming upon her so that she could give birth to a son Jesus, who is the Son of God.

And I love this because what it's to show us is that yes, Jesus is the Son of God. But his identity is inherently unified with the Godhead as a whole. He is not just a man. He is God, He is divine. It is imperative and it's amazing that at both moments of identification of Jesus, we see the Trinity. And so we see John the Baptist identify Jesus as the lamb who comes to take away the sins of the world. God the Father identified Jesus as His Son, God divine, and Jesus doesn't stand there and say, "Well, they said it, take it or leave it."

Instead, Jesus chooses out of love to identify himself to us by identifying with us. And this is actually my favorite verse in this passage. It's only five verses. I do have a favorite verse and I do genuinely like this versus. It's not just like the one of the five that I had to pick, I love this verse because when I read this verse I get excited. You could ask my wife when I was practicing this sermon, I came out of the office limping because when I was practicing this part, I was bouncing up and down so much I strained my hamstring. Literally no joke. Ask her.

Here's my favorite verse. You guys ready? Matthew 3:13, "Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him." You guys feel it? You feel that excitement that's in that verse? No. The look on most of your faces are the same look when I talk about any sport to my wife besides football, like what are you talking about? This verse, I love it and I want to show you why. And in order to understand why we actually need to look at a map. I'm a visual learner, I love maps. I love pictures. So I hope that this will help you guys.

But if you look at this map at that top section, there's a red square that says Galilee, right? The text says, "Jesus came from Galilee." That's where he was from. And that red circle up there is Nazareth. That's where Jesus was from, so most likely Jesus was traveling from His home in Nazareth to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Well, the Jordan is a long river, where was He getting baptized? That little red circle down there. Again, there's archeological evidence that shows that this is where it was. But also we know that John was in the wilderness, which is in that green Perea area just south by the Dead Sea. And so the closest place for the Jordan and the wilderness to me, it's right there. So it just makes sense. That's where John was baptizing.

And so what this verse is saying is that Jesus left his home in Nazareth to go down to the wilderness to be baptized by John, to reveal his identity as the Lamb who has come to take away the sins of the world. In this verse, this one verse is a historical fact, it is truth. It is just documenting what has happened, but it shows God's sovereignty and His providence that this historical movement and journey of Jesus actually points us to the greatest journey of Christ. I don't know if you caught it in there. Jesus left his home, not in Nazareth, in heaven. And He left His home in heaven and came down to the wilderness of the sinful broken world we call earth, why? To show to us, to reveal to us that He is the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sin of the world.

This one verse just parallels that so perfectly. It brings this to mind. It shows us that Jesus identifies with us by coming and living among us to save us. And if you're here today and you're not a Christian, or you're wondering what Christianity is about, the Apostle's creed, I didn't know we were reading that, but that was perfect and that explains it. But this whole first part of the sermon, this is what Christianity is. We believe truthfully, objectively, Jesus is the Son of God, Emmanuel, who has come to take away our sins. That is truth. It is fact. It is reality. That is who Jesus is.

And Jesus then, just base it on the words of others, even though others did affirm it about Him, He proved it to us. But Jesus doesn't just identify with us in the sense that He came and was a human because as you know, there are human beings that identify with us and there's other human beings that were like, they know nothing about what my life is like, right? Jesus identifies with us in all things and this is why I really love verse 15 in this text where Jesus says to John, "Let it be so now for it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." What is Jesus saying? Saying, "John, I don't need to be baptized by you. You're doing baptism by water for repentance. I'm God, I have no need to be repented of anything, but I'm going to do it to fulfill all righteousness."

Why? Because it was the will of the Father for Jesus to be baptized because this is how God wanted to reveal and affirm the identity of Christ to John the Baptist and to those there and to us reading the scripture today. Jesus was striving to be obedient to God in every single step of the way. And as human beings, we're called to do the same. As human beings, we are called to be obedient to the Lord in our lives. And it's once we are Christians that we are given the heart and the desire to truly be obedient to God. And Jesus identifies with us in that life of striving to be obedient to God.

And while Jesus was perfect in doing so, he identifies with us in our weakness and our temptation as well. This is why in Hebrews chapter 4:14-16 it says, "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need."

Jesus knows what it's like to be tempted. Spoiler alert for next week sermon, Jesus goes to the wilderness and is tempted. Jesus knows what it's like to have that struggle. And while He was perfect, when we are tempted to sin and to go against God, He knows what it's like. And what this text tells us is that we can hold fast to our confession that Jesus is the Messiah who saved us from our sins. Even while we are being tempted, because when we do so we run to Christ, we go to His throne and say, "Jesus, I need grace. I need your strength. I need your help to come out of this. Whatever the temptation is, Jesus, I need you to get me through this."

But it's not just in temptation when we are successful in overcoming it, it's temptation when we fail as well. What is our response to be when we are tempted and we sin. It's the same exact thing. When we are tempted and we sin against God and we fall short, our confession still holds fast that Jesus saved us from our sins. And so when we sin, we still run to His throne and ask God, "God, I need grace. I repent. I know that you have died to save me from my sins and I need your grace now."

And it also says in our weakness, not just temptation, in our weakness. And I love this one because Jesus came to reconcile the sins of the world, not just in us but also around us. Have you ever felt weakened just by the weight of the sin in the world around you? I don't know if I've ever felt that more than in this past year, that just so many things going on around us, it wears us down. Whether it's loss of a job of a loved one, loss of a life of a loved one. Whatever it might be, struggling with job yourself, struggling with how to have community while things are online, and whatever it might be and you're just overwhelmed and weakened by the world around us.

Jesus knows what it's like to be tired, to be burdened. Jesus died on the cross a gruesome death, but before that, He was in the garden on his knees praying through the night. "God, if there's any other way, take this cup from me." And in our lives, when we're at the same point, when we feel weak and we feel burdened and we're at the point of saying, "God, please, if there's any other way, please make it happen."

We have the same response that Christ had then, "But not my will, but yours be done." Why? Because we know who Jesus is. We know He is the Lamb who has taken our sins away. We know that He has promised to give us grace in our need. We know that He is with us through our pain and suffering. We can rely on Him. He is dependable. He is trustworthy. It's who He is. And as much as I said this text is not about baptism, it's about identity, it is also about baptism.

And so I'd be remiss to not talk about how Jesus identifies with us in baptism. And the clearest place we see this as from Romans chapter 6, where the apostle Paul says, "What then shall we say? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means, how can we who die to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like His."

This is one of the reasons, one of the scriptures that supports why we do believers baptism by submersion here at Mosaic. But the reason is because baptism is symbolic of this. When we are dumped under the water in baptism, it is symbolic saying that Jesus, I'm giving over my sinful, my fleshly desires, my old self, who I used to be. I'm giving it over to you. And I know that the penalty for my sins has been taken when you died on the cross. And when we are raised out of the water, it is symbolic of the spiritual reality of, Jesus has made us new. That the penalty of our sin has been taken away in that just as Christ was raised, we will be raised with Him in heaven.

And He gives us a new identity. We're washed clean. We have a new identity. Well, what is that identity? Because of Christ, the Father now identifies and tells us who we are. This comes from Galatians chapter three. It says, "For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female, and you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." Who are we? We're sons and daughters of God.

That same phrase that was used by the Father to identify who Jesus is, "This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased." What it's saying is when we are baptized into Christ, the Father says the same to us, "That is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. That is my beloved daughter with whom I'm well pleased." And I need to be clear here what I mean when I say this. Baptism is not magical. It does not save us from our sins. It's not like you could go downstairs, fill up the baptismal, do a cannonball, pop on one and be like, "Cool. I'm good, son, daughter, let's go."

No. What it's saying is that baptism is the natural following, the natural process of salvation. That's why it starts off through faith. We are sons of God through faith, and then talking about baptism. It's like if you have a good meal, the natural process is to post a picture of it to Instagram. It's just what you do. There's no other option really, right? It's the same thing. And when you are saved, the only rightful response is to be baptized.

And so if you are here today and you're a Christian, what this text is saying is that your new identity is son and daughter of God. There's no more Jew or Greek. There's no more racial divide. Your identity is not in your ethnicity, it's a part of who you are, sure. Every single human being is fearfully and wonderfully made, but that's not who you are. Your identity, your value, your purpose comes in the fact that God says, "I loved you enough to adopt you into my family to say you are my son, you are my daughter." We have gone from sinners in identification to sons in identification. We have gone from delinquents in identification to daughters in identification. We have a new identity, this is who we are.

And I love the last part. "We are heirs according to the promise." We got an inheritance. What is that inheritance? It's in the kingdom of God. We get to have an inheritance in His kingdom, but we need to be clear that just because we are sons and daughters and we have an inheritance, doesn't mean we are stereotypical trust fund babies. What do I mean by that? We don't go around saying, "Well, God's my Father so I can do whatever I want." We don't go around saying, "Well, God's my Father. He's given me the greatest inheritance of all times, I don't need to do anything, I've got an inheritance."

No inherently in our new identity as sons and daughter is also the identity of missionary. Where do I get this from? Why am I throwing missionary? Churches love to use the word missionary, pastors love missionary. It's a trigger word. So that's why, I mean, no, it's true. Why? Culturally speaking and especially at the time of Christ, fathers trained their sons in the work that they were doing, right? Joseph was a carpenter. He trained his son, Jesus, to be a carpenter. Peter's father was a fisherman, he trained his son to be a fisherman. This is just how it went and what happens.

And in the same way, our God the Father has a work that He is doing. He has a work of bringing reconciliation and His kingdom here to earth. And so we now, as sons and daughters are being trained in the work of our Father. This is why the great commission is the thing. Matthew 28:19, it says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."

See, the natural progress from baptism then is teaching to follow all that Christ has commanded. Why? Well, because Jesus is the Son of God. He knows perfectly the will and work of the Father. And so He has given us commandments. He has given us his word so that we can follow his instruction to do the work of the Father here on earth. And this is our greatest purpose now. Our identity, who we are as sons and daughters of God and our purpose is to do the work of the Father. We are missionaries.

Now, I want to be clear. When I say missionaries, I don't mean you all need to start working for a church or go to another country. Those are your options, pick one. No. We are all missionaries wherever we are at. And what I mean is, I was a missionary before I worked for Mosaic. I love being on a mission at Mosaic. It's a great opportunity, and I'm honored to be used by God here. But I was a missionary and called to be a missionary before I started working here. Before I worked here, I was at the New England aquarium, fun job. Penguin husbandry unit. If you ever been to the New England aquarium, you look down and you see the people playing with penguins, they're not actually playing with them, but that was me.

And I remember that at this job for a long time, no one knew that I was a Christian. And then one day we were prepping food for the penguins. I remember distinctly it was smelt because you could get fried smelt outside of the aquarium. And one of my coworkers ate it every day and I was like, "How can you eat it? We just fed it to the penguins." But anyway, I remember something came up about like God and science and evolution and the penguins. And I just threw out casually, I'm a Christian.

And as everyone in Boston does when they find out you're a Christian, they get awkward, they don't know what to do. So they just kind of became quiet. And I went through the rest of the day cleaning the islands, feeding the penguins, cleaning, feeding, cleaning, feeding. And when you're done, you're dirty and you're gross. And so you pop out and you go, you go shower. And there were three showers. And I remember as I'm showering, the guy in the shower next to me, he says, "Hey, you're a Christian?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "What does that mean?" And all that I can remember thinking is, really God, right here, right now? Like, this is where we're going to do this? Like all right.

And so I shared the gospel with him and I don't bring this story up to be like, look at how great this story is. I bring this story up to say what it means to be on mission the majority of the time is being willing to be used by God wherever you're at when He gives you opportunities and seeking those opportunities. The biggest way for opportunities to share the gospel and the love of Christ with those around us is simply do people know that we're Christians. It was not a coincidence that I identified myself as a Christian to those around me, that then they started to ask questions. Because how were they going to ask if they didn't know?

But also when I think about this, I think about my wife. Any chance that I can get to brag on her, I will. My wife, if you don't know, she is a missionary. And by that, I mean, she is a lawyer. She's a good lawyer. And by that I mean, she does a good job with her job, but also she's a good person. You have to clarify with lawyers. It's a biblical thing to clarify and my wife hates this joke. But what does it mean for her to be a missionary at her law firm? It means that her primary purpose in life is not to win cases for her firm, her primary purpose in life is not to make money or to be the best boss lady that there ever has been. Those are her words. Her primary purpose in life is to bring the kingdom of God, to make disciples in her office but everywhere that she goes.

And she's working on it, she's doing it. And I remember this past year one atheist lawyer's goal was to go to church once. That's a huge win in my book. I don't know about you guys, but that, praise God, hallelujah, that someone was like, I'm going to go to church once. And then COVID happened. And then they watched online and they actually really enjoyed, and they had a conversation about it. And so even still God is working, but she is on missions. That's what her purpose is.

No matter what our job description is, if you're a doctor, your primary purpose isn't your patients. Take care of your patients. Let me be abundantly clear, do that. That is one way to honor God. But your primary purpose is to be used by God where you're at. What does this look like? Do your coworkers know you're a Christian? Do you pray for your patients, understanding that yes, you do your job, but there's a God who's greater than me? I can pray for those that I work with.

If you're a student, if you're in high school, did you know that your primary purpose is not to go to college? Did you know that if you're a college student, your primary purpose in life is not to go to grad school or get a job? And if you're in grad school, did you know that your primary purpose is not to write that paper or get a job? Your primary purpose wherever you're at is to be used by God on missions to proclaim the gospel to those around us. And again, it looks different for each situation and each person. It's a willingness to be used by God.

I remember a year ago, a teen messaged me and was like, "Hey, I have a friend, he's really struggling with an eating disorder, how can I encourage them?" And as sad and as heartbroken I was for that individual, I was still joyful that one of our teens got it. They understood, my purpose isn't grades, I need to be used here by God to be an encouragement to this person who is broken, who is weak, who is hurting? How can I do that?

Wherever we're at, we need to be looking for ways that we can be by God for His kingdom. And I understand it's difficult now, especially with COVID, everything's online now and you're like, how can I do this if I'm not seeing people in person? You still can. It takes a little bit more creativity, but it's still possible. I know people that have started Bible studies with their friends being like, "Hey, you don't get to see anyone. I don't get to see anyone. At least this way we can see someone, it's a reason to meet. Let's do it." It's as simple as that sometimes, not always, but sometimes it's an example. But I say all of this to point out that we have a new identity. We are sons and daughters. And with that comes this purpose of doing the work of the Father and it's vital that we do it. It's vital that we do it.

I had a teen ask me a couple of months ago, how important is it for us to live out the Christian walk. If we're saved, isn't that enough? How important, how important, lets quantify it. And it's vital. And there's a verse that I was challenged with that day by my wife. Again, she's a missionary, even to me. She challenged me with a verse, Luke chapter 9:23-26. It says, "And He, Jesus said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words of him, will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."

The reason I bring up this versus to challenge us. We have a new identity. We are sons and daughters. This is the most valuable thing that we could have in life. Why would we sacrifice it for anything this world has to offer? Why would we be ashamed of our identity as sons and daughters when it is the greatest gift we have ever received? Don't be ashamed. Don't sacrifice your identity for things of this world. Know the truth of who you are. You are loved, because if Jesus loved you enough to die on the cross to save you from your sins, you are sons and daughters.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you and we thank you that you have given us a new identity. That we are no longer who we used to be, but now we have been put in a place of honor as your sons and as your daughters, because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Lord, give us firmness and security in our identity as your children and give us the strength and the wisdom and the understanding to do your work here on earth. In Jesus name, your son we pray, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Well, good morning. Welcome everybody who's here, everybody who is chiming in online. My name is Andy, I'm one of the pastors here along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. If you are new, we do want to connect with you. We have the connection card for that. We have some in the lobby here in person. If you fill one out and just give us something for your information, ask us any questions we'll get back to you. And if you do fill it out and you're a first time attendee, we would be happy to send you a gift online, you can fill out that card on our website on the Facebook stream, probably. And you can fill it out on our phone app, so we want to connect with you. We know that we might have some people chiming in around the Christmas season for the first time in a while.

Today, we are going to continue in the book of Matthew. We have been in Matthew the last four weeks for our Advent series and we're going to continue in Matthew for the next several weeks. And Matthew, this section Matthew is really relevant at this time of year. Matthew is setting the stage for what life is like in Christ's new kingdom. He has come he has been born, the Word became flesh at Christmas and it's a changing of the age. It's the time of the New Covenant for the Kingdom of God and with that comes changes with Christ's kingdom. And so, in the beginning parts of Matthew, Matthew is laying the framework for what life in Christ's kingdom is like. So, as we turn into the New Year, this is a great book, great section of scripture to just refocus ourselves on the Word of God and get some redirection, realignment to His direction.

So today, I have the privilege of preaching through Matthew 3:1 through 12, and this is about John, the Baptist coming and preparing the way for Jesus Christ. I wish I could say I grew my hair out in honor of his bohemian nature, but I just have not been able to get a haircut yet, in this busy season. But we're going to read from Matthew 3:1 through 12 as our word from scripture today.

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.'" Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Thus sayeth the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for this day. We praise you for this season of Christmas that reminds us of you're coming into the world, man, us, we by our own power, we have tried to justify our being. We've sought righteousness on our own accord and we've received, we've landed in nothing but darkness. But you Lord, you came, you broke through the darkness and into the light, you revealed your power, and Lord, for those of us in Christ, we are free from the darkness in which we once lived. Lord, we praise you for the hope that we have in this message, but today, Lord, let your power be made clear to us, Lord, shake us to the core by your power and remind us of the power that is working within us as we march forward as your servants in your kingdom in this life. In Jesus' name, I pray, amen.

So, what a lovely Christmas passage. There's just enough fire and brimstone in here to scare anybody away who's in this Advent, in this Christmas season, just been inspired to come back to church after maybe a hiatus. I'm joking, I'm joking. We can derive a lot of encouragement and edification from this passage and it's hard to see through, just to read this text. There's a lot of intense details, but I think what Matthew is getting straight at is he's asking, "What are you seeking?" That's what he's asking you in this little section of scriptures. Still at the beginning of his chapter, what are you seeking in Christ in His Kingdom? If it could be put more plain, "It's why are you here today? Why are you viewing today right now?"

If you're seeking anything other than the true and good King, the Lord Jesus Christ, looking to lead a lifestyle that is glorifying to His name, His kingdom, if you're not doing that, your motives are wrong, you're coming with the wrong heart. So, why is this important to Matthew? Matthew's writing in the decade or two after the ascension, the life, the ministry and ascension of Christ into heaven and Matthew has seen people fall away at this point. Matthew is a Jew. His gospel is primarily to Jews of his day. That's his target audience. He's seen a lot of them come with the wrong motives. He's seen some thinking that the Messiah would come and we can keep our traditions.

We can keep our temple life, our worship life, just add a little bit of Jesus, here and there, incorporate those hard teachings only when it's convenient. And when the gospel is pushed against the lives of these people, he has seen them fall away. He's seen those false motives come out. And Matthew at the beginning of the gospel, he's putting John right here to call us, take this seriously. So, again, I ask, "What are you seeking?" That's what Matthew's asking. That's what I'm asking you today. "Why are you here today?"

I have to start with this intensity, too because it fits the nature of the text. That's what John, "Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He's an intense guy, so I have to begin with the tone of the text. Are you coming to continue to live a life of clean religion and only incorporate the hard teachings of Jesus particularly to repent? Matthew gives us this imagery of Christ's kingdom being ushered in by a bohemian in the wilderness. He dresses in wool and animal skins, eats bugs and honey to tell us that you are not in the right place.

Gone are the days where worship is centered at the beautiful ornate temple. And now, the means by which God is going to do his work, the way he's going to get his message out, takes new form in the preaching of the gospel by simple men, not priests. Are you coming here simply to dabble into Christianity? See what all the hype has been about through history. Maybe like the Pharisees and Sadducees. You heard there's a good preacher here? I'm sorry, Pastor Jan is not preaching today, but you want to come and see what the hype is about. Maybe you're thinking as many teachings have been helpful to me in my life, maybe Christianity provides something it's had quite a track record in history, maybe you'll pick it up like your yoga or CrossFit phase.

Matthew communicates clearly that through John's message, he calls them brood of vipers of these evil snakes. Just even sometimes the babies will kill their mother, I've read in my research. Now, this insult, these are evil intentions. And then he takes at the end of this section, he takes him to the eternal stakes that are involved when one considers Christianity. Its eternity with life with Christ or its unquenchable fire. Christianity isn't just something you dabble into. We get a lot of international students that come in and out throughout the year. It's like taking up the arts. It's like taking up a new course of study to them. No. Christ wants your worship. He wants you to acknowledge him as King with every era of your life.

Are you here because of Christianity or Judaism or even both are in your family heritage? And you really just want to retain that heritage of that part of your family's history. I mean, at Christmas, that's the perfect time to chime into a sermon to experience the nostalgia of life. With those in your life who are actually real Christians. You miss them, but God doesn't want just empty worship. He doesn't need his self-esteem build up. He's altogether sufficient, satisfied in himself. The text says, "If He really wants worshipers, he can turn stones, raise them up into worshipers." God doesn't need you. He wants a relationship with you because He loves you. If He really is the all holy, all powerful, all knowledgeable, unchangeable, eternal being of the universe, the best thing he can do is give us to him.

Maybe you're here because you simply want help. You want help with your problems but you don't really want the teachings of God or God Himself. Maybe you're just attending to avoid hell. This seems a little more innocent, but Matthew gives the second half of verse seven. He says, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" He's saying that sarcastically to the Sadducees and Pharisees, the perennial opponents of Christ and the New Testament. They're not coming out with the right motives. They're seeing, "Can this be something that I add to my life." They're not really thinking about their sin, their need for a Savior, a Messiah, a King to come to bear the burden further sin and God just crushes that down.

So, we're not to come to Christianity. John and Matthew, they make it clear, we're not to come to Christianity for the sake of tradition, to try to improve our lives, to carry on aspects of our religious or family heritage or even escape hell. What's the point then? Why consider Christianity why consider a lifestyle with repentance from sin at the center? There certainly seems to be a lot of opportunity costs. We might be missing out a lot in life by taking this path. Why take this path of repentance that John, the Baptist that Jesus Christ called his followers to? And that's exactly what I want to talk to you about today. That's the last few verses of the section of the Scripture.

One to nine call readers to really evaluate their motives of what they're bringing to Christ and 10 through 12, there's a second emphasis. Verse 10, there's talk of a chopping axe. There's talk of the might of Christ. There's talk of the Holy Spirit and fire that believers received from Christ. Verse 12, there's talk of the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire. This is talk of the power of God. I want to talk about the power of God today because heading into 2021, sorry. Heading into 2021, this is a topic that we need. Passing on rightly preached on the hope that we have and through our faith in Christ alone on Christmas Eve, but I want to remind us that as Christians, we have access to the power of God.

One of the great tragedies about Christianity is that people don't know Christianity is powerful. There's a lot of believers that are limping through life. Just, they're afraid to even talk about this topic for appearing too charismatic or crazy, but a lot of people in the church, we don't really see other believers exhibit this knowledge of the power at work within them and outsiders. They certainly don't see that from us, but the reality is that any of us here who know the power of God personally know that that is the distinguishing feature the selling point of Christianity. It's what makes it unique. It's what gives us the ability to not just persevere, but to thrive in all seasons of life. It gives us joy to lead lives of repentance while living for the glory of our king. Like John, it gives us the courage to go before others, to call them to repentance, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So today, I want to talk about the power of Christianity. I'm going to ask two questions, what is the source of Christianity's power? What does the power of Christ actually bring to our lives? So, what is the source of Christianity's power? And so, notice in our passage, how John has described. It really does not tell us about his personality. Yes, we can read into it, we can apply like he's this mystical guy with this unique dress, but that doesn't really talk about it. We just know that he preached, "Repent, the Kingdom of heaven is near." Furthermore, we find that he had a good following. People from all Judah, and Jerusalem and the Jordan River. People flocked to him. Some modern theologians think he had a following that tapped into six figures.

There was something powerful about his ministry. He was the first prophet that entered into the course of redemptive history in 400 years for the people of God. So, people were thirsty. They were starving, but we should read that he's a simple man and really the one thing that we have, the description of him that really we should be focusing on is John is a voice crying in the wilderness. Mark and Luke, they talk about John, the Baptist. They give us a little more background information. Matthew intentionally keeps it plain. He's a voice crying in the wilderness. Sorry, Boston life is getting the best of me.

Matthew has shown us throughout John's ministry, the power of Christianity is not in the messenger, not in the mastery of the teachings by a person, not in the complexity of words, but with which the message is delivered, not in the location in which it is delivered. The power of Christianity is in the message of Christianity itself. I've heard it said before, Christianity says it's not what you do, but the gospel does to you. It's not something that I take up, it takes me up.

Romans 1:16. We rarely go week without talking about this here at Mosaic. The gospel is the power of God and to righteousness to the Jew first and also the Greek. What's the gospel? It's the Greek word evangelion, it means "Good news." It's not the message. It's that I must muster up strength and save myself. That's not good news. Okay. How many of you tried that for years? I did that years, 23 years of my life, just got nothing, but despair and exhaustion. How many of you tried that in 2020 over and over? Lord, how am I going to have the strength to do this? What's the message?

God has done something about my salvation. In his infinite glory and holiness with full knowledge of every rebellious deed that I've done, every prideful thought that I've had, He has chosen to do something to save me. That's why we celebrate Christmas, that's why we make such a big deal about it every year. God has visited his people. Despite man's failure, his tendency to lean on of all his own wisdom, He has come. All of man's sin and efforts and failure to find God on his own, they bring him to darkness, but he enters into creation, he brings the light he brings the power. The Bible is often misunderstood. It's often depicted as a chronicle of man's pursuit of God. That is wrong. That is not Christianity. That's not why we take up this pursuit. That's not the Christian message.

The central message is that man has sinned against God as Adam did in the garden, so we all do and God comes after us, seeks us, as He did with Adam and Eve. He covers our sin. When we get physically baptized, we're participating in something that does not show the end product of our pursuit of God, but reveals that God has pursued us. It's an outward sign of an inward change that was completely initiated and carried out by the Holy Spirit of God, simply because God chose to love us. Christianity, the power is in that God always makes the move to save man. It's in believing in this message that we may know the power of resurrection in our own lives. Like just by faith, we get access to this power, this knowledge that God saves us.

Scripture says that before Christ, it's a life of powerlessness, Ephesians 2:1 through 4. I think I forgot this in the slides. "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."

Life apart from Christ, we are powerless. We're just following. Satan is labeled as the prince of the power of the air. We're just following the course of the wind and the world. Whatever is thrown at us without the ability to discern what is right and wrong, without the ability to truly love what is of God, but that is us no more. We have lives of power. Paul, in Ephesians 1:16 through 20, he wants readers to grasp the power that has come to us in our salvation.

"I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places."

Let's meditate. Do you know this power, the same power that rose Jesus from the grave is what caught us out of the darkness, the death to our sins in which we once walked. We have newness of life. We don't just get it at salvation. It continues. The gospel is the power of God. It seems too simple. It seems too simple to believe. I was watching a movie, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, on Netflix. It's really out of character as a Netflix release, very wholesome entertainment.

And just the boy, he goes to school his whole life while his family are farmers in Malawi, probably age 12, 13, and a severe drought comes to the land and he has to stop going to school, but he still gets access to the library and he reads about power. He reads about windmills with the drought, as famine starts lots of rioting in the land. And he goes to his dad and he says, "Dad, if we build this windmill, I can power a pump that will pump water from our well constantly. We won't be dependent on the seasonal rains." And the tension of the movie is that the dad because he's not educated, he just can't understand that this power from the wind can be transformed into electrical power that powers the pump.

And that's just the view of a lot of people with Christianity. It's the simple message: Salvation in the life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus Christ that is offered in Christianity is can give us power, can give us peace that we don't know apart from it. It can give us full knowledge of ourselves. It can give us freedom from the sins that have weighed us down all of our lives. It's too good to be true to simple, but it's the Word of God itself. So, we need to just meditate. The gospel is the power of God. If you are saved in Christ, you have, you know this power.

But I want to say, what does the power of God do? More specifically, how does it work? What does the power of Christ actually bring to our lives? Verse 10, through 12, again, it taps into it's like an axe laid to the root of the trees, it chops down. We are baptized by the Holy Spirit and fire. It's like it burns with unquenchable fire. From this text today, it says, "The Power of God chops things down. It burns things up."

Matthew 9:16 through 17, Caleb prayed this text, tapped into it. There was no talk between us. Jesus talked about the effect of the power of God, the power of gospel as it interacts with something. Matthew 9:16 to 17, "No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

The power of God rips. It blows up everything that it mixes with. You can't put new wine into old wineskins. The power of God represented here by the fermentation. It's going to burst. The power of God is a destructive power. If a person, a spirit, an idea, a law goes or stands against it, ultimately, the Lord is going to burn it up like chaff. Why? This is what John said, "Christ alone is Savior and King." There's only one way to God, one way to salvation, that's the King Jesus Christ, the Promised Messiah of all the Old Testament prophets, the one who fulfilled the law. He alone conquers and reigns over everything in his path. Nothing in the world has blown up things like the gospel.

Jesus came and even the law of God comes to an end. He doesn't abolish it, but he is the only person in history who had the power to fulfill it. Paul, I tapped into this a couple of weeks ago, the wisdom of the world can't stand against the power of God. I preached about this two weeks ago. It's blown up. It's proven foolish. I talked about how the birth of Christ. God shows man's foolishness in sending his King to be born in a small town like Bethlehem.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 20, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.' Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"

Jesus ultimately chops down, smashes everything working against him. Take His power seriously. This is what John is saying, "Anyone coming to baptism with the right motives, anyone coming to salvation in the Lord knows this." John says, "He is mightier than me. I am not worthy to carry the sandals of his feet." In those days a student might carry the sandals of his rabbi or his teacher. They were basically lower than a slave. John says, "I am not even worthy to do that when you consider the power of this King, Jesus Christ." and Jesus tells John, says that John is the greatest of men at one point in Scripture when he affirms John's ministry.

The power of God destructs everything that opposes it, but even as Christians, we know this, we know this destructive power of God. If you don't know anything about the destructive power of Christ personally, you don't know anything about the power of the gospel at all. Every true Christian knows that when Christ comes into your life, He immediately starts burning up all of the infirmities, the remnants of you, the remnants of the old man that are left from your old life. You're declared righteous upon salvation, but we're not fully holy.

That won't come until Jesus Christ returns until we die, until Jesus Christ returns in a spiritual sense and in a physical sense, upon his re-establishment of creation. Jesus Christ, He burns up these remnants of our old selves and as we're spiritually reborn, just like Adam and Eve experienced in the garden, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, leaves us guilty and hopeless, clung to cover up our shame, all knowledge that we based our lives off of, our wisdom of the world that we're rooted in and it explodes, our understanding of our own goodness thrown out the door. What does Paul say about his own righteousness? The most holy, the Jew of Jews, the Pharisee of Pharisees. He considers all of his goodness as dung, skubula. But the Spirit of God doesn't stop there.

Having burned us, smashed us, God begins creating us anew, like the new wine fermented in the new bottles. We're convicted of sin, stripped of our pride, proven weak, unable to help ourselves, and then the Son of God takes hold of us. We finally see our need for him to be our Savior. He needed to go to the cross for us. We need it to be given his righteousness, we need in return to make him Lord and honor Him as God. We begin to see life in a new way. We see God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, life, death, everybody else in this world anew.

And that's the work the text talks about. We receive the Holy Spirit upon our baptism, but the fire continues after our salvation. It's a purifying fire for the rest of our lives. It's this power that separates Christianity from all other religions. We actually experience it. We actually can change in this life. We actually can thrive in not just the peaks of life, but in the valleys. When we experience the resurrection power of Christ in one season, we know that we will have it as we march on.

Like I am so tired from 2020. It's been in this situation with kids at home most of the time. We have COVID still continuing, we have just who knows what's going to happen with the election results, just lots of other tensions, and by God's grace, I haven't had to deal with a lot of the troubles that a lot of people have dealt with in this year, but I'm tired. Like where do we derive strength? Where do I get it? Where do all of us get it to march forward and in a faithful manner that honors our Lord and Savior? Like we have it already.

It's this power that John called the Pharisees and Sadducees out about, he knew they didn't have it when they came to see him. How can someone have it? In verse eight, John provides the answer. Bear in mind with keeping with repentance. What is repentance? Metanoia, the Greek terms it means to change one's mind. It can be from the right thought to the wrong thought. In Scripture, it takes on a new aspect. It's a complete change in one's ways. It means to forsake evil, prideful, sinful ways in order to live rightly to God, out of thanksgiving for what he has done for you in Jesus Christ.

Just more formally, I just love this, the Westminster shorter catechism says, repentance unto life as a saving grace. We can only do it because of God's help. Whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God and Christ does with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience. There's a change in mind, which leads to a change in heart, which leads to a renewed and vigorous commitment to the ways of God. I've rebelled against Jesus as Lord over my life, but now I receive his reign over my life. Lord, let your kingdom come, let your will be done in my life.

Why must we keep with repentance? In keeping with repentance, we're saying, "God, I trust you, as I always should have. I trust your ways. You are my King. You are my Lord. You are my Savior. You make my path straight. I will even say no to things that I desire in the flesh, things that the old man still wants, apart from you, because I trust that following your way is better for me, and more glorifying to you. I was made to function in this way." Repentance is the enactment of faith in one's life. "Christian, do you repent? Is repentance, the posture of your life?"

I was talking to a person recently, grew up in the church their whole life and they're telling me that the only time they think of the gospel, that Jesus Christ came and lived the life that they could not, that the death that they deserve, that rose from the dead, conquering sin once and for all, ascended to the right hand of God the Father and will come again, this humbling, humbling story that I said, it's God coming to us, pulling us out of the darkness. They said, they only think of that when they commit a sin.

As Christians, this can't be the case, it has to be our daily meditation. "Lord, I am saved by your grace. Apart from you, I was a child of wrath pursuing my own way, yet you stepped in and saved me." And when we have that posture constantly, we want to please God, we want to live under his commandments, we have compassion for those people in our lives who don't know this grace, who don't know this power, who are walking into 2021 dead and have no reserves. Is this the posture of your life? It needs to be constant? Wake up and say, "Lord, I'm your child. I don't deserve this. Help me to live in a way that is honoring to your name and acknowledges your grace to me."

Nonbelievers, what do you think about Christianity? Why are you listening? Why are you here? Going into a New Year, do you think turning a new leaf, turning a new page is sufficient for the change that you want in your life? Are you still looking at your own weakness and yet trusting in your own power? Are you still looking at Christianity as a means to add to your repertoire for tools of self-improvement?

"Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. His winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." You don't have to face that you can trust in Christ. That's really what John is communicating through the intensity. Imagine a life filled with the power of God. If you're a Christian, and you've forgotten the taste of that power, upon your salvation, upon being reborn in Christ. Imagine the power of God not working against you, but for you. Let the power of God destroy you. Let it make you anew and keep with repentance. Let me pray.

Lord, we are humbled that by your grace, we are your children. We have rebelled against your rule in our lives. We can look to the heavens. We can look within ourselves and know that there is a creator. Yet, we've suppressed that truth in our lives. Even those of us who you have saved already, Lord, we still rebelled against your power. Lord, you are gracious to us. You are long suffering with your love toward us. You are steadfast in ways that we are not steadfast.

Lord, help us to lead lives of true thanksgiving for what you have done for us. Let us enjoy the freedom Let us enjoy the burn of the sanctification that we have. And Lord, just let us have true compassion in this coming year for those of us, those neighbors around us who are hurting, who are hopeless, who are fighting the sin in their heart, who are weighed down by the guilt, embarrassed by the shame of their sin and don't know how to deal with it. Lord, let us be the means by which you introduce others to your power. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. My name is Andy. Welcome to all of you who are here in person and those of you who are online. I'm just thrilled to be here. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with pastor Jan and pastor Shane. I just want to plug it as we always do. If you just arrived and you're new, or you're just chiming in online, you can fill out a connection card. This is the best way for us to get to know you and for you to get more information about us.

You can fill that out in person, put it in the white collection box in the back here, or fill it out online, or on our connection card on our app. Today, we are continuing our Advent series. This is a time of the year where we spend extra time meditating on what Christ's first coming means for us: his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, and ascension, and how it gives us hope in him as we await his second coming.

We're going to continue in the book of Matthew and I'm going to be reading from Matthew 2:1-12 12 today. Matthew 2:1-12. And I just want to start off by jumping right into the text. And then I'll jump into my message today. Please follow along as I read the word of God. Matthew 2:1-12. "Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem saying, 'Where is he who has been born, King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him."

"When Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel."

"Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem saying, 'Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.' After listening the King, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was."

"When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way." This is the word of God. Please join me in prayer.

Heavenly father, we just praise you that we live in a day where we are less prone to turn to follow signs, to seek stars, to seek messages from you that are given to us by nature, by the whims of the world. Lord, we come in a day where we have seen that Jesus Christ has come into this world. He has revealed your true nature. He was the exact imprint of your nature in this life. He was the man, the God man to whom all the scriptures pointed and in whom all of them are fulfilled.

Lord, we praise you that we get to be in this day where we get to look back. The victory is secured. We're just waiting till you come and you consummate your kingdom. You establish it in its entirety in our bodies, in our souls, in the world. And Lord, we pray right now, meet us in the way that you came and met us in the form of the baby, Jesus. Lord, meet us right now. Give us wisdom to be able to discern the ways that the world wants to deceive us and give us wisdom to walk forward in a way that's faithful you. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

I shouldn't have closed my Bible after I read it. Number one rule to break, according to my seminary preaching professor. I will be preaching from the Bible this whole sermon. So for all those who were forced to be in Christmas pageants with the three wise men as children and loathed it, this one's for you. I've waited for this day my whole life. I was the shyest kid. I hated those things. To all those who loved the pageants, I'm sorry not sorry to give you this message.

To all those who don't know what I'm talking about, it's okay. You didn't miss out on much. I'm joking. Those dramatic displays of the birth of Christ can be beneficial, especially for a child. This is a passage that's really well-known. Christians and even non-Christians, people outside of the church will have a lot of familiarity with it. And it has a lot of details that are just really important to cover. I think many of you probably know a lot less about this passage than you think.

For example, I want to begin with a question, how many wise are mentioned in the text? It's three, right? No. The text mentions three gifts given by the wise man, but it does not say that there were three of them present. Next, were the wise men kings? What does the text say? It calls them wise men. They're not called kings. Baltazar, Melchor, Gaspar. The song We Three Kings, I love it. One of my favorites to sing in this season. It's crushed. These are wise men.

What is meant by wise men? The Greek word could be magi. These men were astrologers. They were magicians, diviners. They're interpreters of the sky, interpreters of dreams, most likely from Persia. And they were doing exactly what God told the Jews not to do that. They were trying to find a way, find guidance through life on just the whims of their thoughts, the whims of their flesh, apart from him.

Next question, were are these men believers? Some people insert into this text that these men at the beginning of the story are believers. They know who this King of the Jews is, what he represents. They kind of have an understanding of the theology of the Messiah that they are going to see. The text says they come and they're looking for the king, the one who has been born King of the Jews. There's something right about that. He was born king.

The text says that they want to worship him, but that doesn't mean that they're believers coming to worship their savior and Lord with a humble and contrite heart. The word used for worship might better be translated here as pay homage, pay honor to this king in the same way that they would show reverence to a man of honor. You have to think, it was literally the business of the magi to try to get to know the kings, the rulers, get their foot in the door of the courts of the troyal and ruling classes, find a source of income, get that per diem.

And one can only imagine just the extra favor you might get when you stumble upon and you find a ruler and are the first to pay homage to a king. We can't really insert into the text that these guys were believers of Jesus as the Christ. So at this point, many people might begin to ask, so why can we trust this account? Why would scriptures mention pegging men from the East coming to pay homage to the King of the Jews?

And why does Matthew present them in such a positive light. Old Testament scriptures, New Testament scriptures, they would have blatantly condemned the magi for their practices, for their beliefs, probably for some of their cultic ceremonies that were immoral. So why is this a part of the revelation of God? These are reasonable questions to ask. And I just want to speed through some of the details that tap into the details of the text.

There's a lot of reasons to make it plausible that this is actual history that Matthew is chronicling. First, no Christian writer could have made this up. This story would have triggered a negative response to the Jewish or a Christian reader of Matthew's day. And if Matthew is really trying to convince this Jewish audiences, as we touched on primarily in the past couple of weeks. Pastor Jan's first sermon in the series.

Matthew is writing to Jews. Why would he put it in the text unless it actually happened? If he were trying to fabricate a story to try to convince Jews to believe, why would he incorporate these guys into the story and put them in a positive light over Jews? Second, just the star stuff. I just want to tap into it. In many places of the ancient world, the intellectuals were astrologers. They believed astrology.

Did you know that in history, it's preserved that in 44 BC during the funeral Julius Caesar, there was actually a supernova that appeared in the sky, some form of sudden star-like brightness that appeared. And this was great for the business of astrology. For a long time it lead to a belief that the birth and death of great kings, great leaders were marked by appearances of stars in the sky. Also history has preserved and modern science has confirmed that a conjunction of planets Jupiter and Saturn, they aligned in the sky at three different times to the naked eye, given the appearance of a really bright, single light in the year leading up to Christ's birth.

We mark the year of Christ's birth and tie that to King Herod's death. That's preserved throughout history. And the 5 BC, beginning of 4 BC. There are a couple of dates, the specific dates that are thrown around, but May 29th, October 3rd, December 4th, and the year leading up to Christ's birth are the most popular dates. This could explain why the magi had to make the final call for where to go once they entered Israel.

They might've had this natural phenomena in the sky that triggered them. There's this unique light in the sky. There's these rumors of a king born that would come out of Judea. And just to elaborate, there was a widespread rumor and first century BC in the Mediterranean region that a great ruler would come out of the region of Judea. Tacitus, Suetonius, Roman historians, Josephus, a Jewish Roman historian, all of the first century AD, they mentioned that these were common rumors. These were common expectations.

This rumor was proven influential when Vespasian, a Roman who actually put down a rebellion in Judea in AD 66, part of his platform for his campaign while running for the office of Roman emperor, and he won, was his claim that he was the great leader that was anticipated in this day. And so you have these phenomena in the sky. The non-believing world has these expectations for a leader that would come out of Judea.

Perhaps the astrologers of the day, they would have been studying different ancient texts, different ancient scriptures as part of their vocation. Perhaps they had exposure to Numbers 24:7. Remember, Israel was exiled to Babylon, who then came on control of Persia. The prophet Daniel was alive and very influential in Babylon and Persia. During the exile, it's likely that the magi, the astrologers, the intellectual elites of that day would have been talking, had exposure to multiple scriptures.

Number 24:7 says, "A star shall come out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel." Just this kind of randomly placed prophecy in the Old Testament, spoken under the spirit of God by a Gentile prophet, Balam. There's a chance that these astrologers of the day were influenced by this text. So you have all the rumors flying around amongst the astrologers. You have actual phenomenon in the sky, maybe some influence from this Numbers text. And there's a lot of reason to believe that this actually happened.

That magi guy from the East, a caravan of them showed up saying, 'Where is the King? Where's the King of the Jews? Where is he?" With assurance that he was born or that he was about to be born. There's a lot of reason to believe the credibility of Matthew's texts from the scripture, from outside of it. All of this information is really intriguing. You can just get lost in this text and in the history, the resources that come out.

But in order to get something from this text, we have to stay focused. Matthew is not a true historian. He's a pastor. Scripture talks about there's not enough space to talk about the miraculous, the amazing things that Jesus Christ came and did in his life. So why does Matthew, most likely writing with a pastoral perspective to engage his Jewish audience, primarily Jewish audience, why does he include this specific story of the magi traveling, saying, "Where is he? Where is this king born of the Jews?"

And today, by focusing on these actions, the story of the magi, I want to suggest that Matthew is making a comment to his audience about the wisdom of that age. Taken further, Matthew is making a comment about the wisdom of any age. So why is that? The wise men were the intellectuals. They're the leading thinkers. The intelligence here. Thank you AP European History for giving me a chance to use that for the first time in 15 years.

The wise men were the lead thinkers of their day. They would have been appointed to presidential councils, overseeing the life and worship of their respective countries and kingdoms. These are people who would have been writing the textbooks while having tenured positions at the top universities. These are the people who would give the most stimulating Ted Talks as well. And Matthew, in this episode, during the events leading up to Christ, he puts their knowledge, their wisdom to the test.

It's in their pursuit of the poor baby King of the Jews that their wisdom is turned upside down. The apostle Paul once said in 1st Corinthians 20 and 21, "Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world, for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It please God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."

This text from Matthew has that same message. Paul's question to the philosophers, the learned, the top thinkers of the day. Remember he goes into the talk of the logos, how the Greeks looked for the principle that guided everything and explained everything in life. Matthews chipping into that for his audience. So I want to make the claim, this passage teaches us about the wisdom of the world. It shows us that Christmas puts to shame the wisdom of any age.

From Matthew 2:1-12, we can say that the wisdom of the world is cyclical, superficial, and insufficient. Those are going to be my three main points. The wisdom of the world is cyclical, superficial and insufficient. I'll explain the big vocabulary words. Point one, the wisdom of the world as cyclical. What do I mean by cyclical? It's prone to change due to circumstances, discoveries, innovations, needs, trends. Many times it repeats itself.

I get this simply from the text by meditating on the fact that the wise men, the magi, the astrologers, the lead thinkers of large powerful countries for likely a couple of centuries derived their wisdom and knowledge and counsel from phenomena and the stars. That's a laughable to us. That's something that we scoff at in this day. But how many of you know your sign? How many of you when you come across a horoscope you can't help. You're tempted to look into what it says.

What's on your agenda? What's coming up for you? It's laughable. It seems superstitious. And as Christians, you should not be doing that. I'm going to say that plainly. We don't have to dig into that. That is just dabbling with idolatry. But it's laughable. This is something that is rooted in beliefs of 2000 years ago. But at some point it came back. It influenced our age. It influenced our society, especially in the 20th century.

I still remember seeing horoscopes in the newspaper growing up. I don't really know where people go to get it today. You can just find a million websites, I'm sure. But there's a cyclical aspect. It's the wisdom of the world is dated, it's trait. It repeats itself. Let me give you another example. In the mid 19th century, what were all the academics and elite saying was going to solve man's problems? In the fifties, sixties, seventies, the thought of Sigmund Freud reigned.

People would go to cycle analysts multiple times a week, for years, spending hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars to figure out their conscience with little results. This was actually horrible for the church, just FYI. After millennia of Christians going to the scripture for wisdom, instead of talking to their brothers and sisters in Christ who are pastors, who were guided by the Holy spirit, people needed an expert to solve their problems.

Freud had his day in secular society. Freud infiltrated the church. But by the 1980s, he was ruled obsolete. What do these examples suggest about other systems of thought by the elites, the academics, the thought experts of our day, supposed thought experts of our day? What does it say about the previous ages and their experts? Think about the fluctuations in what universities have said about gender and sexual identity and desire.

They're once genetically not fixed. They were learned. And then a decade or so later they were fixed. Is there ever anything proposed to solve and deal with the problems of man by the world? Are any ideas ever new? Do any of them last? Just wait five, 10, 15, 20 years and our kids and grandkids will be laughing at us for many of the things that we believed in our day. My grandmother... Just a couple of practical examples of how this can happen.

My grandmother went to the grave thinking that smoking was not detrimental to her health. She started smoking as a teenager, probably went 40 years or so. I think she had another health problem that caused her to drop smoking. But for the rest of her life, when she went out with her friends, she was sneaking cigarettes. We just laughed at that. She insisted. She went to the grave believing that because that's what they impressed upon her in her day.

And football fans think of the option offense. It apparently rose to prominence in the 1970s. It's gone in and out of fashion. Bring in Tim Tebow, bring in Michael Vick, it rises to prominence again. That's how wisdom and philosophy of this world has fluctuated throughout history. C.S. Lewis once said, "All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." All that is not eternal is eternally out date.

What does this mean? And he thought principles, ideas that are not rooted in the revelation of God and the inspired scriptures given to man are worn out. Once an idea has its day, it is immediately kicked out the door. Immediately on its way to be kicked out the door. That's how the wisdom of the world works. The reality is that every generation of elite thinkers believe that they know best. C.S. Lewis taps into this in this talk of chronological snobbery.

Every generation thinks that man has ascended to greater knowledge, evolved beyond its shortcomings. We know better about the differences between men and women. We know best how to treat racial and ethic differences. We know best how to talk about sexuality and relational dynamics. We understand the self better than there rest. But where is the evidence of ascent to greater understanding? Where's the evidence of emerging consensus of thought?

In 2020, do you see that evidence? The world says, "Christians, you have to get with it now." And yes, we should have a heart to learn. We should be able to admit that we just might personally have blind spots. Science is figuring out how some things work. But do we follow the philosophies, the teachings of this world and its imperatives when they contradict scripture? God's special revelation. As a church, do we follow them, as individuals?

And just thinking about those answers, let me ask you what has happened in your own life when you've blended the teachings of scripture with the teachings of the world? I did that for about five years, four years of college, one year out before I found Mosaic in August 2011. It's only by the grace of God that brought me out of the darkness in which I was walking and the despair. What has happened when churches that you're a part of blended the instruction of God word and the world?

Some of you come from great churches, great hometown churches that are faithful to the word. And I'm jealous of you. A lot of you come from these churches. Their intentions, they mean well, but in order to try to attract people, they've watered down the word of God. And the reality is that they're laughable. It's painful to think about it. Pulling from the world and picking and choosing from the Bible.

Life apart from the word of God or life in which one blends the word of God with the wisdom of the world, it correctly leads one to confer with Ecclesiastes that all is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:8-11 says, "All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. And there's nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new.' It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after."

We do forget, and that's why we repeat a lot of the worldly wisdom. Christmas tells us, where is the wise man? Where is the philosopher? Where is the debater? He's already received a boot in the rear end out the door. He might be let in again for a little while, but then he'll be booted back out again. The wisdom of Christianity is different than that of the world. It is eternal. Isaiah 48 says, "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever."

Believe this or just the abide in me, the song, the prayer. That was perfect. That's where our life is. That's where wisdom comes from, day-to-day wisdom to March forward in faithfulness. Abide in God's word. It's sufficient for your situation. It's sufficient for the church. The beauty of Christianity is you can read the Bible. You can read the greats from the past 2000 years: Agustin, Luther, Calvin. There's universal appeal because they're pulling from the word of God that appeals to all of us as image bearers of God.

Adam and Eve were created not just to walk the garden and tend to it alone, they were supposed to do it with God instructing them and guiding them along the process. Point two, Christmas teaches us that the wisdom of the world is superficial. What do I mean by superficial? It's shallow. It leads one to the same path, saying that prosperity will satisfy. Prosperity, power, closeness to the nobility will heal.

Go to the centers of power to find what you're looking forward, to make a difference, get access to the resources that you need. But God set up Christ's life so that he didn't have access to any of those things that worldly wisdom says we need. Verse one and two, "Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, behold, wiseman from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews, for we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him."

Based on the magi's own study, on their own volition, the influence of the wisdom of the world on them, of course Jerusalem is where the King of Jews will be. "Where is he?" They say when they show up with confidence. They're thinking it's superficial, it's shallow. A town like Bethlehem, any other small town, insignificant place, doesn't cross their mind. Furthermore, we get a sense that they're not really going there to truly worship him. They're going there to honor him.

Their motives are questionable at this point in the text. The study and volition of the wiseman led them to Jerusalem. They were probably going in their best dress. So maybe those three wise men pictures with them in the very colorful robes and head dresses. There might be some accuracy, just there might be more than three of them. They show up only to be redirected to a birthday party. This is where the wisdom of God begins to supplant the shallowness of the wisdom of the world.

"Where's the party? In the courts of the king? In an area like the Back Bay, with chef Salt Bae serving the lamb?" No, they don't land in Jerusalem. That's not where the party is. It's in Bethlehem in a barn or probably more of a crowded house at this point. At a party with who? A super poor family, shepherds. These guys where the social outcasts, the unlearned of society and sheep. Do you see the wisdom of God bringing to light and undermining the shallowness of the wisdom of man? It really should cause us to laugh.

1st Corinthians 1:25, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men." That's what the Christmas story shows us. Everything about the Christmas story is wrong according to the wise men, according to the prideful Jews, who Matthew is writing to. The people are outcasts. The magi themselves were just ethnically not the right people. They shouldn't have been there. The people from the right bloodlines, social background, economic background, they're not there.

Jesus' family, Joseph and Mary, are the poorest of the poor. When they go to the temple, probably after they use the money from the gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh to flee to Egypt, they go to the temple to dedicate Christ. They pay the poorest fee for the sacrificed. They offer a sacrifice allowed for the poorest of the poor. Other parts of the gospels tell us that Christ was raised in Nazareth, a place of ill repute.

He went on to work as a carpenter. When he began his ministry, most of his followers were not just the leaders in the region, but an eclectic mix of misfits, rejects. Scripture talks about how there is nothing special about the appearance of Jesus Christ. As you read this, you have to really ask yourself, how would you have planned for Jesus to become what he became in the eyes of the world?

I don't want to say campaign manager or hearing and say election trauma. But what if you were the campaign manager of Jesus Christ? Would you have really come up with what is in scripture to put Jesus Christ to the place of prominence, where he is in the history of the world? God's plan is radically different than what any of us could come up with. All the things of the world that the wisdom of the world tells us that we need, Christ didn't have.

Power, influence riches, political authority, academic positions, Christ avoided all of them. With his Christmas presentation, the Holy spirit, through Matthew, is teaching us the shallowness, the superficial reality of all things that the wisdom of the world says we need. The king, the son of God, the promised Messiah, the fulfillment of all the scriptures is born in a stable, surrounded by a bunch of misfits with all the smells around. And that is why is worthy of our worship. He is altogether wise, wholly different, sovereign.

God's power is glorified in how he can work through such a circumstance. In the context of Matthew, this is the specific point that Matthew is trying to make to his Jewish audience. Don't be like Herod, who was a professed Jew. The priests, the scribes, they missed this when the magi came into town. Those Jews, they were able to quote the scriptures about where Jesus was to be born. They were able to even say that this Jesus, this king would be a shepherd of his people.

He would rule with righteousness. He would be just, gentle, kind. They're able to say that while under the reign of Herod the great, a powerful tyrant who sucked the money in life out of the people, yet they missed it. Matthew's audience, they're Jews. They're looking for Christ, for God to reveal himself in a profound worldly way. And Matthew is saying don't miss it. He came. He was born in a manger. And that is why he is more worthy to worship than any other king you can think of.

We have to shed our earthly expectations. For us, the command is to be aware of the grip of the world's wisdom on our hearts. Now, we don't realize it when we come to Christianity just how strong it is. It took me to go to seminary to just see the influence of the thinking of the world on my heart. You don't have to do that. You can just abide and every step of life appeal to God's word, fend it off with prayer. When you start thinking about the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the way of God, the wisdom of God working through these broken hopeless circumstances, just simply believing in a God who works like this. You might think you'll be laughed at or mocked in pursuing faithfulness to him. The reality of this text is that it's not might. You will be laughed at and mocked by the world in following God's wisdom and not the worlds.

But we have to heed the wisdom that Matthew used to expound upon these teachings in chapter two. Chapter five, we're going to continue in Matthew. After the admin season, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, a teaching of Christ that blatantly turned the wisdom of the world upside down, says, "Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Blessed are those who mourn so they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets before you." We have to trust the Lord's wisdom, his ways, his commands. And that is the means to blessedness and fullness in this life. Point three, Christmas teaches us the wisdom of the world is not just cyclical, superficial, but it's also insufficient.

What are the wise men of the world supposed to do? They tell us how life works in its entirety. They're the ones who are supposed to find things and explain things for us, find that principle, that thing that explains everything. But scripture in this story from Matthew, it tells us that the wisdom of the world can only take us part of the way. How is that shown? The magi can't quite make it to the destination that they seek, the location of the King of the Jews.

By their own knowledge and volition, they make it pretty far. They get to Jerusalem, but they don't quite make it. The wisdom of the world is insufficient. We have longings for something that cannot be found in this world, longings for a sovereign, righteous, glorious king on our hearts. But the wisdom of the world can't take us there. Romans one. Romans is called Paul's gospel. He begins his gospel with... It's really an epistle.

But he begins, what's perceived as his gospel, with unaided reason, we know that God exists. We can look at the world. We can look within ourselves and know that there is a creator. But without special revelation to us from God through his word, through the preaching of the gospel primarily. The gospel is the power an through righteousness to the Jew first. The power of God and through righteousness to the Jew first and also the agree that we can't gain access to God apart from the preaching of the gospel, apart from special revelation from God.

Science captures this. A Harvard School of Public Health professor, Tyler VanderWeele, and a journalist John Siniff, they wrote a USA Today op-ed entitled Religion May Be a Miracle Drug. They outline mental and physical benefits correlated with religious participation for most Americans who go to church. Just some of the benefits. Mortality rates are reduced by 20% to 30% over a 15 year period for those who go to church.

Those who regularly attend services are more optimistic. They have lower rates of depression. They're less likely to commit suicide, have greater purpose in life, are less likely to divorce, and more self-controlled. Science and research in our day, they can quantify the value of religion, quantify the value of Christianity, but they can't take us to the Lord Jesus Christ, who brings us those benefits. The peace of heart, the experience of the love of God, the peace with the father that we get through Christ.

Man by his wisdom could not find God. That's the point of Christmas. God comes to us. How do the wise men find Jesus in the story? It's not until God gives them the specific paths through the reading of the scripture, by the scribes know. To begin their journey, maybe they had this background where they heard Numbers 24:7-17, this text that a star and Sceptre shall come from Israel. And that would be the special revelation from God given to them.

But we can't really discern where they just fall in the suspicions of the magi of their day. We can't discern that. But in this text, it's the quoting of the scriptures that redirects the magi from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It's what gets them to their destination, where the king, whom they desire to see and to meet wise. This is in Matthew 2:3-6. Furthermore, in verse nine, we get the sense that the final appearance of a star was of a different sort of appearance.

It says that the star appeared for a short time. It came and stood over the house. Is this a supernatural star, a special star, or just a special act of providence arranged by God for them in that moment? We don't know. But verse 10 talks about how they felt at that moment. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. There is no elation about them because they know that they're being guided by God himself.

They've been looking for wisdom their whole lives, and they know that they have found it. It's coming from the source of all wisdom of true wisdom. They haven't seen Christ in physical form yet, but they know that they're being guided by the right spirit because God has spoken to them. The scripture that this brings to mind is 1st Peter 1:8-9. It says, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

This is Peter writing to people walking with assurance that wonder is under the care, the guidance of God who has sealed their salvation even though they can't see him. And the magi have that. Before they see Jesus Christ, you get this through the language, through their response. When they go to Christ, they worship him. They lay down. They bow. They worship him. They offer him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh that would have been gifts fit for a king.

And the word offer is used primarily in a sacrificial way. This is what Matthew is trying to tell his audience. You, first century Jew, you might not see him. In your circumstances, you might not see God at work in your day to day life and your toils and your troubles dealing with the vines, the thorns and thistles of life. You might not see him. But in order to get there, read his word. You have it, just like the scribes, the priests.

He's speaking to you directly. You have the source of wisdom and you can rejoice. He has spoken to you through his word in the person of Jesus Christ. There's assurance that God is with us, that God is guiding us, that he will always be with us, regardless of our circumstances. There's a knowledge that we have that separates us from non-believers. It's the source of our hope that we will persevere to the end of our journey as the magi I did.

This knowledge, it's only given to us God. True faith that God loves one, is guiding one, is what drives us to true and sacrificial worship of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what gives us the ability to endure the hardship. Do you want to worship God? Do you want this assurance that is the Holy Spirit who is guiding you instead of the whims of the wisdom of the world? Do you see the cyclical nature of the wisdom of the world, the shallowness of it, the insufficiency of it?

If this is your position, the apostle Paul instructs you look to the cross of Jesus Christ. For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. It's at the cross that a holy God wisely retains perfect justice by shedding his wrath for man's sin on his own son, while also exhibiting infinite mercy and love to those who are saved by such an act. It's there that you'll find the nuanced, glorious wisdom that will satisfy your heart. It's there where you'll stop clinging to the shallow wisdom of the world.

You'll lose the rigidity of mind that comes with it. It's where your sins will be forgiven. It's where you'll truly know God and yourself. Let bow in prayer. Lord, we praise you that we are not people who have just seek desperately for you. It is by your grace that you have called us your children. It's by your grace that you have revealed yourself to us while we are wandering; not just wandering, we're enemies against you. We did not desire a relationship with you, but you called us, you spoke to us, you showed us your holiness.

You gave us a taste of your spirit. We know it's different than the wisdom of the world, the spirit of the world. And Lord, I pray, give us faith that we may trust you going forward. That your word is sufficient to guide us. That we don't have to look for the church to rise to earthly prominence. We don't have to rise to earthly prominence ourselves, but we can be made complete and whole in you. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood, churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Welcome. My name is Shane, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we're so glad to have you with us today. We would love to connect with you, and if you would like to connect with us, we do that through the little connection card. You probably grabbed one of those on the way in, you can just fill that out and drop it in the little white box at the back of the room on your way out this morning. You can also do that online. There's a link to that on our homepage. And if you fill that out for us, we would like to just follow up with you this week and also just send a small gift to you in the mail, to thank you for being with us today.

One quick announcement before we get started. Tonight, we're having our final prayer service. It's going to be here at 5:00 PM. You're all welcome back for that. And then next Sunday afternoon at 3:00 PM, we're going to be having our final members meeting of the year. So if you're a member of Mosaic, or if you're becoming a member at that meeting, look forward to seeing you there.

Advent is here, Christmas is coming. We are spending Advent this year in the gospel of Matthew, taking a look at his account of Jesus' birth. And so last week, Pastor Jan took us through the first half of chapter one. We looked at Jesus' family tree, his genealogy. Next week, we're going to be looking at that famous story of the wise men who followed the star to Bethlehem to worship the newborn King. This week, we are looking at the birth of Jesus itself, and it's, it's an amazing story .for those of you who have children, you probably have a birth story, especially with the first child. That experience is so crazy and surreal that it gets seared into your memory.

We had that with our oldest son Owen. With our daughter, Nora, Nora was born just a few minutes before Valentine's day. And I tried and I tried it and tried to talk to my wife, Kelly to just told out for a few more minutes, but she was being totally unreasonable. And so Nora was supposed to be born on Saturday the 14th, which was Valentine's Day. Instead, she was born on Friday the 13th, which explains a lot, if you know Nora. And so she's born on Friday the 13th. The next day, I go home to stay with our older son, Owen and overnight Boston gets hit with the most massive snowstorm that we have seen in all the years that we lived here. Everything, the next day was shut down, there was a travel ban. We were snowed in. And Kelly and Nora were stranded at the hospital, ended up having to stay there an extra day.

Finally, the next day, we're able to dig the car out. The roads are somewhat cleared and we're able to go to the hospital and bring them home. And if you've ever driven a newborn home from the hospital, it's one of the most terrifying experiences in your life. For some reason, you get them down to the car. You triple check every buckle, every strap of their car seat. And as you're pulling out of your parking spot, it feels like you've never driven a car before in your entire life. And so here you are. You've just been given this massive responsibility. You've got to take this tiny, fragile, little human being, who's only like two days old, and get them home safe and sound. But to do that, you have to drive through the minefield of Boston drivers.

And so things are going well. We're about two blocks away from home. We're in the home stretch. We're coming down Beacon Street. And all of a sudden the guy in the lane next to us just decides he wants to be in our lane and just smashes into us. It was like, "This can't be real. This can't be really happening. We're getting in a car accident on the way home from the hospital with my newborn daughter." Everybody was fine. She was fine. She was new to the whole driving thing, so she didn't know any better. This was normal for all that she knew, but things didn't go the way we planned. And at times, they were stressful. But now we look back on this as a fond memory, a story to tell. And oftentimes, the things that are most memorable in life are those times where things didn't go as planned, where they didn't go the way that we expected, or maybe hoped that they would.

And the Christmas story, the story of Jesus' birth, it's a lot like that. You read through the accounts and it's such a almost shocking and unusual story. It's very unexpected, but it's also very memorable. And what Matthew, I think one of the things that he wants us to do, as we read through his account of Jesus' birth, is to understand that while yes, these things are unusual and they were maybe unexpected to us and maybe were even unexpected to Mary and Joseph, that they really shouldn't have been unexpected. Because actually all of these details, the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth, had been prophesied hundreds of years before and were recorded in scripture. And they were put there to prove, and to show us that this truly was the Messiah. That all of these details that were outside of Mary and Joseph's control, they were not outside of God's control. And actually God was sovereignly orchestrating these things to answer clearly that question that we sing at Christmas time, What Child is This?

And the answer is that this is no ordinary child. That Jesus is the child of the promise, the child of the prophecy, the Messiah. That he was the son of Mary, and yet he is also the Son of God, Emmanuel. Fully human, fully divine. And so our text today, we're going to be looking at the second half of chapter one, Matthew, beginning of verse 18. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along. The passage is also going to be up here on the screen. And the three points that we're going to be looking at today is first of all, Jesus Christ is born. Second, we see that Jesus Christ is loved. And third, we see that Jesus Christ is named. And so I'm going to read our text verse. This is Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 18.

"Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph son of David do not fear to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us." When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name, Jesus."

Would you please pray with me for today's sermon? Father, we thank you for speaking to us today and we thank you for your written word. Your word is powerful. It is authoritative for our lives. And we also thank you for sending us your living word, your son, Jesus Christ. And as we examine the accounts of his birth today, I pray Holy Spirit, that you would impress these words upon our hearts. To know them, to love them, to learn, and to obey them, to walk in them. And as we do, to become more and more like your son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray. Amen.

So point number one today, Jesus Christ is born. This is verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. Christmas is a good time to slow down and to reflect on life. And I think one of the most important things we need to slow down and reflect on this time of year is this very simple, and yet profound statement, that Jesus Christ was born. And think about what that means. That the almighty, eternal, creator of the universe was born. We can't fully appreciate even that title, Almighty Creator, because we can't even begin to appreciate the scope and the power of the universe that this creator created. I'm not an astronomer, but I have watched the entire, How the Universe Works docuseries on Amazon prime. So I'm basically an expert. So I'm going to take you on, on just a little drive through our universe.

We started off with home sweet home, planet Earth. And do you remember the first time that you flew in an airplane? It's easy to become jaded by air travel when you do it a lot, but that first time when it was still awesome, when it still caused you to wonder. As you're lifting higher and higher into the air and you see everything below is just getting smaller and smaller, small, you realize just how tiny and insignificant you are compared to just the vast magnitude of the planet that we live on. And we live in an age where, with the help of modern telescopes and in satellites, we're just beginning to understand that as big, as huge as our planet seems, it's relatively tiny and insignificant compared to the magnitude of the universe that it's found in. And so you look even to our own solar system, the planet, Jupiter, this is earth next to the planet. Jupiter, the great gas giant of our solar system.

Jupiter is so large that the planet Earth could fit inside it's great red spot. It's a massive storm that has been raging across the surface of the planet for over 300 years. You could fit 1300 Earths, inside Jupiter. If you zoom out even farther to the largest object in our solar system, the sun could fit 1 million Earths inside. And yet we know that the sun is a a relatively small star compared to most. And so even within our galaxy, you have stars like what was for a long time, the reigning champion. I think it's been dethroned and this is maybe the seventh or eighth largest star in our galaxy, VY Canis Majoris. If you look at the picture there, you may not be even able to see, there's a little blue circle down there. That circle represents the orbit of Earth around the sun. And the sun itself is just like a speck of dust compared to this massive, massive star.

You zoom out farther, and at the center of most galaxies are believed to be these things, we call some of them super massive black holes, are something like 40 billion times the mass of our sun. And a small percentage of these super massive black holes developed things around them called quasars ,where incredible amounts of energy are swirling inward, with tremendous speed. And then for some reason, are violently ejected outward at near light speed, reaching temperatures in the billions of degrees. Powerful enough to eclipse the entire combined brightness of all the billions of stars within its own galaxy. The jets from these quasars can fire particles out beyond border of their galaxies, into intergalactic space. They're trillions of times brighter than our own sun. And we've discovered thousands of these quasars among the billions upon billions of galaxies in the universe.

The size and the complexity and the terrifying power of the forces within our universe, they boggled the minds of physicists. Not like armchair physicists like me, but those are the ones who actually spend their lives studying these things. They appear to be completely paradoxical. They far exceed our ability to perceive and understand. And yet the almighty creator of the universe, for whom, and through whom all things were made, simply spoke them into existence.

The God who did that chose to come down and visit a tiny town, on a tiny planet, orbiting a tiny star, and the way he chose to visit us was to be born a tiny, defenseless, dependent baby. Entrusting himself to two terrified teenagers. We mustn't underestimate how profound a statement Matthew makes when he tells us that Jesus Christ was born. The hopes and fears of all the years were met in him that night. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. "When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." Verse 22. "All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us."

Jesus' birth was prophesied. Jesus' birth was miraculous, and Jesus' birth was proof that the Messiah had truly come at last. That this son of Mary was in fact, the Son of God, fully human, fully divine, and he'd come to save his people from their sins. So we see that Jesus Christ is born.

Secondly, we see that Jesus Christ is loved. Verse 19 says, "And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your way for that, which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. For she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us." And when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she'd given birth to a son. And he called his name, Jesus."

If you're familiar with Luke's gospel, Luke gives us a little bit more information about Mary and Matthew gives us a little bit more information about Joseph. And we see when we read this, that Jesus was loved by Joseph. And you might ask, "Well, how do we see Joseph loving Jesus in this passage?" And to answer that, we really need to set the context. We're told that Mary was betrothed to Joseph. That in that culture, marriage was a year long process. It usually began when the parents would actually arrange the marriage and it would begin with the betrothal. And then after a 12 month waiting period, there would be the wedding and the consummation. And so for those 12 months, the betrothed were legally married. It was binding, but they didn't live together. They couldn't sleep together. The wife would remain in her father's household and the husband would go to prepare a place for them, to prepare a home for he and his wife, so that at the end of the 12 months, they would have the wedding ceremony, and then the wife would be brought to her husband's home, to consummate the marriage.

Jesus actually alludes to this, when he's talking to his disciples in John 14. He tells them in verse one, :Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself. That where I am, you may also be." That we, as the church, are in a sense, betrothed to Christ. We are legally united to him by grace, through faith. But now he is also gone to prepare a place for us, and that we are awaiting the advent of his return when he comes, with the new creation, to bring us home to himself.

And so, put yourself in Joseph's shoes for a moment. You're a young, godly man. You have done your best to live a holy life, according to the law, according to the word of the Lord, you've remained pure to the Lord. You've remained faithful to your wife. You are making moves. You're making sacrifices. You are working hard to prepare, to spend the rest of your life with this woman. You are so excited as you're anticipating your wedding day. And then one day shows up and says, "Hey, Joseph, buddy, we got to talk. I've been thinking. Maybe I'll weave some curtains for that house that you're working on. We can put one of those live, laugh, love things up above the mantle. And oh, speaking of laughter, funny thing happened, funny thing, you're going to find this hilarious. I've found to be with child."

And Joseph's like, "What does that mean?" It's like, "I'm pregnant, Joseph. I'm pregnant. But don't worry. I didn't cheat on you. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. It's God's baby. And this angel came and he told me that I'm favored. And that you me are going to raise the son of God together right Joseph?" But that's not in the text. You can read between the lines. In all seriousness though, this would not have been funny. Joseph would have been heartbroken, humiliated, devastated, betrayed. And so what is Joseph going to do? According to the law, this was adultery. According to the law, Joseph would have had every legal right to put Mary to public shame, even to have her stoned for what she had done, or what she seemed to have done. And so what is Joseph going to do?

Scripture, It doesn't tell us a whole lot about Joseph. Joseph likely died when Jesus was young. We see him when Jesus is 12 years old and we never see him again. He probably died when Jesus was maybe in his late teens. We never really hear Joseph speak in scripture, but his actions speak. And his actions say a lot about his character and about the kind of man that he was. And we see that Joseph was a man who loved God, who loved Mary. And because of this, he had the faith to love Jesus and to take him as his own son.

Verse 19 says that, "Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." And when he woke, he obeyed, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded.

And so how was Jesus loved by Joseph? We see that Jesus was loved by Joseph in three really important ways. First of all, we see that Joseph loved Jesus, by loving Mary. It's easy to gloss over this, but even before the angel appears, even when Joseph is utterly heartbroken, humiliated, we can see that he still clearly loved Mary. He didn't want to do her harm. He didn't even want to put her to shame, though he may have had every reason to do so. Instead, he resolves to divorce her quietly, to not make a big spectacle out of this. And then when he learns the truth, he follows through. He takes Mary as his wife. He takes responsibility for caring for her and for the child. He adopts Jesus as his own son. And then we'll see in the stories to come that really, he shepherds and he leads his wife and his family with incredible courage and compassion.

And fathers, one of the best ways that we can love our kids, is by loving their mom. And mother's, one of the best ways that you can love your kids is by honoring their father. Everyone wants to have a mom who is cherished and a father who is honored, who's honorable. And just as Christ is the head of his body, the Church, Ephesians five tells us that husbands are the head of their wife and they need to, just as Christ did, they need to cherish her, nourish her, lay down their life for her, just as Christ did for the church. And that's what Joseph does, even at incredible cost to himself. And as a result, Jesus grew up with the security of having a mom and a dad who not only loved him, but that clearly and sacrificially loved one another as well. So Joseph loved Jesus by loving Mary.

Secondly, Joseph loved Jesus by submitting to God. Then Matthew tells us that Joseph was a just man. He was a devout, godly man. He also seems to be a very humble man. Even when he was faced with extreme disappointment, he doesn't respond in anger, or rage. And when he learns that Mary is pregnant. He's not vengeful. Instead, he seems thoughtful. Scripture tells us that he spent time, and considered how to respond. He wasn't hardened or bitter, he was humble. He was meek. And this meant that he was teachable enough to receive God's messenger and to submit to God's message when it came to him, even though it was going to cost him dearly, Joseph loved God, and the proof that he loved God was found in his willingness to obey God.

Now, Jesus told his disciples in John 14:15, that, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And as fathers, we can not love our children. As Christians, we cannot love our neighbors if we do not first love and obey God, the father. The command to love our neighbor as ourselves, is the fulfillment of the entire law, because the entire law is instruction on how to love God and love our neighbor. And so Joseph loves Jesus through his obedience to God. And as Jesus' earthly father, he understands that he was merely a steward serving under the authority of Jesus' Heavenly father.

Third, we see that Joseph loved Jesus by leaving a legacy of faith. Kids are very good at sensing hypocrisy. And so is everyone else around you. Jesus got to grow up with a father who clearly believed what he said that he believed. And he held to his convictions, even when it was costly. And as a Christian, if you really believe what you say you believe, if you live by faith, not by what is seen, but by what is unseen, some people are going to look your life and they're going to look at your decisions, and they're going to think that you're crazy. "You give how much money to church? You read your Bible and you pray every day? You intentionally deny yourself, earthly pleasures, and seek to live a holy life?"

Some people are going to look at you and they're going to think that you're nuts. They might even despise you for it. Others, however, are going to look at you and they're going to see maybe there's something to this that your witness is going to be compelling. And now without faith, Joseph would have divorced Mary and gotten on with his life. Instead, his faith leads him down a difficult path. In a culture of honor and shame, Joseph for the rest of his life is going to bear the reproach of those who accused him of marrying an unfaithful woman and fathering an illegitimate child. And this was going to follow him for the rest of his life. We see hints of this in the gospels. The Pharisees in John 8, accused Jesus of being born out of sexual immorality. The people in Jesus' hometown referred to him as the son of Mary, because clearly he was not the son of Joseph, let alone the son of David. And no one certainly didn't believe any of this nonsense about him being the son of God.

Why was Joseph willing to do this? Why was he willing to bear this humiliation and this shame? It's because he had faith. Joseph had faith that God would one day vindicate his name and the reputation of his family. He had faith that the truth would one day be exposed. He had faith that no matter what anyone else said about him, or his wife, or his son, that God was pleased with them. And he had faith that even if he was to be scorned by all the men on earth for all of his days on earth, that he was going to be honored by God for all of eternity.

Matthew 5, one of the first things that Jesus taught his disciples was that their witness in their faithfulness to him, it was going to have this dual effect on people, where some people were going to reject them and hate them for it, while others would glorify God because of them.

This is Matthew 5:11. Jesus says, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are on the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people lay a lamp and put it under a basket, but on its stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father, who's in heaven." Joseph loved Jesus by being a good husband to Mary, by being an obedient servant to God, and by living a life of faith. Trusting God and doing what was right, even when it was hard and sacrificial.

Third, we see that Jesus Christ is named. Verse 20 says, "As Joseph considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." And all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they should call it his name, Emmanuel, which means God with us." And when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she'd given birth to son. And he called his name, Jesus."

The name Jesus simply means the Lord, Yahweh saves. It was not merely his name, it was his purpose, and his identity. That Jesus was born, a messianic savior king. He's not a king who would come to kill for his people, as many in Israel had hoped, but a king who was going to die for his people. He was not a king who had come to deliver them from Roman occupancy, he had come, instead, to save them from their sins. Jesus was born to save. Jesus was born to die, to offer his life as an atoning sacrifice for sin. And he lived up to this name perfectly. And as a result of this, God, the Father raises him up and gives him a new name. This is Philippians 2:5-11.

It says, "Having this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ, Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, by being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

Joseph gave Jesus a great name, and then God, the Father bestows on him, a greater name, the name that is above all names. But then we see that Jesus also gives Joseph and Jesus also gives us a new name as well. We see this from the prophet Isaiah and in the book of Revelation. Isaiah 62:2 says, "that the nation shall see your righteousness and all the kings, your glory, and you shall be called by a new name, that the mouth of the Lord will give. Revelation 2:18. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. "To the one who conquers. I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.""

God promises in Isaiah 56, that to all who serve him, he says, "I will give in my house and within my walls, a monument, and a name better than sons and daughters. And I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." Revelation 3:12. "To the one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out from it. And I will write on him, the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."

There's a lot in a name. Names are important. Our parents name us when we're born. Our friends, maybe give us nicknames, maybe people who have names, terms of affection for us. Some names are good. Other names are painful. I'm sure that Mary and Joseph were called a lot of names throughout their life. And many of us have been called a lot of names. We've been given labels, labels that have left deep wounds on our souls. And as followers of Jesus, Jesus tells us that we should expect to be called a lot of things. A lot of names, a lot of slander, and some of it will hurt, some of it will cut, but there's only one name that truly matters.

And God looks at Joseph. This lowly, scared, heartbroken teenager. And I love how he addresses him, through the angel. He says, "Joseph son of David, remember who you are." God looks at us. He calls us his own, his saints, his people. He calls us a royal priesthood. He calls us beloved children. He calls us a treasured possession. He knows us by name. He calls us by name and he will give us a new name. More than that, we're told that he will give us his own name, a name that will eclipse the pain and the shame and the reproach of every slanderous name that we've ever been called here on earth. A name that will leave us glorified and vindicated and redeemed. And we experience this blessing in part right now, as we bear the name of Jesus and what an honor it is to be called Christian. You think about that. And we must be careful to walk in a manner worthy of the name of Jesus, and so not to take the name of our Lord in vain.

A day is coming what we now experience in part, we will then and, and whole, as the children of God. Romans 8:13 says, "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God For you to not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba Father." The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing, for the revealing of the sons of God."

Advent is a season of suffering and celebration. On the one hand we suffer. We live in a dark and a fallen and a sinful world. And on the other hand, we celebrate that the light of Christ has broken into this darkness and that the darkness will not overcome it. And we celebrate that through God's Messiah, we have been justified by grace through faith that Emanuel has come, fully God, fully man, and that his sacrifice was fully acceptable and sufficient to save us from our sins. And we celebrate that Emmanuel is still with us, that the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts and he is sanctifying us. He is keeping us, he is holding us fast and he's preparing us for that day when our justification and our sanctification are consummated in our glorification.

And so Advent is a time when we celebrate what has been accomplished. It's also a time when we anticipate the future. And this is why we sing, "Joy to the world, the Lord is come." Not just that he has come, and he has come, but he is with us now, and he is coming yet again. And we eagerly long the day of his return. Today, we're not sure only celebrating Advent, we're also celebrating communion. And in the same way, communion is a time for us to remember Christ's sacrifice. It's also a time for us to anticipate his return. This is 1st Corinthians 11. Paul writes that, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you. That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. And he said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way. He also took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.""

And then he says, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." And so we do this in remembrance of Christ. And we also do this in proclamation that he has died. He has risen. He is seated at the right hand of God, the Father, and he will return again in glory. And so, as we transition into communion, if you are here today and you are a Christian and you have examined yourself before the Lord, and you are walking in repentance, then you are welcome to participate in communion with us today. If you're not a Christian, we are so glad that you're here with us. We do ask that you would just respectfully refrain from participating in this part of the service. It's not going to do anything for you. There's nothing magical about this. Communion is a sign of the covenant between Christ and his people.

Now, if you've made that decision to become a Christian today, if you're ready to repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ, you're welcome to join us in this celebration as well. And then finally, if you are a Christian, but you are living in unrepentant sin, scripture warns us about taking communion in an unworthy manner. And the very next thing that Paul says in Corinthians 11, verse 27, he says this. "Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks, the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself."

And so before we begin, I'm just going to give us a moment for you to just sit in silence and spend some time in prayer, examine yourself, discern the body, discern what we are about to participate in, as we take communion together. If you didn't grab one of these on your way in, feel free to go grab one, or just raise your hand, and I think one of the ushers can bring one to you where you're at. We'll just spend some time in silent prayer, and then I will pray for us. And then we'll all take communion together.

So let's pray, Father, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for sending us, your son, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, we thank you for saving us from our sins. We thank you for your sacrifice. You were willing to leave the glory of heaven. You were mocked, mistreated, you were abused and murdered. You came in love and we responded in hate. And God, only you can save us from our sins. There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. And so we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for laying down your life, for taking up our cross, for bearing the punishment that we deserve, so that we could share in your glory.

And so Father, as we examine our hearts, we see so much sin and we repent and we ask your forgiveness. We pray Holy spirit, that you would sanctify us, that you would empower us to live lives worthy of the name of Jesus Christ, worthy of the gospel. And we thank you for this time of communion when we can be reminded that while we are great sinners, that you are a much greater savior and that your grace is sufficient for us. There's nothing that we can do to be saved on our own merit, but that we are justified freely by grace, through faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ. God help us to grow in our love and our obedience to you and our love for our neighbor, that our lives would leave a legacy of faith, that shows the world that you are our God and that we are your people. And we pray all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome again to Mosaic. Good to see you this morning. My name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. We would love to connect with you. The way we do that is through our connection card. Hopefully, you were able to grab one of those on the way in, if not, we have that also available on our website. You can find a link to that on our homepage. But if you fill that out for us, we would love to just follow up with you this week, and also just send a small gift to you, to thank you for being with us today. And if you fill that out this morning, you just drop that in the little white box at the back of the room on your way out later on.

Just one quick announcement before we get into the sermon today. Tonight at 5:00 PM, we are having a prayer gathering here at the temple in the sanctuary. You're all invited for that. It's going to be a really laid back time. We're just going to spend some time and worship together, spend some time in prayer together. And then we're also going to have a brief message from one of our members on one of the parables of Jesus, tonight. And so, I'm looking forward to that, and you're all welcome to come back and join us for that at 5:00 PM tonight. We'll also going to be doing that next Sunday night and the following Sunday night after that as well.

Today we are wrapping up our sermon series going through the Book of Malachi. And this is going to be the final sermon before Advent. Advent is the time when we remember and when we celebrate Christ's first coming at the birth of Jesus on Christmas. And Advent, is also a time when we anticipate Christ's return, when he comes again to judge the world in righteousness and to make all things new. In this text today, this is not only the end of Malachi, it is also the conclusion to the entire Old Testament scriptures. And it really serves as God's final word to his covenant people before 400 years of silence. And so, after following this text, there's not going to be one single prophetic word given, spoken, written down for 400 years. And the people of God are not going to hear him speak to them again until the Advent, until the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist. And then with that, also along with it, of course, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

So, if you've been with us through the Book of Malachi, you've probably noticed by now that it is a pretty depressing book. In a lot of ways, it's like the darkness before the dawn of Christ's arrival. And what we see is that God's people have returned from their time in exile physically, but their hearts have not returned to God spiritually. And so, the reality of their return is falling short of their expectations, falling far short of their expectations. And what has resulted is a disillusionment. The people are bitter, and the people are grumbling.

And really the last three chapters of Malachi have read like one long argument between God, the Father, and a mouthy teenager. The people are just grumbling against the father. And you really just get the sense of everyone saying, "Dad, we're sick of you. We're sick of your rules. We want you off our back, let us do our thing. Let us go." And all this should sound very familiar.

This is, you think about it, it's really the setup for one of the most famous stories ever told. This is Jesus' parable of the prodigal son in real life, "Dad, I'm sick of you and all your rules. Why don't you get off my back and let me go?" And we see this sentiment in Malachi three. We saw this last week in Malachi 3:15, where God says that, "Your words have been hard against me," says the Lord. But the people say, "How have we spoken against you?" And the Lord says, "You have said it as vain to serve God. What is the profit of keeping his charge, or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the arrogant, blessed. And evil doers not only prosper, but they put God to the test and they escape." It's like, what's the point of serving you God?

Did you ever run away from home when you were a kid? And you get so mad at your mom and dad, and was like, "That's it. I'm out of here. I'm leaving. I'm never coming back." And then like 20 minutes later, you're halfway down the block, hiding behind the neighbor's garage, seeing if anyone's coming to look for you. And it's like, "I'm getting hungry. I think I have to go to the bathroom. I didn't think this through. I was just angry and feeling impulsive." And you have the walk of shame back home.

Sometimes God as a good father, he says, "Okay." Sometimes he disciplines us actively. Sometimes he disciplines us passively. This is the passive wrath of God. This is Romans chapter one, where God says he gives them up to their sinful desires and really lets them learn the hard way what life is like apart from him.

Romans 1:21 says that, "Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but became futile in their thinking. And their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds, and animals, and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, dishonoring their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the country rather than the creator, who is blessed forever."

This is Romans chapter one. This is the prodigal son. This is the people that we see in Malachi three. And this is not just them. This is us. And we're all runaways. We're all prodigals. And deep down we're longing to get back home, but we can't. There is sin and pride, and bitterness, and cynicism standing like this chasm between us and the Father.

And so the question is, how do we get back? How do we cross that infinite divide that our sin has caused? How do we get home from here? The question is, how do we take our cold, hardened, prodigal hearts that have been running away from the Father for so long and replace them with tender hearts that are going to run back to him instead? That's what we're going to be talking about today, as we wrap up the book of Malachi. Three points that we're going to look at, we're going to talk about the father's kindness, the father's severity and the father's heart.

So, we're going to be starting at Malachi chapter three, verse 16. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along. Otherwise, you can follow along up here on the screen as well. So, this is Malachi chapter three, beginning in verse 16. Is that right? There it is.

Malachi 3:16, "Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another, and the Lord paid attention and heard them. And a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. "They shall be mine," says the Lord of hosts. And the day when I make up my treasured possession and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more, you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God in the one who does not serve him."

Chapter four, "For behold, the day is coming burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble. The day that is coming, shall set them ablaze," says the Lord of hosts, "So that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. You shall tread down the wicked, for they will be as ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act," says the Lord of hosts."

"Remember the law of my servant, Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers, to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction."

Now, would you please join me in prayer. Father, we thank you for speaking to us today. And we thank you for your word. Your word is holy. It is inerrant. It is infallible. It is authoritative. It good for us. And we pray Holy Spirit, that you would impress these words upon our hearts, that we would know them. We would love them. We would obey them. We would walk in them. God, we pray today that you would give us clean hands, that you would give us pure, softened hearts. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Amen.

Point number one, we're going to talk about the father's kindness. Last week was Owen's birthday. Our oldest son turned nine years old, kind of a big deal, last year in single digits. And so, we wanted to do something special for him. And we got on eBay and we bought him an old school game boy with a couple of games. Not like the original game boy, the one that you could only see what you're doing if you hold it at the exact right angle. And it was like a brick. But the one that came after that, it had the nice flip up thing and the back lit screen. And he was pumped.

But here's the thing about older video games. Today's children are cuddled by the video game market. Back in the day, video games were merciless. They were treacherous. They were unforgiving. And he never really had an experience of playing one of those before. And so, as excited as he was, I knew that this was going to be hard for him. I knew that he was going to get frustrated. And sure enough, within 20 minutes, he's on the verge of tears. He's completely disillusioned. He's fed up. He wants to quit because he's been playing the first level of his first game, Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past. Classic. And he's just dying over and over, and over, and over.

And I think about the games back then, is when you died, you had to start over from the beginning. And so, he's just, he's losing it. He's ready to give up. He's begging me to let him quit. He's begging me to beat the game for him. And as a good father, I said, "No way. Owen Louis Sikkema, you are not going to stop playing this Game Boy until you beat that first level."

And now, here's the thing. Sometimes I will take the controls and I will do something for him, because I know there's just no other way that he's going to be able to move forward. Most of the time however, I don't want to do it for him. I would much rather do it with him.

And so, I laid down the law. I said, "I'm not going to let you quit. I'm not going to do it for you, but I will do it with you." And so, I sat down next to him, and for the next hour, I forced him to play his Game Boy. And I've never seen a kid so miserable to play with their birthday present before. But he'd go. He'd get to a certain point in the game, he'd die. Start over, get a little bit farther, die, over and over. Probably 30 times he died. And every time I would point out, "This is what you did wrong. This is what you need to do differently. This is how the mechanics work the controls. Here's some tips. Here's some strategy. And by the end of it, he hated me. He hated the game.

He was probably about ready to smash the thing on the floor, but then finally it happened. He gets to the end. I don't know what that clicking is. I'm really sorry. He beats the boss. And all of a sudden, all of this anger, all this rage, immediately flips on its head. And he's literally jumping around the room for joy, screaming, "I did it, I did it. I did it." And as soon as his mom walks in the door, he just can't wait to tell her, "Mom, you're not going to believe it, Dad helped me beat the game." I went from being the worst dad in the world, to the world's greatest dad." Put it on my coffee mug, I deserve it. And he is so pumped up. For the rest of the day, he can't stop talking about it.

It's a silly illustration because life is not a game, but life is a battle. And it's a battle that sometimes when we're honest with ourselves, we're just, "I don't want to do it anymore. I want to give up, I want to quit. God, you do it for me, but I can't do it."

Sometimes God says, "Okay." Sometimes God steps in, and miraculously takes the controls, intervenes in our lives and changes our circumstances. More often than not, he doesn't do that. I think the reason that God doesn't do those things for us is because he wants to do something in us and through us, and with us. That God is a good father. And as a good father, he needs us to learn this lesson, that his power is made perfect in our, what? In our weakness. That when we are incapable, when we are humbled by the task that is before us, it forces us to rely on God and the way that we always should be all along. It forces us to stop taking the father's kindness and grace, and providence for granted, and acknowledge that apart from him, we can do nothing.

Jesus told his disciples, "I am the vine. You are the branches." And many of the people that Malachi was writing to had forgotten that God was a good father, that he loved them. And that they looked at their circumstances and they couldn't see the good that God was trying to do with their eyes. And so, they started pushing him away in their hearts.

It's easy to do. When life knocks us down, we can get mad. We can give up. We can run away. We can get bitter at life, bitter at God, bitter at people. And like the people, here our hearts can grow cold and hard.

And all we need to do instead is what we see this other group of people that we meet in today's texts. Well, we need to fear the Lord. We need to humble ourselves and come to our father and humbly ask him to give us the help we need. And acknowledge we can't do it alone.

We need to choose fear of the Lord over fear of our circumstances. We need to choose faith over cynicism. We need to choose to get better instead of getting bitter and to see that all of these obstacles before us, by the power of the Holy Spirit are actually opportunities for our spiritual growth. And so, what is the point? How does this relate to the problem of our hard hearts? This is the connection, that our proud, prodigal hearts are softened when we begin to understand that God doesn't discipline us, he doesn't allow us to go through trials and tribulations in order to harm us. He does so in order to help us.

God wants to see his kids grow up. He wants to see his children grow up to be strong and courageous, and resilient. And then at the same time, kind and compassionate and humble. And sometimes what this means is that God is going to care more about pruning our characters than he does about pandering to our comforts. He disciplines us because he loves us. He longs to see us grow up into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

And so, maybe you felt like you've been going through a lot of pruning this year. And pruning is painful. But how many of you can look back even now, even in 2020, and say that, "This was the most painful, and gut wrenching, and heartbreaking, and yet valuable formative sanctifying year of my life. And I am thankful that God has led me through it." I know you can. I know some of you can say that.

I know for many of you, 2020 is the year when you finally learned how to pray, because you had no other choice. This is the year that you re-examined your life, and you finally got your priorities straight. This is the year where you stop trying to live life in the flesh and learned what it means to live in the spirit. This is the year that you walked through the fire. And it was in those flames that you learned that God is with you and that he is holding you there, not to harm you, but to refine you like precious gold.

This has been one of the most trying and painful year of my life. But I do believe that I'm thankful for it, that I've grown in my faith. I've grown in my humility. I am so humble, you don't even know. I'm growing in humility, I hope. Growing in compassion. So far yet to go, but I can see God working there in my heart. I'm growing in dependence on God's spirit to sustain me. And one of the greatest joys I've had this year is being able to see how the same is true for many of you.

The psalmist in Psalm 119 said that, "It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees." Now, I'm going to pause here and just ask, honestly, how many of you are like, "Yeah, no, I'm not there. I'm not feeling that. I'm not feeling thankful for this. I am really angry at God right now." Maybe your heart feels cold and weary, like you want to give up. I said I felt that way plenty of times this year too, it's not like an all or nothing thing. It's a daily battle to put the flesh to death, and to walk in the spirit, and to believe the promises of God. But if you're not there yet, don't mask your pain, and don't be fake with yourself or fake with God. Be honest with God. Be honest with yourself.

Perhaps the reason you're not there, is because you don't fear the Lord. Maybe you're not a Christian. Maybe for you, what you need to do right now is repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ for the first time before any of this is going to start to make sense. Perhaps you are a Christian, you do fear the Lord. And perhaps the problem is that you're discouraged. And when I say discouraged, I mean, literally you have been drained of your courage, your joy. You are gun shy and fearful of trusting God and trusting his promises because you have been wounded. You have been hurt.

If that's where you are at, then this is what you need to know. This is what you need to hear. And this is what Malachi tells us. What's the first thing that God told the people at the beginning of the book? It says, "I have loved you." And in their cynical hearts, they say, "How have you loved us?" But here again, we see him repeat the same truth, that if this is you, if your heart is cold and weary, listen to these words that God loves you. He sees, he knows, he's not forgetting.

Actually what it says is he values us like treasure. And he treasures us like children. This is straight from our text today in Malachi 3:16. It says, "That those who feared the Lord spoke with one another, and the Lord paid attention and heard them. And a book of remembrance was written before him, of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. "They shall be mine," says the Lord of hosts, "In the day when I make up my treasured possession and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him."

I don't know why God has allowed things to happen the way that they've happened this past year. I'm really sorry about that. I'm going to move this because I think I'm bumping the cord or something. I don't know why.

I also don't know if things are going to get better or things are going to get worse. What I do know is that God is still God, Jesus is still Lord. And he still loves us. And he loves us with a selfless sacrificial, never ending, covenantal love. And I understand that sometimes that can be hard to believe. And if you're having trouble believing that today, then look to Jesus, look to the founder and perfecter of our faith, look to the cross and see the undeniable proof of God's love. And then look to the resurrection, see the undeniable proof that God is sovereign, that he is in control, and he can work even the darkest moments of history for our good. This is central to our identity as Christians. This is why the New Testament has so much to say to us as Christians about suffering and about suffering.

Well, I wish we had time to just do a survey of the entire New Testament to see all that it has to say on this, this morning. But I'm just going to read one passage for us. And I read this to encourage us, literally to give us back the cruise that we need to be faithful, children of God, through life's trials.

This is Hebrews 12. It says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great, a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin, which clings so closely. And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners, such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted."

"In your have in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there, whom his father does not discipline. If you are left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live. They disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness."

"For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but yet later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness, without which no one can see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. That no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. And by it many become defiled. That no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal."

If you're weary, if you're ready to give up, then remember, remember the father's kindness. Remember that he disciplines those that he loves. Don't harden your heart. Don't grow angry or bitter. It also says don't go seeking comfort through sinful pleasures. Instead, look to Jesus, look to the founder, the perfector of our faith, and know that his power is made perfect in your weakness. The father is forming you because he loves you. He wants you to grow up into the image of his son.

And so, we remember the father's kindness. Point two, we remember the father's severity. This is chapter four, starting at verse one. It says, "For behold, the day is coming burning like an oven, when the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze," says the Lord of hosts, "So that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be as ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act," says the Lord of hosts."

Malachi reminds the people of the father's love. He reminds them of the father's judgment. And one of the major complaints that the people had made against God was that he was being a bad judge, that he was turning a blind eye to evil. He was letting the wicked and the arrogant off the hook. And we saw this in Malachi 3:15. It says that, they call the arrogant, blessed. And evil doers, not only prosper, but they put God to the test and they escape. And God says, "Oh no, they don't. They're not off the hook. Don't worry about them. Their day will come. And I'm not letting anyone off the hook. Their destruction is going to be both terrifying and complete. Instead of worrying about them, you should worry about yourself. Because if I haven't destroyed them yet, it's because I'm being patient. I'm giving you time to repent."

The father's severity should soften our hearts. And it should do for two reasons. First of all, it shows us that God will indeed give justice to the oppressed, that the wicked aren't getting away with anything. That God is a good and gracious judge. And he will one day deal with the problem of sin and evil once and for all.

Acts 17:20 says that the times of ignorance, God overlooked, but now he has commanded all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, Jesus Christ, our Lord. God will do what is just. He is going to right every wrong. And even if the wicked seem to prosper in this life, they will not escape the judgment that is coming and eternity.

And this is very good news for the future, that God is going to deal with this problem of evil. At the same time, it's very bad news for us because we're sinners. We're wicked. We're deserving of God's judgment ourselves. And so, the second way this softens our heart is by showing us that that God's desire is to be patient with us in order that we might find his mercy. And he calls all people everywhere to repent. As an omnipotent, wise and all-knowing king, God sees every sinful act, every sinful thought, every sinful desire and inclination of our hearts. And as a just, and righteous judge, God will call all things to account. Nothing's going to be swept under the rug. Every debt will be paid. Every sin will be punished including yours, including mine. Nothing will elude his justice.

But as a kind and loving father, God desires to show us mercy. And he's made a way for that to be possible for us through the sun of righteousness that has risen. And so, here we see the severe justice and the severe mercy of God that softens our hearts. That on the one hand, God is a good judge, and his justice demands a penalty be paid for sin. And that his wrath towards sin should rightly be poured out on us for all of eternity in a place called hell.

And yet, on the other hand, he desires to show us mercy. And so, for all who fear him, who repent and place their faith in the savior, Jesus Christ, the wrath that we deserved is instead poured out on him. And it was poured out on him on the cross. And this humbles us, because we see that we are so bad that we deserve hell. That we are so bad that Jesus had to die for us. There was no other way for us to be saved. And yet at the same time, we are so loved that God was willing to send his son to do that for us. That Christ was willing to come and to humble himself, and to lay down his rights, and to laid down his life, and to be a propitiation and for our sins, so that we could be reconciled to our father.

This is the gospel. This is the good news that lies at the center of our faith. This is what fills us with love, hope, peace, and joy. As we enter into the Advent season, we remember that Christ has come, our Messiah has come, that he's accomplished redemption, that we have been saved from the penalty of our sins. This is also what we anticipate during Advent in the second coming of Christ, that he's not just going to remove the penalty for our sins, but by the power of his Holy Spirit, the risen Christ is saving us from the power that sin has over our life. And he's coming again to remove the very presence of sin all together and for all of eternity, when he comes to judge the world in righteous.

And this just fill our hearts with hope and joy, and courage. And we see, we get a glimpse of this in chapter four, verse two. It says, "For you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. And you shall go out leaping like calves from in the stall." And we experience this right now in part through the gospel of having our sins forgiven. But a day is coming when we are going to experience that completely and in full.

The sun of righteousness will rise. It's a picture of a life-giving light. It's a light that vanquishes the darkness and exposes truth. And it destroys lies. And it floods and it fuels creation with righteousness. It makes things right. There is healing in its wings. As it reveals the truth, it also rejuvenates the creation. It reverses the curse. It writes the wrongs. It fixes what is broken. There will be no more sickness or sorrow, or tears, or death, or sin, or decay. That day is coming.

He says, "You shall go out leaping like calves from a stall." Have you ever seen that? Have you seen a calf, a baby goat, jumping for joy. Just YouTube, baby goat park. It'll change your life. It'll make your whole year so much better. Now, as you're watching that say, "Yes, that is me. That is my heart. That is what it feels like to know that my sins have been forgiven, and that the father loves me." It's a picture of freedom and joy that we have been set free from the stalls of sin and death, and Satan's tyranny.

So, you see the father's kindness was softened by the father's severity. Finally, we talk about the father's heart. In light of all of this, Malachi concludes his book, and the Holy Spirit concludes the Old Testament scriptures with two final instructions. Verse four, "Remember the law of my servant, Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel." Verse five, "Behold, I will send you, Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Lest I come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction."

It says, "I want you to remember, and I want you to behold. I want you to look back and I want you to look forward. I want you to hold onto my word and live your life as I've taught you to live. And I want you to look forward and hope to the sign of Elijah, who's going to come, and he's going to prepare the way for the Messiah. And I'm telling you this, because I want you to be ready when he arrives." Again, we see God's patience. That before Messiah would come, God would send this sign that Elijah would come and he would lead the people in repentance, so that they would be ready to receive the Messiah. Now, here's the problem. If you know your Bible history, Elijah lived 400 years before Malachi. And wasn't he long dead by now? Actually, no.

One of the interesting things about Elijah, you might find this interesting. Is yeah, he did live 400 years before Malachi wrote these words, but Elijah actually never died. Elijah, is one of only two people in human history who never ever died. God took him up in to heaven before his death. It seems as if his ministry is not complete yet.

And so, what is going on here? Some people speculate that Elijah is going to literally come back before Christ's return. Some people think that maybe he is one of the two prophets mentioned in the Book of Revelation. It's not entirely clear. But what the New Testament does tell us clearly is that this prophecy was in fact fulfilled, at least in part through the ministry of John the Baptist, which is interesting because the 400 years of silence that are about to follow are not going to be broken until the announcement of John the Baptist's birth.

And so, in the opening scenes of the New Testament, we read that Zachariah was serving as priest before God in the temple. And a messenger from the Lord, an angel appears to him. And this is what he says in Luke chapter one, verse 13, he says, "Do not be afraid, Zachariah, for your prayer has been heard. And your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name, John. And you will have joy and gladness. And many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink. And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord, their God. And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. To make ready for the Lord a people prepared."

So, John was born. He fulfills this ancient prophecy. But what does this all mean? And what does this have to do with fathers and with children? It's a strange way to end the book, or at least it seems so. If you think back over Malachi, the people of God, had really two major problems. One, they had a major problem with their worship and their devotion to God. And they had a major problem with their families. They were unfaithful to God and they were unfaithful to their wives.

And so, what we see is that there were some of the men were intermarrying with idol worshipers, and they were not teaching their children to grow up to love and serve the Lord. Others were breaking their marriage vows and they were divorcing their wives. And because of all of this, they were failing at their purpose.

And what was the purpose? What was the thing that God said he was seeking from them? Well, he told them in chapter two, that what the Lord was seeking was godly offspring. He was seeking a godly legacy from these people, but they were failing.

Malachi 2:14 says that, "The Lord was witnessed between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless. Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant, did he not them one with a portion of the spirit in their union. And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. And so, guard yourselves and your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth."

Instead of leaving legacies of faith, they were leaving a legacy of faithlessness. Instead of leaving a legacy of godliness, they were leaving a legacy of godlessness in this. And what was becoming, was they were becoming a generation of prodigals who had run far from home. And now they were raising a generation of children who didn't even know where home was. They were so far from God.

And Malachi concludes with these words of hope and says, it's not always going to be so. The day is coming, when fathers will turn to their children and children will turn to the fathers, and they will together, turn their hearts toward God, the heavenly father. And that John was going to come to prepare them for the Messiah. And that the Messiah was going to come to bring them back home.

And thinking about this through the lens of prodigal and specifically, the story of the prodigal son, the Messiah is really coming as the true big brother that the prodigal son never had. If you remember the parable, it ends in a party, right? The father throws the celebration. And everybody is inside. They're having a good time. They're celebrating that the prodigal son had come home, except for, of course, the older brother. He's outside by himself, grumbling in the darkness against the father.

And the father goes out to reason with him. In Luke 15:25, it says, "Now, the older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and he asked what these things meant. And he said to him, "Your brother has come back and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound." But he was angry and he refused to go in.

His father came out and he entreated him, but he answered his father, "Look, these many years, I have served you, and I've never disobeyed your command. Yet, you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him." And he said to him, "Son, you are always with me. And all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for your brother was dead, and he's alive. He was lost and is found."

We can see the father's heart in this. But had the older brother had that same heart, had the older brother had the father's heart, the story would have ended much differently. Because what the older brother should have done, what a good older brother should have done, is gone to the father and said, "Father, let me go after him. I'm willing to leave behind everything that I have here with you. And I will go to the ends of the earth, if that that means I can bring my little brother back home." He didn't do that, but Jesus did that.

And that's what I mean when we say that Jesus is the better big brother. That John prepares the way, and then Jesus comes to seek us, to save us, to find the prodigals, to bring them back home. And he softens our hearts so that we can cross that chasm, that infinite divide of our sin that has separated us from the father. And we can be reconciled to him. Once again, this is the love that can change the world, because this is the love that changes human hearts.

And I think Malachi singles out the fathers and the children here, because I think he's getting that this was what God's vision was from the very beginning. This was going all the way back to the garden, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue. It wasn't just a command to make lots of babies. It was a command to make image bearers of God, who fill the earth, who raised children, who love the Lord, their God with all of their heart, and with all of their soul, and with all of their might, and with all of their strength.

It's a picture of healthy people, producing healthy marriages, producing healthy families, healthy communities, healthy societies, in which people love and serve the Lord with all of their heart, because his love has transformed them from the inside out. That's God's vision. That's Jesus' vision. And that's why he came as our older brother to break that cycle of cynicism and sin, to tear down the walls of hostility between fathers and children, between families and peoples. And he does so by tearing down the wall of hostility between us and God. To turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children, and the fathers and children together, back to their God. To take our proud prodigal hearts that have been running from God for so long, and turn them back into the father's embrace.

And so, whoever you are, wherever you've gone, whatever you've done, this is the call to repent, to turn, to come back and to see that the father is waiting, standing at the door. And he's standing there not waiting to strike you, but to embrace you, not because of anything that you've done, but because of what his son, Jesus Christ has done for you. He's waiting to welcome you in to celebrate and to say the words that he said in Luke 15:23, "Come on, let us eat and celebrate, for this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found."

Let's pray. Father, we praise you as a powerful and mighty king. And we honor you as a just and righteous judge. And we love you as a kind and tender father. And we thank you for sending your son, our big brother, Jesus Christ, to seek us, to save us from ourselves, to take our hearts of stone and replace them hearts of flesh. Hearts that can beat and rhythm with yours, with your truth, and with your love.

God, I pray today that you would heal the broken hearted, that you would lift the needy from the ashes, and that you would strengthen our hands and feet, and give us the courage we need to be your children, to be your ambassadors, your representatives. God, I pray that your power would be made perfect and put on display through our weakness. That the light of your salvation would shine through us as a beacon of hope to this cold, dark and hard hearted world. We pray this in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

We're in the book of Malachi. Malachi is sent by God as a prophet to reawaken his people who are in spiritual stupor. They have grown numb to God. They are indifferent to the cause of God, the word of God, to the mission of God. They're indifferent to the work of the temple. The reason why they're indifferent is because their heart has been divided, they are in the middle.

They're on the one hand loving the world, on the other hand, asking for God to bless them. And they're starting to ask questions like, is this worth it? Is it worth following God? Is it worth doing his work? Is it worth trying to live a godly life? As they're looking around and seeing that the people who are pagans, people who are living any way that they want seems like they're happier, seems like they're living better lives.

And the reminder from Malachi here today is that God is a God of eternity, that God is a God of justice, that God has already sent his son Jesus Christ to bear the wrath of God for our sins. Jesus came the first time as a savior of his people, meek and mild, offering salvation, offering forgiveness, but he will come back and he will come back as a king and as a judge.

And none of Christianity makes sense if we lose sight of the fact that eternity is real. The very moment you die you stand in the presence of God and you either spend eternity with God or apart from God in a place of eternal, conscious suffering called hell. And when Christians lose sight of that reality, that this is real, we lose sight of the most important thing in our lives, which is the mission of God.

We have been saved to now carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who are not yet saved. So Malachi is sent by God to awaken his people with a fire from heaven, and I pray that he sends the same fire today. Today we're in Malachi 2:17 through 3:15. I'll begin by reading Malachi 2:17, 3 through 5. You have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say, how have we wearied him?

By saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them or by asking where's the God of justice. Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

But who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears? He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. They will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old, as in former years.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who press the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Two main points from the text, don't weary God, and second, don't rob God. First, don't weary God. Malachi 2:17, you have wearied the Lord with your words. They have wearied the Lord. How do you make sense of this? If God is omnipotent, if he's impassable, on the one hand he's transcendent. So he's above suffering or feeling pain. On the other hand, he is being wearied by these people.

Isaiah 40:28 says, have you not known, have you not heard the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth? He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. On one hand, he can not grow weary, on the other hand, we can try God's patience to the point where he is weary of us, of our reactions.

Isaiah 7:13 he said, hear then O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary God also? You're testing the patience of God. With their disobedience, they are wearing God, they're grumbling. Very few of us repent of the sin of grumbling, of complaining against God. God, you are not doing what you're supposed to be doing. You're not doing your job as you're supposed to be. You are not the God that you're supposed to be.

We are wearing God with those complaints. What does it mean that God can be wearied when he is transcended above everything? Well, because in his love, in his kindness, he opens up his heart to us. He chooses to love us and he chooses to feel true love. Therefore, God does feel emotions. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that God does love in a true love, like a feeling love because he chose to love.

And God like a good father, at some point as we see in the old testament, he does get tired of the complaining and he does discipline that. Any parent understands this. Every once in a while you get to the point where you've just had it with your kids complaining. Dad what's for breakfast? Eggs again? No, I want ice cream. No, we're not doing that. What's for dinner? Soup, mom made soup. No, I want something interesting. That's what they do.

This morning my daughter woke up... We've been living in the city for 11 years, this morning she woke up, my oldest daughter. She said, "I'm sick and tired of not having my own room, no backyard. I'm sick and tired of being a pastor's kid." That's what she said. I'm sick and tired of being a pastor's kid. And at that moment, I felt just a little bit of what God feels where it's like, "I'm getting tired of this getting. I'm getting tired of your complaints."

Is there a sense in which God can experience emotional frustration, disappointment? Yes, because he truly loves. That's why he's wearied because he truly loves. Genesis 6 tells us that the Lord does experience emotions. Genesis 6, before the Lord sends the flood, it said that he regretted that he had made man. He got to the point where he was so fed up with the evil of humanity that he sends the flood.

Judges 10:16 says that God couldn't bear Israel's misery any longer. Isaiah 63:9 through 10, in all their distress, he too was distressed. Psalm 2:4, the one enthroned in heaven laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Luke 15:20 talking about the parable of the prodigal son. The father sees the son repenting, returning and the father, scripture says, was filled with compassion, ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The reason why the Lord does feel true emotion is because he opens up his heart to love us and hear his people, they just complain. Malachi 2:17, but you say how have we wearied him? By saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them or by asking, where is the God of justice? How are they wearing him?

They're saying, God, are you even just? God, are you even good? Why? Because we see evil all around us. We see the evil people prospering, God, why aren't you bringing down your condemnation upon them? Are you delighting in that evil? Therefore, they're questioning his character, impugning his character. In Malachi 3:13 through 15, the other side of questioning God is now they don't see the point in serving God.

Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord, but you say, how have we spoken against you? You have said it is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the arrogant blessed, evildoers not only prosper, but they put God to the test and they escape him.

God, we see these evil people who are living any way they want and you're not bringing judgment and condemnation upon them. We're serving you, what's the point of serving you? What profit is there? The arrogant are blessed, evildoers prosper. What about us? And this is the age old question of why do the wicked prosper? Why do the righteous suffer?

You do the right things, you can't get ahead. They scoff at God and they're doing great. The Jewish people really felt this. They felt true suffering as a people in Malachi's day. They were under the thumb of the Medo-Persian empire who were godless and yet they were prosperous. They're people who've got a back in the land of Jerusalem, but their temple is but a shell of its former glory.

And the Jews have become disappointed with God. God, you didn't give us the life that you promised to give us. We expected blessing and yet all we have is suffering. God are you just? It's a synagogue agnosticism, doubting God's existence, his goodness. God are you delighting in evil? Are you good? Are you just? And what they're doing here is they're questioning God's job.

God, do you know what you're doing? I could do your job so much better than you. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around how hard it is being God. I get a little understanding of how God gets wearied with us sometimes with our complaining, with our groaning, our griping with my kids. I have four kids, I have four daughters, kids complain. Daughters are just more articulate at it.

They're just better at words, better... and they know where... like fast at speaking and they come out. And especially if you have smart kids, that's even harder. The smarter the kids, the more words. And I get to the point where I'm frustrated. There's a frustration because I love you so much, I want the best thing for you. Something interesting.

What's something interesting to you? It's always carbs, it's always sugar. No, I don't want to give you carbs and sugar for breakfast because I don't want you to get diabetes by the time you're 40. You're going to thank me later. So I'm at the point where it's like, "Yeah." I've been a pastor for 11 years and I know how... I think this is the hardest time in the history of the world to be a pastor. I think every pastor probably feels that, whatever I'm alive today so I get to say it.

Pastor's back a hundred years ago, literally you saw people once a week. Maybe they have appointments with you, tremendous office hours. Today pastors have never been more accessible, email, Facebook Messenger, IG messenger, Twitter, phone, they know where you live. And in Boston, Massachusetts, everyone's got an opinion. Everybody has opinion. That's why you live here, you're very opinionated and you're good at expressing your opinions.

And in this pandemic, this has been the hardest time of ministry in my whole life. And I get your emails, I get your messages, I get your texts, I get your phone calls, I get all of it. And your voice is heard. And we truly are a mosaic where whatever your opinion is, on whatever the matter, there's 10 people diametrically opposed to you.

And Pastor Shane, Pastor Andy somehow we need to keep everything going. And at the same time, I'm grieving for the state of the church. I'm grieving over it because I love the church. I've given 35% of my life to the church. I see what the enemy is doing through all of this. Yes, you read the studies. Yes, the stats. Yes, the news. But on top of all of that is a demonic war and I see what the enemy is doing in all...

By the way, the whole pandemic started when we started a sermon series called Stratagem: How to Discern the Strategies of the Evil One. And literally in the middle of that series we're like, "Pandemic." I've been discerning the work of the enemy through this. I see how the church is being weakened through it. There's an indifference to the church. There's an indifference to the gathering of believers.

You know what the word church means? Literally, ekklesia means the gathering of believers physically. We need that. Humans need that. And more than anything the church of Jesus Christ whom he loves, the body of Christ, which is physically together, the Holy Spirit moves when we are together. This is our witness. Our worship is warfare.

I say all that to say, we just need to love God, we need to love Jesus. And the mission is more important than anything. Whatever your preference, the mission's more important. People literally die and go to hell every single second to spend eternity apart from God. All I want to say is whatever your preface, whatever everything, there's nothing more important than that.

The glory of God and the church of Jesus Christ and stop telling God how to do his job. That's the point of this text. And when we do question God, when we do weary God, what's the response? The response is repent. Repent. Who are you to question God? Job suffers for 38 chapters in the book of Job, he loses his kids and he loses his wealth, he loses his health. He loses everything. He's griping against God for 38 chapters, God shows up and he just says, who are you? Who are you to question me?

He's God, he gets to do whatever he wants to do. Our job is to repent of sin and follow him. And then the presupposition that he's dealing with here is, Malachi is dealing here is, you want justice? You're telling God that he's not just, you want justice? How many of us would be alive if God flips the switch and destroys all of the evil in the world?

How many of us will be alive in a second? That's what he says in Malachi 3:2, who can endure the day of his coming, who can stand when he appears? He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. So when we say, wouldn't it be great if Jesus came back? Yes, it would be great. But how many of us are ready? How many of us are ready for the justice of God to come?

Malachi 3:1, behold, I send my messenger. Before he sends Christ in the first coming and before he sends Christ in the second coming, there's a messenger. He will prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to the temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Prophecy as usual in scripture has double meaning, sometimes more.

The first meaning of this prophecies, John the Baptist is going to come to prepare the way for Jesus Christ. Isaiah 43, a voice cries out in the wilderness, prepare the way the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Zechariah's prophecy when he prophesies over his son who was in the womb, when he prophesied, he says, you will go and prepare the way of the Lord.

Jesus applied that prophecy to John the Baptist in Matthew 11. Malachi 4:5 says, behold, I will send Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. Elijah the prophet, his spirit descends upon John the Baptist. That's how the prophecy comes together. And then we see in Malachi 3:1 that he, John the Baptist, is preparing the way for the Lord.

So in the sense, this human Messiah that comes is also going to be the Lord. And we see that from Malachi 3:1, behold I, God, send my messenger, John the Baptist in the spirit of Elijah. And he will prepare the way before me, God, me, the Lord, that's Adonai in the Hebrew, whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. And here in the Hebrew, it's Yahweh.

There's two Lords. Here what's going on, Yahweh here represents God, the father, Adonai is Jesus Christ. How do we know that? Because we see that difference often in scripture. Psalm 110:1, the Lord, Yahweh, says to the Lord, Adonai, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. So the Messiah is clearly David's son yet David calls him Lord. And there's two Lords, Yahweh and Adonai.

What's this talking about? In the old testament, this is prophecy of the Trinity. That there's three persons in the Trinity, God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit. God the father sends God the son by the power of the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons, one essence. And we have this in Malachi3:1, John the Baptist comes as a messenger telling people to repent.

What was John the Baptist's message? Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh, he's here. Therefore, repent of your sins, bear fruit with that repentance. Repentance isn't just saying, God, I'm sorry, all I want is your pardon so I can continue sinning. Repentance is God, I changed my way. I changed my life. God, I want to be used by you because I am yours. That's what repentance is. John the Baptist preached that, prepare the way for Jesus Christ.

And the second meaning of the prophecy is before Jesus' second coming, Revelation 11 talks about this, there will be two witnesses who will powerfully bear witness before the coming of Christ, and the second coming, one of those witnesses will be Elijah himself. The preparing the way of the Lord, this imagery, is clearing roads, preparing towns for the visit of the king.

It's a messenger sent to the towns who tell people, "Hey, clear the road of rock, of debris. Fill in the ruts and the potholes." God in his grace sends a messenger before his coming. He did that through John the Baptist about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ lives the perfect life, dies on the cross bearing God's fire of judgment and condemnation for our sin, our rebellion, our wickedness, dies, is buried, on the third day he's risen.

And the scripture says by our faith in him, his grace is applied to us. His judgment, his substitutionary atonement, his death, that is counted to our account the very moment that we repent. That's the only way that the fire of God, when it comes, it will be a fire that cleanses, that refines instead of incinerating.

God in his grace sent John the Baptist, God in his grace sends the church, sends us, we are priesthood of all believers and God in his kindness before the second coming of Christ will send another witness. Our job now, here, is to see where in our life do we need more of the refiners fire. Malachi 3:2, who can endure the day of his coming, who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap.

God wants to pour out his fire upon the church, upon each one of us. Wherever there's an indifference to sin, an indifference to God, a lack of love, a lack luster relationship with him we're to ask, God please send this refiners fire. Please wash us with the fullers' soap, the soap that cleanses. In Malachi 3:4, he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.

He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. To the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old, as in the former years. Here the imagery is God sends his fire to purify. This is the process of making silver.

The oriental silver smith would heat it and the impurities, the dross, the slag, they bubble to the surface. He would skim the surface to the point where he could see his reflection in the silver. So this is what God is telling his people. You want justice, justice begins with you. You want God to punish evil, to cleanse the world of evil, it begins with you. It begins with you repenting of your sin and pursuing righteousness on a daily basis.

And he is sending the struggles, he's sending the difficulties in order to purify us. All whom he loves, he purifies. It's painful, but it's not as painful as the judgment in the second coming. In the second coming, this is Malachi 3:2, then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow, the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the soldier and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

These people wanted God to judge their enemies, but they didn't judge themselves. They didn't fear God. God says, first judgment needs to come into your own life reawakening cleansing of sin. This is the process of sanctification and that's how we prepare ourselves for the second coming. In the second God will bring judgment. He will bring all of these people a swift witness against them, it's talking about the ultimate judgment.

The sorcerers here, anyone who practices the occult, adulterers, anyone who is sexually unfaithful in particular in their marriage vows. Those who swear falsely, those who bend the truth, this is perjury under oath in court or in anything else, those who oppress the wage earner, anyone who is dishonest in their financial dealings. So what's the difference between the two fires? One is a fire that refines, the other fire is the one that incinerates.

What's the difference? The difference is the covenantal love of Jesus Christ. Have you accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on your behalf? Have you repented of sin? Have you turned to Jesus Christ? Have you trusted that his death on the cross when the fire of God's wrath came down on him, do you trust that this is Jesus dying on the cross for your sins?

Do you see how Holy God is? How sinful we are? How loving God is? How just God is and how much we need his grace. Do you see that? That's the only hope. There's nothing more important than that. There's nothing. There's absolutely nothing more essential than you trusting in Jesus Christ, you repenting of your sin, you following him. There's nothing more essential than that. There's nothing more essential than you worshiping the God of the universe.

And then the temptation is, as we see the evil around us, as we are... the more you grow in holiness, the more you walk with the Lord, the more it breaks your heart that there's sin in your own life and that there's just outright evil and injustice around us. And the more godless a city, the more pagan a city, the more it grieves you and it wearies you. It's exhausting spiritually. And there's a temptation to hate the evil person.

And here, as we pray for the justice, God come, God, we pray for the second coming, God, swift fire from heaven, please. We'll never lose sight of the fact that these people are eternal souls. And if Jesus Christ comes back right now, they will spend eternity in hell. So as we pray for justice, we are to care with a compassionate heart for those who don't yet know the Lord. We are to develop a compassion for those who are unbelievers.

Second Peter 3:8 through 13, do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

And then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed since all these things are thus to be dissolved. What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Don't weary God, if we do, if there's a grumbling spirit of complaining toward God, we are to repent of that. And then the second point is don't rob God. Malachi 3:6, for I the Lord do not change. Therefore, you O children of God are not consumed. He's setting this up, he's about to tell him that you've been robbing me. On the other hand, he said, my fire of judgment hasn't come down on you yet because I've chosen to pour my love out on you. I don't change.

God is the only one who can say I am that I am. He's the only one who can say that. Every single one of us, we have to say, I am not yet the person that I'm supposed to be. I'm growing in the grace of God. God's the only one who can say I am that I am. A.W. Pink says he can not change for the better for he is already perfect and being perfect, he cannot change for the worse.

And God is telling Israel, look, I should have destroyed you, I have not yet. And the reason is because I made a covenant with you. God chooses to love, and God is a God of his word. When God says, I love you, he will love you to the end. He will not let you go. And I'm setting that up all to say these people have been complaining to God, "God, what's the point of serving you when you are not blessing us? We're doing so much for you and you're not giving us what we want."

And God here actually says, no, you're not doing everything you ought to be doing. Malachi 3:7 through 8, from the days of the fathers, you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, how shall we return? Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me, but you say, how have we robbed you in your tithes and contributions.

We're saying, "God, we're doing so much." And he's saying, "No, no, no. You're not doing everything I've called you to do. You're comparing your obedience to that of the pagans, you're not comparing your obedience to that of God's law. And really here the main issue is they're in this lackadaisical, middle ground of miserable, pitiful, half-hearted Christianity. This is lukewarm Christianity.

In Revelation God says, "You're neither hot nor cold, you're warm. You're lukewarm. I'm going to spit you out." It's like coffee, there's only two kinds that are allowed, hot and iced. That's it. Warm coffee is disgusting. You want to spit that out. That's what God is saying. He's saying to his people, "You Christians are miserable." The reason why you're miserable is because you're lukewarm, you're half-hearted. It's the most pitiful condition to be because you can't enjoy sin like you used to because God, the Holy Spirit, rebukes you every time and he disciplines you. And because you want sin more than God, you're not getting the fullness and benefit and satisfaction and joy of God. And in order to diagnose their lukewarmness, he points to their bank account.

Well, what's the connection here? The connection is what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, wherever your treasure is, that's where your heart is. Wherever your money naturally flows, that's usually what you love most. And scripture often talks about money as the litmus test, generosity as the litmus test of our relationship with God.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector, pagan, was stealing, robbing the people of Israel and he repents. And Jesus says this in Luke 19:8 through 9. Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore fourfold." And Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to him to this house since he's also a son of Abraham.

He's not saying he's saved because he gives, but he's saying, because he's saved, he gives. He has this natural generosity. Because he loves God and the things of God, he wants to be generous to the causes of God. And that stands a stark contrast to the tragic accountant of the rich, young ruler who comes to Jesus, falls on his knees, says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

And Jesus says, "You know the commandments." He said, "I fulfilled all of them." Jesus says, "You're lacking one thing." Mark 10:21, and Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You lack one thing. Sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, come and follow me." Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions.

And again, this isn't saying that if you sell everything you have, you get salvation. But Jesus was saying, "What do you love most?" How do you inherit turn life? You love God more than anything. You repent of your sin, you love God more than anything. Jesus saw that there was an idol in the way, and that idol was money. This guy worshiped money.

Luke 16:10 to 11, and one who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much. And one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you true riches? Unrighteous wealth, that's money and true riches here, that's the stewardship of souls. That's the souls of people.

God says there's nothing more important than caring for people's souls. And if we have been unfaithful in finances, God will not entrust to us greater responsibility, which is that of caring for souls. So here the question is, are you greedy or generous? And that's always a degree. We always have to check our hearts and see how much greed has taken over.

Do we have integrity when it comes to money? Are our priorities or motives for earning, spending, saving, investing, giving, are they in line with God's word? And how much should we give? That's the important question. In the old testament the number 10% comes up often. Abraham once gave Melchizedek 10% of the spoils from a single battle. Jacob promises to give God 10%.

The law of Moses, however, prescribes several tithes. And if you combine all of them together it's probably 20 to 25%, some say even a third. In Israel, the tithe function more like an involuntary tax. Here Malachi 3:10 says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse. The 10% is a great place to start, but the idea is we are to give proportionately with what God has given us.

So for some of us, 10% is a great place to give, some of us, it's going to be a sacrifice. So in the new testament, first Corinthians talks about giving sacrificially, joyfully and not under compulsion. Give to whom? We give to God. And what's important in Malachi 3:19 through 10 is that God says, give to my house. This is Malachi 3:9 through 12. You are cursed with a curse for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. He's talking about the temple.

And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts. If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and to pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord.

So you're robbing God by not giving to his house, you're withholding the tithes and offerings. Therefore, you're neglecting the ministry in the temple. So the temple is gone now, we don't have the temple. We have the church. The church is the body of believers. So they gave so that the work of the ministry would continue in the temple. We today give to the work of the church. Why? Because Christ loved the church, gave himself up for her, he, though being rich, gave himself for the church so that we could be rich in him.

Jesus said, I will build the church. And really the issue is we give to things that God loves. Does God need our money? No, God commands us to give because we need to give, we need to sacrifice. It's more blessed to give than to receive. And God wants us to give to the work of the church because the church is the vehicle through which God's glory is displayed and the gospel is proclaimed in the world. So it really comes down to giving to the things that God loves, the things that God prioritizes, things that God cares for, which is the work of the gospel and salvation of the souls. And here God says, put me to the test, which is fascinating. In the very beginning he's saying, you're testing my patience. Here he says, test me. What's the difference?

There they were testing him with their disobedience, here he says, test me with your obedience. There they with testing his patience, here he says, test my promises, test my promises. See if I don't open up the windows of heaven. Malachi 3:10, see if I will not open up the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there's no more need, until there's no more needed.

And he's not promising wealth, he's promising enough, satisfaction. Second Corinthians 9:8, and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. Now this is risky. With finances, it's risky. The reason why it's risky here and the reason why he says test is obedience comes first, blessing comes after.

He says, you first give and see if I don't bless. Sometimes we want, "God bless me, if you bless me to a certain point, then I'll give." It's risky, it's faith. But he says, "Test me, let's make a deal." That's what he's saying. And I found this to be true in my own life. And I found when Christians do this, there is really this pattern of God does bless faithfulness.

The text began with them questioning God and then he says, you're robbing me, but in the middle he says return to me. And really this is the main issue, the heart of the matter is the heart. Malachi 3:7, from the days of your fathers you've turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts, but you say, how shall we return? It all starts with the heart.

It all starts with us realizing how good and gracious God is. That though we were in our sins, though we defied him, rebelled against him, cared nothing for him, despised him. And you say, how have I despised him? By being indifferent to him. Indifference is the worst form of hate. And Jesus Christ comes and he dies for us, wicked sinners, on the cross, the God of the universe bearing the wrath of God.

God came to save us from God's wrath and condemnation. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. Christ loses everything on the cross, pours out his blood for us and by grace through faith we're saved when we realize that generosity of God, the largest of his heart, that now duty becomes delight. It all starts with a relationship to return to him, to love him.

However, relationship with God does not mean you don't have to obey. This is the problem with much of American Christianity. Oh, it's not religion, it's relationship. I know what you mean. It is relationship with God, with the God of the universe. And if you have a relationship with the God of the universe, of course it means obedience.

Repentance is not, God, I'm sorry for my sin so now I can continue living in sin. Repentance is, God, forgive me, a wicked sinner who deserves hell for all of eternity. God, forgive me for loving things more than you, for loving pleasure more than you, for loving idols more than you. God, forgive me. And God does and now you become a child of God and a servant of God.

John 15:10, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I've kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. There's a connection. You want to experience God's love, you got to keep his commandments. John 15:14, you are my friends if you do what I command you. You can't say, "I love Jesus, my sins are forgiven. I'm under grace. I can live any way that I want." It doesn't work that way.

God is a jealous God. He's a zealous God. When he makes you his own, when he makes you his own, he's never letting you go. And if you experience dissatisfaction, indifference in your heart, if you experience this questioning, grumbling spirit in your heart, God, you're not giving me the life that I want to live and then you start to pursue sin, that is the most miserable place to be because he will discipline you.

Goes to Hebrews 12, he's a good father and he will discipline you. And sometimes that does mean physical suffering and sometimes even to the point of death, first Corinthians 11 talks about that. There's a sin onto death. So the word here from Malachi for us today is return to the Lord, return to him, be satisfied in him, rejoice in him. There's nothing better.

Is it worth following him? Of course. What's the point? The point is we are to glorify him, enjoy him forever. Mark 10:28 through 30, I'll close with this. And Peter began to say to him, "See, we have left everything and followed you." And Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or a mother or a father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come, eternal life."

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the Holy Spirit. And I pray, Holy Spirit, continue to refine each one of us. Lord, those of us who are Christians continue to refine our souls with your fire, refiner's fire and continue to cleanse us and our souls as with soap so that we long for holiness, that we fight sin, that we take up a cross and follow you on a daily basis because we understand that there is a spiritual war to wage and we are to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and we are pursue you with everything that we do.

And Lord, for anyone who is not yet a Christian, I pray today, convert them, regenerate them, draw them to yourself, show them that they right now are on the path of eternal separation from you. I pray, draw them to yourself, convert them, give them the gift of repentance. And I pray that they accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And I pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood, churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting welcome, we're so glad you're here and we'd love to connect either through the connection card and the worship guide or in the connection card in the app or online. If you filled out allegedly, we will get in touch with you over the course of the week. That said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege it is to come into your presence because of the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ on the cross, by the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, you command us that we are not to have any gods before you. You summarized Jesus, the law of the Lord by saying, love God with all your heart, soul strength, and mind, love your neighbor as yourself. I pray today. Lord, you show us that love without obedience toward you is not love. When you call us to love you. You call us to honor you and revere you and fear you. And make us the people who care about honoring your name. People who care about holiness and righteousness, people who allow you to be Lord and King over every aspect of our lives. No matter how intimate to us.

I pray. Lord, open up your Holy scriptures to us and give us hearts to hear and to receive and to love these truths. We'll pray, Holy Spirit, fill us, rebuke us, where we need to be rebuked, and comfort us where we need to be comforted. We pray all this in Christ's Holy Name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the book of Malachi this week, two more weeks, I was just covering chapter by chapter. And then that will lead us into advent and where we'll just look at Matthew:1-2, so the very next pages in the Holy scriptures. Malachi and the title of the sermon series is a refiner's fire. Malachi is a prophet of God. His name means my message, your God has sent this prophet to speak a work of fire to the people of God, to burn off the dross that has encapsulated their hearts. Their hearts are numb toward God, desensitized toward God, and they need a fire to burn that dross off.

And really that the heart of this book, it is the question, do you love God with all your heart, soul strength, and mind? Does God have a central place in your life? Meaning does faith in God permeate all of your life? Does God get to be God over every aspect of your life? Or does he just get a little time slot on your Google calendar of Sundays for an hour, hour and a half, a few minutes at the beginning of each day, perhaps?

Is God the absolute most important person in your life? Do you do everything that you do for the glory of God? Through the prism of worshiping God, boil a question down is, God central or is He supplemental? And many of us struggle with the centrality of God because a lot of us have learned to compartmentalize God. There's my school box. There's my career box. There's my relationship with box. There's my money box. There's my sex box, whatever it is. And then there's my God box. And this is that part of life where I honor God, I sing songs to Him, I pray some prayers and I do some scripture. And when God gets compartmentalized in our lives, He just becomes an afterthought and we run to Him when we need something. When we need a blessing, when we need forgiveness, when we need spiritual cleansing, when we need him to remove shame or guilt, when we need rescue, we run to Him when we sin.

God forgives, Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I've sinned. I see the calamity of my sin. I don't want to deal with the consequences of my sin. Jesus forgive me. And as soon as I'm forgiven, I run back to my sin. And we see the cycle over and over in the Holy Scriptures. He gets our sin, we get forgiveness and we go back to our sin and God gets our leftovers. We actually only go to God, to say, "God, forgive me, deal with the excrement in the filth of my soul in my life." And then we go right back to it. So how does God feel about that cycle? About that tepidness? About that lukewarmness? How does God feel about us bringing our leftovers to him?

Well, today we will find out what God says, actually your worship to me, what you're giving me, it's actually feces, is the word dung. And he says, "I'm going to take the dung that you're bringing me. I'm going to rub your face in it. So you realize that this isn't going to work." So that's the text that we're in today, Malachi 2:1-9 to begin with, and then we'll deal with verses 10 through 16, after that. Malachi 2:1-9. “And now, O priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not listen if you will not take it to heart, to give honor to My name,” says the LORD of hosts, “Then I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not take it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings; and you shall be taken away with it. So shall you know that I've sent this command to you? That my covenant with Levi may stand," says the LORD of hosts.

"My covenant with him was one of life and peace. And I gave them to him, it was a covenant fear and he feared me. He stood in owe of my Name. True instruction was in my mouth and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. And the people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. But you have turned aside from the way, you've caused many to humble by your instruction, you have corrupted the covenant of Levi," says the LORD of hosts. "So I make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.” This is the radium God's Holy inerrant, infallible authoritative word, He writes these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points to frame-Up our time. Verses 1-9. Stop giving God your Paresh, we'll talk about what that means. Two is don't marry pagans, that's verses 10-12. And three, fight for marital faithfulness verses 13-16.

Point one; stop giving God your Paresh. He writes and speaks these words to priests, that's verse one. "And now, O priests, this commandment is for you." In context, talking directly to spiritual leaders in the Old Testament, these were the Levites. In the new Testament, spiritual leaders of the pastors or the elders. And so in context, He's talking about those who are entrusted to teach the people of God, the truths of God, and to not just teach them the instruction, but also show them, model how it's to be done. "Imitate me as I imitate Christ," the Saint Paul says. Life and doctrine go together. 1 Timothy 4:16, "Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching, Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers." So if you are to teach the word of God to others, if you're going to instruct people from the word of God, you first have to pay attention to yourself, make sure you're living it yourself, and pay attention to your teaching. That's in line with the teachings of scriptures. In James 3:1, says, "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers for you know, that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." God sets a higher standard for those who preach his word, who teach his word. The job of spiritual leaders wasn't just to do the work of the ministry. It was to teach God's word. It was to ordain the worship service, that's the word of God. "We commit ourselves to the word of God and to prayer," as the book of Acts says. And then also it's to keep people accountable to that teaching and equip the saints for the work of the ministry. How does this apply to us? This text primarily applies to spiritual leaders. So Pastor Jan, you're preaching to yourself, Pastor Jane, Pastor Andy, the spiritual leaders. Also, applies to community group leaders. If you're leading a community group in the church, you need to know that this text's for you.

But it also applies to any Christian because any Christian is called to make disciples of other people. Jesus gave us the command in the great commission, "Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit." On top of that, every Christian is called a priest. 1 Timothy 2:9 "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light." So in the church age, Jesus Christ has fulfilled the Levitical code and superseded it. He's our great high priest and we are priests under him. So there's levels of authority given Jesus at the very top, then the spiritual leaders in the church. And it just descends, but every single one of us in some capacity, are called to teach the word of God to those in our community. And as we do, we need to know that there are standards that God sets for priests.

Malachi 2:2 "If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name," says the LORD of hosts, "then and I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I've already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart." The first thing that a minister of the gospel, the first thing that any priest, any Christian needs to do is to learn to listen, not just with our ears. Jesus used this phrase often. He says, "Do you have ears to hear, take care of how you listen." And twice in this verse, he emphasizes, "take it to heart." So he's saying not just listen with your ears, but listen with your heart. Not listen to your heart, listen with your heart.

And what's the connection between the heart and listening heart and learning truths? The connection's the same as the connection between faith and love. You can't believe in God or believe in doctrines about God without loving God because faith isn't just a matter of the mind. It's a matter of the heart, even more so. And we have a propensity to listen, in particular, things that we love, things that we want to hear. So he says, "First of all, when you're listening to God's word, you got to make sure your heart is calibrated to hear, to listen, particular, his warnings." Do you heed God's warnings? Do you heed his rebukes in the scripture? When the word is preached, as you read it, do you take the rebukes from the word of God? Do you take them to heart? And if not, then maybe the real issue is that you do not fear God, you do not honor God. And that's the connection. "If you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name."

The scripture talks often about loving God and we in the American Church, we've done a great job talking about a God who is love and a God who calls us to love him because He first loved us. I think we've done that at the expense of talking about God, who is to be feared, who is an awesome God, a God who is to be revered and honored. He is to be so honored. So feared that we even revere his name, that we speak his name with honor with reverence. That's what he's saying here, "Will you give honor to my name?" This is such a big of a deal. This was one of the 10 commandments, "Thou shall not take the Lord's name in vain."

Yes, don't just say, "OMG," don't you just throw out God's name when you're not talking about God or thinking about God, but that's only a surface-level understanding of what that commandment means. What that commandment means is that God has made us his own. We are the children of God. Christ said, "You are mine. I've given you my name, you're Christians live with Christ. So don't take my name in vain, where you take my name, but you dishonor me with your lifestyle." That's what he's really getting at, is that these priests were not honoring God with their lives. And that's really where everything fell apart. They were teaching people about God and then people were looking at their teaching, then comparing it to their lifestyle. And they had nothing to do with God. And thus, they led the people of God astray. So God says, "You're saying, God bless you. God bless you. God bless. But I'm actually going to turn these blessings into curses." And that's the second part of verse 2, "I'm going to curse your blessings. Indeed, I've already done that."

And then in the text, he talks about cursing. The blessings cursing, the Levi's offspring where there'll be cut off from the ministry, and then their ministry will be cursed. What he's saying is you talk about God. You want God to bless your life, but your life has nothing to do with the doctrines of God, the order of God, the tenants, and the laws of God, and God cannot bless what he already promised to curse. Then Malachi 2:3 Behold, words of God. "I will rebuke your offspring, the offspring of the priests, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it."

And this is the Hebrew word Paresh. And what he's getting at, is what this Paresh means. Excrement, it's bodily waste from these animals that they were supposed to bring as a sacrifice, as an offering, a sin offering to the Lord at the festivals. In Exodus 29:14, it's outlined there where it says, "But the flesh of the bull and its skin and it's dung, you shall burn with fire outside the camp." It is a sin offering. So the job of the priest was to take the animal to the people, brought to the priest, and say, "This is our offering to the Lord, our sin offering." And there was a take the choice parts of the animal and sacrifice to the Lord as a sin offering, a sacrifice for their sin, atonement for a little time. But the inner parts, the intestines, including the excrement, they were supposed to take outside of the temple, outside of the camp.

And there's two indictments here. The first indictment is the priests, were allowing the dung to stay at the temple. And they were bringing that as a sacrifice to the Lord. And the second indictment is, and we read this in chapter one, that they were allowing the people to bring their leftover animals to God, their lame animals, the blemished animals, the blind animals. When God said, "If you're going to bring a sacrifice, it's got to be the best that you have." And what God is saying. He's saying, "Your worship to me is dung, it's excrement, it's feces, that you're presenting your worst to me. I'm going to take this and I'm going to take these feces and smear them in your face because you are making a mockery of the worship. You keep shoving, literally bull Paresh, BS, in my face and asking me to bless it? And I'm about to return the favor." What's he getting at?

He's saying you've learned that there is a way for your sins to be forgiven through the sacrificial system. And you come and you go through the motions of the sacrificial system and the whole sacrificial system was giving as a way of repentance. It was the method of repentance. This is how we're repenting of our sins. You're doing this, you're going through the motions. And then you're going back to your sins. Meaning you love something more than God. You want God just to forgive you so they can keep on doing the sin. And this cycle of sin, ask for forgiveness, sin, ask for forgiveness. And what happens ... on the outside, you're presenting this religion to me on the inside there's nothing but death and corruption and Paresh. And this is the thing that Jesus Christ stood against more than anything else, warned against more than anything else. He has all of his woes in the gospel in Matthew. Woe against the hypocrites. Why did he talk about that so often? He says, be careful in presenting this front of facade of religiosity and cleanliness and purity and caring, nothing about purity on the inside."

And that's why he gives us this very vivid imagery expressing the revulsion that the Lord felt when he saw that these priests were presenting an image of cleanliness, but there was nothing like that on the inside. That's what Jesus talking to the hypocrites. Those who claimed to know God and love God. He said, "You're whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and uncleanliness. You clean the outside of the cup and the place, but inside are full of greed and self-indulgence." He says, "Be careful of a worship that has nothing to do with your heart." Be careful of coming to God and singing songs about loving God and giving him lip service. And then when no one's looking, your life looks nothing like what you were singing about. Be careful of the inner corruption.

Now, Malachi 2:4-6 "So shall you know that I've sent this command to you that might covenant with Levi may stand." Levi was the first priest of the Levitical code, says the LORD of hosts. "My covenant with him was one of life and peace. And I gave them to him. It was a covenant fear and he feared me. He stood in owe of my name, true instruction was in his name and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness. And he turned many from iniquity." Why was Levi's ministry as a priest so successful? Because he feared God, he honored God. He stood in awe of God. He lived according to God's principles. And when no one was watching, and because there was a love for God, a true love for God from the inside. When he taught people, it blessed people and moved people away from iniquity. He turned many away from iniquity.

And the emphasis here is on, "He walked with me." He walks with me is a Hebrew, halacha. Enoch walked with God and he was no more. Noah walked with God. Abraham was told by God, "Walk with me." Jesus Christ, when he comes, the first thing he says to his disciples is, "Follow me, walk with me." This is what it means to be a follower of the Lord. You walk in his ways, you know his ways, you follow him in his ways. That's the only way you can show others how to walk in his ways. He's talking about a lifestyle, a lifestyle of reverence, and obedience and love. And also a lifestyle of hating sin. To fear God means that you hate sin, that you rebuke yourself of your own sin. Proverbs 8:13 "The fear of the Lord is that hatred of evil." To love God is to fear God. And to fear God is to hate evil.

The question that's before every single one of us as believers of the Lord is, do you truly hate evil? Not just the consequences of evil. Do you truly hate evil because you love God because you fear God? And you can't honor and fear God without hating your own sin, rebuking your own sin. You can't be a priest of the Lord without rebuking yourself for your own sin and doing the same to your own brothers and sisters with whom you have covenant community. And this was one of the rebukes of God against Eli. Eli was a great priest in the old Testament. But at the end of his life, God comes and he rebukes him and he says, "You've dishonored me. Why Eli? Because Eli taught people the way of God. And he tried to do the same, but he did not rebuke the closest people to him of their sin. Primarily his sons. He didn't confront their evil.

1 Samuel 2:30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares: "I promise that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever." But now the Lord declares, "Far be it from me! For those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed." He's saying, "Eli, you claim to honor me, but you allowed evil to reside in your own home without doing anything about it." You need to confront evil. You need to speak truth in love and that's exactly what Malachi is doing.

Malachi 2:7 "For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. And the people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts." So every priest, every pastor needs to understand that they are nothing but messengers. They're not editors. They're messengers. They get a message from the Lord, from the Holy scriptures, thus saith the Lord. Malachi was messenger, the priest is supposed to be a messenger. We're supposed to be messengers and we have to guard and preserve and store up what this message is, even if people don't want to hear it. And why does Malachi begin with verses 1-9 talking about, do you love God? Do you fear him? Do you honor him? Do you revere his word? Are you a messenger? Because in a little while in the very next text, he gets to the very intimate parts of life where he begins to meddle in people's intimate lives with the word of God and apply it. And at that point, people have a decision. Are we going to repent of our sin? Or are we going to try to kill the messenger?

Martin Luther said this. He said, "Always preach in such a way that if people listening do not come to hate their sin, they will instead hate you." One of my favorite examples of this is Karl Barth, who was a theologian in Germany prior to World War II. When Hitler was fanning the flames of antisemitism, and some of that was going on in Karl Barth's church. And Barth came out and he preached a sermon on John 3:16. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." And what he said was, "Jesus Christ was a Jew and Jesus Christ died for the whole world and Jews a part of the world. So we need to stand against any hatred of Jews. We need to love Jews and actually love our neighbor." Many in the congregation got up and discussed. So the Jews killed Jesus and the whole antisemitic ideology.

And they wrote him scathing letters. And one of the biggest donors in the church wrote him a letter, the scathing letter, denouncing the sermon. Barth responded with a single sentence. And he said, "It was in the text." I'm just delivering the mail. This is the Bible. And this is how we as Christians need to judge any church, any sermon. And then this is how we also need to judge our own teaching about God. Are we speaking truth about God? Is it from the text? This is how we evaluate. Because the whole ministry of God, the whole ministry of the church is founded on this.

Act 6:4 "The apostle said we are going to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word." We're going to devote ourselves to prayer. That's the worship service. That's the ordinance of worship. The worship guide for the anchoring church is called the book of common prayer. It's not just praying to God. It's the whole worship experience of the congregation. And then the word of God, which is the ministry of preaching the word and teaching the word of God. That's what the church depends on. That is our life source, it nourishes and it strengthens. And we need to unabashedly speak the word of God because that's where life is even if our audience doesn't like it. Do we fear God more than men, than people?

And actually, this is what Malachi says in verse eight and nine. This was the problem with the priest. They feared people more than they feared God, "But you have turned aside from the way, you have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi," says the LORD of hosts. "And so I make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction." What's the issue here? The issue is that for a price, the priest told the people whatever they wanted to hear, the ministry of the word was being bought. In this case, the priests were overlooking clear disobedience in the community and the people are offering substandard sacrifice and the priest said, "Oh, that's fine."

Micah spoke against this in chapter three, verse 11, of Micah. Its heads give judgment for a bribe. Its priests teach for a price. Its prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean on the Lord and say, "Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us." Priests are teaching for a price. I'll teach what you want to hear as long as you keep paying my salary, that's what was going on. And the priests are, "If we demand from people exactly what God demands from the people, the people are going to get offended, they're going to leave. Then we need to make the message a little more palatable. So people show up so that people give so that we have a livelihood." This has always been a temptation in the church.

Samuel Butler in the 17th century wrote a little poem about it. And he says, "What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About 200 pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? 200 more. You want to know the truth? Pay me 200 pounds a year. You don't like it. Pay me another 200 pounds a year. That's what was going on. Does any of that go on today? Yeah. Look at the religious landscape of Boston. 99% of churches that have buildings today, that's what they do. They don't preach the gospel, but they have an endowment that allows them to just not preach the gospel. And I knew early on in the ministry, I knew this was the thing. And practically I made a decision, I don't know who gives what to the church. The only person I know that gives any money, how much? Is my wife and I. We know exactly how much we give. And I will preach whatever the truth of the gospel is, no matter what. And this gig doesn't work out. It's okay. I've got crazy painting skills. I'll go paint houses with my dad, no, no big deal.

And you're like, "Okay, that's the pastor's house, how does it apply to us?" Are you willing to stand up for your faith publicly? Are you willing to tell people in your life; colleagues, students, neighbors, roommates, that you love Jesus Christ, that you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. Specific sins, particular sins, sexual sins, lust, pride, whatever, specific sins. Do you believe that God ordained before the foundation of the world people to salvation that God has an order of this is gender? This is marriage. This is what it means to raise a family? Are you willing to stand up and say, "Yes, I am a Christian." Do you fear God more than you fear people? What they said about Jesus, Luke 20:21. So they asked him, "Teacher we know that you speak and teach regularly and show no partiality but truly teach the way of God." We Mosaic we want to do God's work God's way which is all in line with God's word, whatever that word is.

Now, Malachi gets really specific. He set that foundation. "Do we honor God, revere God, do we honor his word? And are we willing to teach it and live it both at the same time?" And he has two prime examples that get really intimate, and where he goes is marriage, marriage, and sexuality. So is point two, don't marry pagans. So he set that foundation in the verses 10 through 12, he says this, "Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another profaning the covenant of our fathers? Judah has been faithless; and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves and has married the daughter of a foreign god." May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob, any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the LORD of hosts.

So one of the issues that he gets really particular with, but specifically, the priest started allowing marriage to pagans. And they started even doing it themselves. Why? Because people came to them and said, "How dare you priests tell us whom to marry?" There's my God box. And then there's my marriage box. It's this hermetically sealed compartmentalization that happens when there's a cognitive dissonance where people want the sin and don't want God to intrude. So Malachi comes in and says, "Actually it is God's business whom you marry." If you're a child of God, that's why he starts with, "Have we not one father?" Pure child of God, then God expects obedience and as a father, a loving father, yes, God gets to have a say in whom you marry, the father gets a say in the child's choice of a marriage partner, because God loves you. And what does God say here? "Whom does God want these people to marry? There's basically one condition, it's that they love God, that they're Christians, that they're saved, that the regenerated, that they do not worship as verse 11 says, "A foreign God."

And so the issue here is not racial intermarriage and it's not ethnic intermarriage. And we see a lot of examples of people from other races who came to the people of Israel, Rahab, Ruth, Abigail, but they were converted, they repent of their sins, became believers in the Lord. So the question is spiritual intermarriage, and he uses the word abomination here. This isn't just a little mistake. This isn't just a matter of options. An abomination, a word that's used for idolatry, witchcraft, and sacrificing children. This is a big deal. And we see that this is a problem all throughout the Old Testament, also in the New Testament. And why was this an issue in during this time of the people of God when Malachi came to speak?

Well, because it's been centuries from the time where Moses said, "Do not intermarry with people of other faiths." Centuries have passed. And now at the time of Malachi that people say, that's antiquated. That's regressive. Why does God care whom I marry? No, no, no, my God doesn't do that. It's too restrictive. We shouldn't take it seriously. We shouldn't take it literally. It's inapplicable in the modern-day.

The objection is, well, God doesn't care about whom I marry, he just cares about my heart. Because God cares about your heart. He cares about whom you marry. God demands that we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And how can we give our heart that's committed to God fully to a person that doesn't love God fully? If we have a covenant with God, how can we make a covenant with a person that doesn't love God the same? This is a problem all throughout the Old Testament, all throughout the New Testament. It begins with Genesis 6 where Satan's ploy to take down humanity is spiritual intermarriage, and that actually leads to the flood. In Genesis 24, Abraham makes his servant swear, "Please don't let Isaac, my son marry a Canaanite who worships a foreign God." So Isaac marries Rebecca and then they have two kids, Jacob and Esau. Esau marries two unbelieving wives that brought grief to both Isaac and Rebecca. Jacob marries a believer, but his daughter, Dina is involved with Canaanite men. Those men then invite Jacob's other children to intermarry with them.

Jacob's son, Judah marries a Canaanite woman, begins to live like them, and to protect Abraham's descendants so that Jesus could come from this line because God promised to Abraham, God sovereignly takes Joseph out of that land so that he doesn't marry a Canaanite. And that leads to 400 years in Egypt. God then leads them out. In Deuteronomy 7:3-4, God speaks through Moses to the people of God and says, "You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to your sons or taking your daughters for your sons for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you. And he would destroy you quickly."

Why is this such a big deal? Because Satan knows the way that your faith flourishes if you love God. So if he can pull your heart away from God, when you love a person who competes with your affection for the Lord, and that person then pulls you away. And this was really the strategy of Balaam. If you study the false prophet, Balaam is hired by King Balak who was the King of Moab. Balak says, please curse the people of God. There's so many, they're going to take over. Please curse them. He tries multiple occasions, the curse but he can't because God already blessed them. So then Balaam comes up with a plan. He said, "I can't curse them, but get them to intermarry with Moabite women. And that will destroy their faith. And they will destroy their reverence and honor to the Lord."

And we see this ploy by Satan continued. Samson, the strongest man gets taken out through the same tactics. Solomon, his heart gets pulled away from God because of all his wives who worshiped other gods. Ahab with Jezebel, and after captivity, Ezra comes in back to the land with Nehemiah and they see the same thing going on. In the new Testament. Saint Paul says, "Marriage in the Lord. That's the only requirement, that you love the Lord." And 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial, it's a false idol? And what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols for? For we are the temple of the living God.

In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Saint Paul tells people who are married to unbelievers, how to continue the relationship. When he says, "Just love them in the Lord. If you're married to an unbeliever, love them in the Lord. Witness to them, reflect Christ to them." But he's not endorsing entering such a marriage, he's giving to those who become believers after. Why? Why is this important? Because this is what we talked about in the very beginning. Does God get to be God over every aspect of your life? From the smallest to the greatest to the most impactful, is God the most important person in your life? If so, how can you entertain the thought of committing to make a person the most important person in your life who doesn't view God as the most important? Doesn't love the Lord, doesn't reference his word, and plan according to his will.

But we love each other. That's the objection we hear. But we love each other. How can I say no to my feelings? Does God get to be God over your feelings? Yeah, he does. And when God speaks and says, "No, that feeling is wrong." You need to change that feeling, by the power of the spirit of that can happen. It's a question of obedience or disobedience. I've heard, but I've prayed and I feel like this is God's will, "No it's not God's will because God will never contradict what he's already said. It's not God's will." So if you, Christian are dating right now an unbeliever, you need to break up with them. Completely break up with them. "We're no longer dating." "Why?" "Because God said this is wrong." If you really love him, this is what you do. If you really love God, that's what...

But I'm witnessing to them? You can witness to them without having to date them. Bring them to church and you're sitting six-feet-apart, praise God. It's not on you to save them. Tell them about Jesus. God's sovereign. If he saves them, tremendous. Then you can get married. Praise God. So are you willing to honor God there? And this is very important decision that you can make even prior to, so if you're dating. And then if you are hoping to get married, pursuing marriage, praying about marriage, your options are believers. And I understand that as Boston is limited. I understand all that, but we believe in a God of miracles. So just keep praying. And by the way, I'll just say, it's not that big of a deal. Marriage isn't that big of a deal. My wife's not here at the service, so I can say that. It's not that big of a deal. Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians, he says, "If you're married, okay, great. If you're doing business, okay, great. What really matters ultimately is that you love God that you're satisfied in him. That's the most important relationship. So that's number one.

Number two if you do get married still, you get to a place where you together are worshiping the Lord. So you can worship the Lord when you're married. That's the point there.

Point three is fight for marital faithfulness. If you do get married, you fight for marital faithfulness as decreed by God. And this is Malachi 2:13-16. So one of the issues that the priests were allowing and actually participating themselves, they were marrying unbelievers. And then the second issue was once they got married, even to believers after a while, they're like, "Ah, we're not in love anymore." And they would pursue divorce. So Malachi speaks in verse 13. And this second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping, with groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, why does he not? So the people were like "We're worshiping God, we're asking for his blessings. He's not blessing us." There's a lot of emotion here. And God doesn't seem to be hearing their emotion. Well, because God doesn't bless a lifestyle that he has already rebuked in his law.

But you say, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless. Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant, did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God's seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth, "for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her," says the Lord, "the God of Israel covers his garments with violence," the LORD of hosts. "So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless."

So verse 13, the second thing you do that God sees and God does not honor is displeased with, you cover the Lord's altar with tears. That you are showing a lot of emotion. God's not blessing. That's verse 14 because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, same word that was used talking about intermarriage. Again, faithless talking about a lack of fidelity to God, which leads to a lack of fidelity in the marriage. And what's being forbidden here is not divorce in general. It's aversion divorce, divorce because of dislike.

In the old Testament divorces permitted for a sexual infidelity, in the New Testament scripture also adds the desertion when an unbeliever desserts a believer, divorce is allowed. But the divorce that he's talking about here is neither of those. He's talking about divorce because they just fell out of love. And he emphasizes here, "No, no, you've made a covenant with the wife of your youth. She is your companion, your best friend." That's what marriage is at the heart of it. It's a friendship, husband and wife companions, best friends. And there's a covenant. That's the word that's used. A covenant is not a contract. A contract is if I fulfill my end of a bargain and you fulfill your end of the bargain and we keep the contract. If not, the contract is broken, a covenant is a lifelong commitment from the perspective of scripture. The Hebrew word for companion, since the covenant is being knit or joined together, pointing to the closest to the relationship.

Verse 15, did he not make them one, husband, wife? And we see this from Genesis 2, Adam wakes up and he says, "You're bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, you're blood of my blood, we're the same blood, we're family." Marriage makes family and family is from God's perspective, family's to be permanent. So as asinine, as crazy, as ludicrous as it is to say to my kids, "I am going to abandon you, I am going to divorce you." From God's perspective, that's the same level. Marriage is permanent. And Jesus in Matthew 19, points to Genesis 2 and says, "Yes, that was intended from the very beginning. And Malachi looks at divorce from the perspective of Genesis 2, but then also from the perspective of children. "With a portion of the spirit and the unions of God makes them one with the Holy Spirit." And what was the one God seeking?

So God has a purpose in our marriage and a purpose that transcends our feelings or fulfillment or satisfaction. And the purpose is godly offspring. He attacks the sin from the perspective of children because this decision of marriage is where children are influenced to understand God, who God is. And they understand what family is. And our marriage are to be gospel presentations to our children and to the world. And our families are to be gospel presentations that God does not abandon his children. Jesus Christ loves his bride and doesn't divorce her. So from God's perspective, he says, "It's not just about your feelings, not about your desires. It's not about your satisfaction." How does this impact your children from a generational perspective? So this is why you don't marry an unbeliever because God's desire is Godly offspring. And this is why you work at staying married. He says, "Guard yourselves in the spirit, protect yourselves, because God cares not just about this relationship, but generationally speaking.

My wife and I were talking about this. And she's like, "What are you preaching on?" I was like, "The fact that God tells me to love you." And she's like, "Why does God have to tell you to love me?" She doesn't come to the service. I can be a little more honest. It's kind of a catch 22. So my answer was, "You know exactly why? Because God tells you the same thing." There are times where you're married even if you don't like each other, just like there are times when you are still caring for your kids. There are times where I don't like my kids, there are. And you do it because God tells you, that's the reason why God's telling you because he has to tell you because there's flesh and sinful desire and all of this. So when we view marriage as just something romantic and then when the romance is gone and then we ... No, it's, it's a matter of obedience. Love is a choice. Love is a commitment.

And by the way, there's also times when I don't like myself and you don't like yourself, and it's not like you get divorced from yourself. You still like, "We're in this together, me and myself." Where you just keep going.

C. S. Lewis has this great definition of love in Mere Christianity. He says, "Love as distinct from being in love is not merely a feeling. It's a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforce in Christian marriages, the grace, which both partners ask and receive from God. They can have this love for each other, even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself when you do not like yourself." So from God's perspective, we need to understand that marriage isn't about us. Marriage is so much more. It's to be a picture, a sign of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And God has plans for our marriage, for our families that are so much more than just ourselves.

In Malachi 2:16 "For the man who does not love his wife but divorces," says the Lord, "the God of Israel covers his garment with violence," says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless. Twice he says, this isn't for me. This is from the Lord. Why does he do that? Because people don't like to be told what to do. In particular, in the most intimate parts of life. Did God really say? That's the first temptation in the garden? Yes, he did. And here he talks about the man that does see divorce. He covers his garment with violence. What's he talking about? It's referring to the Hebrew custom of a man when he proposed, he would cover the woman with his garment, draping and over her as a picture of protective care and provision. I'm devoting myself to care for you. And he says, "When you divorce, it's like yanking off that protective covering." And the idea here is that the husband is the head of the wife called to tenderly, nourish, cherish, and protect her as his own body.

The Bible doesn't command men to be the head of the wife. It's an inescapable fact. The question is, what kind of head of the household are we husbands? Are we faithful and diligent and effective, or we passive inattentive and ineffective? And it's not that we Lord over. And we don't King over our wives. We shepherd. We are under-shepherds under Jesus Christ. We follow Jesus Christ. So we, as the shepherds, we know where we're going because we're following Christ, we're leading by example. And we're involved, responsible, protecting, providing, instructing, and correcting. And so here, this is a word of the Lord for spouses, for our marriages. What's the marriage secret technique that God gives us here? Is guard your spirits. Guard your spirit do not be faithless. Guard your spirit don't be faithless, the word guard here means to fight, fight the good fight of faith that has to do with loving God, our relationship with God. And also, our relationship with our spouse with our family, it is a fight.

We have an enemy in Satan, we have an enemy in our flesh. We have an enemy in the world. It is a fight. So we fight indifference, halfheartedness, passivity, and we fight it by looking to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ does not compartmentalize his faith. Everything he did was for the glory of God, everything. He loves people. He loved God. He loved his bride, which is the church. And he gave himself for her. Jesus Christ, the good shepherd laid his life down for the sheep. But he's also the lamb of God who went to the cross as a sacrifice for our sin. A lamb that was led to the slaughter. He was faithful even when we were faithless.

And on the cross, Jesus gave his best. God gave his best to us. And God's best on the cross, God's son. This lamb of God that took away the sins of the world. He became sin. He became that offering, the part of that offering the dung, that was supposed to be brought outside the city. Jesus was brought outside the city in a sense, he became our sin so that we might receive the righteousness of God. That's how we see how much Jesus loves, how much God loves us. And when we see that it fills our heart with love. He fought for us, we are to do the same. He sacrificed for us, we are to do the same for him, for our spouses, for our children, for our church. Why? Because Jesus Christ paid it all, and all to Him I owe.

So if you're not a believer, we welcome you to become a believer today in God. We welcome you to repent of sin and turn to Jesus Christ and give your life over to him. And if you are a believer and you're seeing yourself indifference, lackadaisical of spirit and following the Lord, come repent, receive grace. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for this time. The Holy Scriptures, what an incredible book, the book of Malachi is. And we thank you, Lord, that you are faithful even when we are faithless. And we do repent that often we remove you from the centrality in our lives. And we put ourselves on the throne of our lives. We repent of that. And we ask that you come, you cleanse us. And that you also feel the Holy Spirit to empower us to live lives of righteousness, lives that honor you, lives that revere you, not just the name. And we pray this in Christ's Name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

We'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card, either the physical connection card or the one that you can get online or in the app. With that said, would you pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy word? Lord, we come to you with humble and grateful hearts for the fact that you, the God of the universe did not reject us when we rebelled against you. Instead, you chose to pour out your love upon us. You chose to extend mercy to us and grace. Lord, we take a moment now to repent of the fact that we take your love for granted, we take your acceptance for granted, we take a relationship with you for granted. Lord, we repent of the fact that often we are bored in our relationship with you. We are apathetic toward you. I pray today, Lord, send a fire of affection, a fire of zeal into our hearts today. With that fire, burn off the draws of indifference and apathy and stir our hearts to love you like never before. Deepen our relationship with you.

Deepen our understanding of what it means to be a child of God adopted into your family through the sacrifice of our older brother, Jesus Christ. Who came and did absolutely everything that was required by your law, and then died on a cross bearing the weight of our sin, bearing the wrath that we deserve for our law breaking. Holy spirit, come now into this place, come now and fill our hearts. Continue to lead us, continue to guide us, continue to fill us. We thank you for the Holy scriptures. I pray that you take these words that you have given us, help us understand them, and I pray that they go deeper than the mind and into the heart and transform the will. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. We're starting a new sermon series today through the book of Malachi which is at the very center of scripture, so to speak. In that, this book is at the end of the Old Testament, and it's right before the New Testament. We are going to spend four weeks in the book of Malachi covering the four chapters.

That's going to lead us immediately into the beginning of Matthew. We'll cover Malachi chapters, one, two, three, and four. Then that leads us into advent with Matthew chapter one and two. The title of the sermon today is eternal love. I'm praying the Lord helps us understand his love for us. If you haven't heard, this is a big week in the United States. If you haven't heard, the election is this week. This election has been called the most important, the most monumental, the most consequential election of our lifetime, maybe. Today I want to talk about election, but a more important, more consequential, more monumental election. Today I want to talk about God's sovereign election of people, of us, of believers before the foundation of the world. I want to talk about his love that's a divine love, a sovereign love, an eternal love, a particular love and an electing love. The word Malachi, Malachi of the prophet, Malachi just means my messenger.

God has a message for his people. It's the final message given to the people of God, the people of Israel before 400 years of silence before John the Baptizer comes as the prophet preceding, preparing the way for Christ. It's the final instructions. The context is that Israel has been brought back from Babylon. They've been in the promised land for about 100, 120 years. They've rebuilt the temple during the years of Ezra. Nehemiah has come in and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. As they're rebuilding, they're getting back to worshiping God, to the religious rituals. They're getting back to what it meant to have a relationship with God. On the outside, everything looks great. But on the inside, there's corruption and God sends Malachi to the people of God with the question, how are you doing spiritually? How are you doing deep inside? How's your relationship with the Lord? Their very first answer is, we're fine. We're doing well. Then Malachi in a very systematic way unfolds where they have fallen short of worshiping God, giving Him the worship that He deserves. Malachi is bringing to them a message that's hard.

It's hard to hear. God, through Malachi, is confronting their apathy, their indifference to God. They're going through the motions, but their heart is far from God. God speaks through Malachi. 47 to 55 verses are God speaking directly to the people of God. God's goal is to wake them up from this indifference, apathy, numbness, desensitization that they're feeling toward God and get them to a place where they reposition their lives to live lives that God delights to bless. What's fascinating about the book of Malachi is it ends with a warning. The last word of the book is destruction or curse. It's the only of the prophetic books that ends in such a manner. It ends this way because before us is a choice, is a decision. Do we want a blessing or do we want a curse? The instructions are given here to live lives that God loves to bless, lives honorable to God. Today we're in Malachi Chapter 1. We'll cover the whole chapter. Would you look at the text with me, Malachi Chapter 1?

The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. "I have loved you." Says the Lord. But you say, "How have you loved us? Is not Esau Jacob's brother?" Declares the Lord, "Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I've hated. I've laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert." If Edom says, "We are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins." The Lord of hosts says, "They may build, but I will tear down and they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my fear?" Says the Lord of hosts to you, priests who despise my name. But you say, "How have we despised your name?" By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, "How have we polluted you?" By saying that the Lord's table may be despised.

"When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? When you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor, will he accept you or show you favor?" Says the Lord of hosts. "Now entreat the favor of God that He may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will He show favor to any of you?" Says the Lord of hosts. "That there were one among you who would shut the doors that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain. I have no pleasure in you." Says the Lord of hosts "and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations and in every place, incense will be offered to my name and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations." Says the Lord of hosts. But you profane it. When you say that the Lord's table is polluted and it's fruit, that is, it's food may be despised.

But you say, "What a weariness this is?" You snort at it, says the Lord, the Lord of hosts. "You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering? Shall I accept that from your hand?" Says the Lord. "Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King ..." says the Lord of hosts, "and my name will be feared among the nations." This the reading of God's Holy inherent and infallible, authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Two points to frame our time together. First, we'll talk about the spiritual diagnosis as given by Malachi, which is apathy. Then the spiritual medicine, which is election. First, the spiritual diagnosis, apathy. Malachi 1:1 says, the oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. The word oracle here means burden.

It means something that God has given to him, it's heavy on his shoulders. He's bringing it and not because he wants to, but because he has to. Jeremiah talks about a word that God puts into his bones that's like a fire in his bones, not to be trifled with, not to be changed, not to be disregarded or played with. Half the verses and the texts have something to say along the lines of, thus says the Lord or says the Lord or says the Lord almighty. It's not just the word about God, it's the word from God. A word to instill in us trepidation before the holiness of God, the judgment of God, the eternal condemnation of God. It's a burden to be delivered to whom? This is fascinating. It's not just the pagans, it's not to people who don't know anything about God or the word of God or things of God. It's people who love God. It's people who are raised in the faith. People who knew about the faith, the Old Testament covenant. They knew this from infancy. Because they've known it from infancy, they have grown indifferent to it.

When God started a relationship with the people of Israel, it's a relationship that he compared to marriage. It's a covenant relationship. He chose to pour out his love on Israel. Now it's grown tepid. It's grown lukewarm. There's a passion leak that happened along the way. It's become a functional relationship. Almost like a functional marriage where you stay together just because of the kids or you stay together because you've been together for so long. It's a functional relationship with the Lord. God comes to them, and the very first thing that He says is, "I love you." Their response is a lukewarm, "Well, how do we know that he loves us?" The reason why he starts there is because they've lost the fire of love toward God. They've grown apathetic toward God. Spiritual apathy is something that every single believer, every single Christian needs to watch out for. But it's so sinister because it's hard to watch out for it. It doesn't come out of nowhere. It creeps in and we grow apathetic by degree. It's like the parable about the frog. How do you boil a frog alive?

You throw it into cool water and then just warm up the water, warm up the water until it boils. That's how apathy works in our heart. No one starts off in a relationship with apathy. No one starts out with a relationship with God apathetically. It sneaks in. Sneaks in perhaps because we had expectations that were not met by God. "God, why did you allow this to happen?" That's what happened in Israel. They came back. The temple was rebuilt, but it was just a shadow of itself. Only 100,000 Jewish believers returned when they were a nation of millions. They come back and they said, "Does God really love us? It seems like the nations around us are prospering more than we do." It's hard to spot spiritual apathy in us, but the telltale sign of spiritual apathy is self-justification. I feel this. This is my reality. This is my experience, and I am right to feel this. If my relationship with God is not more passionate, then it's not on me. It's actually on Him.

If God wants me to feel different about Him, He should've given me a lot in life, given me a different hand to play. God should have given me the things that I thought He would give me. Then I'd feel better about Him. That's what we see in this text. God comes to them. God wants to show them how apathetic they are to Him, and their reaction was self-justification. Meaning, we have a reason to feel this. Nine times in the scriptures, God is attempting to have a conversation with them. We see the phrase, but you say. Malachi 1:2, "I have loved you ..." says the Lord, "but you say ..." But the people of Israel, this is their response. "How have you loved us." Assumption, you haven't loved us. You haven't showing your love to us. Malachi 1:6B, priests who despise my name. But you say, "How have we despised your name?" God's saying, "You're hating." "How have we hated you?" Malachi 1:7, "By offering polluted food upon my altar." But you say, "How have we polluted you?" Malachi 1:13, but you say, "What a weariness this is? You snort at it." Says the Lord of hosts. God says, "I want a relationship with you. I want to bless you." They said, "But it's so boring to follow you. What a weariness it is." Malachi 2:13-14, He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, "Why does He not?" They're blame shifting. God is saying, "You're bringing offerings that's your leftovers, your second best to the Lord." They said, "But that's on God. That's God's fault that He isn't accepting what we're bringing Him." The same thing that Cain did. Malachi 2:17, You have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say, "How have we wearied him?" Malachi 3:7, "Return to me and I will return to you." Says the Lord of hosts. But you say, "How shall we return?" Malachi 3:8, will man rob God? You are robbing me. But you say, "How have we robbed you?" Malachi 3:13, "Your words have been hard against me." Says the Lord. But you say, "How have we spoken against you?"

God is saying, "You've offended me." "How have we offended you Lord?" It's a hard-hearted reaction to God. Instead of repenting, they are self-justifying. The worst part, isn't just the indifference, it's the response to the person. How great is the person's God and God's love in which is an incredible love. Malachi 1:2, God comes. The very first words on the lips of God in this book are, "I have loved you." In Hebrew, it's not just, "I have loved you in the past." But, "I have loved you with such a great love and I continue to love you despite everything." Their response to that is shocking. But you say, "How have you loved us?" The response is, "We don't feel loved God. It's your fault that we don't feel loved." "I love you." But we don't feel loved. You're not doing enough to show us that you love us. What would warrant such a response? Part of it is, they're so focused on their situation. There is financial, political, relationship turmoil in their lives. God comes to them and says, "I love you."

They say, "That's nice, but what have you done for me lately? What about my bills? What about my relationships? What about our health? What about my housing? My prospects, my past, present and future." You can tell from their responses, they're dead inside. They're callous. They're numb toward God. The word apathetic comes from the Greek apatheia, which means no feeling. They don't feel anything toward God. There's a dryness. There's a stupor. There's a senselessness. There's a boredom. That's what Malachi 1:13, their response is, "What a weariness this is? God, we're bored with religion. We're bored of the things of God. We're bored with the word of God. We're bored with God." If you're a parent and if you have kids, you've had this and it happens all the time. My kids come to me and are like, "Dad, I'm bored. I am so ..." Especially over quarantine it's like, "I am so bored. There's nothing to do. There's nothing to wear. There's no place to go. There's nothing to eat." Nothing to eat, always that comes after mom makes soup. They look at it and they say, "There's nothing to eat."

Which is the biggest slap in the face to a parent. It's like ... My response is, "You should be lucky you're here. You're welcome. I have gifted you with existence. You're bored and partially because you're not doing anything. Go wash the dishes. Vacuum the car. Go do something." That's part of it. But the other, then you start to analyze what's going on in their heart. What's going on in their heart is, they think that you exist for them, that you, parent, exist to entertain them. They're at the center of the universe. "Mom, dad do everything that I demand. I am bored." That's what Israel is doing. I'm bored with you, God. You're not doing enough to meet our needs, to meet our demands. Now you see that really the core issue of this boredom, of this apathy, of this indifference is pride. That God, you exist for us and you're not doing enough for us. Why do they say that? Because they're focused on their circumstances. So focused on their situation, their financial situation, their health situation, their relational situation. Whenever we get too focused on our situation, too focused on ourselves, no matter how wonderful you are, no matter how wonderful your situation is, no matter how much you accomplish, no matter how prosperous your life, you will always get to a point where you get bored with you. If you're focused on you, you will always get bored with you because you are not enough to satisfy you. We have infinite souls, we have eternal souls and we need something greater than ourselves to live for. We need a greater purpose than ourselves to live for. When we're stuck on focusing on the day-to-day, the situation, and we lose sight of God's purpose for our life, God's plans for our life, we can't be bored. If God had so loved Israel, they're asking, "Why aren't we the blessed nation that we were supposed to be, that we were? We have no army to protect ourselves. We're still under the Persian King. Why is life so difficult?" Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

This indifference then leads to very raw, very dead, very dry religion. A religion that has no heart in it. They bring God their leftovers. They're hedging their bets when it comes to God. That's Malachi 1:6 and 7. God says, "A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I'm a father, where's my honor? If I'm a master, where is my fear?" Says the Lord of hosts. "Priests who despise my name." But you say, "How have we despised your name?" By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, "How have we polluted you?" By saying that the Lord's table may be despised. It starts with, God speaks to the people of God, "You're indifferent to me. How have we loved you?" Then God turns His attention to speaking to the clergy, to the priest, to the pastors. He's saying, "You have not taught the people well. You haven't taught about fearing God and honoring God and worshiping God because He's worthy of worship." They step back and they say, "How have we hated you? We haven't hated you. We haven't despised you."

Then Malachi explains, this is how. Verses eight and nine, when you offer blind animals and sacrifice, is that not evil? When you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? "Present that to your governor, will he accept you or show you favor?" Says the Lord of hosts. "Now entreat the favor of God that He may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will He show favor to any of you?" Says the Lord of hosts. He said, "This is how you have hated me. This is how you've despised me, how you've defamed my name. You've given me leftovers. Try bringing the offerings that you bring me to your governor, to the politicians who are in charge of you. Let's see if they accept that offer." What he's talking about is the sacrificial system that God had instated in Israel. This is how you worship God, by bringing Him your best. God said, through the law, that the people, if they wanted to worship God, they had to bring their first fruits. They had to bring their firstborn of the flock and the most excellent of one's property.

God wanted to show that true love always had to do a sacrifice and obedience. This is a real test of faith. They brought animals from their flock, the best animals. The best animals were the best breeding stock. By bringing God your best on an annual basis, you know that you are diminishing your breeding stock. The animals that are coming now from your secondary best are not going to be as good as the animals that came from your first best. It was really a test of faith. I'm going to bring God my best, the best stock, knowing that my obedience of God is going to put me in a place of blessing and prosperity that is diametrically opposed to the world's path to prosperity. Now, God is speaking to priests here because priests got to a point where they said, "We see lethargy in the people. We see indifference in the people. We can't demand absolute obedience from the people because the people will stop showing up. If we demand the absolute best from the people, the people will stop offering anything.

We're going to lower the barrier of obedience and tell people, you know what, it's all going to go up in smoke anyway. Let's just be good stewards. You don't have to bring your best, bring your secondary best. Bring the blind animals or the maimed animals or the blemished animals. The ones that you can't sell at the market. At least bring something." They realized that the spiritual temperature of the people was so low that if they demand the best, then they get nothing. They're more worried about themselves and they're more worried about offending people and losing potential income from the church than anything else. God goes to them and says, "You're so worried about offending people that you forgot that you are offending me. I demand the best." That's what God is saying. Mediocrity, I reject that. Half-hearted worship, I reject that. Begrudging worship, I reject that. How does this apply to us today? I have pastor friends in the city, whenever we meet with one another for mutual edification. One of the things that we always talk about, and especially now during the pandemic, is how's attendance at church?

How are the numbers at church, et cetera, et cetera? As a minister of the gospel, I've been in the ministry for 11 plus years now. I've read all the church growth books and I know what we can do to grow the church. I know it. There's things that you can do, levers that you can pull to get people in the door. There's things that if numbers were all that mattered, if getting people in the door is all that mattered, there's things that I would do and there's things that I would not do. One of the first things that I would not do, first of all, I would stop preaching about spiritual indifference and apathy. I wouldn't talk about that. I wouldn't talk about sin. I wouldn't talk about obedience. I wouldn't talk about giving God your absolute best. I wouldn't talk about the holiness of God, the judgment of God, the condemnation of God. I wouldn't talk about eternal hell. I wouldn't talk about God's damnation, God's wrath. I wouldn't talk about any of that. I would just talk about God who exists to love you and bless you and protect you.

God who is like an enhancement. God who like fairy dust God or Santa Claus God. He just wants to make your life better. Come to Him. He loves you. He loves you the way you are. You can keep living the way you are. Just show up on Sundays. Give God your lip service. Give God a tip and just go and enjoy life the way you want to live it. By the way, a lot of churches do this. What they say is, "Well, we don't want to offend anybody. We want to make a relationship with God more palatable. We want to lower the entry, the on-ramp. We want just to make people's lives better. That's why we preach keys and techniques, and this is five, six, seven steps, 11 steps of how you can live a blessed life. God says, "I'd rather you just ... Instead of making it less off-putting, instead of making it more palatable, instead of making the faith accessible, instead of accommodating people, I'd rather you just close up shop. I'd rather no worship than mediocre worship."

That's what he says in verse 10. "That there were one among you who would shut the doors. I'd rather someone show up and just close up the church, close up the temple that you might not kindle fire in my altar in vain. I have no pleasure in you." Says the Lord of hosts, "and I will not accept an offering from your hand." He said, "Priests, you've made the faith about the people. You've removed God. By doing so, you've dishonored God." This is why God writes this word to them. He says, "Look, unless you change, there will be an absence of the presence of God." Lukewarm is not better than nothing. Mediocre worship is not better than nothing. God doesn't want that. What does God say? How do we rekindle our hearts, rekindle our affections for God? This is point two, the spiritual medicine to our apathy is God's sovereign election. The solution to our spiritual apathy is deepening our understanding of God's love for us. That God is sovereign in choosing people to salvation before the foundation of the world, just because He chooses so.

He chooses people not based on anything they had done, not based on anything that they will do, but just because that's His sovereign choice. One thing I will mention here in the very beginning, is we're not reading Calvin. A lot of people say, "This is Calvinism. That's one person's interpretation" We're not reading Calvin here. We're reading the scriptures. We're going to read some scriptures from St. Paul. We're going to read scriptures from Jesus Christ. It's in the scripture. It's everywhere in the scripture that God's sovereign election of salvation is taught throughout the scripture. That's number one. Number two, I grew up in a church that did not teach election. It did not teach predestination when it comes to salvation. I only heard about this for the first ... I actually heard about this for the first time in my early 20s, as I started studying scripture, as I started studying theology. I went back to my dad, who was an elder at the church I grew up in, and I asked him like, "Hey, why wasn't this ever taught?"

He said, "We didn't really want to offend people. We didn't think it was that useful." It's like theology for people who want to deepen their knowledge of the scripture. But there's a reason why God talks about it. He talks about it often. He talks about not just for people who want to study this with their brains, but He talks about this in a way that's very helpful to our daily walk with the Lord. Then I realized that the people who did teach, the churches that did teach election predestination are churches that preached scripture. By scripture, I mean not just topical sermons where we're going to preach whatever we want on any given day. It's churches that preached books of the Bible. Verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter so that you can't skip the things that are not as palatable to people. That's it. Then I started studying the church history. In church history, I realized that the world's greatest minds, the world's greatest Christian minds all believe this. They didn't believe, they loved the doctrines of election predestination.

Augusta and Aquinas, the magisterial reformers, Luther. How was your Reformation Day yesterday? We celebrated Reformation Day or Reformation Day anyone? You dressed up your kids as Luther, as Calvin, as Zwingli and got them some candy. Yesterday was Reformation Day. 1517, October 31st Martin Luther goes and he takes 95 Theses and nails it to the door of the church in Wittenberg to reform the Catholic Church. You've got Luther, you've got Calvin, you've got Knox, you've got Zwingli, you've got Bucer, you've got Bullinger. Those who later then sought to bring the reformation to the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, Blaise Pascal, one of the greatest minds in the history of the world. Then the Puritans, John Owen, John Bunyan. The great awakening was led by Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, Richard Cecil Augustus Toplady.

The greatest missionaries Livingstone, Carey, Martyn, Morrison, Patton, William Burns. The greatest preachers Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd Jones. They loved the doctrines of grace, of sovereign grace. Because to understand sovereign grace is to begin to understand the depth of God's love for us. That's why when God talks about, "I've loved you." They say, "How have you loved us?" This is Malachi 1:2-3, He then brings in the doctrine of election. "I've loved you." Says the Lord. But you say, "How have you loved us? Is not Esau Jacob's brother?" Declares the Lord. "Yet I've loved Jacob, but Esau I hated." "I love you." "How have you loved us?" "Let me tell you about Jacob and Esau. One guy, I love. The other guy, I hated." What's going on here? Then he goes into the two nations that descended from these two brothers. Now, Jacob and Esau, they weren't just brothers, they were twin brothers. It wasn't like Isaac and Ishmael where God chose Isaac and not Ishmael.

They're brothers from different mothers. Here, it's two brothers, they're twins, same mother. Malachi 1:3-4, I've laid waste to his hill country and left his heritage to jackals or the desert. If Edom says, "We are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins." The Lord of hosts says, "They may build, but I will tear down and they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever." Edom started with Esau and was an enemy of Israel always. They were never an ally of Israel. At no point in Israel's history were they friendly? As Israel was weakened in 7th century BC, Edom encroached and the people of God were asking, "Why are the Edomites taking over?" Et cetera, et cetera. There were enemies. As God is answering, "Why do I love you? Let me show you how much I loved you. I chose you."

He's not just talking about nations. He's talking about Edomites as well. One of the things to know about the love, hate language here. God, isn't using this language in terms of human psychology. There's not a vindictive spirit. There's not a personal animosity. It's language in terms of the covenant. The covenant is, like a marriage covenant, there's a choice. In Deuteronomy actually 23:7, God told Israel, "You shall not abhor an Edomite for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian because you were a sojourner in his land." The language of love and hate is a language of choosing. Love is a choice. Within this general election of nations is a specific relationship that begins with individuals. God chose Abraham. "I'm going to bless you." Then from Abraham's children, Isaac and Ishmael, God chose Isaac over Ishmael. Then Isaac's sons, Jacob and Esau, God chose the younger, Jacob. God determined that the people of Israel would descend from Jacob, not from Esau.

He loved them in a special way, in a particular way. A love that did not extend to Esau and to the Edomites. Why? Because there was something good in Jacob. There was something good in Israel. God actually emphasized. No, He chose Israel because they were the least ... Deuteronomy 7:6-8, for you are a people Holy to the Lord your God, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It's not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord has set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of the people. But it is because the Lord loves you. He's keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of Israel, from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. "Why did I choose you?" God is saying. "Because I love you." That's it. This is kind of ...

It's hard for us to understand because when someone loves me or loves you, you're usually like, "Yeah, because there's ... Good choice. You have great taste. I'm glad you love me." It's because there's something loving in us, of course. God is saying, "No, there was nothing lovely in you. The only reason why I chose you is because I chose you. The only reason why I chose you is because I love you." God did not base his choice in anything He foresaw in either Jacob or Esau. Rather God did it because God did it. In Romans 9:11-13, St. Paul expositive this text from Malachi. He says this, "Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad in order that God's purpose of election might continue. Not because of works, but because of Him who calls." She was told, their mother, "The older shall serve the younger as it is written Jacob, I loved, but Esau I hated." Some people try to dodge the implications of this doctrine by saying, "Well, God chose Israel to serve him, not to save them." But Romans 9 clearly isn't just talking about nations.

It's talking about individuals and salvation, personal salvation. Now why does Malachi begin with the doctrine of election? He begins with the doctrine of election to deepen our understanding of the vastness of the love of God for us. He says, "Your hearts are indifferent. The reason why they're indifferent is because do you do not understand God's love for you." God loves you so much that before the foundation of the world, before you were born, before you had done anything, your name was already written on His heart, graven on His hands. He, before anything was created, had chosen to love you, to pour out His mercy on you. The reason why it's given us to us here is to get us to this place of utter humility. Why am I a Christian? Because I believed, because I repented, because I studied, because I was faithful, because I read the apologizes, because I read the scripture? No. The reason why you're a believer and the only difference between you and an unbeliever is the sovereign choice. The sovereign grace of God. He chose to love you.

That right there, I remember the first time I understood this in my early 20s, I realized I did not know God. I didn't know the love of God. I didn't know the greatness of God. The vastness of God. This is what it means that Jesus loves me? Yes. This is what it means that God poured out his grace on you? Yes. Not just that He forgives you of your sin, but because from the foundation of the world, He chose to save you. You have been saved, you are saved, you always will be saved. It has nothing to do with us, it has nothing to do with earning with good works. Actually Esau was probably the better guy. If you look at just their morality, Esau wasn't a deceiver like Jacob. Esau did get angry that Jacob stole his blessing, but then he got over it. He forgave. Both men were sinners, but God chose Jacob instead of Esau. At this point, the objection is, but that's not fair. The first thing that St. Paul deals with in Romans 9 is, well, what's your definition of fairness?

Who decides what fairness is? Then in Romans 9:14-18, he deals a little more with that. Shall we say then is there injustice on God's part? Is it unfair? Is God not fair? By no means, for He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy on. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I've raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Then He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills. It's not fair. Then St. Paul says, "Well, what's not fair? Is it your mercy?" No. Whose mercy is it? It's God's mercy. Who gets to do ... Does God get to do with His mercy whatever God chooses? Yes, of course. Does God get to be God? Yes, of course. Was God unjust when He condemned Satan and all of the demons when they rebelled against Him? Was God unjust? No, of course not.

He was absolutely just in condemning them. Was God not just when He did not provide a way for them to be reconciled with Him? No. They rebelled. They got judgment. God is glorified in judging as much as He is in giving mercy. The question isn't, why doesn't God save everybody? The question is, why does God save anybody at all? Why does anybody get any mercy whatsoever? God would have been perfectly just in condemning the entire human race. He doesn't owe anybody mercy. This is what God is telling the people of Israel, as He's telling us, we should be absolutely shocked, minds blown by the fact that God chooses to extend mercy to us. In Romans 9:19-24, St. Paul continues with the argument and he says, "You will say to me then, why does He still find fault? For who can resist his will? But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and the other for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show His wrath and make known His power has endured with such patience vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction? In order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory. Even us whom He has called not from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles. How can God hold anybody accountable if He chooses some and He doesn't choose others? That's really the question that he's asking. A very logical question. St. Paul's answers, God gets to be God. God is God. He is who He is. He decides what He wants to do with His mercy. It's not just a matter of standing. It's a matter of submitting. Here's how this applies to our ... If we're indifferent toward God's love, if we're numb inside, if there's a coldness toward God, we as believers need to ask the question, where would we be if it were not for the grace of God? Where would we be without the mercy of God if He didn't pour out His love on us? God is sovereign.

He gets glory for judging people as much as He gets glory for saving people. That's why Malachi 1:5 after he says this, goes through the doctrine of election. He says, "Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel." The reason why he starts off with this in a context of their coldness in terms of worship, as he says, "Now is your worship commensurate? Is your response to God's love commensurate to the greatness and vastness of His love? How can we bring our second best to God, our leftovers to God?" How can we give Him the leftovers of our time, of our resource, of our money, of our energy? How can we be disobedient to God like this? He loved us with such a great love. Why isn't our response commensurate? That's why 1st Peter 2:9 and 10 says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for His own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of the darkness into His marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. He says, "God's called you up. He's given you a purpose. He's given you a job to proclaim His glory and to extend His mercy to others." That's why it makes absolutely zero sense to be bored with God because He's such an amazing God. What a glorious God. He's called the God of hosts eight times, the Lord of armies. He commands all the armies, all the galaxies of the universe and this God chose us. Number one, what this should do to our hearts as Christians, it should melt our hearts with humility what a great God this is. Number two, it should comfort us. That no matter what happens in our lives, we are safe. We are saved. We are with Him. Then it should take our gaze off of our circumstances. When we see God's plan of salvation, it puts everything else into perspective. Then we should ask, okay, the people of God in the Old Testament, how does the Old Testament end?

It ends with their sacrifices not being enough. It leads us to ask the question, Lord, well, what is enough? What can we offer you that is enough to reconcile us with you? The answer is, there's nothing. There's nothing that we can do. There's nothing that we can offer to finally be reconciled with God. It leads us to this place of hopelessness unless we see the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, Jesus Christ is shown up in the offering system that the people of God would bring offerings to God for a temporary absolution of their sins. Which is a sign of a need for a greater sacrifice, which is Christ. In the book of Malachi, the people would bring their secondary best. Jesus Christ comes and He gives Himself. His very best, God the father gives His son to die on the cross for our sins. In Malachi, God says, "Jacob, I loved. Esau, I hated." On the cross, Jesus Christ takes our curse upon Himself. In a sense, God the father says, "Yon, I loved. Jesus, I hated."

Jesus Christ took our curse upon Himself. Why? Because that's how much He loved us. That was planned before the foundation of the world. That's how great God's love is for us. How much greater should our response be to His sacrifice? God, didn't give His leftovers. He gave His absolute best. If this God, this great, gracious God is for us, then who can be against us? Salvation is a free gift. We can't earn it. We can't do anything to pay for it. We can only accept it freely. But once you accept this gift, God demands everything that we have in response. Finally, before we turn to communion, what if I'm not elect? If you're not a Christian, you got to be asking that question. What if I'm not elect? I would tell you exactly what Jesus Christ says. Jesus Christ is talking about God's election, God choosing some and God not choosing others. In that same breath, He gives an invitation, come on to me.

This is Matthew 11:25-30. At that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father, and no one knows the son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal Him. God, thank you that you opened the eyes of some and you closed the eyes of others. In that same breath, what does He say? He issues one of the greatest invitations in all of human history and says, come on to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart. You will find a rest through your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Come onto Jesus. Come repent of your sins. Believe in Him. As you do, accept the mercy and grace that He's willing to extend to everybody. That said, we're going to transition to Holy communion. Holy communion is given to us as a sign of remembrance to remember Christ's sacrifice for us on the cross. For whom is Holy communion? It's for anyone who's repentant of their sins. It's for those who repent of their sins. If you are not a Christian, then we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Or if you are a Christian living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain. Unless you repent, and if you repent right now before Christ asking for forgiveness, asking for mercy and grace, you're welcome to partake. I'm going to pray over the bread and the cup. The way we celebrate communion at Mosaic, is we take the cup, we take the little plastic off. You take the bread in one hand, you take the other little plastic off. You take the cup. As you do that, I'll pray for our time.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the grace that you extend to us. A grace that began before the foundation of the world, before you created anything. You knew that we would rebel and you knew that you loved us so much that you would provide a way for our salvation through the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you, the perfect lamb of God, the unblemished lamb of God, were sacrificed. We thank you that you bore the wrath of God that we deserve for our law breaking. That you absorbed that curse in order to extend to us a blessing. Lord, we pray that you bless our time in communion now. We repent of our sin, of our apathy, of our indifference. I pray that you continue to deepen our understanding of your love. As we do, to respond with a commensurate love. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy, if you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection guide and the worship guide or the connection card in the app or online. If you filled that out, we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross bearing the penalty, the wrath of God for our sin, we now have access into your presence. We don't need a temple and we don't need a high priest, we don't need sacrifices, Lord, because on the cross, as you bore the ultimate sacrifice, you said it is finished and you now give us access into the Holy of Holies which is your presence, we thank you for that Lord. Lord, we thank of that in your presence we have access to the only things that satisfy us. We seek to find satisfaction in knowledge and we know that every truth in this world falls so short of knowing you and being known by you.

Lord, we long for unconditional love, we long for a love that lasts, love that is endless and we can't find it anywhere but in you. You loved us so much that you gave us your only begotten son. Lord, we seek justice. We long for justice in this world. We long for this world to be what it ought to be, how it should be and yet it falls short and still that desires deep inside and we know that only you can satisfy that desire under the reign of Christ. Lord, we long for beauty. We long to see that which ravishes the soul and everything in this world falls so short, but it is found in you.

And Lord, every single one of us, we long for a home and eternal home, a place of peace and comfort and security and you alone can offer us that in your presence. And we thank you that all of that is accessible to us when we come to you by grace, through faith and repentance and humility and we do that now and we ask Lord, satisfy our souls. And we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Today we're concluding our sermon series through the first part of the book of Psalms that we've been calling Balm Psalms in terms of this is ointment from God, this is an anointing from God for our souls. When we come to the Lord, open up the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Scriptures are an extension of God himself and this is how God reveals his presence to us, his person to us as, his power to us.

The title of the sermon today, as we look at Psalm 84, the title is, what do you want? What do you long for? What do you seek? There's this curious passage in the gospel of John in chapter one where John, the baptizer who has apostles, he has his own disciples. He sees Jesus Christ, his cousin, he sees Jesus Christ. And he said, "This is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world."

The next day, his disciples, one of them being Andrew, another disciple of John, they see Jesus Christ and they follow him. They leave John the Baptizer, they start following Jesus, Jesus turns around and he asks a question. He says, "What are you seeking?" They're caught off guard by the question, they don't really know how to respond. They don't even know what they're really seeking, but they are seeking it. So they respond by saying, "Rabbi, where are you staying?" And in response to them says, "Come and you will see."

One of them, Andrew, then the next day goes to his brother, Peter, and says, "We have found the Messiah." What he's saying is, we did not know what we're seeking but we're seeking something that only Jesus Christ could offer. They found the anointed one and they found the anointing for their souls. So question before us is, what are you seeking? What do you want now? What do you want in the future? What do you want in life? What do you need to say? What do you need to achieve? What do you need to get to say when you get it that, "I'm home, I've arrived."

It's the question buried under every single one of the questions in our hearts, we are what we want, our desires, they drive us, our wants, our longings, everything deep inside of a heart. All of these things together are at the core of our identity. Our heart is the wellspring. The desires of the heart is the wellspring that leads to our actions that leads to the behavior. That's why Proverbs 4:23 says, above all us, guard your heart because from it flow all the wellsprings of life, everything you do flows from your heart. So we're taught in scripture, pay attention to what you love, not just what you know.

Knowing God isn't just a matter of knowing theological treatise, is knowing theological facts and truths. You got to pay attention to what you love, curate your heart, be intentional about it. And growing in the faith is so much more than just knowing facts, it's yes, knowing something and yes, we are to be renewed by the transformation of our mind. The truth need to penetrate our minds, but then we then need to fall in love with the truth. We need to align our longings, align our cravings, our desires with God's. And that's not an excuse, contentment can't be an excuse for complacency.

A lot of people here talk about being satisfied in the Lord and a lot of people think, "Okay, now I don't have to do anything in my life. I'm satisfied in the Lord with where I am." No, once you're satisfied in the Lord, he equips, he strengthens you in order to fulfill the purpose that he has for you. Jesus Christ was the most ambitious person who has ever lived. He literally showed up and said, "I am going to save the world." And he did what he did because he found satisfaction in God. It was fuel for him to accomplish his work.

As Holy scripture says that the word of God is something that divides our spirit and our soul. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of our heart. A lot of people and this is what our culture teaches is, you are what you think, but we're so much more than that. We're not just what we think, we are what we desire. And you can just look at your life, how many times did you do things that you know you shouldn't have done, didn't need to do and thinking it was just physical appetites?

You know you should not eat whatever this is in front of you but you're going to, this isn't good for me, but I'm going to eat it. This thing I don't need to buy but I'm going to buy, why? Because I want it. Our desires are more than anything, control our actions. And this is what we're talking about today is, is taking our faith from our mind and let it penetrate and saturate our hearts so that it then begins to transform our lives. That's what Psalm 84 is about, it's an expression, it's a poem of someone longing for that which ultimately satisfies more than anything else, which is the presence of God.

Would you look at Psalm 84 with me? Psalm 84:1, how lovely is your dwelling place Oh, Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord, my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God, even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young at your altars Oh, Lord of hosts. My King and my God blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise. Blessed are those whose strength is in you and whose heart are the highways to Zion.

As they go through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength, each one appears before God in Zion. Oh Lord, God of hosts hear my prayer. Give ear O God of Jacob, behold our shield, Oh God. Look on the face of your anointed for a day in your courts is better than 1,000 elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness for the Lord God is a sun and shield the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Oh, Lord of hosts blessed is the one who trusts in you. This is the reading of God's Holy and Falbo authoritative word, may write these eternal upon our hearts, three points to frame up our time long for God to draw near to God and finally enjoy God, first long for God.

If this is your first time reading Psalm 84, if you're new to Christianity, or if you think of Christianity just as some world religion, you perhaps find verses one and two very puzzling. The emotion here, the descriptive language of the affections that this person feels, this worshiper of God feels for God, how lovely is your dwelling place? What a tremendous word, lovely. When's the last time you used the word lovely? How lovely is your dwelling place, Oh God.

He's focusing on the beauty of God's dwelling place and by dwelling place he's talking about in his mind as an old testament believer as a believer in the old covenant, he's thinking about Jerusalem and in Jerusalem, it's the temple. And within the temple, is the Holy of Holies, that's where the presence of God resided. And it was marked by a mysterious light to show the presence of God. It was God's Shekhinah glory and only the high priest, only once a year, only after undergoing rigorous rituals could enter into the Holy of Holies. Everyone else desired to be there, but they understood, we can't be in the presence of God and the Holy of Holies without dying because of our sin.

He longs to be there in the presence of God. Verse two says, my soul longs, yes, it faints for the courts of the Lord. When was the last time you had a desire like this, I long to be there? And it's talking about a particular place. If you are not from the area and you've desired to go visit family during the pandemic, you know this feeling of homesickness. In particular if you're an international student or from outside the United States you know this or if you're an immigrant you know this feeling, this desire of homesickness.

My family immigrated here when I was five, but for some reason every winter I still have a desire to go back to Estonia. There's something about going back and smelling the air and feeling the presence of your homeland, that's what he's talking about. You miss this place. He longs for it. And it seems so strange for us to talk about God's presence like this, this longing or homesickness for the presence of God. How often do we long for God like this?

And I want to show you that we do long. We have these yearnings deep inside of our hearts and it's yearning and a longing for things that only God can give you. Even if you're not a believer or if you're just interested in Christianity or you're new to the faith, I want to show you that deep inside your heart you will long for things that only God can give you. And what do I mean? I mean, things that separate us from the animal realm.

Animals are satisfied if they have everything necessary for survival; food, shelter, security. You can have the best food, you can have shelter, you can have security and you will not be ultimately satisfied, why? Because there's something in our human consciousness that desires, something that transcends the physical. We have at least five transcendental desires, deep inside of our hearts. We have a desire for perfect knowledge. We have a desire for perfect love. We have a desire for perfect justice. We have a desire for perfect beauty and the desire for a perfect home.

Perfect knowledge is the first one, perfect knowledge or truth. We want to know and we want to know what is true. We long for this, even as little kids. Little kids, what's their favorite question? Why, why is the sky blue? My daughter's had this kick, my daughter Elizabeth. She had this kick where she wanted to know the world record of everything like, "Dad, what is the heaviest stone in the whole world? What is the deepest point in the ocean? What is the fastest animal in the whole animal..." Why, why, why, I don't know why. Thank God for Wikipedia, and I don't even know if that's true.

But have a desire for what is true, we long for desire for what is true. Even in a post-truth culture that we live in, there's fact-checkers. We hear something, is this true? Then there's a fact-checker, and then you find out that a fact-checker is actually sponsored by a certain political side. And then you find out that that's not true and what is true? I don't know. But we long for Truth. What is Truth? Capital T, Truth. Partially, this is why we long for knowledge. We love to know. We love to learn. This is why there's such a boom in podcasts. This is why Amazon is such a gift from the Lord, in terms of books. Do you want a book? Yes. And half a second, you buy that book and then it comes in and you add it to the stack of the other 30 books by your bed that you have not read. You read the introduction you're like, "I'm bored, next book."

We want more, podcasts and books and lectures online and we long for scintillating conversations with people. We're impressed with knowers. You're about to finish one degree and you're thinking about... I'm finishing my doctorate in preaching from Westminster at the Abbey, I just finished my last class. And as I'm finishing my last paper, I'm like, "Ooh, now I can start another degree." We want more knowledge. We want to know more. I was having a conversation with someone recently and they were like, "Imagine not having any bills. What would you do if you had zero bills?" And the person's like, "I would go get another degree." Maybe that's just Boston.

We want to know. We want knowledge. We long for truth. We also long for perfect love and not just to be loved, we long to be perfectly loved, unconditionally loved. We long to be fully known and fully loved, and everybody is looking for this. And what we think of in terms of perfect love, unconditional love, is love from another person. But we understand no matter how great a person is they're not perfect therefore, they will not love you perfectly; you're also not perfect. So then if you're looking to each other for that ultimate love, that perfect love, you'll only meet dashed expectations. We can't satisfy each other's perfect or unconditional love.

I was trying to think through who is the closest person in my life that loves like this. I think it's kids. I think it's little kids who they don't know just how bad you are just yet, they get to know that the older they get. My mom and dad, they're not perfect either. But my three-year-old, she doesn't know yet. She shows my wife her love, by going up to her and licking her in the face. "Why are you licking her?" "Because I love her." Why? Because for her and mom and ice cream are in the same level, unconditional, I'm going to love you.

And every single one we long for, from our stories to our movies, to the art, to the music, we're in transferred love stories. How did people meet? How did they end up? Where we long to end up happily ever after. We also long for perfect justice and by justice, I don't just mean what's fair. Yes, it begins there. Little kids, you don't have to teach them this is fair, this is not fair, it's written on their heart they know and we like them when we see that something's not fair, we're outraged. If that thing does not get fixed, then all of a sudden it turns into cynicism. But we don't just want justice, this isn't fair it needs to be punished.

The opposite side of justice or the flip side, the positive side of it, is goodness. We want goodness. We want good to happen in the world, to people, to us. We want the world to be as it ought to be, as it should be. And we may disagree on what that looks like, but this idea of oughtness or shouldness it's written on each one of our hearts. We expect more justice or goodness than our finite world can deliver.

We also long for a perfect beauty. We see glimpses of beauty and nature in magnificent red sunsets, majestic snowcap mountains. We see this glimpse of beauty in music or we see in art. Even sports; the perfect throw, the perfect catch, the perfect hit, the perfect championship. There's art, is this art? The perfect baked good, there's art there. It does not satisfy. We need another vantage point or we need that same thing again or a different or more of it and then after a while, we get bored with imperfection.

Think of your favorite song, you hear the song for the first time and it's a hit and you listen to it over and over and over and over. After a while, it loses that power to move you. Nothing changed with the song, but you just got bored with that glimpse of beauty. And then we long for a perfect home or a perfect place of harmony or peace. It's a yearning to feel comfortable in this world, secure in this world. Think of how many channels, how many resources are invested into this and to shows about houses, about restoring houses, renovating houses, real estate shows. Why do we have this idea of a forever home? And that's the phrase that's used; this is where I want to live forever, this is where we are going to find our ultimate home.

Five inner desires, and any solely, earthly satisfaction of these five, they always leave us frustrated. No matter how good this physical representation of this transcendental desire, it still leaves us wanting because we want the perfect version because we know that the perfect version exists. How do we know that? Well, it's written on our hearts. We seek these things; perfect knowledge, perfect love, perfect justice, perfect beauty, perfect home and it's things that only God can give us in himself. Deep inside we know that this is true, it's written on our hearts.

The New Testament Version of this Psalms is found in 1st Corinthians 2:6-10, which have all of these components and you can study this text. I'll just read it here. Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God. That's the knowledge that we're looking for. The ultimate knowledge, the ultimate truth, the ultimate wisdom, is we impart the secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory, for our beauty.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Crucifixion here, this is God's justice poured out on God's son for our sin. But, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, this is a beauty that we long for. What God has prepared for those who love him, that's a love that we long for. These things God has revealed to us through the spirit, for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God and the depths of God is the home that we're looking for.

We are created to find our home, our knowledge, our beauty, all of these transcendence things in God. St. Augustine of Hippo wrote 1600 years ago, he said, "Thou hast made us." God, you've made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find the rest in you. So what do you long for? I want to submit to you that underneath every single one of those longings is a desire for God, for things that only God can give you. And this is where sin gets in the way. Sin clouds our vision. Sin comes to us, and this is Satan, this is the world, this is flesh. They all tempt us to find satisfaction in things, and experiences, and people, in anything other than God, even in good things. But if you seek the ultimate from a good thing, it turns into idolatrous thing and an evil thing, a deprave thing.

A good thing, when you're seeking the ultimate innate, can turn into a deprave thing. Look at Jeremiah 2:12-13, be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Evil one, refusing to find true refreshment for the hunger and thirst of our souls in God, instead seeking that satisfaction for the thirst of our souls in things, other things, cisterns. And that he says, they're broken, they can't hold this water. Forsaking God's fountain and seeking to make our own, whatever this is. The first evil, turning away from God. The second evil, seeking that which only God can give us in whatever it is that you long for. And it starts with the desires of the heart. It all starts there; gluttony, lust, envy, enmity, sloth. It's all in anger. It's all in there.

And then we seek to find satisfaction for those things, in things. And what it does, it only makes us thirsty, it only makes us hungry and never satisfied. So this is what the psalmist is saying and he says, "I know that nothing in this world satisfies therefore I want to be in a place that does satisfy, which is the presence of God." And he's picturing in his mind Solomon's temple, but it's not about the temple it's about what the temple represents. And what it represents is, God's covenantal love and his knowledge. He says, "Israel, I've chosen you. I've decided to put my presence within you. I've decided to reveal myself; my will, my law, this is how you find satisfaction in me.

That's why Psalm 84:1, he begins with this longing; How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts. And it's a longing to be in the presence of God. Verse two, my soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy. My heart and flesh, he's not just saying my mouth, he's not saying my throat, not my vocal cords, my flesh. He longs for God with almost a physical desire. He talks about this soul; my soul, the innermost being and starts there. But it's like a hunger, it's like an ache that works itself almost physically.

And the language that he uses to describe the intensity, the desire, this language that's used elsewhere to talk about romantic relationship. A lover is almost kept from his beloved, that's the kind of language that he uses. And he even expresses jealousy for birds, that's verse three; Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my Lord. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise.

He's jealous of these birds who are nesting in the rafters of the temple, their ways unimpeded into the temple courts. They soar above everything that is in the way of this psalmist entering the presence of God, and they build these nests on top of the columns. He's yearning to be in the presence of God like this, why? Because the psalmist, most likely he didn't live in Jerusalem. Most likely he came to Jerusalem once, twice, three times a year at most for the festivals. They would come and they would experience the presence of God, and then they would leave. And as he experienced God he said, "I wish I could just stay here. I wish I could be in the presence of God uninhibited, unimpeded."

When I was in my early 20s and I was studying God's word and I loved God's word and loved God's truth and before God called me into ministry I was like, "Man, it must be so cool to be a pastor. Pastors get to be in the presence of God all the time, that's their job. They just study God's word." Of course, the pastor standing up here is going to tell me how great the presence of God is because that's what he does full time. That's all of his professional waking hours, that's all he does. And then I became a pastor.

And one of the things I've realized after becoming a pastor is, becoming a pastor like most people that become pastors we call them the ministry, they do it because they love God's word. You love feasting on God's word, but feasting on God's word is a different skillset than preparing a feast of God's word. It's like someone who's like, "I love food. I want to devote my whole life to food. What can I do? I'm going to go into culinary school. I'm going to become a chef." You loved eating, but you spend all your time cooking. That's what's going on.

So as I'm sharing with you how great God's word is, how great the presence of God is, I'm also preaching the same thing to myself because you can prepare a tremendous meal without even having a taste of it yourself. So it's to say, you need to develop in yourself this appetite, this longing, this desire for the presence of God. My wife asked me last night, she said, "What are you preaching?" I said, "Developing a longing for God." And she said, "What are your practical tips for that?" I don't have any because you know what, I preach God's word.

Are there any practical tips in here? Obviously, I can give you practical tips. You can't develop a longing with practical tips. That's like saying, "I need practical tips for developing a desire to see beauty everywhere." You can't. It's either you have it or you don't and if you don't, how do you get it? You ask God. "God, I want this longing. I want this hunger. I want this thirst." And it's a blessing from God and of ourselves, we do not have this active desire. And here the psalmist, you see it in him. And it's one of these things that's better caught, not taught.

Yeah, I can give you these little practical points and I'll give you a few after, but it's more like this person longs for God and they found God and they're satisfied. And God, I want what this person has. And he says, "The maker of heaven earth invites us into this relationship, into this presence of longing anticipation and delight." The second point is to draw near to God. So you long for the presence of God, but then you need to actively draw near to God. You have this desire, if it's given to you by God, if not you ask for it. Once it is given to you, then you need to practically draw near to God.

And here I'll tell you this, this is really important and most likely if you've been in the faith for a while, you know this. Whenever there's a longing for God, almost immediately there's something that shows up that keeps you from acting on that longing. And there's different reasons for spiritual warfare or the flesh or the world, there's a resistance. There's almost like a force field that's all of a sudden enclosed over, so he longs for the presence of God.

And then verse five, he starts talking about needing strength. Look at verse five, "Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion." He says, it's a blessing when your strength is in the Lord. Why is he starting to talk about strength? Because you need it, that's the assumption here. All of a sudden, he's like, "Yeah, longing for God. This is great." And then he's like, "Yeah, but to be drawn into the presence of God, you need a strength that is not your own. You need strength from God." Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in God, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

Blessedness of worship belongs to those who desire and then act upon it, despite the resistance from the enemy. Look at James 4:7-8; submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Draw near to God that sounds great, but he says in order to do that you need to actively resist evil out there, Satan, and resist evil within.

And the evil within that he's talking about is, this double-mindedness. And the double-mindedness, every single one of us who pursues the Lord you know exactly what this is. The spirit decrees what God commands, but the flesh does not. I want to do what God tells me to do, but I don't do the things I want to do, instead I do the things I don't want to do, that's Romans 7, there's this fight on the inside. And that's why he says, "You need strength and blessed are those whose hearts are the highways to Zion."

Why is he talking about highways in the heart? Well, he's talking about a longing to draw near to God that's willing to overcome the patterns that we've been used to. And by patterns that we're used to what I mean is; when you are used to a life of sin, sin becomes almost second nature. Sin becomes like, you don't even have to think about it, your mind just goes there and then your actions follow where your heart and your mind... You ever been really tired at work, back free COVID when you had to drive to work? And you were really tired at the end of work and then you get in your car and then you drive home, and then you pull in and you're like, "I do not remember the last half hour. I have no idea how I got home."

It's like your muscle memory took over. You were thinking about a million other things, but you got home safely and you didn't kill anybody. You're like, "Whoa, how did I do that?" Something like that happens in our heart. Our heart, our desires, once our heart wants a thing, and it begins to follow that thing over and over and over there's a rhythm in life and you begin to act without even thinking about that action. It's just natural. It's a pathway. And the more you do that in your heart, the broader it gets. Now, it becomes a highway in the heart. And he says, "Blessed are those whose heart are the highways to Zion to God's presence."

Well, this is one of the things, in terms of spiritual disciplines and one of the things that we need to learn to do is, we need to re-navigate the paths of our heart. And we need God's word and God's people in our life and you need to train yourself up in righteousness where it's like, "Yeah, this path feels natural, but I know where it leads. Instead, I want to follow God's pathway, the pathway into God's presence." It doesn't feel as natural and it takes a lot more work, but the more you do it the more natural it becomes.

And then when you're by yourself, and you have nothing to think about, think about Sunday afternoon, there's naps and then there's Sunday afternoon naps. I don't know why Sunday afternoon they're just more blessed especially after church; church, Los Amigos Burrito, nap. Right before you go into your nap, analyze what you're thinking about. Analyze where your mind naturally gravitates when you don't have to think about anything. And he says that, if you want to experience the presence of God on an ongoing daily basis, train up your heart, your thoughts, your desires, to travel on the highway to God.

Do we have highways in our heart to the presence of God? And this includes spiritual disciplines on a daily basis; wake up, a cup of coffee, scripture, prayer. And includes fasting, silence, solitude, community with other believers, corporate worship. Corporate worship is so crucial to our health as believers, our maturity, but also our health. For 11 years, I've been in one of those transient cities in the world trying to convince people, "God is great. Find your satisfaction in God."

And then people become believers, and it's like, "Corporate worship is crucial, it's important. Joining a church membership, you are all one body of believers. Covenant membership, crucial. You have the Holy Spirit as a believer and the more believers together, the more Holy Spirit we have together. So yes, corporate worship is important and this is how we show the world the glory and the majesty of the presence of God by gathering together. Corporate worship, corporate worship, corporate worship, it's important," then COVID hits.

And then we didn't have church for like three, four months and then we're back to church and wearing masks and social distancing. And then we've got people in the church and there's people in the culture, on two sides of the spectrum. The first side of the spectrum right here is, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I can't do anything. I'm going to die. Yeah, I'll go to the grocery store and I'll hang out with my friends."

This right here, part of the sermon, this is for between you and the Lord, what's the Lord telling you? Obviously, there's people who need to stay home immunocompromised. But there's also people who are like, "Yeah, I'm not going to go to church. I'm going to take a flight across the country." And I've been on a flight recently, it was on American Airlines. And here's what happens on American Airlines, I had a person sitting right next to me. And also on American Airlines they're like, "Mask, mask, mask, mask, mask. Okay, it's coffee time. Okay. Everyone, take your mask off." And then everyone's pretending like, "Oh, okay. COVID knows during coffee break do not..." What I'm saying is, just be consistent. If you're going to stay home, just be absolutely consistent and so don't hang out at the beach with friends, et cetera.

I just don't use COVID as an excuse. Pastor Shannon, Pastor Andy and I for the longest time, we didn't want to do live streaming because we understand the very second you're doing a live stream when a person is just a little lazy on a Sunday, they're staying home and they're like, "I'm still worshiping with my..." No, there's something physically important that is, body beliefs. That's one side. The other side, we've got Christians who are like, "Do you understand what this is? This is government overreach. This is going to lead to totalitarianism. It starts with a mask. It's only a mask, and then all of a sudden they're going to send you to the Gulags, that's number one. And then going to church with a mask and then being told where to sit? No, that's impinging on my freedom. Liberty or death, that's my only two options."

So we got people over here and people over here and all I just want to say is, corporate worship is important and that's it. There's risks in everything. There's risk in driving. There's risk in taking the tea. There's risk in going out to eat; even more so now with outdoor dining, you're going to get a chill and get sick. Psalm 84:6; as they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs, the early rain also covers it with pools. He says, "We need the presence of God, see God, long for God." And then after we do, you begin to draw near to God. And as you do, there's temptation, there's a force field, there's an enemy. And then also, there's these physical challenges to drawing near to the presence of God.

And here he brings in the Valley of Baca, which is the valley of weeping. I'm pursuing God, I want God's presence, but then as I long for God's presence, I see my own brokenness. I see my own sin, I see this in the people around us and represents this place of affliction. And part of the affliction's the enemy pulling us back from God or times when we just feel dry inside, empty of joy like a parched desert. And what he's saying is, when you find yourself, you're drawing near to God and you find yourself in this place of temptation or Valley of Baca, valley of weeping, you got to keep going. When you get here, the temptation is to stay there. When you feel a lack of joy to stay in this place, a lack of joy, and instead of breaking through and continuing to seek after God, we begin to seek joy in sin, joy in things that only cause more spiritual thirst.

So he says, when you stay here, when you fight through this Valley of Baca, that's when God will send springs and rain and covers it with pools; living water, springing up to eternal life. And then he says in verse seven, they go from strength to strength. So you got strength from God to keep going. When you got strength to keep going, you got a little stronger and you go from strength to strength. It's as if, "God, I want your presence, I'm drawing near. There's a forcefield, I'm going to break through." As you break through, you get more strength. And the more strength you get, the more presence of God you want and the greater the pull toward the presence of God.

And then as he mentioned, Zion, one of the things that he does here is, he stops, he pauses and he prays for the political situation in Israel that's verses eight and nine; O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. God of hosts, which is used in verse one, three, eight, and 12, is saying, God of armies. God of all spiritual armies. God there's something in the political realm, the physical realm in my culture and my society, that's keeping me from experiencing your presence. And he says, God, Lord of hosts give ear, God of Jacob, Selah, behold our shield, O God, look on the face of your anointed. Your anointed, he's talking about the King. God, look in the King. God help us politically.

Your ultimate protection, your ultimate shield. Most likely the psalmist here is in Second Kings chapter 18, in the days of King Hezekiah. Where the King of Syria comes in, he takes over Jerusalem and keeps the people of God from worshiping God. So the psalmist calls out," Lord, please bless us. And as we draw near to you, give us strength." So long for God, draw near to God and then as you draw near to God and you begin to enjoy the presence of God, you begin to realize that whatever the cost was to get here to the enjoyment of God it was worth it.

Look at verse 10, for a day in your courts is better than 1,000 elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. By doorkeeper, he's talking about, I would rather be on the threshold of the presence of God. I would rather be the lowest of the low in the presence of God, the highest of the high, in whatever the world has to offer. And the presupposition here, and this is really important, is he understands that there's trade-offs. If you want to experience more of the presence of God, deeper fellowship with God, walking with God, abiding with God, to say yes to that, you got to say no to a lot of other things.

In your heart, you need to resolve God's presence. One day of God's presence is more satisfying than 1,000 years in sin and 1,000 days elsewhere. And this is one of things that we need to and I'm not sure we believe this is Christians. I'm not sure we believe God's presence is better than sin. Do you believe that? And I ask because this is one of the greatest temptations of Satan, the greatest lies of Satan. And one of his most insidious lies is that the Christian life is boring, that it's dull. It's full of drudgery. It's void of anything scintillating, exciting.

Sin is exciting and anything to do with Christianity is just boring, and that's one of the biggest lies of the enemy. And once you start analyzing, even go through times in your life when you have sinned, what happens next? What happens next is emptiness every single time. It over promises and under-delivers every single time, and yet we still believe that sin is more exciting than the presence of God. It's not. Look at how the psalmist talks about God's presence.

Psalm 16:11, You make known to me the path of life, in your presence, there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures for evermore. He says, you can have the ultimate satisfaction for your soul, which makes all of life so much more enjoyable. Psalm 34:8; Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Psalm 36:7-8; how precious is your steadfast love, O God. The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the abundance of your house, and you will give them drink from the river of your delights. Uses the metaphor of food and drink, as a way for us to understand satisfaction of the soul. Psalm 63:3-5, Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live, in your name I will lift my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. It's getting to that time, where I'm getting hungry for lunch.

He's saying this God's presence satisfies the soul like fat and a rich food. What's fat and a rich food? He's talking about steak, obviously. What's it say in the Hebrew? Ribeye. Tomahawk ribeye. That's what he's talking about. He uses the greatest physical food as a way to say, this is what happens in the soul. My wife and I last night we were... we do bedtime story from the Bible and scripture and prayer with our daughters. And last night when my wife was reading from a children's Bible about Jesus, this is where words chronologically, Jesus at the wedding in Cana, they ran out of wine. Jesus' mom comes to him and says, "Hey, you got to help them out, they're out of wine." Major faux pas back in the day. And then Jesus, he said, "Okay. Take the six jars," they're about 30 gallons each. "Fill them up to the brim with water and turn them into wine," and then the wedding continued.

And then I'm like, "What's going to be the application of this story in a children's Bible?" And the application was, we're all sinners and we need to repent of our sin and when we do, Jesus forgives us. Amen. Let's pray. It's true. Repent of you sin and you will be forgiven. I was like, "I don't think that's the application." My wife's like, "What's the application?" I was like, "The application is, this wedding's boring and Jesus made it fun. That's the application." Responsibly, obviously, 180 gallons of wine responsibly. It's an absolute lie of Satan that life is more enjoyable apart from God, that's a lie. It's an absolute lie.

God wants you to enjoy life, but he wants you to seek ultimate satisfaction in him which makes the rest of life so much more enjoyable. Indeed, the presence of God is worth it. One day in God's presence is better than 1,000 in the greatest vacation. That's why St Paul said, "Indeed, I count everything as loss, because it's a passing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. I'll give everything up, in order to gain Christ."

Psalm 73:25-26; whom have I in heaven but you? And there's nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, my God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 84:11; the Lord is a sun, a source of life and light, and a shield, he is our source of protection. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. He said, "Seek ultimate satisfaction in God and then God longs to bless you with honor, with favor, with all the other things. He'll give you those good things, as long as they don't become idols."

He says, "God is our shield." Why is God our shield? What is he a shield from? First of all, he's a shield from our own sin. He is a shield from the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin. And how do we know that God is our shield? Because he sends his son to die on the cross for our sin, bearing the wrath of God that we deserve for our law-breaking, for our evils of seeking satisfaction and things other than him. And Jesus Christ covers us, when we run to him as our refuge.

And then Psalm 84:12; O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you. Blessed is the one who trusts in the finished work of Christ on the cross. Blessed is the one who trusts in God, who fills us with the Holy spirit. Our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Spirit. We don't need the temple, the priest, the sacrifice, because of Christ we have access into the presence of God.

So we go back to the beginning question, What do you want? What do you seek? The scripture tells us, seek God, he alone is a source of perfect knowledge and truth. Jesus is truth. He alone is, and offer's perfect love. God is love. He alone offers us justice and goodness. He is perfect justice and goodness. He alone offers us perfect beauty, he is beautiful. And God alone offers and is our perfect home, our perfect place of belonging.

I'll close with the Ephesians 3:14-21; for this reason I bow my knees before the Lord, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, Amen.

Let's pray, Lord, we thank you that you are the all-satisfying God. Lord, we do repent that so often we seek satisfaction in things, other new people, other new experiences, other than you. Lord, we thank you for the reminder that you are a God who cares about our wellbeing, our ultimate wellbeing, beginning even now. You said that whoever believes in your son, Jesus Christ, has eternal life now. I pray that everyone here; everyone hearing these words, turns from sin, turns to you and lives a life of satisfaction and joy and peace as we pursue you, as we long for you, as we draw near to you and as we enjoy you. And we pray this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Good morning and welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastor's here at Mosaic along with Pastor Andy and Pastor Shane. If you're new or if you're visiting with us, we'd love to connect with you, either through the connection card that you can fill out and then toss in the box at the at the back. Or you can fill out the connection card in the app or on the website. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word? Heavenly Father, we come into Your presence with fear and trepidation. Trepidation, because You are a holy and a mighty God. We thank You that You are just. And as we thank You for Your justice, we recognize that we deserve to be punished for our sins. So we cannot pray for Your justice without also asking for forgiveness for our sins. We're thankful for Jesus Christ who lived the perfect life and died the death that we deserved to die.

By grace through faith in Him, we are given imputed righteousness and now we can cry out, "Give us Your justice and give us Your righteousness. Holy Spirit, we pray that You come into this place, come into this space. Come and fill our hearts. Prepare our hearts to hear from Your holy Word. Lord, as we today open up Psalm 72, in which the psalmist prays for the King, we see a pattern that we too, Your people, are called to pray for those whom You have placed into positions of authority. We pray for every single person in a position of authority over us. We pray for the town council here in Brookline. We pray for Mayor Marty Walsh, Mayor of Boston. And we pray for governor Baker, Governor of Massachusetts. We pray for our congressmen, and we pray for our senators, and pray for the Supreme Court. We do pray for our President and our Vice President, we pray for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

We pray that You fill them with wisdom like You filled Solomon. You call us to pray that Your Holy Spirit guides them. You tell us that, You, the great God of the universe, You guide the hearts of Kings, of those in authority like water in Your hands. We do pray for this upcoming election and we pray that You give us wisdom in how to vote in every single sphere, every single level of the election. We pray that You put into power, put into authority, the person that You have decreed before the foundation of the world. We pray for religious liberty that we can continue to gather as Your people to hear Your Word proclaimed, to worship You in freedom. Freedom that's lacking in so many parts of the world, a freedom that we take for granted all too often. We do pray that You make us a people who don't look to our political representatives to fix all of our problems. They cannot, they are but frail humans. So we look to You, oh great God.

We turn to You for forgiveness, and we turn to You for healing, and we turn to You for blessing, and we turn to You for security and protection, and we turn to You for ultimate guidance. You are the one who can order the chaos of our hearts and of our lives, and we ask for that now, no matter how painful it is. We ask for Your grace, and protection, and mercy. Bless our time in the Holy Word. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. We are in a sermon series called Balm Psalms, where we are looking at some of the choices. Psalms in the first half of the Psalter, we'll pick up the second half of the Psalter at some point later on. We'll do Season Two on Balm Psalms. Today, we are in Psalm 72. Next week, we cap off the series. After that, we got a four week series in Malachi, which then brings us to Advent in which we will look at the first two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew.

Today, we look at Psalm 72, which is a prayer of coronation, a prayer for the king, a prayer for people in power over us. The first lesson that we must draw from the very beginning is that we as God's people are called to pray for those in positions of power. How often do you pray for those in positions of power over us? Do you pray for them more often than you complain about them? Here's my challenge to you. For every time that you share a political meme on social media or in group texts, pray as often. I think if we do that we're going to have revival in the land. But scripture does teach us to pray for those in positions of power. 1 Timothy 2:1-2. "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way." He does not tell us to pray according to their godliness or according to their righteousness, he says pray because they've been placed in this position of authority.

And as we look at Psalm 72, which is a psalm of King David. King David writes this prayer for his son, Solomon, and he prays for Solomon. He prays that Solomon will be blessed by the Lord. If one of the greatest kings, King David, prays for his son who had one of the greatest Kingships of the Old Covenant. If that person needed prayer, how much more do the rulers over us? We must pray regularly for leaders no matter how just or unjust they might be. Pray for wisdom as well in whom to vote for in this coming election in 16 days. And as we do, one of the things you realize as you pray Psalm 72, you realize how far our leaders fall short of the standard. As we pray this, we bemoan that sinful people are leading sinful people. And we cry out to God, "God, send us a true King. The King that, His image is written on our hearts." This is why we're so disappointed with earthly leaders. No matter how great they are, were ultimately disappointed. Even Israel was ultimately disappointed with Solomon and with King David ... Will serve you.

He refuses, they succeed, they rebel, and then following the following kings ruling over Judah don't even come close to the glory of Solomon. In 586 BC, the last Davidic King goes into Babylonian exile and there's no more kings on the throne of David from then on. So as the people of Israel after 586 BC, as they pray Psalm 72, they're praying Psalm 72 in a similar way that we are praying it. They do pray for their current leaders, but ultimately, the Psalm was about the great leader that's coming. It's a prophecy of the coming King, and I'll just set that up with the verbs in the Psalm. Psalm in verse 1, there's an imperative, "God, give Your justice. God, give Your righteousness to the King." That's an imperative. It's a command. And then every verb after that is an imperfect, and it can be translated either as adjustive, may it be. Or as a future tense, it will be, he shall be. And you say, "Which one is it?"

Well, poetry is infused with ambiguity often, because it wants you to read both meanings. So as we read this as a prayer, "May this King be, may this King be righteous, just. May He be good, may He lead to prosperity, may He protect His people." You're also reading it as a cry for the prophecy, "He will be." Who's that? Jesus. Jesus will rule with justice, Jesus will rule with righteousness. So it's a prayer for our leadership now, and it's a prediction and a cry for the future Messiah to come and reign. That Psalm is long and we'll read every single section under each point. The five points that cover our time in Psalm 72, we'll look at the righteous reign of the King, verses 1-4. The eternal reign of the King, verses 5-7. The universal reign of the King, verses 8-11. The compassionate reign of the King, verses 12-14. And the blessed reign of the King in verses 15-17. First, we see the righteous reign of the King. Verse 1 begins with a petition.

It's a prayer, it's pleading for God to do the following. Verse one, "Give the king Your justice, O God, and Your righteousness to the royal son." Or the son of the King. He's not asking the King to just be just, though that would be good. He's not asking for God to make the King just righteous, that would be good as well. No, he's asking for something greater. He says, "God, give the King Your justice. Give the king Your righteousness, O God." First thing that we noticed from the very beginning, is that the people of God do not look to the King for ultimate justice and righteousness. They're not praying this prayer to the King, they're praying this prayer to God. The first thing that this prayer does is it reorders our priorities. We don't look to the President of the United States, or the governor of Massachusetts, or the mayor of Boston to reorder our lives, to fix absolutely everything. We know that this person is placed in authority under someone who has a greater authority, which is God. I think that's one of the problems with politics in the United States.

One of the biggest problems is we look to this one figurehead to figure out all of our problems. And every four years, there's the poll that goes out and survey that's run in the whole country, are, "Is your life better off after the four years of this person in power?" And then you're like, "Is my life better off?" Actually, if you're really honest, probably 99.99% of your life really hasn't changed that much. So why do we spend so much emotional energy, so much stress, so much anxiety, thinking about this one person who is empowered? What this does in the very beginning of this prayer, as you pray for those in powers you realize there's someone in power over this person. And Lord, I pray that whoever's in power realizes that You have ultimate authority, that You will judge, that You have a standard of righteousness, that there is a standard of righteousness. The cry here is, "Lord, put people in positions of power that recognize that they are under authority, that You will judge, You will bring to justice this person with their actions and their decisions.

And as we cry out for this, Lord, we pray that You give Your justice to the King, we can't but pray the same thing for ourselves." Because that would be hypocrisy. How can we pray for the King to receive God's justice if we don't pray that for ourselves? Do you pray that for yourself? Are you willing to pray, "God, give me Your justice for everything I've done. God, judge me according to Your perfect law." You can't pray that for the King if you don't pray that for yourself. And one of the beautiful things that we see here is that as you pray this, you see your need for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because the ultimate hope for our country is not for the right president, or the right senator, or the right congressman, or the right governor, or the right mayor. The ultimate hope for our country is the gospel of Jesus Christ, transforming us first. God, I do cry out for justice, but I realize how far I've fallen from Your standard of justice. So I pray for forgiveness as well, and I pray for imputed righteousness."

How can you pray that God gives the King His righteousness, "God, give Your righteousness to the King." What's that talking about? That's talking about an imputed righteousness. You can't pray that for the King without praying that for yourself, "God, give me an imputed righteousness." Whose righteousness? "That of the ultimate king of King Jesus. God, forgive me of my sins. Thank You that Jesus Christ led a perfect life, died on the cross for my sin, the death that I deserved to die. Bearing the wrath of God, and now by grace through faith, an imputed righteousness is offered to me." So as we pray for the King, we recognize our need for a greater King, and that's King Jesus. No king, no matter how talented, no ruler no matter how successful, no matter what the innate abilities. No king can reign with this justice and this righteousness, this justice and this truth without the empowerment of God. "So God, we ask that for the King, we ask that for ourselves."

All too often, this election and the past election, but what we've seen is ... and the one before that, if you have a good memory. And the one before that, every single election, we always look at the final two candidates. The people that went through the whole primary and all of that and we say, "These two? These are the only options? There's 330 million people in this country, these are the only options?" And then you get to debates, the lesser of evil, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What this does, what the Psalm does is it shows us that the greatest need is not for the leader, it's for a people. The greatest need is for us to be transformed. The reason why it's these two, no matter who it is, is because these two reflect the people. They reflect us as a country. That's why I say the greatest hope of this country is not the President, the greatest hope is a gospel that can transform the people, reawaken the people to the rule of God, to the rule of Jesus Christ.

And the more people who submit to the rule of Jesus Christ, the more people like that, that there are people of justice, people of righteousness, perhaps then We'll have better candidates. And that's why verse 1 is so important. He recognizes that it's the people, it's the people that pray for the King. It's the people who pray for the King to be under God who is the ultimate King. It's the King who rules on behalf of God, it's the King who needs the wisdom of God, and needs to ask for the wisdom of God just like King Solomon asked. 1 Kings chapter 3, God comes to Solomon in a dream and says, "Ask whatever you want. Anything, anything that you want. Anything in the world. You want riches? I'll give you riches. You want power? I'll give you everything that you want." And this is the dialogue, verse 9, "Give Your servant therefore ..." Solomon says, "'... an understanding mind to govern Your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this Your great people?' It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this.

And God said to him, 'Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you.'" Lord, I need an understanding mind, that's what Solomon asked for. That's what we want in the rulers, that's what we want in the person in charge over us. And as we pray, "God, give Your wisdom, understanding, a discerning mind to those in power over us. Give us the same, give me the same." And where does wisdom begin? It begins with the fear of God, we recognize who we are under the authority of God, created by God to glorify Him. "God, give us wisdom and give our leaders wisdom.

God, make Your judgments be the King's judgments, may He rule in accordance with Your justice and judgment." Verse 2 of Psalm 72, "May He judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills in righteousness. May He defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor." Few things I want to point out here is he emphasizes righteousness. Righteousness in the context of not just upholding uprightness or truth, but a righteousness that includes compassion. Compassion to the least of these. It's a responsibility to give justice, to seek vindication, the rescue of the afflicted and the needy. It's a King who cares for the weakest of the kingdom, the most in need. So he talks about, "Give Your poor with justice." And he talks about, "Including the deliverance of the children of the needy." God has a soft spot for the disenfranchised, for the marginalized, for the weakest. And in Scriptures, His categories for the least of these, they're the widows, and they're the orphans, and they're the immigrants.

Those people who do not have financial power, that's what he's talking about primarily. "May the King, may those in leadership care about those who need this socio economic justice, particularly for the children in need. God, we pray that those in leadership care about children." That's emphasized, it's highlighted here, particularly of the children of the needy. In Old Testament contexts, in Scripture, children life did not begin at birth. The whole phrase of "she was with child", the Psalmist and the prophets talk about, "You knit me in my mother's womb." The child is there, that's life. It has its own heartbeat, it has its own DNA. "God, we pray for leadership that cares about life in the womb, life at conception. God, we pray that You send someone to defend, we pray that You send someone to crush the oppressor, that You give deliverance to the children of the needy."

So the king, the righteous king of God, the people in leadership that we want and long for, are not people that conquer, it's people that defend. Defend the nation, defend the people. In particular, defend those who are most defenseless beginning with children. So as we look at our options, who is standing up for life? Who wants to defend the children? Defend life and defend their innocence? We live in a culture that says you can choose your gender and not your sexuality. You can choose your gender at age eight. And our leaders will praise that. Well, 1 Peter 2:14 tells us the job of those in leadership is to punish evil and praise that which is good. What is good and evil? Well, you can't decide what's good and evil apart from a standard, apart from the God that we pray to, "God, give justice. God, give righteousness." There is a line between good and evil. So the King is the one who protects children, he protects the poor, he defends the people. Why? Because he understands they're not his people.

Look twice in this text, it says, "May he judge Your people. May he judge Your people. May He defend the cause of the poor of the people of the needy for Your people." Over and over, God wants justice because God is their Creator. The people belong to God, not to the King. And then in verse 2, the other thing I want to point out here, "May he judge Your people with righteousness and Your poor with justice." Why emphasizing poor and justice? He says, "We need to pray for leaders that are not swayed by those who have powerful interests. Not swayed by money, not swayed by bribery where the rich get justice or don't get justice, and the poor do not because they can't buy their way out." So Lord, we pray the wise ruler does not allow justice to be bought or sold." Isaiah 1:17, "Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." Amos 5:15, "Hate evil, love good and establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."

Amos 5:24, "But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Whose justice? God's justice. To even talk about justice is to assume a God with laws. A God who is just. And ultimately, the only righteous King is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the author and Creator of life and of our salvation, He's the perfecter of our salvation. He came as a King who came to serve those in subjection to Him. He came to love care. He said that ... The Scripture says that, "A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering flax He will not put out." Jesus is the perfect combination of justice and compassion. Of justice and compassion. You look at Him every once in a while and you're like, "Who is this?" As He goes into the temple, as He starts tossing tables of tax collectors and money changers who were oppressing the poor from worshiping God. And then He's so tender, so gentle to the woman caught in adultery. He's got toughness against the oppressor, and He's got compassion for the oppressed.

He's tough and strong enough to deliver us from every oppressor, and tender and gentle enough to care for the oppressed. So as we pray this for our leaders, we also pray, "Lord Jesus, come. Lord Jesus, we submit to You. Rule over us every square inch of our lives, rule over us with justice and righteousness and make us a people who reflect You. So then hopefully, by Your grace, we can have a leader who reflects You as well." Point two is the eternal reign of the kingdom. Verses 5-7, he talks about a dynasty. A dynastic endurance of this King. Verse 5, "May they fear You ..." King, "... You while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. May He be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth." What he's crying out is, "Lord, we want great rulers. And since they're so great, we don't want them out of office." Obviously, this isn't talking about a human being, it's talking about someone greater.

God promised to King David, "David, you will have someone, a descendant of David will rule on your throne forever." 2 Samuel 7:16. "And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before Me, your throne shall be established forever. Forever." With Rehoboam like the second generation as Solomon's son, all of a sudden Israel's kingdom gone. Now he's got 2 tribes instead of 12 to rule over. And then after 586, we don't have any of that. Obviously, this is a prophecy. A King who would indeed rule justly, a Kingdom marked by righteousness, peace, prosperity and a Kingdom that would endure forever. Verse 7, "In his days, may the righteous flourish and peace abound, till the moon be no more." Here, he is back to something very more tangible, very more specific. "Lord, we pray for rulers that allow the righteous to worship, that allow the righteous to flourish." He's talking about those who worship God.

"Lord, we pray for leaders that create an atmosphere, create a culture, create a society where the people of God are free to worship Him as He decreed. Where the people of God are free to teach the whole counsel of God without fear of retaliation or consequence. Lord, we pray for leaders like this, leaders that establish conditions for the Church to do the Church's work." So as we choose whom to vote for, this is one of the things we got to keep in mind as well. Who is going to further this condition or who is going to detract from it? Who will create conditions for the people of God to flourish? And who will create a condition where the people of God do not? "Lord, we pray for rulers that allow us the space to fulfill the great commandment, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.'" Love as is decreed by the truth of God's Word. And here he says, "May peace abound, may the shalom of God." The universal flourishing, righteous flourish.

And as the righteous flourish, they work to further the common good, and then peace flourishes in the culture. Point three is the universal reign of the king. He prays for a King who has a global kingdom embracing the reign of a King whose Kingdom was global. Look at verses 8-11. "May He have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth. May desert tribes bow down before Him, and His enemies lick the dust. May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands render Him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before Him, all nations serve." Solomon's kingdom was great. But as great as it was, we couldn't conceive of Solomon's reign having global dominance. Yes, the Queen of Sheba did come to King Solomon and she did bring gifts as a sign of allegiance. Four and a half tons of gold, which is an astonishing amount. Other kings came bearing gifts, silver, gold, garments, weaponry, spices, horses, mules. Kings from Ethiopia came and brought gifts. But certainly, Solomon did not have a global Empire. This is talking about a different King.

Zechariah 9:10, the prophet echoes the sentiment, he says, "I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off and He shall speak peace to the nations. His rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth." This King that we're crying for is a King who is a King of all people. He transcends all people, therefore He can be King over all people. Whose this talking about? This is why it's so important. Obviously, he's talking about Jesus Christ who has a Kingdom not of this world for now, He has a kingdom of hearts. One of the reasons why the Magi from the east came when Jesus was born, Magi from the east came with gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, is to show that people of all the ends of the earth will one day submit to this King.

This is why King Jesus before His ascension, He gave us, the Church, the Great Commission, "I want you to go and make disciples, of followers of Christ, disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. And lo, I Am with you, always until the end of the days." What was He talking? He was talking about, "Go and share this gospel that transforms hearts, hearts of all people." So that one day, people from every single tribe, nation, tongue will bow down before King Jesus and worship of Him." Point four is the compassionate reign of the King, this is verses 12-14, "For He delivers the needy when He calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.

From oppression and violence, He redeems their life, and precious is their blood in His sight." God is calling for us to pray for a King or ruler that protects those who need protection, but a compassionate protector. We mentioned this in righteousness, but here it's explicitly expounded that we pray for someone who has concern for the poor, the needy. The poor is mentioned three times as a category verses 2, 4, and 12. The needy is mentioned four times in verses 4, 12 and 13 twice. God is telling the people of Israel to pray for a King that protects the most vulnerable. Why? Because the people of Israel had a problem with this just like people of all times, people from all nations. Frequently, the rights of the poor were trampled by the powerful through dishonest gain. And over and over in Jeremiah and all the prophets, and Leviticus as well, God talks about the fact that He abhors dishonest gain.

Oppression and violence are the two evils that threaten the poor and needy. Oppression is the exploitation of the powerless by the powerful, often using usury, or just exorbitant amounts of interest to put people into debt for all of life. And violence was just ruthless disregard for life. So he says, "Lord, we pray for a King who has pity on the needy. He will protect from the oppression of violence and will redeem their life. Their life is precious, their blood is precious in His sight." And hear the language of redemption. We see this language all throughout Scripture, and particularly we saw this language at play where someone redeemed the poor in the book of Ruth. Do you remember? We had a great sermon series over quarantine in the book of Ruth. In the book of Ruth, we see Ruth with her mother-in-law. They come into Israel, they have no money, they have no finances, they are in this category of poor. And by the way, poor in the Old Testament isn't the person who can't afford the iPhone 12. If that's the definition of poor, that's me as well. That's not the definition of poor.

The definition of poor is someone who could not feed their families. If you don't have food, you are poor. You have food, you have sufficiency, you are not poor. That's how the categories work. So Ruth comes in. And what Ruth did was she saw work. God provided ... In the Old Testament, He provided provision through the gleaning laws, where people in positions of power, land owners, people who owned farms or farming establishment, what they were called by God to do is provide work for those who are the least of these. The widows, the orphans, the immigrants. Ruth was a widow and she was an immigrant and Ruth started working. God cared. The King cares by providing meaningful work for those in need, primarily a hand up not just a handout. However, it was also taught in Scripture, that if a person is not able to work due to sickness, an accident, old age, et cetera, that the people who had means of wealth were to care for the least of these.

Jesus taught us the same thing, to provide for those who are the least of these. He said, "What you do the least of these, you do unto Me." The King's job is to make sure that they're protected from this oppression, protected from violence, so that they can be provided for. And ultimately, this shows us the picture of the gospel. Boaz redeemed Ruth by providing work for her, but ultimately not just providing work for, he ultimately paid for all her debts. Now she had freedom, and then he ultimately made her his. This points to the ultimate King of kings, Lord of lords, Jesus Christ comes into ... He redeems us, redeems us from our greatest bankruptcy, which is our spiritual bankruptcy. Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor." Poor in what? Poor in righteousness. Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt who come to the Lord and say, "Lord, forgive me of all my debts." He does forgive because He paid for our debts on the cross of Jesus Christ.

We are to pray for a King that allows us to fulfill the great commandment to love God with all heart, soul, strength and mind. And love our neighbors as ourself. To fulfill the Great Commission, that's our job. Not the King's job, that's our job. And fulfill the great compassion. Lord, as we pray for the king to provide for the needy, are we working to provide for the needy? In particular, we saw this in action over quarantine with our COVID fund. We saw people with influence, people with resources caring for those who were hit the hardest during quarantine. May that continue to be the pattern of our life as the people of God. And fifth, the blessing reign of the King. The king blesses the people and the people bless the King. See, here in verses 15-20, we have 10 petitions for the King, the land, the people, and the nation's. Verse 15, "Long may He live, may gold of Sheba be given to him. May prayer be made for Him continually, and blessings invoked for Him all the day.

May there be abundance of grain in the land. On the tops of the mountains, may it wave. May its fruit be like Lebanon, and may people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field. May His name endure forever, His fame continue as long as the sun. May people be blessed in Him, all nations call Him blessed." May all the nations call this King blessed, he's ultimately talking about the kingship of Jesus Christ. And this echoes the promise that God gave to Abraham, "In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." What's fascinating is the verse 16, he prays for abundance in the land. "Lord, we pray for abundance in the land, we pray for prosperity." And he's talking about a supernatural prosperity. When the nation prospers and the nation is filled with righteous people, then everyone prospers. He says, "May there be abundance of grain in the land. On the tops of the mountains, may it wave. May its fruit be like Lebanon." If you've ever been to the top of the mountain, I'm sure you've seen a lot of great things.

You go to the top of Mount Washington, there's a lot of great things up there. There's even a little tour shop up there and you can buy snacks and stuff. One of the things that you do not see at the top of Mount Washington or any of the mountain, is you do not see grain. There's no grain at the top of a mountain. There's grain on flatland, there's grain on lower ground. There's not grain and abundance of grain on mountains. What he's talking about is, "God, may You send us a supernatural prosperity. Prosperity that only comes from You." We see the same echo in verse 3, "Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills in righteousness." Hills are fertile, mountains are barren. Why is he asking for prosperity in the mountains? And by the way, prosperity means a flourishing of shalom. From the very top bank, prosperity come. He asked for supernatural prosperity, a supernatural blessing. And God does promise a supernatural blessing for people under one condition, the condition is that you submit to God, that you are a righteous people.

Look at Leviticus 26:3-6, "If you walk in My statutes and observe My commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And I will remove harmful beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go throughout land." If you're righteous, you shall be blessed. That sounds great, until you look at the United States of America. That sounds tremendous, until you look at your own life. "Lord, this blessing depends primarily on me. If so, what hope is there? What hope is there for me personally? What hope is there for my nation." This is why the gospel Jesus Christ is such good news and our ultimate hope.

The gospel of Jesus Christ comes to us and says, "You are not righteous, you are sinners. You have rebelled against the ultimate King of the universe, the God of the universe." We deserve punishment, we deserve pestilence. We do not deserve prosperity. So God sends His Son, Jesus Christ. He, though being rich, became poor so that we might become rich in Him. The King of the universe subjects Himself to be murdered by us, rebels. The King of the universe submits to what we deserve for our rebellion, He submits to the wrath of God. He does this to save His people. I don't care who you're voting for ... I do care. You should listen to earlier in the sermon, there's a clear criteria. It's important who vote for. Don't give your ultimate allegiance to the person. The Scripture says, "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, strength and mind." Not that person. No matter how great any King, no matter how great any politician, they did not die for you.

They did not go to the cross for you. They did not observe the wrath of God for you. They're just a person and they need Jesus just as much as you do. So we cry out, yes, we pray for our politicians, we pray for the people in power over us. But ultimately, we pray for Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:8 says, "But of the Son he says, 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your Kingdom." Jesus Christ came and the very first words that He said in His very first sermon is, "The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near. Therefore, repent and believe in the good news." As we pray for that King, we pray that that King repents and believes in the good news, but we also pray the same for ourselves. "Lord, we repent of our sins. And Lord, we pray that You forgive us and give us faith." The prayer in Psalm 72 answers in part ... The cry of it is answered in part with the coming of Jesus Christ the first time.

With His life, His death, His resurrection, His missionary mandate, His ascension to heaven, He ushered in the Kingdom. An all ready but not yet Kingdom. Where is Jesus' dominion to the end of the earth? He healed people, but not all people. He preached the good news to the poor, but not to all. He died and rose again, sent His disciples as witnesses to the end of the earths, but still we haven't preached the gospel to the ends of the earth. Jesus ascended, seated at the right hand of God the Father, and we still are told to cry out for the second coming. Jesus taught us to pray for the second coming. "Our Father ..." He said, "Pray like this, 'Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.'" The ascended Lord promised in Revelation 22:20, "Surely, I Am coming soon." And you know what the saints cried out? "Amen, come Lord Jesus."

So we pray for those in authority over us, we also bemoan the fact that they fall so short of the standard that's written on our hearts. Written there by God Himself and is a story of Jesus Christ. It's the image of Jesus Christ, so we cry for Him to come. The Psalm ends with this benediction, Psalm 72:18-19, "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be His glorious name forever. May the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen." The God of Israel, the God of Jesus ... our God, the triune God of the universe, He alone can do such wondrous things. He alone and endow rulers with righteousness and justice, He alone can make not only hills but mountains wave with gorgeous grain and prosperity. He alone can give the King dominion to the ends of the earth. May His name, His name be glorious and blessed forever. And may His name and His glory fill the ends of the earth. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You the great King of the universe came and died for us, Your rebellious subjects.

Lord, You call us to Yourself not just to be Your servants, but when we are saved by grace through faith, when we repent and believe the good news of Jesus Christ, You also make us Your children. Children of the King. I pray, make us a people who reflect the ultimate King of the universe, make us a people of justice who cry out for justice because we have the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. Make us a people who live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Make Your Church flourish. I pray that we do not forget our mandate, that we don't our responsibility, the responsibility of the Great Commission, and the great commandment, and the great compassion to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to all the earth. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with pastor Andy and pastor Shane and if you're new or if you're visiting with us, we're so glad you're here. If you'd like to connect with us, we do that either through the connection card that you can pick up in the back and then leave it in the back, or online in the app, or on our website. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word. Heavenly father, we thank you for the Holy scriptures and we thank you that in the scriptures you do not gloss over sin. Even the greatest heroes in the faith have fallen because every single one of us is a sinner by nature and by choice, and we thank you for the example of King David.

We thank you that you pursued him, you did not relinquish him to his sin, instead you came and you made him see the darkness of his sin. We pray Lord that you today send us the Holy Spirit and let us see the darkness of our sin. It's within each one of us that every single one of us we have sin within and the capacity to sin infinitely more egregiously than even David himself. So Lord keep us from our sin, do not lead us in ways of wickedness, instead lead us in paths of righteousness and Jesus we thank you that you have given us that example, but you didn't just come to give us the example, you came to atone for our sin, to pay for it so that you the God of the universe remain just as you justify those who are unrighteous. And we thank you Christ that you offer forgiveness, that you offer grace, that you offer mercy simply when we come to you with a broken and contrite heart.

So send us hearts of contrition today, soft hearts toward you and help us be a people who accept your grace and extend it to others, show others the path of righteous, where to find that grace at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. We pray bless our time in the Holy scriptures and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, amen. We're in a sermon series called Balm Psalms and which we are going through some of the choices, Psalms and scripture, the word balm meaning it's balm to our souls, that it does send us healing. It provides relief from the pain of this world, the pain of our own sin and folly. Today, we are looking at Psalm 51 in which King David, a man after God's own heart, one of the most choice servants of God himself, he pens a prayer of repentance.

If you look at King David's life and you ask what is the greatest victory of all of his life? You can look at perhaps his victory over a bear in which he wrestled with his hands, a bear, or you can point to the fact that he wrestled and killed a lion with his bare hands, or the fact that he took on Goliath with just a few stones, or you could look at the Philistines that David himself took with the very small band of brothers took on the Philistine army. You can point to all of those as potential great victories, but I would submit to you that his greatest victory we see in Psalm 51. We see the picture of a man who is victorious over his sin, over his pride, over his self righteousness and he is on his knees before God, a broken man. He's a contrite man, he's a man with a limp, he's a man with a wound. He's a man in desperation, a bruised reed and in this text you see a man who is confronted with the gory nature of his sin as he sees the glorious nature of God's forgiveness.

It's a familiar story, the story of David and Bathsheba. We see this in second Samuel chapters 11 and 12 in which King David sends off his armies to continue fighting, continue building his kingdom, he stays home. He stays home and he's spending time on his palace roof, he begins to wander, goes for a little stroll. His eyes began to look around, he glances where he should not and he begins to think of things that he should not. He sees a woman bathing on her rooftop, Bathsheba, calls for her not knowing at this moment as he's blinded by lust, as he's blinded by sinful desire, not knowing that this will lead him to break half of the commandments of God, half of the 10 commandments. Not only does he commit adultery, he also kills, steals, bears false witness and all started with covetousness.

In second Samuel 11:5, Bathsheba sends him a message with three words, I am pregnant. At this moment, David he's faced with a decision, do I come clean? Do I repent of my sin? He chooses not to, choose to cover it up. Sends for Uriah to come to spend time with his family, Uriah does not even enter his house, sleeps outside. He says, how can I go in and sleep in the comfort of my home when my brothers are out on the field, sleeping on the ground. Uriah goes and he's a stand up man, a man of principle, contrast that with David. And then David is left with either repentance or murder, he chooses murder, tells his commander in chief I want you to send Uriah to the front lines, at the very last moment when the enemy is about to destroy everyone, I want you to pull back the rest of the soldiers so Uriah dies.

And to cover it all up, David goes in silence. He murdered by decree after committing adultery, for months he's got a quiet conscience because it's a steered conscience, it's a hardened hiding conscience. And then we see the grace of God in Second Samuel chapter 12, where he sends the prophet Nathan and he confronts King David. He confronts him when King David tried to block off the truth of God as it speaks into this situation. Before I read the confrontation of Second Samuel chapter 12, one of the things I want to point out is a lot of us... if this is your first time reading this text, or even if you've heard the story before, a lot of us we read this text from a position of self righteousness where we say but I've never done that, nor could I. I do not even have the potential to commit murder or adultery. I could never do that.

If you read the text in that way, from a position of self righteousness, you are no different than David before Nathan comes to him. You are no different than David when David is incensed by the sin of someone else, of a hypothetical person in his kingdom and all the while blind to his own. So this is the story of Second Samuel 12, one through seven then verse nine and I'm going to read this in order to set the context for Psalm 51. And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, there were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.

He brought it up, it grew up with him and with his children and he used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock, or herd, or prepare... to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man and he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. Nathan said to David, you are the man. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

David is outraged by the sin of another... a lesser sin, significantly lesser. In Psalm 51 David finally comes to grip with... comes to grips with his own sin and this isn't just a Psalm that's given to us to show us the repentance of David, it's a Psalm given to teach us how to repent, how to repent from the heart in contrition. So that brings us to Psalm 51, would you look at the text with me? Psalm 51, verse one. Have mercy on me O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from the blood guiltiness O God, O God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. So Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart O God you will not despise. Do good to Zion and your good pleasure build up the walls of Jerusalem, then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings, then bulls will be offered on your altar. This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time as we meditate on true repentance. Repentance first of all, turns from sin, then it turns to God and finally repentance believes the gospel.

First of all, repentance turns from sin. In order to understand Christianity and to understand the gospel in the Holy scripture, you got to understand what repentance means. You got to understand, you've got to have a working definition of repentance and learn the discipline of repentance on daily basis. My favorite definition of repentance comes from the Westminster Shorter Catechism and the definition goes like this. A saving grace, repentance is a saving grace whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ does with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God and with full purpose of an endeavor after a new obedience. So we see that in it you realize who God is, he's Holy, who I am, I'm a sinner. You realize that sin is actually destructive, it also breaks the heart of God.

So I want to turn from sin and I want to turn to God and do everything I can empowered by the Holy Spirit to walk in obedience. Therefore, repentance isn't just feeling bad for your sin. It's not feeling bad for the mistakes you've made. It's not even just... it's not having heart wrenching grief over the consequences of sin, that's not what repentance is. It's being convicted, inwardly humbled that you've sinned against a Holy God and you want to do everything you can to turn from it, thankful for the grace of Jesus Christ. We all experience guilt and we all experience shame Christian or not, Christian or not. It's a universal human feeling because the morality of God is written... God's moral code is written in our hearts. We've all done things that we know are wrong, have been wrong and we all feel shame. I shouldn't have done that, we feel guilt, guilty for doing that. Even if we don't believe in some external moral code, we still feel the weight of this and I'm not just talking about adultery or murder that separate us from God. It's every single sin, every single transgression against God's law is a treason against our creator. David here recognizes his sin before God and he does not blame shift. He does not justify his sin based on his accomplishments, based on his past righteousness, based on the songs that he's written, based on all the great work he's done for God, he doesn't, he doesn't blame shift, he doesn't make excuses. Look how often he uses me and my in the first five verses. Have mercy on me O God, blot out my transgression, wash me thoroughly from my sin for I know my transgression, my sin is ever before you. I have sinned, I was brought forth in iniquity, in sin did my mother conceive me, he owns it.

He takes responsibility for his sin. He takes responsibility for his own decisions because without admission of guilt you can't accept God's forgiveness. And what's fascinating is he recognized in verse five, this theological category called total depravity. That we are born with sin, where every single faculty of our being is tainted with sin. We're not as bad as we could be, but there is sin within, original sin that leads to total depravity. But he says I'm born a sinner, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me, he owns that but he doesn't use it as an excuse. He doesn't say it's my past, you don't understand my family, but I wasn't brought up in the right way. There's nothing that he points to, to excuse his behavior and that's the first step to true repentance.

You got to get rid of the blame shifting, you got to get rid of the excusing and you got to own the sin. I made these decisions, yes I'm a sinner by nature, I chose to sin. That's the star where he uses me and he uses my and there is sorrow over that sin, which leads to forgiveness and transformation. Last week, we talked about the different categories of sin of transgression. In sin and iniquity, transgression is seeing God's law and stepping over it on purpose, defiantly, rebelliously. He says I've transgressed, I've stepped over the law, blotted out and uses this verb often several times, blotted out, blotted out. And he's talking about this idea that God is a judge and he Chronicles our sins and he's begging God, God when you open the book of justice, please, please, God I want that redacted. I want black stripes over that, over my sin, over everything I've done. Please blot it out of the Chronicles of justice.

In sin he misses the mark of righteousness and he says Lord cleanse me, I need a cleansing from sin, the iniquities twisting what God made straight, wash me from that. He owns it and this is the beginning of repentance. I have sinned, Lord forgive me of my transgression and my iniquity and my sin. Psalm 51 verse four, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. God, you are the one I have violated. You are the first one that I've sinned against, before sinning against anyone else I've sinned against you. The prodigal son when he comes to his senses, returns to his father in Luke 15:21, he says father I've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. He understands that his sin is first of all against God the father before it's against his earthly father, because every sin is always against God first.

David loved God, but at this moment when he commits this heinous sin, he loves something more than God, he loves sin more than God. David committed adultery with Bathsheba because he loved a sin more than God and he says, God have mercy on me because I sinned against you first. If you went to David when he was a teenager, writing Psalms under trees, as he's watching his dad sheep. If you go to him as a teenager and say David when you are the pinnacle of your career, when you have all of the greatest blessings of God, it won't be enough for you and you will actually take that which is not yours, that which is forbidden, David would have never believed you. He would have never believed that he was capable of that.

How did David end up there? David who was a man after God's own heart, David who saw God worked for him so powerfully miracle after miracle, how did he end up in this place? Well, he didn't stumble into it, he didn't go from perfection to this. He gave in incrementally, little by little a thought arises in his mind, a desire in his heart and he does not put it to death. He lets it fester, he lets it grow and little by little it begins to take over his imagination, his heart and then ultimately it leads to deeds. Imagine if David had repented before committing the sin, imagine if he had repented of the desires and the thoughts. And this is the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ that Jesus says sin starts in the heart and you need a heart transformation, you need heart surgery spiritually speaking.

In the gospel, Jesus Christ gives us strength to deal with those desires, to fight those desires before they lead to action. So this is what I want to encourage you dear Christians. I want to encourage you to fight sin on a heart level, thought heart level before it leads to deeds. And here's why this is... and this is why if you read the sermon on the Mount, this is why Jesus starts with the heart. And he says, you think you've heard that it was said that adultery is wrong, but I tell you whoever looks upon another person... whoever looks upon a woman or a man with lust for them in their heart, you've already committed adultery. Meaning adultery is what leads to the sinful lustful gaze. In the same way, he says if you're angry with your brother or your sister, that's tantamount to murder because you in your heart, your anger is leading to this hatred where you wish that they had disappeared.

So the true battle against sin that God is calling us to, the true battle against sin that leads to righteousness and holiness is on the level of the heart and the level of the mind. The earlier we repent, the less damage our sin does. God forgives David ultimately for the penalty of the adultery and of the penalty of the murder. God does not remove the consequences of that sin and this is why a lot of Christians they mix up these categories. Oh, if I ask for God to forgive me, then he'll protect me from the consequences of the sin, not necessarily. This is why God tells us not to sin in the first place because of how destructive sin is in our own lives, in the lives of the people around us. So God didn't remove the greatest consequences of the sin, Uriah was still dead.

Bathsheba's family was destroyed. The child that Bathsheba and David had, that child died and there was family dysfunction in David's family for the rest of his life. Second Samuel 12:10 through 15, the words of Nathan. Now, therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife, thus says the Lord. Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun for you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. David said to Nathan I have sinned against the Lord and Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin, you shall not die. Nevertheless, because of this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord and the child who was born to you shall die. And Nathan went to his House.

Repentance is turning from sin and it's turning to God. You see, David isn't demanding that God forgive him. He pleads with God, look at verse one, have mercy on me O God, according to what? According to David's great track record, according to everything David has done for God, according to all the great things David could do for God, no, it's not according to David's track record at all. It's according to your steadfast love, it's appealing to God's character. God, you are a God of love, steadfast love, of love that's unshakeable. According to your abundant mercy have mercy on me, because your mercy is abundant please give me some. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. David is begging God for the new covenant. He's begging God for something deeper than just repentance, what's he asking for?

He's asking for regeneration. He's asking for heart transplant as is prophesied in Ezekiel 26, 25 through 27. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the hardest stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. He's saying God, I'm not just asking for forgiveness of the sin because it's not enough. The sin is still within me, I need a clean heart, I need a willing spirit, I don't just need cleansing, that's part of it, I also need regeneration. I need something different, why? Because if you think repentance is just turning from sin, you will never overcome sin because sin is too powerful, it's too medicine, it's too magnetic, it's too entrancing.

Look at Second Samuel 12:9, this is what Nathan says to David. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You've despised the word of the Lord in committing the sin because the word of the Lord is an extension of the Lord, so you've actually despised the Lord, why did you... how do I know you despise the Lord? Because you loved something greater than the Lord. And that brings us to something really important and that's this, David didn't just commit five. He didn't just break five of the commandments, he didn't transgress just five of the commandments. In order to break any of the commandments, you have to first break the first commandment. What's the first of the 10 commands? Thou shall have any gods before me.

So before David killed and committed adultery and stole someone else's wife and bore false witness and coveted that which was not his, before he did all those things, what led him to do all those things is he stopped loving God. He now loved something more than God. Before he committed adultery, he committed idolatry and what was the idol that he was following? It was himself. He started worshiping himself, he started worshiping his own desires, he started worshiping his own lust. So in order to get rid of a sin, turn from us and you got to turn to something greater, sin is something that does capture our hearts and our desires, we love it, that's why we're stuck in it. So the way to overcome it is to love something with a greater love.

This is what Thomas talked about when he said the expulsive power of a new affection, where you love something more than the sin when what scripture calls us to love is God. There's no greater power in the universe than God's love. That's what David is asking, God based on your abundance of your love, please forgive me and as he turns from sin, his heart is filled with God's love which begins to transform him. And you see the depth of David's repentance, he's deeper than the ground. I think of repentance like this, a lot of us we don't see our need for repentance because of the light pollution of self-righteousness. At night in Boston, you rarely see the beauty of the stars because of light pollution. Some of us are like we think because we measure ourselves against other people, we measure ourselves against our past.

David measures himself against God and as he sees how far he falls short of the standard of God, he ends up in the depth of a well of his sin. And the deeper you go in the well of repentance, when you gaze up, there's less light pollution and you see the glory of God's grace, the bright stars of his grace and that's what begins to transform you. You see that God is willing to forgive no matter how dark our sin. One of my favorite illustrations of repentance and the effect of repent and the process of repentance is from C.S Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and which there's a little boy named Eustace was really selfish and he loves riches, and he finds this gold bracelet, he puts it on his arm and he's in love with this. He's coveting this thing, he's thinking about dreaming about it, captures his imagination and when he goes to sleep he becomes outwardly what he was inwardly, which was a ravenous dragon.

Transforms to the dragon, he's driven from humanity. In a moment of loneliness, begins to cry then Aslan the lion, the Christlike figure comes and offers him transformation and Eustace doesn't accept, tries to remove the dragon himself to no avail. And then finally he asked for Aslan's help and he says the very first tear he made was so deep that I thought had gone right into my heart. When he began pulling the skin off... worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. And then the rest of the texts he describes just how Aslan peels it off, it's painful, but he's able to bear it with the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off then ultimately turns into a boy again and he's baptized in the waters and dressed in new clothes.

Repentance is always painful. It's always painful to come to terms with your sinfulness to say, I am not the person I thought I was, I'm not as righteous as I thought I was, I'm actually sinful and I desire wicked things, harmful things, destructive things. I need cleansing, I need transformation. Psalm 51, six through 12. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, take me... take not your Holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, uphold me with a willing spirit.

Now he goes deep. He's dealt with the transgressions, the iniquities, he's dealt with the fact of the sin, now he goes deep and starts repenting of the heart desires that caused him to stumble. And he says Lord, you delight in truth in the inward being. He goes into the very depth of the heart and he says, Lord you delight when this truth inside assumption that there's not always truth inside and he says you teach me wisdom and the secret heart, what's he talking about? He's not just talking about the heart, he's talking about the secret heart. He's talking about the part of your heart that you are not even honest with yourself about, it's the secret heart.

There's things in your heart that you know you desire, but then there's secret part of your heart where God needs to teach us wisdom, if he doesn't, there's folly. So we need to stand in judgment so to speak as an umpire over our own secret heart and guard it, guard your heart, be careful what comes out of that secret heart. Do you speak truth and wisdom to the folly to counter the folly of the secret heart? Or do you let those little thoughts bubble up into your heart, into your mind, into your imagination, ultimately into your actions. So we've got to ask Lord, please teach me wisdom in my secret heart, teach me to fear you which leads to wisdom. He says purge me with hyssop, hyssop is a shrub with hairy little leaves where it retains more of the water and they would dip it into a bucket with water, a bucket with blood when there's the atonement and they'd splash on people in order to create an atoning cleansing feeling.

He says please Lord, with the hyssop purge me of the sin. The word for purge in the Hebrew is just a play on the word sin. De-sin me, de-dragging me... unsin me, please Lord, that's what he's begging. And so he's saying sin in a sense, it leads to a feeling of dirtiness, a shame that you feel you need cleansing from, almost like you need a shower but you need a shower for your soul, and the deeper the sin, the deeper the cleansing that you need. That's what repentance is, repentance is like a shower, that's why we need it on a daily basis. But once in a while, you need a deeper cleansing and for deeper cleansing, if you're from a Slavic background, or a Finnish background, or Scandinavian background, you know if you want a deeper cleansing, you go to the sauna.

My dad, his father was from Finland and my dad built a sauna recently, he was sending me pictures... we have a group family chat and he was sending me pictures of the sauna that's finished. He was like hey, come by for a sauna and I like... great, I like the sauna session, but sauna session with real Russians with... my dad's in that, you can't just sit there. You also need a venik and a venik is, its they rake birch branches, they dry them out, they bind it together and then you go in there and they dip it in water and then they say turn around and then you give them your back and they go... they start wailing on your back in a very like sadistic way, make it as painful as possible and then you can say hey, it's kind of painful. My dad's response is yeah, but it's good for you.

I'm cleansing you of the toxins of your skin and the beauty is you always have to trade and then whoever... you reciprocate of the love. So true deep repent is kind of like that, it's painful. With every smack it's painful, but there is a cleansing and David understands that this cleansing is going to transform him and though his sins are scarlet, he asked Lord please make me whiter than snow. But the deepest part of his prayer is this. He says God, I don't just want to be forgiven of my sins, I don't just want for you to blot out my sins, I want you and he begs God, don't cast your presence... don't cast me outside of your presence. Don't take the spirit of God from me, let not your Holy Spirit be taken from me, why is he saying this? Because he's seen this happen to Saul.

He saw King Saul, and he saw Saul turn away from the Lord and when he should have repented, he didn't. And then the spirit of God departed from Saul and Saul's life just went into shambles, fell apart. And he says please, don't take your Holy Spirit from me. We see that true repentance in David's mind, he begins to get it, the greatest thing that we get through repentance isn't just forgiveness, we get God. He doesn't just want the cleansing, doesn't just want the forgiveness, he wants the presence of God. In the Old Testament, in the Old Testament saints were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit was with them, it wasn't in them. In the New Testament after the day of Pentecost, now the Holy Spirit regenerates and it doesn't just regenerate, it seals our hearts and the Holy Spirit is now within every single Christian.

And that needs to change how we think about sin, that the Holy Spirit first of all is always with us. So he always gives us power to overcome sin, but then also if we choose to go against the spirit, we grieve the spirit and we go into a sin, into act of sin with the Holy Spirit, with us, that's what leads to grief. And David says I don't want that, I want your presence, I don't want to continue sitting. I want not just cleansing, not just forgiveness, I want renewal and transformation, that's why he says Lord, give me a clean heart. Give me an upright spirit, a new and willing and upright spirit, so repentance is deeper than remorse, it's a cry for regeneration. He says, I don't want to vacillate anymore between holiness and sin, I want holiness.

Second Corinthians 5:17. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. So repentance is turning from sin, turning to God and asking for all that God is willingly offering us. God you are the heart cleanser, clean my heart. God you are the spirit giver, give me the Holy Spirit. God you are the joy restorer and the bones that have been broken by the consequences of my sin, restore so that they dance with joy. God you are the life upholder, the sin remover. God I want all of that and as we draw near to Christ, he draws near to us. Repentance is turning from sin, its turning to God and its believing in the gospel. Where do we get the gospel from Second Samuel? Where do we get the gospel from Psalm 51? Look at second Samuel 12:13.

David said to Nathan, I've sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin, you shall not die. The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die, how can God say that? How can the just God of the universe say that and still remain just, he doesn't say here for your heinous sin we're going to bring a lamb, a sacrificial lamb, or goat or a bull, none of that happens. He says God has chosen to put your sin away, what sin? Sin of adultery and murder. Well, surely a righteous God can't just put away sin, you can't just pretend that it didn't happen without penalty. God is a righteous God and his wrath burns hot against sin, so why wasn't David killed? Why didn't David die for his sin? He should have, he deserved to.

How can God just forgive him and remain just. And also if you look at the Levitical code, Leviticus one through seven, which addresses the sacrifice... sacrificial system prescribed by God, it was only for unintentional sins. There were no sacrifices prescribed by God for premeditated or defiance sins, they couldn't be removed by sacrifices. So the penalty for adultery in the Old Testament, in the Levitical code, it was death. The penalty for murder, also death. So if there's no sacrifice for the sins and David deserves the death penalty, how could he be forgiven? And if all you have is the Hebrew scriptures, if all you have is the Old Testament, there is no answer. David didn't know a thousand years later, God would send a son of David, God would send his own son.

Jesus Christ came into the world and lived the life that David should have died... should have lived and Jesus died the death that David should have died. Before the foundation of the world, God planned to pay the penalty for David sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Hebrews 9: 13 to 14, for if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Jesus Christ lived the perfect life. Jesus never looked upon a woman and thought what can I take from her? He looked and he said how can I serve her?

The greatest illustration of that is the woman at the well who has been used by men for years, comes to Jesus and Jesus says I want to offer you true water, water that leads to eternal life. Jesus never took advantage of woman, Jesus never took advantage of a man. Jesus unlike David did not send an epistle, a letter for Uriah to die, instead Jesus Christ is the letter of God that was sent into this world. He is the word of God and Jesus took on Satan, sin and death on the front lines and he took it upon himself by himself, in the father's presence, the Holy Spirit's presence were taken away from the son and Jesus dies on the cross crying out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The father and the Holy Spirit they left the son so the son could absorb the wrath that we deserve for our law breaking... This is mind-boggling.

Jesus Christ, the sinless son of God became on the cross an adulterer. He became on the cross a murderer so that he could forgive David of his adultery and his murder. Sin became sins that we might become the righteousness of God. He didn't just take on David's sin, he took on our sins, all of our sins, each of our sins. In the very moment before he died, he said it is finished. In the very moment he said it is finished, the curtain in the temple surrounding the Holy of Holies was torn from the top to the bottom as proof that he is the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Our sins have been paid for by Jesus Christ, that's why David could be forgiven, that's why we can be forgiven. That's why when God commands us to repent, he's issuing an invitation, come, bring all of your sins, bring all of your shame, bring all of your guilt to Jesus Christ, who's willing to forgive.

In Psalm 51:13 David says this, I will teach transgressors your ways, then after being forgiven I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. He says my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness, my mouth will declare your praise, what's he saying? He's saying Lord forgive me and after I'm forgiven, I want to teach other sinners to find the grace that I have found. This is why if you truly come to faith in Christ, you care about others coming to faith. You want your neighbors and your friends, those who are far from the Lord, this is why Mosaic exists, we exist so that our friends, our neighbors, everyone in the city, everyone beyond, everyone that we come into contact with can have their sins forgiven.

God wants to forgive, God wants to cleanse, God wants to wash and what does he demand for forgiveness, for acceptance, for eternal life, he says this. The sacrifice of God are broken spirit, a broken in contrite heart, O God you will not despise. Jesus brought the ultimate sacrifice and now he calls us to bring our sacrifices, which are broken in spirit and are broken in contrite heart. So how do we accept that forgiveness? How do we do it? We do it by repenting the same way King David did and he prayed like this. Have mercy on me O God according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, let's pray.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, and welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. Today we are celebrating our ninth birthday as a church. Happy birthday Mosaic, happy birthday. Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday. My wife asked if we're having cake today. I said, "Baby, what is it? 2019? No. We'll have extra cake in 2021 at our 10 year birthday." Lord willing, Lord willing.

Thank you, everyone for your sacrifices, for your service, for your ministry. In particular, everyone who's been here one plus years, raise your hand if you've been here more than one year. Wow. Praise God. More than two years. More than three years. More than four years. More than five years. Vlad and Edgar. You've been here for five years? Six years. Seven, eight, nine. Elizabeth raising her hand, my daughter, Elizabeth. I remember how old Mosaic is because of Elizabeth. She's also nine. And Edgar. Edgar's been here from the beginning. Edgar started the church. Good job Edgar, thank you.

One really, really, really, really important note I want to make at the beginning. For us to reopen full force, we need to reopen Mini-Mosaic. To reopen Mini-Mosaic, we need 11 volunteers. 11 volunteers to sign up to help with Mini-Mosaic. Four assistant teachers, four front table. I start with those because those are the easiest. Front table is you just literally sit there and you look welcoming and you sign people up. Front table assistance, you don't really have to do much. It's just the gift of presence. And then we need three teachers.

Now this is an appeal in particular to the parents. Why in particular the parents? Because I know how tired you are being with the kids all week, this is a respite for you. You just want to come to church and just get a break from your kids. I know. It's hard. But here's the thing, if we get parents to sign up just for once a month, once a month, you serve all of the other parents in the community. So that's the appeal to the parents and then to anyone else who feels led by the Lord to serve in a really important way. We would love to help you sign up. You can do that by going downstairs after the service and talking to Raquel Ross, who was our Mini-Mosaic director and thank you in advance, TIA. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Holy God, we thank you that you are holy. Even though we are sinners, we don't have to lower your holiness. But we can be honest about your holiness, so we can be honest about our transgressions, our sins and our iniquities. Why? Because of your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you that you sent your son because you so loved the world, you sent your son, to die for our transgressions, our willful defiance against your law of our sins of missing the mark not because we didn't see it, but because we didn't want to see it and you're willing to forgive us of our transgressions, of our iniquities, of our sin because you placed it all on Jesus Christ and you are more willing, more ready to forgive us of our sins when we confess, than we are to confess.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you come today and that you send each one of us the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, and then ultimately the gift of good works, which is proof of heartfelt repentance. Holy God, I pray that you bless our time in the Holy Scriptures what an incredible Psalm, Psalm 32 is, and I pray that you help us experience the joy, the deep, heartfelt joy of being forgiven, the blessing of that gift. And we pray all this in Christ's Holy name, amen.

We're in a sermon series that we're calling Balm Psalms. Why? Because the Psalms are like balm for our souls. John Calvin said that the Psalms are an anatomy of every part of our souls. Therefore, if you want to study the human person, if you want to study yourself, if you want to know yourself, you need to study the Psalms. Anyone can give us knowledge of the human body, not anyone can give us knowledge of the human soul. Very few places that you can go to, and scripture is that place. The Psalms give us an expression of the whole range of human emotion from the highest of highs to the lowest of depths.

And one of the main emotions that is described in the book of Psalms is gratitude that leads to joy. Thanksgiving that leads to happiness. So the psalmist talks about Lord, we thank you. We're so grateful that you have saved us from the hands of our enemy, and we experience so much joy. Lord, we thank you that you allow us to come into your presence. Thank you for your presence, and we experience so much joy in your presence. And Lord, we thank you that you are our rightful king. You rule righteously and everything that you do we worship you for that. And we thank you for that. And we experience so much joy as we thank you.

Well, today we're going to talk about thanksgiving for forgiveness. As the psalmist, King David, as he repents of his sin, confesses his sin, he doesn't stop in the contrition. He doesn't stop in the confession. He doesn't stop in the broken heartedness. He moves on to thanking God for forgiving him, therefore experiencing incredible joy. He emphasized contrition, yes. But he doesn't stop there. And it seems paradoxical to talk about repentance in the context of thanksgiving and joy. When we think about confession, especially if you come from a Catholic background, confession is where you go and you tell the priest of all of your sins. You tell him, everything that you've done that's wrong, and then you walk out. You feel a little relief, but usually there's no transition into joy that then strengthens you, empowers you, enhances your walk with the Lord.

It seems paradoxical to talk about God, I thank you for forgiving my sin. And to talk about the bliss, the rapture, the thanksgiving you feel, the joy you feel after he forgives. It seems paradoxical unless you've experienced it. If you've experienced the joy that fills your heart when God forgives you, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you've experienced the relief of forgiveness, the removal of guilt, of shame and the freeness of the restoration, not just the forgiveness of sin, but a restoration of fellowship and service with Christ.

Here in the middle of our a sermon series in the Psalms, we're going to cover Psalm 32 today and Psalm 51 next week. And it's a two part examination analysis of what repentance looks like, true heartfelt repentance. Psalm 51 gives us the full confession, the full journey of realizing how Holy God is, and realizing just how deep and dark our sin is. And he goes through that whole progression. Here, in Psalm 32, we don't get the full progression, we get the destination. So the point of the Psalm is, why wouldn't you repent of your sin? Look at the destination. So much freedom and your soul. So much forgiveness God is offering us.

So Psalm 51 is the journey of complete confession, Psalm 32 is the destination, that's what we're talking about. Holy Scripture tells us that God is in the business of turning a negative into a positive. And the more negative the negative, the more positive the positive. The deeper the loss the greater the win and the restoration. Scripture talks about God turning doubt into trust. Anger into love, sadness into joy. He talks about darkness getting turned into light, death into life, sinners into saints, and at the very center of Christianity is Jesus Christ dying on the cross, the ultimate death of the Son of God. The worst thing that we can imagine happening in all of the universe, and then God restores it into the resurrection. And that's what this Psalm is about, that God is willing to find us, meet us in our loss and he's willing to forgive us any and all sins upon sincere confession.

And what is sincere confession? It's not just acknowledging our sin, but it's also acknowledging that we have a desire to no longer sin in the same way. To no longer fall in the same way we fall. To no longer commit transgressions and iniquities. And true confession leads to true restoration. And that's the two parts of true repentance. Confession is the negative side and then restoration is the positive side. So that's what we're going to look at in Psalms 32. Would you look at the text with me. Psalms 32. A maskil of David. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of the summer.

I acknowledge my sin to you. And I did not cover my iniquity I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore let everyone who was godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me, you preserve me from trouble, you surround me with shouts of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding which must be curbed with a bit and bridle or it will not stay near you. Many are the sorrows of the wicked but steadfast love surrounds the one who trust in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice a righteous and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Two parts to the sermon, because there's two parts to the Psalm, we'll talk about the happiness of confession and then the happiness of restoration. First of all, the happiness of confession. The big idea of this Psalm, especially the first part of the Psalm is that God wants you to be happy. He's offering you happiness, He has created you for happiness in the presence of Himself. And happy are those who when we sin, which we do on a daily basis, instead of keeping silent, we confess our sins to the Lord, and the Lord is sure to forgive.

So this is Psalm 32, a maskil of David. Maskil means instruction. It's a Psalm of instruction and it instructs in the way that we should go, and particularly and way to find happiness in the presence of the Lord. And He begins with a double blessing. Verse one and verse two, you see that blessed and blessed. The word blessing, I asked my daughters last night. Every night, we have devotion before we go to bed. And we've been going through the Psalms, because I'm preaching from the Psalms, I've been living in the Psalms. So we were in Psalms 32, and I said, "What is blessing?" And my daughter, Sophia says, "Blessing is when God blesses you." Public school nowadays. You can't use the word in as you're defining the word. You can't do that. But I think a lot of us we have a hard time because it seems so abstract. In what other contexts do you hear the word blessing other than, Instagram hashtag blessed when you're in a very nice place?

What does it mean that we are blessed? And the word really in the original, it just means happiness. It's the ultimate form of happiness, and theologians get into the difference between joy and happiness. But it's the ultimate form of bliss, of euphoria that you feel, that says there's a blessing that comes with knowing that you're right with the Lord. The greatest source of blessing is God Himself. And what gets in the way of us experiencing God, and the presence of God, experiencing a deep, profound, abiding relationship with the Lord is our sin. So if sin is in the way of experiencing joy, we need something to save us from that sin. So He says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. We get three nouns here for sin. There's three different aspects, angles that we get of sin.

The first word they use is transgression. What is transgression? This is utter rebellion. It's a personal defiance, deliberate defiance against God when you know God's way, and you know how you should be living but you choose not to. It's a raised fist to God. Sin. What is sin? Sin is missing the mark that God set. A mark, it's an archery term, and we miss it. We shoot at the mark and we miss it, the word is used in Judges 20, where there were elite soldiers, Benjamites who could use a slingshot in such a way that it would hit a single hair. And if you hit the mark, you have not sinned. That's what the original term means. And then iniquity is deviation from the right path. It's going astray, taking the wrong road. So this is the picture that He paints for us, that there's a mark, God says, "This is how to live a godly life, a happy life, a full life." That's the mark.

And you're to walk in that way toward that mark, and one degree off and you're going to end up in a completely different place, one degree off, and he says what happens is we see the mark, we see the path, but we choose to transgress. We choose a different path deliberately because we think we can circumnavigate God to find happiness. And this is what the world promises, this is what Satan promises, this is what our flesh promises, that true happiness is found outside of God. He says, this is my sin together. They particularly the full dimension of human, evil, all of our sin.

And then, to counter the three nouns for sin, he gives us three verbs for forgiveness. There's forgiving and there's covered and there's not counted. Forgiven is there's a burden on me. It's like a backpack full of rocks, as you're climbing up a mountain, there's a burden upon you. And to be forgiven means that the burden is lifted. Covered, the sin is covered, it's concealed, it's out of sight. It's a forensic term. Like you're in a court of law and the judge says you're not guilty and not counted, not imputed, it's not reckoned. God doesn't record it.

So here, David says, "This is really the key to happiness." Are you struggling with happiness in your life? Do you find that you're missing happiness? That you're going through days, that you're going through weeks through months, you're just in a funk. He says, perhaps you're missing out on the blessing of the forgiveness, of the covering of the not counting, or not imputation. So he takes all of sin, as dark as it is and he says, "No matter how dark the sin, God can deliver from all of it." And he indicates with these three verbs, a completeness of divine deliverance from all evil within, of everything that we've done that's evil.

We have a hard time understanding just how incredible this is, because we take it for granted. Many of us, if you've heard of Christianity, if you heard of Jesus, if you heard of God, yes, of course, God forgives. Yes of course, Jesus loves me. He died on the cross for all my sins. Yes, of course, I should just believe in Him and be forgiven. Yes, yes, yes. But it doesn't lead to joy because we don't see the depth of our sin. We don't see it graphically. And this is why the Old Testament is important every Christian needs to be... We don't have enough Old Testament theology in our practical lives of theology. If you read the New Testament, apart from the Old Testament, you don't get the full picture of God, of holiness, of sin. In the Old Testament, God provided for sin to be atoned for. And He provided a very vivid, a very graphic, a very gory picture of forgiveness.

Study in Leviticus 16. Leviticus 16 talks about the Day of Atonement where the people of God will gather before God's presence. And the priest would, after slaughtering a bull the priest would take two goats. The first goat he would slaughter, blood, gory, all of that. And then that blood was to be a symbol of the provision that we need for the atonement of our sin because sin leads to death. The penalty for sin is death. So if we are to be forgiven, if our sin is to be atoned for, if we're not going to die, something has to die in our stead. That's the first goat.

The second goat, the priest would lay hands on that goat and confess in particular, all of the sins of the people of Israel. As the hands are laid, he's confessing the sins of the people, the transgressions, the sins, the iniquities and then sends the goat away to die in the wilderness. In the Old Testament, God promised that there is forgiveness, there is atonement for a limited time, in bringing this guilt offering. And every year, the people got would be reminded that sin leads to death. Sin leads to death, sin leads to death.

And only in that context, can you understand the incredible grace of God where He sends the ultimate Lamb of God. Not a goat, but a lamb, a sheep. And that sheep is Jesus Christ, He's the Lamb of God that took all of the sins of the world upon Himself. And He died on the cross in our stead, with all of our sins, every single one of our particular sins laid upon Him as if He had committed all of those transgressions, acts and iniquities, and then He is slaughtered. Like a sheep, He's led to the slaughter and then He's slaughtered, His blood is shed, His body is broken, so that there is now provision for the forgiveness of our sins.

So Jesus now is our ultimate sacrifice. Jesus Christ is our ultimate high priest and Jesus Christ is our temple. Therefore, as we think about Jesus forgiving our sins, we can't rejoice in the forgiveness of sins until we come in contrition, in brokenness of heart to the foot of the cross and see Christ dying in our stead.

Anything you have ever done can be forgiven by God, any sin, any iniquity, any transgression. And you can get specific and you can... We have those places in our minds where we store our pasts. They're just there. They're embedded, it's indelible, you can't get rid of it. It's just there. And we try and close that door. But when we understand that Christ, His sacrifice is enough to cleanse me from all of that, we can now begin to experience joy and happiness.

Now what's the catch? Is there a catch to the forgiveness of all of my past sins? And not just past, but past, present and future. What's the catch? And there is a catch. That's Psalm 32, two, blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit. That's the catch. There is no deceit. He's saying, God can't forgive you of sins that you keep covered up. God can't forgive you of sins that you keep masked in masks of fake righteousness, self righteousness, self justification, mask of duplicity, deceitfulness, disguise. And here's why we do, because it's so hard to own up to that's how dark my sin is, that's how wicked I am, that I can do this X, Y and Z, we would rather cover it, "No, I'm not that bad."

And he's saying, if there's a spirit of deceit in us, there is no hope for forgiveness. Because the spirit of deceit keeps us from being honest with God. And as we're in the Psalm you need to ask yourself, and it's difficult, I know. But you need to do this really hard soul work and just ask yourself, what am I hiding from God? Because I'm hiding it from myself. That's the ultimate reason why we're hiding it from ourselves because you can't hide anything from God. But we're not honest with God. What are you covering up in self justification or with comparison, where you grade yourself on a curve, because the people around you are so much worse than you are?

So this Psalm calls us, to come to the Lord of naked transparency, to take off every single one of our masks. Stop pretending that you're better than you are. Jesus loves you. God loves you, not the masked you. Take the masks off, come to Him, be honest with yourself and with God. How did David do it? David, a great man after God's own heart, David, who wrote so much of the Holy Scriptures, David, the greatest king that Israel had ever had. Had David ever experienced a season where he was ensnared by the spirit of deceit? Yes. And that's what makes this Psalm so profound, that he lived through this.

This great man of God had been blinded by the spirit of deceit, and you can study this, and Holy Spirit, we'll deal with it more next week. But David, when he should have been in battle, he stays home. And he's on his roof and he starts looking where he shouldn't have been looking. And one thing leads to another and he sees this woman, Bathsheba, who was married to Uriah. And he has her brought to him and he impregnates her. And then instead of repenting of that egregious sin, he tries to cover it up because of spirit of deceit. He would rather cover it up because it's too costly to be honest about the sin. So he masks himself, masks what he's done, and then he calls Uriah, Bathsheba's husband who's at battle to come home, because he thinks if Uriah spends time with his wife, then there's an excuse for the baby that's coming. Uriah being a loyal soldier, he refuses and says, "Look, I'm not going to sleep at home in the comfort of my home when my brothers are at war."

So he doesn't do what David wanted him to do. So David's sin, it's more likely it will become public. So David sees that there's only one way to continue covering up the sin and that's to get Uriah out of the picture. So he tells Joab his general, "Send Uriah to the very front, the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him so that he might be struck down." David with his words, commits murder. Uriah now dies, he's out of the picture, David can now marry Bathsheba. Uncomfortable. And if you study especially the Old Testament, you see how graphic sin is. How dark it is. And that's for us to understand just how incredible grace is. But it all starts with the spirit of deceit. No, that's not a sin. No, I'm entitled to this. I deserve this. I've sacrificed so much. God owes me this. There's a million ways to rationalize our sin when we lawyer up ourselves.

Deceit kept him quiet. Verse three, from when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of the summer. He gave us three nouns to describe sin and then he gives us three verbs for how God forgives. But he gives us three ways that he suffered before he repented. When he was silent, his bones wasted away, day and night your hand was heavy upon me, and my strength was dried up. How long did David keep quiet after sleeping with Bathsheba and murdering Uriah? How long did he keep quiet? Almost a year. Almost a year this great man of God pretended that he was holy, pretended that he was righteous, pretended that he was leading the people of God in all righteousness. And in the meantime, he's got this mask on of righteousness, of hypocrisy. And deep inside, he's wilting away.

He talks about his bones almost rotting, languishing from deep inside. His bones are wasting away. He's talking about his core. In his core, he doesn't have words to describe his spirit, his soul. But it feels like in his bones there's rot. And he's talking about the physical anguish that starts with mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological anguish. It's devastating. And this is a metaphor for a depression that comes when there's known sin in our lives.

Sometimes, sometimes, and I'm not saying that there's not physical depression, and we can have that... But I am saying that sometimes we feel depression in our lives because of unconfessed sin. That's what this text is saying. Silence about sin makes us physically sick. I'm not saying that all sickness is because of personal sin. That's not true. Because even the disciples looked at a person who was blind and they said, "Jesus, who sinned? Was it him or was it his parents?" Because they think that all sickness can be attributed to a person's sin or the parents' and etc. Jesus said, "No, it's for the glory of God."

But sometimes, and this is a conversation that a lot of Christians don't want to have nowadays, because they're like, "Oh, now we're getting into the medical field and the pastor is not a doctor, so he can't talk." I'm saying it's clear from scripture, that some sickness does come from sin. The presence of habitual sin in our lives. In all kinds of ways, where anxiety increases, stress increases, and perhaps leads to knots in the back or higher blood pressure, shorter temper, insomnia or extra pounds. There's an unexplained affliction in our lives. If it comes out of nowhere, we must ask as we're praying for healing, as we're praying for restoration, we must ask, "Lord is there sin in my life that is leading to this?" David clearly knew, he says, "My bones are rotting, they're wasting away." There's something wrong deep inside.

And God sometimes does send that heavy hand of affliction, which is a proven sign of His love. Revelation three 19, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. God's is a good father and when His children are sinning, sometimes, because we won't willingly repent, He does send reproval or discipline. Psalm 32, five, from the anguish that he's experiencing, spiritually, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, all of that. From that anguish, the graphic imagery of that anguish, we see a matter of fact declaration. Psalm 32, five, I acknowledge my sin to you. I did not cover my iniquity I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah. Selah, by the way, means just a break. It's just a pause and he wants us to pause here and meditate on what he's just said.

And by the way, the confession is missing, the confession itself, that's Psalm 51, we'll talk about that next week, when the prophet Nathan confronts David and David confess I've sinned against the Lord. But David here, and I want you to notice, he says, my, three times. My sin, my iniquity, my transgressions particular. I confess, I acknowledge it, I will confess to whom, it always starts with the one against whom you primarily sinned, against the Lord. This is what true repentance is. It's not just saying, "God forgive me of sins." God forgive me for my sins. My iniquities, my particular transgressions, he owns his sin. He fights the spirit of deceit. He owns his sin. He acknowledges it, he doesn't cover it. He confesses it the sin weighed him down, and God's forgiveness releases him from the burden.

One of my favorite things about verses one and two is in the Hebrew the verbs precede the nouns. He talked about his transgressions, he talked about sins, he talked about his iniquities. But in the Hebrew, the verbs forgiven comes before transgression. Is forgiven transgression, is covered over sin, not counted by the Lord for iniquity. And what he's saying is that God is so ready to forgive us of our sins. He is a forgiving God. He's a God of grace. He's so gracious that we can't even talk about our sin without speaking first about forgiveness, about the covering, about the not counting. The ordering is important. Because even for us to acknowledge our sin is already a work of grace in God in our heart. For us to even think about repentance is already proof of the work of God in our lives.

We don't come to repentance because we finally logically worked it out, reasoned it out. Repentance is alien to us. Just like Gods imputed righteousism is alien to us, repentance is alien to us. We are so sinful that we cannot even repent on our own. That's why when a lot of people say, "Yeah, you know what? For a season I'm going to sin." Christians grow up in church and then they go to college, "I'm going to sin for a season and then I'll come back to church." Repentance is not in your power. Repentance is a gift from the Lord. Where do I see this? Romans two, four, or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience? Not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? A lot of Christians, they are getting degree by the degree subtly hardened to the presence of God, to the person of God, because they are presuming upon His grace, "I'll repent when it is convenient to me." That's false. That's a false narrative.

Repentance comes from God. God leads us to repentance in His kindness. Acts 11, 18, when they heard these things, they have fell silent and they glorified God saying, "Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life." Repentance itself as a gift from the Lord. Second Timothy, two, 24 and 25, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. And they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. Repentance is a gift.

So if you feel the Holy Spirit working in you, this desire to repent of your sin, of your iniquity, of your transgression, do not presume that there will be multiple other chances. Perhaps there will be. Whenever you feel the Holy Spirit convicting you of sin, leading you to repentance, at that moment, you must repent. It's an act of the Holy Spirit in us, resulting in the outflow of repentance in our rebellion. This is how rebellious we are, how naturally stubborn we are, that we cannot repent on our own. Even repentance is a gift. Even faith to believe in the God of the universe who's holy, against whom we've sinned, even to have faith is a gift. Ephesians two, eight through 10, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. What's the gift of God? Salvation. Not a result of work so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in Him.

You've been saved by grace through faith, that's a gift. Salvation is a gift. But it is the gift of God. The emphasis isn't just on salvation, it's on faith itself. This is how gracious God's grace is that even the faith to believe in Him is a gift. And the repentance comes together with it. So he says, do not be silent about your sin, confess your sin to the Lord, it's already been exposed on the cross. On the cross all of your past, present, future sins, all of them have been laid down on Christ. There's no need to hide. And if God would immediately forgive King David for his egregious sin before the coming of Christ in person, how much more so will He forgive us our sins that have already been paid for, and confession is just how we accept this gift. First John one, seven through nine, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

Even when we're walking in the light, we still have sin, and we need to be cleansed of it. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There is a caveat, that a lot of people don't talk about. The caveat to having all of your sins forgiven is honesty. Brutal honesty, naked transparency before God. St. Augustine, one of my favorite theologians, he had Psalm 32 inscribed on the wall by his sick bed to remind himself. And this is a person who had lived decades of holy, righteous living, worked for the Lord, served the Lord. But he wanted to be reminded of his sin, iniquity, transgression, that's all been forgiven, covered, removed, not counted against him. Why? Because he said, "The beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner." The beginning of knowledge is to know oneself to be a sinner.

Doesn't matter how many years you invest in getting an education, getting knowledge, if you don't know yourself to be a sinner before a holy God, you don't know anything of ultimate importance. This is why when Jesus Christ came, what was the very first word on his lips as written down in Holy Scripture? Gospel of Matthew chapter four, verse 17, the very first word out of the mouth of Jesus Christ in the Holy Scripture is the word repent. Repent. And because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, the commandment of repent is not God issuing condemnation, it's God issuing an invitation. By repent, He's saying, come and receive forgiveness. Come and receive a new heart, a transformed mind that leads to a new life.

Now we don't stop there. This is important. I always get carried away with point one. We don't stop there. A lot of people say confession, just confess your sins, acknowledge your sins. God forgive me my sins. True repentance always leads to a transformation of life. And this is the point two, happiness of restoration. Happiness of confession always leads to a change of worship, a change of the way that we live. Psalm 32, six and seven. Therefore, based on that forgiveness, therefore everyone who's godly offer prayer to you at a time, when you may be found surely in a rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for him, you preserve him from trouble, you surround him with shots of deliverance.

All of a sudden, he went from sinner, transgressor, a person who commits iniquity, he goes to being godly. You see that word in verse six, who is godly. He calls himself godly. This is imputed righteousness of God. God who is now my security, He is my rock, He is my salvation. He is my preservation and Him alone now I worship. We see in verses one through five, he had sinned because his object of worship was wrongheaded. He was worshiping pleasure. He was worshiping an idolatry, comfort, security, significance. Now repentance leads to new worship and he's worshiping God with shouts of deliverance. Isaiah 55, six and seven, seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him returned to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

He's saying, seek the Lord while He may be found. Pray to the Lord while He may be found. Verses eight, and nine, I will instruct you, who's talking now? It's God. All of a sudden we go from David speaking to God, the Holy Spirit's speaking, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. He's saying true repentance always recognizes, I've been on the wrong path, I'm going to repent. That's what repentance is, it's a change of mind that leads to a change of heart, that leads to a change of life. Now he says, I want to live a different life, I want to follow the instruction of the Lord willingly.

This is how the gospel of Jesus Christ changes everything. Every other religion, every other worldview, you study any revolution, you study anyone who tries to change the world. Apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ, everyone tries to change the world by changing forcefully the behavior of a person. Submit to me, say this, follow this way, become part of this particular movement, or else. Christianity comes in and God doesn't just say, repent, or die. He says, repent because Christ has died. See how much I loved you. I've given myself in order to forgive you. When you see Christ dying on the cross for your sin, it changes your heart. Now you want to follow him. Now you're not like the donkey and you're not like the horse or the mule, which they need pain in order to follow. He says, no. Christ took our pain. And now when we see that he did on the cross for us, we now follow because our hearts are changed, our hearts are live toward God.

Psalm 32, 10, many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trust in the Lord. And that's the key phrase, the wicked trust in themselves. They trust in their works, they trust in their righteousness they trust in themselves. Whereas the righteous person, trusts in the Lord and when they trust in the Lord, the Lord's love, is the power that surrounds them and empowers them. Psalm 32, 11, be glad in the Lord and rejoice, oh, righteous and shout for joy all you upright in heart. Started with the blessing of being forgiven, the blessing of having your iniquities covered, your transgressions removed. And then he ends with gladness, rejoicing and righteousness, and a shout for joy. Three calls to exalt. Be glad, rejoice and shout for joy.

Do we face hardships in life when we follow the Lord? Yes, of course. Maybe even more so. But he says when the waters of difficulty rise against us, they won't reach us. In the beginning he said, it's blessed to be forgiven, blessed to have our transgressions removed, not counted against us. The mark that we talked about, that mark, the end goal, that's home. A lot of people sin, because they think that home is not where God is. Home is something that we build for ourselves. And that's what happened with the prodigal son. The prodigal son said, "I am going to experience more happiness and joy apart from the father. I'm going to take everything that father's given me and I'm going to and enjoy life. I'm going to build a life for myself apart from the father."

And apart from the father, he doesn't find happiness. He finds brokenness. And then finally he repents, he comes to he's senses. That's what repentance is. And he comes back to the father hoping that there's a chance that he will be forgiven. And this is Luke 15, 18 through 20, I will arise and go to my father, I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

This is the beauty of Christianity because this is the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We don't even have the potential of being forgiven. God is so ready to forgive us. He is on the road waiting for us to return. And then he runs toward him, he hugs and he kisses him and he completely forgives him because of the compassion he felt for him. This is the God that we worship, this is the God that we praise, this is the God who was ready to forgive. So if you do have sins, if you have a spirit of deceitfulness, today is the day of repentance in particular because we are celebrating Holy Communion. And I'm going to read first Corinthians 11, 23 through 32. And as I do, Elizabeth, would you mind bringing me one of the little communion cups? I forgot to bring it. I was so excited to preach. I forgot we're... Just one of them, Elizabeth. Since you're nine, and we're celebrating Mosaic's ninth birthday. Okay, nobody look at her so she won't be shy. Thank you, sweetheart. She looks very autumnal today. Thank you baby.

First Corinthians 11, 23 through 32. The words of St. Paul as inspired by the Holy Spirit, for I received from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed, He took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also, He took the cup and after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant of my blood do this, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. What does it mean to partake in a Holy Communion in an unworthy manner? What can make us worthy before the Lord? Nothing that we do. What makes us worthy before the Lord is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But in particular for us, what makes us unworthy today when we believe in Jesus Christ is to partake in the Holy Communion with a spirit of deceit, where we know that there is unrepentant sin in our lives that we have allowed to fester, and to grow. Before you partake in Holy Communion, make sure that you repent wholeheartedly before the Lord. Confess, acknowledge and cry out to the Lord to give you the power of the Holy Spirit, to turn from the path of sin, to step into the path of righteousness.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread, or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of Christ. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak, and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So if you are a Christian, a repentant Christian, who's repentant today of sin, particular sins, this is a chance to repent, to accept grace and to participate in Holy Communion. If you are not a Christian, if you have not repented of your sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It won't do anything for you, instead, just spend the time meditating on the gospel of Jesus Christ. What does it mean that the God of the universe sent His Son to die in my place for my sins, and is willing to forgive? Would you pray with me as we pray over the bread and the cup.

Holy God, we thank you for the bread and the cup. We thank you that the bread symbolizes the body of Christ, which is physically broken for us and the cup symbolizes the blood of Christ, which is physically poured out for us. But the physical pain wasn't the greatest pain that you experienced. In the same way that King David experienced spiritual anguish, psychological anguish, deep inside, as his bones, it felt like, were wasting away, Jesus you experienced that wasting way of the soul because you took our sin upon yourself. That was the greatest anguish as you took our sin. The sinless Son of God took our sin and bore the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin, for our transgression, for our iniquity. And Jesus, you did that willingly. Because you love us. You want the best for us, which is God. And you reconciled us with God because of your sacrifice. And we thank you for that.

And now in the presence of God, we can experience the joy of forgiveness and the joy of God's presence. Bless our time in the Holy Communion. We repent of all our sins and we pray that you forgive us. We pray that you count them not against us. We pray that you reckon not on our account, instead in pure to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took the break and after breaking it he said, "This is my body broken for you, take eat and do this in remembrance of me." He then proceeded to take the cup and He said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood which is poured out for the sins," many, "take, drink and do this in remembrance of me."

Holy, gracious and merciful God, we thank you, that you Holy Trinity did not leave us in our sins but before the foundation of the world you had a plan to redeem us. You predestined for us to be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit because of your son's work on the cross. We thank you, Jesus, that you showed us the way of life and the way of life is the way of the cross, where we are called on a daily basis to deny ourselves and to follow you. And Lord wherever we do sin, transgress, wherever we commit iniquities of stepping off your path, I pray that you give us the gift of repentance, the gift of grace to turn from that sin and turn back to your path, so that we can continue to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ, whose name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Or for us here today, good afternoon. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. This is a prerecorded service. We are meeting online right now this Sunday, because the temple where we meet has plans and preparations for one of their great annual holidays. So, we are meeting online. We look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you for just being flexible, after a long season of being flexible. But we pray that the Lord would continue to work profoundly through the mediums of technology that he's given to us. Today, we are continuing. Before I go into that, if you are new to Mosaic, you can still sign one of our connection cards. You can click on a link and fill one out. If you want to learn certain information about the church, the body here, our values, community groups, fill that out. We want to get to know you. We will follow up with you. Please do that.

But today, we are continuing in our series, Balm Psalms. We've been going through this series through the Psalms, talking about how the Psalms are like balm for our soul. They're soothing. They meet us. They give us words to our deepest and strongest emotions in the Christian walk. Additionally, they drop balms of truth for us. Today, we're going through Psalm 22. Growing up, my mom used a lot of skin products. And some skin products, you just have to use over and over and over again for days before they make a difference, before they improve your condition, before they improve that cracked skin. Psalm 22 is one that you really have to spend time with. You have to meditate on. If you don't know, this is the Psalm that is typically referred to on Black Friday.

Good Friday, excuse me. On Good Friday. And on Good Friday, we typically read about the afflictions of Jesus Christ, as he approaches the cross, and he's on the cross. Often, the pastors, preachers will spend time quoting Psalm 22. Psalm 22 is the most quoted Psalm, most quoted, most alluded to Psalm in the New Testament. This is a crucial Psalm in the history, in God's redemptive history. And so, just want to delve right into it.

The best way to really take in this Psalm is to read it by yourself. Meditate on it. Spend time with it. Go back and forth in between the New Testament and the Old Testament. When you spend time with that, you see this is a Psalm written 1000 years before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Before crucifixion was even invented, crucifixion is predicted here. There's a lot of debate when you dig into the commentaries. Does this prophesy? Was David functioning as a prophet when he wrote the Psalm? Yes, it should be blatant. It should be obvious. You should read this Psalm with me right now, and think that you're in the New Testament. Today, I'm not going to exposit it. It's a little too long for me to take you through all 30 or so verses in one sitting. I want to pull out a crucial theme that is a part of this text. Would you please listen as I read the word of God? Psalm 22. "To the choirmaster, according to the Doe of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. "Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. "But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. 'He trusts in the Lord, let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, for he delights in him.'

"Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.

"Many bulls encompass me. Strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death.

"For dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

"But you, O Lord, do not be far off. O you my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion. You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen.

"I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel. For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.

"From you comes my praise in the great congregation. My vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever.

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

"All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship. Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it." This is the word of our Lord. Please pray with me.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for this text. We praise you for just the details that you have laid before us to show the lengths, the depths that you went, that Jesus Christ endured, to preserve your name and provide a means of salvation for us. Lord, we praise you for your holiness. We praise you for working for your great name, and inviting us into relationship you with great compassion. Heavenly Father, we pray right now. Use this time of worship together to give us a grand vision of you, in all your glory and all your holiness. Give us a healthy fear. Shake us to the core, that we may worship you properly. Holy Spirit, please be with us. Correct and sharpen our hearts, as we delve into your word. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

If you know the tiniest bit of Christianity, you'll know that the Bible claims that God is holy. You might have distant memories of singing Holy, Holy, Holy. Lord God Almighty, if you grew up in the Protestant church. If you're from a Catholic background, you might be triggered by the word holy, to think of first holy communion. If you like history, you might think of Holy Wars. Sadly, some of you, many of you, when you hear the word holy, you might only think of ways that you've sinfully used it in a profane manner at a time of exasperation. Whatever your association with the word holy, if you've been in the church for any amount of time, the word has probably become commonplace to you, a common part of speech, something you encounter a lot in God's word, and hear and say in prayer in small groups. But when we think about the word holy, the sad reality is that a lot of us in the church don't understand God's holiness. And we downplay its importance in our lives. That's wrong.

Isaiah 6:3 is a passage that highlights the importance of God's holiness. The prophet Isaiah, at the time of his calling, he receives a vision from the Lord, sitting on his throne in all of his glory, with seraphim, these heavenly beings on either side of him. One seraph calls out to the other seraph and says, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory." We can't speed past the repetitive nature of holy made here. It wasn't sufficient for the seraph to say, "God is holy." The seraph had to use the word holy three times to capture the depth and breadth of God's holiness.

In Hebrew culture at that time, to say something twice was to make clear that this was really important. The listener here should focus in upon hearing something repeated twice. To say something three times was to attach supreme, superlative importance to something. In all of scripture, the only quality of God that is mentioned three times in succession is holy, holy, holy. Isaiah says, God is not simply holy or even holy, holy, He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, or wrath, wrath, wrath, justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy. And that's not enough. The whole earth is full of his glory.

When we think of holy, holy, holy, it's supposed to stretch the boundaries of our intellect, stretch the boundaries of our imagination, whatever you think of when you hear the word holy, hear that God is holy, you need to know that God is in an entirely different category of holiness. He's much holier than you ever thought he could be.

When we think here, holy, holy, holy, it's meant to humble us with the realization that God is different from us. That God is infinitely greater than anyone and everyone who has ever lived, who has ever existed. This is essential to know that God's holiness is the crucial feature of his being. The crucial essence of his being when we come to Psalm 22. When we come to Psalm 22, we're walking on holy ground. Charles Spurgeon, a great preacher, pastor once said, "We should read Psalm 22 reverently, putting off our shoes from off our feet, as Moses did at the burning bush, for if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is this Psalm."

Why is it holy? In seeing the grave detail, we see the length that God went to preserve his own holiness, by pouring out his wrath for the sins of man on his own son. Perhaps more than any other piece of scripture, the holiness of God is on full display in Psalm 22. His ways are altogether different. He himself is altogether different. Today, I want to talk about God's holiness. I just want to clarify even further, what is holiness? What is God's holiness? Why does God's holiness matter? How does God's holiness provide comfort? I'll go back and forth to this more topical connection with the text.

What is holiness? The word for holiness comes from the Hebrew word qadosh, which means to cut. To be holy means to be cut off, to be set apart from everything else. It means to be in a class by oneself, a cut above the rest, when we think of great athletes, great artists, great figures. Qadosh has another layer of meaning. I mean, to be holy, qadosh means to be entirely morally pure, in every way possible, at all time. Often, holiness is cut short in its definition. It's defined by using only one aspect, one of the aspects that I just presented, but we have to include both. To say that God is holy is to say that his holiness occupies a place of power and moral purity that no one else has ever had before, or where no one else has ever sat before. We therefore don't have anything that we can compare him, as a frame of, compare God's holiness to as a frame of reference. Because there's no metaphors, there's no similes, there's no comparisons that quantify what God's holiness is in relation to us.

God is altogether different. He's altogether pure. To say that he is holy is synonymous with saying that he is God. Psalm 2, we touched on this in recent weeks, it taps into this. "Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, 'Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.' He who sits on the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 'As for me, I've set my King on Zion, my holy hill.'"

It's folly to think, for rulers of the nations to think themselves, think of their thrones on a similar level of God in his holiness. First Samuel 2:2 proclaims, "There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none besides you. There is no rock like our God." Exodus 15:11 asks, "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?"

To clarify even further, God's holiness is not just a feature. I misspoke a couple of minutes ago, it's not just a feature of who he is or what he does. His holiness is not just one of many other attributes that sets him apart from all other beings. God's holiness is the essence of who he is. Everything God thinks, desires, speaks, and does is an expression of his holiness. Therefore, God is holy in every attribute and every action. He is holy in power. He is holy in justice. He is holy in awe. He is holy in mercy. He is holy in grace. He is holy in sovereignty. He is holy in wisdom. He is holy in patience, holy in wrath, holy in faithfulness, holy in compassion. He's holy even in his holiness. So why, point two, why does this matter?

If you're anything like me, you're probably thinking, "I kind of get it. I think I can define how he's holy. But what does this mean for me? How does this doctrine impact my life?" First and foremost, the holiness of God is at the center of the redemptive narrative of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's at the center of scripture. It is the holiness of God that brings us to this moment, highlighted in Psalm 22, that points to Jesus Christ bearing the wrath for man's sin on the cross. Without the holiness of God, there'd be no moral law to which every human being is responsible. Without the holiness of God, there would be no divine wrath, as depicted graphically in Psalm 22, against man's sin. Without the holiness of God, there would be no need for a perfect son sent as an acceptable sacrifice, as atonement for the sins of man. Remove God's holiness from our doctrine, or remove it from the life of the church, remove it from the speech of mankind, and it all boils down to your sense of right and wrong.

Really means nothing. Your sense, your desire for justice means nothing. Our sense of these things, it stems from God's holiness. God has imputed to us some of, communicated to us some of his attributes. As image-bearers, we know, we have it written on our heart what is right and wrong. And so, we can't ignore God's holiness. Some people come to Christianity and they say, "I want to learn about God." They want to read. They want to study. They want to do the apologetics. They want to engage in argument. But they don't want to confront God's holiness. They think they don't need that. You can't come to Christianity without confronting God's holiness. It's at the center of the story.

So, how does God's holiness provide comfort? Want to read from Psalm 22 again. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The famous words that Jesus Christ spoke while he was hanging on the cross. "Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel." In a moment that seems so out of control, that seems so evil, where wrong seems to be rewarded and right seems to be punished, where God seems to have abandoned the Psalmist, abandoned Jesus Christ, it's the recollection and the love of the holiness of God that allowed the Psalmist, that allowed Christ to persevere through the crucifixion. This is the first thing that he says in that feeling of forsakenness, that feeling of abandonment.

With the utterance of "my God, my God," in the midst of this excruciating trial, Christ still views God the Father as God. He doesn't lash out against God. He doesn't shake his fist at him. He does not revoke his faith in the Father. He does not seek his own vindication in the moment. What he finds refuge in, what he seeks, what he proclaims first and foremost is, "Yet you are holy." It's the holiness of God, and leaning into that, in this moment, that allows the Psalmist, that allowed Jesus Christ to stay faithful and persevere through the most despairing of moments. Jesus Christ, thinking about his father, his holiness, knows that God is far bigger in his holiness than the circumstances that he faces.

A.W. Pink, theologian says, "Never did divine holiness appear more beautiful and lovely than at the time our Savior's countenance was marred in the midst of his dying groans." This Christ himself acknowledges in Psalm 22. When God had turned a smiling face from him and thrust his sharp knife into his heart, which forced that terrible cry from him, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," he adores this perfection. A lot of theologians take time to argue, he had the whole Psalm in his mind. What the Psalmist knew when he wrote this, what Jesus knew and believed with the eyes of his heart, was that in every situation that he was in, in the care of his sovereign and holy father.

In our lives, it's the same. Every situation you have been in, every situation you are in, the situation you're in right now, every situation you will be in is under the sovereign control of the holy God. It often doesn't seem this way, but it is true. Because God is holy, what he does is always right. What he says is always true. Whatever he wills is just. Whatever he promises, he will always deliver. In year 2020, do you believe this? Psalm 22 teaches us in verse 1, in our perceived forsakenness as Christians, perceived abandonment, God is holy.

Furthermore, Psalm 22, verse 1, when God seems far away, "God, you've called me to this task yet I don't feel like you're showing up," he is holy. When he doesn't seem to answer your prayers, the groanings of your heart, he is holy. Verse 2, when you're crying and anxious, but still get no answer, God is holy. Verse 6, when we're stomped on like a worm and scorned and despised, God is holy. Verse 7, when you're mocked, God is holy. Verse 8, when accused of wrongdoing, God is holy. Verse 12, when the people of power look down on you, he is holy. Verse 13 to 15, when your body is sapped of all strength, when you feel like you're reduced to a lifeless heap of flesh, when you thirst and feel like death, God is holy. Verse 16, when enemies of God's people, these dogs surround you and harm you, God is holy. Verse 18, when your garments and belongings are taken, he is holy. Verse 21, when he rescues you, he is holy.

Do you believe this? Ted Tripp says, you have to preach this message of God's holiness to yourself over and over again. Evil is not in control. Injustice does not rule. Corruption is not king. Satan will not have victory. God is, and will always be worthy of your trust, for this one reason. He is holy. We might not get to see it in this life, but with his holy might, God will defeat every evil thing that has inflicted pain and brought upon every difficulty injustice. And this form of despair will eventually deliver us to a world free of all that is wrong, forever.

So, when we as Christians, when we don't find comfort in God's holiness, there's something wrong. There's something going on. The message of Psalm 22, of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is that Jesus Christ was forsaken by the Father, so that we who are in Christ would never be forsaken by him.

Second Corinthians 5:21. "For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God." Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." There might be times that we don't feel like we're children of the holy God. We don't feel that he's holy and in control. In these moments, these are feelings, not truth.

We need to reject those feelings. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?" And in this flesh until Jesus Christ returns, our own heart can condemn us. Satan condemns us. The world condemns us, but we can't trust those feelings, whatever the source or the cause. We need to fight feelings with faith. Ephesians 6:16, 18, "In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication." We need to fight condemnation with conviction like the saints of old.

Hebrews 11:1. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Though it might appear that God is not with us in the bleakest of moments, we trust that he is. We trust that with him on our side, we're never in the wrong place or the wrong situation. Though we might face temporary injustice, he will eventually bring full justice. One day, we will reign with him in full holiness and splendor.

Where does this conversation, this discussion of the holiness of God lead us? What direction should encounter with God's holiness lead us? To praise and celebration. This is the end, the turning point of the Psalm, Psalm 22, verse 22. "I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel. For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.

"All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. "All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship. Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to people yet unborn, that he has done it."

No, we encounter God's holiness, and we praise and worship him for it. Ironically, when we're in the valley, when we're in despair, when we feel like God has abandoned us, we feel like we're falling apart or becoming undone, but it's an encounter with God's holiness that truly causes us to become undone.

In God's holy presence, we lose all sense of pride, all reasons to boast in ourselves, the desire to keep on living for our own glory. With our creatureliness and our sin exposed by our holy God, we really see our need for our Savior. We see the impossible gap between ourselves and the Father, and finally understand that the Son who was forsaken by the Father is the only way to bridge that infinite gap. We celebrate God's holiness because when God reveals it to us, the purpose is not to get us to run from him in hopeless terror, but to run to him to find grace for all of eternity. We receive God's offer of grace and we praise him. We lead lives of worship and praise and mission for his glory.

A classic prayer called The Valley of Vision praises God for his holiness, and really captures those trying moments, when we see his holiness most clearly, like this moment on the cross. The Valley of Vision. "Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, thou has brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights. Hemmed in by mountains of sin, I behold thy glory. Let me learn by paradox, that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells, the brighter thy stars shine. Let me find thy light in my darkness, thy life in my death, thy joy in my sorrow, thy grace in my sin, thy riches in my poverty, thy glory in my valley." Please join me in prayer.

Lord, we pray. Give us the vision of Jesus Christ. Let us see you working, for your glory, for your holiness, out of deep love for us, in the valleys, in the moments of despair. Lord, we pray, give us a grand vision of you moving, of you running, pulling the strings of life, guiding the world, all for your glory. And Lord, while we wait, let us run with praise. Let us celebrate your holiness. Let us proclaim it with joy, and invite others into it. Lord, I pray, honor our lives, honor our faithful efforts to you, especially when we don't have strength to walk forward without your help. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And it's so good to worship together. If you'd like to connect with us and you're new, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the Connection Card and the Worship Guide or in the app or online. We'd love to get connected with your information and we would like to send a little gift in the mail to say, "Thank you for coming out." With that said, would you please... Oh. One quick announcement. Next Sunday we are not meeting in person. Unfortunately. We will be meeting online. And I will be in the Facebook Live chat. I really enjoy that.

And there might be a chicken wing question. Who knows. Who knows. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word? Lord, we thank you for the Holy Scriptures. We thank you that the Holy Scriptures reveal so much about your character. About how gracious you are. About how loving you are. How pure you are. How holy you are. And we thank you that through the Holy Scriptures we get to meet the hero of the Scriptures, your son Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you for living the life that each one of us was intended. A purpose to live. And for dying the death that we deserve to die for our law breaking. We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us. And Holy Spirit I pray you continue to tune our hearts to the voice of God. Let us hear the proclamation of your glory that creation preaches and declares.

Let us hear your holy voice that directs us and guides us to live lives that glorify you most. Continue building your church here, Jesus. You are a great builder, and you get all the glory. Thank you for leading us here, and I pray prepare our hearts now. Remove any doubt, anxiety, stress, worries and let us hear from you. I pray this in Jesus name, amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the Psalms. We're calling them Balm Psalms. Balm in terms of it's balm for your soul. It's medicine. It's ointment. It's anointing for your soul and hopefully in your time with the Lord, in your devotions, you're spending time in the psalms. Today, we're in Psalm 19. Junior year in college I had a season of doubt. I looked around at my fellow students, at my professors and no one believed in God. Very few believed in God. Almost statistically insignificant. And then I had this one professor. He was there for just a year from the University of Moscow. And he was a believer. He was a Russian Orthodox believer, but he loved the Lord and he loves the Scriptures.

And I asked him, I said, "Why do you believe? No one else around us believes. Why do you believe?" And he quoted Emmanuel Kant and this is the quote that he gave me, "Kant said this in the Critique of Practical Reason, he said, 'Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe. The more often and steadily we reflect upon them. The starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances. Beyond the horizon, my vision, I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.'" And Kant was actually buried in Russia and this is his tombstone and it's the quote on top, it's in German and at the bottom it's in Russian.

It talks about the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. That's why I believe in God. Can we know that God exists? Of course we can. Even to ask that question from the perspective of Scripture is folly. Scripture says, "Yes, of course God exists. Look around. The greatest miracle in the history of miracles is creation itself. It's creation ex nihilo. Creation from nothing. Everything from nothing. God speaks. It's there." And today we're looking at Psalm 19 where it says that, "Creation speaks. It declares. It proclaims that God created everything. And it declares and it communicates something about God because God is a communicating God." Can we know who God is from creation? We can know some aspect of Him that He's all powerful. That He's beautiful. That He's an architect. That He's a designer. That He's a creator.

But the other aspects of His character are veiled. Creation can't give us those, and that's why we need the other book that God gives us which is Holy Scripture. Got is Elohim, great creator, almighty God. He's also Yahweh, a conventional God who loves us. So God's written two excellent books published for our instruction edification. The first book is creation. Its natural revelation shows that God is a genius of a God. The second book shows us the will of God. That He created us for a purpose and that we are to obey His will. That He is sovereign over every single person. Not just over Christians. He is God over all.

And today as we enter into the incredible Psalm that Psalm 19 is, a great writer C.S. Lewis said, "This is the greatest writing he's ever read in his life." The greatest lyricism. One of the finest poems in the world", he says, in his reflections on the Psalms. Today we're going to look at glory of God in all of creation in the Scriptures. And in God's recreation which is Christians. So would you look at psalm 19 with me? Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God. And the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them, He has set a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strongman runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them.

And there is nothing hidden from His heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure of making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover by them as your servant warned in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern His errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths on our hearts. Three points. We'll look at God's glory in the cosmos. We'll look at God's glory in the Scriptures. And we'll look at God's glory in the Christian. So the first point is God's revelation or God's glory in the cosmos. By cosmos I mean all of creation. Everything that is and it begins with Psalm 19: 1 and 2. "The heavens declare the glory of God." It's as if everything around us is a sermon. It's a preacher declaring the truth that God is and the sky above proclaims His handiwork day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. By heavens, He's talking about the sky. He's talking about the galaxy. He's talking about the universe. The cosmos.

And e talked about this a little last week, that we are to meditate on the nature around us. It is created for us to be wow by, to have awe. To be in awe. Which is one of the greatest places to be. Little children ... this is why children are so happy. Children find awe in everything. I was just admiring my daughter, Milana. She had a little bottle of water. She's wowed by it. Because she doesn't see little bottles of water on a daily basis. She sees bigger bottles. And she loves it. It fits her hand so perfectly. She's wowed by it. It's such a happy place to be. Such a joyful place to be. And I think as we grow older, we get desensitized to the awesome nature, the world that we live in. It speaks. There's mystery. There's splendor. There's order.

And the galaxies of the cosmos, they're loud. They're direct. People often say, "I've never heard the voice of God. I don't believe in God. I've never heard the voice of God." Well, God doesn't often speak audibly. He speaks louder than audibly. He doesn't just speak to our ears, He speaks to all of our senses if we are willing to receive the message.

The heavens aren't just glorious. They declare. They proclaim. It says, "Days pour our speech. Nights reveal knowledge." It's like there's two choirs. The choir of the day, and the choir of the night, and they're singing together in beautiful harmony. They utter forth. That's like the speech bubbles forth. From the very beginning, the Psalm is what He assumes is there's no pretext for disbelief. There's no justification for it. You can't live in physical reality and just believe that it just happened.

That's not just disbelief, that's willful disbelief. Reality in a created order demands that we acknowledge the creator. And we aren't just to acknowledge. We are to adore like creation does. It declares. It proclaims that he's glorious. Psalm 19:3, "There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard." So it's not audible. It's not distinct words, but it's real. It's not precise, but it's still an eloquence. It's a wordless word. You ever hear people around you speaking in a different language? The thing I always think when I hear a different language around me, it's like two people speaking different language, they're totally talking about me. And as a bilingual speaker, if you hear me speaking Russian in front of you, I'm totally talking about you. 100%.

Why would I speak in English? I'm going to speak in Russian to just ... Right? And it's as if nature speaks a different language. We know it's there. We need someone to decipher that ... what is nature saying? What is it speaking? Psalm 19:4, "The voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." And the assumption here is everybody hears. Everybody hears. The question is, what do you want to do with that testimony? And the New Testament sheds light on this, that there is wrath from God when people willfully tune down the volume of God's creation. Romans 1:18 and 20, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth. For what can be known by God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so they are without excuse."

Saying the reason why people reject that there is a creator behind the creation is not that there is not enough evidence, it's because there's a suppression of truth. I don't like this truth. Therefore this truth isn't true to me. God says, "No. No. You can't do that. There is no excuse." Romans 10:18, "But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for their voice has gone out to all of the earth and their words to the end of the world." He quotes this psalm. So meaning that nature exists. We exist not just for natural order. There's not just a natural end to our existence. There's a moral end that we exist just like all of nature exists to declare that God is glorious.

It's important not just that it is, but what it says, and nature is a form of language and it's speaking about God and the heavens are a sign and every sign about God is a vehicle of ideas about God. So the fact of nature reveals the fact of God. The being of God. The vastness of nature shows that He is immense. The uniformity of nature declares His unity. There's an order in the godhead. The regularity of nature discloses His unchangeableness. He does not change. He's immutable. The variety of nature manifests His exhaustlessness. The adaptations of nature unveil His wisdom and the happiness of nature declares His wisdom. His goodness. That God is a good god.

One of my favorite things in the world is to watch animal videos. There were the cat videos that were ... and then there were little puppy videos that go viral, and then there's goat videos. Videos of little goats. And they are like the happiest beings ever. Sophia, my oldest daughter, started dreaming about having a farm and she's like, "I just want some goats." And I said, "Who's going to care for the goats?" She talking about hiring someone. Good for you. There's a happiness in creation. It shows us that God is a happy God. He's a good god. And nature is telling us to think about God. And as we contemplate nature, we have to contemplate God. And it's not His only revelation, obviously. But it's a great and beautiful revelation and God's testimony is both of His work and His work is a testimony about His goodness. And it's plainly discoverable. The more you study, many of you are in fields where you study God's creation on a daily basis. You could probably preach this part of the sermon significantly better than I can.

It's everywhere. Charles Misner was a physicist who was friends with Einstein and he said this, he said, "The design of the universe is very magnificent and should not be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religions. Although, he struck me as basically a very religious man. Einstein might have looked at what the preacher said about God, and felt that they were blasphemy. He had seen more majesty than he had ever imagined in the creation of the universe and felt that the God they were talking about couldn't have been the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that the churches he had run across did not have proper respect for the author of the universe."

What a quote. The author of the universe. It's as if we're daily reading a book and saying, "There is no author." Psalm 19:4b through 6, "In them, He has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber. And like a strongman runs his course with joy. It's rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them. And there is nothing hidden from its heat." So this part of the sermon, He crescendos with the son. He said, "The sun on a daily basis proclaims. It's a witness to God's glory." And he personifies the sun here. He says, "The sun is like a bridegroom." It's like a groom. It's like a groom on his wedding day.

If you're married and you were a groom for your husband and you were a groom at one point, you know exactly what this feels like. That morning, you're about to get married. I remember the day, the night before I got married, I couldn't sleep. I slept like three hours. I was just so excited. And thinking through all the details and still mad that I invited my barber who was supposed to cut my hair the evening before, and my barber comes to my wedding, he forgot his scissors. He forgot all of his tools. And that's the only reason I invited you, Joe. So I'm thinking about that and I was like, "Well, it's okay. We'll use a little gel and a little pomade and we'll figure this out." That's what I'm thinking.

Then you wake up and I remember with my boys, we went to Dunkin' Donuts, and I still remember the egg, ham and cheese on an everything bagel. I still remember. The extra large coffee. Cream and sugar. I still remember all of that. And then you get ready. The tuxedo. The excitement. He said, "The sun is like that." There's an exuberance that every day is a gift. It's a gift to be alive. There's a joy. There's an eager anticipation. There's a brilliance. There's a radiance. And it moves through the sky, He said, "Like a strongman." Like a world class runner. Where it just seems so easy for them. Right? You ever watch the Olympics, you're like, "Yeah. I could do that. That's so easy." Someone once said like, "Every Olympic event should have just one regular person. Just for like so we know how good is Michael Phelps. Just throw in the commenter. The guy who was saying that Phelps is slow." Throw in that guy.

And He's like this is what the sun's like. It's like an athlete. He makes it look so easy. Unaffected by how difficult it is. And it provides continual undeniable proof of the greatness of God. However nature has fallen, it's great and it's good, but it's fallen. So we can know a lot about God but the fallenness of creation gives us doubts. Is God good when there are earthquakes and forest fires and tsunamis and tornadoes? Is God good in those moments? And that's why we need more than just general revelation. We also need special revelation. We have natural revelation. We also need supernatural revelation to show us just how great God is. And this is the second point that God's glory in the Scriptures, God is not silent. He has spoken and He expresses Himself in two books, in nature and the Scriptures.

And He comes and tells us that the Scriptures are from Him through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came. He believed that the Old Testament was God's word. He spoke more of God's word, and then sends the Holy Spirit to speak even more of God's word through the church. And Saint Peter, Peter the main apostle of Jesus Christ, the main disciple, he saw the glory of Christ. He saw the transfigured Christ where Jesus Christ unveiled His glory. Removed just a little bit so Peter, James, John, they saw the glory of Christ.

And this is what Peter writes about that in connection to the Holy Scripture. 2 Peter 1:16, "For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God, the Father. And the voice was borne to Him by the majestic glory. This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place. Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.

But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." This is one of the most mind blowing text in all of Scripture. He said, "We saw the glory of God in Jesus Christ and we have something", not just equal in revelation. We have something even more glorious in revelation. And he's talking about the Holy Scriptures. He's talking about the miracle of the Holy Scriptures, and this is what the Psalmist talks about starting verse seven. He talks about the law of the Lord. It's perfect. Reviving of the soul. And here, I love getting into all the details about the lyrics and just the wordplay. One of the things I just want to point out is, he gives us 12 qualities here about the law of God. And you can study them on your own. He gives us six nouns, six adjectives and six verbs about the beauty of it. So you see how it's all planned.

He's talking about the law and when we think of law, we think of just God's commandments, but it's more than that. It's the word Torah, or Torah, which is the God's teaching. It's God's wisdom. God's instruction. So for us, the Torah, for us God's instruction is more than just the Psalm. More than just the Ten Commandments. More than just the Old Testament. It's all of the Holy Scriptures. All 66 books. And if you study the Holy Scriptures, you really do see it's a miracle of God. If you go outside today, if you go up to 40 people, and you say, "Tell me what God is like from your perspective", you won't have 40 perspectives. You'll probably have 400 perspectives.

Because every single person probably has 100 opinions on God and they're all contradictory. They will not be in unison. And the Holy Scriptures written over 1,600 years. Over 40 authors. In three different languages. Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Written on three continents. You're talking about people who were tent makers, physicians, shepherds, farmers, fishermen, priests, philosophers, kings, and they're all singing in harmony. They're all speaking about the same glorious God. They're all speaking about the Holy Trinity with Jesus Christ at the center of this one theme. God created everything that humanity rebelled against God. That God sends a redeemer to die in our place. And that God does redeem and that God does transform people by the power of His Holy Spirit through the Holy Scriptures. And the Holy Scriptures have transformed billions of people. Lives are transformed. When people read this book and submit to the teachings of the God of this book, it transforms people. It transforms men. It transforms women. It transforms families. It transforms communities, nations. It transforms everything. And he says, "The law of the Lord, it's perfect. It's whole. It's complete. It's lacking defect of any kind. And it revives the soul." And the beauty of this text is he says, "The law of the Lord", he changes from El, Elohim, to Yahweh. That God gives this law because He's a loving God. And he gives us this law, this teaching, to show us how our souls can be revived. And the assumption for revive for this word is that something is wrong. That our souls are languishing. That there's a lack of energy. There's a lack of vibrance. There's a lack of life and our souls need to be refreshed and restored and reinvigorated. They need to be renewed. And the Holy Scriptures do this. If you're a Christian and you devote yourself as a discipline to studying the Scriptures, loving the Scriptures, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You wake up and it's as if you died a little in the inside. That's the only way I can really describe it. There's like a spiritual amnesia that happens where you forget that everything that happened before in terms of God, you wake up and it's as if everything God did, all of the revelations you got, it's as if blank slate and you need the soul to be revived again. And that's what God's word does. The second part of verse seven is, "The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple." It's sure. The testimony is God's own witness about who He is, what He requires. That's what the law is. And it's sure. It's verifiable. It's trustworthy. It's dependable. And there's a prophet. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simply. Assumption here, apart from God's law, there is no wisdom.

And wisdom is very different from knowledge. You can get lots of knowledge about how the world works, but without wisdom which is why the world works the way it is, that's what wisdom is. It's being able to take truths about God and those truths now have purpose. And now you know how to take that knowledge and apply it. Wisdom is thinking the thoughts of God. It's seeing life as God sees life. And it's acting accordingly. Some of the most educated people in the world, if they don't know God, if they don't know why everything exists, if they don't submit themselves to God, Scripture calls that folly. That you can be getting incredible education, but without wisdom, without why are we here, who's behind me being here, what is my purpose in life, you're missing it.

So my girls are back in school. Praise God. The youngest. The two youngest go to school now. Milana goes to pre-kindergarten at age three. And that, I feel so good about that. Praise God. The two oldest is still online, but the two youngest are out of the house for at least a few hours of the day. One of the things, as I grow older, like I've read the wisdom part. But as I grow older, I begin to realize a lot of what they teach in school is just folly. Like teach my kids math and two plus two is four. There's no debate on that. Teach my kids math. Teach them how to write. But as far as the content, apart from God and God's wisdom, you remove that from the classroom, and there's a lot of folly being taught. And we need to understand that we need wisdom on a daily basis. We need wisdom about how the world is. How the world works. And the wisdom is this is ... God says, "This is who you are. And here is the design book. Here is the design user manual."

You need God's law. Psalm 19:8, "The precept of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart." Precepts are right and they rejoice the heart. What are precepts? They're rules. They're regulations. This is how you work, and I want to give you this manual so that you know how to have moral satisfaction. That's what the joy is. To gladden the heart with moral satisfaction. The law isn't given to us by God to restrict us from good. It's given to us to restrict us from evil. You ever meet a child that grew up with zero restrictions? You ever meet a kid like that? And for some reason it's always at the grocery store or at the airport. That's where you meet those kids. I don't know why it is, but it's true. Next time you fly, you'll see those kids.

And probably that kid is sitting right next to you on the plane. We know. We know that children need a framework. They need to be told no. We know this. Why in the world would we think that if God has children, He would not tell them no? God does tell us no. He tells us no all the time to give us a better yes. He actually wants us to get to the point where wee tell ourselves no. That's self-control. Self-discipline. And say, "Yes" to the great things of life. That's what parenting is. And that's what the Holy Scriptures are. God is saying, "This is my word to you as my children. I want the best for you." The law is designed to lead us in the way of life, peace, blessing. And that's why His law is very specific about very nitty-gritty everyday things. Here's my law regarding work. He's my law regarding finances. Here's my law regarding desire. All kinds of desire. Here's my law regarding love. Here's my law regarding how you structure your life. And it leads to rejoicing of the heart. Sin steals joy. Holiness replaces it.

Holiness fills our heart with incredible joy. Psalm 19:8, "The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes." The commandment of the Lord enlightens the eyes. It's pure in the sense that there is no sin, malice corrupting influence. There's no darkness in God's law. And it does enlighten the eyes. In terms of it reveals what life is like. It reveals the path forward. It enlightens your eyes. It clears your vision. It's like when you wake up. You always got to wash your eyes. There's all kinds of gunk in there. And for me, I don't really see everything until I put on my glasses. Everything is blurry right now. The first two years I would preach without glasses because I was like, "I don't need to see people's reactions." It would just ... I don't need to see people falling asleep. I don't need that.

This is what God's law is. It fixes your eyes. You begin to see what is good. And you begin to see what is evil. And on top of that, and this is as you grow in the faith, you don't just see good. You begin to love good. You begin to be drawn to the good. You don't just see evil. You begin to hate evil. The part of loving God is also hating evil. All the evil within, all the evil without. And part of loving God is also loving the things that God loves and God loves the world and God loves people. And God's law does this to the sight of our hearts. The eyes of our hearts. Psalm 19:9, "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The fear of the lord, it's clean.

Again, there's a parallel with the previous verses. Clean is pure, meaning the fear of God is what cleanses us. The fear of God is what keeps us close to Him. And I believe that a lot of Christians don't really grow in their faith because they don't have a theology of fearing God. If God is the God who created everything that there is, if God is who Scripture says that God is, why would we not fear Him? And I'm not talking about a fear that pushes us away from Him. I'm talking about a fear that pushes us away from anything that would pull us away from God. There's a difference. Fearing God is you love Him so much. You want to do everything you can to bring delight to His heart instead of disappointment. And that's what fear is. He's so great. He's so incredible that when you love Him, you fear anything that will pull you away from Him because that's what brings disappointment to His heart. How is your fear of ... Do you fear God?

Do you fear God? And the greater ... I don't know ... You kind of experience this when you meet someone famous. If you've ever met someone who is in power. If you ... I remember one time I shook Bill Clinton's hand and I was in college, one time. And I remember just like people were in awe of the president. People were in awe of this person in a position of power. There's something ... there is like a trepidation that happens. Well, how about the God who created that guy? How about the God who created everything? And a very healthy love for God always comes with fear. Fear of God that's pure and it's enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Psalm 19:10, "More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb." He's saying that the law of God, the word of God, it's treasure. Many of us we don't really understand Scripture because we read Scripture like we read a law book or like a history book. He says, "No, no, no. This is the way you got to read Scripture. Like a treasure map."

Like this map is given you, and you, if you study this map attentively, you will find much treasure. More treasure than fine gold. And He says, "It's sweeter than honey and drippings of the honeycomb." My community group knows this and the staff at Mosaic knows this. Whenever we have Scripture and we study Scripture, I start to salivate. Like it's so delicious. There's so much goodness in God's word as you dig into really what's going on. Paying attention to every single word. And he said, "It's like honey." The thing about honey, if you've ever met anyone that is a beekeeper that makes honey, Tanya's dad is a beekeeper in Philadelphia. He used to do this in Ukraine and then he went to a monastery that has huge fields. He walked up to the door and said, "Hello. I'm going to bring my bees here. Is that okay?" And they said, "What are you talking about?"

He's like, "Here's some honey. It's a foretaste of the honey I keep bringing you." And they said, "Okay." So he's got these little beehives. He's got little boxes. And he shows us what he does and it's so much work to care for them and to create a space for them to live and to make sure they don't get sick, but it's so worth it. And that's what He says. That's what Scripture is. It takes time to mine for treasures. It takes time to make the honey. But it's so worth it. A few things here about how to study Scripture. My favorite view of how to study Scripture comes from the monastic movement where they would study. That's what they did as a full-time job.

And they talk about the five movements of studying Scripture. Because a lot of people think of Scripture of like I need to study the Greek, I need to study the Hebrew, I need to really understand what's going on, and it's a very mechanical understanding of Scripture. But the goal of Scripture is to have a relationship with the Lord. To spend time with the Lord, for Him to satisfy your soul and give you power for the day.

The five movements are silencio, lectio, meditatio, oratio and contemplatio. The first one is silencio where you're quiet before the Lord. You sit down with Scriptures. Quiet before Him. And you start praying. You start a conversation with the Lord. You ask for the Lord to fill you. You enter into God's presence. You slow down. You intentionally release the chaos of what's inside and the noise in your mind. And then lectio is you begin to read the word slowly. Paying attention to every single word, lingering over the words, studying the context. Studying how the words work together in the sentence. How the sentence works together in the paragraph, et cetera. When a word catches your attention, stop. Pause. Because at different readings, God speaks differently. Yes, it always means what it meant and the context is the same. But sometimes... and this is why I always say in my community group, "What hit you in a fresh way? What stood out to you in particular as you're reading this text?"

Stop and attend to what God is saying. Meditatio, read the Scriptures a second time out loud. Savor the words. Listen for an invitation from the ... and there's something about reading it out loud. Speaking the words of God into the space. Oratio is you respond. Lord, what did you teach me here? How do I need to change? How do I need to repent? Where in my life am I not submitting to your word? And you enter into a personal dialogue with the Lord. And then contemplatio is contemplate. The rest of the day, contemplate. What did the Lord say and what is He continuing to say, yield and surrender to the Lord. Psalm 19:11, "Moreover, by them your servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward." And from the warning, he transitions to prayer and repentance. And he allows God to warn Him and as God warns him, he turns to the Lord in repentance. And this is point three. The glory of the Lord in the Christian.

And by Christian, I mean a person who has represented of their sins and trusted in Jesus Christ. Psalm 19:12, "Who can discern his errors, declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression." He asked God. He said, "God, I have hidden faults." What does hidden faults mean? It's sins that you don't see how sinful they are. It's when you see the world around you living a certain way and then you say, "Why can't I live like that?" And you come to the Lord and you say, "Lord, reveal the sinfulness of sin." That's what he's talking about. That's the hiddenness. And then the presumptuous sins, when you allow hidden sins to remain in your life, they become presumptuous sins. And by presumptions sins, there's a defiance.

No, I will not submit to the Lord. Or, and I see this in a lot of Christians, you presume on God's grace. Yes, this is a sin. But God will forgive me. God understands. And that lack of fear keeps you in the presumptuous sin which has dominion over you. So he says, "God, forgive me. Reveal the sinfulness of sin and release me from the dominion of it." Psalm 19:14, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer."

I love how he brings the word redeemer in here, and I love how in the temple we have a Bible verse. I know that my redeemer lives. It's from the book of Job. Why in the Old Testament are we using the word redeemer? And if you remember in the Book of Ruth, we talked about this. That Boaz was the redeemer. The redeemer of this idea was this is a person who will come and pay for your debts. This is a person who will come and free you from the dominion of another owner. And he says, "God, you, Yahweh, you're my redeemer. Redeem me."

And ultimately, it was Jesus Christ who dies on a cross for our sins. He said, "No. You humanity, you", every single one of us, we have not kept God's law. We have actually contradicted. Transgressed God's law. We were enslaved to the presumptuous sins of our hearts. Jesus Christ comes. Lives a perfect life. A life of embodying the law. A life of perfection. Purity. Holiness. And then gives Himself as a sacrifice for us, for our sins. And this is why I love these verses in the Psalms, because he's talking. This is how you become a Christian. You repent. You ask for forgiveness. You turn away from sin. You turn back to the Lord who is our rock. And He is our redeemer. 1 Peter 1:10 through 12, "Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully. Inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you.

And the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven." Things into which angels long to look. In the same way that we stare at the sun or we stare at creation. Don't stare at the sun. In the same way that we are blessed by looking at creation. Angels stare into the gospel, because they can't believe what God did to recreate humanity. Meaning that every single Christian is a miracle. In the same way that creation reflects the glory of God, it's a miracle. In the same way that Holy Scriptures are a miracle. Every single Christian is a miracle of God because it took that. It took God's word, spoken into your heart in order to regenerate you. So God is glorified in the cosmos, in the Scriptures, and in the Christian.

In conclusion, what do you think of when you think of the good life? What do you think of when you think of the good life? Do you think of fast cars, vacations, big houses, et cetera? This is what God wants. This is was God says that leads to ultimate satisfaction. What is the chief end of man? This is the Westminster catechism. What is the chief end, chief and highest end of man? The answer, man's chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully enjoy Him forever. Enjoy God. Enjoy His creation. Enjoy His Holy Scriptures, and enjoy the fellowship that God gives us with His children. Let's pray.

God, what a great word that you have given us from Psalm 19. I pray that you make us a people who do enjoy you. Who seek to enjoy you on a daily basis. That you are so much better and so much satisfying than anything else. And we thank you for Jesus who reconciles us with you, and we thank you for the Holy Spirit who is with us. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new, if you're visiting, welcome. We're so glad you are here. We'd love to connect with you. If you'd like to connect with us, we'll do that through the connection card that you hopefully received, or you can fill it out online. With that said, would you... Happy September, by the way. We're entering the most glorious season in Boston, September and October. It's all downhill from there, so enjoy.

Would you pray with me over the preaching of God's Word? Holy God, we thank you that you are a great God. You are a glorious God. You are an all-powerful God. You care for us. I pray, Lord, that you bless these series in the Psalms. I pray, Lord, that you deepen our devotion for you as you expand our vision of you. Not only are you glorious, but you are beautiful. You are so creative. You are the greatest artist, and you're the greatest poet. I pray that your Psalms, your poetry, becomes our poetry, that these words become our words, that these prayers become our prayers. I pray that you teach us to love you not just with our minds. It's too easy to just stay there. I pray that you ignite our emotion for you, our affection for you, our imagination for you. Redeem our emotions, redeem our affections, our desires, and our imagination. Please do that through your Holy Word.

Jesus, remind us that you are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and you call us to bring every single square inch of our lives under your dominion. You entrusted us to us so that we submit ourselves to you and as we do, we experience blessing. I pray everyone that hears these words find true blessing in life, finds the best life that there is, which is the blessed life from you. We pray that you bless our time in these Holy Scriptures. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.

So we're starting a new sermon series called Balm Psalms. Balm, as you know, is... It's a soothing ointment. It's to soothe physical ailments, but in terms of the Psalms, we're talking about a Balm for our souls. And we are also... Right, it's a play on words, bomb, balm. It's theological bombs that God drops into our hearts, into our minds, into our lives to show us that our vision of God is too small. And that's one of the reasons why we don't experience God and the power of God as we should, His presence as we should.

The series, hopefully, will be... I want to give you a taste. I want to give you the words. I want to give you a framework for studying the Psalms, for you to dive into them on a daily basis, to bathe your soul in this balm, in these bomb balms that absolutely obliterate these false categories that we have of God. My one goal, my one desire as we go through these series is to help you deepen your devotion to God, not just study theology dryly, but to love God, love His Words, love His work.

Now the Psalms are... They're hymns. They're songs of praise. They're prayers, both individual and corporate. They show that praying is important. Singing is important. Experiencing God is important. Creativity is important. Beauty is important. God created all of these. The word for the psalter in the Hebrews, Psalms... It just means praises. It's the largest book in the Old Testament with 2,527 verses. It's quoted more often than any other book in the New Testament. It's quoted more than any other book from the Old Testament over 560 times, it was that important. There's hymns, there's laments, there's thanksgiving.

By the way, some of the things I'm sharing with you... I just learned recently. I took a class on preaching through the Psalms at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia just this summer and just so much goodness. I can't wait to share it with you. One of the things that my professor said is that God invented poetry. God designed poetry. And in the book of Psalms, He shows us how to use poetry as the greatest communicator, he communicates with poetry to communicate to the whole person. Prose... It speaks to the mind. Poetry speaks to the heart, the soul, to our emotions, to our imagination. He invented it to communicate to the whole person.

Over 27% of Holy Scripture is poetry, almost a third. God invented it to communicate to us, to stimulate our affections for Him. They're dense. They're intense, emotional, little balms of emotion. It's better to express acute desires of lament, of praise, et cetera. It's given to the community to memorize. That's why these little tricks, these little lines of communicate, these techniques like simile are used, comparison of like or as. Metaphors are used. Metaphors are image based on similarity within difference. God is a sun, S-U-N. God is a rock. God is a lion. Christ is the lamb. God is a shepherd metaphors.

There's also anthropomorphism, which are used to... We ascribe, in the poetry, human likeness, human attributes to God because we don't have other ways of understanding Him, so God moves with His fingers. He has hands. There's thick darkness under His feet. The psalmist says, "Lord, I pray that you keep me as the apple of your eye." Does God have an eye? No, but you know He's communicating.

There's zoomorphism where we ascribe animal form or attributes to God. God, hide me in the shadow of your wing. I love that. You can see that image. Hide me in the shadow of your wing. There's laments. There's hymns. There's thanksgiving. There's psalms of ascent where the Israelites would sing on the way up to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival. There's songs of trust. This is how you trust God in times of chaos there's royal psalms to remind us that God is King. He deserves our submission and our affection. There's Psalms about Zion, about the city of God, salvation history. There's Torah Psalms, one of which we're going to cover today. Torah Psalms, Psalms 1, Psalm 19, Psalm 119. Torah doesn't just mean God's law. It means God's teaching. It means God's wisdom. He teaches us what His mind is like, how He thinks so that we think His thoughts after Him.

There's five books of the Psalms. The Psalms is just one book, but there's five within Psalms 1 through 41... That's one book. Then 42 through 72, then 73 through 89, 90-106, then 107-150. Each book concludes with a doxology to praise Him, praise God. And the fifth book ends with a doxology of doxologies, five psalms just telling us to praise God, thank Him for who He is, and worship Him for who He is. God, thank you. God, thank you for being so amazing.

Today we're going to cover Psalms 1 and 2 and I call this the two pillars into the temple that is the Psalms. They're meant to be read together, understood together. I'll just show you a few reasons why this is true. The first line of Psalm 1 begins with blessed or happy. This is the way to happiness. This is the way to true joy, a serenity of heart. The first line of the second Psalm ends also with blessed. This is the way to happiness. This is the way to blessing.

Psalm 1:6, we see, it says, "For the Lord knows the ways or the path of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." And Psalms 2:12, "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry. You perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him." Psalm 1 talks about meditating on that which will lead to life and Psalm 2 talks about meditating on that which will lead to death. Psalm 1:2, "But His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he mediates day and night." That same word is used in Psalm 2:1, "Why do the nations rage? And the peoples plot in vain." Plot, in Hebrew, same word as meditate. Some mediate to find out. What is God like? How can I be in tune with His will? And others meditate on how to rebel against God.

So with that introduction, would you look with me, please, at Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. Psalm 1:1, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish."

"Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us." He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, "As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill." I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, "You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Now therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Two points to frame up our time together, only two, because that's all we need. We'll talk about the blessings of the law, and we'll talk about the blessings of the king. First, the blessings of the law. One things I just want to point out. As you study, I took six semesters of Hebrew in seminary, not enough. Just even a little study of the original language, you begin to see the wordplay. You begin to see God's genius in this book, in all of Holy Scripture. I'll just point one things out. This is just God flexing. The first word of Psalm 1 begins with aleph, which is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. And then the last word in the Psalm begins with tav, which is the last letter in the alphabet.

This is what He's saying. He's saying, "This Psalm shows you the A through Z of how to live a godly, blessed life." God is about to expose to us, reveal to us a secret of the blessed life, of the happy life. Psalm 1, "Blessed is the man or blessed is the person who walks, not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." Psalm 1 is a Torah psalm like 19 and 119, to teach us not just the law and a lot of us this is what we don't understand. When we think about God's law, we think of about God restricting us from keep from something fun, from something, something that will lead to life. No God's law isn't offense to keep us from joy and happiness.

God's law is a guardrail to keep us from dying to keep us from perishing. So His law is actually good. Its His wisdom. And we know that God, when you understand, there are some laws that are just stupid in the United States, I can give you a lot of examples but my time is limited. There are some laws that are just arbitrary, like who invented this law? This is dumb. And because I don't know that the government loves me.

The government never written me a letter that say, "Jan I really love you. I love you so much. I'm going to forgive you. All of your taxes. I'm going to forgive you all of your debts, someone has paid your debts for you." You know what? If that happened I'd be yeah, teach laws are good. These people have my best in mind. But when you read God's law, it's coming from a loving God who has the absolute but your best in mind.

He wants you to flourish. It's like a father writing letters, writing guidelines to his children. I want you to prosper. This is the way to the best life. And the best life is the blessed life. And He begins by saying there's two, two wisdoms. There's a wisdom from God and there's counsel for God. And there's wisdom that's evil. So the man who's blessed is a person who does not take the advice of wicked people. Instead takes that advice and compares it to the advice of God. And I grew up in a Christian home. My dad taught me early on. He said, "Look, there's going to be people in your life especially when I went to college, there are people in your life who have PhDs, who have multiple PhDs who have accomplished a lot academically." He says but when you look at their life, morally they're fools, their lives have been lived in folly. And you can look at the consequences of that folly. You can be a genius in terms of the world and still be a fool from the perspective of God.

So blessed is the person who does not take the counsel of the wicked. We take counsel wicked all the time. It's we're inundated with it. We drive in the car with my girls we're driving to visit my parents yesterday. And they're like, let's turn on the radio. I don't want to turn on the radio because there's so much trash on the radio that just inundating us. And this is advice. This is how to live. This is the best life. And we're getting these messages. We're getting this narrative from every which person that you can live your best life apart from God. So blessed is the person that does not take the counsel of the wicked.

So meaning if you're a Christian, you will look different than the crowd, especially in a place like Boston. Your decision should be patently different, fundamentally different, your pattern of life, your lifestyle, the way you speak, the way you think, the way you live when no one is looking.

And you see the progression here in verse one, it's about walking in the counsel than standing in the way of sinners and then sitting in the seat of scoffers. There's growing comfort with evil. First of all, you listen to it it's a casual acquaintance, and then you're standing in it. And then finally you sit down into the ways of evil. And He's not saying that we can't interact with those who are not Christians or those who don't love The Lord. Jesus He spend time with sinners. He would eat with sinners and fellowship with sinners in a sense in order to save them, in order to influence them to come onto the path of the Lord in order to have their sins forgiven.

And we are to do the same. And this is just a basic question. Do your non-Christian friends influence you more than you influence them? Do they influence your life more than you influence their life? And it all begins with finding the true blessedness of the true wisdom verse two, His delight is in the law of the Lord. You don't just read it. You delight in it.

And on His law. He meditates day and night. You so delight in it. You're always thinking about God's law. You're only speaking about God. You bring in God into every conversation. You're bringing God into every single decision God's law. Psalm 19:7-8, "And the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes." Psalm 119:97, "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day."

So scriptures are not just to be read and not just to be studied they're to be heated absorbed. They're just saturate our minds and they're to be delighted in, the scriptures teach us the wisdom of God teaches us who God is, who we are about our human predicament, about the possibilities we are to pray the Psalms, trust the Psalms delight and meditate in them. This guides our path and keeps us from the path of perishing. Psalm 1:3, "He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, in all that he does, he prospers." He's saying that the blessed people, those who meditate in God's law day and night, they're rooted. There's a stability. There's a profound peace. There's a groundedness or plantedness and there's also prosperity.

That you do prosper you're alive. One of the things I do want to point out here is in the Hebrew for planted, is like a tree that's planted. It's a divine passive that's the term. It's a divine passive participle. He's planted the question is by whom? By whom is the righteous person planted? Is planted by the great gardener himself and actually in Hebrew. The word for planted is transplanted. Transplanted and is communicating the God finds us a wild shoe in an arid arid land. He digs us up and he transfers us to a place of streams of water, a place where we will flourish.

A place that's well-watered and he plants us in Himself. He plants us in his word and our souls are nourished like streams of water through God's word. This is what salvation is like. Salvation is God pouring His spirit into our lives, transplanting us from a life of sin, into a life that honors God wants to be with God. John 4:14, this is Jesus with the woman, the Samaritan woman at the well and he tells her, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

God communicates the sin what sin does is it promises us water. Instead it makes us even more thirsty. It promises us refreshing water instead it gives us saltwater that makes us even more thirsty. So you need more and more and more of the sin. And you're never, you're never satisfied.

John 7: 37-39, and the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." Now this, he said about the spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, and as yet, the spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Saying the water waters, the stream of water it's the Holy Spirit. Are you planted next to the Holy Spirit? Are you watered on a daily basis by the Holy Spirit? That's why He starts with the word of God, because the word of God was written by the Holy spirit.

You experienced the Holy spirit. As you read meditate, delight in what He wrote. He's always with us. And He fills us with satisfaction with delight. I've always loved the phrase in whatever he does he'll prosper. And I've always prayed that over my life, Lord, I want to prosper in everything I do. And for some reason, the very first thing that always comes to mind is money. God, you said I'm going to prosper. I Want to prosper in all that I do. I want to prosper in everything. And I just want to point out here, there is a prosperity when you live according to God's wisdom, there's a material prosperity that comes when this tree produces fruit for whom does the tree produce fruit? For itself? No trees can't eat fruit. The tree produces fruit to refresh others. So He's talking about prosperity in service, prosperity in generosity, prosperity in giving, prosperity in blessing. And this is where the teaching of Jesus Christ comes in and connects with Psalm 1.

Jesus Christ said, "It's more blessed to give than to receive." The true blessing isn't when you hoard, when you get more for yourself, because what's the point of fruit being produced and then falling and rotting on the ground there's no point there.

He's saying this is prosperity when it comes to the Kingdom of God. Psalm 1:4, "And the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away." Chaff and here he's using the imagery of ancient farming practices, where they would get grains, sheaves of grain and they would bring them into the barn. And they will lay them down on the threshing floor and crushed the grain with a threshing sledge and then take a winnowing fork and toss up the grain. And as they toss up the grain, the grain, the heavy grain, the seed falls down to the floor while everything else gets blown away by the wind.

And that's what chaff is. That's the chaff. And he says, righteous are like a tree they're well, water. The chaff is dry and it gets blown around by the wind dried up, not bearing fruit. It's worthless, it's dead. Psalm 1:5, "Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. And He's saying the judgment is imminent. It's inevitable. And God, the King, He will judge every single one of us." Psalm 1:6, "For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." And the word here for knows is intimately knows. He's watching over. He's guiding as a father, as a shepherd, embraces cares for watches over as the righteous walks in the way, walks in the path that God has for us. In the book of Acts, the Christians were called people of the way as we followed Jesus.

There's two ways in life when we talked about this last week, but it's all over scripture. One leading to life, the other to death, Deuteronomy 30:19-20, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice holding fast to Him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and give.

Joshua 1:8 talks about the same thing as one of my favorite verses actually my senior in my yearbook, senior yearbook in high school, this verse was under my picture. Don't try to find that picture. That was back when boy bands were cool, bleached hair frosted tip, don't look at it, but there's still a Bible verse to show that there's redemption, even in folly. Joshua 1:8 "This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on a day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.

And He starts there because... And I start there because many Christians today, they have this perverted theology of Christianity where Jesus died on the cross for my sins. He forgives me and my sins so I can live any way that I want false. False if you're a true Christian. If your sins have been truly forgiven you're a Child of God, and you want to honor God who is a King, he is your Father, but he's still a King. And when he tells us something to do, we are to do it. Yes, there's forgiveness when we repent.

But true repentance is turning away from sin, not just being sad for the consequence of the sin, not just being sad, that there is judgment for that sin. And then going back to the folly, no. Who is the ultimately blessed man? Is Jesus in the Psalm? Yes, of course he is the word for man blessed is the man, it's emphatically masculine for a reason. It's a reference to a particular man, the son of God, who is the son of man. He's the mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus Christ. Who delighted in God's law like nobody else, who did this perfectly, who meditated on the law of God day and night, who embodies this Psalm? It's Jesus Christ.

Did Jesus care about the law. Yeah. His very first sermon. The Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5:17-18 He says, "Do not think that I've come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass away from the Law until it is accomplished."

Jesus Christ came and He loved the Law so much. He loved God's wisdom so much. He fulfilled it completely. He did not sin once. Every single one of the 10 commandments, he fulfilled, he didn't just not do what was said, do not do this. He also did everything that was prescribed to do so. So as you take the 10 commandments there's sins of commission do not murder, do not covet, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's sins of omission. The opposite. The flip side is this is what you are to do.

Thou shall not have no other gods before me, therefore, worship God and worship him alone. Jesus fulfilled the law and He goes to a cross and bears the penalty as if he did not obey the law. How does that happen? How does God the Father allow God the son to be punished for transgressing the Law. It says cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree. Jesus, hanged on a tree, bearing our curse upon Himself. He did it in order to save us. So he's talking, don't be wicked. Don't walk in the way of wicked. That was every single one of us.

And Jesus comes and He lives the life that we were supposed to live, but didn't, and He goes to the cross and He bears the penalty that we deserve to bear so that we wouldn't have to. So how can I become this blessed person? How can I make sure that I don't bear the curse of God trust in Jesus Christ, give your life to Jesus Christ, repent of sin, turn to him and you become a Child of God. And he puts you on the path on the way where you will be blessed and find blessing as you delight in the word of God.

Matthew 7:!3-14, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

Have you found this life? Have you found this way? Jesus welcomes us to Himself to the way, the second point blessings of the King in this Psalm there's opposition, between the righteous and the wicked. Again, these two categories and the different chaining factor between the righteous and the wicked is submission to the King.

And the main theme of Psalm 2 is the kingdom and dominion of God. And this is why Jesus taught us to pray that kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's an invitation to a God-centered life, a God-centered world, dominion of God, the kingdom that was and is and is to come. So when we meditate on someone, when we meditate on God's Law, we hear the voice Of the King who gives that law and who enforces that law?

The God is a God of law and order for prosperity sake and for His glory. So the keys to happiness in Psalm 1 and 2 is happy or blessed are those who meditate on the law of God, delight in the law of God. And then Psalm 2 is blessed and happy is everyone who takes refuge in the King, who takes refuge in God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ. God is in charge, God is in control of everything.

Therefore we can rejoice. That's what Psalm 2 is about. And there's four acts in Psalm 2 and applies to King Dave, ultimately to the King of Kings, which is Jesus. So at first, the first act is verses one through three questions about chaos. The author is saying, "God, where are you?" When there's so much chaos and calamity in the world? God, where are you? This is Psalm 2:1, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The Kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords from us."

Who's this anointed capital A in the ESV. This is the Messiah. This is the one who is anointed to be the King of Kings. He's talking about the son of God, who was also the son of David. And He's saying the nations are gathering to get the Kings of the world are gathering to get the plot against God. God, we don't want to submit to you. We want to be kings of our own lives. We want to sit on our own thrones and He's so he's not just talking about political Kings. He's including those. Is talking about us. He's talking about every single human being who wants to be King of our lives. We want to decide what is law? What is good? What is evil what's allowed and what isn't. And the author of this rebellion is Satan himself. And Genesis 3:15 God says, "I'll put enmity between you Satan and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." He's talking about the offspring of the woman here is Jesus Christ, bruising the head of Satan. And He did that on the cross. And as he bruised and the image of Christ, putting his heel into the head of Satan, crushing, you said giving him a death blow.

He didn't kill him. But on the cross he gave him a deathblow bruised... Satan bruised, the heel of Jesus and Jesus bruised Satan's head. But even that from the very beginning from the garden, there's still enmity between God and his people and Satan and his people. And God calmly sits on his throne. I love this image of our sick in verse four. He who sits in the heavens, laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. And he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury saying, "As for me, I've set my King on Zion, my holy hill."

Does God laugh? God does laugh. God has a sense of humor. God invented laughter. And one of them there's lots of... you can prove that God has a sense of humor, by just looking at creation, just many, many examples where it's like, God's just messing with us. My favorite, perhaps this is new, but I've never heard anyone really talking about Luther mentioned this a little bit. God is sitting on his throne. He's sitting. He's not worried. And He's laughing at people who are sitting on their thrones. They're trying to be Kings and he's laughing at them because those same people who are Kings of this world, God created every single person in such a way.

We're on a daily basis. You have to sit on a thrown. In order for cleansing to happen. So the most glorious Kings in all of creation, the most glorious presence, the most Napoleon and Alexander, the gray and everybody on a daily basis, they're humbled. There's a deep theology there. There's deep, deep theology. So next time you're on the throne actually as your body is being cleansed, repent.

So your soul gets cleansed. You're welcome, is transformative. To God just creating a designing like humbling aspect God's laughing and God doesn't take pleasure in the death of the wicked. So He's not laughing like ha ha, I'm going to kill you. I can whack you in a second. He can. What scripture says, "He doesn't want the death of a wicked." So he puts a plan into place. How can I deal with the rebels? How can I redeem the rebels and bring them into my family? How can I do this? And still remain just, and we see that in this Psalm as well.

God's anointed speaks and reveals God's plan for dealing with the rebellion. That's verse seven, I will tell you of the decree: The Lord said to me, this is Jesus speaking the Lord said to me, "You are my Son; today I have begotten you." Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

What's God's way of dealing with the rebellion without killing the rebels. He sends a son and he says, "Today I have begotten you." And a lot of people have misunderstood this language of begotteness. They think, oh, the Father created the sun and there's lots of cults and lots of heresies that have come from that theology. No, that's not what He's talking about. The sun hasn't been has existed before all of eternity, the son, there was never a moment when Jesus Christ was not.

Jesus is part of the Trinity Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. So what's the begotten language today. I have forgotten you. He's talking about a particular day today on this day, when the identity of Jesus Christ was manifested. When the father bore witness to Christ as being his son and full power. When was Jesus Christ manifested as truly the Son of God in the resurrection, when he comes back from the dead. That's what the begotten language is talking about. The begotten is the resurrection. Where do you get that? In Romans 1:1-4, Paul, a servant of Chris Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

You are my son today. I've begun He's talking about the resurrection. When the manifestation of Jesus, as the Son of God happened, and this, we see prophesied in Psalm 2 written over a thousand years before Jesus Christ was born. The genius of God's plan, the genius of God's word, who's the author talking about, of course Jesus Christ. Matthew 1:1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of God, the son of Abraham. Revelation 17:14, they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings. And those with him are called and chosen and faithful.

So the promise happened that Jesus would be born, the King would come and the King came humbly to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many, resurrected ascends to heaven, and then he's coming back. So this Psalm is a warning and it's also an invitation warning judgment is coming invitation, repent of your sins. Every knee will bow Philippians 2:9-11, therefore God is highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Everybody will bow and everybody will confess either you do it in humility in this life, or you'll do it in humiliation when Jesus returns. That's why He gives us this closing appeal in Psalm 2:9, you shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a Potter's vessel.

Judgment is real. Jesus Christ is coming back. We live in 2020 with every single day. I'm like, Jesus coming back today. He's coming back, with every single new iteration of the 2020 craziness like Jesus coming back. He's got to come back. But it's true with every day brings us closer to the physical return of Jesus Christ in the second coming. Revelation 11:15, then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and He shall remain forever and ever.

So Jesus is coming back. Why? To crush all opposition to reign and righteous and son David's throne. Revelation 19:15-16, from his mouth comes a sword, a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God almighty on his robe. And on his thigh, He has a name written King of kings and Lord of lords. When Jesus returns, he will return physical.

And He will reign physically for a thousand years and Satan and all who, who followed Him will be thrown to lake of fire and tormented forever. That's a reality. That's a fact. And now the Psalmist ends with this appeal. Now, therefore, O Kings be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for the wrath his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

He goes, it's incredible back and forth, fear and trembling. He's coming as a King to vanquish all his enemies. So don't be his enemy. Take refuge in Him, submit to Him. Every single one of us we're in verse three, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away, their cords from us. Have you never had the thought how much life would be easier if there was no God, if there were no rules, if there were no commandments, can you, we've all been there.

We've all wanted a reality apart from God, we all try to try to create these excuses and he's here. We've all done this. We've all fallen short of the glory of God, but he says, "Take refuge in him." Not from Him in Him, don't run from God. Run to God. There's no refuge from Him, but there's refuge in Him. So run to Jesus Christ, run to Christ today. King Jesus taught us the way of happiness the way of blessedness. And I'm going to read this, the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. And that'll be our transition to Holy Communion. But this is Psalm 1 and 2 echoed in Jesus' first sermon, Matthew 5:2-11, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, and for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you amen.

At this moment, we're going to transition to Holy Communion. I've been waiting for this for five months. You've got these cool little cups, they got both bread and the cup. If you are a Christian, a repentant Christian, if you have repented of your sins, and if you are continuing to repent of your sins, your welcome to participate in Holy Communion. If you are not a Christian, or if you are in sin, now that you have not repented off, please refrain from this part of the service.

Instead, spend this time repenting of sin and meditating upon God. If someone who wants to participate in communion has not received one of these. We can bring you some, just raise your hand if you haven't received one of these. So the way it works is you take the top off and there's a little piece of bread right there. This is actually my first time ever doing this.

And then there's little thing that you take off for the cup there it is. Alright. The night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, he took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you, take it and do this in remembrance of me."

(silence)

He then took the cup. He said, "This cup is a cup of the new covenant of my blood just pour out for the sins of many take drink, and do this in remembrance of me."

Heavenly Father you are a great God. Thank you so much for sending your son, Jesus Christ, your beloved son, your begotten son, to die on a cross for our sins, bearing the full brunt of your wrath for the curse that we deserve for our law breaking. For our rebellion, for our sin and our sins. Lord, we thank you that you provided a way for the rebels to become your children. We pray Holy Spirit continue to fill each one of us.

We want to be like the blessed person, the blessed man, the blessed woman planted by the streams of living water, which is the Holy Spirit. Lord we thank you for the songs and we pray that in this next season, you do deepen our devotion for you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the digital connection cart which you can find in the app, or on our website or if you're watching online in the comment section below. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Oh, holy God, I pray that you today open our eyes to the reality that is all around us, a reality of holy war, of spiritual warfare, the reality that there are two kingdoms with two kings both vying for the same throne, the throne of our hearts for now. And I pray today, Lord, that you show us that when we come to you, Jesus, when we ask for you to forgive us of our sins, to liberate us from sin, to liberate us from the shackles of sin that you also call us to submit our wills to yours for you are the great King of Kings.

Lord, I pray that you give us discernment to discern truth from lies, to discern your voice from the enemies, to discern your will from that of Satan. And I pray, Lord, that you make us a people who are fearless as lions because we have the Lion of Judah with us. You are with us. And yes, Satan does come like a roaring lion seeking whom to devour, but when you are with us, you give us victory and in you, we are more than conquerors.

I pray, give everyone listening now ears to hear and eyes to see this reality. And I pray, Lord, regenerate so many, transfer so many from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Savior and King, and whose name we pray, amen.

The title of the sermon today is Holy War. We're finishing our sermon series in Luke for now. We're starting a brand new series for eight weeks, next week through the Psalms, an incredible series, praying for the Lord to bless each one of us. The title of the sermon is Holy War.

We are at war with an invisible enemy, an unseen enemy intent on destroying each one of us and destroying the human race. And you will never understand the events going on around you. You will never understand world history. You will never understand the world unless you understand that the world is at war, between God and Satan, good and evil, truth and error, faith and unbelief, life and death itself. It's not a physical war.

Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Do you believe in this? How can you not? We can prove that God exists by pointing to his creation, his good creation, his beautiful creation. It's pointing at love in the world and goodness, and kindness, and humanity, pointing to sacrifice and service, pointing to those who are generous in heart. We see goodness.

Proof of the creator is visible in the creation. Satan is not a creator, he's a counterfeiter at best and he counterfeits in order to destroy. So, how do we prove the existence of the destroyer? We point to the destruction. It's all around us. It's all around us. We can start with world history. We can start with World War I and World War II and nuclear warfare. We can start with the Holocaust. We can do that. Or we can just look around and see the destruction around us. By the way, the tactics of the enemy of destruction have not changed. You read the Old Testament. Everyone who worshiped Baal, everyone who worshiped the idols, every single one of those societies had a pattern of child sacrifice. Why did God destroyed Jericho completely? Why did he call for the annihilation of Jericho? Because the walls of Jericho were built on the skeletons of babies.

Let's point out the destruction around us, destruction of unborn humans, death-inducing destruction. The leading cause of death worldwide in 2019 that killed 42 million human beings was abortion. 8.2 million died from cancer, 13 million from other disease. How many people have died of COVID? We're told around 842,000, let's say a million. 42 million compared to 1 million. The invisible enemy is not COVID, it's Satan.

And then if the baby isn't killed in the womb, he tries to destroy children as early as possible, and there's a pandemic of this. Just go to FBI's National Crime Information Center and just research how many children go missing in this country a year. Just this week, the US marshals found 39 missing children in Georgia under Operation Not Forgotten. Most likely, you haven't heard of that.

There's a major police operation also this week in Western Australia about 140 underage victims with 11 arrests. Why are children going missing and what's happening to them? Demonic, it's demonic. We can all agree with that. And then if he doesn't destroy children there, he tries to destroy children with lies about food, lies about sexuality, with pornography, lies about marriage, lies about families, lies about sin in general which leads to generational sin and you get the families' destruction of churches, destruction of cities, destruction of society and ultimately, Satan's goal is the destruction of the human race.

Study evil. Open your eyes to the evil around us, the evil that is not shown us, but it's there. And if you visited other countries, if you're from another country, you know it's there because it's more visible than it is here. Study evil and you will never be more sure that God exists. So, our only hope is Jesus Christ. 1 John 3:8, "Whoever makes the practice of sinning is of the devil for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil," to destroy the destroyer.

That's why Christ came and that's why it's so important to understand in Christ ministry, how he fought with Satan and demons and how that applies to our life today. I want to look at Luke 11:14. We'll begin with 14 through 23. Luke 11:14, "Now he, Jesus, was casting out a demon that was mute. And when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled. But some of them said, 'He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,' while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven.'"

"But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? And if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.'"

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points, first we look at Jesus versus Satan, then we look at Satan versus people, and then three, hearing keep the word, those are weapons. First of all, Jesus versus Satan, we see in verse 14 that Jesus cast out a demon that was mute. So, this demon was causing physical pain, physical ailment to the person, to this man and the person couldn't speak and the people marveled.

So, Jesus is the Son of God. That's clear from the gospels and he was sent to deliver us from Satan. And the battle with the demon exposes another battle, a battle between truth and lies, between the religious authorities and Jesus. The demon submits to Jesus Christ, the religious authorities do not, because they understand if one greater than them has come, if one who has power over the demonic has come, they need to relinquish their authority and submit to him. They do not, so they begin to question him. They don't have teachable open minds. They're closed, they're accusatory.

They don't question the fact of the casting out of the exorcism. That's undeniable. They question the source of his power. They just got a sign but they want another sign. They're asking for more evidence and there's never enough evidence for the rebellious heart, not even enough evidence for them that he's reading their minds. Even that's not enough. Verse 17, "But he knowing their thoughts said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls.'"

That's the famous line that Abraham Lincoln used in a speech before the Civil War. It was from scripture. Verse 18, "'And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they will be your judges.'" Incredible logic. Jesus cast out demon, and then his enemies, the authorities say, "He's doing it by the power of Satan," that's Beelzebul.

And Jesus just says, "If Satan goes to war with Satan, how can his kingdom stand?" And he says, "Your sons, by whose authority do your sons cast out demons?" He's talking about the 72 disciples in chapter 10 where Jesus gives them authority to cast out demons and they come back and they said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name." And Jesus says, "Don't rejoice that the demons obey you, but rejoice instead that your names are written in the book of life."

And Jesus sees through the stratagem, he sees through the Pharisees or the religious authorities and he sees Satan's strategy. So Satan, sometimes he goes to war by possessing people. Sometimes Jesus goes to war by possessing ideologies and he sees with the Pharisees, though they're not possessed by Satan, they are being influenced by Satan through a demonic idea and he sees the third temptation of Satan in the desert. Remember in the desert, Jesus goes, he's tempted after fasting for 40 days. And the third temptation was, "Jesus, go to the pinnacle of the temple and jump down." Jump down.

Reveal your power for show. And Jesus doesn't. They've already seen a miracle. The question is will they continue to rebel or submit. And the reprobate mind is perpetually stuck in this debate mode. I need a little more evidence. I need to study this a little more. I need to read a few more books. I need to ask a few more questions and you're always stuck in this limbo of debating and you never pick a side. And that's why Jesus, this text, he lands it with verse 23, "Whoever is not with me is against me, whoever does not gather with me scatters."

What he's saying is there's only two sides, there's only two kingdoms. It's the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan. Satan is a real spiritual being, not just some impersonal force for evil. He was an angel created by God who rebelled against God and he commands a host of evil spirits. Those are called demons, and here Satan is called Beelzebul. Beelzebul was a derivation that goes back to Baal worship.

We see this in 2 Kings 1 where King Ahaziah, he falls. He's hurt and he wants to know what's going to happen with him. Is he going to die? Instead of going and asking the prophets or asking God himself, he sends people to inquire of Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, the lord of the flies.

Why was Beelzebub called the lord of the flies because this was a Hebrew idiom that was derogatory to show that if you worship this lord of the flies, if you worship this false idol, everything in your life will be turned to destruction where the lord of the flies, what does that mean? What are flies attracted to? They're attracted to dung in the King James version, D-U-N-G.

If you worship this person, if you worship this idol, if you worship Satan who is actually behind this idol, he will make everything in your life go to that. That's the name of Beelzebul. Jesus talks about the fact that Satan's agenda is to come to steal, kill and destroy when Jesus' plan for us is to give us life and give us life to the fullest. Then here we see the religious authorities, they're slandering the son of God. Instead of submitting to the evidence and following the evidence, they find self-justifying explanations and they're slandering, blaspheming the son of God.

What's Satan's agenda? It's to harm us. Satan hates God. So when he sees human beings created in the image of God, he wants to destroy them as much as he can in order to recreate them in his own image, in his own defiled, degraded, perverted image. Since the fall of the human race into sin, every person's born under Satan's dominion, Jesus called him the ruler of this world. Paul called him the God of this world who has blinded the minds of the unbelieving.

In this case, the demon causes the man to be unable to speak, unable to speak to God, unable to worship God, to praise God. He causes him to be mute. He mutes him. Other cases, he blinds people. You can study the legion and the thousand demons and the psychological physical effects that they bring. He harms. He mutes. He blinds. He's sneaky.

He doesn't do that in the west as much because he does just enough to keep you asleep. If he does too much, you're going to wake up to it. He doesn't want to jolt you awake to just how awful, just how egregious the evil is. He's sneaky, and how do we wage war? We wage war in the same way that Jesus wage war. How is Jesus waging war here? He speaks to the demons, speaks the word of God. Be gone in the name of Jesus Christ.

He speaks to the Pharisees. He's doing spiritual warfare. He's speaking the word of God. The truth of God, the word of God, that is our weapon, trust about us, humanity. Truth about sin, truth about reality, salvation, the gospel. And by speaking truth, that's why it's so important to speak the faith, speak the word of God, speak the gospel to those around us. We're liberating captives.

We, the church of Jesus Christ, we are charging the gates of hell with the flaming sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. That's why Satan wants to mute us. That's why Satan wants us to be bashful about our faith, to be embarrassed to say, "This is good, and this is evil. This is diabolical. This is demonic. That's from the pit of hell."

Why is it so uncomfortable in here now? Why? Why are we so afraid to speak the word of God? Because we've been muted. The volume is down on us in the church of Jesus Christ, and Satan continues to spew his BS, the lord of the flies.

Luke 11:20-22, Jesus says, "But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." If I do this by the power of God, by the finger of God, and this is an allusion to Exodus 8:19, where the Egyptians understood that they had sorcery, they had power. When Moses came, he had the finger of God with him.

If I'm doing this by the finger of God, if I'm casting out these demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. If the kingdom of God has come upon you, then the king is here. "And when a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace," he's talking about Satan here, "his goods are safe. But when one stronger than he," if someone is stronger than Satan comes, "it overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil."

The kingdom of God is upon us. It's the initial face of the kingdom manifested in the presence of the king who rules in our lives, who rules on the thrones of our hearts and also anticipates the day when Jesus will reign not only in our hearts, but on the throne of King David. Satan will be bound from his powerful influence on earth, and Jesus will put his feet on the necks of his enemy.

His enemies will be a footstool for his feet. Satan will be bound because Jesus is stronger, Jesus is fully armed, Jesus attacks, Jesus overcomes and he takes away the armor and takes away the spoil that's been stolen by the enemy. That's Jesus versus Satan. Jesus wins. He wins every time.

But we need to decide, are we going to allow the fullness of Jesus Christ to fill our hearts? And that's point two, Satan versus people. And here are the objection that's raised in the west is, I don't hate God. I don't hate the idea of God. I just don't want to be fanatic for God. I don't want to be an extremist. I don't want to be a fundamentalist for God.

Do I love God? I wouldn't go that far. Let's just say I don't hate him. Or I don't hate the idea of him in general. Is he my king? No. But Satan isn't my king either. Satan isn't my master either. And that's how we want to just remain neutral. Yeah, a kind of Jesus. Yeah, I don't want to go all the way. And this is how Satan blinds us in the west.

I'm not your master. You don't need God to be your master. You are your own master. Do as you please. You define morality as long as you're not hurting anybody publicly. That's how he lulls us to sleep. And how he blinds our minds and our eyes. And then we don't see reality from what it is. We just say everything just exists. Everything around us, it just happened.

Morality, yeah, not that big of a deal although it's written in our hearts. Then, we still feel shame, we still feel guilt, we still feel regret even though we've transgressed laws that we don't even believe in and then we go down the cycle of anxiety and depression and shame and destruction, and then we numb ourselves with substances to get rid of that. And then little by little by little by little, the Satan says, "You are your own master," and little by little, he enslaves us.

And here, Jesus illustrates what happens when we try to play the neutral card. It never works because you can't control you. You can't master your own desires. You can't master your own heart. How often have you done something and you say, "How in the world could I have gone so far? I don't even recognize myself." He takes our sin and uses it as a foothold to exacerbate it, to create further destruction in our lives.

And Jesus illustrates it with a story. Verse 24, "When the unclean spirit," or just cast out of demon and he's speaking to this person. "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest. And finding none it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. And then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first."

So perhaps, you have had a demon that you were battling and you overcome it. You overcome this one thing that had been enslaving you. Perhaps you did it with moral reformation, willpower, determination and Satan at that moment, he tells his troops to retreat temporarily to give you reprieve so that you start thinking that you defeated this thing by yourself.

You clean your heart for a little bit. You swept your heart. You put your heart, your life in order, perhaps to show you Satan retreats, perhaps to show you, "Hey, I don't exist. Hey, you can overcome this." Perhaps to show you that you can be saved without Jesus and he does this all the time with therapy, with rehab, with Alcoholic Anonymous or other religions.

And the end goal ... This is what Jesus is saying. "I've cast out this demon but the end goal is for you to welcome God the fullness of the Holy Spirit into your life. You either have one spirit or you have the Holy Spirit. Let the Holy Spirit fully indwell the presence of Christ in your heart."

If not, Satan doesn't rest. He will send more demons. This demon, he's restless. He doesn't like being in the desert. He wants a home. And the spiritual world, like the natural world, abhors a vacuum. So you see that seven more evil. Here, we see that there are different degrees in evil of the demonic. Seven more evil move in, eight demonic roommates in this person's heart.

Scripture talks about don't let the sun set on your anger, lest you give Satan a foothold in your heart. Sometimes through our own sin that we have not mortified. We give Satan a foothold. Once he gets his foot in the door, he wants to knock it down. I wonder if there's a foothold in your ... We all have it. We all have these footholds. The question is to what degree. To what degree have you not repented of clear sin? To what degree has this sin been pulling you away from the presence of God, from the holiness of God, from the purposes of God for you?

Jesus is saying it's all of Jesus or none of Jesus. You can't just have a little Jesus. It's all or nothing. And this principle, it applies individually but also applies collectively to churches and applies collectively to communities and applies collectively to nations. Jesus was applying this principle here to this one person but also to Israel. The worship of idols had been exorcized from Israel when they were freed from Babylonian captivity. That demon was gone.

But now there are new demons, the worship of the letter of the law, legalism, formalism, covetousness, pride, greed. Public religious life was worse than ever, so much worse they were on the brink of crucifying the son of God, and they didn't see it. How could they be so blind? Because they see the evidence of the work of God and they attribute it to Satan. They're literally pawns of the evil one because they have not allowed Jesus Christ to cast out the demons of sin and pride and selfishness and folly and gluttony and the rest of them.

So, how do we battle the demonic? How do we battle the influence of Satan in our lives? How do we wage holy warfare? Jesus ends this text with a really curious passage, Luke 11:27-28. "And as he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, 'Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!' But he said, 'Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!'" Why is this text added right after a text about the demonic and exorcism? Why? And this woman is well-meaning though little misguided, so Jesus just corrects her thinking a little. She said, "Your mother must be so proud for raising a son like you." And of course, this is true. Mary certainly was blessed. We've got The Magnificat and Jesus doesn't deny that Mary is blessed though he does correct the direction of this lady's thoughts.

This lady thought just being connected to Jesus physically, relationally, just being connected to him was enough to be saved. She thought, "Oh, you're so ... You're the messiah. And just by virtue of your mom, her connection with you, you're saved." And Jesus says, "That's not what saves."

Familiarity with Jesus Christ is not what saves. That's not the way to blessing. The way to blessing is faith in Jesus Christ. And the work on the cross that Jesus Christ took the penalty for our sin, that Jesus Christ on the cross died because of our sin. Jesus Christ on the cross was ... He was putting his heel into the head of Satan, into the head of the serpent, giving him the deathblow. That's what Jesus was doing on the cross as he absorbed our curse for us in order to give us this blessing.

And what's the blessing? Once we become a Christian, once we're saved by grace through faith, once we repent of our sins, that's all you need to do. All you need to do to be transferred from the domain of darkness to the domain of light no matter how dark your darkness has been is to say, "God, I repent of my sins. I repent of my evil. I repent of my dark works. And Jesus, thank you for bearing the penalty for my darkness on the cross. You're enshrouded in darkness in order to transfer me into the kingdom of light." That's all you need to do.

And once you do, this is the emphasis here. You are in a kingdom where you are to submit to the king and that's why you need to hear the word of God and keep it. When Jesus becomes your savior, he also becomes your king. So, are you hearing the word of God? Not just listening to it but hearing it ... And are you keeping the word of God because we fight the good fight of faith with faithfulness, by worshiping God with our lips. That's why worship is so important. That's why if you're coming to a service, come on time. Come 10 minutes early, 15 minutes, because worship isn't just a warm-up for the sermon.

And we have an incredible worship team. But worship is we are proclaiming with our being that God is holy and a savior, and that's what prepares us to hear the word of God. So, no more late people next week, or just watch online. Just watch online so I don't see you walking in late. That's why I stand in the back, by the way. I'm like ...

Here's the other thing I'll say. When you're faithful to the Lord and you are public about your faithfulness to the Lord, people will hate you. When you are public about what you believe about God, the true God of Holy Scripture, when you're public about what he teaches, about the most private areas of life, when you proclaim that, you will be opposed today like never before.

I've preached this before, and I've kind of like ... I haven't even noticed how the temperature has increased exponentially so fast. The hatred that's coming that's being directed at people who are faithful to the Lord, who stand on this truth. 1 Peter 5:8-11, "Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour." How does he do it in this context? "Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering ..." He wants to devour by suffering.

"The same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world." Are Christians being persecuted for the faith around the world? Yeah, by the millions. "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

So Satan, prowling lion, wants to devour sometimes through temptation, sometimes through lies, sometimes through false theology. In this context, through suffering to get Christians to back down. And they don't stand for the truth because it's painful or it's costly. It's not starting physically yet, but we're beginning to see the financial costs. I'll just give one example from my ... It's kind of a silly example but it happened and kind of blindsided me.

So, my brother and a few guys from the church had been working on a startup over the pandemic called ToolBelt home services pros with customers. Customers post a project and home service pros send their price. And I grew up painting with my dad. My dad, Vlad, he started a painting business. If your house looks bad, don't get mad, call Vlad. So, I did that every summer since I was eight. Every summer afternoons, weekends, I am a tremendous painter. Humbly, I will tell you I am probably the best painter you've ever met. The lines, come on.

And so my brother and I, it was a Friday, and this gentleman posted "I need my shelves painted." And my brother and I ... I was preaching then on Thursday. So Friday, Saturday, that was my weekend. So, Saturday, I was like, "Yeah, let's go. Let's go paint some shelves." And I was like how much you want to make, how much if we did the thing, okay, 500 bucks.

And I submitted the price and the guy said, "Okay, great. When can you come?" I said, "Tomorrow." He said, "You got the tools?" I was like, "I got everything. I got everything. I'll take care of you, Steven." He said, "Okay, great." I submit my bid.

Two hours past and I was like, "Yeah, something is weird." And then he messages me. This is what he messaged me. He says, "Hi, Jan, sorry. I can't accept your bid. I found an article you posted through your church in which you labeled being gay as a sin titled 'Lust kills love. Love kills lust.' I will not hire someone who believes that to do work in the home I've built with my husband of 10 years and our two children," period.

That did not feel good, and never feels good. So, I prayed. I want to going to come back with a link to that sermon. Did you even listen to it? Where I talk about grace, it begins with grace. We're all sinners. He didn't listen to it, I don't know. I said, "Hi, Steven, no problem. I was just trying to serve you as a Christian and pastor. I'm called to love and serve everyone, trying my best as a sinner myself. By God's grace, I wish you and your husband and your two children all the very best. All love good, sir," heart emoji.

Stuff like this happens privately all the time. You don't want to know it because I'm not going to be like, "Oh, Steven, you weren't nice to me." Pray about Steven. We're called to love those who persecute us, but the persecution is only going to increase. And the more you look like Christ, the more your life reflects Christ, the more of this you will get. The more public you are with what you truly believe, the more of this you'll get, especially in this political climate.

Matthew 6:10-12, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." So, I missed out on $500 but my spiritual Venmo went cha-ching.

The gospel, they demanded a sign. People today demand a sign. The greatest sign that God has ever shown the world of his existence and of his character is the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ conquered Satan and sin and death on the cross, came back on the third day. And when we believe in him, we are saved.

Colossians 2:13-15, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him."

He did what no person could. He defeated Satan, and Satan now is a defeated foe, although he's allowed to reign until being finally bound at the second coming of Christ. Satan is on a leash. He's still here. He's still causing havoc, but Jesus alone has enough strength to save our soul from his demonic clutch. We're saved by grace through faith, that faith always leads to obedience. Saving faith leads to obedient faith.

If Jesus Christ, if what he taught was false, he's the greatest blasphemer that ever lived. And if what he taught is true, then he is greatest king. So, you can't stay in the middle. There is no middle. Either you fully accept or you fully reject. Either you are in the army of Christ in his kingdom or you're in the army of Satan. You're being used by him.

Here's what I found after 11 years in ministry in Boston. The number one things that gets in the way of people accepting this truth no matter how much evidence you give them, the number one thing that gets in the way is pride. Because it's painful to admit that you are have been wrong. As smart as you are, as educated as you are, as connected as you are, as successful as you are, you have been wrong about the most important issue in the universe.

And to admit that, it's so, so painful. So, repentance is a form of suffering which does humble us. But if you don't submit to Jesus as king, you are not just in the wrong side. You're not just in the wrong side of history, you're on the wrong side of the greatest war being waged. So, join Christ. Join the army of the Lord. Stop grasping at straws to justify unbelief and sin. Seek the truth. And Jesus said if you seek the truth, you will find the truth and the truth will set you free.

I'm going to close with Paul Harvey's ... He wrote a short little essay in 1965, which reading it now seems so prophetic. And I like to read it every single election cycle just so we see the work of the enemy in our culture and how it's progressing. He says this: If I were the devil, if I were the prince of darkness, I'd want to engulf the whole world in darkness. And I'd have a third of its real estate, and four-fifths of its population, but I wouldn't be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, thee.

So I'd set about however necessary to take over the United States. I'd subvert the churches first. I'd begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve, "Do as you please." To the young, I would whisper that the Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what's bad is good, what's good is square. And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, "Our father, which art in Washington ..." And then I'd get organized. I'd educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I'd threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I'd pedal narcotics to whom I could. I'd sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I'd tranquilize the rest with pills.

If I were the devil, I'd soon have families at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations at war with themselves until each in its turn was consumed. And with promises of higher ratings, I'd have mesmerizing media fanning the flames. And if I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects but neglect to discipline emotions. Just let those run wild until before you knew it, you'd have to have drug-sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door.

Within a decade, I'd have prisons overflowing. I'd have judges promoting pornography. Soon I would evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in his own churches, I would substitute psychology for religion and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money. And if I were the devil, I'd make the symbols of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle.

If I were the devil, I'd take from those who have and give to those who want until I'd kill the incentive of the ambitious. And what do you bet I could get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich? I would caution against extremes and hard work in patriotism, in moral conduct. And I would convince the young that marriage is old-fashioned, that swinging is more fun, and that what you see on the TV is the way to be. And thus, I could undress you in public and I could lure you into bed with diseases from which there is no cure. In other words, if I were the devil, I'd just keep right on doing what he's doing.

There is good and evil, there is God and Satan. Question is, are you with him or are you against him? Those are the only options that Jesus gives us in your life, and your whole eternity depends on it. The choice is clear as day. And then once you submit to Jesus Christ, take up the whole armor of God, especially the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and be praying at all times in the spirit for that is how we stand firm in the Lord. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your Holy Scripture. We thank you, Lord, that you are with us, that you are the ferocious lion who is by our side, the Holy Spirit that you are with. Lord, I pray that you fill us like never before. And whatever closets or little crevices in our souls, in our hearts, that we are keeping close from you because we're so enjoying that darkness in the inside, I pray today knock down those doors.

Knock down those closets and fill, overwhelm us with your presence. Overwhelm us with your power and make us a people who unabashedly proclaim the whole counsel of God, who never shy away from the truth, no matter what the consequences are. And we thank you for that in advance and we pray all these in Christ's holy name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

We're back. Hallelujah. Praise you Jesus. I've gotten a lot more charismatic over the past six months. Praising God. Hallelujah. Praise you Jesus. I'm so glad we're back. Welcome if you're new to Mosaic, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through a digital card and either on the website or in the app. We are still in our sermon series in the book of Luke transitioning soon. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly father what a good father you are, you're a father to us corporately and you're a father to us individually. And we thank you for adopting us into your family because of the work of your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus you are our older brother. You are our Lord and savior. You paved the path for us. You made the way for us to follow you and follow you into the presence of God the father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit we pray today, we ask for more of you. Jesus, you promised that when we ask more of the Holy Spirit from the father that you love to give good gifts to your children. The greatest gift you can give us is the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit fill us now. Holy Spirit, I pray that you convict us of sin, whatever sin that has beguiled us. Whatever sin that is controlling us. I pray today remove it.

Give us a glimpse of the holiness of God. Show us God how immense your holiness is. How much higher you are than us. I pray today that you deepen our reverence for you, a fear of you, a good healthy fear that keeps us from sin, keeps us from doing anything that would hurt our relationship with you. I pray, Lord, bless our time the Holly Spirit and the holy scriptures by the spirit and Holy Spirit continue to protect us from the evil one, from the demonic we live in a true spiritual war. And I pray remind us of that. Remind us that prayer is actually the way that we fight. Sometimes we think that prayer is a waste of time, that prayer doesn't accomplish anything. It accomplishes everything.

So we appeal to you Holy Spirits today come and today remind us that there's nothing more important than sitting at the feet of Jesus, taking your word in, being transformed by your word, and then going out and living in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ and continuing to preach the gospel. Share the good news with those who are still captive. And I pray release many in this next season and we pray all this in Christ holy name, amen.

The title of the sermon today is rest at his feet. We'll be looking at the story of Martha and Mary. And usually the story is presented in such way that Mary is sat at the feet of Jesus. Martha was too busy. Don't be like Martha, be more like Mary. And I think it's a little deeper than that. There's more layers than that. I share the story about my dad often. I'll share a story by my mom. My mom... So I come from Slavic family, in Slavic families hospitality is all important. And if you have guests over, you have to present all of your food, not just a little food, all the food you have. The store, the table has to be and the rest of the phrase is, it has to be breaking. It has to be almost collapsing under the weight.

And my mom is tremendous at this. She's so good at this. She's not good at just creating the food and making the dishes and a lot of salads, a lot of meat, a lot of potatoes, but she's also really good at presenting it beautifully. So with the salads, like she'll cut up the cucumber or the radish or something and she'll make a flower out of it. Just sprinkled parsley, just perfectly. It's always incredible. And one of the things that I noticed even growing up it's you'd would never sit down with us. She would cook and she's running around just to make sure that everyone has enough and they've had seconds and thirds and fourths, and she would never sit down. And then when the guests would leave, she would just crash and then get mad at us.

What do we do? She's like, "Oh, you should've helped." I'm like, "We are..." And I didn't really understand that frustration until we had kids. And now we have a family of six. We have four kids, my wife and I. I know what it takes to just feed my kids to the magical restaurant table for six, please. I know how hard that is. And then you got more people. And that's kind of what's going on with Martha. She wants to serve Jesus. She wants to please Jesus. She wants to show Jesus how much he loves her. And food is her love language. Hospitality is the way that she thinks and Jesus stomach's is the way to get his heart. And she kind of misses the point where Jesus is at the end of his life. And he knows that his time on earth is limited and he just wants to spend time with her. He just wants to sit there.

So that's what the text is. It shows us, reminds us what's most important. It reprioritizes things in our life. So today we are in Luke 10:38 through Luke 11:13. Would you look at the text with me. Luke 10:38, now, as they went on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her. "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished one of his disciples said to him, "Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." And he said to them, "When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation." And he said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him friend lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him." And he will answer from within, "Do not bother me the door's now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you, for everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

What father among you if his son asks for a fish will instead of a fish, give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, listen to God intently. Second, talk to God relationally, and third ask of God audaciously.

First of all, listened to God intently. Luke 10:38. Now, as they went on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. So the family is Mary, Martha. We don't know where their parents are. Most likely they passed away that's why they haven't been mentioned. It's Martha's house. Most likely Martha is the oldest. Martha then there's Mary and they have a brother named Lazarus. So that's the family. Jesus was friends with them. He's friends with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And this is really important because in the age old question is can men and women be friends. And I would submit to you that apart from Jesus Christ, there's always going to be some weird tension where it's never like too many... But with Jesus Christ, we're not just friends we're siblings.

We're siblings, we're brothers and sisters. So we can have sibling relationships in the faith because Jesus Christ comes and he takes away our sin and gives us the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome our sins. So Jesus did not have a home. He actually said, the son of man doesn't have a place to rest his head. So he would be blessed, receive blessings from gospel, patrons or people who were blessed financially. And they opened up their home to him. So Martha welcomes him and the disciples. How many disciples of did Jesus have? 13 or 12? So with Jesus, 13. 13 grown men just rolled into your house. You are not expecting, did they call? Of course not, text message at least? No, nothing. Mail pigeon? No, nothing, nothing. They roll in and they're hungry. They just ministered all day.

Now, I'll tell you this. Has anyone had 13 men over their house to eat? Am kind of afraid when my brother comes to my house. One grown man, like I need to go shopping just for him. Just for that little, we had burgers this week, he down three burgers gone, and then he was looking at the last one. I'm like, "Come on, man. You can't do that. That's my second one." So just do the math. So they come to his house and Mary loves to serve. Mary loves to care. This is her love language. She wanted to create a feast for Jesus. She wants to practice hospitality. It takes time. It's hard. Cooking back then was so much harder than is cooking today. You couldn't just go to the Stop & Shop at Trader Joe's. You don't have a gas stove. It's so much harder. She feels all this pressure.

So she's doing that and what's her sister doing? Luke 10:39. And she has a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. And usually at this point in the sermon, you say, okay, don't be like Martha, be like Mary. But I don't think that's what's going on here. Because scripture talks about faith and works. We're saved by grace through faith. When there is sin in our lives and the Lord draws us to himself we repent of our sin, of our righteousness, of our bad works, of our good works, that we try to do in order to gain salvation. We repent of all that by grace through faith, we're saved because of the work of Jesus Christ. Now, we're called the good works. It's faith and works. It's like two paddles of a rowboat.

It's like two pedals on a bike. They're together. We are to worship and we are to work, we are to take God's word and translate that into work. So that's not what's going on here. What's going on here is something deeper. It's a re-prioritization. Martha you invited me into your home and you didn't ask me how I am. You didn't even ask me how I'm doing. Perhaps Mary was better at the EQ emotional intelligence. She saw that Jesus was burdened. She saw that Jesus had set his face to Jerusalem. He knew these were his last day. So Jesus started teaching. He started teaching. She sits at his feet. Most likely he's standing. And by the way, this is interesting. Judaism didn't forbid explicitly that wouldn't be instructed in the Torah, but it was unheard of for a rabbi to allow a woman to sit at his feet, because that meant that she is one of his disciples and she's sitting there.

She's listening. Later Rabbinic tradition includes quotations such as may the words of the Torah be burned, they should not be handed over to women. So they're saying rather than teach a woman the Torah, we prefer burning it. And Jesus rejected these outright unbiblical attitudes. And you see Mary's posture here. It expresses her desire to learn. She's sitting at his feet intently listening. There's also an aspect of worship, of adoration. She's absorbing the words. Soaking in the information, this focus, this rapt attention. She loves the teacher, therefore she loves the content, therefore she's absorbing it. There's an incredible connection between love and learning. In particular when it comes to God. This has to do with any subject. I'll just give you an example, if you're a musician and you love the song, you don't have to sit there and memorize the lyrics. They just stick to your brain.

You know what I'm saying? I can give you lots of examples of songs that I've memorized, but they shouldn't have been memorized. That was a long time ago, I'm redeemed. But you know what I'm saying? And with children, you see this with children, children come into the world with all. And because they have all their minds are open. They absorb information. This week we found out that our youngest daughter Milana... We speak Russian at home. We found out that she knows English. And my second daughter, Elizabeth, she started asking her questions in English, she said, "Touch your nose." She was like. "Touch your ear." "Give me a cookie."

They just absorb the information? And I say this because love and learning about God, they're so intertwined. Last week we talked about the great commandment. There are two great commandments. One is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.

There's a way to love God with your mind. When you love God, you love what he teaches. You love his word and his word sticks to your mind. I had a conversation recently with a sister who said, I get bored reading the Bible. I have a hard time reading. I fall asleep and I said, "When you're dating someone and you receive a text message or you receive an email or even a voicemail, you listen to that voicemail, no other voicemails." There's something about love and learning. And she's sitting there. She loves the subject because she loves the God who's speaking this word. But Martha verse 40 was distracted with much serving, she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." Fascinating, fascinating.

She's distracted. She hears perhaps a little bit of what Jesus is teaching. And this is probably going on for hours. And she's distracted by the serving. She wants to please God. She wants to please Jesus. She wants to show him how much she loves him. And she's distracted scripture says so much so she actually gets irritated. And what does she do? She goes to Jesus. And she says, "Lord, do you not care? Do you not care? I'm slaving away in this kitchen. And my sister sitting there listening to you talk, do you not care?"

I wonder if in this season you've asked the Lord that question. Lord, I'm serving you so much in the season. And I'm kind of out of fuel, do you not care. It's kind of accusatory. She's known Jesus. She's known his teaching. She's seen his miracles. She's accusing him and so much so that she says, "Lord, tell her, tell her then to help me, tell her." She's telling God what to do. There's a lot to unpack here. First of all, I'm going to say that Martha is... I think Martha's from New England. She's very blunt, from Boston. I get this from this text in John 11 where Jesus is about to resurrect Lazarus. And then Martha is like, "Hold on Jesus. Don't roll the rockaway yet, he's been there in there four days, I've done the math. It's going be a foul odor"

In the King James it says, "I think he stinketh. My brother's stinketh." She's absolutely blunt, this is what's on her heart. And I love this part about, she goes to Jesus with her aggravation, with her anxiety, with her doubt. "Do you not care?" I'm sure you've been in the situation where you're working hard and you see someone who isn't and it's hard for a person who's working to understand the person who's not in particular when it comes to studying scripture and prayer. And you're like, hold on. Because when you're doing work for God, you think that's the most important thing. When you're studying God's word and praying you think that's the most important thing, but the scripture isn't pitting them against each other. It's re-organizing, re-prioritizing, what comes first?

Above everything seek first the kingdom of God. The first thing you got to do is pray. The first thing you got to do is listen to God's word. God doesn't want our leftovers, he wants our first fruits. Before our work for him he wants the adoration of our heart. The other thing I will just point out here, Martha took herself too seriously. She thought if I do not be feed Jesus, Jesus will not be fed. If I do not feed Jesus' disciples, Jesus' disciples will not be fed. I am very important. My work is very important. I am actually indispensable to Jesus in his ministry. If I were not here, they would all die. So I'm going to go back to work. And there's a lesson here. The lesson is thinking like that, that I am indispensable, that's prideful. God does not need any of us. It's a miracle he would use any of us.

And that should humble us that we get to serve the Lord. She overestimated her importance. And when you do that, then your work becomes burdensome. And this applies to every single aspect of life. Being a spouse can be a burdensome ministry. If it's not done in the power of the spirit. Being a parent could be a burdensome ministry. Being a friend can be a burdensome ministry where you're like, I need to save this person. No, you don't. Jesus can save that person. My job is to point this person to Jesus. There's stuff going on, her heart's not in the right place. And Jesus just needs to reorder a few things. And that's really what salvation is. Salvation is God reordering loves in our life. You might be loving a good thing more than the greatest thing which is Jesus and that pulls you away from him.

Luke 10:41 and 42, but the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion of which will not be taken away from her." I love this answer. If you study Hebrew and Aramaic and then Jesus spoke, he was in the world of all three languages, including Greek. Whenever a name is repeated twice, it's for emphasis and it's for affection.

You see this as King David talking about his son, "Absalom, Absalom." When his son had betrayed him. And here Jesus say, "Oh, Mary, Mary." I use this to my kids when I want to emphasize my love for them but also they've done something that they shouldn't have. "Sophia, Sophia." That's what I do, "Liza Liza. Katia, Katia. Milana Milana." And they're smart kids. And whenever I mess up or do something stupid, Sophia, her favorite thing is, "Oh Papa, Papa" Same thing.

That's what he's doing. There's affection here, but it's like, I want to correct you, speaking truth in love. And he repeats her name and what did he say? He says, you're anxious and troubled about too many things. You've allowed secondary things to push out the primary thing. And that primary thing is actually the thing that gives you energy to do the secondary things. And that's why you're so anxious. And you're so distressed and troubled. So come back to the one thing that's necessary. It's the only thing that's truly necessary. You can just strip everything else away. But the only thing that's truly necessary is God. It's spending time in his word. It's nourishing our souls with his word. It's listening to him and speaking to him. There's nothing more important. That's the highest priority for Christ's servants, that's highest priority for all of us. And we forget this.

Sometimes you get to the point... And my wife and I we have this conversation. I'm like, "Baby, I see you're stressed out. When's the last time did you spend time in the scripture state?" "I don't have time to spend time in the scriptures. I've got to feed them breakfast." We have that conversation. And then I say, "Why don't you wake up earlier?" And that never goes well. So I got to feed them breakfast. But there is that time I got way too much to do to read scripture. I got way too much to do is spend time in prayer. I got too many other things and we actually lose the fuels source. We lose the power of the spirit. So dear believers sit at the feet of Jesus. Sit at his feet, this is not less than scripture, we have to read scripture, but it's more than scripture.

So the God that wrote his word, we read it, we study it, we meditate, we listen to his cadence and Jesus said, my sheep know my voice. And then when you know his voice from the scriptures, you hear him speaking in life by the power of the spirit. Sometimes he speaks through people. Sometimes he speaks through event, but he's with us, he's always with us. We can sit at his feet and rest in him. The only thing that's truly necessary, it's necessary in sickness, in health, adversity, prosperity, in life and death here and eternity. I wonder if Martha listened to this rebuke. By the way, hearing a rebuke from the Lord, hearing a rebuke from anyone, it does not feel good. You think Martha, after serving, slaving away for hours like to be rebuked. I wonder if she even sat down for the meal. It's like here, you can finish roasting the lamb yourself.

But I think she took it to heart. How do I know this? Remember when her brother Lazarus died and Jesus delayed coming on purpose so that he could glorify himself by resurrecting Lazarus. And Martha comes to him with the same blunt straight to the point voice. John 11:21-27. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise is again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me though he die yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die, do you believe this?"

And she said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ the son of God who was coming into the world." Why is this important? It's one of only two great confessions of the identity of Jesus Christ in all of the new Testament. The first came through lifts of Peter. He says, "I know who you are. You are Christ the son of the living God." And then on the lifts of Martha, you are the Messiah. You're the son of God. You're the Christ. She got it. Because she realized that the only one thing is necessary. She made that her good portion. God blessed her with this great revelation, the great confession. And then Mary, of course, she kept to the one thing to the end.

John 12:1-2, six days before the Passover Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So this is immediately after. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, again, she's serving and what's Lazarus doing? Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Here, I'd be like, "Lazarus why aren’t you helping your sister." But he just died. He just came back from the dead. That takes a lot out of you. So Martha is working, hopefully Mary's helping. Then Mary puts everything down. She walks, she took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And that house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. She realized by this point, not only is this the only thing that's necessary this is also the most precious thing there is. This is the most precious one there is. She knows she's in the presence of treasure and she wants to give her greatest treasure.

Something that's probably worth tens of thousands of dollars, a family heirloom. And she wants to pour out her devotion on Christ. Therefore preparing him for burial. And John 12:4-8, how did the disciples react? Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was about to betray him said, "Why was this ointment not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor?" He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. Jesus said, "Leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial for the poor you always have with you but you did not always have me."

And you see the juxtaposition in the text that one of the disciples Judas does not see Jesus for who he is, though he heard all of his teaching, saw the miracles and he doesn't realize that this is the greatest treasure in the world. Instead, the treasurer is stealing from the treasure Treasure because adultery, because of money, because of greed. And that's what led him to betray Christ. Instead, you've got these two sisters. One gives the great confession. The other one gives a great, great anointing. And it's all because they kept the main thing the main thing.

Second of all, talk to God relationally. So listen to God intently and then talk to God relationally. Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." What's fascinating here is why do they wait until Luke chapter 11 to ask Jesus how to pray? This is the end of Jesus' ministry.

This is probably the third year, for two years nobody asked, why. I think partially because they just assumed they knew how to pray. They grew up in Hebrew culture. They grew up going into the temple. They grew up going to synagogues, but they realized that Jesus prayed in a categorically different way than everyone else around them. Everyone else chanted or recited or just had these wrote memorized prayers. Jesus prayed intensely fervently, relationally. And why do they ask? On the one hand, prayer is easy. A child can pray. When you're at your wit's end, when you've got nothing, no other strength you pray. But also prayer's hard, prayer is strenuous. It's taxing of energy, of power, of focus, of emotion physically. And then you leave prayer filled spiritual.

There's something there, it's so natural, it doesn't need to be taught or you can spend your whole life studying it. Why do they ask here, because they understand that the spiritual warfare is just dialing up as Jesus is about to go to the cross as this hostility coming at him. And they realized that Jesus prayers are more and more fervent he's spending more and more time in prayer because Jesus knows he's about to enter the most cosmic battle there ever was on the cross with Satan.

John Piper said, you don't know what prayer is for until you know that life is war. That's why they got ask. They're like, I don't think I'm doing it right. I don't think I'm really struggling in prayer. So Jesus does pray. He teaches them. And then he talks about how to do audaciously. And he said to them, verse two, when you pray, say father hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. Perhaps you're like this isn't the Lord's prayer that I've had memorized because the one you have memorized is probably from Matthew six, The Sermon on the Mount. The reason why Jesus gives two different ones is to show us it's not about the magic formula of saying these words about the content, it's about the framework.

It begins with father. In The Sermon on the Mount Jesus says our father to emphasize the God his father of all Christians here is just father to emphasize that God is father of people individually because by grace through faith, because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we are adopted into the family of God. So we can come to God on our own. You don't need to pray to God through another person. You don't need someone to mediate through. You can pray on you. You can go to God the father on your own. Yes, he's King. Yes, he's great. But he's also father, dear father. Galatians and Romans calls him Father abba, abba father, dearest father. Some people say daddy, I'm like, ah, I'm just going to add a little more reverence to that. Dearest father, you're my dearest father to begin prayer with that it's relational.

Though it's relational, though he's a personal father he's still God. He's still God, hallowed be your name. May your name be holy. It is holy, but may your name be holy in my life, on my lips, in my heart. May your name be holy, maybe revered and feared and worshiped in this city, in my family, in my community. I think a lot of Christians are missing this. They're missing the holiness of God. For a lot of people, God is a buddy. God he's just a friend. God is someone who will always forgive your sin. So it doesn't matter how you live. Now, it doesn't matter how you live. God so much hate sin that he... Look at the cross. Look what it takes to get sin forgiven. Takes a son dying on the cross for us.

And I think our generation is missing this reverence. This awe that the God who created everything and in him all things hold together. We sin against him on a daily basis. We forget him. We've got a spiritual amnesia. We do things that he told us not to do. We don't do the things that he told us to.

I think part of it is in an attempt to share God's love with people we try to hide the true nature of God. We try to hide what he's really taught. What he's really taught about gender. What he's really taught about sexuality. What he's really taught about family. What he's really taught about the most important things in life. I'll just give you an example. This just happened this week, Lifeway, which is usually their great publisher, they publish a lot of great stuff, devotionals, and Bibles. They came up with the Bible Devo, which is a Bible devotional, but it's called a Bible Devo for generation Z. And this is how they translate John 1:1. John, 1:1 goes like this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Okay, that's John 1:1. This is how they translate.

Since day uno, there was cap G, big Jay was chilling with cap G and big J was cap G. Someone made an executive decision that that's a good idea. Some read that and like, yeah. Okay, generation D, let's go get them. First of all it was blasphemous. This is just bad theology. I don't know anyone gen Z who calls God cap G, big J. It's all to say that God is still God. And in prayer we need to know, yes hollowed be your name, may your name be holy. Your name is holy. So remind us to pursue holiness. Your kingdom come. Jesus rule in my heart. Jesus I submit everything to you. I yield everything to you. May your kingdom come in my life. May your kingdom come into my relationships, in my decision, in everything. And as you pray that you got to say is Jesus King over this decision, is Jesus King over this relationship, is Jesus King over my desires, over my affection, over my thoughts, over my thoughts, over my entertainment choices.

Is Jesus King right now, as he's sitting on his throne over what I am doing is he's reigning over everything. So the prayer begins with God. It's vertical then we begin to ask for what we need. Give us each day our daily bread, everything comes from God. We're fully dependent. Relying, he's talking about physical bread and spiritual bread, and you're not just praying for bread for yourself, but for others. Not just give me my bread, give me our bread. So you're cognizant of other's needs and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

Give me bread. Forgive me, give me grace and give me grace to extend grace to others and lead us not into temptation. What an interesting turn of phrase. Have you ever meditated on that? Why should we ask God not to lead us into temptation? Why would we have to ask God not lead us into temptation? Does God tempt us? No, of course not. James 1:13-14. Let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire. So God doesn't tempt us and God doesn't lead us to temptation to leave us in temptation. But there is a sense in which God allows temptation to happen. And he actually leads us through that temptation.

Because God is with us we're sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit. God is in us. Sometimes God does to test us, lead us to temptation and through temptation. And the way that he leads us through temptation is for us to cling to him, to hold onto him, to recognize that he will never give us temptation without giving us an exit strategy. That's first Corinthians 10:13, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Now, I've always understood that like, okay, you're in temptation, God has allowed this temptation in your life and he will give you an exit. And you have to take that exit by yourself. That's not what's going on because a Christian has the power of the Holy Spirit in him. So God is always with us.

So when he's giving us the exit strategy, he's leading us to it and through it, this is really important. This is how I think of it. I think of it temptation comes. I'm tied to a chair in a warehouse building and the Lord comes like a navy seal. Repels onto the roof from a helicopter, comes down and he's rescuing me. I don't know if for some reason the image that comes as Jack Ryan. I like it so much because the transformation from Jim Jack Ryan will happen with that. So he's leading me out, but he's saying stay close, stay close, stay close. I know where the exit is, stay close. Now, that metaphor doesn't work. Like most metaphors don't work. So got to broaden it. It's not bullets there. They don't look like bullets. They don't look like bullets.

Temptation never comes in the form of a bullet. It comes in the form of something tasty, something attractive. There's a seductive siren song of voices around us pulling us away from the one who says, I know where the exit is. Follow me, stay close to me. Don't stay here. Don't give into that temptation because you're going to come out stronger. And when you come out stronger, you'll be able to lead others out of that temptation. Just like what happened when Jesus started his ministry, he got baptized and what happened? The Holy Spirit. It says, ekballō in the Greek, cast him out, throws him into the desert in order for the enemy to tempt him. Why did Jesus Christ fast for 40 days? Why he tempted by the evil one? Why did God allow that for Jesus to conquer that so then to show us how we can be more than conquerors.

The other thing I want to point out from first Corinthians 10:3, it doesn't say, God won't give you more than you can handle. He often does give us more than we can handle so that we run to him. But it says that you won't give us more temptation than we can bare. So when you feel tempted by the evil one, when you feel tempted by sin, by the flesh, run to Christ, run to Christ and he will show you the exit strategy to get out by the power of the spirit. Look what happens, I'll just mention this and then point 3. We sin and then we pray. Pray before you sin. Pray when you're tempted. In that moment of temptation, pray. Call someone, text someone, "Hey, I'm being tempted right now, please, please pray for me, please." And the other thing I'll say is if you have time for temptation, you have too much time on your hands.

Go serve someone, go babysit someone's kids. I know lots of families who actually struggled over Covid. Go babysit. Number three, ask of God audaciously, ask of God. And this is shocking. And I read it before. But the story is in Luke 11:5-8 Jesus telling a story. He's like that prayer happened. Now, I'm going to show you the war aspect of prayer, the struggle aspect, the battle aspect, where you wrestle with God. And he tells a story of a guy who has a friend come to his house at midnight. He doesn't have any food. And the rule of hospitality in middle Eastern culture was that you had to provide shelter and food. So this guy doesn't have anything. So he goes to his friend's house and he starts knocking. And it says his friend doesn't give him the loaves of bread because they're friends.

Because if you wake me up at midnight and you wake up my kids, we are no longer friends. That's what's going on, but he'll give it to him because of his impudence that's what the text says. His persistent, audacity, tenacity, his shamelessness, he's almost reckless, persisting in the face of all that seems reasonable. And Jesus says, that's how to pray. That's how to pray.

You wrestle with God. You beg God. You keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Verse nine and I will tell you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be open, it's the holy boldness. You're knocking, you're insistently asking, you're searching and you refuse to stop, it's battle, it's a holy struggle, that's what's going on.

A story goes of Alexander the Great had a general, his daughter was getting married and Alexander the Great tells that general, "Hey, I'll pay for that wedding, just tell me how much." And then the general writes this letter with the amount. The treasurer reads letter and tells Alexander, "Hey, you're probably going to behead him because this is just absurd." And Alexander the Great asked for the number. And he says, "Give it to him." By such an outlandish request he shows that he believes that I am both rich and generous. And he was flattered by it. In some sense, God says, I want you to know how great of a God I am. John Newman wrote that we're coming to a King, large petitions with the bring for his grace and power are such none can ever ask too much.

So there is a sense in Martin Lloyd Jones, the great British preacher he wrote about this. He said, I commend to you the reading of biographies of men who have been used by God in the church throughout the centuries especially in revival. And you will find the same holy boldness, this argumentation, this reasoning, this putting the case to God, pleading his own promises. All of that, that is the whole secret of prayer. I sometimes think Thomas Goodwin uses a wonderful term. He says, sue him for it, sue him for it. Do not leave him alone. Pester him as it were with his own promises, quote the scriptures to him and you know God delights to hear us doing it. As a father likes to see this element in his own child who has obviously been listening to what his father has been saying. It's true, it's true, about kids pestering their parents.

You were listening and you know that I do not lie. I shall give you that ice cream cone, just don't tell your mom, happens all the time. Do you wrestle with God? As Jacob wrestles with God says, "I'm not going to let you go until you bless me." As Abraham haggles with God. I love that story. Abraham haggles with God, God comes to him and says, "I got to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, they're so sinful." And he says, "What if there are 50 righteous people in the town." God said, "Okay, I'll relent if there's 50." And then Abraham's like, "How about 45?" And then at that point, he's like, "How about 40?" And God's like, "Okay." And then he comes back to him and he's like, "How about 30?" Now, he's going down by tens.

"How about 20?" "Fine." "How about 10?" And he should have kept going because they weren't even 10. But he does say a lot. There's this wrestling. There's this proximity to God, verse 11-13. What father among you if a son asks for a fish will instead of a fish give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil you at your best, feeding your children, giving your kids good gifts, even at your best you're still evil. You still need Jesus. Know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. So like ask, seek, knock on the door, you shall get. When we think of that, we think of physical things.

The story of Alexander the Great. Yeah, okay is God going to give us bank? Maybe, maybe not. The greatest gift that God can give us, what's the punchline. How does Jesus land this text, will not the heavenly father give more of the Holy Spirit, give more of himself, give more of his presence, give more of your holiness. If that's what you're asking for God, I want you to be hallowed. I want you to be holy in my life. God forgive me for my sins. Do not lead me into temptation. I pray that you provide for me both materially and then also grace for forgiveness of sins and to continue to forgive others.

How do we deepen a passion for the Lord like this? Revelation chapter two, he talks about you've lost your first love. He's talking to a church. How do we get it back? We go back to the foot of the cross. We go back to the feet of Jesus, in all of Jesus' prayers he always called God father. He called him abba. The only time he does not call him abba is when he cries out in Matthew 27:46, about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lima sabachthani?" That is, "My God, my God." Twice, with all of his heart, the one that he loves has turned his face from him. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God, doesn't answer that prayer, why? Just like he didn't answer the prayer in Gethsemane, "Let this cup pass from me." Why?

Because this is what it took. It took Jesus' prayer, not being answered so that we can be adopted into the family of God so that we could have our prayers answered. What's fascinating is Jesus reverts back to abba. After he absorbs the wrath of God on the cross he reverts back to abba and his final words, Luke 23:46, Jesus calling out the loud voice, said, "Father into your hands, abba into your hands I commit my spirit." And having said this, he breathed his last. He breathed his last so that we could receive the breath of life. Receive it. Why wouldn't you receive the breadth of life, receive the Holy Spirit, receive forgiveness of sins. Come to his feet, his nail pierced feet, receive, listen, talk, ask, and continue to live the life he's called us to live.

Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for your word. What a tremendous word it is, a blessed word. Lord, we thank you for giving us access to yourself. We thank you for reminding us that the most important thing, the one thing that's necessary in this world is our relationship with you. And we deepen it by listening to you attentively, by talking to you relationally, by asking audaciously, in particular for things that you've already promised. You've promised to build your church. You've told us you don't want to see the death of a sinner. You want people to be converted. You promised us that when we are close to you will bring us flourishing and the flourishing not just of ourselves and our families, but our communities, our city, our state, our nation. So we pray Lord that you continue to pour out your spirit and give us victory over Satan, sin, and death. And we thank you in advance and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning Mosaic, most of you, some of you. It's a foretaste of next Sunday. So glad to see every single one of your eyes, and glad you're here. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this blessing it is. What a blessing it is to gather as your people. It's so good to come together in the House of the Lord. Jesus, You are here amongst us. We feel Your presence and we pray by the power of the Holy Spirit, minister to us today. Speak a powerful word to us and show us how desperately we need the only good Samaritan, the only truly ultimately good Samaritan. Jesus, You offer us mercy. And some of us are too self-righteous and blinded by our self-righteousness to accept the grace and mercy, the compassion that you so long to pour out into our lives. Then once we receive that mercy, make us a people who extend mercy to others. It's hard, it's costly, it's emotionally taxing, but you're always there to refill our resources in a supernatural way, and I pray do that with us today. Lord, continue to bless this church, continue to bless this body of believers, continue adding to it, and we pray this in Christ's holy name, amen.

The title of the sermon today is, The Only Good Samaritan. We are in Luke 10:25-37. There's a lot of important questions going through our minds rapidly now. What is the most important question on the top of your mind, even this week? Is it a question of finances? Is it question of how's the economy going to go? Is it question of, are my kids going to school? Is it a question of housing? Is it a question of, am I going to get married? Is it a question of, am I going to stay married? Hopefully yes, you should. Is it a question of how are we going to get through this season? How should I provide for my family? All important questions.

The most important question that each one of us needs to find an answer to is a question that a gentleman asked Jesus in our text today. And what he'd asked is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life? Is my eternity secure? When I die, that's for sure, am I going to a place of paradise, a place called Heaven, a place of God's presence or not?” And then once we get an answer to that question, the second most important question that we need to find an answer to, and then orient our lives around is, how can I help others? How can I extend the greatest amount of compassion to another person, which isn't just to meet their physical needs, it's to meet their spiritual and eternal needs? That's what the text is about today, Luke 10:25-37. That is the fastest introduction in the Pastor Jan's sermon in the history of Pastor Jan's sermons.

Luke 10:25, “And behold, the lawyers stood up to put him to the test saying ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? How do you read it?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You've answered correctly. Do this and you will live.’.

But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper saying, take care of him, whatever you spend. I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You go and do likewise.’”.

This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together, the impossibility of self-salvation, the impossibility of selfless love, and the only good Samaritan.

First of all, the impossibility of self-salvation. Many of us are used to this parable. We've heard this parable, probably not dozens of times, but probably hundreds of times. We already know what it means. It's one of these you know, in staff meeting, we go through the text prior to it being preached as a devotional, as a Bible study. When we got to the very end after reading it, and we're like, “What are your thoughts?” And everyone's like, “You know, we kind of kind of get it. We've heard it. Okay, show mercy to people.” Because we're so familiar with it, we kind of lose sight of the point. We kind of lose sight of the outrage, how provocative this story is, especially set in the context that it's set in.

Yes, we know it's a nice ideal to help people. And many of us have devoted, oriented our lives around helping as many people as possible. And perhaps you read this and there's an element of cynicism because of ministry fatigue, where you've been ministering to people in this season over and over and over and over. And you're like, “How many more people will need help on my path?” And you get to this place where you feel a callus, you feel a numbing, desensitization words where it's like, “Yeah, I kind of understand that priest and the Levite. I kind of understand going to the other side and just walking by. That's on the one hand. And on the other hand, there's just so many people to help, and I can't help everyone like this.” So you get to a point where you start asking, “Why should I help anyone like this?”.

And what Jesus is ... And this is the radical point and I'm going to bring in the gospel at the very beginning. Because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I don't have to show mercy to get mercy. I don't have to show mercy to get mercy. I get to show mercy because I got mercy. It changes everything. I got mercy from God. This morning, I woke up and I repented of my sin, why? Because I'm a sinner. And every single one of us, we need to repent of sin. And God extends grace. When he extends grace, it changes everything. And now, it melts that numbness, that desensitization, and then we can continue to serve. We don't show mercy to earn mercy. We've been given mercy therefore, we show mercy.

So the context is in Luke 10:25, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This isn't just a lawyer like real estate lawyer, this is a lawyer of God's law. This is a lawyer that knows the Old Testament law. Not just the 10 laws, but all the ceremonial laws and all the institutional laws. He knew the law. He devoted himself to this noble tradition and he comes to Jesus and he asks a good question, but he asks it with a very questioning posture of heart. Right question, wrong heart.

Here's the thing, whenever anyone comes to you and says, “How shall I inherit eternal life?” What's your answer. I know my answer is, trust in Jesus, repent of your sin, and submit to God. Receive God's grace and you get saved. Jesus doesn't go there. And then you got to ask the question, why doesn't he go there? Well, he doesn't go there because this guy thinks that he's already got it. This guy thinks he's done enough. This guy thinks that he has kept the law. He's never missed a Jewish feast or sacrifice. He's devoted himself to the study of law and traditions. He's got all the bases covered. Kept the Sabbath, tithed from his spice rack. He thinks he's got it. He thinks he's in. And what he wants to do is he wants to undermine Jesus' ministry of telling people, you need to repent and turn in faith back to God. He's not a pagan. He's not a Samaritan, people you look down on, and he's testing Jesus in front of a crowd. And what does Jesus do? Jesus responds to his question with a question, verse 26, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”.

This guy knows the law and he knows what's at the heart of the law. And the heart of the law is summarized with love God and love people. That's verses 27, 28. The first commandment, love God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all of your mind, with every fiber of your being. Love God completely, 100%, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, as much as you care for your own needs, as much as you work to provide for your own needs. As much as you think of yourself, think of your neighbor, be a good neighbor. And those who dislike your neighbor, love your neighbor. That's the law. And we see that he did say the right thing. Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

The story should end there. Why doesn't the story end there? It doesn't end there because this gentleman felt uncomfortable. In the same way when you read passages like the Good Samaritan and you feel a little discomfort because you feel like you're falling short, that you're not living a life full of compassion, he feels it. And instead of going to the Lord and saying, “Lord, something's wrong in my heart. Love my neighbor as myself? I despise my neighbors. My neighbors are awful.” Not my neighbors in particular, some of them. Most of my neighbors are great.

So that's why he does what he does in verse 29. And look at the text. This is really important. “He, desiring to justify himself said, ‘Who is my neighbor?’” Why does he justify himself? Because he feels something. What is he feeling at that moment? What is he trying to cover? He feels that he hasn't done enough. He feels that he's fallen short. He feels a tinge of shame or guilt or regret. The context of this parable is a question of salvation, the context isn't what should I do to be a good Christian? How should I live my life? The context is, how do I become a Christian? And Jesus answers, you can save yourself theoretically. You just have to look love God with everything you got and your neighbor as yourself. And then Jesus tells him the story, which exposes that not only does he not love his neighbor, he actually despises his neighbor.

Who does Jesus put at the very center of the story? It's called the Parable of the Good, what? Samaritan. The history between the Jews and Samaritans. You can just look into it. They hated each other. The Jews thought that the Samaritans were half-breed. They wouldn't even dine together. So Jesus is saying, “You think you're saved?” I'm not only going to answer your question of salvation. I'm also going to expose how much hate is in your heart. Like think of the person that you hate the most, and there is that person. Every Michael Scott has a Toby.

Imagine this parable. This is Michael Scott coming to Jesus and saying, “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus is like, “Let me tell you a story about this man walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he got mugged. And Jim walked by and Pam walked by, but Toby stopped.” That's a humorous way to think about it. Now, it's about to get real.

Let me tell you a story of the good, whatever the opposite political party that you're voting for. Let me tell you a story of the good Trump supporter with a MAGA hat and a Trump bumper sticker on his donkey. Let me tell you that story. That just got uncomfortable. Let me tell you a story of the Biden supporter who got down and showed compassion. Now, that got really uncomfortable. That's what's going on in this guy's heart.

I'm professing that I love my neighbor. What if my neighbor's different than me? What if deep in my heart, I despise my neighbor? I don't say it out loud, but that's exactly what's going on in the text. Why is he trying to justify himself? Because he's trying to cover that shape, that regret, that hate. He doesn't like what he sees in his own heart. There's a cognitive dissonance. It's not lining up with what he said. His heart isn't lining up with what he professes with his mouth. Jesus said, “They profess to love me with their mouth, but their hearts are far from me.”.

It's the same thing that happened with Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve sinned, the very first thing that they did before going into hiding from God, what's the very first thing they did? They realized that they were naked and ashamed. So they covered themselves. They justified themselves with fig leaves. That's exactly what this guy is trying to do.

Gregory of Nazianzus said, “Why? What changed? What changed? Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed and then all of a sudden they sin and they have to cover themselves, what changed?” He says, “Well, before the sin, before the fall, they were ensconced, clothed in the love and acceptance of God so their nakedness didn't bother them. And through sin, they strip themselves of God's love and acceptance and we're left with a sense of exposure, fear, shame, and guilt.”.

The Jews looked down on these people. The Jews claim this lawyer claimed to love people in theory, but people in reality are difficult to love. And that's why we need to exercise and grow in compassion. Luke 10:33, “A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.” There's a Greek word splagchnizomai. It's to feel pity in the inner most being. It's the deepest form of empathy. It's actually the most common descriptive, emotive word of Jesus Christ's heart or what was happening in Jesus' heart. He felt compassion. That's why he came to die for our sins. In the story of a prodigal son, the father, when he sees his son running to him, he said he had pity, he had compassion on him and ran toward his son.

Luke 10:34 and 35 shows us that it's costly to show this compassion. Not just feel it, but to actually act on it. “He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. And then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper saying, ‘Take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back’” It's costly. He shows compassion. This is holistic care. He's showing that it was unexpected, but he's willing to take his own resources, his own funds in order to help this person.

And then at the end, Luke 10:36-37, “Jesus says, ‘Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’” The lawyer still doesn't get it. And he can't even say, the Samaritan. He can't bring himself to say, the Samaritan. He can't bring himself to say that my enemy is actually better than me in a hypothetical story. He says, “The third one.” The one who showed him mercy, Jesus said, “You go and do likewise.” So what's the standard to inherit eternal life? Love God with everything you got and be a good neighbor and love your neighbor as much as yourself.

Basically what he's saying is, help anyone and everyone that God brings into your path. This is why I said the impossibility of self-salvation. Because in our culture, when you say, “Every single one, we need to repent of sin because not one of us is good enough.” And then everyone in our culture pushes back with the self-righteousness, “I am a good person. I've never hurt anybody.” That's not the standard. The standard is help everybody. Not just don't hurt anybody, help everybody. That's the standard. You want to earn your way to heaven, that's the standard. And what's Jesus trying to do? He's trying to get him to this place where he says, “That's impossible. Jesus, how can you expect that?” And Jesus is like, “That's the whole point. That's why I'm here.”.

And so that brings me to point two is the impossibility of selfless love. So it's impossible to save yourself and this selfless love is impossible. It's to get us to a place where we know the world will be a better place if this were true, but it's impossible to do. But what's fascinating is we do long for it. We long for utopia where people are loving, where people are good and generous and kind and serve one another and extend compassion and mercy. Here's a really interesting thing. Apart from a worldview that God is, that God exists, that God is love, altruism and selfless love does not make any sense.

John Lehrer writing about altruism he says, “It's always been a sticky subject for evolutionary biology. And altruism is the act of helping someone else at a steep, personal cost.” Charles Darwin wrote about this and he said that altruism was a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. And in the descent of man, he writes, “He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature.” It's been a paradox for many.

In the 1950s, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane, someone asked him, “How far would you go to save the life of another person?” He said this, he said, “I would jump into a river to save two brothers, not one.” He said, “I would save eight cousins, but not seven.” So I'm willing to sacrifice my life for another, as long as it's on my terms of multiple people, et cetera. This moral arithmetic that he used.

The famous example of this is Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese in New York city. She was stabbed to death in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of the borough New York City, March 13th, 1964. And that led to the Genovese syndrome, especially diffusion of responsibility. Why didn't anybody help her? They thought, “Why should I?” People saw this happen, they'd say “Why should I help, risk myself? Someone else should do it.” And everybody was morally outraged by that. Why are we morally outraged by that? Why are we morally outraged that you had a chance to help this person and you didn't? Why are we morally outraged by that? Because we know it's written on our hearts. You can't find an explanation of why that moral outrage exists, why we know that we should help when we have an opportunity to help. It only makes sense if there is a true God, a living God, the teaching of Jesus, this is what makes it so awesome. The world would be a better place. Not just for you, it would be a better place for absolutely everybody.

Nietzsche wrote in The Will to Power, he says, “Another Christian concept no less crazy, the concept of equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.” Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, what does he write? “All men are created equal. This is a self-evident truth.”

Is this self-evident? That everybody is created equal. Equal in what sense? If you just look at the facts and the face of it, it's almost absurd to claim that everybody is equal. Equal in what? We're not equal in height. We're not equal in weight. We're not equal in strength, intelligence, stamina, truthfulness. There's inequality all around us. How can we say we are all created equal? In what sense? In the most valuable sense, that every human soul, every human life is valuable to God. That you'd remove that foundation and now you're building a house of morality on sin. And the preciousness and equal worth of every human life is a Christian idea. You just see that Christian idea when it's actually put into practice. And that's what did change the Roman empire. Christians have always believed that God places infinite value on each human life.

The pagan emperor, Julian wrote this, “The Impious Galileans ... ” That's how he call Christians, “ ... they relieve both their own poor and ours. It is shameful that ours should be so destitute of our assistance.” Look at world history, Christians when faithful to the gospel, when faithful to the scriptures, they've been a huge blessing to the world.

Prior to Christianity, the Greeks and the Romans had little to no interest in the poor. For example, the first ecumenical council was in the Nicaea, 325. That's when bishops were directed to build hospices next to cathedrals. There was never such a thing as hospices. The elderly and the sick were left to fend for themselves. The first hospital was built by St. Basil in Caesarea in 369. By the middle age, hospitals covered all of Europe and even beyond. In fact, Christian hospitals were the world's first voluntary charitable institutions. Care for mentally ill, that was a Christian idea.

Florence Nightingale formed the Red Cross in order to love his enemies in times of war and genocide. The vast majority of hospitals were started by Christians, by Catholics, Presbyterians, Protestants, and even their names reflect this.

We know that loving people selflessly is good. It's written on our hearts. We're outraged when it's not done. And we ourselves aren't consistent with what we know we should do. So what do we do with this gap? We know we should love selflessly. If we don't, we're outraged when other people don't, we're not outraged when we don't. So what do we need? What solves this? This is what I said in the beginning. I can't guilt you into loving people. I try with my daughters, if one of them isn't loving another one like, “You need to love your sister. If you don't, there's like this punishment, like no iPad for you. You got to love your sister.” You can't force someone into loving another person. You can try to guilt them into it, you can try to shame them into it. It's always temporary` and it's always on the surface.

What's the only way to get people to love other people? It's only in the gospel. It's only the good news. And this is point three, the only good Samaritan. It's awesome to think about this utopia, where everyone loves each other, but it's impossible. And this is what Jesus is doing. He's trying to get the lawyer to a point of desperation where he says, “If that's the standard for eternal life, then definitely I haven't gotten it. Before Jesus saves that guy, he's trying to get that guy lost. Before he gets him saved, he wants to get him lost. He's presenting God's standards. And he wants this guy to see how far he's fallen short, that his heart is actually full of hate.

God requires this love, a love that can't be required. But he doesn't just command love, he compels love by showing us how much he loved us. That Jesus Christ is the only true good Samaritan. In the story of The Good Samaritan, we are not the good Samaritan, we're the guy on the ground. He's trying to get the lawyer to see himself, “I'm on the ground and I'm being offered help by a Samaritan. I'm on the ground and I'm being offered help by my enemy. Will I accept that help?” That's what's going on. And Jesus is saying, you actually, like you say you've fulfilled the first commandment, you haven't even come close because the second commandment is easier and your terrible.

So you need to accept the grace from this Samaritan, the Samaritan who at his own cost comes to help you. This Samaritan, who doesn't pour out oil and wine, but he pours out his blood and his body is broken in order to extend us mercy, in order to give us compassion, in order to say, “Look, I'm dying on a cross for your law breaking, and I'm going to give you the blessing of my law keeping. And on the cross. I'm going to take your penalty of law breaking in order to do that through the double amputation.”

This is how we experienced the grace of God. And when you see that Jesus did that for you, for me, despite our wickedness, despite all our sin. Everything that he knows, we know, we know what's deep inside and we try to hide it. He knows. So don't justify it. Don't don't let yourself righteousness keep you from accepting the grace of God. And when you know that you're saved by grace, when you know that God extends mercy to you, compassion to you, that then begins to melt your he art in order to extend compassion to others. So here's a word for us, for Bostonians, especially for ... We need to repent not just of our sins, our bad works, we also need to repent of our good works. We need to repent of thinking that our good works are what's going to get us into Heaven. We need to repent of our self-righteousness. And by the way, every one of us struggles with this. I struggle with this all the time. The longer I'm in the ministry, the more sacrifices that I make for the Lord. I'm like, “I've given years to you, God, where's my blessing?” I don't know if anyone else has ever done that.

The more sacrifices you make, the more you're like I should be getting more. And God's like, self-righteousness, you deserve nothing, you deserve hell. And you're lucky that you're even alive. That's what grace does, it, like, “You deserve nothing. You're lucky your heart is beating today. Now, keep doing what I called you to do.” And everything else is icing on the cake. So we are to repent of our sins and self-righteousness.

Galatians 3:11-14, “Now, it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not a faith rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.”.

Jesus did it all and there's no better reason to love than love. Jesus loved this for no reason, whatever in ourselves. He love us not because we're lovely, but because he's loving. And unconditional love frees us to love. And this parable isn't about getting us to be people who act once in a while with mercy, it's to get us to a point where we live a life of compassion, a life of mercy.

Why does Jesus start with the law? He starts with the law to get this gentleman lost. He gets into a point where he sees, I haven't even come close. Then Jesus pays for our sin. Now what happens with the law? Does the law disappear? No, we're still called to love God with all of our being and love our neighbor as ourselves and to grow in both of those. The law is always a mirror of how you're doing. There's some mirrors that just make you look better. I don't know what it is, it must be the lighting or something. My brother, Vlad], in his apartment, that mirror makes me look so good. Every time I'm like, “Vlad, I just need to go to the bathroom real quick. Oh yeah, that looks great.” And that's why people take selfies in restaurant bathrooms, I don't know what it is, restaurant bathroom, maybe dimly lit or something.

Nobody ever takes selfies at the doctor's office or the dental. Nobody does that. Because the light's different. It exposes more of your imperfections. God starts with the law to expose our imperfections, to show us, this is what you got to work on. And the Apostle James said, when you read the holy scriptures it's like a mirror. The Look gaze deep into, where do I need to change? And then God extends grace and fuels us with the Holy Spirit in order to change.

Who is my neighbor? The answer isn't who is my neighbor, but am I a good neighbor? That's what Jesus tells him at the end. Am I a good neighbor? Am I a good neighbor to whom? Literally any human being with a legitimate need, literally any human being with a legitimate need. And obviously, we can't help everybody, but I like Andy Stanley's comment where he says, “Do for one, what you would like to do for all.”.

1 John 3:17-18, “But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth.” And the other thing I just want to point out here at the end. When we talk about mercy and when we talk of compassion, usually we think of those things as just doing things for people, helping people with food and helping people with rent and helping people with their car, helping them with whatever physical needs that they have. But one of the interesting things that Jesus Christ here is doing, he's actually in a story using a story about a good Samaritan, he is extending compassion to this gentlemen by telling the gentleman the truth. Jesus is being a good Samaritan for this gentleman and Jesus is trying to meet his greatest need. And his greatest need is to see that he's blinded by his self-righteousness.

It doesn't feel like help to the gentlemen at that moment. Sometimes compassion doesn't feel like compassion. Sometimes compassion feels like you just got roasted by Jesus and you walk away in front of a crowd. But sometimes that's what we need. We need that truth to break the hardness of our hearts. Jesus is doing, he's embodying the compassion and telling this man the truth.

So love is discerning. You need to discern, how can I extend compassion? What is this person's greatest need at this moment. Sometimes it's an act of love and sometimes it's a word of truth. And in this text, Jesus twice points out, go and do it. Oh, you know the law? Go and do it. And at the very end, he shows him, you didn't know the law and you need Jesus, the gospel. And then he says, “Go and do it again.” Meaning that works always follow salvation, mercy follows mercy. What the law demands, the gospel produces. So we're saved by grace through faith for works that God has predestined before the foundation of the world.

And I'll close with Romans 8:1-4, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.”.

Everything that God calls us to do, he's already done in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Receive that grace, then he gives us the Holy Spirit to live out and do what he's called us to do.

Can you imagine a world without grace? Can you imagine a world without Christ? Can you imagine a world without love? It's almost impossible to. Now, can you imagine a world with true selfless love? Where people aren't just talking about racial divides and financial divides and political divides. People are just talking about how they're serving one another, how they're caring for one another, how they're extending grace to one another. That's what Jesus Christ does and it starts with us. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you for not just giving us the law, but fulfilling the law. And we thank you that you often speak a hard truth into our hearts in order to soften our hearts and we need that. We need that on a daily basis. Lord, we do repent of sin and we do receive your mercy. And we thank you for your compassion. We praise you for the gracious and loving God that you are and we thank you for being that God, and we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane and it is good to be here today in the full glory of my quarantine hair with all of you after being behind the screen, facilitating the Facebook activity during our services the past few months. Today I just want to jump right into the text. First of all, I'll remind you, if you're new to Mosaic we want you to fill out the connection card.

Even when we're online, we are going to hammer this home. We want to get to know you. We want to try to build true community here we gather, still online via Zoom via Google Meet and Word of God moves through those platforms. So if you'd like to get more connected to our church, ask questions, submit prayers, please fill that out. We'd like to get to know you.

Today, I just want to jump right into the Scripture. We're continuing our series in Luke. The last passage says, ends with anyone who wants to do the work, continue the work and the heaven, the kingdom of heaven, if you put your hand to the plow, you must not look back. These are words to some of Christ's earliest disciples and our passage begins today with Jesus sending out some common disciples.

I just want to advise you there are about 30 words or phrases that I circled or highlighted when I first read this. I'm going to try to focus in on what the Lord has for us today. We can't cover every little detail, but I'll do my best. Hear the Word of God. After this, the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them on ahead of Him, two by two into every town in place where He Himself was about to go. He said to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way.

Behold, I'm sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, peace be to this house and if a son of peace is there your peace will rest upon him, but if not, it will return to you and remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you here.

Heal the sick in it and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you, but whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you go into its streets and say, even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this that the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tire and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tire and Sidon then for you, and you Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. The one who hears you hears Me and the one who rejects you rejects Me and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me. The 72 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name. He said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. In that same hour, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You had hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. All things have been handed over to be by My father and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.

Then turning to the disciples He said privately, blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings desire to see what you see and did not see it and hear what you hear and did not hear it. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we're people who tend to lean on our own strength. We forget Your heart when You call us to do things. We become reluctant servants, Lord, we come syncretistic. We mix Your word with the word of the world and Lord, I pray right now meet us. Show us the power of Your word. Help me to exhibit reliance on the power of Your word and Lord, let us go out from here today, emboldened, yet humbled by grace. I pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

So for many of you, this is your first time seeing me if you're new to Mosaic. Again, I've been behind the screen. I am the discipleship pastor here. So I provide oversight over our community groups and do a lot of the counseling here in our community. I don't get many opportunities to come up here and preach and this is a little bit, this intro is a little bit of a state of the church from Pastor Andy. I want to lead with saying, I have grown in love for Mosaic tremendously by this period.

Our text today it is Jesus sending out 72 regular disciples, these aren't the highly trained guys. This is a ragtag group. He gives to the disciples prior to this text, there's a transfiguration. He shows them His glory. The disciples still argue about being greatest before Him. The disciples don't get it essentially, in the preceding chapters of where we are here in Luke, and these calming dudes that Jesus sends out, they go out, they heed His word, and they get it.

I really think that that is Mosaic, Pastor Jan, Pastor Shane and I just watching this community through this just season of multiple traumatic seasons. You guys have stepped up, you guys get it, the majority of you. In some ways we had our COVID forms at the beginning of the COVID season, just dozens and dozens of people signed up to serve, offer their resources, offer their time. Dozens and dozens of people continued, basically all of you continue to give to the church to cover our regular budget and then gave additionally to cover our COVID budget and that's just beautiful, beautiful.

A lot of you have just been relentless in offering prayer. A lot of you have been relentless in just reaching out. Many of you who have been served by our church members, have in response come and ask to be served and to ask how you can serve. Just personally, I want to thank all of you. My daughter, Clara Joy, was born about five and a half weeks ago. She is a delight. My wife is a trooper. I'm so amazed by her ability just to love her and our four year old son Drew in this season and I just want to thank you for the prayer.

We felt the prayers, every detail every aspect of her birth, Joyce's recovery has gone smoothly. I just really want to give you guys a word of encouragement. Continue this care. We helped a brother, I'll call him Eddie. He was a close friend of a member of the church and we helped Eddie. Eddie was working in the restaurant business. He's an immigrant, and he was behind several months on rent before he finally asked for help from a Christian sister who's a member here and with the funds, with your sacrifice, we got to help Eddie tremendously.

If you're new to Mosaic, I want you to hear this and this is the heart of the church. Mosaic is not just built on preaching. Mosaic is built on the people, the servants of Christ, the disciples of Christ, who just sacrifice. They're here on mission. If you're a Christian in Boston, you are a missionary. We got 4% evangelical Christians here. That's tiny.

So just hear this. Join along if you're inspired. Eddie says, this is in thanks after we gave him a couple months of very cheap rent, very humble living. My beloved and dear brothers in CHRIST JESUS. It is with my heart overflowing with gratitude that I write this message. First of all, thanking our good and merciful God, who by His grace and power has established angels on earth in the form of people to bless the needy, spiritually as well as materially.

Praise be to God for the life of my sister, a member of our church, and her family. Her pastor, men, women, youth and children, members and visitors of this congregation that has cooperated with the maintenance of the house of the Lord and thus helped afflicted and needy souls. I praise God because just as He broke the hearts of kings to bless and exalt His people in the past, so He used your hearts to give me the help that only God could provide in a moment of uncertainty that many are going through.

So my prayer, it's hard not to read this and tear up. So my prayer is that God will continue to open the windows of heaven, pouring out on your lives and ministry and on this whole congregation, blessings without measure that your lives overflow with the best of God and that the olive oil, this was translated from another language, does not cease in your vessels. May God and Christ bless you abundantly, protect you and prosper in all areas of your life. Receive a strong hug, so strong with the love that unites us in JESUS CHRIST. God bless you. Thank you, my brothers. That's to all of you.

I just say, keep it up. Keep just living out, acting out God's love in our church, in our community, keep looking for opportunities. It's hard. It's hard to find ways to serve. It's hard to find ways to share the gospel, but keep it up and I sit back and as pastors, we just get to observe this happening, and we get a taste of why God chooses to use the church to do His work, and it's a beautiful thing. Keep at it. Now, that's the good news, but here's the bad news.

If there's anything that, just observing the church, if there's anything Negative that has come up time and time again the past five months since I've seen you, as the tensions have risen and traumas hit our society, loneliness, temptation are just constant. A lot of people in the body of Christ, they're just shrinking back.

They're claiming to be ill equipped to handle this season. They're powerless to be of use. The word is not sufficient for this time. Generally, there's even a sense of shame about the Word of God right now. A lot of us feel apologetic about being Christian and that might be by our own doing, or just being recipients of the virtue signaling coming from all parts of the spectrum, but it's felt, and today I want to call you back.

I see this, the shame. I see this on social media. I know this because people have sent me and the pastors resources from their work, HR departments with instructions for the church for how to care to people. I know this because people have often called us and said, pastors, I have a word for you that I got from my job or from this website. I know this because people send me YouTubes of people preaching about how to save the world right now.

They look like they're made in 1992 by some dude in his mom's living room. They're talking about solutions to this season and I know this personally. I've had many days where I just wake up and I feel powerless. I feel helpless. Where do we start? Where's the hope in all this? I've posted witty comments on Facebook and then immediately deleted them. I've been tempted to make the video to just share it and get my influencer following.

I feel it myself, but I just want to say today, I'm going to just pound the power of the word. People of God, we were born for situations like this. Harvard shouldn't be telling us how to care for people right now. We should be telling Harvard how to care for people right now. In the Word of God, we have a greater arsenal of weapons than USA and Russia combined. At the core of Christianity is a belief that the root of all evil, it's in one thing. It's in sin.

Our pride, covetousness, perversion, racism, abuse of power or sinful acts of vengeance. They stem from sin inspired by Satan and here's the thing. We have the full solution for it. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and it changes people. That's our hope. So today, I want to press against this sort of shamefulness, the shrinking back. I want to try to embolden you to take the word out.

I'm a shy, quiet guy. Evangelism is hard, sharing the word is hard, even though I've got years of theological training at this point, but I want to just remind you of the weapons that we have in store. So we're going to talk about the power of God's Word and the heart of God's Word. The power of God's Word. So I'm just going to tap in the Luke 10:17 and 18, and this is at this point, Jesus has sent the 72 out and He tells them to preach the gospel, heal in the name of Jesus.

Tell them of the kingdom, that the kingdom of God is near. The Messiah, the man who the Scriptures say is coming in to save man from his sin is here. Repent. He sends them out in territories. He says, I'm sending you out in lands, there's going to be wolves amongst the sheep. So the disciples are sent out and Luke 17, the 72 returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name. He said to them, I saw Satan fall like heaven, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. So they're preaching God's word, and they have success. They're not limping back. They're not wounded. All 72 return. Nobody was stoned or arrested, and they experienced supernatural power.

The demons are subject to us in Your name, but something even greater is happening. Verse 18, verse 18, is better translated as Jesus saying, I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I was watching. The picture here is of Jesus rejoicing as He observed Satan's kingdom being destroyed, one rescued soul at a time through the 70. I was seeing the master, while you were expelling the subordinates of Satan, I was seeing the master fall like heaven over and over.

Notice again, I just want to emphasize the power is not in these men. These are 72 dudes. Think of the silliest guys in your middle school classes. These are the highly trained 12. These guys were probably fishermen, shepherds, laborers, mostly uneducated. In verse 21, Jesus calls them children. So they're either really young in age or faith or both and just the power is not in them. God uses ordinary men and women to do the work of His kingdom.

One of the things that many of you at Mosaic might experience is probably disappointment when you actually get to spend extended time with me and Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane. You find out that we are ordinary dudes. Pastor Jan's just, he's a Russian immigrant. Oldest child, paving his way forward at all times, just learning along the way. Pastor Shane, a gentle soul from the Midwest, like literally the nicest guy.

Me, I'm an Italian-German-English American from Philly who had a Rocky poster on his wall in high school and college. Yes, we've gotten the chance to get some degrees at this point. Yes, we've had years to kind of develop our skills, those spiritual gifts but we're ordinary dudes, and all that we do and all that we say for the kingdom in our positions, the power is not in us, but it's in the word itself, the God from whom it comes.

We see pastor Jan say this on the Facebook chat every week while watching his own preaching. He praises God for the work that he is doing, for the power He's given him when you guys are praising him online, and the power of God's word is all over scripture. I just want to take you through, I'm going to hammer this because you need to remember this. We have an election coming up in a few months. We're still recovering as a church from 2016.

By God's grace, this is a diverse church community. Half of you are going to be really disappointed in November. What are you going to lean on? Where's your hope going to be in this life, for this world, in eternity? It's in the power of God's Word. Second Timothy 3:16 and 17 says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

This language, all scripture is God breathed. This is reminiscent of the creation story. Genesis 1:1-3, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and the darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Spirit, Ruach, spirit, wind, breath. We get a sense of the Holy Spirit's there in this moment. God said, let there be light and there was light. Then the creation story continues and when God speaks, there's this pairing of His heart, His essence going out and the spirit making it alive, allowing it to come alive. He created the world with His breath. He speaks creation into existence and at the pinnacle of creation as the story goes, He creates man. What does He do to impart some of His attributes to man that He doesn't do to the animals? Genesis 2:7, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. I had a seminary professor who said, maybe this is why kissing just actually is so special in this life. It takes us back to that moment that God breathed life into us. That's hypothesis.

When God says, all scripture is breathed out by God, it says, the same power that God used to breathe the world into existence, the same power that He used to bring life to man, to give him some parts, communicate parts of His being to him, that same power is what breathed out the word of God, the 66 Bibles of the Scripture that we have today. That power is in the actual word of the Bible. So when we read it, when we meditate on it, when we memorize it, when we just add it to our daily language, there's a power going out.

Do you believe this? When you think about all the voices going around, there's not power coming from them unless it's grounded in the Word of God and this is a great relief. This is why I can confidently stand here as a pastor today in front of you. I struggled with speech all through elementary school. They wanted to hold me back the first few grades, because I just didn't talk and when I talked, I always had a bit of a stutter. I'm still battling it today, but I'm not up here by my own power.

This power, it's emphasized over and over again in Scripture and the power works in multiple ways. Just listen to these verses. Hebrews 11;3, this one really emphasizes the point that I just made. By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. Romans 1:16-17. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God has revealed from faith, for faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Martin Luther, John Wesley, the guys who sparked the Protestant Reformation and Great Awakening, these guys studied Romans one and they realized that there is a power preaching the Word of God. The Catholic Church was trying to attract people with the beauty of their churches, saying it's faith plus works. No, these guys brought it back. The word is in the power. When the word goes out, the Holy Spirit uses it to bring heart and hearts to come alive, and that's what changes people, movements that have influenced millions.

Jeremiah 23:29, is not My word like fire? Declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? God's word does not return void, empty. It's always going to convert and then there's another and I don't have time to go into today, it's going to condemn. There's two responses to God's word is what Jesus talks about in the passage. It depends how do you receive Jesus Christ. That determines your outcome and eternity.

Hebrews 4;12, for the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Essentially it's saying, you have Excalibur. The sword from the king, your God. He gives it to you, it's at your disposal. Use it, search your own heart, let it penetrate the hearts of others.

First Peter 1:23, since you have been born again not have perishable seed, but have imperishable, but through the living and abiding Word of God. We're born again by the word of God, therefore, our salvation cannot be taken away. Because the source is eternal. It's God Himself. John 15:3, already you are clean because of the word that I've spoken to you and this is just saying, you read the Bible. It literally cleanses you. A lot of Christians know this.

You just have a bad week. You have a fight with your spouse, you yell at your kids and you just need to be washed. You open the word, you feel the peace of God, you're convicted of your sin, God's grace for you, and you get peace. A lot of non Christians, they know this as well. This is why they don't read the Bible. A lot of drifting Christians, they know this is going to happen. This is why they don't want to open the Bible. This is why society calls the Bible a weapon. They know this power is there. John 15:7, if you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

By abiding in the word, meditating on it, just imbibing it, drinking it in. It's not just in isolation as a monk, it's throughout your day just meditating on it. You have five seconds of thought, recalling the Word of God. Your affections grow more and more in line with the things of God, with the person of God. When we begin to desire and ask for such things and grow that love for God, God makes things happen for us. This isn't prosperity gospel, this is just the word and I've seen it happen in my own life. Acts 6:7, and the Word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. So, the church grows by the power of the word and this is a story of Mosaic, Boston. Everything we do, has the word in the middle. Love Jesus, simple Jesus, the Word of God. He's in the middle of all that we do.

Every aspect of the service, the music, the preaching, the prayer, the way we govern the church. It comes from the word. It doesn't make us popular in the community, but it pleases our God. We try to convict people of sin through the word, convict them of God's love for them through the word. We live and die by the word as does the Church of Jesus Christ globally.

I just want to say, look at the church. It was nine years ago this week, August 14, 2011, I walked into Mosaic church for the first time in my life, at the Huntington Avenue YMCA. Communitas was the topic, kind of talking about how God's community is different from the world. I remember that because I never felt the power of the word in my life, despite being in the church for 23 years. On that day, there were about 15 people in attendance.

By God's grace, I say this humbly. We were getting 500 plus people in person at our services on Sundays before quarantine took off. God is building His church. I think most notably in this season, I just did a quick glance at our members. We have 200 or so covenant members. We have people from 33 different countries amongst the 200. That's just a quick glance, I didn't really dig into it. A few thousand people have been in and out of the doors of Mosaic in the past nine years, 10 years.

Only the powerful word of God can accomplish this In a place like Boston, Massachusetts. I look at Pastor Jan sometimes, I love him. I think I was converted here. He is so different than me. The more and more time we spend there, he's so different and I praise God for that. Only by the word of God, can I look at him and say, I love you. I forgive you. I'm so thankful you're different than me. Because that adds more perspective, more power to our witness here.

Just at the heart of Mosaic, it's not just the preach word that we rely on. It's back to the, tying it to the 72 of this passage. It's we rely on the people of God to be sharing the word more than us as pastors. It's kind of backwards. A lot of churches do the complete opposite. Ephesians 4:11-12. He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, that's us pastors, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

It's the job of the saints to take the word and share it, contextualize it, bring it to your families, community groups, bring it to co workers, to the influential institutions of our city. You discuss it at home, at the bar, at the office, at the park, over text and I regretfully say over Zoom and Google Meet, but that doesn't take the power away from it. The Holy Spirit uses the efforts of the people of God when they stand firm on His word.

Our text tells us just to say, this wasn't just for that time. What does Jesus say in Luke 10:19? Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you. That was after they came back. Jesus said, this is a future of power that My servants are going to have. Furthermore, John 14:12 builds a little bit on this idea of the works that are yet to come in the life of God's people. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in Me will also do the work that I do, and greater works than these will He do, because I am going to the Father.

Do you want to be used by God? Do you want to have His power move in and through you, or are you apologetic about sharing gospel? Martin Lloyd Jones is called by some as the best preacher of the 20th century, at least in the English language that I know. He served in Wales and London for about 50 years. He once said to his church, surely the Christian has a right to laugh. It is our lasting shame as Christians that we allow the world in these days to laugh at us. We do so merely because we do not realize we should upon the power of God.

We look at the people of the world, with their motorcars their luxury and their various pleasures, and we even seem to envy them. We who have all the riches and all the resources of the Godhead in our grasp, we for whom God spared not His only begotten Son, we for whom God has prepared such things as the eye of mortal man has not seen, nor ear heard nor heart ever felt. We who, to use the words of Jesus Christ, on this occasion to the woman of Samaria. Have the well of water springing up into everlasting life within us.

How can we be envious of those who depend upon the polluted wells of the world for their pleasure and happiness? What if we here in San Fields, that's this church, but realized how great our treasures are, and realized it to such an extent that we made all the people in this neighborhood and town feel that we were laughing at them and sorry for them in their dependence upon the fleeting things of time. Why, the life of this town would be completely changed in a very short time. What if we imagine that here in Brookline, here in Boston, like have compassion on the souls around us, leaning on just broken vessels for their peace, for their foundation.

That's what's happening all over the web. That's what's happening. People are desperate. They're clinging, you see these YouTube videos that are made in someone's mom's house, and they get 90 million views. Surely some of your good friends, some of your family members, if you said to them, hey, I see you grasping at something that I think is going to disappoint you. I want to tell you what I have in Jesus Christ. Do you think they'd listen to you?

A lot of people cling to the argument, preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words. Sounds so good. That's often ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi. Maybe there's a day in the church to use it, but this does not align with our passage today, nor all the quoted scriptures that I've provided. When we share the gospel, we can't be afraid to use scripture blatantly. We want to let our speech be seasoned by it, have our prayer for others and prayer for healing saturated by it.

Without it, all of our efforts are void of the power that comes with it. It took me years to get to this point, to just be, man, I'm going to share it. Yes, we want to be strategic and timely with our delivery, but we can't be shameful. When you know the love of God, the peace of God, the joy of the Lord, you can't help but want to speak about it. My wife and Drew were listening to songs on Laurie Berkner radio. She's a famous children's musician. The song went, I've got a song in my bones and it wants to come out.

I've got a song in my bones. I've got a song in my bones and it wants to come out, and when it does, I'm going to sing and shout. I don't know if she's Christian, but that's how we should feel about the gospel welling inside of us. So I want to move on, I think you should feel some way right now, even though I'm calling you to a task that you don't really want to do all the time. I want to talk about the heart of God's Word.

Luke 10:17 and 20. The 72 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name and Jesus later on, He says in response to this, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. The 72 come back, they get a taste of serving God, the very thing they were created to do. It's like electric coursing through their veins. It's the best adrenaline rush in their life. They experience some flow, and they're ready for some more.

What Christ says to them, it's a little confusing. He says, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this. The spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Half of commentators they think that this is primarily a stern caution to the disciples to not get overconfident and proud for all the power and authority that they have. It's been given to them. They should be reminded that they have any of this power.

They have the love of God, by God's grace and I think there's something to that. The other half see it more as a slight correction. I think these guys are right. The main reason being that the 72 they come back, they ascribe praise where praise is due. They give Christ credit, and say that the demons were driven out in Your name. Christ isn't admonishing them here. He's redirecting them. He's placing their current joy and perspective to a greater joy.

He's saying, you have reason to rejoice, but you can know a greater joy. Actually, you will definitely know it one day heaven. What is that? What's the greatest benefit? What is the greatest joy in heaven? It's God Himself. It's saying, train yourselves to love God. That is going to be the greatest joy you can have. That is what is going to drive you to continue to do ministry for Me and this is hard for me to understand.

I love tasks. I love people telling me what to do. I love people giving me clear instructions, letting others make decisions. My favorite teachers growing up were typically the teachers that everybody else hated, because they actually made you do work. I love them, I thrived under them and all you had to do was do what they said. There's a lot of joy, a lot of self assurance, you just do what you need to do and that you can pat yourself on the back.

I know a lot of you are like this because you came from other states, other parts of the world to come to Boston, Massachusetts, perhaps the largest collection of task oriented people per capita in the world. A lot of you put me to shame on this, but what God wants, what Christ wants is not devotion to Him simply for the thrill of it. Not simply because following Him gives us great purpose, not because it gives us access to great power, nor because it makes us feel joyful temporarily. He wants a heart devotion.

He wants us to crave His presence, the ultimate benefit of heaven. Our ultimate reward isn't a purpose. It's a person and you have to really chew on this. A lot of people that come to church, a lot of people get in the ministry because they've felt that electric feeling of serving God. It gives them a sense of meaning and gives them a sense of great purpose. A lot of people come to Mosaic and they feel the buzz. They see something happening here.

They show up, they serve, but they don't really develop that love for God and when they go, you see them drift. People burn out and service the Lord when the love of God Himself isn't a part of their spiritual life. The gospel teaches us that while we were yet in sin, Christ died for us. Essentially says, God has no reason to love us. Like we are completely sinful, completely fallen yet He did, He does And he went to great lengths to show it in sending Jesus Christ to bear the burden for our sin on the cross. Why? Why did He do this?

Because He loves us, because He loves us, because He loves us. There's no reason within us for Him to love us in His holy, righteous state. He wants us to turn to Him in love because we love Him, because we love Him, because we love Him and we desire to be in no other place than in His presence, living in His will, under His command. He wants us to look at Him, read His word, find out who He really is, and love Him, worship Him, serve Him out of love.

The only real way to grasp the kind of love that God wants us to have for Him is the perspective of a parent. Children are the most costly investment a parent can make. I'm thinking about this a lot as number two came along. They cost a lot of money, they cost a lot of time, they cost a lot of energy. They smell often. Most of the time, the child presumes upon their parent's generosity and grace, but a good parent, despite the cost, just loves the child.

What does a good parent want most from a child? The child to occasionally walk over them, give them a hug and sincerely say, I love you. My son Drew, he just turned four. He is a horrible hugger, horrible snuggler the first three years of his life. He's always focused. He's always on, he just started to randomly put toys down, put books down, walk over to us, hug us, look us in the eye and say, "I love you."

Like that's what God wants from us while we're serving Him. That's where the power to continue serving Him till the end of our day is comes from and furthermore, a parent doesn't just want a child to listen them because they're promised a treat for listening. They want the child to listen to them because the child knows their parent loves them. We're still working on this one with Drew. You have to give him a lot of toys to get stuff done.

That's what God wants from us, a pure love. In this text, Jesus Christ models that true love for God, the person of God the Father in verses 21 and 22. This is coming from, He's just watching the 72. They returned. He sees God's plan going forward through His ministry. He realized He's in the company of the elect, who He came to save and He sees the Father's heart in everything that is happening. He can't help himself from rejoicing in prayer.

Luke 10:21-22, in that same hour, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. He's praising God for His titles, for who He is, that You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. He's praising God for His election. Yes, Father, such was Your gracious will. He's praising Him for Grace, praising Him for His will, over what's happening in the world.

All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. He's praising Him for the authority that He has bestowed upon Jesus Christ. This, this is true love for God, the person of God and where did this take Jesus? What lens did He go to follow the father out of true love for Him? He went to the cross for you and me.

Do you praise God for His attributes, His Holiness, sovereignty, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, justice, wrath, love, grace, mercy and joy? Or do you pick and choose what you like about Him, His word? God doesn't want that love and if you never really develop a love for those things, you might just limp into heaven or not even get there. Some might think that God has conceded or vain to wanting this kind of love from us, but if He is who He says He is, the sovereign King, Lord and Lord, King of kings, the Creator, the very best thing He can do for us is give us Himself.

The very best thing He could have done in all His majesty was create other beings to enjoy him. In Heaven, we get access to the Father to enjoy Him. If you don't worship God for who He is, if you don't love Him, because you love Him, because you love Him. If you don't love Him, because you don't like the hard doctrines of the Bible, the biblical orthodox faith that's been maintained throughout history, Scripture gives you a test. This is verses 23 and 24.

Can you look at the person of Jesus Christ and still not love God? So verse 23, then turning to the disciples, He said privately, blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings desire to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Because the disciples over these little guys, like a T ball team huddle he says, hey, guys, that King you preached about, that's Me.

I'm the one that all the prophets preach about. I am the Messiah. I am God in hard copy. Look at Me, enjoy Me. When things get harder on the road, you're going to want to think about Me. Why is looking at Jesus Christ the test to see if you really love God for all that He is? There is no fuller expression of God's Word and God's heart than in the person of Jesus Christ.

Second Corinthians 1:20, for all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. Hebrews 1:3, He, Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of His power. Jesus didn't just preach God's word, He was the word of God. He is the word of God still, seated at the right hand of the Father. The kingdoms and nations are in the palm of His hand.

Like sovereignty, He's controlling things right now. Jesus is literally God's mic drop. There are no scriptures, no books of the Bible after the New Testament, after the writings of the apostles who learned directly from Jesus, because nothing more needs to be said from God's perspective. He has spoken entirely. When we read the New Testament about the person of Christ, we read about the person of God. It's as if Jesus Christ, in His full power is there with us in person.

John Piper talks about how in Christ we see a peculiar glory. I just love how he sums up who Jesus is. Particularly Jesus' primary speaking point to us was on the cross. The person of Christ brings together infinite highness and infinite condescension, infinite justice and infinite grace, infinite glory and lowest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness, deepest reverence towards God and equality with God.

Infinite worthiness of good and greatest patience under suffering evil, exceeding spirit of obedience with supreme dominion over heaven and earth, absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation, self sufficiency and entire trust and reliance upon God. That's Jesus Christ. If you love Jesus, the Word of God, the heart of God's word, embodied, you really see who God is. You really love God. You're going to consider it not a task, but a blessing to go out to the ends of the world to serve Him.

You're going to consider it a blessing to take from the money that He's given you, the authority that He's given you to use it for His glory. Now, you're not just going to crave momentary success, victory's purpose, the thrill of sharing God's word, but God Himself. You're going to love heaven.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Go. Let's pray. Lord, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. You have overcome this world, this life. We will not bow to sin or to shame. We are defined in Your name. Lord, let that be our attitude as we go from here today. Let us wield Your sword with grace, with humility, knowing that You have created a spot in Your house in heaven for us, despite our sin.

We praise You for sending Jesus Christ to take the wrath of our sin, but more importantly, we praise you for sending Jesus Christ to show us who You are, to show us Your heart. Lord, I pray just use this word as we go forth this week. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello. Welcome again to our livestream service. So glad to have you watching along with us. If you're new, I especially want to welcome you. My name is Shane. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic. As Pastor Andy mentioned earlier, we would love to connect through our digital connection card. You can find that link in the description of this video, or it should be popping up in the chat if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube. If you fill that out, can you give us some information about yourself? We would love to follow up with you this week and just send a small gift to your email to thank you for being with us. Then you can also check off on there to receive some more information from us about ways to get connected here at Mosaic.

The last couple of months have been pretty crazy for our family. Beyond just COVID crazy, we made the decision back around May, that it was time for us to begin looking for an apartment and to move. We began that process. Part of the reason is... My name is... coming in and out in the livestream, or is that just happening here? Anyways, my wife and I... We've been married for 15 years. We've got two kids. Our son, Owen, is eight. He's going to be turning nine this fall. Our daughter is five. They've just been getting way too big. They've been sharing a bedroom. Our whole family's been sharing a bathroom. It just hasn't been working out. Something needed to change.

Now rewind with me. We began to look. Things were going well. We found a great place. We're getting ready to sign the lease and set the move-in date. Then the owner of the apartment called, said, "Hey. We saw on your application that you have a child under the age of six. Therefore, we need to have the place inspected for lead." Of course, they found lead because it's Boston, and everything here is made 100 years ago. He's like, "Well, before we can let you guys move in, we're going to have to delead the apartment."

If you know what that's like, it's a whole long process. It's got to get inspected. Then the work needs to be done. Then it needs to be inspected again. Long story short, our move date moved. We went from looking to move in mid June to July 1st. Then it moved again from July 1st to July 15. Then it moved a third time to August 1st. We actually, finally moved into our apartment yesterday. Praise God. Extremely worn out and tired. Huge special thanks to Wade and Jessica for watching our kids for us, literally, all day long. They're probably more tired than we are.

I bring that up because if we rewind all the way back to the spring, making that decision to move, that is a big life-changing decision, right? That's a decision that comes with a lot of risks and a lot of questions. It's something that you have to put a lot of thought to. I don't know. How do you make decisions like that? Some of you might be the, shoot first, ask questions later, type. I am the, ask all the questions and then maybe I'll reluctantly pull the trigger, type. I'm the kind of guy that I need to sit down. I need to look at all the possible options. I need to write out all the pros and cons and very carefully come to a decision.

That's what we did. My wife and I... We sat down. The first thing we did was we updated our budget. Then we set kind of our target price range. Then we kind of went shopping to see what our options were. Then we did a full-out cost/benefit analysis of every single option before us until we finally arrived at the one that we believed would be best for our family, that would be best for our budget, would be best for our ministry, and for our goals, for our short-term, for our long-term goals.

I bring all of this up because it's relevant to our text today. Jesus never really pressured people into making an impulsive or an uninformed decision when it came to following Him. In fact, what we often see is that when people want to follow Him, He challenges them to count the cost before doing so, to consider what they're really committing themselves to. We're going to see this in our text today, that three people come to Jesus. Some of them seem very enthusiastic about following Him. All Jesus needs to do in this moment is, right, smash that Like button and His followers go up, but He doesn't do that. You should do that if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube.

Jesus doesn't do that. Instead, He tells them to consider what it's going to cost them to be His disciples. In doing so, He gives them an open door to walk away if that cost seems too high. This seems so strange to us. Doesn't Jesus want more followers? Yes, of course, He does, but He wants followers. He wants followers in the truest sense of the word, legitimate followers. He wants lives, not just likes. He wants men and women who are prepared to give their lives to follow Him wherever He goes, wherever He takes them, whatever it costs them.

What we're going to see is that Jesus is going somewhere. A place our text tells us that He's going is He's going to Jerusalem. Jesus is on a path to the cross. Our text today is Luke 9. We're going to be looking at verse 46 through 62. As we do, I want us to do a cost/benefit analysis of following Jesus. We're going to see five aspects of life where following Jesus is going to cost us something in the short term. We're also going to see that the decision to not follow Jesus is going to cost us something in the long term.

The five categories that we're going to be looking at is, first of all, we're going to be talking about how following Jesus is going to cost us our pride. Second, our purpose, third, our possessions, four, our people, and then fifth, our priorities. If you look at the text with me, I'm going to be reading from Luke, chapter 9, beginning in verse 46. It says, "Now an argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest, but Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side. He said to them, 'Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.'"

"John answered, 'Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow with us.' Jesus said to him, 'Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.' When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparation for him, but the people did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' He turned and rebuked them. They went on to another village."

"As they were going along the road, someone said to him, 'I will follow you wherever you go.' Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' To another he said, 'Follow me,' but he said, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father.' Jesus said to him, 'Leave the dead to bury their own dead. As for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.' Yet another said, 'I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.' Jesus said to him, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.'"

God, we thank you for this word. We thank you for your word, your word that is an authority in our lives that is true, that is inerrant, that has power. We thank you for giving us this word recorded here in Scripture for us. Lord, we pray that you would take these truths and that you would apply them to our heads, to our hearts, to our hands to conform us more into the image of your Son, Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray, amen.

Wow. It's an intense text. In the context of Luke's gospel, it's a little bit of a turning point. Much of Luke's gospel, up to this point, has really been focusing on this issue of Jesus's identity. Who is this man who performs miracles, and casts out demons, and heals the sick? This really comes to a head in verse 20, when Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answers, "You are the Christ of God."

Then right after this, we see the story of the transfiguration where Peter, James, and John are brought up to the mountaintop. They are given the privilege of getting a glimpse of Jesus's true power, and splendor, and glory. Luke 9... It answers that question of Jesus's identity definitively, that this is God in the flesh, that He is the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, the divine Savior of the world. Now that that has been made clear, Luke begins to shift a little bit and ask another important question. That's this: If this is who Jesus is, then what does it look like to be His disciple? What does it mean to follow this Jesus?

The big idea is that if you have seen Jesus for who He really is, you never want to leave Him. This is what we saw last week. Peter sees Jesus for who He really is. What does he do? He's like, "This is great. Let's build some tents. Let's camp out here forever. I never want to leave you, Jesus. Let's just stay here." What Peter needed to learn and what we need to learn is that Jesus doesn't just camp out. Jesus is not going to be stagnant or complacent in His mission. Jesus is on the move. He has a purpose to fulfill. He has a mission to complete.

If we want to be with Him, we have to move with Him. We have to follow Him. Following Him won't always be safe. It'll almost never be comfortable because our passage today tells us where He's going. Verse 51 says that, "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." This is so important, right? Jesus... Up to this point, He's been healing. He's been traveling around. He's been teaching. Now, all of a sudden, He sets His face to Jerusalem because now the time had come where He needed to complete His mission. He needed to fulfill His purpose here on Earth.

What was that purpose? He told them a few verses earlier. Verse 22, he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and on the third day, be raised.” This was His purpose. This was His mission. He's born to die, to give His life as a ransom for many. If this is where Jesus is going, then what does it mean to follow Him? Well, Jesus tells them in the very next verse. Verse 23, "He said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?'"

The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Before reaching the glories of heaven, it needs to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. It's short-term pain for long-term gain. For us, short-term, following Jesus is potentially going to cost us everything. Short-term, it may seem reckless, insensible, foolish. Long-term, it's the only rational option before us. Look at these five categories. The first thing that we see in our text is that following Jesus is going to cost us our pride. It says in verse 46 through 48. It says that, "An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side and He said to them, 'Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.'"

Notice that Jesus doesn't rebuke them for wanting to be great. Instead, it says that he knew the reasoning of their heart. The reasoning was flawed. He corrects their reasoning. He gives them a proper definition of what greatness is. You want to be great? That is great. You should strive for greatness, to be the best that you can be, but first, allow Jesus to give you a proper definition of what greatness is and what makes a person truly great. He pulls this child over, and He says, "Look." How do you relate to those of humble stature? He checks their pride. What we see here is Jesus is... He's trying to get his disciples to displace where... Instead of desiring a childish greatness, that they begin to desire a child-like greatness.

This is the difference. Childish greatness... It's puffed up. It's pride-filled. It's argumentative. It's conceited. It's filled with selfish ambition in its desires to rule over and subjugate others, but child-like greatness is humble. It's gentle. It's meek. It's not weak, but it's strength that's under control. It's ambitious, but it's ambitious to serve others. It reaches for the top, but it does so in order to pull others up along with it.

What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus? Here, the cost is, we must lay down our childish pride. The benefit is, we receive the freedom of child-like humility. The childish pride... It comes from thinking of God as a taskmaster, as this grumpy boss who's always tracking everyone's performance, comparing you to everyone else. Child-like humility... It comes from knowing who God really is. He's a loving father that you have been accepted by grace through faith, not anything that you've done to earn it. Therefore, there's nothing you can do to lose it. Therefore, you've got nothing to lose and no one to impress. You're just secure in the Father's love.

A childish desire for greatness is insecure. It grasps at power to build itself up at the expense of others, but a child-like desire for greatness is both confident and humble at the same time. It's secure in the Father's love. Therefore, it's free. It's free to steward the power that God gives it as a gift from a good Father in order to use to serve and to build up others.

The second thing we see is that following Jesus is going to cost us our purpose. This is verse 49 through 55. John answered Jesus. He said, “Hey, master. We saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he does not follow with us." "Jesus said to him, 'Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.' When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him, but the people did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' He turned and rebuked them. They went on to another village."

When I say that following Jesus is going to cost us our purpose, this is what I mean. James and John... They had a dream. They had a vision of what it would be like when the Messiah came and established his kingdom, of what their purpose would be in that Messianic kingdom. Their problem was their presuppositions about that purpose and that kingdom weren't in line with Jesus. Jesus has to rebuke them here. See, Jesus's mission was not about handing out special ranks or privileges. It was not about destroying His enemies. He's actually getting prepared to die for His enemies. He said that, "I've not come to condemn the world, but to save the world."

Now this doesn't mean that there is no judgment. The time for judgment would come. Actually, in the very next chapter, in the very next passage, Jesus talks about that as He sends His disciples out on a mission. He says, "Listen. You're going to be rejected by people. You're going to be rejected by villages. Listen. Those villages or those people are going to fall under judgment on Judgment Day," but that day is not here. That day is coming right now. They're on a mission to proclaim good news. They're on a mission to proclaim and to announce the gospel that the king has come, and he's offering peace. He's offering amnesty to all who would repent and believe, that people can come to be forgiven and to be made right with God.

The question for us here, the application is, is Jesus the Lord of your dreams? Can Jesus tell you what to do? Can Jesus tell you no? Are you willing to submit your dreams, your plans, your deepest desires and purpose to Him as your king? When I was about 14 years old, a dream was born in my heart. That dream was to stand on a stage in front of a crowd of people, playing music with a band, and hearing them sing songs that I had written.

Now I knew at age 14... At the time, my all-time hero was Kurt Cobain. I was just fascinated with him, with his story, with his talent. Even at 14 years old, I knew that this dream was not from God, and it was not what God wanted for me. I knew that Kurt Cobain was a tragic hero who lived a tragic life and died a tragic death. I knew that, but I convinced myself that I was going to be different, that somehow, if I could just get a small taste of the success and the fame that failed to satisfy him, that surely, it would be enough to satisfy me. I worked toward that goal. When I got into college, I pursued that with everything I had. It really didn't take long before that dream started to come to fruition.

I met some guys. I joined a band. We started writing music. We started playing shows. We started going to studios and recording. The next thing you know, we're doing radio interviews, and we're signing autographs. We're getting to play shows with some of our all-time favorite bands. It was amazing, but that feeling... It didn't last very long. In fact, it wasn't long before that glory really began to fade, and I felt myself getting jaded. I felt myself getting dissatisfied, disillusioned even. I remember the night that my dream from 14 really, for all practical purposes, became a reality.

We were playing this show with one of our favorite bands that had just recently risen to massive success. We're playing this show. The room is packed. As we're playing, I can hear the crowd singing the songs that we wrote. After the show, the rest of the band... They went and they hung out with the other bands. I went home. All I could really feel, all I could really think was, "That's it? That's what I've been waiting for?" That didn't satisfy me. That didn't feel the way that I thought that it should feel. I knew what was going on. I'd known it in the back of my mind for some time.

I was chasing the wind. I was never going to reach that moment of satisfaction. Anytime you get closer, it just moves farther away. I knew that as I was chasing the wind, I was also running away from Jesus Christ and from His purpose for my life. That was a hard realization. I began to see that the songs we wrote would never be good enough, that the shows would never be big enough, and that it was never going to fully satisfy me. God had to take me to the end of that dream to show me how vain it was and to show me that when Jesus says no, I should listen, but also to show me that when Jesus says no, it's not because He's trying to withhold something good. It's because He has something better, and you need to trust Him.

I needed to repent. I needed to let go. Really, the problem wasn't that my dream was too big. The problem was my dream was way too small. It was all about me. I needed to make it all about Him. I needed to put that down in order to take up my cross and find something that was really, truly worth living my life for, which was following Jesus Christ. We might not directly relate to that or to James and John. The application for us all is that you're going to know that Jesus is truly your Lord by how you react when He tells you no. If Jesus can't tell you no, then He's not your Lord. If He's not your Lord, then He's not your Savior.

Don't waste your life trying to tack Jesus onto your dreams, trying to get Jesus to serve your purposes. Instead, invest your life in His eternal purposes and His mission. The question is, what area of life are you trying to keep Jesus off the throne? It could be anything, right? Is it sex? Is it money? Is it relationships? Is it the way that you treat other people? Is it work? Is it leisure? Is it the way you parent? Is it your health or your stewardship of your body, of your resources? Now whatever it is, if Jesus tells you no, right... He's not trying to withhold something good. He wants to give you something better. What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus here? The cost is, we must be ready to lay down our desires, our dreams, our purposes and submit our lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The benefit is, we receive the joy of being used by God for His eternal purposes in His plan, in His mission.

Third, we see that following Jesus is going to cost us our possessions. This is verse 57, 58: "They were going along the road, and someone said to him, 'I will follow you wherever you go.' Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes. Birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'" As Christians, this is hard, but we need to be really careful about becoming overly attached to the things of this world. Jesus wants this man to understand that the urgency of his mission is so great that he can't afford to put down roots. He can't afford to get too tied down by the comforts of this world. For Jesus, that meant He didn't even have a home.

Now, does that mean in order to follow Jesus that we all need to be homeless? I hope not. That's a hard question because, apparently, it did for this guy at least. Now I don't think that applies to everyone. The question for us is, are we ready? Are we willing? Are we prepared to do so if Jesus commands? If Jesus is the Lord of your life, then He's the Lord of your stuff, and He can tell you how to use it. He's the Lord of your money, of your home, of your possessions, of your time, of your treasure, of your talent. They're all His. We are called to steward them well. Everything we have has been entrusted to us by God for His good purposes. We're going to give an account for how we use them.

Now, if that worries us, again, we need to remember who God is. God is a loving and generous Father. His purposes are good. His resources are limitless. Therefore, if He's asking us to be disciplined with how we use our possessions, if He's asking us to be generous, He's asking us to be good stewards, it's because, again, He knows what is best for us. He knows what's best for our fellow man. 2 Corinthians 9:6 says that, "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." This makes sense. Pretty much, common sense farming illustration.

Then he compares it to how we use our finances and possessions. He says this, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, 'He has distributed freely.'" He's giving to the poor. "His righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God." What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus here? It costs us our entitlement to use our possessions as we desire. The benefit is, we get to steward the provisions of a gracious Heavenly Father whose resources are limitless.

Fourth, we see that following Jesus is going to cost us our people. This is verse 59 and 60: "To another he said, 'Follow me.' He said, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father.' Jesus said to him, 'Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.'" Sometimes I like to imagine what it would be like if Jesus was a pastor today and try to figure out, how long would it take him before he got fired for saying stuff like this? James and John... They got the classic Jesus juke. These next three guys are getting the Jesus nuke. This is like, let the dead bury their own dead. Wow. What's going on here?

Well, culturally, there might be some stuff going on here. It's likely that this guy's father wasn't actually dead yet. Perhaps what he was saying was something more like, "Jesus, I want to follow you, but I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait until my father dies because I don't want to lose out on my inheritance or my place in the family." Whatever the case, Jesus is trying to make it clear that the call to follow Him is... On the one hand, it's urgent. On the other hand, it's a call that's going to supersede all other commitments, loyalties, allegiances that we may have, even to our own biological families.

Now, this doesn't mean that we don't love and honor our families. 1 Timothy 5:8 says that, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for the members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Now what this does mean, however, is that our allegiance to Jesus and our loyalty to the family of God... It overrides our allegiance to our biological families if those things come into conflict. There's going to be times when they do.

Some of you know this very well. I've talked to people. I've met with people who've come to Mosaic and said things like, "Listen. I live in a country where it is against the law for me to become a Christian. If I get baptized and make that decision to follow Jesus, my family is going to disown me. They could even have me killed." For them, the cost of discipleship was immediately a reality in their life. It cost them something, and it alienated them from their families.

Some of you have experienced this to a lesser degree. All of us at times in our lives... We're going to have these times where the wishes, the desires of our biological families, and our allegiance to them is going to come into conflict with our allegiance to Jesus and His desires and purposes for our lives. My wife and I... We know this a little bit. This month is going to mark seven years that we have been here in Boston and seven years that we have been away from our family.

Now, their wish and our wish is that we would be closer together. All right? We miss them terribly, but Jesus has called us here. We need to remind ourselves, "If this is where Jesus has called us to, we need to trust Him that this is for our good and obey." Jesus is passing out a lot of hard pills to swallow in this passage, but we take them as medicine for our souls. We take them with an eternal perspective. By God's grace, Kelly and I... We have assurance that we will spend eternity with our biological families in heaven because of their faith in Jesus Christ. That's a great comfort to us, even if right now, we don't get to see them as often as we would like.

Even if that were not the case, when we come to Christ, we are given in Christ a whole new definition of family, that our true family is not biological, but it's supernatural, right? It's the family of God. It's our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is what we see in the previous chapter in Luke 8. In verse 19, we're told that, "Then Jesus... His mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. He was told, 'Hey, your mother and your brothers... They're standing outside, desiring to see you.' He answered them, 'My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.'"

Mark 10:29, "Jesus said, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. Many who are first will be last, and the last, first.'" How can leaving our families for the sake of the gospel result in receiving a hundredfold back? Well, He's talking about the church. He's talking about our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If you've ever relocated around the country, and had to leave a church, and move to a new area, and find a new church, you know exactly what this is about. J. C. Ryle wrote that, "The true Christian regards all Christ's friends as his friends, members of the same body, children of the same family, soldiers in the same army, travelers to the same home. When he meets them, he feels as if he had long known them. He is more at home with them in a few minutes than he is with many worldly people after an acquaintance of several years. What is the secret of all this? It is simply affection for the same Savior and love to the same Lord."

What's the cost/benefit of following Jesus here? Well, it's going to cost us our earthly commitments and allegiances, but the benefit is, we receive a heavenly citizenship, adoption into the household of God. Jesus is preparing for us an eternal place with an eternal people.

The last thing we see is that following Jesus is going to cost us our priorities. This is verse 61, 62: "Yet another said, 'I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.' Jesus said to him, 'No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.'" What do you treasure? What do you hold most dear? What are you afraid to let go of, or what can you not imagine living your life without? What is it that's going to tempt you to take your hand off the plow and look back?

Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, and He didn't turn back. There were a lot of good things that He could have done, but He sets that all aside because there was only one thing that He needed to do. Nothing was going to stop Him from fulfilling that task, from going to the cross. His priorities were set in stone. Many of you have read the book, From Good to Great. Jim Collins famously observed that good is the enemy of great. It sounds very profound, but it's just kind of common sense, right, that there are so many good things that we could commit our lives to, but those good things become bad things if they keep us from doing the ultimate things and the greatest things. The greatest purpose and priority that anyone can have in this life is to know Christ and to proclaim the kingdom of God.

This all started with Jesus's disciples arguing about, who is the greatest? The true greatness comes when we follow in the footsteps of the greatest man who ever lived, and that is Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, that only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon Him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure, receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it. For those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy and the burden is light.

Following Jesus and giving your life to His kingdom as your top priority... This is going to be the hardest thing that you could ever attempt to do, but it's worth it. The reason that it's worth it is because as you do, Christ is right there with you, yoked together. It might be hard, but you keep pushing forward. You keep in step with him. As you do, you begin to realize that He is the one carrying the weight. He's the one shouldering the burden, and you get the privilege of going along with Him in this great mission.

As we close, I want to just ask one simple question. Why count the cost of discipleship? Perhaps you came to Christ, and nobody ever challenged you to do this, to count the cost. What's the harm in that? If somebody is ready to come to Christ, why stop them? Why caution them and encourage them to count that cost? Why not just let them dive in with all of their enthusiasm? I think part of reason that Jesus wants us to count the cost of discipleship is because once you've done so, there is absolutely nothing that's going to be able to make you turn back. Once you've counted the cost and once you have determined that the privilege of following Jesus and of knowing Christ is worthy of giving up everything you have, then nothing is going to take away down.

Nothing will stop you. Nothing will deter you. Nothing will distract you. There will never come a day where you throw in the towel, and quit, and say, "Hey, I didn't sign up for this," because, of course, you signed up for this. We all signed up for this. We did it because He's worthy, because He's worth it. This doesn't mean that you're going to live a perfect, flawless Christian life, but it does mean that you're going to get up every day, you're going to take up your cross, you're going to preach the gospel to yourself, remind yourself of Christ's worth, and you're not going to turn back.

Listen. Until you see Jesus for who He really is, this cost of discipleship is always going to seem too high. The lordship of Jesus is always going to seem burdensome. When you see Jesus for His true worth, when you see Jesus for who He truly is, you begin to see reality for what it truly is. That truth sets you free. It sets you free to see that the cost of discipleship is not a price that you have to pay. It's actually an investment that you get to make.

Jesus says this in Matthew 13, verse 44, that, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who, on finding one pearl of great value, went, and sold all that he had, and bought it." "The kingdom of God is like a field," Jesus says.

Now, the world sees that field. It sees toil. It sees work. It doesn't see any value in investing there. What the world doesn't know is that that field is not a field to be worked. A field is a field to be mined for treasure, that in that field is a treasure. The greatest treasure of all is Christ Himself. The greatest treasure you find is Christ because He's the one who first treasured us. He's the one who found us and gave His all for us. He did so joyfully.

Before calling us to count the cost, Jesus Himself counted the cost. He counted the cost of our salvation. This is Hebrews 12:1. It says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him... " You picture that guy who finds the treasure in his field and then in his joy, he goes and sells everything he has. It says that of Jesus, that, "For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God."

What was the joy set before Jesus? What did Jesus have by going to the cross that He did not have without going to the cross? It was us. It was God's people. We can joyfully give all we have for Christ and for His kingdom because God joyfully gave all He had for us. No matter how hard we may try, we will never outgive God. Romans 8:31 tells us, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son... " Think about this. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"

Where are you today? Counting the cost of discipleship... It's important. It takes thought. It takes honest reflection, but it doesn't really take a lot of time. The man who found the treasure in the field... He immediately, joyfully went and sold all that he had to get it. He bought it right away. Now, in contrast, we see that Jesus is not at all impressed with the men that he meets in this passage. He's not impressed with their excuses. He's not impressed with their reasons for procrastinating, for waiting to make that call. He wanted them to count the cost, but He also wanted them to act urgently.

Maybe you're a Christian who came to Christ, and you've never counted that cost. You should do that now. You should do that daily because, really, what you're doing is you're counting the value of Jesus Christ as you do. Perhaps you're not a Christian. Perhaps you're watching, and right now, you're afraid. You're afraid of what it might cost you to follow Jesus. I'm not going to stand up here and give you a bait-and-switch about all the amazing things that are going to happen to you if you make that choice. I want you to count the cost because it will cost you.

Beyond just the five things that we've already talked about from this passage, first and foremost, it's going to cost you your sin. You know in your heart what I'm talking about. You can't come to Jesus without repentance. Where are the places in your life that you don't want Jesus to be Lord because you don't want Him to change things, because you don't want Him to tell you what to do? If there are places like that, this is what I would encourage you to do. Take a hard look at Jesus, and then take a hard look at your sin.

What has sin done for you, right? Has it made you happy? Does it satisfy you? Does it give you peace? Does it give you joy? Does it give you hope? Does it give you purpose? If not, then why keep living for it? Scripture actually says that apart from Christ, that we are slaves to sin. We live for sin, and we are slaves to sin, but that Jesus came to set us free from not just the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin to give us victory over sin. We can live in that freedom. Jesus died for you so that you could be set free, so that you could repent, put your faith in Him, and find that His commandments for you are not burdensome. His commandments are life, and joy, and peace.

Listen. Making that decision... It's going to be the hardest thing that you would ever do, but nothing could be more worth it. On the other hand, not making that decision is a decision too. That decision comes with a cost as well. I pray that you would consider that. As you do, look and see that sin will take everything from you and never fulfill on its promises. Jesus is the only who came and gave everything for you. That is why He is worthy of our lives.

Now, would you please join in prayer before we continue in worship? Father God, you gave your greatest treasure, your one and only Son, Jesus Christ, so that we could be saved, so that we could be adopted into your family and be called sons and daughters as well. We thank you, and we praise you for that. Jesus, you gave your all, your very life, for us. We thank you for your sacrifice.

We pray we would live lives worthy of your gospel. We pray that you would help us to just more deeply comprehend your great love for us and that by the power of the Spirit, we would count the cost and see your greatness, see your worth, and live lives of greatness ourselves following in the footsteps of you, our Lord, our Savior, denying ourselves, taking up our crosses daily, and following you. Jesus, it's in your name that we pray, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Mosaic. If you're new, or if you're visiting, please fill out a Connection Card online. If you're tuning in online, I just need to share how rapturous that experience was. I feel like today is my birthday, it's Christmas, it's Easter, it's my anniversary and it's pay day all in one. Just singing in person, seeing my brothers and sisters in person, what a gift this is. Hopefully, we'll reopen soon. August 26th is the date, tentative date. While we prepare for that, we are doing living streaming as you see. As Pastor James said, "Please excuse the technical difficulties." With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Holy God, what a gift your presence is. What a gift the presence and the fellowship of our brothers and sisters is. Lord, thank you for giving us the gift of your son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you that you came in the flesh, God incarnate. That you tabernacled with us. That you pitched your tent to be with us, to welcome us in to your presence. Lord, we repent of all our sin, which is clogging up our vision of you. We want to see you more clearly than ever. We pray that you do increase our faith. We pray that you do give us mountaintop experiences in your presence. I pray that you do prepare us for the spiritual warfare when you tell us to go down into the valley of the shadow of death and to wage spiritual warfare against the demonic in your name, through prayer, by your word with the gospel.

We pray over the city, Lord. We pray, Holy Spirit, continue to build up your church in this city. Bless every single gospel proclaiming church. Bless every single church that's faithful to your holy scriptures. I pray draw many to yourself. You have many in this city, that's why you called us to be here for such a time as this. We pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures and we thank you for them. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

First of all, I want to say I will be sweating a lot during this sermon. By the way, I miss that. I missed sweating for Jesus, that's number one. Number two, this ... there's 24 people in the room, 25% of which are my family. That takes me right back to when we started the church. It's a great time to restart. Today, we are in Luke chapter nine. The title of the sermon is, A Glimpse of Glory. That's the official title. The unofficial title is, In a Tent with Jesus, that's the unofficial title, A Glimpse of Glory. I'll start with a quote, Os Guinness, he's a British writer, but spent a lot of time in the United States and a great cultural critic of the United States, he said this about the US, he said, "We have too much to live with and too little to live for. Everything is permitted and nothing is important." What do you live for? What is most important in your life? What gets you up early in the morning without an alarm clock? What gives you energy to keep striving, to keep working? And the Christian life is work, and to keep fighting the Christian life is a fight.

The text right before this, Tyler did an incredible job last week. The text before this is about denying yourself. Jesus calls every Christian on a daily basis to deny yourself. What gives you the power to do it, to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus, why? "Follow me," Jesus said. "Fight the good fight of faith. Repent of and mortify sin." Why? Why? Because you get more God. You get more of God's glory in your life. You become more transformed in order to look more like Jesus, in order to show Jesus more clearly to others.

The Chapter 9 of Luke begins with a question. "Who is Jesus?" Luke 9:9, Herod said, "John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?" And he sought to see Him. And then Luke 9:18-20, now what happened, "That as he was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He asked them, 'Who do the crowds say that I am?' And they answered, John, the Baptist, but others say, Elijah, and others that you're one of the prophets of old has risen.' Then he said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?" And Peter answered, 'Christ of God.'"

So that's what people say. That's what Peter says. Today, we hear clearly, this is what God, the Father says about Jesus Christ, and we get the transfiguration. The transfiguration is right in the middle of Jesus's ministry. That's why it's right in the middle of Matthew and Mark and Luke. It's to show us that this moment to show Christ's glory, this moment is in the top three most important moments in Jesus's ministry. One was His incarnation, the birth, ultimately his passion of the Christ, and in the middle you get the transfiguration. Right after the transfiguration Luke 9:51, "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Isaiah says he set his face like flint. He showed Peter and James and John, this is who I am, was reminded himself now, I'm going to reveal that glory through the suffering, death, and resurrection.

Today we are in Luke 9:20-45. I'll read Luke 9:28-36 to begin our time in the holy scriptures. Would you look at the text with me? Luke 9:28, "Now about eight days after these things, he took with him Peter, and John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

"Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory, and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah,' not knowing what he said. As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud saying, 'This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him.' And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. Talk about a glimpse of heaven, a glimpse of hell, and a gospel microcosm. First of all, a glimpse of heaven, Luke 9:28, "About eight days after these things, he took them, Peter, John, and James, and went up in the mountain to pray." Before every single major event in Jesus life and ministry, he spent significant portion of time in prayer. Jesus was always praying, but Luke points out that he's praying intentionally to show us that something really important is about to happen, to draw our attention to this importance. Luke 9:29, "As he was praying, the appearance of this face was altered and his clothing became dazzling like white."

Jesus Christ said, "I am the light of the world." Not I reflect the light of the world. Jesus is not like the moon reflecting the glory of the sun. Jesus is the son of God and he's like the sun in that, the light comes from within, the glory comes from within. It's inherent to him, it's luminous, it's emanating, it's glistening intensely white. My parallel passage says, "It's so white, such as no earthly bleacher is able to whiten the pre-incarnation glory is revealed just a focus, just a glimpse and Jesus Christ is the focus of the story, just like he's the focus of every story."

He is man, but the man is God. By the way, if you study any of other religious literature, Jewish literature, any other world religion, there is never anything even close to an event like this. Why? Because you can't fake it. You can't manufacture this. Jesus, yes, he was a man. We talked about this in Philippians chapter two, we talked about the glory of his incarnation and the miracle that he did take on flesh. I'm not going to do much here, but I will just say, he was as human as we are. He did not have a sinful flesh, but all the human things that we do, he did. He ate. He drank. He worked. He slept. Jesus got haircuts. Imagine be Jesus' barber. Jesus got haircuts. He had his beard trimmed. He walked. He talked. He grew weary. He even got sick once in a while. He knew some things, he didn't know others. He had to learn by studying and observation.

The God of the universe had to learn to walk, meditate on that, as a baby, as a child, made himself that helpless. He laughed. He wept. He experienced pain and the exasperation and melancholy, and he did bleed. Peter, James, and John, they saw that and they knew he was different. Peter knew, theoretically that you are the Christ, now Jesus like, "Let me show you what that means." In Isaiah 6, by the way, in Isaiah 6, gospel of John tells us that Isaiah saw Jesus. Isaiah 6, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high, lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

"Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two, he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.'" Who's Isaiah talking about? John tells us that Isaiah was talking about Jesus.

John 12:41, "Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him." That's Jesus. That's the holiness of God shown us in Christ. Luke 9:30, the story continues, "And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah." Why Moses and Elijah? This is fascinating, Moses and Elijah were the two men in the holy scriptures who both had previously met God on mountaintops. They experienced the presence, the glory of God. Moses died, he was buried by God. Elijah is one of two people in scripture who actually didn't taste death. It was Elijah and chicken wing right now, say it out loud, or in the comments, who was the other one? I can't hear you. Who? I will by faith believe that you said Enoch. Yes. That's the one, chicken wing. Chicken wing will send ... Next time I'm bringing a bucket of chicken wings, just toss it at you. Just kidding.

What is the importance of these two men showing up on the mountain with the transfiguration of Christ? Well they're the most important people in the old testament. Moses, he brought the law. Elijah symbolizes the greatest of the prophets. We have the law giver and we have the greatest prophet. We have the law and the prophets. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." By the way, both Moses and Elijah had experience God before. They knew that they were pointing to Jesus and Jesus here is having a conversation with them about how he is going to fulfill that.

By the way, God's glory, where Jesus shows God's glory, he shows the glory of God, that in the old testament is a euphemism for God. God and his glory are used interchangeably. That's why Exodus 33:18-23, Moses is asking to see God, but what's the language he uses? He says in verse 18, Moses said, "Please show me your glory." He said, "I will make," God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," he said, "you cannot see my face. For man shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, 'Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock and while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed. And then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.'"

Here on the mount of transfiguration, Moses ... God said, "You're not going to see my face. I'm going to show you a little bit. I'm only going to give you a glimpse." Here on the mountain, Moses sees the glory of God where? In his face, in the promised land. God said, "No, no, no, because you sinned, you can't go to the promised land." Now God brings him into the promised land. So what atoned? How? How can God show Moses his face, and Moses doesn't die? What happened to Moses sin that Moses can now see God's face and experience his glory and be welcomed into the promise, what happened? What happened was the cross of Jesus Christ, and we'll get there.

Here they're having a conversation. Jesus isn't asking them questions, Jesus isn't interested in how Moses and Elijah are doing. Jesus is the one speaking. Jesus is at the center of the story. It's clear that who the greatest is. In Luke 9:32, "Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him." Now, some of the crucial points in Jesus' ministry, you see the disciples falling asleep. You got that in the Garden of Gethsemane, et cetera, why is this point ... I think partially, it's because physically they were exhausted.

The mountain that they climbed was the one next to Phillip Caesarea, you're probably talking about 5000 feet, 6000 to climb to the top. Mount Washington, I think it's around 5000 feet to the very top, has anyone climbed Mount Washington? How long does it take? I think if you're booking it it's like five, six hours to get to the top, right? Maybe if you're really in shape, maybe less. So hours climbing the mountain, they're physically exhausted, so they fall asleep, and they're about to miss the most glorious moment in their life to date. A question you could ask is, why isn't Jesus asleep? One of the things that I read, one of the commentators say, and I think this is actually very interesting, that Jesus, yes he was human, but he was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit descended upon Jesus at the start of his ministry when he got baptized, remember in the form of the dove, we saw that. Now everything Jesus did in his ministry was by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has a supernatural energy that the disciples don't yet, because the disciples don't yet have the Spirit of God within them. I just want to point that out. Jesus is praying. The disciples are asleep. When they wake up, it says, "When they became fully awake, they saw his glory." I think this is very symbolic language that one of the reasons why we don't see the glory of God as he wants to reveal it to us, and experience the presence of God as he wants to gift it to us is because of spiritual sleep.

Luke 9:33, "And as the men were parting from him, Peter said that, 'Jesus master, it's good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah,' not knowing what he said." Peter is perpetually sticking his foot in his mouth. That's another situation where the ... he doesn't know what to say, but he's going to say something ... thinking out loud. I read a lot about what is going on here. My theory, my sanctified imagination says that, I think Peter so enjoyed that moment, he so enjoyed the glory of God, it was so rapturous, he's like, 'I don't want anything else. I've never experienced anything more glorious. Let's stay here, three tents, I'll build them. We'll go glamping. I'll build the tents myself.'

By the way, Paul was a tent maker, that's interesting. The incarnation was, the word for incarnation is tabernacled in John 1, Jesus pitched a tent with us, he came to live with us. I think what's happening here is, Peter, he wanted to build the three tents and say, "Okay, John, you're the grace guy, we're going to bunk you up with Moses to balance each other out. And then Elijah, you're kind of a nut, but so is James, you guys can have a tent. And, who's left? Yeah, I guess I get a tent with Jesus." I think that was his thought process. I can totally relate.

The beauty here is, that he wanted to be with Jesus in the fullness of it. John 9:34, "As he was saying these things, God interrupts him and a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud." What's fascinating is in the old testament when God is bringing the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, there was the pillar of cloud, and the pillar of fire. Those were both symbols of the presence of God. Then Jude tells us that it was actually Jesus that led the people of God out of Egypt. The fire and the cloud, they symbolize the presence of Jesus Christ. In the second coming, Daniel tells that Jesus will come on the clouds, and his appearance will be glorious, like fire. You have this combination of Jesus right here, in the clouds, the clouds are overshadowing, and his face is showing a fire.

In Second Chronicles when Solomon finishes the temple, it says that the fire comes down from heaven, consuming the sacrifice, showing that sin must be atoned for. Then what we see in the history of the old testament is Ezekiel 10 and Ezekiel 11 outlines this in First Samuel 4 is that because of their idolatry, the people of God, the glory of God left the temple. God's glory was withdrawn. Glory departed for 600 years. Then when we see the story, the incarnation, remember when the angels come to the shepherds, what do they say? It says, "That the glory of God shown in the sky." It says in Luke 2:14, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those whom he is pleased."

God brings the glory back to the people of God. In Luke 9:35, "And a voice came out of the cloud saying, 'This is my son, my chosen one, listen to him.'" Herod said, "Who is he?" I'm not sure, the disciples said the other people, they say that you're a prophet. Peter said, "You are the Christ." And God the Father says, "This is my son, my chosen one." I was actually meditating on that phrase this week. I was thinking about my pops, my pops has two sons. He loves saying that phrase, "Yeah, this is my son, yeah, that's my son." I was meditating on it, because I've never said that. I've said something even better, that's my daughter. I love to see how proud God the Father is of his son here.

In all the Christ glory, the humility of this, look how glorious he is and he's humbling himself. He's shrouding himself with flesh in order to atone for our sins. The point here is he's the one that's worth dying for and living for. He is the most important one. He's the one for whom we deny ourselves, to get more of him, for whom we sacrifice to get more of him, for whom we mortify sin to get more of him. By the way, this is so practical, and yes I'm still on point one, it's so good, but point two is going to be a lot shorter. It's so practical in that we always make decision based on what we find important. We make decisions based on what we find important. For whom am I willing to sacrifice my life, for my family? I will lay my life down for my family. I think everyone would say that.

I work every waking minute, other than when I sabbath for my family, for the kingdom of God. If you find comfort to be important, you'll do everything you can do be comfortable. You will work until you don't have to work. If you find being in shape important, you will do everything you can to sacrifice what you can, endure as much pain as you need to get that. If you find wealth important, you will pursue that and sacrifice whatever to get that. If you find security important, relationship important, et cetera, et cetera.

By the way, when we look at all of the negative outfall in our life, most of the time it's ... these components are a result of valuing something ultimately that shouldn't be valued ultimately. That's why Jesus comes. In the bookend between deny yourself and follow me, take up your cross daily and I'm going to set my face like flint and go the cross, there, he shows us this is why it's worth it, to sacrifice absolutely everything. In Luke 9:36, "And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen." From there, and this is almost anti-climatic, they descend from the mountain, they just had a glorious rapturous mountaintop experience, and we go from Jesus in glory to little boy in misery. We go from the mountaintop to the valley of the shadow of death. We just got a glimpse of heaven, now we're going to get a glimpse of hell, and this is point two.

The reason why this text is here right after the transfiguration where God doesn't do anything arbitrarily, he's orchestrated this, it's to show us that we are at war. A lot of people ask, "Why is there so much bad in the world? If God is good, why is there so much bad in the world?" Actually part of that answer is, because there's a spiritual war, we're in a war. We live in a war. The universe is at war. God is good. Satan is evil. The two kingdoms are clashing. There's angles and there's demons at war. Luke 9:37-40, "And the next day when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him and behold a man from the crowd cried out, 'Teacher, I beg you to look at my son for he is my only child. And behold a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out, it convulses him so that foams at the mouth and shatters him and will hardly leave him, and I beg your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.'"

The parallel passages in Mark 9 and Matthew 17 say that the demon actually threw the boy in fire and water. Why? Because Satan is a murderer, and occasionally it rendered the child mute, so as the child's in water drowning he can't cry out for help, in fire, he can't cry out for help, that's how evil Satan is. This has been the case since infancy. The word here is for a boy who is not yet had his Bar Mitzvah, so he's I don't know, nine, 10. Sometimes our problems in life are physical, sometimes they are emotional, sometimes they're chemical, sometimes hormonal, but we can't forget that there is a category of the demonic. Sometimes our ailments are demonic. Sometimes the problems that we experience are from the demonic realm, so what do we do?

Jesus, what's your reaction to this gentlemen who's been in pain for years? The child has been in pain for years. Jesus' reaction is surprising, because he ... his reaction is irritability. He's irritated. Jesus answered, "Oh faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here." Who's he talking to? He's talking to the disciples, twisted, faithless generation, including the father, that's interesting. Why? Verse 42, "While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground in convulsion, but Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the boy and gave him back to his father, and all were astonished at the majesty of Jesus." Jesus is irritated with the disciples and the father. Why? Because of their lack of faith. You're faithless. What annoys Jesus is our lack of faith.

Why does Jesus rebuke the disciples and the father? They're lack of faith, they're lack of repentance, they're lack of obedience, and they're lack of prayer. In Mark 9:22-29, the parallel passage. "It was often," that's the father talking, "It does often cast him into fire, into water to destroy him, but you ... if you can do anything," this is the father talking, "have compassion on us and help us." And Jesus said to him, "If you can," exclamation mark, maybe a question mark, "all things are possible for one who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I believe. Help my unbelief.

"When Jesus saw that the crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, 'You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.' After crying out and convulsing him terribly came out and the boy was like a corpse so that most of him said he is dead, but Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, 'Why could we not cast it out?' And he said to them, 'This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.'"

I believe, help my unbelief, I kind of believe, make my faith stronger. Jesus rebuked the father and the disciples because they forgot one thing, they forgot to pray. They tried to cast out a demon without praying. The father, for years, this has been happening to his child, and this is why Jesus rebukes the father. Why didn't you ask sooner? Why didn't you come to God sooner? Why did it take this for you to come to God in prayer? That's a word from the Lord for some of us today. Some of us aren't relying on the Lord, aren't dependent on the Lord, because we think we got this.

What are the things in your life that you just don't even pray about? Jesus says, "Pray for all things." What are the things in your life? Perhaps it's your work. Do you pray for your work? Perhaps it's food. As you're cooking your food, you're like, "I got this. I don't need you for this food." Jesus says you can't do anything without me, driving, and by the way, I love this ... my wife taught me this, every time we get in the car we pray, we're going to pray, every single time. Jesus said pray for everything. Whatever we do, we have mic issues today, three minutes before the service started, what was I doing like a crazy man? I was walking around praying, casting out demons from the sound system, hallelujah, praise Jesus. We need to pray for everything. Prayer is the beginning of the Christian life and it's every single step in the Christian life.

Prayer and faith, they're intertwined. This is how we become Christians, and this is how we grow. It's the beginning, it's the middle, it's the end, it's everything. Faith isn't just knowing the things about God, it's taking that knowledge and acting upon it. In the business world, and the startup world, they say ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas don't really matter. What matters is execution. Well, we have the greatest ideas in the world, that's the kingdom of God, and it's the gospel, is that Jesus is holy. It's that God hates sin. It's that God wants the best thing for us. Now, are you acting on those ideas? The reason why Jesus brings Peter from the mountaintop, "No, we're not staying in a tent up there. Peter we're going to come down, because I haven't called you to be monks, I've called you to be missionaries waging war against the demonic." What are our weapons? It's prayer and scripture. This is what we're here for, this is what we're doing. Do you believe like that.

Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer, he was asked on his deathbed, "Hey do you ... you're about to die, how sure are you of everything that you have written about?" He said, "I believe them, the promises of God enough to venture in eternity on them." Scripture says, "Look to Jesus. Grab onto Jesus. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Grab his hand." We were at the beach yesterday in Jamestown, Rhode Island, and my daughter, Milana, she wanted to jump over waves, but she realized she can't do it herself. She came up to me and grabbed my hand and said, "Dad, we're going to jump together." I was just pulling her up and she felt like she was jumping. That gall, that audacity of, "I'm going to grab your hand, and I'm not letting go." That's what prayer is, that's what faith is.

The other thing that I'll mention about faith, because glory, seeing God's glory, faith is vision. That's why Jesus said, "Hey, sin is actually something in your eye. Like take out the speck in your eye, take out the 2x4 in your eye before you judge ... help anybody with their sin." This is absolutely correct. I see God more clearly, I see God's plan more clearly the closer I am to him. The more I repent of sin and fight it, that's clearing of vision, the clearer I see God and his will. That's a spiritual life. It's a battle. Peter comes down the mountain, James came ... John, they just had this glorious experience with God, a few chapters later, you know what Jesus says to Peter after Peter tried to keep Jesus from going to the cross, what did he say?

"Get behind me," what? "Get behind me Satan." You're like, "How does that happen?" It's spiritual amnesia. That's why every day we need to go pursue God in prayer on the mountaintops. Second Corinthians, 4:16-18, "So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day, for this light momentary affliction's preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. Look to the things that are unseen, that's faith. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." How do we look to the things that are unseen through prayer and through faith?

C.S. Lewis said, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the son has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else." When you see God the Son in his glory, everything else makes sense. We got a glimpse of heaven and a glimpse of hell, and finally a gospel microcosm. Verse 43, "But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, 'Let these words sink into your ears. The son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of men,' but they did not understand the saying, and it was concealed from the so they that might not perceive it, and they were afraid to ask him about the saying."

What did he just say? He said, "I'm going to die on the cross." What did Jesus talk about with Elijah and Moses? Well, that's one verse that I missed as I was going verse by verse. Luke 9:31, "Who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem," most likely you have a footnote in your Bible next to the word departure, and at the very bottom, it says, "GK, Greek," and then what does it say? Exodus. The word for departure here is the word exodus.

We often talk about actually when someone passes, they're not longer with us, dearly departed, we use that language, but Jesus isn't just talking about his death, he's talking about his exodus. Who's he talking to about the exodus? He's talking to Moses who knows about an exodus like nobody else knows about an exodus. Moses doesn't want to talk about that exodus, he wants to talk about Jesus' exodus, where Jesus, as the new Moses leads a people out of captivity, out of bondage in liberation. By the way, he says the word accomplish, spoke of his departure, which he was about accomplish at this death in Jerusalem. People don't really accomplish much with death. Death isn't something that we do, it's something that's done to us, we die. But not in the case of Jesus.

Jesus said, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord." Jesus Christ had to die for our sins in order to liberate us from captivity, in order to expunge the sin from us, in order to get us into the promised land, in order to show us his glory. In the same what that Moses needed the gospel, he needed Jesus to lead him out of sin and into the promised land. We do the same. We need Jesus Christ. The other thing I will mention here is in terms of the gospel, how this text practically changes our life, there's a battle for glories in your heart. There's a battle for glories. The glory of temporal, earthly, physical pleasure, and the glory of eternity, the glory of God, the glory of Christ.

This Hebrews 11:23-26, "By faith, Moses, when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king's edict, but by faith, Moses, when he was grown up refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God, then to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." It's a battle of glories. You need to sacrifice things in this world to get more of the glory of God.

I wonder if Peter has ever written about this experience. They didn't say anything about it in the gospel. They came down and didn't say anything. I wonder if Peter's written anything about the transfiguration. Oh, he has. I'm going to read this because it shows us how we can experience more of the glory of God in our life. This is Second Peter 1:16-21, "For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were witnesses of his majesty for when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the majestic glory, 'This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.' We ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain."

Now what he says next is so important, if you've zoned out, come back, this is so important and then we'll lay in the plain, "And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy is ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the spirit." You know what he just said? Seeing Jesus, man, that was cool, you know what's even cooler than that? Holy scripture. Do you want to see God's glory on a daily basis? Study his scripture. What did God the father say? Listen to him. Listen to him. Listen to him from the scriptures.

That's what changes in Second Corinthians 3:17-18, "Now the Lord is a spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit." The more time we spend with the Lord, the more we become like him. The more we saturate our mind and our hearts with the holy scriptures, the more we are transformed. The greatest thing about heaven is the glory of God, it's God. Will there be night in heaven? No. It will always be bright. I wonder if there's naps in heaven. I don't know, I haven't given that much thought, probably won't be sleeping, but I think Sunday afternoon naps. Jesus Christ will be the source of light in heaven.

I'll close with this story, true story, at the end of World War II, Murdo MacDonald, he was a British soldier, a soldier for the UK, they snuck up to a German concentration camp that had American soldiers in it, and he whispered the good news to an American soldier through the fence that the war was over. The German soldiers in that particular concentration camp, they didn't know yet. They wouldn't find out yet for another three days, until the soldiers of the UK, until they came and liberated the American soldiers. So for three days, the American prisoners of war, for three days, they still had to go through the same hardships. They had to eat the same terrible food. They had to endure the same trials et cetera, et cetera, but do you think their mindset was different? Yeah.

They had to endure the same pain, but they had something that fueled them to get through that. What was that? It was hope. It was faith. This is fact. Now that fact changes the way that I live. That's why Jesus showed them the transfiguration. Yes, deny yourself, yes, take up your cross daily, and yes I'm about to take up my cross, but it's all worth it because I've brought the gospel of hope. With that said, would you please pray with me before we transition to worship?

Jesus we thank you for your transfiguration. We thank you for this glimpse of glory. We thank you, Lord, that you are not a victim, but a victor, and Jesus that you reign. Your truth will triumph over evil. I pray that you give us, not just a glimpse of your glory, but a vision of your glory that enables us to follow you on the daily basis, no matter how hard it is, no matter how great the sacrifice, because it's all worth it. We pray all this in Christs' holy name, Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning church. That is if you are watching it live on premiere. But if you're not, then good afternoon or good evening or good whatever time you are watching this. I'm so glad to be here speaking God's word to all of us, including myself, as Pastor Jan pointed out two weeks ago. I'm preaching to myself today and it's an encouragement to be with you all and speaking with you. Today we're actually going back to a series that we had started a while ago, going through the book of Luke and we're picking up right where we left off, Luke chapter 9. And we're going to be looking at verses 18 through 27. And what we're going to be talking about today is this idea that I call outliers of faith. Now, many of you have heard this term outliers before, many of you may be haven't.

And it's something that when I looked up the definition actually had somewhere around 10 different definitions. So it could mean a lot of different things. So I want to be clear about what I'm talking about. And I'm going with more of a mathematical statistical definition of outliers, which is something that is seemingly distant or distracted from the main body of work. And so for an example, going back to high school mathematic, bringing you back to those good old day, if you are plotting a graph and you're expecting it to have a linear correlation, a line, and this is where you expect your data, and there's a point way over here, you're going to be wondering why is that there, that doesn't fit with the data I expected? And that is what we call an outlier. But outliers aren't just in mathematics or science or statistics, outliers are actually in almost everything that we do.

And I think the clearest example is relationships and not just romantic, in also friendships, working relationships, family, or yes indeed romantic relationships as well. We go into those relationships with a preconceived understanding of what they are, what we have been taught to expect in these relationships. And that is sort of our line. And then in relationships, sometimes things pop up that we think, "Whoa. Where did that come from? That doesn't fit in the data of what I expected this relationship to be like." And quick side note, don't ever talk about relationships as data points. It does not work. It will not go well. I'm only doing this because I have asked my wife for permission to do so. And she said it's okay. So don't talk about relationships as data points. But I was thinking back to when we were dating, my now wife Alison, when we were dating we lived pretty far apart.

I lived in the North Shore and she lived in Charlestown. And so we spent a lot of time driving back and forth to each other. And with that, I would drive to class, have my clothes for that, then drive to work, have my work uniform and then drive to her house to pick her up for a date and go out on a date and then come back home late at night and I'd be tired. And so naturally over time, completely out of my control, my car got a little bit messy. There were clothes piled in the back seat, there were bags of Dunkin' Donuts and cups in the cup-holder from the times I was eating on the road and it just got a little bit disorganized, I'd say. And very lovingly, my wife Alison pointed out she really would appreciate a cleaner car when I was driving her and taking her on a date.

Now, when I was going into a dating relationship, I expected things like driving to visit her. I wanted to spend time with her, you had to drive. But I expected love commitment, compassion. These are the things I was told about dating. Not once did anyone ever tell me I needed to clean my car and that that was a factor or data point in dating. Now, when you come across these outliers, you have options of what you can do. You can do one of two things. And this is the same exact thing they do in mathematics and science as well. The first option is human error. In mathematics, it's taking the measurements wrong or not being precise enough. And in this situation, if I wanted to count this data point of cleaning my car as human error, that would look like me saying, she just has a different calibration of cleanliness for cars.

It's just not measuring up to the same. So that's that. Or this is her feeling on this, but that doesn't affect my understanding of cleanliness of cars or of dating, and so I can discount it as human error. Now, if any of you at home are thinking that it was possibly human error, just ask her about the time that I had a Christmas tree in the back of my car for five months. So clearly it was not human error. Clearly it is the second option that we have to look at this data point, this point that seemingly is disorganized or disjuncted from the rest of the main body and say, "How does this fit in with my understanding of the rest of the data? How does this point fit in with my understanding of dating?" And it fits in in that part of dating is serving, part of dating is welcoming and loving the other person in ways that they feel loved.

So rather than discounting her point, it is my job to clean my car as part of dating and now of marriage. And it is something I am still working on. But this is what we're going to be looking at with faith. A lot of us have this focus on faith, a really simple, clear definition of faith, which is good and true. A lot of us when we think of faith, we think of things like faith is believing without seeing or a faith is belief and trust in God. And those things are true and those things are good. And that's what we expect the rest of the discussion of faith to revolve around. But throughout scripture, there's a lot of different factors and components and you could say data points that show us what faith is actually like. And we can foolishly reject those as errors or we can lovingly and welcomingly accept them and say, "Maybe I need to rethink how I think about faith. Maybe I need to adjust my understanding of what faith is."

And so that's what we're looking at today in our text of Luke chapter 9. But before we get into that, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you and we praise you and we thank you that you give us faith. We ask that you strengthen our faith, that you grow our faith, that we can grow in trusting you more and loving you more and that we can have a faith that overcomes this world. That nothing in this world can hinder our faith and love and trust of you. I ask that in this time you speak through me, use your Spirit to speak through the text and challenge each and every one of us to grow in faith to strengthen our faith in you. Through Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

So Luke chapter 9 verses 18 through 27. If you have your Bibles at home with you, feel free to bring them out. If not, you can follow along, the text will be on the screen with us. And it says in Luke chapter 9 verse 18. "Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them, 'Who do the crowd say that I am?' And they answered, 'John the Baptist. But others say Elijah, and others that one of the prophets of old has risen.' Then he said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' And Peter answered 'The Christ of God.'

And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one saying, 'The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.' And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.'" Amen.

So this text, we're going to be looking at five different what I call outliers of faith. The five of them are first that faith is unpopular. And then faith is from the Father, faith is patient, faith is daily and faith is unashamed. And so we're going to be looking at how these outliers of faith, these different data points of faith, focus and point us back to the root of faith. And so the first one is faith is unpopular. And this comes from the very first verses where Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they're like "Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say other prophets." And then Jesus asks, "Who do you say that I am?" And this part right here, this verse where Jesus asks Peter, "Who do you say that I am," this is the core of faith. This is what faith is based in.

It's saying that Jesus is the Christ of God. We say today that Jesus is the Messiah. He is our savior. He is the son of God. These are all saying the same thing. This is the root and core of faith, is in who Jesus is. Now. We're going to be faced with times where people disagree with us, and actually our belief that Jesus Christ is our savior is unpopular. I remember back in the day when I was in high school, I was taking a biology class and the teacher was very smart, very well-educated, had all of the degrees and he made an offhand joke about how science disproved God, or that you could not use science to support the existence of God. And as a Christian that upset me. I love science, and so after class I spoke with him and I shared with him about my beliefs about God and that I believe science is something created by God and it's good and all these things.

And it seemed good to me. I felt good about what I said. And his response to me was, "Don't you think that's a little naïve?" That really hurt me then. Because I like to argue, I like to give support and reasoning for things, and to hear that someone thought my beliefs were naive really hurt. But what it was really coming down to was that he did not like my beliefs and my beliefs about who God is, were unpopular and were against what he thought. And this is just one of many examples that I'm sure you guys have experienced and know of where our belief and faith in Jesus is unpopular. But what I find really interesting is that in this text, they give three examples of who people say Jesus is. And it actually reveals a lot to us about some of these more popular statements about who Jesus is.

What we find is that a lot of popular statements about Jesus are either missing some information, are either philosophically trying to be intellectuals and come up with some new thoughtful idea or are passive and say "It doesn't really matter." And that's what we see in these examples. The first is John the Baptist. Well, this is missing some critical information because there are hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus with John the Baptist. And so if you saw them at the same time, you would know that Jesus is not John the Baptist. And so it's missing some critical information. And then with Elijah, this is the philosophical, this is the intellectual answer. I know of a verse somewhere in scripture that talks about Elijah coming back or one that'll be like Elijah coming back so clearly this is him.

But the difference is that Jesus said and claimed that he is the Father, the Father and him are one, that he is God, I should say. And that he is the Lord. And so, Elijah never claimed that, it was clear Elijah was not God, and so we meet sort of a distinction here that this can't be right either. And then a really popular belief is, "It's one of the old prophets. I don't really know. Someone else will tell me what to believe." And we see this today, right? We miss information. We say this historical Jesus maybe wasn't who the Bible describes, or maybe that historical Jesus doesn't really even exist, but he definitely did not claim to be God or did not do the things that he said he did. Well, that's missing some critical information because if you study history outside of the Bible even, even though the Bible is good historical accurate information, if you read the works of like Flavius Josephus, he was an author for the Roman empire taking historical accounts of the things that were happening in the providence of Israel at that time.

He accounts the works of Jesus that come perfectly in line with the works of scripture, that show what Jesus said, the things that he did and that people believed he was the Messiah, the Christ of God at the time, historically. So to say that historical Jesus is different from the Jesus in the Bible is missing some critical information. We like to be philosophical and say, "Jesus was a great teacher. He was a good man who said good things, and that we should follow after him because he was good." But again, Jesus claimed to be God. Good men don't claim to be God. And also good men don't die on the cross. So we can't just philosophically talk about Jesus or try to intellectualize and make Jesus who we want him to be.

But we also can't be passive. We can't just say, "I don't know. Whoever people say Jesus is that's who he is. He was probably someone from sometime that's important maybe. Who knows?" We can't do that. Having faith in Jesus means at the root declaring that he is the Christ, he is the Messiah, he is our savior. And that belief is often unpopular. But then this leads us perfectly into this next idea that faith is from the Father. And maybe you're thinking, "Yeah. That makes sense. That doesn't seem like an outlier." But where it really becomes an outlier is where we live this out practically. And this is actually coming from the parallel text in Matthew chapter 16.

So if you don't know, there are four gospels, and a lot of times each of the gospels talk about the same events and each one adds some to the story. And in Matthew 16, we get a little bit more information about Jesus's response to Peter when Peter declares that Jesus is God, is the Christ. And in verse 16, it tells us "Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the son of the living God.' And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

So Jesus says to Peter, "Blessed are you." Why? Because he didn't believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah because of his own intellectual thinking, but it was because it was a gift from the Father. Now this is really important. And this is really critical because one thing that this does is it clarifies that there's no room for spiritual arrogance or superiority. No room for spiritual superiority. Because what it says is that our faith is a gift from the Father. And so Christians, do we have an air of spiritual superiority? Do we look at others and say, "Oh. My faith is stronger than them," and so we puff ourselves up. Well, what that says is "No. Your faith isn't from you. You can't boast yourself up with your faith because it is a gift from the Father."

When you think about the faith that you have turn to God and praise him, because he has blessed you with it. Or even worse do we look at non-Christians and say, "Oh. They don't understand because they don't have the faith that I do." Remember faith is a gift from the Father. Praise him for the gift that he has given to us if we have faith. Now, maybe you're watching this and you're not a Christian and you're saying, "I'm looking at these things, I don't believe this, I don't have faith in this." But maybe you want to, but maybe you're learning and you're saying, "This is interesting. I want to know more." Well, this is actually a huge encouragement to you because what it shows us is that the Father is the one who gives it. So run to him, pray to God, ask him for faith, ask him to reveal himself to you.

God loves to reveal himself to those who seek him. He loves to. So run to God. Ask him to reveal himself to you, to give you faith. And Christians, ask God for more faith. Right? He blesses us with faith. It is a blessing. And so when we are feeling down, when we maybe feel like our faith isn't strong enough, or it needs to be better, that's okay. Turn to God, seek him, ask him for more faith. And the Father loves to give faith to us. And this relates back to the unpopularity of faith as well, because it shows us that it's not something we can master up only on our own. We can't just look at facts and be like, "This is the fact, this is the fact, therefore I have faith." That's what society wants us to do, is just reason ourselves into things.

And there is logic. There is reasoning in believing in God, absolutely. But faith is a gift from the Father. Trust in him, seek him, desire faith from him. The next point is that faith is patient. And faith is patient in two ways. It's patient in timing and it's patient in method. And we often talk about love is patient. And I love this idea that love is patient, that is true. But faith is also patient. And we see this in our text and also in the Matthew text. But in our text in verse 21, it tells us, "And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one saying, 'The son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised.'"

Jesus, your disciple just said that you are the Christ. He gets it. He understands. Why are you telling him not to go and tell people about it? This is what we do all the time at church. We talk about proclaiming the truth of who Jesus is, sharing the gospel with our friends and family. This is something we talk about a lot. Jesus, why in the world are you commanding them to not tell anyone? It's because he wants us to be patient with his timing. He says that these things still need to happen. I still need to be rejected. I need to suffer and die on the cross and three days later, be raised from the grave. These things still need to happen. So I'm asking you to be patient in my timing. But also, he asks us to be patient with his methods.

Because a lot of times God's methods for bringing about his will are different than ours. We see this in Matthew 16 in verse 22, it says, "And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying, 'Far be it from you, Lord. This shall never happen to you.' But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me Satan, you are a hindrance to me for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.'" Now, this is immediately after Jesus says that he needs to suffer and die. And Peter, the one who just said you are the Christ says, "No Jesus. Not this way. I believe you are the Christ, I believe you are my savior and you are God, but not this way. It's not going to happen that way. I have a different plan than yours."

And we have to be patient with God's methods because when we aren't, what Jesus's response to Peter is "Get behind me Satan." But not just that, he says, "You are a hindrance to me." And this one hit me really hard. This word "hindrance" was like... Am I a help to God and to his will and to his plan or am I a hindrance to him? Patience is something we talk about with faith that we have to have faith that God will bring about his will, his way. We talk about that a lot. But, we often grow impatient still. Think about a time where you have asked God for something and it hasn't happened in your timing, or it hasn't happened in the way you thought, have we grown impatient? Has that hurt our faith in God because we said, "You know what, God didn't answer in the time I wanted, in the way I wanted, and so now I'm struggling with my faith."

Now this is why it's so important that faith is patient in timing and method, because this is how God works his will. We know that God's will is good. In this story, it's what was necessary for Jesus to live and to go and to die on the cross, to save us from our sins so that we can have an eternity with God. This is what we put our faith in, is these events. But it had to happen in his time, in his way. If Peter tried to force his will, then he would have blocked the salvation for all of us, but because God is so powerful, he did not let that happen. He could not have let that happen. And that brings us back to the word hindrance, right? We're not stopping God. We can't prevent God from bringing about his will and doing what he wants. We're not powerful enough.

But are we going to be a hindrance, are we going to be fighting against him, are we going to be pushing back or are we joyfully going to be running along with him, fighting for his will, bringing about his will, submitting to his will in his way. We also see this idea of Jesus commanding people to be silent and not to speak a lot throughout scripture. This was something that I was really focusing on in the book of Mark. Eight different times, Jesus says that... It says that Jesus commanded them to be silent and to speak nothing of what had happened. There's only one time in Mark chapter 5, where Jesus says, "Go and tell. Go and tell." And what's the difference there?

It tells us in Mark chapter 5, verse 18, it says, "As he was getting into the boat," Jesus, "The man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him, but said to him, 'Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.' And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him and everyone marveled." This is the story of a man who had a legion of demons cast out of him, and afterwards he runs to Jesus and says, "Jesus, I'm going with you wherever you go. Let me follow you." And Jesus says, "No. Instead, go and tell people what had happened."

What is the difference? Why does Jesus tell him the only one go and tell? Well, he's the only one that wasn't in Israel at the time. He was a Gentile. So what does this mean? This shows us again, that God's methods are different than our own. Jesus knew that if in Israel word of who he was came about, he might be killed prematurely. He might be stopped prematurely. And he wanted to bring about God's will in his way, so he patiently told others to hold off and not speak now. But to this Gentile man, he says, "Go and tell." And what a lot of the Jewish people who were told, "Don't say anything. Be quiet," might've been thinking was, "Well, why does he get to go and tell? Jesus, why did you give things to him that I was asking for, that I wanted to do?"

And I think another really important thing about faith and patience in faith is not comparing ourselves to others. Not being like, "God, why did you do this for them, when I asked you the same thing. God, I asked you for a husband or a wife and I haven't gotten that yet. Why did you bless them with it? Or I asked you for this job or this promotion why didn't you bless me with that when you have blessed them with that or..." Whatever it might be we ask God for something, it doesn't happen in the timing and way we want and then we see it happen for someone else and we get jealous.

And that can hurt our faith as well. It breeds doubt, it breeds insecurity in our faith. And what we need to do is to overcome that by saying, "No. My faith isn't in my circumstances, my faith isn't in the things going on around me, my faith is in the person of Jesus Christ. I trust in him no matter what is going on in my life, in the world around me, with other people, I am trusting and I have faith that God is going to work his will his way." And sometimes that's really hard. I'm not saying that's easy. I'm not saying that when we ask God for things that we should just be like, "All right. That's it. Done?" It is hard, but that's why we need to continually go to Christ. That's why we need to be like that man in the book of Mark and run to him and say, "Jesus, I'm following you." Because it's when we go to Jesus, that he gives us clearer instructions as for how to go.

And sometimes it's just have faith, have patience, trust. Number four, faith is daily. And this one I was thinking about because I was thinking about the way I talk about faith in the most common times I use the word faith. And that most common time is when I say, "We put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ to be saved." True. Amen. Hallelujah. However, it doesn't stop there. Faith is not something we do once that puts our faith and trust in Jesus and we are saved and then, "Great. I'm done with that part of faith. That part of faith is over. I've completed. Check." No. It's daily.

And this is in verse 23 of our text where it says, and he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake will save it." The word, "Daily," take up your cross. This is the one of the four gospels that uses that word "Daily." But it's really important. It's really important here that daily we need to pick up our cross. What does it mean to pick up our cross? We have romanticized this idea of the cross in our culture, right? Because it is the thing that Jesus died on to bring us salvation. That is good. And so we wear necklaces with crosses, we have crosses on top of steeples and in paintings and pictures.

And those things are all good and fine and there's no issues with that. But then we start to think about the cross solely in the positive, in like, "This is good." But when Jesus is speaking to his disciples and says, "Take up your cross daily" what Jesus is saying is saying, "Be prepared to die every day and look back at your day and say, 'Was that day worth it? Did I live my life today to glorify God? Did I not seek to save my own life? Did I not do everything selfishly, self-preservingly or did I do things for the kingdom of God?'" This is also really hard to do. But when I was in college, I was part of a Christian group, and one of the leaders at the Christian group was giving a lesson on overcoming temptation and overcoming sin. And one of the things that he said that has really stuck with me, he said that every single day he wakes up and he commits that day to God. He says, "Today God, I'm going to be obedient to you."

And this has a really stuck with me because I don't know about you, but for me, longterm goals can be something that is hard to complete daily. It's something that you say, "It's longterm, so if I mess up today, it's okay because longterm it'll come true." But daily goals are the harder ones. Daily goals are the ones that you have to do it every single day. And so to wake up each morning and say, "Today, I'm committing today to you Jesus, I'm following you now," that puts it in the immediate presence, and we're not able to say, "Well, if I mess up today, it'll work out longterm," because, no, you're committing today.

And this is what Jesus is getting at when he says, "Take up your cross daily." Is he's saying, "Follow me daily, have faith in me daily, trust in me daily, all of the time." And again, we have seasons of doubt, we have seasons where life is hard. But again, this is why we have to remember that faith is from the Father because it's when times are hard, when it's hard to follow him daily, when it's hard to pick up our cross daily, we can go to him who is powerful enough to carry it for us, to strengthen us, to give us encouragement, to lift up our spirits so that way we can have faith even in difficult times.

And lastly, point number five is that faith is unashamed. And this is actually bringing it partly back. This is closing the loop with unpopular. And he says in verse 25, "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself. For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." Are we ashamed of Jesus? Or are we ashamed of his words? It's telling that Jesus makes a distinction. A lot of people might say, "I like Jesus. Jesus seems like a nice guy to me." But then when we read his words and say, "Do you agree?" say, "I don't know. Maybe. I have to think about it." Or, "I don't really like that part of it, I would change it slightly to this."

No Jesus says, "If you're ashamed of me or of my words, I will be ashamed of you when I return." And this word ashamed is really challenging. Maybe we don't feel it as piercingly as we should because this word ashamed is the same exact word that is used to describe the feeling of Adam and Eve in the garden when they sinned and they realized they were naked and they felt ashamed. It was stunning, it was piercing, it was heartbreaking this feeling. Do we feel ashamed of Jesus and of his words? Do we cower back? Do we like Adam and Eve go and hide ourselves from his presence when things get tough, when things get challenging, when popular opinions about who Jesus is pushed against the true view of who God is? Do we hide?

True faith is unashamed of Jesus and his words. And I looked at three different times in the New Testament where Paul used this word, the same word for unashamed. And I think it's really telling and really encouraging to us about what it means to be unashamed. The first is in Romans chapter 1, verse 16. He says, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith."

Unashamed of the gospel. This is the story, this is the life, this is the work of Jesus Christ that he died on the cross to save us from our sins. He rose from the grave, defeating sin and death, bringing us into a perfect relationship with the Father. Paul says, "I'm unashamed of that. I'm unashamed of it because this is how we are saved." It is unpopular to believe that Jesus is the only way to be saved today. Are we ashamed of that? When people ask us what we believe about God or what we believe about salvation, is Christianity the only way, are we ashamed to say, "Yes. Jesus is the only way to salvation?" That is the only way. Nothing else works. We can't be ashamed. We are unashamed of the gospel because it is what saves us.

The next time Paul talks about being unashamed is in 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 12, he says, "But I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what he has entrusted in me." Are we ashamed of how we are saved? Are we ashamed of who Jesus is? And the second part, are we ashamed of his power to be the thing that sustains us, to keep us with what he has entrusted us? Do we say, "I don't know if I'm willing to trust him fully that he is providing me with the strength. I'd rather rely on my own strength to follow him. I'd rather rely on myself and my own intellect to follow him." Paul says, "I'm not ashamed because I know who he is and I know that he will keep and protect me and keep what he has entrusted me to do."

The work that we do for God is only because of the power of God in us. And the last time, this is actually a Hebrews chapter 11, verse 15, and the author of Hebrews says, "If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared for them a city." And so what does it mean for Jesus to be ashamed of us? It says that God is ashamed of us when we look back at the world and say, "I want that," rather than looking forward to the kingdom of God and saying, "I want him." You see, God is ashamed of those who look back at this world and say, "I cannot. This is where the good stuff is. I'm holding onto these things. My joy, my goals in life are all focused on my job, my career, my life, here are the things that I have, that's where my ambitions lie. That's where my focus is."

Jesus says, "Be careful because there's another country, a better country, and it's specifically a heavenly one and it's coming. It's the kingdom of God, and it will be here." And this is actually the very last verse of this passage, where it's Jesus says, "But I tell you some who are here today will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." What that means is the kingdom of God is here. It is present. What does he mean when he says this? The very next section of text in this book is the Mount of transfiguration where they get a glimpse of Jesus in his glory. But we're also told that his kingdom is here now. That the church is his kingdom, is spreading his kingdom in this world. The kingdom is here. And so are we more focused on the things of this world or are we heavenly focused, focused on his kingdom, trusting in him and seeking his will.

And with all of these things, are we unashamed of it? And there's actually a poem/song that is becoming very popular right now that fits this idea perfectly. And the reason why I want to talk about this is because I can see it is already being used for the gains of political countries, of the country here. And that's fine. Whatever you think about that, I'm not commenting on that. But what I want to point out is that this poem is one meant to be discussing the kingdom of God. This is a poem written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900, and then his brother five years later made it a song to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday and specifically the freedom of slaves in America.

And James Johnson was actually a trusted advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, and he was the representative of America to Venezuela and Nicaragua. And he wrote this poem looking at American slavery, and those who have come out of slavery and said, "This is what I see in it." And here's how the poem ends. He says, "God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far on the way, though who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee, shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to our God, true to our native land."

This song actually really embodies everything that we're talking about today. Faith is unpopular. That the American slaves were enduring slavery, silently crying, they were alone crying, but still having their faith in God, even when it was unpopular for them to do so. Faith is from the Father. It says, "Thou who has by thy might led us into thy light." God you're working through your power to bring us to salvation. God you have saved us, you have given us faith. This is from you. Faith is patient. It says, "God of our weary years," not minutes, days, years of enduring slavery. God you are still God through all of that. I still have faith in you in spite of the circumstances.

Faith is daily. It says, "Lest our feet stray from the places where we met thee, and may we stand here forever." Let's just stay with you God, I don't want to wander a single footstep away from you. I don't want to be enticed by the world, says "Be drunk by the wine of the world." I don't want that God. I want to follow you daily. And God I'm unashamed to say that I'm standing beneath your hand under your power and that you are the true God, and that I'm remaining faithful to our... what they say, our native land. What is that? It's specifically talking about the kingdom of God. If you don't believe me, that's why it says standing under your hand, where are they standing? Where's their native land? It's under the hand and power of God. It's the kingdom of God.

And this is the kind of faith that I want. I don't know about you, but I want the kind of faith that no matter the life circumstances, no matter how hard it gets to the point of having to endure slavery, nothing can waiver my faith in the one, true God. Nothing. And it's only when we look at all of the aspects of these faith and we try to incorporate them into our lives, these outliers of the faith, that we can really have a lasting faith that endures all things and overcomes the world. So I challenge you today, have this faith in God. Have faith that is unpopular, that believes who God really is. Faith that is from the Father, trusting in him, praising him for the faith that you have.

Faith that is patient and it is enduring in time and method of the will of God. Faith that is daily. That you pick up your cross daily and say, "Today Jesus, I'm having faith in you." And lastly, faith that is unashamed to boldly proclaim who God is, to boldly live for him, to boldly trust in him and submit our lives to him no matter what. That's the faith I want. I hope you do too. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you and we thank you that you are the God that gives us faith. Lord, we ask that you give us more faith to live out your faith, to strengthen us in faith, that we will be bold to follow you, bold to live for you, that you will give us and grant us with a faith that overcomes all trials that overcomes the world. Lord we thank you. We thank you that you give us this kind of faith. Through Jesus' name your son we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to another edition of Mosaic-Brookline Online. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you're doing well. I hope your getting some sun, Vitamin D. It's very important. And, I hope you are enjoying the summer despite everything around us. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God who has designed us in a way where we can experience joy and satisfaction and fulfillment as we are close to you, as we pursue you, as we are in relationship with you.

And Jesus, we thank you that you didn't just come to forgive us of our sins, but you came to replace our sins with something else, to replace our sins with yourself and tell us that you are the bread ... Your body is the bread and your blood cleanses us from sin, and you replace that with satisfaction by the power of Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, we recognize today that we do have a spirit leak, every single one of us, and we do need to be filled continually so that we continue to enjoy you, enjoy life, enjoy your good creation.

I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures today as we study the secret of satisfaction, of how to find it on a daily basis. And we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is The Secret of Satisfaction. We're landing the plane, closing off our sermon series through the Episcopal Philippines. Next week, we're continuing a series through the Gospel of Luke. Can't wait for that. Just to begin, quick question. What's missing in your life? What's that thing, maybe a few things? What's missing from your life that you need to be truly happy, to be fulfilled, to be satisfied? What's missing? It's the thing that your mind naturally gravitates toward when you have nothing else to really think about. Perhaps it's in the early hours of the day, or on a Sunday afternoon when you take a nap, as you're about to doze off, what's the thing occupying your mind?

You need that thing for complete satisfaction. How satisfied are you with life now? And usually we stave off that question of how satisfied am I know by saying, "Well, if I get this thing or that thing, then I will be fulfilled," but we haven't achieved satisfaction in the past, not complete satisfaction with things that we thought were going to satisfy us. What makes us think that that next thing is going to do what the other things, the previous things have not done. Many of us, we avoid this yawning emptiness through business, through denial and it's a postponement at best. Even in seasons when you have incredible satisfaction, when everything is just clicking, everything has come together, even in the highs of life, there's always an underlying low that you know it's going to pass. It's going to end.

So today we're going to talk about this satisfaction that God offers everybody. St. Paul calls it a secret. I found out what the secret to content ... I found it, meaning it's something that we need to look for, meaning it's something that we need to learn, meaning it's not just a state of mind. It's not just an emotion in the heart, it's actually a skill of the will to grow in satisfaction. He uses the word satisfaction, contentment interchangeably. Contentment is independent from circumstance. He's in prison. He's in closed quarantine. He doesn't have the comforts of life and still he's content. He found satisfaction. He found the secret.

That's what we're talking about today. We're in Philippians, chapter 4:10-23, closing off the book. Would you look at the text with me. Philippians 4:10-23. "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Yet, it was kind of you to share my trouble and you Philippians yourself know that in the beginning of the Gospel when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me, in giving and receiving except you only. Even in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs once and again."

"Not that I seek the gift but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment and more. I am well supplied having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen."

"Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Framing up our time with three questions. Why is satisfaction a secret? What is the secret? And, how do I obtain the secret? And, in question number three I'll give you five sub-points of how to obtain satisfaction.

First, why is satisfaction a secret? Why does he use this word in verse 12. He talks about, "I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger." Secret, he used that term because not everybody has it. It's not easy to find. It's like a hidden treasure. It's like mining for diamonds. What he's talking about is finding contentment, and the opposite of contentment is dissatisfaction. You don't have enough. You're grasping for things that you think might satisfy and it is a secret because it's hidden. It's something that we know deep down inside. There's this paradox to life. Especially nowadays, there's this paradox to life and probably more than ever, a lot of things are incredible. In terms of technology, in terms of just comforts of life, and then on the other hand, in the pandemic, people are facing a crisis financially, crisis health wise, crisis existentially and we have this paradox of everything is great but everything is actually terrible.

People are beginning to ask really deep, really probing questions of, "What is my life? Where am I? Where do I want to be?", and making really drastic life changes. Part of that is our circumstances have shifted in such a way where we think if we change those circumstances, everything else will be solved, but deep down inside there's still this longing underneath all those circumstances. A longing for something deeper, something that will satisfy. It's a vague anxiety, a mild depression. The German word here is sehnsucht. There's just something missing. In Russian, there's this one powerful word that unfortunately does not translate into English. It's the word toska. This is one of the reasons why I love going back to where I'm from to Estonia and Finland and Russia. There's a toska that people, they're honest about.

They're honest that there is this sadness. There's mild depression, this anxiety. You don't have to mask it. You can talk about it. You can be honest about it, and Russians are. Here Vladimir Nabokov, the great writer who wrote in Russian and English, he wrote this, "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels, it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning."

"In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level, it grades into ennui, boredom. There is a longing for something beautiful, something gorgeous, something satisfaction but we can never quite remember what it is." It's feeling anxiety, and this is one of the things that we talked about last week, all of a sudden anxiety just overwhelms you and you're not even sure what made you anxious. It's this longing. Here in the United States, in a capitalistic, consumeristic, individualistic society, we think it's things. If I get these things, if I get these objects, this will satisfy. If I buy this, if I buy some more things from Amazon, if I buy some more furniture from Wayfair, if I have the right food experience, that will satisfy temporarily and then it's back.

St. Paul calls contentment the secret. It's alluding us. It's hidden. It's invisible. It needs to be sought after. It needs to be learned. The word for contentment that he uses here in the Greek ... the root of that word is satiety. It's being satiated and it's used in the context of physical, like you have physical satiety when you have a great meal and you ate just enough, not too much where you're uncomfortable and you're perfectly satisfied. This is what contentment is. It's the satiety of the soul, and physical things can't do it. People can't do it. Only God can.

C.S. Lewis has done so much great work on this concept of satisfaction and God. Mere Christianity's got this great paragraph. It says, "Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us are longings that no marriage, no travel and no learning can really satisfy."

"I am not now speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or holidays or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and the scenery may have been excellent and the chemistry may be a very interesting job, but something has evaded us."

We see an object, a thing, an experience that someone else has and they seem so happy in the commercial, in the ad. Then you say, "If I had that, I'll be happy. I'll be satisfied." You pursue it and the closer you get to it, the more you realize, "Ah, this isn't everything it was promised to be." Satisfaction is just another way of talking about joy, and there's so much overlap between joy, between peace, between satisfaction, contentment. Why is there so much overlap here? It's because they are all sides, facets of the same diamond and not just a diamond, of the same person, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one who satisfies. He said, "I am the bread of life. I've come that you may be full, have life to the fullness, so that you can be filled with the spirit." He talks about satiety all the time, but what gets in the way is sin. So when Christianity talks about sin, it's not just, "Oh, you were so naughty. You did a lot of bad things." When Jesus comes and He says, "I want the best for you, and the best for you is not sin." Sin is junk food for the soul. It just makes you hungrier. He says, "No, I'm offering you true, great, delicious artisan bread." My cousin and I follow him on Facebook, he got into baking bread, and he makes the most beautiful bread I have ever seen. I watch the videos, I love the pictures. It looks so delicious, as if my eyes were satiated just watching that.

Jesus says, "I am the most delicious bread and your soul is longing for it." Instead, you're eating Twinkies. You're filling your soul with Twinkies. Cut that out. With cinnamon buns. I used to buy cinnamon buns on the way to middle school every single day for $.99 at the gas station. Don't do that. It just makes you hungrier, and that's why Jesus talks about sin in terms of something that pulls you away from the source of satiation, satiety that you're really looking for.

Commandment Number 10 of the Ten Commandments, Commandment Number 10 is the one that St. Paul pointed out in Romans 7 that he struggled with this, and it's covetousness. Exodus 20:17, "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's." Why does God command us not to covet? He commands us not to covet because covetousness steals our contentment. It steals our satisfaction. It steals our enjoyment of life today. There's three areas, and by the way, that commandment covers three things, and 1st John 2:16 covers these same three things. What do we seek satisfaction in? I'll give you there's three main categories. Stuff, sex and strength. Stuff, sex and strength. You see that with Exodus 20:17. There's stuff. It's your neighbor's house, and his ox, or his car. Anything else and then it talks about strength, which is like people whom you employ or have power over, and then your neighbor's wife.

1st John 2:16 has the same three categories. "For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world." He's talking about people in the world, us, who pursue satisfaction in these things. Stuff is the desire of the eyes. It's possessions. We think, "If I have more stuff, if I have more things, if I have a bigger place, if I have a car ..." In it of themselves they may be fine, but when they become the main thing, they begin to possess us. We become possessed by possessions.

Sex, the desires of the flesh. And how's this not our culture? If I have more experiences or find that right person, or have the right kind of experience, or the right amount of experience or the right variety of this experience, then I will be satisfied and you never are.

And then the pride of life, that's strength. Stuff, sex, strength. He's talking about the pride of life. Power, status, celebrity, getting ahead, getting clout, getting influence, getting fame. You get those things. If you do get them, very few people do, and the people who have say it doesn't satisfy. I remember Jim Carrey, I think he was giving a graduation speech. He said, "I wish for every single person to achieve what I have achieved so they too realize that this does not make you happy." It doesn't. It doesn't. Not in of itself. In Romans 1, there's this really interesting, provocative thought where St. Paul says, "Sometimes God, to bring us to our senses, gives us the things that we think we'll satisfy." He talks about it as God's judgment, that God gives people what they want as judgment over them and what happens is their desires continue to grow and continue to get more insatiable, more ravenous, and they get to the point where it's just an empty, gaping hole in their soul.

Roman 1:24, 26-28, "Therefore God gave them up to the lusts or over desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves." Verse 26, "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions." Verse 28, "Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done." It's like the parable of the Prodigal Son. The son comes to the father and says, "Dad, your as good as dead to me. Can I have my inheritance now." Takes the money and the father gives it to him. The father lets him go. What happens? He finally comes to his senses. The objection here that people have, "Well, I'd rather be temporarily satisfied. I'd rather enjoy life for now than not have these things. I'm perfectly happy playing with mud pies or sports car or money, sex and power. I'm perfectly fine. I'm perfectly happy with that."

And, I would do what Jesus did all the time. I would ask a question. Are you satisfied? Are you happy? If so, why? Are you happy in these things? If you're not, then why are you pursuing more, and deep down inside we know there's something missing. And the problem with just pleasure, mere happiness temporarily ... And, this is really where we're honest with ourselves. Once you get to the very top, once you get the things that you've always wanted to get, you start thinking, "Oh my, it's all going to end." Leo Tolstoy, he wrote incredible books. He made a ton of money and at the end of his life ... Mid-life ... mid-life, he pauses and says, "Nothing matters if death is the end of everything. Nothing matters. If I die, how many people will remember my name?" Leo Tolstoy, yeah a lot of people remembered his name, and then he says, "But, if the world ends, if the sun burns out, who will remember me?"

And ultimately it leads you down this path if you keep asking these really reasonable questions, when you die, if you just rot, when the sun dies, everything rots, if there's no difference ultimately between how you live, there's no difference if you're compassionate or violent, there's no difference between right and wrong, there's difference between meaning and meaningless, purpose and lack of purpose. A lot of people, we have conditioned ourselves to believe that there is a difference between right and wrong, to believe that there is true meaning, to believe that there is something after this life.

Well, what is it? You got to be consistent with your worldview. What is it? If we, in this life, achieve everything we've wanted to achieve, if we have everything that we wanted to have, why do we still have this deep sehnsucht, this deep toska, this deep dissatisfaction. By the way, this longing is reawakened in those moments when you get a glimpse of what that satisfaction, when you get a taste of what that satisfaction could be. When you get a foretaste of it. For example, when you hear a song, a brand new song. It just moves you to the core. You get a glimpse of that satisfaction. The ocean. Why do we love the ocean? Why do you love going to the ocean, just being there, feeling so small in the context of its immensity, the smell, the sound, the wind, the beauty of it, the grandeur of it. It awakens this longing.

Or, when you see and experience something beautiful, part of God's creation, we begin to realize that there is this satisfaction to be found. Where do we get it? We get it with God. This is why Jesus Christ came. He came to take the penalty for our sin on the cross and saying, "Stop living dissatisfied lives. Stop living lives fueled by the desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes and the pride of life. I want to give you satisfaction and satisfaction is found in Him." This is Christianity, I've had some good friends listening to these sermons who are not believers, and some of the feedback I receive is, "Hey man, I don't really believe this stuff but it's really useful. Some of the stuff you say, it makes so much sense. If people lived like this, life would be better."

My response is always, "Hey, Christianity is the greatest life hack in the history of the universe. Christianity offers us the cheat codes to life." It helps us figure out who we are. It helps us out figure out what the world is about, how to understand everything around us, and it helps us live satisfied, fulfilled lives no matter what circumstance we're in. So, that's why it's a secret because sin is the way, covetousness is in the way and Jesus gives us a way out from the sin by replacing our sin with satiety of the soul, which is contentment.

So, what is the secret? The secret is that this isn't all there is. That's really the secret, and St. Paul knew that. He knew that as he's in prison. He said, "Everything's been taken away from me. I have nothing, but I have Jesus, so with Jesus, I have everything. I have God's presence." If you have everything without Jesus, you have nothing. If you have nothing, with Jesus, you have everything. This is what he's talking about. This is what C.S. Lewis talked about so often that there's this desire in us that no physical object can actually fulfill, which points us to the fact, the reality that this world isn't all there is, that there is a spiritual realm.

This is what he says in Mere Christianity, he says, "Creatures are born with desires unless satisfaction for these ... Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there's such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there's such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

You were. You are. You are not just a physical body. You are a soul. You have an eternal soul, and God wants to satisfy your eternal soul with himself, with his Holy Spirit by removing your sin, replacing it with a satiety of the soul, which is contentment. That's the Gospel. You believe by grace through faith, you come to God and say, "God, I repent of the fact that I've been trying to find satisfaction in things, in stuff, in sex and strength. Instead Lord, I want you, my savior. I want you to fill me. I want to abide in you. I want to be in you and you in me by the power of the spirit."

One of the things that I've noticed with the COVID pandemic is how much people fear death, and this is the truth of Christianity. That if you are a believer, death is just a transition to glorious life. So for us, for Christians, we don't need to be as deathly afraid of death and if you are so afraid of death, my dear non-Christian friends, you should be. Because this life is not all there is, and after this life we transition either to eternity with God in a place called Heaven or eternity in a place of insatiable desire, which is hell. That's what the flames of hell are. It's insatiable desire. It's ravenous desire just growing and growing and growing for all of eternity.

It's either that or you're growing and growing satiety with God in heaven and the way to remove the fear of death, the way to make sure you're eternally secure is repent of sin and turn to Christ to be filled with the spirit, be satisfied in Him. The First Commandment and the 10th Commandment, they're actually bookends and they summarize the same idea. The First Commandment is thou shall have no other gods before me and the 10th Commandment is thou shall not covet. And it gets to this idea that sole satiation is found in God, and gets to the idea that covetousness is ever growing satisfaction. Satisfaction is fulfilled with Commandment number one, "God you are enough. I don't need any other idols. I'm going to worship you. You fulfill all my longings. You are my justification. You are my righteousness. You are my wholeness, and therefore, I don't need to covet stuff. I don't need to covet sex. I don't need to covet strength. I don't need that. I have you."

St. Paul gives us two cases, test cases, and they're the most important test cases of how to find satisfaction. It's plenty and want. Plenty and want. He says, "I've learned the secret of contentment in abundance and in need. When I've had everything, when I've been brought low." And by the way, these are the two situations when people have everything and when people have nothing, these are the two most likely situations where you might consider suicide. When you have nothing to live for, it seems ... And when you have everything, and you still feel the toska, the sehnsucht. You still feel it.

People who have everything ... plenty is every bit as much of an expose of false contentment, of dreams. It destroys the delusion of thinking we're happy. It's when people get to the very top and they say, "You know what? Nah, that's not it." And people at the bottom, and St. Paul says, "I've learned the secret in both. I've learned the secret of satisfaction and feasting and in fasting." In both places, Jesus gives me assess to him, and I can enjoy great things that God has given me without making those things into idols. And when I have nothing, I can enjoy the presence of God.

By the way, this is why fasting is such an important spiritual exercise. This is why Jesus did it, this is why the prophets did it. Jesus said, "When you fast, not if you fast ..." If you do it on a regular basis, you actually feel content. You get to a point where you don't feel hunger and you feel more connected with God spiritually than ever before.

Point three, and this is just really practical. How do I obtain the secret? How can I learn the secret of contentment. Philippians 4:11-13, "Not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

This is the most quoted verse in our culture, and most misunderstood. There's athletes who have this tattooed all over them, and just completely don't understand what the context of this text ... He's not saying, "By God's strength, I can win all the time." He's actually saying, "By God's strength, I can overcome losses." That's what he's saying. He learned the secret through Christ who is strengthening him. The secret, it's not obtained, it's learned. It's not discovered. It's learned. It's a process.

So, what situation in your life today do you point to and say, "This is the most dissatisfying area in my life?" Possessions, job, health, marriage, housing situation. Whatever it is, if you can change it, do it and work toward changing it. We'll talk about that in a second. But most importantly, learn to be satisfied in that situation, which gives you actually more strength to change the situation. So, the first lesson here is learn that coveting is misdirected worship. We've touched upon this a little bit. Coveting is misdirected worship. Commandment Number One is actually given to us in Commandment Number 10's psychological terms, Thou shalt have no other gods before me and you shall be absolutely content today with what God has given you for today as you work to accomplish and achieve the things that you hoped to accomplish and achieve.

So, we shouldn't want something so badly that if we don't have it, we're miserable. There's plenty of things you could want, but should you be miserable if you don't have those things? Does not having those things, the absence of those things, does that steal joy from you? From your life? Well, perhaps you deified it and this is then an idol. Psychologically, idols can be things that give you self-esteem and identity. Sociologically, idols are things that give you credibility with people. Theologically, it's what makes you feel acceptable in the sight of God, "If I have this and only if I have this, then I will be satisfied."

And at this point, you got to preach to yourself ... We talked about this last week ... that, "No, this is not what makes me whole. This is not worthy of my ultimate affection. Only Jesus is." Two is learn to trust God to meet your needs. Look at verse 19 and 20, "And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen."

And, he's talking about the Philippian church who were so generous to St. Paul. How do you know that you are trusting God to provide for your needs? You know how you know? And, how much you're trusting him? Look at your giving. Look at your sacrificial giving. Giving to the church, giving to other people, saving money, setting money aside, earmarking it so that when you hear of a need, of a person or a neighbor or someone in the church and you have the funds there. When you sacrificially give, generously give, that's when you know you ... "God, you've provided to this day and I know you will provide in the next day, and that's why I'm going to give today."

That's verse 10. He says, "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but had no opportunity. Not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have learned that whatever situation I am to be content." They heard of his need and they wanted to partner with him to care for him because they were concerned for him. Verse 14-16, "Yet, it was kind of you to share my trouble, and you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the Gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only. Even in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs once and again."

Was the Philippian Church rich? Not that we know of. There were some gospel patrons that were there, but on a whole they were a poverty-stricken church. Yet, they were big hearted. They had largest of heart, they were generous and they sent St. Paul a gift to support him. In Proverbs 11:25, "Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and the one who waters will himself be watered." Luke 6:38, "Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you."

The premise of this promise is that we must first be generous to others and that in a sense, we can block the flow of God's blessing into our lives by being stingy. When you give, it's such a blessing to give. It's more blessed to give than to receive. You feel such joy and you realize, "Oh my ..." First of all, you realize there's someone who needs this more than I do, so I've been so blessed to be well off, and it means that I helped that person and that person is going to help another person. It just makes everything better. It's more blessed to give than to receive.

By the way, I love that St. Paul noticed this, that he called out the generosity. He said, "You've been generous. You've been a really generous church." In verse 17 and 18, he says, "Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gits you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God."

This is what St. Paul was saying. It's not Jesus said it's more blessed to give than to receive, and yes, you get this feeling of satisfaction by giving and there's been all kinds of studies about the benefits of altruism and generosity and just health benefits, but he's not just saying that you get a great feeling when you give, though you do. He's saying that giving actually factually, in a very tangible way, benefits the giver. He says, "You're going to get a well earned reward." In the Greek, he's talking about accumulated interest increases to your credit. He's saying that God pays interest on your investments in Heaven.

That's what Jesus said, "Don't store up treasures on earth. Store up treasures in Heaven." Storing up treasures in Heaven, the interest rate there is incredible. Jesus said that for all of those who sacrificed for the Gospel, what's the percentage of return? Seven? Eight percent? 100%? No, you know what Jesus said? "A hundredfold." A hundredfold. "A hundredfold return to all who give things up for the Gospel." A hundredfold. What's the percentage of that? A hundredfold, what's the percentage of that? Chicken wing? Chicken wing? First person to type it in the comment section. What's the percentage of a hundredfold?

Good job. Good job. It's 10,000%. It's 10,000%. That's like investing in Amazon or Apple or Tesla when they just went public. And if you didn't, you kicking yourself, "Ugh, oh no." I've got a friend who at the very dip when the market was down, he was about to buy Wayfair and then forgot about it. Still kicking himself. Poor guy. He's saying, "God keeps track." I love that. That God pays attention to our sacrifices. Another translation says, "I want to see profit added to your accounts," as if we've got heavenly Venmo's and with every spiritual sacrifice, with every generous gift, God's keeping track just like Jesus was watching the widow give her mites, give her pennies to the Lord. Jesus was watching. He's paying attention. He's recording anything and everything that you do, and every time you give something, it's recorded in Heaven.

Every time I ask my daughter, Elizabeth, for a cup of water, she always brings it and with a big smile she says, "Dad, you know what it says in the Bible? Whoever gives a prophet a glass of water gets his reward in Heaven. I got your reward." At that moment, I'm like, "Oh, thank you so much. Now go make me an omelet," and she's like, "Nah, I don't want that much reward." Still working on that, but it's true that God does pay attention.

1st Timothy 6:18-19, "They are to do good ..." That's people who are rich financially and relatively speaking, that's every single one of us, "to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life." What a phrase. That giving things, giving finances helps us take hold of that which is truly life. And he calls this a fragrant offering and that's an illusion. Leviticus 7, when the priest would come in, they would lay an offering on the altar and they would pour out the offering, creating a steam that the whole community could smell, so giving is an act of worship. Giving is a way that we fight the idolatry on our hearts, the greed in our hearts, the covetousness in our hearts.

That's why giving is such an integral part of worship. It's the preaching of the word, it's singing to the Lord, it's prayers and also giving. 2nd Corinthians 9:6-8, "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he is decided in his heart, not reluctantly, or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work."

Learning the secret of satisfaction and contentment, lesson number three is learn to avoid comparisons. Learn to avoid comparisons. Verse 11 he says, "Not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content." One of the main contentment killers is you start comparing your life to the people around you, and instead of running the lane that God has for you in this season, you start looking at the other lanes, how appealing they look. You don't know the other people's sacrifices, what it took to get there. You don't know the hardships that they are dealing with.

Focus on the lane that you're in and avoid comparisons, trusting in God's sovereignty that he put you here for a reason. 1st Timothy 6:6-8, "But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content."

Four is learn to adjust to change. This has been so important in this season. I call this learning agility. Tom Brady calls this pliability. He doesn't just lift weights. He does all kinds of stuff for flexibility, pliability. We need to have some kind of spiritual pliability, especially in this season. Life is full of ups and downs emotionally, physically, mentally, financially. There's so much change in the world. The only thing we can be certain of is there's going to be change ... Other than God of course ... How well do you handle change? I try to teach my daughters this, that, "Yeah, we had a plan but things changed."

And, you've got to be okay with that. You can't get emotionally overworked because of the changes that happen. St. Paul was free and now he's in prison. Change happens. That's the nature of life. God is sovereign. He's in control, and he will give me grace to adapt to this situation. It's those moments when things happen, like when schedules change, plans change, watch your emotions. Watch your emotions. Do you get frightened or moody or angry or uptight? There are three kinds of circumstances in life. There are circumstances that I can change, and I do change. Great. I can change it. It's in my power to change it. I do change it.

And there are circumstances that I can control, that I can change and I don't. Either it's because I'm lazy or just complacent, and here I just want to say a word that contentment is not the same thing as complacency. Complacency is when you're stuck in a rut in your life and there's just no movement for months and months and years and years. A lot of people excuse complacency. You know what God's called you to. You know what he's calling you to do, and you're excusing complacency with, "I'm content with where I am."

Don't confuse those two. Many of us, God is calling us to great things and either it's fear or it's laziness, or it's sin that's getting in the way and we're excusing that complacency, justifying it and clothing it in the language of contentment. Then, there are areas in life where I can't control it, that's not in my power to control, and we talked about this last week. Give that up to the Lord and stop worrying about it. Control what you can control and give the rest up to the Lord.

The fifth lesson to learning contentment is learn to experience communion with God. I'm not just talking about just rote prayers. I'm not just talking about 15 minutes just giving token 15 minute devo, devotional. I'm talking about learning to meditate on God. Remember I started the sermon with what do you daydream about? Learn to daydream about God. When your mind has nothing to think about, no work, no nothing, think about God. That's the first level. The next level of that is as you're thinking about other things, you're thinking about God. I'm up here right now talking about God, in the back of my mind, I'm communing with God.

It takes a little while to develop that skill but you can. St. Paul says, "Pray without ceasing." As he's doing everything he's doing, he's praying without ceasing. He's praying about what he's doing. He's communing with God on a daily basis. Learn to experience his love in your heart. Learn to seek him. St. Paul talks about contentment as spiritual satiety that we find by the power of the spirit in Christ. Then, seeking contentment, I've found the secret. Well, the secret is Jesus. So, seek Jesus. Seek the Holy Spirit. Seek the Lord. Learn to find your deep inner needs met in him. That frees you from coveting, frees you from grasp and from discontent as you grow to learn how to periodically feel awash in the love of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 12 and 13, "In any and every circumstance I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

I'll close with Ephesians 3:14-21. "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in Heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

"Now to him, who is able to do far more abundantly in all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, and Amen."

The five lessons to learning contentment, learn that coveting is misdirected worship, learn to trust God to meet your needs, learn to avoid comparisons, learn to adjust to change and learn to experience communion with God. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. So good. Satisfies our souls. Just reading it, just hearing it, meditating upon it. Why? Because you are at the center of your word. Jesus, we thank you that you offer us satisfaction. So few people find it, but it's available to everybody. Anyone who seeks shall find. You made that promise. When we draw near to you, you draw near to us. We thank you for that. We pray all this in Christ's beautiful name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to another online service of Mosaic Boston, Brookline. My name is Jan Vezikov, one of the pastors here along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. Pastor Andy and his wife, Joyce, just had their baby this weekend. I think I can announce it. I don't know if they've announced it. Congratulations, Joyce and Andy. We are so happy with you, praying for you.

Happy 4th of July weekend. I hope you are planning some time to spend with family, friends, enjoy some grilling, go to the beach, enjoy the good gifts from our Father. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy Word.

Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you that you are a good father, that you want the best for us. And the best for us is the path that you laid out in the gospels. And at the center of the gospels is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, who didn't just walk a path, he laid the path, he ran that race for us in order to give us his righteousness and take our sins upon himself. Jesus, we thank you for that.

Holy Spirit, empower us today, to learn that you call us to be people of spiritual stability, which leads to stability in every single aspect of our lives, and show us how we can be people who are no longer prone to being tossed by every wave of doctrine to and fro, but we can walk the path that you've set before us, and we can fight the good fight, and we can run the race that you call us to run. We pray that you bless our time, the Holy Scriptures, and we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is strengthening spiritual stability, and we are in Philippians 4:1-9. It's been an incredible time in the Book of Philippians. We have this week and next week, and then we are transitioning to a new series.

The year was 2000. In June 2000, I was 17, junior in high school, the summer after junior year, before senior year, and my uncle came over from Estonia. And my dad, and my uncle, and I went deep-sea fishing, first time in our lives, thought it would be a great idea. It sounded like a great idea at the time. We didn't check the weather forecast, and the guys on the boat didn't care about the weather forecast because they were seasoned fishermen. So we would go deep-sea fishing. We'd leave the dock at 8:00 PM. It's a full day, from 8:00 to 5:00 PM. Sounded like a good idea at the time, again.

I caught my first fish at 8:29. At 8:30 AM, I remember every single detail of this trip, because at 8:30 AM I started feeling queasy. And I go into the little room that they have, and I sit down and I sit down next to the garbage can. It was actually a bucket. It was a barrel. I was sick. I got seasick really bad, then my dad was next. And all day from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM, I just remember suffering the whole time.

And what I remember, to this day, is the smell. I remember the smell of the fish. I felt like a pebble in a concrete mixer for the whole day. It's all to say, that's what a lot of life feels like in this season. Everything is in flux. The world is in flux. Everything seems to be unstable, things that we thought should be stable. We feel the tossing and the turning, the vacillation, the turbulence, the turmoil.

Schools are in flux, jobs are in flux, health for many years in flux, relationships are in flux, the economy, politics, world order, everything. And for many, unfortunately, faith is in flux. What do I even believe? How do I even keep going down this path of faith?

And here, St. Paul gives us something that we can build our lives on. He gives us something that we can anchor ourselves to. He tells us, “Stand firm thus in the Lord.” That's the big idea of our text today. It's a text about stability, integrity, consistency, maturity. And St. Paul lived a turbulent life, but he stood firm. He never wavered. His faith was never in danger of being shipwrecked. That's a term that he uses because he was anchored. He made no compromises, even in the face of persecution. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Many, many Christians think that they enter Christianity, they repent of their sins and they turn to Christ, and then they're good, they get the get-out-of-hell free card, and then they can coast the rest of their lives. You can't coast. If you're not anchored, if you are not stabilized to the gospel, you will be tossed to and fro. So that's what we are going to talk about today.

Philippians 4:1-9, we'll look at five keys to stability in faith, and ultimately in life. Would you look at the text with me?

Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice.

Let reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Five keys to stability in faith, and ultimately in life. And this is all from verse one. Verse one, stand firm, stand firm, stand firm. That's the big idea. That is the operating verb. That's the imperative. How do we do that? Here they are, the five stabilizers or shocks to provide stability in an unstable world. Number one, partner in the gospel. Number two, rejoice in the Lord. Number three, worry about nothing. Four, pray about everything. And five, guard your heart and mind.

First, partner in the gospel. St. Paul planted this church in Philippi, leaves, and then hears that there's some kind of relational friction in the church, in particular between these two ladies. So he writes and says, “I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord.”

This is fascinating. They worked with St. Paul. They worked with Clement. Verse three, “They labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers. Their names are in the book of life.” They're believers. And Paul leaves. So Euodia, Syntyche, St. Paul. St. Paul appears to have been the glue in this relationship, that they were willing to work together because St. Paul kept them connected. St. Paul leaves, and now they look at one another and they're like, “Ah, I don't think you're my friend. I think you're a friend of a friend, and Paul's not here. So I don't think I really agree.”

So St. Paul does not say, “I want you to agree, period.” That's not what he says. And he doesn't say, “I want you to agree in me,” in Paul. He says, “I want you to agree in the Lord.”

When you look at the closest relationships in your lives, you got to ask the question, “What is really connecting me to this person?” If it's just this person, when that person sins against you, when that person does something that irritates you, it has potential not just break off the relationship, it has the potential to destabilize you spiritually. You know what I'm saying?

Whenever you have conflict in a relationship with a person, it always leads to conflict in your relationship with the Lord. When there's friction with the relationship with the person close to you, there's inevitable friction with your relationship with the Lord. You close off to the person, you close off your heart, and then your heart is closed off to God. And St. Paul says, “I want you to agree in the Lord.” It's the Lord that unites you. It's the Lord that by the gospel of Jesus Christ welcomes you into the family of God. And God is Father. Jesus is our older brother. And by the power of the Spirit, we can live like siblings. And he says, “I want you to continue partnering in the gospel.”

Now, why is this important, the partnership in the gospel? For St. Paul, if you have friction relationally as Christians, that deters your work for the Lord in the gospel, your gospel work. And that's why it's so important for St. Paul not just to have unity in the church, but unity for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel, expanding the kingdom of God.

The other thing I want to point out, this epistle is a letter. That's what the word epistle means. It's a letter written by Paul to this church in Philippi. And once received, the pastor of the church takes this letter, and on a Sunday gathering, where the church is all together, he reads this epistle. And as he gets to chapter four, verse two, Euodia and Syntyche are sitting on opposite sides of the room. And its true companion… in the Greek it's syzygos… most likely that's the pastor, my true companion. And the true companion is reading this, and calls out these ladies by name.

I find that fascinating, because we live in a culture where it's incredibly offensive to tell anybody that what they're doing is wrong. The only sin that's left in our culture, in the idolatry, in the religion, the secular humanistic religion of our nation, the only sin that's left is to call something a sin. And St. Paul doesn't just say in general, “Hey, I want you guys to get along.” What he says is, “Euodia, Syntyche, I want you to get along in the Lord. Why? Because I love you.” And that's what he started with in verse one. “I love you. You're in my heart. I long for you. You're my joy and my crown. So stand firm thus in the Lord. Continue to partner in the gospel.”

This is why we need one another to point out one another's sins. And we need to have the humility to welcome that criticism, and we need to have the audacity to give it constructive criticism, loving criticism, to help the person continue to stay on the path. “Look, I see that you've veered off here. Let's get back together to the path.” This is why it's so important to have a partnership in the gospel with believers in our lives that we're together with in the Lord to further the kingdom.

One example of this instability, this vacillation of the faith is Genesis 49:3-4. This is the example of Reuben.

Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity, pre-eminent in power, unstable as water. You shall not have pre-eminence because you went up to your father's bed then you defiled it. He went up to my couch.

If you want to know the backstory, read Genesis 49, in just the second part of Genesis. The point here is, Reuben was a firstborn. Reuben was supposed to be the one who gets the blessing of pre-eminence. Instead, he doesn't. Why? What disqualified him? It was spiritual instability. He had unparalleled potential, opportunity, forfeits it all because at some point, he chose temporal pleasure over eternal blessing from God.

And even St. Paul needs this community. That's why he begins the text by saying you're my brothers and sisters, in verse one, you're my brothers and sisters, my joy and my crown. We need a partnership in the gospel to keep us stable in the Lord, to keep us growing. How is your commitment to gospel community? And I ask that because we know who goes to community groups and who doesn't. And if you have stopped attending community groups, welcome back. We'd love to have you. It's important.

I know it's not the best format. I know it's difficult with video chats. I know it's hard to hear one another. I know it's hard with the technical difficulties. But for now, it's all we got, so we need to continue to partner in the gospel.

Number two, rejoice in the Lord. The second stabilizer in our faith is rejoicing in the Lord. That's verse four and five, “Rejoice in the Lord, always again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.”

He doesn't say rejoice in your circumstances. He doesn't say rejoice in your job, your career, your family, your prosperity, your health, he says rejoice in the Lord. The Lord is a God of goodness, and power, and mercy, and justice, and grace, and provision. Rejoice Lord. He is our shepherd. The Scripture says, “As we follow him, we shall not want.” He's our true security. He has solved our greatest problem on the cross by giving His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin, to forgive us. He solved our greatest problem. If with Christ he gives us salvation, obviously he'll give us everything else we need in life.

And that's what he points out in verse two and three, “Euodia and Syntyche, Clement, your names are written in the book of life.” You're going to spend eternity together. So why not get along now? Whatever it is that's causing a rift in your relationship, it's a secondary issue. Go back to the gospel. Your names are written in the book of life, probably on the same page because they probably got saved in the same season. You're together, forever. Now, let's be together here and now.

In Luke 10:17-20, speaking of salvation as the greatest source of our joy, because salvation connects us to the source of joy, which is God. Luke 10:17-20. Now, Jesus had sent the 72 disciples to… Jesus had 12 disciples, and then he also had an outer circle of 72, and 120, and 500. But he sends out the 72 to go preach the gospel. And they come back.

The 72 returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

That should be the greatest source of our joy, my eternity is secure, “I'm going to spend all of eternity, forever, with God.” If God solved my greatest problem, why am I so worried about Him not solving my temporal problem? He's here. He's with us. He's got us. Rejoice in the salvation that God gives you, because God is a God of joy.

And that's what leads to reasonableness. Verse four, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.” And this an incredible word. It's translated in many ways, because it's a multifaceted word. One translation says gentleness. One translation says moderation. Another one says, “May your patience be known.” But what is this reasonableness? It's a radical evenness of temper, where no matter what happens, you are even-keeled. Whatever happens, your emotions are controlled, your emotions are anchored in a God who gives joy, and whatever happens, you still can experience joy. You can still do this thing that he tells us to do twice, it's an imperative, it's a verb, rejoice. And why? Because of the gospel.

And the reasonableness, you know what this is. If you just think about the opposite, the opposite is to be unreasonable. And you've had people in your life, maybe recently, and you yourself have probably been told by other people, “Hey, you're being unreasonable.” It's when your emotions are ignited and you can't even control. You're just out of control. And at this point, St. Paul says, “Why? Because you are not anchored in the gospel.” And this has to do with the highs of life. It has to do with the lows of life. Reasonableness keeps you in the middle.

1 Corinthians 7:29-31, it gives us the same idea. “This is what I mean, brothers, the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none,” what does that mean? “…and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.”

What does this mean? St. Paul is saying, “You treat the physical as temporal.” You treat everything that's happening as something that will, too, pass. This, too, shall pass. And you've seen that bumper sticker.

John Newton says, “If you understand the grace of God, it makes the worst bearable, and the best livable.” The worst bearable, and the best times livable. Meaning, we rejoice not because of circumstances but despite circumstances. That's what joy is, and that's how joy differentiates itself from happiness. Happiness has to do with happenstance, circumstance. Joy has to do with God.

Rejoicing doesn't mean that we don't weep. Jesus wept. And we weep with the weeping, but Christian weeping is different. Christian sadness, and mourning, and sorrow is different. You say, “I'm sad. I'm sad, but this is not my route. I've lost something. It's terrible. But this isn't the core of who I am. This isn't the main thing, and nothing can touch the main thing.” So I can only be so sad. I can only be so sad.

And then, by the way, when the good things happen, when you do get a promotion, when you experience success, when your relationships flourish, what does a Christian do? You say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, settle down my heart. Don't get overly happy with this circumstantial thing. It's nice, it's great, I'll enjoy it, but it's not the main thing, and I might have to leave it. I will have to leave it at some point.”

And by the way, you got to preach this to yourself. When you're sad, and you're despondent, and you're anxious, you got to speak the truth to yourself. And when you're overly ecstatic with circumstance, you got to preach to yourself and say, “Hey, calm down. It's not the main thing.”

And by the way, the idea of preaching to yourself has hit me in a way… I've always heard, “You got to preach to yourself.” The Psalmist preaches to himself, “Why are you downcast, O my soul.” He preaches to himself.

During this quarantine, like you're watching right now on a Sunday. What am I doing right now with you on a Sunday? I'm watching me with you. I'm watching me preach to you, and I'm watching me preach to me. And I'll tell you something, the first few weeks, I was overly critical, like, “You did this wrong. You did that wrong. Too much bobbing. Too much weaving. Too much hand emotion. What are you trying, land a plane?” et cetera, et cetera, “Your hair looks…”

If I listen to the substance of what I'm saying to myself, which is Scripture, which is the gospel, deeply encouraging. I do know, it's the gospel, it's the holy Word, and you preach truth to yourself, you edify yourself with God's Word, and that's what it means to grow in maturity when you feed yourself. Point three, the third stabilizer in our faith is, worry about nothing. Philippians 4:5-6, “The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything.” Worry pulls us away from God. Worry kills joy. Worry causes stress. What's worry doing? Worry assumes responsibilities that God has not given us. And that's how worry pulls us away from God, because in a sense, subconsciously, we're saying, “God, you're not doing your job. God, I can do your job better than you can.”

The Scripture says, “Worry about nothing. Be anxious about nothing. Do not be anxious about anything.” If you can't do anything about it, what's the point of going around in circles? And that's what the word anxiety or do not be anxious in the Greek means, to go around in circles, like driving around in a cul-de-sac. You're not getting anywhere, so why spend your time doing it? You can't control the uncontrollable.

I love the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6:25-34, the words of Jesus Christ: Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on it. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

I love the quote, it goes, “Worry doesn't empty tomorrow of its troubles, it empties today of its strength.” How are your anxiety levels? How's your stress? The Scripture says, “Be anxious about nothing.” Be anxious about nothing. And here's the thing. You can't get rid of anxiety without replacing it with something else. So he says, “Be anxious about nothing.” In the same breath, he says, “Pray about everything.” And that's point four.

Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Whenever God tells you to eliminate something in your life, be it sin or be it just something neutral, He says, “I want to take this from you in order to give you something better. I want to take this from, and I want to replace it with something better.” And by the way, if you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. With babies, this is the only technique of taking something from them. You can't just take something…

My kids when they were really little, they would like to eat whatever's on the floor because they like to eat. If you've met Vezikov babies, we like to eat. It's our spiritual gift. I remember that Sophia, with Elizabeth, with Ekat, with Milana, whenever I got to take something as harmful from them, I always immediately got to replace it. And that's what God is talking about, “I want to take that anxiety from you. I want to take that burden from you. It's not yours to bear. And I want to replace it with something else.” And the technique to do it is prayer. Paul is saying, “Don't panic. Pray.” And the path to peace inside is always prayer.

How is your prayer life going in this season? Are you spending a lot of times in prayer with God in your prayer closet, you and God? Are you sharing your burdens with Him? Are you casting your anxiety, your stress? What are you worried about? Bring it to the LORD. Pray during this time. Pray during every time. And if you say, “I don't have time to pray,” whatever time you spend worrying, stressing, in that time, if you pray, you'll have less to worry about.

Philippians 4:6, “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” In everything.

A lot of people think about prayer as just something religious that religious people do, to say a prayer, to memorize a prayer. And that's not what prayer is in Scripture, prayer is a conversation with God. It's an outpouring to a best friend, exactly everything in your heart. And that's how Jesus taught us to pray. And that's why he doesn't just say pray about religious things, he says in everything. Pray about everything. Everything, every detail, all of the minutia, God wants to hear it. Everything.

My daughter, Sophia, has started texting. She got an iPad. Actually, Pastor Shane's wife, Kelly, gave her an iPad. She wanted to read books from the library on it. And she's figured out. She got an iCloud account and she got iMessenger, and she's been texting me. And she texts me all kinds of things. She texts me pictures, and she texts me little drawings that she makes, just little updates of how she's doing, from a different room. We're in different rooms in my place. And I will tell you, as a father, I love every single one of those texts. I eat them up. “Give me some more. Give me some more artwork. Give me some more flowers. Give me some more pictures.”

And God is a great father, He's the best father, and He loves to hear what's going on in our lives. And that's what prayer is, it's sending really long text messages to God. The longer, the better, if you have something to say, not just repetition, per Sermon on the Mount.

He uses the word here for request, in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Not just needs. The Sermon on the Mount says needs. Here, he says request. That's another layer of our lives. It's not just needs. God does meet all our basic needs. As a good father, He wants to know what our requests are.

The Scripture says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Our greatest desire is met when we delight ourselves in Him. But there are other desires, there's dreams, there's hopes, there's goals, and he says, share that with God. Meaning specifically, like specific requests. A lot of people pray too vaguely, too general, “God bless my life.” Well, sometimes a blessing is painful. Sometimes He sends suffering as a blessing. So be specific. “God, I'm under stress because of X, because of financial issues, because of housing issues, because of relational issues. God, this is what I'm thinking about.” Me, personally, like, “I'd like to restart church.” These are the things. “Pastor Jan, what are you worried about?”

I turned these worries into prayers about the church, and the future of church, and the future of the city, and the future of how this is ultimately going to impact people. So what do I do with those burdens? Or when someone sends me a prayer request, or, “Pastor Jan, I'm concerned about this. Pastor Jan, I'm having trouble at my job. I'm having trouble with my marriage. I'm having trouble with my children. What do I do?”

How can I as a human being bear that weight? The only way I can is if I immediately transfer everything to the Lord. That's what he's talking about. “God, I'm under stress. I'm tense. I'm nervous.” So be specific about it. When you pray, the Phillips translation of this text says, “When you pray, tell God every detail of your needs.” Every detail. If it's big enough to worry about, it's big enough to pray about.

And by the way, God loves to answer specific prayer. He loves that. If you pray about something super specific and then it happens, what's your reaction? Your reaction is like, “Oh, wow!” I'll just give you one example. In our community group last week, we were doing prayer requests, and my daughter Ekaterina, number three, who's five, I said, “What's your prayer request?” She said, “I want a unicorn.” And I was like, “Well, you're not getting a unicorn.” So I had to write it down and I had to pray about it. So I was like, “Lord, if it's your will, send her a unicorn.” A few days later, someone from the community group knocks on our door, and they were at the store and there was a stuffed animal unicorn with a little notebook altogether. And I gave it to her, and she's like, “God answers prayer.” He does, and He loves specific prayers. “God, this is what I'm specifically praying about. If it's your will, may it be done.” And if that's not, His will is even better.

1 Peter 5:6-7 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time, He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.”

I love this idea. You've got burdens on your shoulders, cast them upon the LORD. This is what prayer is. Unload your worries upon Him, because He's looking for you. This is what prayer is, is this release valve of pressure. The God who created the universe by the power of His Word, the God who made every thumbprint, every snowflake different, every voiceprint different, every face ID face different, that God cares for you and that God loves you. He made you His image, particularly.

Another translation of this text says, “You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon Him, for you are his personal concern. There's no problem too big for God. There's no problem, too small.” 20 times in the New Testament we're told to ask. James 4:2, “You do not have because you do not ask.” Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Are you a good asker? Do you ask well? Jesus actually uses parables. He's like, “I want you to pray with impudence.” He gives a couple of examples in the parables. He says, “I want you to ask, and keep asking.” It feels like nagging sometimes. And he says, “No, I want you.” And what happens is the more you pray about something, the Lord begins to reveal to you. Is that from God? If it's not from God, he removes it. If it is from God, he begins to give you strength. I mean, how to perceive, how to act in a way to make it happen by God's grace.

And I love this next verse, where he says, “Don't just pray, but as you pray, do it with thanksgiving.” Look at verse six, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.”

Now, this is fascinating. He's saying, “In the same breath that you ask for something, do it in a way that there's an attitude of gratitude: do it in a way where you are thinking God, already.” And you say, “How can I be thankful until I know how He's going to answer it?” And this is the point, that as you petition, as you ask, as you plead you, you thank God ahead of time for the entire range of possible responses, knowing that they from Him, and knowing that His will is always the best. Always be asking with a thankful heart. That's what he's saying.

Mark 11:24, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Believe that you have received it. What an interesting turn of phrase.

And by the way, name and claim it churches, the prosperity gospel, they take these verses and they build the whole theology upon them, and they don't counter it with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me, but not my will but yours be done.” You got to balance those out. But I think a lot of Christians to say we have nothing to do with prosperity gospel, we're all in the Garden of Gethsemane, they lose texts like this. This is God's Word.

You ask for something, whatever you ask, believe that you have received it. And as you do, it will be yours, thanking God after he gives something. That's Thanksgiving. That's gratitude. Thanking God after is gratitude. Thanking God before, that's faith. That's faith. There's clearly a balance, and you need the Holy Spirit to help you discern, “What should I be asking for?”

But I will tell you, God does give a gift of faith, an incredible anointing sometimes with faith, where you just believe. Everyone around you says, no. And I remember I had this with Mosaic in the early years in a special way, where everybody around me said, “Nope, it's not working. Nope, it's not working. Nope, you haven't raised enough money. You don't have enough of a core group. You don't have enough.” And I would wake up every day and I would thank God in advance for the church that He's building. I knew it. I knew it. And then that those prayers, by the way, motivated me to work on a daily basis.

And I remember 2009, 2010, 2011, up until 2014, I was still pastoring a Russian church. We were doing four on a Sunday. I was working 80, 90 hours a week, wake up at 5:00, 6:00 AM, go to bed around 11:00, midnight. And every day, I would pray and thank God, and work. Pray, thank God, and work. And that's the combination. So where in your life are you not praying enough? And where in your life are you not taking what you pray for and working for it by the grace of God, just like St. Paul did and just like he tells us to?

I'll give you one illustration from the Old Testament of this idea of thanking God for the thing that you just asked Him for in the same breath. 2 Corinthians 20, the context is the King's name, Jehoshaphat. He's about to go to war. He's about to get attacked, blindsided, by the Moabites, Ammonites, the Meunites. It's a great multitude of armies, and he's afraid. And he calls the whole nation. He proclaims a fast. He said, “We're fasting, and we're praying for God to intervene miraculously.”

This is 2 Chronicles 20:6. This is the beginning of his prayer. “O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you.” What's he doing? He's reminding God, this is who you are, but he's more reminding himself of who God is. That prayer in that chapter, I recommend that you read it.

In verse 14: The Spirit of the LORD came upon Jahaziel, the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly.

And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat, thus says the LORD to you, “Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God's. Tomorrow, down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jeruel. And you will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.' Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the LORD will be with you.”

Stand firm. What's he calling? He's calling that stability in the faith. The battle is not yours, it's the LORD's. The LORD will intervene. You see the next steps in verse 20.

And they rose early in the morning and went into the wilderness of Tekoa. And when they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Hear me, Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Believe in the LORD, your God, and you will be established, believe His prophets and you will succeed.” And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and praise Him in holy attire, as they went before the army and say, “Give thanks to the LORD, for His steadfast love endures forever.”

And when they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come up against Judah, so that they were routed. For the men of Ammon and Moab rose against the inhabitants about Mount Seir, devoting them to destruction. And when they had made an end of the inhabits of Seir, they all helped to destroy one another.

What a text! Before the victory, they pray for victory, they get a word from the LORD, “Yes, victory is coming,” and they believe that word, this true, and they start thanking God for it before He even does it. That's the combination of praying for something that you know is a desire from the LORD, for the glory of God as you're seeking His kingdom, and you're praying for this. And then God confirms that, “Yes, this is true, this is happening,” through a prophetic word, and then you start thanking Him for it. And as you thank, He does it. It's an attitude of gratitude. It changes everything about our lives.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.” Can you see the combination? Prayer is the glue between rejoicing and thanking in all circumstances. Prayer, in all circumstances leads to joy, and then you thank God, for prayer keeps everything together.

And finally, five, guard your heart and mind. This is the fifth stabilizer, spiritually and in every aspect of life. Philippians 4:8-9, “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.”

Think about these things. Not just anxious thoughts, or worried thoughts, depressed thoughts, or negative thoughts. So I want you to replace what you were thinking about, because changed thoughts lead to changed feelings, which leads changed actions. What's stressing you out? Think about something else. Your mind is such a special gift from God. Our minds have the capacities store over 100 trillion thoughts that can handle enormous things. And you've been given by God the ability to choose what you think about, to choose what you meditate upon, what you ruminate on.

A lot of people, and unfortunately a lot of Christians, you don't discriminate between what you think about and what you don't. You think about things indiscriminately. And you just allow any thoughts that come, that arise, to stay there. You need to be a referee. You need to be judge of your own thoughts. You need to be king over your thoughts, so to speak. You need to pastor yourself. You say, “No, I'm not thinking about that. No, that will not edify. No, that will not build me up. No, that will not lead to health, spiritually or physically.”

So watch what you take in, thought-wise. Watch who you read, watch what you watch, watch what you listen to. Where are these things taking my mind, and are they going to lead to glorifying God and more joy? The Jerusalem Bible says, “Fill your mind with these things.” The Good News Bible says, “Fix your mind upon them.” It's done with deliberate action. It's a conscious choice, where you are thinking about something, you say, “I'm going to flip to something else. I'm going to change the channel.”

And by the way, practically speaking, this is a lot easier to do if you keep yourself busy with good things. If you have too much downtime, this is harder. When you're by yourself with nothing to do, this becomes a full-time job.

I've had times in life, where like you graduate college and all of a sudden you have time where you're not studying 16 hours a week, or a summer vacation. Watch out for the times when you have nothing to do. The Scripture says, “The days are evil. Redeem the time.” Redeem the time, meaning that you are in charge of your schedule. Keep yourself busy with good things, with edifying things, with things that will actually lead to health and stability. Eight words that he gives us here: true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent praiseworthy, they're filters. They're filters on what we allow our thoughts to think about.

My wife has been asking me, Tanya has been asking me for a couple of months, “Hey, can you change the AC filter? Can you change our HVAC filter? Can you please change it?” I'm like, “Yeah, yeah. Not that big of a deal. Not that big of a deal. Not that big of a deal.” And then I came across some vent cleaning videos. If you haven't seen these, these are incredible. Go on YouTube, vent cleaning videos.

And these are videos of professional HVAC techs that come to your house. They put the snake into your vent with a little video camera and another little tube that sucks out all the nasty, whatever that stuff is. And you see bags full, barrels full of lint, and filth, and dust. I saw that. It reawakened my realization to, “Oh my, maybe I should listen to my wife and change the filter.”

I went down to change the filter. First of all, it was really hard to take out because it was so chock-full of grime and dirt. And I take it out, and it's almost… I didn't show it to Tanya. I haven't thrown it out yet either. I'm going to go home, throw it out right now, so she doesn't see it. It was disgusting. I take the beautiful filter that I just got from Amazon. I take it out of the plastic, and it's pristine. It's clean. I put it back in. I'm telling you, air changed right away.

We need to change the filter on our mind. Sometimes the filter gets clogged up, and it's not even working anymore. And the way that we do that is with the gospel, that we run to the Lord, Jesus Christ, say, “Lord, I can't even filter out my own thoughts. I need you. I need your strength. I repent of my sin. Cleanse me.” And the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from the inside as we internalize what he has done for us.

Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” What is the filter? The gospel is the cleansing part of the filter, but what is the filter is Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture is the filter. Holy Scripture is what tells us, that's good, that's true, that's honorable, that's worthy of praise, that's not. And this is why Scripture often talks about doctrine as the foundation builder to our stability.

Look at 2 Peter 2:14, “They have eyes full of adultery,” he's talking about these false teachers, “…insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!” Unsteady souls, who are not anchored in the gospel get pulled away from false teachers, false narratives, false worldviews.

2 Peter3:17-18, “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”

Stability comes from Scripture. Saturating your mind with Scripture. Washing your mind with the water of the word on a daily basis. Holy Scripture is the filter. And then when the filter is clogged up, the gospel and repentance. And this leads to peace of mind.

Verse seven, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I love the phrase, “will guard”. It's a military term. He's talking about garrison, or sentry, guard. St. Paul is in prison in shackle to a Roman soldier. And he says, in the same way that there are guards at my jail cell. He says, “The peace of God, which transcends,” it's above our understanding, it doesn't make any sense on a physical level, “it guards your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” So when the negativity comes, when the anxiety comes, when depression comes, this peace serves as a guard.

So, what are you worried about nowadays? Worried about finances, or the economy, politics, your health, world order, kids, career? Whatever is raising stress in your life, get rid of that. Replace it with prayer, and allow the peace of God to guard your heart in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him perfect in peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” Is your mind stayed on God? Do you trust in God?

And verse nine, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.” Practice these things, not those things that pull you away from. “Practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.” And by the way, this peace is part and parcel with the joy that God offers. A joyful heart is a peaceful heart. A peaceful heart is a praying heart and a thanksgiving heart.

C. S. Lewis writes this. “I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever,” joy, would ever, “if both were in his power, exchange for all the pleasures in the world. But then joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.” Joy keeps us grounded, stabilized. Pursuit of pleasure at the expense of joy pulls us away from the Lord. And joy is always better.

The five points, the five stabilizers that provides stability in unstable world, if you missed them: Partner in the gospel, rejoice in the Lord, worry about nothing, pray about everything, and guard your heart and mind.

I'll close with Hebrews 6:18-19. “We who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” Amen. Let's pray.

Holy God, we love you. Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we thank you that you give us a sure anchor to keep us connected to you, to keep us grounded, to keep us from being tossed to and fro by the waves of this world, by the waves of what's happening around us. And Lord, I pray in this time, continue to fill our hearts with joy and peace, and continue to grow us in stability. And I pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Hello. Welcome to another online edition of Mosaic Boston, Brookline. If you are tuning in online, live, thank you so much. We're so glad you're here. Take a couple moments say hello in the chat below. If you are at the beach while we are watching online, enjoy. But thank you for listening after you came home, or on the ride back, and paying attention. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you. We thank you for the gift of life. We thank you that you have designed us to be people who live lives of joy rejoicing in you, and we experience the utmost joy when we are the absolutely, absolutely closest to you. And Lord, show us that often, the fact that we don't pursue you, the fact that we don't press into you, the fact that we don't strain forward, and press ahead to get as close to you as possible.

That's actually the cause of so much of our unhappiness, our sadness, our depression, our anxiety. And show us today that the secret to joy is pursuing Christ, who pursued us, pursuing Christ to His perfection. And as we get closer, we get perfected. And as we get perfected, we get more and more whole. And you give us a holistic health, which leads to joy.

I pray that you give us these secrets, and give us the power of the Holy Spirit, not just to understand it with our minds, but to receive them with our hearts. And also, empower us to live this out with our wills, our actions. And Lord, I pray that you bless our time, the Holy Word, we're so thankful for it. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

One my favorite things about living in the city, living in Boston is every spring, I love that the Boston Marathon passes right by my street. I live in Pleasant Street, and the runners come right down Beacon Street. It's always amazing. The city is energy packed. It's incredible energy, incredible feel and emotion. And my favorite of all the Boston marathons was the 118th Boston Marathon of 2014.

And I remember distinctly because that Easter Sunday was April 20th, the day before the marathon. And for the first time, we were meeting at the Fenway Regal movie theater, and for the first time, we moved the Easter service from theater seven to the biggest theater they had. It was an act of faith. We had no idea how many people would come, and we had hundreds show up. The energy was amazing.

And we had dozens of people in the blue little jackets from the Boston Marathon. We've prayed over them. It was incredible. But that marathon was particularly memorable, and emotional because it was the year after the Boston Marathon bombings were three people were killed, and many were wounded. And the whole marathon, and the build up to it was incredibly emotion filled.

And in a story book ending, the winner of that marathon, Meb Keflezighi, 38 years old. He was actually the oldest man to win the marathon in 83 years, and the first US citizen to win it since 1983. And he ran with the names of the victims written on the corner of his bib. And as he approached the finish line in Back Bay in Copley Square, as he approached the finish line, there were chants of USA.

And as he crossed the finish line, an incredible triumph and joy. He raises his hands. He raises his fist, his arms, and almost collapses, but keeps going. Incredible. I love that. What a memory. Let me ask you, how did he feel when you crossed the finish line? You already know the answer. Triumphant joy, just exploding with joy. Let me ask you a question. How did he feel while he was running it?

How did he feel in preparation for the Boston Marathon, the tens of thousands of hours that he hit the pavement by himself with nobody watching, just driving himself pressing into the goal, the purpose that he set for himself full tilt with every nerve, every ounce, every muscle, every fiber of his being because he had a purpose in mind. And the purpose was to win.

And this is incredible. This is incredible story in it of itself. But this is actually analogy, the metaphor the St. Paul uses to describe the Christian life. That there's a starting point, and there's a finish line, and in the middle, this is what our life is. You become a Christian, that's the starting line. Scripture talks about this as justification that you are made righteous, just by grace through faith in Christ.

And the end is glorification, where you have a brand-new redeemed body just like Christ's resurrected body. But in the meantime, we are called not just follow Jesus slowly. It begins with a walk just like a child crawls and then walks. But then the Lord says, we are to seek maturity, and we are to run after Christ in an ultramarathon way. And this is important because St. Paul says, I'm pursuing perfection in the text that we're going to read today.

And this is important because Jesus didn't call us to be good. He actually called us to be perfect. And the closer you get to Jesus, the more you realize how much you lack perfection, and there's this holy tension between a Christian getting more holy, and realizing how unholy he or she is. And the godliest Christians are still so very aware of imperfections.

Still, there's a tinge of disappointment in themselves, a personal frustration that fuels them forward to pursue Christ who is perfection. The closer you get to Him, the more perfect you get as you understand your imperfections, which fuels you to keep following him more. This world isn't heaven, we know that. And Robert Browning put it like this. He says a man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what is heaven for?

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, meaning I am reaching for a higher-level amount of holiness than I can ever grasp in this life. But that reaching, that hunger, that desire for it is what actually transforms us. Today, we're in Philippians 3:12-21. Would you look at this incredible text with me? Philippians 3:12-21.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I've made it my own. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with mindset on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. So, what must I do in order to become perfect as the Lord calls us to become? And the word perfection actually means completeness or wholeness. Assuming that we have, presupposing that we have brokenness in our lives, in our hearts, and we know each one of us do if we're honest with ourselves.

So, how do we get that perfection? Well, this frames up our four points for today. Number one, acknowledge imperfection. Number two, press on for perfection. Three, keep growing in maturity, and four, remember what's at stake. One is acknowledge imperfection, you see this in verse 12. How honest St. Paul is with himself.

Not that I've already obtained this, or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. If anybody qualified as a candidate for perfection besides Jesus Christ, St. Paul was number one, the most likely candidate. He had a spotless spiritual resume on the outside as he told us verses four through six.

And then, after becoming a Christian, he pursued sanctification 30 years. This is where he is in his life. He's been a Christian for 30 years. He's already written half of the New Testament. He's planted churches in all four regions of the Roman Empire. He's giving everything, sacrificed everything to follow Christ. A good friend, a member of the church invited me to mass challenge, which is a startup incubator just to see his office.

And in the bathroom, there's a sign that says everybody wants to change the world, but no one wants to change the toilet paper. And that's where we find ourselves in the culture. Everyone wants to change everything. No one wants to change the little things. St. Paul actually focusing on the little things, and the most important thing, the gospel actually changed literally, had a global impact with his life.

And still, he says I'm not perfect. He still says I have a long way to go. And this is one of the lessons that we can extract from this text is that successful people never stop growing, always developing. They're always expanding, learning. He said I haven't obtained this. I'm not perfect. I don't consider it my own. And actually, verse 13, there's two emphatic personal pronouns before the verb.

He says, brothers, I, even I, I, even I have not yet grasped it. Incredible spiritual humility that he learned from time with Christ. Dear friend, do you willingly acknowledge your own imperfections, your own flaws, your own sins? Are you willing to own your mistakes? Are you willing to face your faults, not just to excuse them, not just to play the victim card?

And we can do this by the power of the gospel. Because when we acknowledge our sins, and when we show remorse for them, contrition over them, when we repent, there's always grace. Sometimes, we tend to think too highly of ourselves. Romans 12:3, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.

But to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. What he's talking about here is, can you look at yourself with an honest self-assessment? This is called self-awareness to do, an inventory of your life on a regular basis. Sober self-reflection, as Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

And why are we talking about this? Usually, this topic comes up January 1st, or the first Sunday of January New Year's resolutions, like inventory of life. By the way, this is the last Sunday of June, meaning the year is almost halfway over. This is a perfect opt and what a half a year it's been. This is a perfect opportunity to stop, and pause, and say, "Where am I? I need to do a self-inventory." Where am I? Where do I want to be? Where do I need to improve? What am I glaring weaknesses? What are my shortfalls? What are the things that I need to work on? What are my blind spots?

Where do I need growth as a person, as a human being, as a Christian, as a friend, as a son, as a daughter, as a husband, as a wife, as a church member, as a child of the family of God, as a student, as a professional? This is a personal inventory. Where do I need to change? And by the way, how thoroughly am I talking about? Like this, do an inventory of yourself as thoroughly as you do an inventory of others.

And each one of us, we do, we can see other people's glaring blind spots when they can't, and we feel that. We see them imperfections, and we criticize. With that same perspective, with that same magnifying glass, do an inventory of your life. The first step to pursuing perfection or wholeness, progress in the faith is to acknowledge that you haven't arrived.

And this is what it means to grow in faith. Because you know what happens when we think we have arrived, you become proud, and complacent, and you stop moving. Growth always begins in the mind. It's a change of thoughts that leads to a change of feelings, that leads to a change of action. So, thought, I need to keep growing, I need to keep running, I need to keep pressing ahead.

Feelings, I want to be the person that God has created me to be. I'm not that yet. Actions, what do I need to work on by God's grace? Philippians 3:15, let those of us who are mature think this way, starts with the mind, and if anything you think otherwise God will reveal that also to you. And by the way, this is so contrary to many people, but many actually Christians in the church.

Today, a lot of Christians would rather pretend to be a healthy Christian. We'd rather pretend than change because change always takes work. It's painful. And yes, we're all sinners. Yes, we have problems. Yes, we struggle with doubts. For some people, reputation is more important than transformation. And St. Paul gives us an example of incredible honesty with himself.

And by the way, this is a mark of maturity in the faith. There's absolute transparency. This is where I am. This is what I'm struggling with today, this week. And you voice it to other believers, and you ask them to pray for you. And what that does is that gets them to open up as well, and you together can fight the good fight of faith. Proverbs 28:13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

Don't conceal, instead confess and forsake. Seasoned Christians are acutely aware of inadequacies of what you need to work on. And mature Christians don't just say, "Oh, look how far I've come." That's nice. That's good. But you also have to say in the same breath, look how far I have to go. Philippians 3:12 St. Paul says, not that I've already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own.

Because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I press on. I overextend myself. I go for it with all I've got. I throw myself into this straining with every nerve, ounce, muscle to reach the price. Incredible intensity, maximum effort, he understands that there's no gain without pain. It's so counterintuitive because one of the idols in our culture is comfort.

So, for us, if we idolize comfort, then the opposite of comfort is pain. If we worship comfort, we only pursue comfort. We develop a resistance, a lack of tolerance for pain. And therefore, we don't accomplish the purpose that God has for us. We understand that the most valuable things in life always take pain, work, sacrifice.

To create something, to build something, to become a person who edifies others, adds value to their lives, and to serve others, to give to others, which is actually a greater blessing. It's more blessed to give than to receive. What's your motivation St. Paul? That's why whenever you see a driven person, you're like, "What are they motivated by? What gets them up in the morning? What is it?"

St. Paul says, this is my motivation. Verse 12, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but press on to make it my own because Christ has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. He starts with that. He says, Christ made me his own. I am reaching to grasp the righteousness that God has for me because Christ has already grasped me, made me righteous. And this is the interplay between justification and sanctification. Justification is monergistic. Yes, I'm dropping a big theological word on you. You can look it up. monergistic, meaning one way, justification, God says, I choose you, I regenerate you, I change your heart from stone to flesh. Now, you're mine. Now, you're a Christian. It says if He grasped us, as we're running the wrong way, turns us around and now, we're running for Him.

That's monergistic justification. Sanctification is synergistic. There's an interplay between God's will, God's energy, God's desire, God's Holy Spirit, and our effort. We can't earn our salvation justification. However, there is an effort to our sanctification that there are things that we have to do. The metaphor for justification in scripture is accounting. You were in sin. God takes your sin upon himself and Christ on the cross.

By grace through faith, He recommends you or accounts to you a righteousness that is not your own. That's justification, it's an accounting term. However, what St. Paul is doing here is talking about sanctification, and he doesn't use an accounting term. He's using analogy. He uses an athletic analogy. And athletes know this, if you want to win, you have to experience pain, discipline yourself in absolutely every single facet of life.

So, it begins with acknowledging our imperfection, but it doesn't stop there. He continues and talks about pressing on for perfection. So, press on for perfection. Point two, Philippians 3:13, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the price of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. By the way, this is totally unexpected in our culture.

Our culture stops at point one and says, "Yeah, I'm not perfect. Yeah, I acknowledge that I'm not perfect. Yes, I have things to work on." And we stopped there. St. Paul says, "No, no, I don't stop there. I'm not perfect, but I pursue perfection." The fact that he has not accomplished these goals actually motivates him, it actually energizes him.

Starkly different from our culture, which uses our imperfections as a justification to stay in them. We use our sin as a justification to continue sinning more. I'm not perfect, and I can't stop what I'm doing. So, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. St. Paul says no, no, if you are a Christian, you have no excuse to remain in habitual sins, to remain in sins that dog you, and plague you for years. They keep you ensnared for years.

He says fight the good fight, turn to Christ, repent of sin, ask for more the Holy Spirit, put a plan into place of how you're going to wage war on the sin on a daily basis. And he uses his sin, everything that he's done in the past, and he uses that as motivation to pursue perfection. He says but one thing I do, I press on, I press on, it's a present tense verb meaning continuous action. I keep pressing on.

And by the way to press on. This is the same word that he used in verse six when he says as the zeal, I persecuted the church. As the zeal I pressed on to get the church. What's he doing? St. Paul is a master wordsmith. Every single word matters. Every single word is planned, and he's filled with the Holy Spirit. What's the Holy Spirit doing through St. Paul's gifts and talents? This is a wordplay.

It's a play on what he said. He's saying with the same passion, with the same zeal that I persecuted the church, I am pursuing Jesus Christ, and His righteousness, and I'm trying to make that my own. With the same passion that you pursued sin before meeting Christ, with that same zeal, with that same energy, with that same planning, and you know what I'm talking about.

Prior to meeting Christ, there is this part of our imagination that's fallen, where we plan things to do, we plan ahead to sin more, to put ourselves in a position where we provide for the flesh. And he says no, in the same way, you need to plan for sanctification. You need to plan for holiness. Tonight, how am I going to plan to wake up tomorrow, and pursue Christ to fight flesh, and be filled with the Holy Spirit?

And what's his trick? St. Paul, how do you do that? And he says this one thing, I do, I do one thing. What do I do? I forget and this is verse 13. This one thing, I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. This is his trick. That St. Paul only do one thing in his life. No, of course not. He did lots of things. But he did everything he did with one purpose, to glorify Christ to the maximum, and to share the gospel.

He says this one thing, I do, I proclaim Christ and Him crucified, meaning everything he did in the church as he evangelize, apologetics, as he wrote epistles, as he quipped leaders in the church, and plant the churches, as he defended the faith before kings, and before centurions. Everything he did, he did with one purpose in mind, and how did he make sure that every single detail his life was aligned with that purpose?

He says, I forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead, forgetting and straining forward. This is important. Because St. Paul, actually, he had a past, what a past he had. Not only did he persecute the church, but as a young man, he was actually present. When the first martyr of the church was executed with stones by the Pharisees, St. Paul was there guarding their clothing, probably looking on with glee, and then he used that to go and persecute church.

Did he have a past? Yeah. I was actually talking with someone this week, and we were talking about God, talking about faith. And he said, I got a past. Bad, I got a rap sheet. I said, well, what did you do? And his response was other realm, and it was on text, it was R-E-A-L-mmmmmmm, other realm. And I don't know what that means. But I will tell you this. St. Paul's other realm was worse than that.

Because most likely, he was a murderer of Christians. He would take fathers, mothers out of homes to go and imprison them. And ultimately, they were executed for being Christians. And St. Paul says, I forget what's in the past. I forget all the bad things I did. I forget all the defeat that debilitates, and I forget all of my heartbreaking sin, my guilt, my grief, my grudges. And I also forget all the good things I've done, all of the wins.

Because sometimes, wins actually drag us down. You get to a place where you did great for the Lord today, and you're like, "Yeah, I did really good." And you take your foot off the gas of continuing pressing forward. He says, I forget what's in the past, I'm not manipulated by my memories, I leave the past in the past. And by the way, this is what we talked about last week. He says every day, I count my gains as losses in order that I may gain Christ more.

So, every day, he would sit down and tally up, look at the gains that he had for Christ, all the wins that he had. And he would transfer that to the lost column. And what that does is it empties up the gain column to get more of the Holy Spirit, more of Christ for the next day. You do that one day. The next day, your gain column is a little wider, it's a little bigger, so you can actually do more.

Because what happens is if you follow Christ full tilt like this today, tomorrow, you're going to wake up, and you're going to be just a little stronger. And here, I want to use the term compounding sanctification, compounding sanctification. It's like compounding interest, compound interest, you know how that works? Compounding interest, if you don't know how it works, it's incredible.

It's where you invest, and you make money, interest off of what your investment. And then, the next year, you make interest off the interest in the compounds. The same thing happens with sanctification. The more you pursue Christ today, the easier it is to pursue Christ tomorrow. So, perhaps you're in a place, and you walk with the Lord where you're like, "I can never even imagine freedom from this particular sin.

I can never imagine not wanting this. I can never imagine the taste buds of my soul being so recalibrated that I want the good things, not the bad things. I want the helpful things, not the harmful things." And St. Paul says this is the trick. The trick is I forget what lies behind the good, the bad, the ugly, everything, and the wind. And I press on, I press forward to what lies ahead. That's what gave him power to run the race with Christ.

And this is 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, one of my favorite passages. He says do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So, run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So, I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I disciplined my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Incredible. By the way, St. Paul must have been a fan of sports. And I miss sports so much. I can't wait for sports to be back. I'm praying with all I got that the NFL season is going to start on time. I'm going to root for the Pats, of course. Tom Brady, maybe a little, I don't know. I've forgiven him just a little bit. But St. Paul uses these metaphors because he says that's how you understand self-control and self-discipline.

Luke 9:62, Jesus said, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. You can't drive a car looking in the rearview mirror, you can't run a race looking backwards. Yes, we definitely learn from our mistakes and our setbacks. But we move forward with those lessons, not with shame, and guilt, and anxiety over the mistakes. We tend to remember things that we should forget.

We tend to dwell on our shame and our sin in the past. Why do you keep remembering the things that God has already forgotten? When you repent of sin, God chooses to forget that sin. He cast it behind himself, he cast it into... scripture says as far as the east is from the west, and this is by the way, is a mark of maturity that you're always looking forward, not back. You don't look back to spiritual victories, you don't look back to spiritual defeat.

My parents were moving a couple years ago, and we went to help them clean out. It was their house in Cranston, Rhode Island before they moved to Jamestown, and we were in the basement helping them clean out. And my wife was with me, and she discovered my closet growing up. And by this time, we were married, I think 12 years or something.

And there's a there was a box with all of my trophies from football, from wrestling, from baseball, from rugby, from all over this. And she walks out in amazement holding this box, and she's like, "Why have you never shown me this?" And I was like, "Baby, because that was high school. And I'm no longer in high school." I never want to be like Uncle Rico. You know who Uncle Rico is? Napoleon Dynamite.

That's the guy who lives in a van, and he's always videoing himself throwing footballs, and says he can throw footballs over a mountain, and he's a middle-aged man still living this glory days of high school. Some of you perhaps have something similar happened spiritually where you had a time when you were on fire for the Lord. And you live in those glory days. Remember what I did for Christ?

St. Paul never stayed there. What are you doing for Christ today? What are you doing for His glory and His kingdom today? And by the way, looking forward, one of the reasons why we don't look forward, and press forward, and have a forward-thinking mind. For many of us, it's because we live in a culture where youth is an idol. We idolize youth, and therefore a lot of people have a hard time aging.

And we can't look back and reminisce. We can't stay there. It leads to this place where we don't enjoy what God has for us today. And I love Proverbs 31:12, and this is the wise woman, the Proverbs 31 woman, strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She laughs the time. God has given me grace today. God will give me grace for tomorrow.

And how do I press on for perfection? The key is verse 12, not that I have already obtained this, or I'm already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. What's this? What's the it? What's the object? Philippians 3:11, by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

In Paul's mind, the resurrection from the dead, that's the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's the price. So, Paul is pressing in to get Christ, to get the resurrected Christ get His power. Paul pursues perfection by pursuing Jesus. Paul pursues perfection by pursuing the light of Jesus. And he does this into his old age, and that's what gives him strength to keep going.

Point three is keep growing in maturity, knowledge, your imperfections, press forward to perfection, and then keep growing in that maturity. Verse 15, let those of us who are mature think this way, and if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

I love the fact that he talks about maturity here. When you keep running after Christ by acknowledging imperfections daily, and pursuing perfection by pursuing Christ, that grows you in maturity on a daily basis. And St. Paul says, those of us who mature, we are to think this way. My daughter Milana, she's three years old today, Thursday, the day I'm preaching, this is June 25. You will listen on Sunday. But today Her birthday. And I she's turning three, she turned three, and I love the age of three. That's one of my favorite ages. Now, I'll tell you why. Because now she's in a place, and I've seen this with all four of my daughters. She's now in a place where she is growing in self-sufficiency. She's growing in maturity. She can feed herself. She knows when she needs to go to the bathroom.

She can articulate what she wants. She can actually help around the house, and clean up her room. She doesn't scream as often when she doesn't get what she wants, or when she hears the word no. When you become a Christian, dear friend, you are a baby Christian. It's okay to be a baby Christian. You need someone to carry you around. You need someone to feed you, milk you.

You need someone who care for you and serve you. Dear Christian, it's not okay to stay there. And I'll just be the real talk right here. A lot of the Christians I know, because of this extended adolescence in our culture, a lot of Christians I know, they stay in this little infant baby toddler child stage of Christianity. Yeah. I've got enough to get to heaven, but you don't continue to grow.

And here's how you know that you are an immature Christian. How do you react when you hear the word no from someone in the church family? Number one. Number two, what kind of food do you prefer? Milk or like the mushy baby food? Or have you now gotten to a point where you love spiritual meat, steak as I call it? Children, immature Christians, they need to be served, all of the attention is on me.

It's as if I am the only one that exists. That was Milana up until the age three. She's still almost there. Hopefully, we're trying to grow. And part of maturity is you now look to the needs of other people, you now want to serve other people. My daughter, Sophia is there, she's already serving, she's already caring. And that's what it means to grow in maturity. And how do we do that?

We do that by pursuing maturity through God's word. Colossians 1:28-29, Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. That's the goal St. Paul says of the ministry. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. He says this is the goal of my ministry.

This is the goal of our ministry is to get you to a place where you begin to serve, where you begin to feed yourself, where you begin to care for yourself, and when you begin to feed others, and care for others. And the best way to grow in this attainment, grow in this maturity is to find heroes in the faith. And that's why St. Paul says brothers, join in imitating me. Keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

This is what I talked about a couple weeks ago that there's things in Christianity that must be taught. And there's things in Christianity that must be caught, where you begin to emulate the example of other people. And this is how I seek to grow in my own life. Look at the people who are few steps ahead of you and emulate them.

One of my favorite heroes in the faith, and each one of us should have heroes in the faith is George Mueller, who devoted his life to preach the gospel, and also care for orphans at age 71. He wrote a letter to some of his students at age 71. He said, you know what's the key to my success? Scripture and prayer, and he said I've read the Bible cover-to-cover over 100 times.

That's incredible, over 100 times, and he said, every time it's been as if I'm reading for the first time, every time it's refreshed me, and encouraged me. What an example. What an example. Can someone look at your spiritual disciplines, scripture prayer, fasting, silence, and solitude, giving, serving, worshiping the Lord?

Can someone look at your clear spiritual disciplines and say, "I want to emulate that?" With George Mueller, I want to emulate him. Every Christian, you need to know that there's always someone watching you. There's always someone following you in some sense. Right now, someone's following and you looks to you to show them the way. Someone prays because they've heard you pray.

One of my favorite prayer warriors is my Uncle Victor in DC. Actually, I pray in the same temple as he prays because I've never heard someone pray as passionate as he did, and he is a hero in the faith. Someone is watching you fight the good fight, fighting your battle. Someone wants to be like you, and your Christian walk, and they're cheering you on. Someone sees Christ in you and admires your strength. Someone is borrowing your faith when they don't have any. Someone believes you're the best Christian they know, and that's so true in Boston, Massachusetts. Someone is hanging tough because you're standing tall. If someone's smiling when they think of you. Someone is thanking God for your friendship. Someone is following you. So, keep going. Don't let them down, and keep growing in maturity. Keep growing the people around you in maturity.

And number four, remember what's at stake. Verse 18, for many of whom I've often told you, and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to himself.

Paul says, watch those who are worthy of imitation, and weep over those who are not. And he's talking about them as enemies of the cross of Christ, the cross of Christ is the general principle of the Christian faith. It's at the very center of what we do. 1 Corinthians 1:18, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The cross tells us that there's nothing that we can do to save ourselves. The cross tells us that only God can save us. The cross tells us that God, His son died on a cross in excruciating pain, physical, and excruciating pain, spiritual in order to pay the price for our sin. Meaning, we can't save ourselves, and there's two categories of people who are enemies of the cross.

Number one, it's legalist. And he talked about beware of the dogs, beware of the evildoers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh. That's the beginning of chapter three. It's people who say the cross isn't enough for salvation, we must add works to it in order to be justified. Says that's an enemy of the cross because you're saying Christ's sacrifice was not sufficient. The other group of enemies of the cross are those who are licentious, legalists, and those who are licentious. Meaning, these are people who say, "Oh, God forgives me of all my sin. Now, I can live any way I want, and God will just continue to forgive me." And St. Paul says, "No, you don't understand the cross." You don't understand that the sacrifice that was made, how precious the blood of Christ was.

And he didn't just die on a cross to forgive you of sin. He died on the cross to free you of sin. And he says stop diminishing the value of the cross, and he says their end is destruction as verse 19, destruction here is talking about eternal punishment. It's not temporal punishment. It's destruction, not annihilationism. You don't cease to exist, but you experience the wrath of God, you experienced His judgment.

And anytime I talk about the clear teaching about the judgment, for those who reject the gospel, I get pushback where people say, I can't believe in a god like that. But if you reject mercy, you can't expect mercy. If you reject mercy, you don't get mercy. So, receive mercy today. This is the beauty of the gospel. You ask for forgiveness. You repent of your sin. You turn to Christ.

All of your sin is blotted out, everything, your whole other realm, rap sheet, everything is forgiven, receive it now. And if you don't receive that mercy, judgment is coming. Jonathan Edwards, commanded this sermon to you. It's called The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, in which he argues, sin against God is a violation of infinite obligations.

Therefore, there's an infinitely heinous crime. It's an infinitely heinous crime deserving an infinite punishment. We sinned against an infinite God. And that's an infinite crime, therefore, there's an infinite punishment, and that's a place called hell. And by the way, the destruction, the enemies of the cross, he says their appetite is their god. Their belly is their God. What's he talking about here?

That's verse 19. What's he talking about? Is he talking about gluttons, or is he talking about just people who pursue sensual pleasure, or sexual morality? Yes. That's an outward working of something that happened on the inside. And in the context, this belly or this appetite is actually a synonym for the heart. In the ancient world, they felt with their innards, with their bowels.

And what he's talking about here is emotions. He's talking about feelings, when feeling is not facts, when emotion is not truth, govern and regulate our life. When we pursue that which feels good, instead of that which is good. That's what he's talking about. And often, that leads to physical and ultimately spiritual destruction. And they get to a point where they glory in their shame, quagmire in a cesspool of shame.

Where people take things that are shameful, sinful, hurtful, harmful, and we actually present them as good. We take bad things, and present them as good things, and whoever calls the bad things bad things is actually a bad person. That's where we are in our culture. And in Philippians 3:20, he says, but our citizenship is in heaven.

And from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to himself. He's talking to Philippians, who treasured Roman citizenship, and he says Philippian Christians, remember that your identity is not in Roman citizenship, Americans, your identity is not in your American citizenship.

Primarily, it's in Christ. We are first Christians, second Americans. And he says we're citizens of this other kingdom. And from it we await Christ will come and power and glory. He's talking about the Second Coming, which is one of the most frequently emphasized truths in scripture. It's in every book of the Bible, except for Galatians, Philemon, and 2 and 3 John. Scripture talks about it all the time.

And the same way that Jesus promised He'll come the first time, and He did. He promised that He will come in the second time and He will. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, if you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

And when it comes to the second coming of Christ, there's two truths that we see here. That our bodies will be transformed, our lowly bodies will be transformed into a body like His glorified, our current bodies are subject to disease, death, sin. He says there will be transformation, not just outwardly, but also inwardly. Then we'll never be able or desire to sin. And second of all, he says, Christ will subject all things to Himself.

So, if we are not willingly subject to Him in this world, we will be forced into subjection in the next one. Everybody will bow in knee before Jesus. He will reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I can't wait. So, make certain dear friend, that you today are in submission to Jesus Christ as Savior, and as Lord so that when He comes, He is your Savior and not your judge.

The four points, if you missed them, acknowledge imperfection, press on for perfection, keep growing in maturity, and remember what's at stake. That's what leads to wholeness or perfection. Robert Murray M'Cheyne said, "Lord, make me as holy as a redeemed sinner can be." Keep on the path, keep running your race, and keep your eyes on the prize who is Christ.

The more you get of Him, the more perfected you become, and the more joyful that you feel just like Meb as he crossed the finish line of the 2014 Boston Marathon. That said, would you please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. And Lord, I pray that you give us strength to lay aside every weigh and sin, which clings so closely.

And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, what a God you are. We love you, we praise you, we glorify you, we honor you, and we pray all this in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to another edition of Mosaic Boston, Brookline, online. So glad that you are joining us. Hope you are encouraged. Hope you're staying strong in the Lord and abiding in him. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word.

Heavenly Father we pray for peace in our nation. We pray for peace in our city. Lord, I pray that you continue to make us agents of reconciliation, agents of change. Make us peacemakers. As you told us, blessed are those who are peacemakers. And I pray, Lord, give us grace to do that. And Lord, remind us that apart from you not one of us is righteous, apart from you not one of us can justify ourselves, and apart from you we are not good, not at the center.

And I pray, Jesus, that you apply your grace to our hearts today, that we take all of our earned righteousness, all of our merit, and we count it as loss in order for us to gain Christ, initially in justification and daily in sanctification, to take everything Lord that you empower us to do and to give you glory for it, it wasn't us, and continue to repent of all the sin, the unrighteousness, the pride, the folly, the selfishness that makes the world a miserable place.

And I pray that you continue to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ, whom we long to know deeper and deeper on a daily basis. Bless us. Bless the church. Bless the city. Bless every member of the church. Bless everyone who calls Mosaic their church. And I pray, bless everyone listening today by the power of your Spirit, and we pray this in Christ's Holy name. Amen.

We're in a sermon series going through the phenomenal Book of Philippians that we are calling Inner Peace in Utter Chaos. How to find that inner peace and how to keep it, how to cling onto it, how to cultivate it. Today we are in Philippians chapter three. The title of the sermon is How Good is Good Enough? How good is good enough to get me to heaven?

A lot of people think that we are made right with God or God accepts us because we are good or we do more good than we do bad. Or if we at least are incredibly sincere and trying to be good, we're not always good, but we try to be good with the hand that we have been dealt. And here, the question arises is how do you know what's good? How do you know that you are good? And this is where other people come into play.

Most of us we don't measure ourselves with God's Commandments up to God's standards. Instead, we look at the people around us and we say, "How am I doing in relation to the people around me? How am I doing in relation to my neighbors, my colleagues, et cetera." And this is where, and once you start digging you realize that we do enjoy having enemies, we do enjoy having villains and people to vilify, people to look at and say, "You are wrong, and you are bad, you're unrighteous." And we like that. It makes us feel good. It makes us feel righteous. And we're thankful that we're not like those people.

And that reminds us of a story in scripture where a Pharisee goes into the temple and he prays to God as he points to a sinner, a tax collector. And he says, "Thank you, God, that I am not like that guy, that I am not as much of a sinner as that guy." And that sentiment of self-righteousness, that's in every single one of our hearts. And you see it. You see this on a daily basis. You don't even need me to give you examples. It's people who don't watch the same news network, it's people who don't vote in the same way as you, it's people who don't wear the face masks as you do, it's people who wear face masks as they're driving. Self-righteousness is at the root of everything wrong with our nation and with our world.

And this is where Christianity is the great equalizer. Christianity doesn't say those are the bad people and these are the good people. When you're a Christian that means you're on the right team, you're a good person. Christianity says, every single one of us is a sinner. We're not as bad as we potentially could be, but every single one of us has every single facet of our personalities, of our lives, tinged, tainted with sin. And we need the Lord, Jesus Christ, every single one of us.

And this is what our text is about. It's about righteousness. What does righteousness mean? It means being right enough, worthy enough, good enough, acceptable enough, in relation to other people? No, in relation to God and his Holy standard, his Holy Commandments. And when we look at his Commandments, we look at what he demands from each one of us. We realize how far every single one of us fall short. That humbles us. And we get to a place of contrition of heart and humility and we beg God, "Please forgive me. Please give me grace." It softens our heart and actually gives us the potential to change and be change agents in the world.

How good is good enough to get into heaven? Jesus Christ set the standard. It's perfection. To fulfill God's will perfectly. Not one of us has done that. Trying to get into heaven with our good works is like trying to long jump the Grand Canyon. Getting into heaven is harder than getting into Harvard. What's the acceptance rate? I don't know, 4 or 5, 6%? For heaven it's 0% apart from the grace of Jesus Christ. So that's what we're talking about today. Philippians 3:1-11. Would you look at the text with me? "Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh- though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.

Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews as to the law, a Pharisee as to zeal, a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. That by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

This is the reading of God's Holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word, and may it write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. We'll talk about fake faith, we'll talk about true faith, and we'll talk about knowing God.

First, fake faith. Here in Philippians 3:2, St. Paul gives us a warning, a serious warning, an unexpected warning. He says, "Look out for the dogs," what? "Look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh." Dogs? Evildoers? Those who do what with the flesh? And Paul here is referring to false teachers. This is the legalists or the Judaizers, the legalizers who came in and they seemingly accepted the grace of Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you're saved by grace through faith.

And then they said, "Yeah, but what about the Old Testament laws? What about the ceremonial laws? What about the dietary laws? What about those? Yes, we understand the moral laws, Jesus taught about them and the Sermon on the Mount, but what about the rest?" They didn't deny that you must believe in Jesus, but they said, "Okay, Jesus is great, but you need to add something. It's Jesus plus something. Jesus plus dietary laws, the kosher dietary laws. Jesus plus the Sabbath laws. Jesus plus circumcision."

And they argued that if you did not fulfill the dietary, ceremonial laws, of the Old Testament, you cannot be a true Christian. It's believe in Jesus Christ plus something else. Jesus plus something else. And by the way, if you read the Book of Acts, this debate actually arose time and again, so much so that the apostles gathered, in Acts 15, at the Jerusalem council, and they had a discussion, a debate. And the conclusion was no, for the Gentiles, those laws don't apply. They actually don't apply in terms of salvation to anybody, the dietary and ceremonial laws. You're saved by grace through faith. You believe in Jesus Christ, you repent of your sin, you submit to him, and you are saved for all of eternity. Paul actually wrote the Book of Galatians to refute this error. And he calls people who taught this, Jesus plus something equals salvation, he called them false prophets. And he actually calls down damnation on those who pervert the true gospel. He says, "May they be cursed if they preach a different gospel." That's why in Philippians 3:2, he says, "Look out," he uses that phrase three times. "Look out, look out, look out, be aware." Meaning that there's a danger to each of us in that we are susceptible to this kind of thinking because we are all prone to pride and self-salvation. Works through righteousness is the default setting of our hearts.

I enter Christianity, I enter a relationship with God, by his grace. Then I need to continue in that relationship, I need to follow Jesus in my own effort, by adding my own works. And one of the reasons why we are so susceptible to form of logic, this false theology, this false philosophy, is because we want just a little credit for what we've done. We want just a little credit for following Christ, the sacrifices we've made. We want a little credit for the self-discipline. We want a little credit for being a Christian.

And we had this conversation last week, that God loves honoring those who honor him. Those who deflect all glory to him, he then shares with us. He wants to honor us. And St. Paul just talked about honoring Epaphroditus and honoring people like this. But it's when we crave this honor from other people, from God, in a way that takes it away from God. That's when it becomes sinful. Salvation is 100% a work of God. He begins it and he continues it. It's all by his grace.

So he says, "Be aware of the dogs," and hear this phrase, dogs. It's a slur used by the Judaizers against believers, against Gentiles who turned believers. But it began with a racial slur against Gentiles. Because the Gentiles weren't concerned with the clean and unclean, the ceremonial laws of purification, and all those rituals. And dogs, by the way, dogs were not pets back then, dogs were actually scavengers, they were packs of wild dogs that would raid garbage heaps. They ate anything they could find. And the Judaizers would point the Gentiles and call them dogs because they didn't care about the ceremonial laws or the laws of purification.

And St. Paul points out that beneath the surface of calling another person, a dog, was a racial or an ethnic pride as if being born a Jewish, as if the Jewish birthright, made people right with God. They ranked themselves higher than any other ethnicity. This is what St. Paul is getting at. And that same pride, this is what we're seeing in our culture. This ethnic or racial pride, this national pride that we're better than everybody else, this is what's making, what's causing the chaos in our culture.

How much strife in the world, racial or religious strife is caused by this pride? The Catholic-Protestant Wars in Ireland, be a strike between the Arab and the Jews, white, black. The term ethnic cleansing, what a demonic term that is? Diabolical term. Iraq's persecution. Just look at world history. We're better than you, therefore, you're bad, you're evil, time to get rid of you. That's the same mindset we're seeing now in our culture. You're wrong, therefore, you're bad, therefore, you need to be canceled. What does that mean to be canceled?

This is what St. Paul is getting at. These Judaizers had that same mindset. That to come in and say, "You're wrong," therefore, you're bad, therefore, we're getting rid of you. And St. Paul says, "Beware of these people who add something to God's word, who adds something to the gospel of Jesus Christ as most important for salvation."

While God did choose the nation of Israel as his people, and they still have a special purpose in this plan, God is no respecter of persons in terms of granting salvation. Look at Romans 10: 12-13. "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Anybody. Anybody who calls on the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, "Lord, I call on you. Lord save me," anybody, anybody, anywhere, no matter what you've done, no matter what your past, your future depends on what you do with Jesus Christ. He says, "Beware of the dogs who pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ and be aware of the evildoers or the evil workers." They outwardly were zealous about obeying God's law, outwardly they were good in moral in terms of fulfilling religious activities, but in God's sight, he doesn't just look at our behavior, he doesn't just look at our actions, he looks at our hearts.

And in their hearts, they trusted in themselves, not God. They trusted in their works, not God. They trusted in their merits, not God. They trusted in self. And when they glorify self, that nullifies the work of Christ on the cross, on their behalf. Yes, faith without works is dead. The Apostle James makes that so clear. Faith without works is dead. Faith, true faith, always leads to works of righteousness. But the order is important. The order of faith leads to works, not works lead to faith.

And be aware of those who mutilate the flesh. Be aware of those who look to religious rituals for salvation or gaining some kind of merit before God. And here, it's a play on words that St. Paul makes in terms of, circumcision in the Greek it's peritome, and here he used the phrase, false circumcision or mutilation and used the word katatome.

Just as the pagan priests of Baal in the Old Testament in the time of Elijah, they would cut themselves in a frenzy in order to make themselves right before the idols, before their gods, in order to get their attention, in order to show them, "Look how much we love you, how much we care, please accept us, please have favor on us," these people were doing something similar. They were trying to earn favor with God, curry favor with God.

Paul argues this in Romans chapter four when he says, "Look, God gave the right of circumcision to Abraham as a sign of the circumcision of the heart." That God does heart surgery on us, that God cuts through the hardness in our hearts in order to sensitize us to the will of God, to love God. This is how he enlarges our hearts so it's filled with love toward God and people. And then the outward circumcision was a sign of the inward transformation. And this is why Jesus gave us baptism.

That's what baptism is in the New Testament. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward reality that we die to sin and we're raised with Christ, we're washed of our sin and we're raised to follow Christ in a life of righteousness. And even with Abraham to whom this rite was given. Righteousness wasn't given to him by circumcision, that's not what made him righteous, it all started with faith. Abraham believed God's word, and God counted Abraham's faith as righteousness. It's salvation by grace through faith.

A lot of people today, if you ask them, "Are you a Christian?" They'll say, "Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'm a Christian, I was baptized. I'm a Christian, I participate in Communion. I'm a Christian because I've attended church or I was dedicated as a child or I was baptized or yes, we had a Christian wedding in a church." And you looked at things that you've done or have been done to you to say, "This is how I justify my relationship with God. This is how I justify myself." But really there's no relationship with God. It's just outward deeds.

Jesus told this to religious Nicodemus. He says in John 3:3, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Unless there's a regeneration, a transformation of the heart, the spiritual heart surgery, where you experience God's grace filling your heart, desensitizing you, getting rid of the numbness toward God, you don't yet know God.

And therefore, Paul here is warning us to be aware of trusting in any form of human goodness, any form of worth, merit, good works, as the basis of what makes us right before God. If you ask someone, "Are you going to heaven?" And they point to anything other than, "Yes, Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins. He's my Lord and savior," if that's not the heart of the answer, then most likely they, you don't know God.

1 Corinthians 1:27-31, "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being may boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.'"

This is so brilliant. God knows the only way that he can transform us is by making us good while keeping us humble. If you were God, how would you do that? How would you make people good and keep them humble at the same time? The better someone gets in their career, the more someone accumulates some things, their stuff, the more reputation someone gets, the more clout that they get, the more popular that they get, what happens to the ego? It grows. It's inflated. So how do you make someone good while keeping them humble? And the better they get, the more humble they get? Whatever system you use, it has to be something profound. It has to be something miraculous. And this is what the gospel of Jesus Christ does.

He says, "We, you, we are all wicked sinners." We are so bad, the only way for us to get saved was the Son of God, dying for our sins on the cross. That's how bad we are. And yet we're so loved that he was willing to do it. That's what it took and he was willing to take it. And every day when we realize, "Wow! God did that for me? And that's what it took? He was willing to take it?" It humbles me. And I realize that all of my righteousness is actually his righteousness. Therefore, I can grow in goodness, and grow in humility at the same time. And this is what it means to grow in goodness. It means to grow closer to God. And the closer you get to God, the smaller you feel and the more humble you get. Well, that's true Gospel Christianity, it's not a legalistic Christianity, as the Judaizers taught, where you need to change your behavior and that's what makes you right before God.

Dorothy Sayers is one of my favorite writers. She tells the story of a very bad legalistic missionary who goes to share the gospel he thought, and he's sharing the gospel to a poor native chieftain in some primitive tribe in the world. And the chief says, "Let me get this straight. If I become a Christian, I can't kill my neighbor and cut off his head, right?" And the missionary says, "Yeah. Yeah, that's right." And the chieftain says, "That means I can't kidnap the wives of my enemies and take them into my harem. Is that right?" "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't steal someone's wife." And he says, "Also I can't loot their villages and burn them?" And the missionary says, "Yeah. Yeah, that's right." And the chieftain says, "Well, I'm 70 years old. I can't do these things anyway. I'm already a Christian. I can't chase people. I can't rape women. I can't plunder villages. I'm already a Christian."

This is how many people unfortunately think of Christianity, people in the church, people outside the church. People in the church, I need to become a better person so that I can become a better Christian. That's how it works. You become a better Christian by focusing on the gospel. Living in a manner worthy of the gospel, getting your heart filled with grace and the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. It's all gospel centered. And then if you're not a Christian, a lot of non-Christians say, "I can't be a Christian because I'm not good enough. I can't go to church. Do you understand what I've done? Do you understand that my lifestyle... I can't do it. I can't be a Christian."

And this is where the gospel comes in and says, it doesn't matter what you've done. You can't change your behavior. You can't save yourself. You come to Christ as you are. You repent of your sins, saying, "Lord, forgive me for everything I've done. I can't change myself. I can't be the person who I know I need to be. I'm not that person. Please save me." And the very moment that you do, God pours out his power into your heart that then begins to transform you from the inside out. It's all about the gospel.

How does a person get into heaven? Jesus made this absolutely clear in the Sermon on the Mount. Look at Matthew 5:48. "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." And what does he mean by that? Well, he spends the whole Sermon on the Mount explaining that. And he's talking to, in particularly to Pharisees, who thought they were good enough to qualify for heaven, qualify for the presence of God because they fulfilled outwardly the law.

So we never murdered. I've never killed anybody. And Jesus says, "If you've ever been angry, unrighteous with another person in your heart, you've already broken God's law. Unrighteous anger is tantamount to murder. The Pharisees prided themselves in never committing adultery. And Jesus says, "Have you ever looked at another person with lust for them in your hearts? You've already committed adultery." Meaning God expects righteousness, not on the action level, but on the heart level, on the thought level. Well, if that's the test, who of us passes? Who of us is accepted? Nobody except for Jesus Christ.

And this is the gospel that Jesus comes, he fulfills the law. He never sinned, not in action and not in thought, not in inclination of the heart, fulfills the law perfectly, and then gives himself as a sacrifice for our sins. He who knew no sin became sin on the cross so that we might become the righteousness of God. It's called the double imputation. That Jesus got our sin and we get his righteousness, and righteousness is not our own, and this leads us to true faith. When you begin to understand that, that's when you begin to grow in true faith, not fake faith. Fake faith is outward.

True faith starts in the inside out, fake faith is all about behavior modification. I'm going to force you. I'm going to bully you. I'm going to pressure you into changing. That's how society works. True faith says, "No. Come to Jesus. He'll fill your heart with grace and love. And that's what transforms you in the inside."

Therefore, you can extend grace and love to those people that you disagree with. And you can tell them, "Yes, I disagree with you. Yes, you're wrong. But that doesn't mean I'm better than you." I can disagree with you and still love you at the same time. That's what God does with us. So this is true faith.

Point two. False faith kills joy. False faith kills joy, true faith gives joy. Religion kills rejoicing, grace fuels rejoicing. That's why he starts with, verse one, by talking about joy. "Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you." He says, "Rejoice in the Lord." By the way, this phrase, this is the summary of Christianity, to rejoice in the Lord. True faith always produces joy in the Lord.

Verse three. "For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh." This is so freeing. He says, "We, by God's grace, have had this circumcision of the heart." He's cut off everything that's in the way of me loving God and people. Therefore, I worship God by the Spirit of God. That means to live a life of awe and gratitude, love for God. God is Spirit and those who worship him, worship in Spirit and in truth. And we glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in ourselves. He's our confidence. He's our glory that frees me from myself from self-focus. It frees me from self-reliance.

Jeremiah 9:23-24. "Thus says the Lord: 'Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.'"

Put no confidence in the flesh. We put no confidence in our spiritual resume, in our accomplishments, we put all our confidence in the Lord. And when the focus is from self to the Lord, to Christ by the Spirit of God, that leads to so much joy. Because God's perfect. He makes no mistakes. He will never, ever, ever change. He's immutable. That's incredible.

Colossians 2:10-11. "And you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by cutting off the body of the flesh..." Excuse me, "By putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ." Meaning there's a putting off and a putting on.

And he deals with that in Colossians chapter three. "We are the circumcision that's the spiritual inner work performed on us by Christ." And I love that he says, "This is what happened. These are the facts. This is who Christ is." That's chapter one. Specifically, chapter two, look at his humility. That he descended. He served. He made himself nothing. He humbled himself. Fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. When you accept those facts, it leads to experience. When you receive the truth, it leads to this experience of transformation of joy. It's a feeling. It's emotion.

Dear Christian, how's your joy? In this season, how's your joy? Are you rejoicing in the Lord? It doesn't say rejoice in your circumstance. It doesn't say rejoice in politics. It doesn't say rejoice in news. It doesn't say rejoice in your salary. It doesn't say rejoice in your job and your family or your relationships. It says rejoice in the Lord. He's the one that fills you with joy.

And by the way, St. Paul knows the difference between life-giving true faith and dead false faith. If ever there was a person who could make themselves right before God on the basis of keeping Jewish law, it was him. He had credentials by his birth. He had a track record of experience. But on the road to Damascus, he was met by the resurrected Christ and everything changed. He got an experience of God. True faith counts all human merit, all human merit, everything we've ever done, as loss. There's nothing that I've done for the Lord that matters in terms of my salvation and I give all that up to gain Christ. That's what he's about to do in verses four through six, but the theology of our righteousness apart from God, we get from Isaiah 64:6, among other places.

"We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away." All of our righteousness, every good thing. A lot of people think, if I've done more good than bad then God sees, okay, I made it. I got a 51 in the exam. That's enough. Okay. Now I go to hell. That's not how it works. So all of our righteousness is like a polluted garment. It's not enough. We're not enough in our righteousness. And that's why St. Paul says, "I tried."

He says, verse four, "Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more; circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless." Wow! What a resume. He gives us four inherited points and he gives us three acquired points or qualities. Four inherited, three acquired qualities.

First, the inherited one is the rituals. He says, my family obeyed all of the rituals. I was circumcised and I wasn't just circumcised, I was circumcised on the eighth day. Check. My race, I'm a blood born citizen of the covenant nation of Israel, specifically of the tribe of Benjamin. Tribe of Benjamin and whose territory it was Jerusalem, the Holy City. And by the way, Benjamin provided the very first king, King Saul, and remained a tribe of Judah in the Southern Kingdom when the Northern tribes broke away. And not only am I of Israel, of the people of Israel, I'm also a Hebrew of Hebrews. Meaning I'm of this race, I'm of this nation, and I speak Hebrew. I speak Arabic. Those are my four inherited qualities.

And then my acquired qualities, religion. I picked the right religion. I was a Pharisee and this was the strictest sect of Judaism sought to obey the law in the most scrupulous way possible, tithing even of their spices. As to rules, look how zealous I was. I found people who didn't believe like I did, and I persecuted them violently. And as to righteousness, I was blameless. Outwardly, I was blameless. There were no violations.

So you could ask St. Paul, "St. Paul, are you a believer in God?" At that point in his life, and he says, "Yes, my family believes the right way, circumcision." Or, "St. Paul, are you a believer?" "Yes, I have the right race. I am of the people of Israel." "St. Paul, are you a Christian?" "Yes. Not only am I of the people of Israel, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin. I'm of the Hebrew of Hebrews." "And by the way, St. Paul, are you a Christian?" "Yeah. I've never broken one law."

And by the way, in the Book of Romans, he tells us that he realized after he became a Christian, that he broke laws all the time. Specifically, the law of "Thou shall not covet." All the other laws he could do outwardly, but "Thou shall not covet" is on the heart level in a way that's deeply personal. And he realized that he'd sinned.

I think a lot of people think like this. "Are you a Christian?" "Of course, I am. I'm American." I've got a lot of Slavic friends. "Are you a Christian?" "Of course, I am. I'm Russian Orthodox." Italian friends. "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, of course I am. I'm Catholic. I'm Italian. Of course, I'm a Christian." "I'm a Polish. Of course, I'm a Christian." "I've been baptized, I'm a member of a church. I'm reformed. I've got the right theology. I'm a good person." But here's what St. Paul is saying, you can't get saved by osmosis. You can't just be around the right people and that's enough for you.

St. Paul was doing that. He was using the wrong measuring sticks, pedigree, purity, performance. Remember verse seven he says, "Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ." Bishop Lightfoot, writes this in St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians. He says, "All such things which I used to count up as distinct items with a miserly greed and reckon to my credit, these I have massed together under one general head as loss."

It's as if St. Paul has an Excel spreadsheet of gain and loss, he says all of my gains, everything that I've done, everything I think I've done to profit something. So I'm transferring all of that to the loss column in order for my gain column to be filled with Christ, the righteousness of Christ. He's saying, "I write everything off, everything I've inherited, everything I've acquired, I write it off as loss."

Verse eight. "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ." He actually doesn't call his credits loss because I give them up, but he calls them garbage. He says, "After an understanding of the gospel, I realized all my righteousness, it's garbage." And perhaps he's playing off, he's calling Judaizers dogs. Let the dogs eat the garbage, go after my former garbage.

But the word for rubbish here, by the way, it's a very polite translation of the original Greek. And I would submit to you, it's over polite. It's a Greek word, skubala. He says, "All of my righteousness is skubala." The King James Version of all the translation is the most like the closest where it translates this word as dung, D-U-N-G. That's what the word skubala is. It says, "My righteousness is a heaping pile of skubala. And I give all that up in order to gain Christ."

By the way, this year, this is my submission to Mosaic Boston's members meeting that's coming, hopefully, in December. This is my submission for the T-shirts. Right here. If you look at the screen, 2020 skubala happened. We're still in it. We're still in the thick of it. But this is just to give you an idea. That's how strong of a word this is. St. Paul is communicating this, that my righteousness, that's what my righteous is compared to the righteousness of [inaudible 00:39:47], compared to what God demands from me. And that's why in verse seven, I counted as loss. It's a perfect tense, completed action, ongoing results. I've done it.

And his salvation, I counted everything good I've done as loss. And then verse eight, I count everything as loss. It's present tense. Ongoing. That means St. Paul, at the end of every day, he would go full tilt, serving God with everything he had. And at the end of that, he would sit down and he would say, "What have I gained today? What have I gained? What have I gained? My dedication, my labor, my work, my persecutions, anything I've done." He sits down in his Excel spreadsheet, and he transfers all that gain to the loss column, to make more room for Christ, to make more room for grace, to make more room for the Holy Spirit. That's what pride does. Pride crowds God out of our hearts. It crowds the Holy Spirit out of our hearts.

Jesus says, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." True faith means gaining Christ as the only basis for acceptance and doing this on a daily basis. Over and over again, he repeats this verse seven, "Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death."

Talk about fake faith and then true faith, but gaining true faith always leads to personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. We don't just believe in, we know him. We don't just know about him, that's point three, knowing God, and it's not just knowing about him, it's knowing him. It's a personal knowledge.

Look at verse three, eight. No, chapter three, verse eight. "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus," Our Lord? Not just our Lord, my Lord. He's my Lord. He is mine. Mine. Some of you are 26 and under, and you're under your parents' health insurance. You're under the family plan. Some of you want to save money on your cell phone, so you're under your family's plan. There's no family plan in Christianity, is Jesus your Lord personally. Can you say Jesus Christ is my Lord. Today he's my Lord. There's no group discounts. God doesn't have grandchildren.

My daughter Milana, she knows this so well. She's the youngest. She's almost three. And she's got to compete with three other sisters for our attention, not for our affection, but that's what she thinks. And my daughter Ekaterina is five and she's a tremendous snuggler. She's so good at snuggling. Yesterday, she ran to us in the morning and she climbed to the bench. She's like, "Hi dad, I'm here to snuggle." And right after her, it's Milana. And Milana's favorite phrase is, "No mine. Mine, papa. Mine, papa." And she's trying to push her out of the way. She understands that I am her father personally. She has a harder time understanding that I'm also father of three other daughters.

But a lot of Christians don't understand the personal part. That Jesus is my Lord. He is my God. He's not just our God, he's both. And that's what St. Paul focuses on. It's knowing Christ Jesus my Lord on a personal level. And also on the positional level.

Verse nine. "And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith." To be found in him. What a phrase! Meaning when you become a Christian, you are placed in Christ. Everything that's true of him is true of you. In him we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. God, the Father, views us through the merits of his son. And when you trust in Christ, you are clothed in his righteousness. The rest of our life we're trying to grow into that clothing, but you're clothed with his righteousness. And when God looks at you he says, "Behold, this is my beloved son or daughter in whom I am well pleased." He delights in us.

Once you're a Christian, there's nothing that you can do to get God to love you more. And there's nothing you can do to get God to love you less. There's incredible freedom in that. And what's the goal of the Christian life? It's to know Christ deeper and deeper. And that's what makes us become like him.

John 17:3, "And this eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you've sent." Christianity is primarily about growing in our relationship with God as he reveals himself in Christ. And that's what changes everything about our lives. It begins with the initial introduction. This is Christ. This is Jesus. He's your Lord. He's your maker. He's died for you. But then as in any relationship, it needs to be cultivated. And how's any relationship cultivated? Time together, communication between one another. We can't know him through philosophy or speculation, we can't know him through someone else's ideas or someone else's experience of him, we can only know him through the way that he's chosen to reveal himself, which is his word. And as you spend time in God's word, the Holy scriptures, what it does is it focuses your attention on God, on Christ. The written word focuses your attention on the Living Word.

For example, Hebrews 1:1-3, as we're reading the scripture, what does the scripture do? "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he's spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high."

Dear Christians, the way that you grow in knowing God is knowing scripture. And as you study scripture, you don't just study the truth, you study the experience that God is... You don't just absorb the truth, you absorb the Spirit. This past week in community group, as we were doing prayer requests, one very courageous brother said the following. He said, "Please pray for me. I don't feel like reading the Bible. I have no desire to read the Bible. It's like the hardest thing in the world."

And after he said that, almost every single person after him, as they're giving their prayer requests, they're like, "I feel the same thing. I've got the hardest time reading scripture in this season." And I'll tell you why, because there's demonic warfare. And that's what shows us the power of the Holy Scripture, to enrich our souls and to enlighten our minds and edify us. Satan doesn't want you to, therefore discipline is so important.

I was just sharing the way I do it with myself. I Pavlov's dog, myself. Pavlov's dog, the bell rings, and the dog salivates. For myself, is if I want a cup of coffee in the morning, I first have to read scripture. You got to figure out something that works with you, but it's got to be self-disciplined. And the reason why it's so hard is because it's actually so beneficial. Just like working out. Before the workout, you're like, "I don't want to do it." After you do it, you're like, "That was great. Why didn't I want to do it?" Same thing with scripture.

He talks about knowing Christ and also knowing the power of his resurrection. That's Philippians 3:10. "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection." Jesus Christ said, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. Whoever lives by believing in me will never die." Jesus said, "I am the resurrection." Not just that he has been resurrected. He says, "I am the resurrection." What's the point here? Well, it means that the resurrection is a fact to be believed and it's an experience to connect with. The resurrection is a fact to be believed and an experience to be connected with. It's a fact and experience. It's both. It's a real connection.

Yes, Christianity has some real hard edges to it, which actually shows us that it came from not us, but from God. If we agree with everything in Christianity, it would show us that most likely it was a work of people, not of us. Has truth to be believed. We believe in the resurrection of Christ. We believe that he really lived, really died, that he was really raised. We also believe because we've experienced him.

We experience the presence of Christ. We experience his resurrecting power by the power of the Spirit. Ephesians 1:19-20. "And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand i the heavenly places." The same Holy Spirit that resurrected Christ when he was dead, is the same Holy Spirit that resurrects our hearts and souls when we are saved. And the same power that saved us is the same power that transforms us.

Romans 8: 11, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." The same Holy Spirit who conquered Satan by resurrecting Christ is the same Holy Spirit that gives us strength to conquer the temptations from the evil and to conquer the temptations of the flesh and the world.

Philippians 3:10. St. Paul says, "I know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death." We will never share or enter into the same sufferings in the same way as Christ went through because most of Christ's sufferings were spiritual anguish not just physical, but we must learn to go through suffering in the same way that he did. To entrust our souls to God, to humble ourselves and say, "God, you're in control. And this season that you have me in, you brought me here for a reason, and you will get me out of this season."

Hebrews 5:8, "Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered." Jesus didn't have to learn obedience because he was disobedient, but obedience is a form of suffering. To make the right choice, to say no to sin, it's hard. It's difficult. It's actually painful. It's painful to submit to the Father and that's what Christ did on the cross. It's not my will, but yours be done. And God uses our suffering and he uses it to purify the draws out of our souls.

Illustration of this is in the Book of Daniel. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, thrown to fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar. And then he's looking in, and he doesn't see three, he sees four. And he says, "One of them is like a Son of God." It was Christ right there in their suffering. Christ was right there in their fire. And they came out unscathed.

Paul knew this fellowship of suffering as he was preaching in corrupt Corinth. And he was afraid. The Lord appears to him in a vision. Acts 18:9-10. "And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, 'Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.'" Becoming like him in his death is to speak God's word by putting sin to death, mortifying flesh, and self taking up the cross daily.

A lot of people want to come to Christ for forgiveness of sins. Christ doesn't want to just leave us there. I don't just want forgiveness of sins, I want freedom from sin. And that freedom comes at a cost. The cost of denying self, taking up my cross daily and following Christ.

Galatians 2:20. "I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me." And then Philippians 3:11. "That by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." It seems as if he's almost talking about, I need to earn this resurrection. And that's not what he's talking about, because that would contradict everything that he was just talking about, a righteousness that's not my own.

What he is talking about, first it shows there's no presumption. I hope I'm saved. Every day, I need to confirm that calling and election, there's no presumption. There's no saying, "I'm going to heaven. I can live any way I want." There's no presumption. But by any means possible, it means whether in this life, whether I'm alive, when Christ comes, or whether I die and I'm resurrected in a new glorious body, by any means possible, I will do everything I can, however God chooses, to bring me to him.

I'll close with this. 1 John 3:2-3. "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." I don't know about you, but it feels like we're living in the end times. Read some Book of Revelation and then look at the world outside. I think this is what Christians all throughout the ages have felt. And by the way, it's good to feel that, that we don't know. We don't know when we die and we don't know when Christ will return. Let us be faithful to the Lord today.

Religion and gospel are diametrically opposed, the fake faith, the true faith. Religion says, "I obey, therefore, I'm accepted. It's all about me." My gospel says, "No, you're accepted because of the work of Christ. It's all about him. Therefore, we obey." Changes the motivation. Fake faith says, "Motivation is based on fear and insecurity. If you're not a good person, you will be punished." And the gospel says, "The motivation is based on grateful joy. All my sins are forgiven because of the work of Christ. I'm motivated." Obedience is I obey God in order to get things from God, in fake faith. In true faith, I obey God to get God. Fake faith prayer is I'm going to get stuff from God. True faith is I'm going to get God. Fake faith is joyless, and true gospel faith rejoices in Jesus Christ.

If you have not accepted Christ yet, we welcome you to do that today. If you have accepted Christ, continue to count all your righteousness as loss and gain Christ daily.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time and the Holy Scriptures. We thank you Lord for this word that reminds us there's nothing that we can do to make us right and righteous before you. We just accept the righteousness of Christ, and what a freedom that is. But then also give us grace to live in a manner worthy of that righteousness, to grow into that righteous clothing as we draw near to you, to grow both in goodness and humility at the same time. I pray all this in Christ's Holy name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to another online service of Mosaic Boston, Brookline. Hope you're well. Hope you are abiding in the Lord, rejoicing in him, meditating in the gospel, and being filled with the Spirit daily. So happy that you are tuning in with us. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we pray that you bless our time in the word today. You have, every single week during this crisis. We felt it. People are being ministered to by your word and we're thankful for that. And I pray today, Lord, encourage us in the faith. I pray, Lord, encourage us with the example of Jesus Christ who came not to be served but to serve. Encourage us with the example of St. Paul who did the same. He served. Encourage us with the examples of Timothy and Epaphroditus, godly people, godly men who gave everything, sacrificed everything in order to encourage the faith of others, in order to plant the seed of the gospel, in order to plant churches. Lord, bless our time in the Holy Scriptures and continue to edify and encourage each one of us so that we can edify and encourage one another. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

The title of the sermon today is Here to Serve. The whole text that we are about to read is about service, sacrificial service. St. Paul writes this letter to a church in Philippi, a church that he planted with Timothy. Together, they planted it. And the church is growing and as the church grows, there's potential for disunity, for division. And this is what Satan does. One of his strategies. One of his stratagems is to sow seeds of division. So St. Paul writes this letter and says, "There's nothing more important than the gospel because there's nothing more important than Jesus." And there's nothing more important than people meeting Jesus. So there's nothing more important than for us to devote our lives to get the gospel to people. And we do it together as brothers and sisters partnering in the gospel, getting the gospel to people living in a manner worthy of the gospel. And the greatest example of this is Christ himself.

Christ goes from the highest of heights to the lowest of depths in order to serve us, in order to save us. So we're in chapter 2 today. The concluding part of chapter 2 of Philippians, it's started with a glorious text, a gloriously Christological vision of who Christ is, what he did in his incarnation, and how that applies to our lives.

Last week, we talked about the interplay between God's sovereignty and our responsibility. God work salvation in us. He gives us that gift. We are to receive that gift, receive and believe. And as we do, we then work out our salvation. God gives us grace but we use that grace, so it's not in vain. So we work as hard as we possibly can. And then from that, from that glorious part of the chapter, St. Paul moves to something that seems at first reading so mundane. He shows us a travel itinerary of a few gentlemen. Why St. Paul, why this text? What does it have to do with our lives?

Well, what St. Paul is doing is he's illustrating the points that he just made about Christological service, serving like Christ served. About the interplay between God's sovereignty and human responsibility. And then he shows the example of two godly men who are mirroring, they're reflecting that Christ-like service, they have the heart of Christ. They are here to serve.

And the other thing I want to just point out about this travel itinerary is these are real people in real time, in real places. And why is that important? It's important because the New Testament is grounded in real history, in real time, in real space. The gospel is rooted in world history, not mythology. These are real people with real lives, and real emotions, and real pain, and real desires, and hopes, and dreams. The gospel is relevant to them, therefore it's relevant to us. It applied to them. It applied to us. We see if someone got sick, someone couldn't come because they had to be in a different place. People had friends. St. Paul had friends and counted on them like we count on our friends. There's deep fellowship, there's deep emotion here. They lived in the same world that we live in. They're in real history. They're real human beings. These are real lives with real stories.

The New Testament is a testimony. It's an account, a historically verifiable account of extraordinary things that happened to ordinary people when they submit their lives to God, in service to him, in service to people. That's where we find ourselves today in Philippians 2:19-30. I'm going to start reading with two verses that we ended with last week, verses 17 and 18, because it all flows together. Would you look at the text with me, Philippians 2:17?

"Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I'm glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also should be glad and rejoice with me. I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father, he has served with me in the gospel. I hope, therefore, to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me. And I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also. I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill."

Indeed, he was ill, near to death. "But God had mercy on him and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. So receive him in the Lord with all joy and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me." This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points today, we'll talk about the servant's heart, the servant's hardship, and the servant's honor. The context is that St. Paul is in prison in Rome and the Philippians, the church in Philippi, the Philippian Christians take up an offering for St. Paul to meet his monetary needs and they sent it through Epaphroditus who volunteers for the job to travel 800 miles. It took at least six weeks over rough terrain. And on the way, he catches some sickness, some disease, some infection, and it was almost deadly it brought him to the brink of death. But Epaphroditus persists in spite of the pain.

Why are we talking about a guy named Epaphroditus? And we need to remember this guy's name, it's important. Because St. Paul knows that the faith, the Christian faith, can't just be taught. It also must be caught. Taught and caught. It's both. He's not just giving them words of faith. He's giving them a real life, flesh and blood examples of this is how you live this out. I know my walk, maybe you can relate, my walk in the faith. I have been impacted by the scripture. I have been impacted by the books of theology, thousands of books of theology that I've read. I have also maybe even more so been impacted by godly people in my life whom I saw serving, whom I saw pouring themselves out for the faith of many, whom I saw sacrificing.

I saw this with my parents. I saw this with my dad. I saw this with my uncle. After college, I moved down to Washington, DC for my first job out of college. And I got to live with my uncle who was a church planter in Washington, DC, and my aunt. And I lived with them for a month, and I saw on a daily basis how much they sacrificed, how they worked, how they served one another, how they served their children, how the children served the parents. Incredible gospel-centered family, incredible gospel-centered church. I saw them doing uncomfortable things, getting out of their comfort zone.

We would do street evangelism. This is a Russian church, and we would go to on Saturdays, I would work a full week, on Saturdays, I would go to the Russian store and evangelize. Try to share the gospel with these people going to the Russian store. Really uncomfortable, but powerful in bringing many to faith. Moved down to North Carolina, Raleigh-Durham area for seminary. And I remember Andy Davis and his family, and I remember the saints at FBC Durham sacrificing, daily serving one another in radical ways. And that right there ignited a fire in me to give my life to the Lord, to serve him with everything I've got.

This week, my wife and I, we celebrated, actually yesterday, Wednesday. You're listening on Sunday, celebrated 14 years of marriage. Praise God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord, and thank you, Tanya, for your patience and forbearance. But in my wife, I see this heart of service. I've always seen this heart of service. She would give everything she has to those in need, be it family or not. The gospel has to be both taught and caught, and that's why we have the example here of people who have Christ's heart.

Jesus didn't just come to be served but to serve. To give his life as a ransom for many. Therefore, dear Christians, service for us isn't an option. There's not elite levels of Christians like Navy SEAL Christians who serve and the rest of us are served. No, if you're a Christian, you're called to serve. And the reason why we have to be called to serve and reminded of this, because it doesn't come naturally. It's hard and you got to develop a heart of service, it has to be cultivated. And I think about it like this.

Two weeks ago, we talked about developing the mind of Christ, thinking Christ's thoughts with him. That's how we discern what God's will is, by the transformation of our mind. But also, we have to develop not just the mind of Christ but the heart of Christ. A heart of Christ that beats intact with him. His heart that was poured out, that bled for others. It was that heart that motivated his hands. We need to develop both the head of Christ, the heart of Christ, and the hands of Christ. But today, I want to focus in here. I'm going to focus on developing that heart of Christ.

Look at St. Paul in this text, how often he mentions Christ in talking about travel itinerary, which almost has nothing to do with the Lord seemingly. Okay, verse 19, "I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you." What an interesting phrase. Now I hope to send Timothy to you soon. I hope in the Lord, in the Lord Jesus, what a phrase. Look at verse 24, "And I trust in the Lord that shortly, I myself will come also." I trust in the Lord, meaning if it's the Lord's will. So for St. Paul, every day as he's making plans, as he's thinking what he's going to do in the near future, the Lord and his will informs every decision he makes. It's not just simply common sense, not just simply what he thinks is best, what his wants or his desires are, but he submits everything to the Lord and his will.

And he mentions Epaphroditus here, that Epaphroditus got better from his illness. And he doesn't just say, "Oh, thank goodness that Epaphroditus got better." He doesn't say, "Thank goodness," he says, "Thank God." Thank God. Look at verse 27, "Indeed he was ill, near to death but God had mercy on him. Not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." God had mercy on him. God extended his life. Verse 29, "So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men." In the Lord, I hope, I trust in the Lord. God is in control. God is the one who extends mercy by extending life, so receive him in the Lord.

The heart of St. Paul is focused on Christ, his heart beats intact with Christ. Jesus is at the center of everything that St. Paul does, thinks, plans, desires, wants. Jesus is at the center. His whole life revolves around Christ. Christ is the focus point. And this is how you develop the heart of Christ. What does Jesus want? What does Jesus love? What does Jesus desire? I want to desire those things. Timothy's focus was the same, it was on Christ. Look at verse 21, "For they all seek their own interest, not those of Jesus Christ, but you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father you served me with the gospel." We all have our own interests, every single one of us. And here St. Paul says there are some Christians in Rome at that time, they're believers. They've confessed, they've professed believing in Christ. But still, he's not number one.

For them, they can't say that, "For me to live is Christ." Their interests are higher. Their own personal interests are higher than the interests of Christ. This is why I'm talking about developing the heart of Christ. Your interests are those things that you love more than Christ, which actually is a form of idolatry. But Timothy, no, Timothy, he doesn't seek his own interest. He seeks those of Christ by serving in the gospel with St. Paul. And by the way, Timothy was with Paul when they first visited the Church when it was first founded. So St. Paul knew that if I send Timothy to the Church in Philippi, they will be encouraged by his presence. St. Paul says, "I trust in the Lord that I too will come to see you." Meaning, "I hope that I get to travel 800 miles, six weeks over rough terrain, risking life and limb just to be with you. Just to be in your presence. That's how much I love you." And by the way, this has to inform our ecclesiology what it means to be a church, brothers and sisters.

I'll tell you, there's people on staff I haven't seen in person since early March. Pastor Andy, I haven't seen in person since March. I get to see him on video once or twice a week. And I'm telling you, I miss him. I miss you, Pastor Andy. Hope you're doing well. Caleb, I saw at my brother's wedding. Raquel, I got to see as she was standing outside of Ruggles Baptist Church at my brother's wedding also. And I'm telling you when I saw them, and perhaps you can relate, when I saw them, it was a treat. It was a gift. It was a gift for the eyes just to be in the presence of this person. There's something there.

Yes, online. Sure. We're thankful we can do this. We're thankful we can do CGs via video. We're thankful. But it's not meant to be a substitute for the greatest present that there is, which is each one of us, of our presence. Our presence is a present from the Lord for one another. So that's why I can't wait to finally meet in person, and I trust in the Lord it will be soon. Epaphroditus has the same focus. His heart beat with the heartbeat of Christ. He pushed himself almost to the point of death to bring a gift to St. Paul. The gift of the finances from the Church of Philippi but also the gift of his own presence. And then we see the heartbeat of Christ in Epaphroditus in that when he hears that the church in Philippi heard that he was sick, he's distressed over their distress. And this is incredible.

Not only is he sick physically, but he's emotionally sick and worried that these people are sick and worried over him reveals a servant's heart. Verse 25, "I thought it was necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need." Epaphroditus brought this gift and he completed by his presence what the Philippians could not by their absence. Verse 30, "For he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me." And I like this word here for service and minister. Both come from the Greek word liturgia, we get the English word liturgy from. And in secular Greek, the word was used of a man or a person who out of love for his city, out of love for the gods, would give a lavish, generous financial gift to the city or finance a great drama, or outfit a battleship. Meaning this was sacrificial.

So we see that Epaphroditus is a minister. He sacrificed much offering, everything for Christ. And this is what it means to develop a heart of service. And also, a servant of Christ is willing to go anywhere that Christ sends, anywhere that Christ sends. Do you think it was easy for Timothy to leave St. Paul's side? No. No, of course not. Look at that relationship, verse 22, "But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel," they loved each other. They had a relationship where St. Paul was a spiritual father and Timothy was a spiritual son to St. Paul.

But God was calling Timothy to make this trek to sacrifice, to leave his comfort in order to bless others. That wasn't easy, but it was the Lord's will. Do you think it was easy for Epaphroditus to leave the comforts of home? Take this difficult journey to Rome? No, it wasn't easy, but it had to be done. Do you think it was easy for Paul to leave the comforts of Judaism, the comforts of his faith, and his family, and everything, and to be a missionary? No, of course not. But Jesus said, "I have a mission for you. You are my servant." And a servant gets sent wherever the master says to go.

So I wonder, have you ever, and by the way, this is an important question. Have you ever said, "Lord, I will go wherever you tell me to go. Lord, I'm willing to go wherever you tell me to go"? He's told me, I'm here. The question I'm wrestling with is, "Lord, am I willing to stay where you've called me to go?" And perhaps that's what many of you are wrestling with. There's other places to live where you can be much more comfortable, perhaps less useful for the kingdom. It's an important question, "Lord, am I willing to go? Lord, am I willing to stay once I am where you've called?" And the servant who has the heart of Christ is willing to go and willing to serve anyone. Timothy served Paul and then he has to go and serve the Philippians. Epaphroditus served the Philippians, now he's willing to serve Paul.

Now there's an incredible story of Philip who has a flourishing public ministry of the gospel preaching in Samaria. And then Jesus says, "No, I want you to leave this great ministry where perhaps you can build a platform for yourself, and I want you to go and preach the gospel on a deserted road to reach the Ethiopian eunuch. I want you to go preach the gospel to this one person." Are you available to go where perhaps you won't make the great name for yourself? A servant doesn't care about their own name. A servant cares about the name of the master and servants put others ahead of themselves. Paul's in prison facing execution. He's encouraged by Timothy's presence and understandably he could say, "No, I can't send Timothy. I need him with me now ministering to my needs." He says, "No, I'm putting the Philippians' needs ahead of my own and the Philippians serve Paul financially. And they sent Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus is willing to serve and go to the brink of death, obviously sacrificing for others.

Contrast it with these people who are, in verse 20 and 21, are not concerned for their welfare. Look at verse 20, "For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Christ." Now this is a little difficult to understand because we're talking about the church in Rome. And the epistle to the Romans was written five years before this. Romans 16, St. Paul has a whole list of specific Christians whom he admires, and appreciates, and genuinely thanks for their faithfulness. But most likely, once they came to faith, they were dispatched or sent to other cities. That's why he doesn't have anyone other than Timothy and some of these people who care about only their own interest.

The other thing I just want to point out here about the heartbeat of Christ, Jesus deeply loved. He deeply loved his disciples. He deeply loved the people around him in a true, tangible, visible, emotional love. And there's so much love in these verses. It oozes with a bromance, of brotherhood, of fellowship. That's the word, not bromance, brotherhood, it's a brotherhood. Epaphroditus here longs for the Philippians. He's distressed that they're distressed. And the word here's the same word that's used for Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane who was distressed. It's deep emotional pain. The Christian life, my friends, is not stoicism. We have felt emotion, deep, raw emotion, rollercoaster of emotion during this time and that's okay. That's good to feel that emotion. It's good to feel that grief, that tenderness, even tears, sorrow, even slight anxiety.

And by the way, this is interesting. That St. Paul says this in verse 27, "But God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." St. Paul felt sorrow and "I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious." This is fascinating. St. Paul, did you know at the time of your writing Romans 8, which you gave us, Romans 8:28, "For those who are called by God, predestined by God, and who love God, all things work together for the good"? Didn't you know that St. Paul? Don't you know that your troubles are actually, God is going to use those troubles? There's a purpose in your pain. Didn't you know that St. Paul?

St. Paul, didn't you know what you're about to write in chapter 4 where it says, "Be anxious about nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, present your requests to God"? Didn't you know that? Don't be anxious, you're about to write us? And now you're telling us about your anxiety? Well, this is fascinating. And by the way, anxiety isn't something that you can just suppress. It's not something you can just truncate. It's not something you can just turn off. It's something that we battle or something that we strive to replace with joy, with peace, with tranquility. That doesn't mean in this fleshly body, in this sinful world that our anxiety is just immediately gone completely. Now it's a battle for joy. It's a battle for peace on a daily basis. And St. Paul's not afraid of expressing those deep feelings. And as he does, the Lord uses it to minister to others.

So the servant of God is willing to go anywhere, love anyone, and sacrifice anything because they have the heart of Christ. Timothy gave up his interest, Epaphroditus almost lost his life. Paul to the Ephesian elders said this in Acts 20:24, "I do not count my life of any value, nor is precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." St. Paul said, "My life is of no value to me. There's something more important than my life and that's Christ. For me, to live as Christ and die." Again, St. Paul did pay the highest price. We don't know if he ever saw the church in Philippi. Verse 24, he says, "I trust in the Lord that shortly, I myself will come also." Most likely he didn't. And this was part of God's plan for him.

The Lord when he called St. Paul to himself and met him on the road to Damascus, and St. Paul was blinded and then God tells Ananias, "Go now and minister Paul," to pray over him. But this is what God tells Ananias in Acts 9:15, "But the Lord said to him, 'Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.'" God gives St. Paul the gift of salvation. And he gives him the gift of suffering, as we talked about in chapter 1.

And for the Christian, yes, death is sad but we don't grieve as those without hope for the saint. Death is a blessing, it's a home-going. Why did I spend so much... This is a typical Pastor Jan. Most of the time of the sermon, I'm going to spend in point one. Why did I do this? Because we can't talk about the servant's hardships and the servant's honor without focusing on the servant's heart. If your heart isn't motivated by love for Christ, you won't be able to endure the hardship. And if you're just motivated by the honor that you will get, you won't be able to endure the hardship. Your heart needs to be filled with the love for Christ.

As a Christian, if you're motivated by anything else than Christ, you will burn out in your spiritual walk. You'll burn out and you'll bum out. Why? Because it's hard. You'll get angry by the way people treat you, by the way... You get hurt. You'll grow weary and frustrated by hardships and sacrifices. You'll quit in disgust and disappointment. If serving for any other reason than love for Christ, if you have any other reason than love for Christ who loved you, gave himself for you, you'll give up. But if you are fueled by constantly being captivated by love for Christ, by the love of Christ, it changes everything.

A servant's heart and then, point two is a servant's hardship. There's no service without sacrificing, and sacrificing is hard. It's even painful. Philippians 2:27, "Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him. Not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow," meaning, I've already got sorrow. I'm in prison, I'm facing execution, I'm being persecuted, and the death of Epaphroditus would have mounted that sorrow. Verse 25, "I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my needs." How does he describe the Christian life? Work and fight, worker and soldier, that there's work to do to be a Christian, to live on mission. And that there's a fight to battle. This is war.

In all my years of being a minister, in all my years of being a Christian, I have not felt demonic oppression. I've not felt it as tangibly, as powerfully. I've not been as sensitive to it as I do today, in the world, in the nation, in our city, in my own life. We're at war. And war is hard. No one goes to war because it's easy. Look at St. Paul and his own life. 2 Corinthians 11:23-28. He chronicles his hardships, "Are they servants of Christ? I'm a better one. I'm talking like a madman. With far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, and hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there's the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches."

Anytime I read that passage, I walk away and saying, "My troubles are nothing compared to this guy's." And as he's enduring all of that, he's got a love for the church that keeps him going. Soldiers into a boot camp to learn how to endure hardships and battle. And servants we must train. When war comes, that's when we're ready. And today, we're going through a season that we've never lived through. Unprecedented is the word, I can't wait till we go back to precedent times. I miss those. But this is what we've been training for, for the hardships. Philippians 2:22, "But you know Timothy's proven worth," he's been proven. His worth has been approved by testing. That's the same word that's used in Romans 5:3-4, "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." Proven worth and proven character. That's the same word here in the Greek.

A product is tested before it's sold to prove that it's reliable. Cars need to go through crash testing. And that's how you know it's reliable. St. Paul had persecution, hardship, from without, from within, from above. From without, this is the persecution from the Roman Empire. From within, Christians who are motivated by selfish ambition and envy, criticizing St. Paul. And from above, demonic warfare, and he's being pressed. 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies." We are spiritual war.

I've been hearing this from a lot of people. I've been saying this a lot. Like nothing makes sense. I don't know what to believe, whom to believe in the news. I don't know what's true. I don't know what's being spun. I don't know what's being exploited in order to create some political advantage. I don't know. Nothing makes sense. But you know what hasn't changed? The truth of God's word, the truth of the gospel, and that we are at war. One of the reasons why things don't make sense in the physical realm is when people around us don't understand that there's a spiritual realm. Yes, it looks like we are at war here with one another. But that's because there's war above us, and we need to be encouraged that we know who wins.

I've read the end of the book. The Book of Revelation, I know, Jesus wins, and we can be encouraged with that. But we are at war, Ephesians 6:10-20. I'm going to read the whole passage because it's so relevant for us today. "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand or be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

"In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication to that and keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly, to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I'm an ambassador in chains, that I may declare boldly, as I ought to speak."

Spiritual warfare that culminates in St. Paul's action. He says, "What is the action?" It's to speak the gospel boldly. Timothy did not look to his own interests, he looked to the interests of Christ. Many of us are afraid to speak the gospel to our unbelieving neighbors, and friends, and colleagues, to speak the truth of the gospel. Because our primary interest is to be liked. We want to be liked by the people around us but that's not the goal. That's not the goal, to be liked. The goal is to be loved. And the way that people can truly love us is when they are transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. So how do we wage the spiritual war? By loving people and telling them the good news of Jesus Christ. Why wouldn't you become a Christian? Why wouldn't you want all of your sins forgiven? Why wouldn't you want to spend eternity with God in paradise where he is at the center?

I want to point something out about Epaphroditus risking, Philippians 2:29-30. "So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me," risking. The word for risking in the Greek literally means hazarding his life, gambling. It's a gambling term, it means that he's willing to roll the dice. He's willing to roll the dice with his life, because he sees the pot in the middle. He's willing to risk his life because he knows the reward is greater than the risk. The reward is greater than the risk when you trust in Christ.

Blaise Pascal and his Pensées, he had this thing called the Pascal's Wager, in which he said, "Every single person alive today is gambling with their life." And this is the wager, "If God exists, and I live for Him, I have to, in the short term in my life sacrifice finite pleasure, finite comfort. I have to lose something in the short term in order to gain something infinite in the long term." That's the wager. Others are wagering. And they're saying, "No, no, God does not exist. Therefore, in this life, I'm going to live any way I want for my pleasures as if I'm my own king. And I'm risking being miserable in all of eternity, I'd rather be happy as I defined it in the short term." And what he's saying is if like everyone's playing, everyone's gambling, if it turns out there is a God, if it turns out that there is an eternity and that we are eternal souls living in bodies, and we didn't submit to them now, we lose, and we lose for eternity. We lose infinitely. But if you win, you gain everything.

I've been watching the Facebook news feed, Sundays, and I get to see who enters the chat, who watches with us. And I've been seeing a lot of my friends from high school, a lot of my friends from college, a lot of my neighbors, and I'm so thankful for that. And from the bottom of my heart, I welcome you. And from the bottom of my heart, I'm calling you to realize the greatness of God and the greatness of his gospel. That God gave his son Jesus Christ to die for my sins and your sins, sins of the whole world, and whosoever believes in Christ shall have eternal life forever, sins forgiven. You'll have blessing in this life. Yes, there are sacrifices. Yes, there are hardship. But there are things that make us stronger and draw us closer to Christ, which is the greatest blessing that there is. It's the greatest deal in the history of all deals.

Jesus says, "Come to me, submit to me, give your heart to me and I give you myself," which is better than anything and everything in the world. So it's a no brainer, you should become a Christian. Everyone should. So why go through the hardship? Because you're motivated by Christ, you're motivated by his heart. And you also go through the hardship because there is a servant's honor, that God does honor his servants.

And this is point three, the servant's honor, we don't seek honor for ourselves. I want to point that out, but we seek honor for the Lord and the Lord loves to share the honor. The Lord is a generous God who wants to honor his servants. Look at 1 Samuel 2:30, "Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares, I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever, and now the Lord declares, far be it from me, for those who honor me, I will honor and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed." And what an interesting thought of a glorious God of the universe, likes to honor, loves to honor. When we honor him, he honors us. 2 Timothy 4:8. "Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing." So any hardship that we face will be well worth it when we see his face, when we see the face of God.

Matthew 25:21, "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little and I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.'" The Lord wants to honor his servants, he does, and he will. Paul honors Timothy also by sending him as his representative. Paul honors Epaphroditus by his commendation. In Philippians 2:29, he says, "So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men," honor such people. And by the way, Paul is doing what he's telling them to do. He's honoring these godly people, godly men in this letter. He admires these brothers, appreciates them for their sacrifice, for their faithfulness. James Fraser of Brea, he says this, "The size and the substance of the spirit of a man's soul is at once seen by the spontaneity, and the generosity, and the exuberance, and the warmth of his praises. Just as the smallness, and the stinginess, and the sullenness, and the mulishness of another man's soul is all disclosed to us by his despicable ingratitude to all his benefactors. Almighty God Himself inhabits the praises of Israel. And to praise, and with your whole heart, all those men and women and children who deserve praise at your hands; that, already, is a certain contribution toward your praise of God."

What a text. You got to go back and you got to analyze this text. By the way, James Fraser of Brea, I commend you, I salute you, James. What a quote, what a paragraph. And the alliteration, oh my, the pair-off, phenomenal.

Here's what I want to say about honoring one another. I grew up in a Slavic church. I grew up in a Slavic church in Providence, Rhode Island. And in Slavic Baptist culture, there's some quirks. There's a lot of quirks. One of the quirks is that they would have a special music time or like special participation. There's the worship, there's the choir singing, there's the sermon. There were actually three sermons. Our service is like three hours. And someone would come up to sing, someone would sing a song.

And there would always be a group of people in the church that wanted to clap, that wanted to honor these people for doing a tremendous job. And then, in every conference I've ever been to, Slavic conference, there's always a contingent of people who say, "No, no, no, don't clap, instead, say Praise God." Interesting if you analyze it, and the fear was if you clap for these people, or you say thank you, or you admire, or you say good job. The fear was, they're going to lose their reward in heaven. And by honoring them, we're not honoring God. So let's not even think about them. Let's just think about God.

And I understand the heart behind, the heart is that you don't want to breed narcissism, you don't want to inflate the ego, and you don't want to detract from God's honor. No. But this is what this quote is saying, James Fraser, and this will be seen in the text. "We honor God by honoring people." When we see people reflecting God, and we honor them for that, we're actually saying, "You know what? Good job, and God great job because you created this person, and you filled them with the spirit, and you gave them these gifts and abilities. It's not theirs. But they're working. They're working hard at this." And Scripture is full of compliments paid by saints one to another. Thanksgiving for help, for love, for service, for generosity, and the Lord does this himself.

The Lord often praises his servants without even drawing attention to the fact that they couldn't do anything apart from him. This is fascinating. Look at Job 1:8, "The Lord says to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?'" That's what he's saying, "Check him out. He's doing a great job." Look at Numbers 12:3, and by the way, this is one of my favorite texts in all Scriptures. "Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth." Who wrote the book of Numbers? Moses. So Moses is literally sitting there, and he's saying, "Moses is the most meek person on the face... I am, Moses is the most humble person on the face of the Earth." Now you read that, and it's humorous. It's actually hilarious. Because to say I'm the most humble or the meek man is actually showing that you're far from it. But what's going on here?

The Holy Spirit says, "Moses, write this down." Moses was like, "I can't write this down." God's like, "Write this down, because I've noticed something in you, Moses. I want others to see it and I want others to emulate you." God praises Noah for being righteous in this generation. God called Solomon very great, even majestic. Jesus commends the woman of great faith. He notices the widow's generosity as she contributes two mites. Jesus marvels at the fate of the centurion. Jesus affirms Nathaniel for not being a hypocrite.

The woman with the alabaster jar who goes and she gives Jesus her life savings in this ointment and to anoint him for his burial and his disciples start grumbling, led by Judas. They said, "Imagine how many people we could have fed if we had taken this alabaster jar and actually sold it," and Jesus says this. He says, "Why do you trouble this woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told the memory of her."

It's so important for parents to say, "Good job," to your children, to say, "I love you and I appreciate you." Kids are born with a profound need to be loved and appreciated. And it's devastating when they don't receive it, the love, the praise, the appreciation, and so much of our brokenness, personal brokenness, brokenness in the society. It's because kids have grown up without parents telling them, "I love you. I appreciate you." Without fathers saying to daughters and to sons, "I love you and I appreciate you. I'm so proud of you." Hardly anything has greater influence in our emotional and spiritual welfare. Why? This is so important. Why does every single one of us, why do we crave this appreciation and love? It's because we're created in the image of God, was a Triune God, and in the Trinity, in the internal councils of the Triune God, this praise, appreciation, love, compliments, all circulating all the time. It's what God is. It's what God does, because God is love.

It's the Father saying, "Son, great job." It's the Holy Spirit saying, "Father, Son, great job." It's Jesus saying to the Holy Spirit, "Great job in filling people. Great job in anointing people. Great job in building the church." And Jesus and the Holy Spirit's saying to the Father, "Great job. You're great, Dad. Thank you."

What keeps the praise from being man-centered? How do we make sure that our praise of people isn't fueling narcissism or inflating ego even with our kids? It's when we say great job because of a great God. Great job because of a great God. This is St. Paul, he said this about him. He, actually, he honored himself, which it's crazy, but he did. He honored how hard he worked. He said, "I am what I am by the grace of God. It's all God, Great God. But his grace in me wasn't in vain. I worked harder than the rest of them. But it wasn't me, it was the grace of God." Great job, Paul. Great job, God. Praise God. That's how, we deflect the honor to the Lord. So honestly, practice this in your families. Husbands, admire your wife, speak appreciation, honor, love. Saying, "Baby, you're doing a great job, tremendous job." And wives, honor your husbands by telling them, "I respect you. I see the sacrifices that you're making for us."

Parents, admire your children, appreciate your child. Tell your children they're beautiful. My youngest, Milana, whenever she dresses up and she knows she looks good. First step, she goes to the mirror, she looks at herself. She says, "Hmm, hmm." And then she goes into my room and she just stands there. And what's she doing? She's waiting. She doesn't just want me to see, she wants me to speak. I always say, "Baby, you look so beautiful. Wow. That's amazing." By the way, all of my daughters do that. By the way, my wife does that as well. Tell people that you love them. Tell people that they're beautiful. Tell people that you appreciate them. And obviously, we don't overlook harmful behavior. This isn't flattery or fawning. We encourage the good, we discourage the bad.

We're not called to inflate egos, but to encourage servant's heart. By the way, this admiration is generous spirit. This mutual appreciation, it engenders unity. There's nothing that unites like this in teams, in companies, in families, in the church. Honor. And here, one more really important point I want to make. Speaking of unity. Speaking of the climate we're in now. I've seen what's happening now. I've seen this before. It's happening now in the church. Churches around the nation. I've seen this before. I saw this in 2016, summer of 2016. Brothers and sisters in the church, when they realize that their brothers and sisters do not vote like they do, that infuriates so much that they leave the body. They left this church and they left the church. I've seen that.

When your politics are the reason why you can't love brothers and sisters, that you're not serving the Lord primarily. There's a Lord higher than the lord. So as we engage in politics and political discourse, let us never forget that there's a higher kingdom and we're not citizens of this world. We're citizens of that kingdom, and there's nothing more important than to be united by the gospel of Jesus Christ, extending honor to one another, and respect, and civility, and kindness, most importantly, love. And I will say this as we talk about, as you make political statements online, as you make political statements to one another, make sure don't forget Romans 13. Romans 13:7, "Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenues are owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed." That's everybody. In particular, in that context, it's those in authority over us.

We can disagree with those in authority over us. We can do everything that we can in order to get someone else in authority over us. But whoever is in authority over us now, there is an honor and respect that they are due for the office. So be careful of the way that you talk of those in authority or those potentially in authority because Romans 13:4 says, "He is God's servant. For an allotted time, God has a certain purpose for this." And in that context, it was Nero, who was a terrible, terrible, terrible king. But there was an honor. Ecclesiastes 10:20, "Even in your thoughts, do not curse the king. Nor in your bedroom, curse the rich for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter. Give honor to those whom honor is due."

In conclusion, when you live like this with a servant's heart, enduring a servant's hardship, to receive a servant's honor, you will live a life where you will be missed when you're gone. And that's how Jesus lived. Jesus had a servant's heart, the greatest servant's heart. Jesus endures servant's hardships, he endured the greatest hardship and Jesus received a servant's honor, the greatest honor and name that is above every name, but today, however, he isn't missed. You know why? Because he came back from the dead and we have the presence of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit with us. Amen. Hallelujah. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time and the word. What a rich word, always is. And we pray, Lord, that you cultivate in us a servant's heart, to give us the strength to endure a servant's hardship. And, Lord, we long for the day when we get the servant's honor and we thank you for honoring us even now. Give us a grace so that we honor one another as brothers and sisters, in partnership with the gospel. And we pray that you expand your kingdom even in this time, especially in this time, and I pray that the gospel continues to go forth and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, amen. Hallelujah. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello, welcome to another online service and Mosaic Boston - Brookline. So, glad that you are tuning in with us in this truly chaotic time. We are confronted with another confluence of crises with the COVID crisis and now the racism crisis, the chaos on the streets. There's no more important time than now to turn to the Lord. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless our time and the Holy Scriptures. Lord, I pray with the psalmist in Psalm 44. I pray awake, O Lord. Why are you asleep, O Lord? Rouse yourself. Why have you forgotten us? How much longer will you turn your face from us? How much longer will you forget our affliction and calamity? Lord, bless our time, the holy word. I pray, Lord, take this word and comfort us. Comfort those of us who are grieving. Comfort those of us who are fearing.

Lord, send us peace in our hearts to make us agents of peace in the world, agents of reconciliation to help reconcile our neighbors with you and with one another. Bless our time in Philippians and teach us that there is a difference between grieving and grumbling, between grumbling and lament, between lament and love. I pray Holy Spirit now, fill each one of us. Give us a timely word for this crazy time. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Here in the beginning, just a word to our brothers and sisters of color, people of color, you know that we love you. I just want to extend another loud, clear articulation that we love you. You are loved. You are precious in the sight of God, and you are precious to us. We can't even begin to understand what you're going through with fear and doubt and cries for justice and we're crying with you. We love you. You have a place at Mosaic. You have a place in the body. Scripture says that when one part of the body rejoices, the whole body rejoices. One part of the body grieves, we all grieve. We are grieving with you, but we do not grieve like those without hope, because we do have a hope in Christ.

This is a time for lament. Scripture has a clear distinction, a clear theological category for lament. Lament is different from grumbling. Today, the passage is about grumbling, do all things without grumbling or dispute. Lament is different. You see psalms of believers crying out to God, saying things like "Awake!" This is Psalm 44 verse 23. "Rouse yourself, O Lord!" Lament. You see a whole book in the Bible called Lamentations. We lament what's going on. The difference between lament and grumbling is this, it's about a posture of heart. Do you have a humble heart, lament, or proud heart, grumbling?

Lament is when we go to God and say, "God, God, please make this right." Grumbling is going to God and saying, "You did it wrong. You're not doing it right." We place ourselves in the position of questioning God's wisdom. Do you even know what you're doing? Question God's care. Do you really love me? Do you really care? We forget God's goodness, focusing on what I don't have rather than what I do. We do lament. We are horrified by what happened to George Floyd and we're praying for his family. We're praying for his daughter. We're praying for his brother, his friends.

We're also horrified by what happened to David Dorn, police officer, who leaves a widow, married 40 years, 70 years old. We grieve for him as well. We grieve over the horror of the chaos. We grieve over the media that is exacerbating this situation for their own cause and the sinister powers above that, and the ultimate sinister power above all of that is Satan and the demonic, whose job is to divide us and conquer. Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy where Christ comes to give us life and life to the fullest. Why isn't the media showing us the peaceful protests, the Christians gathering at the protests and singing worship songs to God? That's what we're called to do, to be agents of change.

Today, we're going to talk about... The text is so relevant. We're going to talk about not grumbling, and we're going to talk about how that is a cause for disunity. That's really Satan's tactic. Christ comes in the text prior to our text today. Christ says, "Humble yourselves. Make yourselves nothing. Make yourself served. Count others more significant than yourselves, in particular those who are grieving. Rejoice with those who are rejoicing. Weep with those who are weeping." That's what we're called to do. The original temptation was when Satan comes to Eve and questions God's goodness. Complaint was the sin that kept the Israelites out of the Promised Land seven times.

Scripture said that they murmured, or they grumbled against God. What they're doing is they're saying, "God, fix things quickly. God, give us an immediate solution." A band aid solution is superficial solution. God brings them out of captivity, spent 400 years in captivity, brings them out of captivity miraculously, and then they start grumbling. "God, why didn't you send us water? God, why haven't you sent us food?" God sends a manna. "God, we don't have any meat. Send us meat." All the while they're focused on their circumstances and forgetting the power of God that brought them to salvation, forgetting God's redemptive power to liberate them.

Sometimes when we go through seasons like this, it's so tempting to forget about the Gospel that God obviously loves us. God obviously cares, because he has provided the solution for a greatest problem that's the sin in our heart. He does that by sending his son, Jesus Christ, to absorb the justice of God that we deserve. Does God care about justice? Yes, look to the cross. Does God love us? Yes, look to the cross.

A lot of people today are crying out for an immediate solution. It's tempting to turn to other weapons, be it politics or protesting, all important things to be part of it to devote part of your life to. Those are part of the arsenal, but the most important weapon we have against the evil one is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The most important weapon we have against sin is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel isn't just about behavior modification, and that's really what the law wants to do. Change your behavior or else.

The Gospel says "No." It's about heart transformation. Only a heart transplant can save us from ourselves, save us from our sins, save us from our wicked racism that's in every single one of our hearts. That's what we're going to talk about today. How does change happen? How does true transformation happen in our lives, in the lives of our families, in the lives our communities, our neighborhoods, our state, our nation, and the world?

So, with that said, would you look at Philippians 2, 12 through 18 with me, Philippians 2, 12 through 18. "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ, I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I'm glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also should be glad and rejoice with me."

This is the reading of God's holy and they're infallible, authoritative word. He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time, we'll talk about how God works in us, how we work out, work out our salvation, and then we'll talk about the gains or the fruit of that mutual work.

First of all, God works in. That's verse 12. "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." For, the word 'for' here emphasizes, makes it emphatically clear that our obedience flows out of the work of God in us. We're working out our salvation that began with God beginning that salvation in us. He who began this good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ.

Our working is only possible by God's grace. It's verse six. "I'm sure of this, that he began a good work in you will bring it to completion to the day of Jesus Christ." So, before we work out our salvation, we must possess it. He doesn't say, "Work for your salvation." He doesn't say, "Earn your salvation." He doesn't say, "Through good works, through your own personal righteousness can you justify yourself." No, he says, "Work out what God has already worked in you." The whole process of salvation is meant to humble us and that's what our culture lacks so deeply.

Cries out for humility on every side, a humility that says, "Help me understand. Help me listen. Help me know what you're going through," humility to understand. I love that he uses the word 'salvation'. It's such a radical word. It's a word that points to a situation where we can't help ourselves. We are in dire straits, we need saving. It's a predicament that we ourselves can't get out of. Scripture says that God saves. Jesus saves. It's not our works, not our merits, not even our faith. Our faith does not save us. God saves us. God saves those who cry out. Faith is just a hand that clings to the ring of life, the life ring, the floating device when we're drowning, God save me. So, we are to work out what God is working in us and develop what you already have.

I'm glad that our nation is crying out for justice. I love that. I love that. Why? Because it shows us that every single one of us, we have a desire for justice within our hearts. It's written on our hearts. We're in the world that we get this idea of justice, of true justice, of ultimate justice. It's not a manmade idea, it's a God invented idea. God is a God of justice. God is a God of morality. God is a God of purity and holiness and virtue. As we cry out to justice, we cry out for justice on every single level, not just social justice, but holistic justice, justice for all. That's God's heart. The problem is every single one of us in our hearts, we're unjust. We have all transgressed God's good law, every single one of us.

We all need salvation. We need to be saved from our sin. We need to be saved from the wrath of God, the justice that he cries out for on account of our sin. Here he says, "Work out what God has worked in you," and this is a classic instance of the interplay between God's sovereign grace and our accountability of our responsibility. This is really important. How does change happen in my life? How does change happen in my community, my family? How does change happen globally? How does it happen?

Do we sit back and say, "God, please fix things," and do nothing in ourselves? Or do we put all the emphasis on ourselves forgetting that apart from the strength of Christ, apart from Christ, we can do nothing? This God's sovereign, are we responsible? The answer's yes. It's both and not either or. We're not called to harmonize sovereignty and our responsibility. We have to believe both, receive both, and we are to obey both. Some emphasize God's sovereignty at the exclusion of human responsibility.

The classic example of this in terms of salvation was William Carey. One of the first missionaries to go to India and a minister before William Carey went, before he got on the boat, the minister said to him, "Young man, sit down when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine." Others stress our responsibility to the exclusion of God's sovereignty and guilt trip you into believing that if you don't evangelize every single person everywhere that you meet them immediately that their blood is on your hands. We are to not harmonize these. We are to live in this tension, receive both. No, no, God is in control. God is sovereign. Jesus Christ is on his throne.

Yeah, I do have a responsibility to work out my own salvation. A lot of people would like to skip that part. Let's not focus on me. Let's not focus on cultivating my virtues. Let's focusing on cultivating someone else's virtue. Now, it begins with God is sovereign. He's in control. He gives me the power of the Holy Spirit to work out my own salvation, and only then can I be actually effective long term, not to provide a superficial solution but a true lasting solution. We work to obey all the while depending on God's grace. Philippians 4:13, "for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Both to will, he's talking about the desire. God gives us the desire to change. God gives us desire to be more Christ-like.

The word here for work is energy. He gives us not just desire, he gives us supernatural energy. He gives us the power to do what he calls us to do. He energizes us to will and to act. He gives us the desire and the capability to change. How does he do this? Let me just pause. I don't know about you, but this has been a very weary time, wearying time, not just worrying, wearying. I don't just feel tired. I feel something deeper in my bones, a weariness. I'll tell you this. It's a Gospel weariness. It's when you understand what God calls you to do. When you understand the person that you're supposed to be and you're not and you fall short daily.

When you see all the sin and the calamity and the chaos in the world, you'll begin to grow weary by it. You begin to see that you in and of yourself, you're helpless to change things. If you stay in that spot, I will tell you this, you will get burnt out and you will want to quit. You'll get burnt out and want to check out. The only way we can keep going, keep pushing is if we're daily energized by God's Spirit. God uses four things to energize us to change us. He uses see the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the church, and circumstances.

Scripture, first of all the Bible, Philippians 2:14, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world holding fast to the word of life." The thing that's going to keep you from grumbling, the thing that's going to keep you from disputing in the midst of all the sin around us, all the corruption around us, it's holding fast to the word. I will tell you this. Some churches, some organizations, they come, and they say, "No, the Gospel isn't enough. We need to focus on something else." Gospel isn't the only thing we do, it's the most important thing we do.

True change comes when Christians devote their lives to Gospel ministry, to understanding the Gospel, and to live in a manner worthy of the Gospel of themselves, and then to share the Gospel with neighbors. Are you holding fast to the word of life, to Holy Scripture, and to the word at the center of that word, which is Jesus Christ and his Gospel? 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man and woman of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Are you equipped? Sometimes I feel so ill-equipped in this time. How can I articulate what's in my heart? How can I articulate and speak in such a way where people are ministered to as they're grieving, as they're fearful?

The Word of God, that's the answer. It's the Word of God. The more nutritious food you eat and then use that energy to work out, the more healthy you become. The more nutritious spiritual food we eat, that's God's word. The more we work that out, actually obey it, the stronger we become. Often people say, "I wish I had your faith. I don't have any faith." My response is "What's your relationship with Scripture? Do you read scripture? Do you love scripture?" Scripture says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes from the word of God." Jesus said, "These things I've spoken to you that your joy may be full."

We're also changed and transformed by the Holy Spirit. God puts his Spirit in us the very moment that we believe. Romans 8:11, "If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spear who dwells in you." We need life, so much death around us. We need spiritual life, which then permeates through us and transforms everything around us. When you commit your life to God, he comes into your life. 2 Corinthians 3:18, "And we all with unveiled faced, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the spirit." This is where true transformation comes from, from the Holy Spirit.

As you meditate in the Gospel, the Holy Spirit massage the Gospel into you gives you strength to change. Yes, we hate racism out there, but do we equally hate racism in here? Every single one of us has it in them. Jesus said, "Everything that people do, adultery, sexual morality, unrighteousness, corruption, theft, all everything, all everything that's broken in the world comes from where? From the hearts of men and women who have not been transformed, and the hearts of men and women who are not being daily transformed by the power of the Spirit."

So, are you filled with the Spirit? Do you position yourself on a daily basis to be filled with the Holy Spirit? When you're running on empty, if you don't turn in to rest or if you don't go to the gas station, you have no more energy to go. That's what the Holy Spirit says, "Do you take time to refuel, to get filled with the Spirit, hoist your sails, the Holy Spirit carries you along."

Transformation also comes through the church. Work out your salvation is plural. Yes, it's personal. It's deeply personal, our salvation, but we cannot work out our salvation by ourselves. We need brothers and sisters. We need a community of believers. I love that he talks about work out your salvation.

This text comes immediately on the heels of the text right before from last week, Philippians 2, 1 through 11, where he talks about humility. We need humility to be united on the mission of God, and then he begins to explain how that's done practically. You will not have humility unless you are working out your salvation on a daily basis. As you do, your heart is filled with humility and you don't grumble. Even when things are tough, you lament instead of grumbling. Humility at the heart of lament, pride at the heart of grumbling.

That's Philippians 2, 1 through 4, "If there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others." Count others more significant than yourselves.

So, my White friends, do you count your Black friends more significant than yourself? My Black friends, do you count your White brothers and sisters more significant than yourself? My Asian friends, my Indian friends, my Slavic friends, everybody. This is the only way that we can be a true church family. Everybody honors the other. Everybody serves the other. Everyone cares for the other. This is the only way to true Gospel, unity which leads to the growth of God's kingdom.

God uses circumstances in our transformation as we work out our salvation. Problems, pressures, headaches, difficulties, stress, all of that, they get our attention. Hebrews 5:8, "Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered." Hebrews 2:10, "For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." Jesus was already perfect, but he was continually transformed. He was continually filled by the Spirit through suffering. This is how he entered into our suffering. He suffered, Jesus suffered.

So, God works salvation in us through scripture, through the Holy Spirit, through community and through circumstances. How many hours a day do we have circumstances? 24/7, right? We rarely change until we get desperate. We don't change too often when we see the light. But when we feel the heat or God lights a fire up under us, we begin to get moving. That's how God works salvation in us. It all starts with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus procured salvation for us on the cross as he absorbed the justice that we should have received for our sins, the punishment.

Christ absorbs all of that, although he had never sinned. He received the punish for it, he had never sinned. He does that for us to extend us mercy, not justice. When we receive that salvation by grace through faith, that's when transformation begins. We get that heart transplant, and then we continue to be transformed through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, the church, and circumstances.

So practically, how do we work out our salvation? So, we understand the distinction. God is the one who works salvation in us, then we have to work salvation out. Well, you can't work for your forgiveness. This is verse 12, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Verse 13, "it's God who works in you, both to willing to work for his good pleasure." We can't work for forgiveness. Peace with God is given to us as a gift. It's important that God doesn't justify the obedient. God doesn't justify those who earned it. God justifies those who are sinners. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for our sins. This is important, because the world operates on a merit system. You're a good person, because you do good works.

Every religion operates on the same system. You are justified before whatever the deity it is, because of your good works. Christianity says no, there's no good works we can do enough in order to save ourselves. You're not good enough, nobody's good enough. We are all sinners. We are all sick with sin. If you think you're good enough to go to heaven, you're probably not going to heaven. We need to repent of our sin, repent of our pride, repent of everything in us that's making the world a miserable place. Once you have been saved by grace, we work it out. The classic illustration of this is sometimes Jesus Christ heals people in Scripture, it doesn't make any sense of what he tells them to do as he's healing.

For example, in Matthew chapter 12, there's a gentleman who has, a scripture says a withered hand, maybe some nerve damage. Jesus Christ tells him, he says, "Raise your hand, raise your arm." It's impossible for him to do it. Jesus says, "Stretch your arm forth." In obedience to doing something that is absolutely impossible, God gives him the power to do it. That's kind of how our salvation work. That's kind of how our sanctification works. We can't sanctify ourselves, but God says, "Work out your salvation as we do." By grace through faith, he gives us the power to do it.

Another example was a man who was unable to walk for 38 years and Jesus comes up to him and says, "Take up your bed and walk." The man responds with faith. He does it and he's healed. Jesus imparts power that's required to fulfill the commandment. That's what happens with our own salvation. 2 Peter 1:10, "Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall." Confirm your calling. Confirm your election, which shows us the spiritual complacency has no part in the life of a thriving Christian. We have to strive to enter by the narrow gate.

In the Old Testament, there's several passages about these cities of refuge. There are six cities of refuge, where if a person kills another person accidentally, they can run to these cities to find refuge from vengeance or retaliation. That's kind of how the Gospel works. Jesus is our city of refuge. Every day I wake up, I find myself outside that city. In my heart, unless I run to Christ on a daily basis... Maybe you're there right now. You can tell, is there grumbling spirit in you? Is there a spirit of disputation in you, disputing? Is there a spirit of division in you? Well, are you in the city of Jesus? Are you seeking refuge in him?

Scripture often says, "I must do this. I must strive against sin. I must fight the good fight of faith. I must run the race so as to win. I must be active in cleansing myself defilement of sin. Put to death therefore what is earthy in use, sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil desire covetousness. Put off the old man, put on the new man. I must work out my salvation to keep in step with the spirit. Put sin to death, put on the new man." Forgiveness of sin is always followed by desire to be cleansed from sin. Justification always leads to sanctification. I have been saved, I'm being saved. This is a hard work of putting on holiness and the fear of God. He does talk about fear. Work out your salvation with what? With fear and trembling. In here, you got to pause, and you got to ask.”

Doesn't scripture say in 1 John that perfect love casts out fear?" Yes, of course. Yes, God is a loving father. Why would children fear a loving father? Our sins have been cast behind God's back. They've been buried in the deepest sea. So, why fear? We have the Holy Spirit as a seal of our eternal salvation. Why fear? Scripture says that there are good fears and bad fears. They're good fears that God has ingrained in us, like a fear of fire keeps us from getting burned, the fear of an edge of a cliff, or fear of heights that keeps us from falling. There's good fears that protect us from harm, and there's bad fears that actually lead to harm.

The most succinct way I can put it is good fear keeps us close to God. Bad fear keeps us far from God. Good fear keeps us far from sin. Bad fear keeps us far from God. There is a good fear that we as Christians need to develop and cultivate, a reverent fear. Here's the thing about reverent fear or honoring God, glorifying God, standing in trepidation before him and his word. It's that it does not push out inexpressible joy, it actually cultivates it. Reverent fear, inexpressible joy, they can exist in the same heart at the same time. The world doesn't know this, but it's true. The true good fear actually leads to joy. It's not a fear that enslaves, but it's a fear that emboldens. It doesn't imprison, it liberates. It doesn't paralyze, it animates.

Look at Proverbs 28:14, "Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity." The word for blessed here, another translation says, "Happy". Happy is the one who fears the Lord always. When you fear the Lord, you have nothing else to fear. Last night, it was like 11:00 PM, I was trying to fall asleep. I wake up at 5:00 AM whenever I preach, like 11:00 AM and I hear loud bangs. No idea what was happening. At that moment I said, "You know what? I have a choice to make. I can fear whatever's out there, or right now, I can run to the city of refuge that is Christ. I fear him and because I fear Him, I got nothing to fear." Every single one of my days is already predestined, pre-allotted.

I had a conversation with a nice lady, Susan. We have great relationship. She's in a nursing home now. She's gone through a lot of difficult things. She called me to say, "She's on the brink of death," yesterday for me to pray for her. She says, "Jan, do you think I'm going to be alive tomorrow?" I said, "I hope so, but we're not promised tomorrow." I said, "I don't know if I'm going to be alive tomorrow." We're alive today. We're alive today for a reason. We don't need to fear that which is beyond our control, because we fear God. It's a good fear.

Think about it like this. I love my dad. He's a great guy. I also fear my dad, and that fears a good fear. I honor him, I respect him, I revere him. I don't want to do anything that would take joy out of his heart in regards to me. This is part of what he's talking about. When you realize that God is great, that God is so incredible, that the angels when they see God on the throne, when they see Christ on the throne, they cover their eyes, the seraphims cover their eyes with their wings. Isaiah sees God and he falls on his face and says, "I'm a wicked man. God is a great God."

Ecclesiastes 12, 13 through 14, "The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this as the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." Fear God, he will judge. Our sins will be judged either on the cross or on the day of judgment, all our sins. Sometimes I think we forget the greatness of God, because we forget the greatness of the universe because we're so focused on our phones. We spend way too much time on this one little tiny device. Because we're looking down and we haven't looked up in a while, we forget about the vastness of God, the vastness of the universe, and how small we are.

I just want you to meditate for just a few minutes on the Pistol Star. There are millions and millions of stars in our own galaxy. The nearest of one would take 100,000 years to get to the current speed of space probes. The Pistol Star is 10 million times brighter than our own Sun. That star is in a galaxy with millions of stars, and our galaxy is one amongst millions of galaxies. It's so immense. The distance is so spread out, we can compute it, but we can scarcely comprehend it. We barely understand it. Here's the thing. God spoke everything into existence. Everything was created by the power of his word, God speaks and things are.

If we're worried about the chaos around us, if we're worried by the clickbait news media that everything's wrong and they just focus on the chaos, if that's where we are, we lose sight of the fact that God's in control. Jesus Christ is on his throne, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear God. God spoke mere utterance, effortlessly created everything, and controls every particle. Amazing. God works out our salvation and uses scripture, uses the Holy Spirit, uses the church, uses circumstances. And then we are to respond to that power by loving God's word, depending on his spirit, and commitment to the church, responding to circumstances.

Do you love God's Word? This is A, because growth isn't automatic. We can't passively grow in the faith. Change is a matter of choice. Do you choose to follow God? Do you choose to spend time in Scripture? Proverbs 4:23, "Keep your heart, guard your heart with all vigilance, for flow from it flows the springs of life." Change of life, change of feelings, it all starts with a change of thought. Ephesians 4: 23 and 24, "and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness." How do we put on the new self? How do we transform? He says, "Are you renewed in the spirit of your mind?"

By the way, this is what the word repentance means. Repentance doesn't mean to fall in sackcloth, and ashes, and all of this. It means to change your mind. That's what repentance means. In terms of God, in terms of his law, it's a change of mind, a change of predisposition, a change of perspective. When I repent on a daily basis, hourly... I need to do it hourly, great, great sinner, all of us are. What that is, is "Oh my. I'm too focused on self, too focused on circumstance, too focused on sin. I need to change my mind to get focused on the savior not on sin. When my thoughts are changed..."

By the way, I've been more sensitive to this lately because it's been emotional roller coaster. And then you just go, pray. Spend some time in Scripture. Change of mind, which leads change of feelings change of heart, which leads to a change of action. That's how were transformed. The way I think determines the way I feel. The way I feel determines the way I act. The way I act determines the way I live. It all starts with thoughts. There's no action without thought behind it. If you're acting depressed, it's because you're feeling depressed. If you feel depressed, it's because you're thinking depressing thoughts. At that moment, what we got to say is we got to preach to ourselves and say, "No, mind. No, me. No, my soul. Why are you so downcast?"

John 17:17, "Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth." Psalm 1, 1 through 3, "Blessed or happy is the man or the person who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. In all that he does, he prospers." Focus on God's word, spend time in God's word, love God's word, meditate upon.

Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God." B is dependence on the Holy Spirit. This is the way that God calls us to work at our salvation. Ephesians 5:18, "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit." Be filled. God filled me with the Holy Spirit. I'm humbly asking, begging for you to do so.

John 15, 4 through 5, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." A branch is totally dependent on the vine. Cut off, no resources, no nutrients, dead. Same way we were totally depend on Christ. Are you connected to him? Are you interlocked with him? We have to be plugged in. God has the power, it's not automatic.

How do you know you're in the spirit? This is something I was just meditating on. I'm know I'm walking in the Spirit where I spend more time praying about things than just focusing on how I can fix those things. Whatever you're not praying about, you're not depending on God about. The most powerful thing we as Christians can do is pray. Nothing more powerful, pray and fast and cry for God to move. As you pray and fast, he will reveal to you what you are to do.

God also transforms us through the church. Of course, salvation is intensely individual, but we're not saved individually, alone. Yes, we are saved individually. If you're not saved in individually, you're not saved, but we're also saved together. This is why the verbs in verse 12 and 13 are plural. Work out your salary, your own salvation, but work out you, together, in community. You work out salvation with one another. I said, "We can't live the Christian life in isolation."

This is where it's important to have deep relationships, grounded in love, where if you see a brother or sister in sin, you don't grumble about their sin behind their back. You don't just dispute them about their sin in public. You go to them one-on-one, and you speak to them the Gospel. You call them to repent. We all need to do that we all need to learn how to humbly receive that.

And then responses to circumstances, this is how we work out our salvation. There's a parallel in Scripture between God's resources and our choice. Will you receive those resources? God has the resource of his word. Are you in his word? God has the Holy Spirit. Do you choose to depend on the Holy Spirit? God uses the church. You choose to join the church, to join the community, to walk with other believers. God uses circumstances, you choose how to respond to those circumstances. Most important in life isn't it what happens to us, but how we happen to react to what happens to us.

James 1, 2 through 4, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." You can always choose how to respond to circumstances. Will these circumstances make me bitter or better? Will these circumstances break me or make me? Will these circumstances be a stumbling stone or a stepping stone? Whatever it is, we're going through. What's most important isn't what happens to you, but what happens in you.

And then finally, the gains, this is the fruit of work out your salvation which God has worked in you. It's growth in obedience, contentment in the Gospel, and concern for others' faith. This is growth in obedience. Verse 12, we do, we grow in obedience. This is what it means to obey. He says, "My beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only is my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Love and obedience are not mutually exclusive. If you love your children, you want them to obey you, because the things you tell them to do are what's best for them. When we walk in the spirit proximity to the Lord, we want to obey, because we're beloved.

Growth in contentment. This is verses 14 through 15, "Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world." Grumbling, this is when we got beef behind people's backs. We can grumble against God. We say, "God, you're not doing it right." When we grumble about people behind their backs, they're not doing it right. Disputation, disputing is when we challenged someone in a selfish way, not in a submissive way where "I do want to learn, and I do want to help you."

That's the difference between that and Matthew 18 where you go, and you confront a fellow believer who's in sin. You say, "I'm a sinner. I receive grace. I repent, but I see the sin in your life." This right here is done, grumbling and disputation as I've mentioned, it's motivated by pride. Here, 'the phrase crooked and twisted generation', Saint Paul gets that from Deuteronomy 32:5, where Moses says about Israel, "They have dealt corruptly with him," with God, "they are no longer his children because they're blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation." This is where they grumbled. There was no water, there's no food, there was no meat, and forgetting all the miracles of God before them.

There is a crooked and twisted generation around us. Part of the Gospel weariness that we feel is when we see the chaos around us. We see the sin around us. We see the racism. We see the sexual perversion, the corruption, the violence, the child abuse, the crime, the hatred, the drug abuse, cheating, deceit, abortions. We see all of this. We're pained by it. It's easy to cry out to God in a proud spirit and say, "God you're not doing your job." God says, "Humble yourself before my sovereignty. I'm on the throne. I'm in control. Focus on the Gospel, focus on your responsibility and let me be sovereign."

And then also complaining just doesn't work. Grumbling doesn't work. It's just a waste of time. It's a waste of energy. If we used the energy that we use to grumble and complain, if we use that productively to actually help fix problems, we get a lot more done. 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." He says, "When you live without grumbling, without disputation, this crooked and twisted generation, you will shine like stars in the world," like stars in the world. I love that. We live in the cite. Every time I go out of the city at night, I'm just shocked by how bright the stars are. When are stars, the brightest? When the night is the darkest. That applies to us living our Christian lives, where we are, in the dark places where we find ourselves.

Also, that applies to when we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. When we are going through darkness, when we are going through trials, when we are being afflicted on every side and opposed. Can you be content? Can you rejoice in the Lord? If so, you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. Where everyone's grumbling, everyone's disputing and you are content in the Lord, you're walking like a lion, knowing that you have nothing to fear because you belong to God.

Philippians 4:11, "Not that I'm speaking of being a need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content?" Are we content, dear Mosaic? As God works salvation in us and we work that salvation out by grace through faith in the power of the Holy Spirit, the gains, our growth in obedience, growth in contentment, and growth in the Gospel. Oh my, the Gospel is something we're not just to know. It's not just the beginning of Christianity. It's not just the A, B, Cs of Christianity. It's the A through Z. It's everything in Christianity.

Philippians 2:16, "Holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain." He says, "Are you holding fast on a daily..." The word 'holdfast' implies that something's pulling you away from it, pulling you away from the Gospel. I'll tell you a story from Galatians. In the book of Galatians, Saint Paul writes about an encounter he has with a dear brother in Christ, the Apostle Peter. He says he found out the Apostle Peter stopped eating with the Gentile Christians. Saint Paul goes to him and he says, "I rebuked him to his face because he was not walking in step with the Gospel."

Saint Peter, something happened in his heart. He knew the Gospel, he witnessed the resurrected Christ. He got a vision from God to go to Cornelius, the Gentile, and to share the Gospel to this Gentile, to have a meal with the Gentile. Something happened where he was pressured by other people, by Jewish Christians who said, "If you're not circumcised, if you're not of our ethnicity, you can't be a full Christian. We're not going to eat with you."

Saint Paul says, "Peter, I see racism in your heart. I see racist tendencies in your heart. The way that you battle racism, Peter, isn't I'm going to force you to start virtue signaling to show people that you're a better person.” He says, "No. You're not transformed by the law, you're transformed by the Gospel. You're not walking in step with the Gospel, Peter." That's how transformation happens in our own lives. Am I walking in step with the Gospel? Is the Gospel continuing to transform me? How does the Gospel do this? You look at Christ. His blood ran, his blood bled for every single race in the universe. Every tribe, tongue, nation will be redeemed by God, worshiping Him in heaven by grace through faith.

Philippians 2:22, "But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel." Growth in the Gospel starts with understanding the Gospel, and then serving in a Gospel. Finally, when God works salvation in us, and we work out our salvation, the gains, a growth in obedience, contentment, Gospel, and finally, concern for others' faith. Philippians 2:17-18, "Even if I am poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also should be glad and rejoice with me." Saint Paul had every right to grumble and dispute as he's in a Roman prison in his 60s. He could have grumbled against God and said, "God, I deserve a better retirement. I've given you the best portion of my life. I've sacrificed myself for you."

He could have disputed with all of his critics, everyone who was criticizing him, everyone who was undermining, impugning his ministry, impugning his motivations. Instead, he doesn't. He focuses the last part of his life on what? On the very thing that led to the transformation of the Roman Empire. He could have focused his time in fighting the unjust Roman Empire, he doesn't. He spends the end of his life writing epistles to churches, furthering the Gospel ministry. These same words are what transformed the Roman Empire. Four hundred years, it was absolutely transformed. There were more Christians than non-Christians. Only the Gospel could change our hearts. Only the Gospel can change our neighbors' hearts. Only the Gospel can transform the world.

The points are God works in. He works salvation in us through Scripture, the Holy Spirit, church, circumstances. We work out that salvation by loving God's word, depending on the Holy Spirit, committing to the church, and responding to circumstances in a godly way. Finally, the gains are growth in obedience, contentment, the Gospel, and growth in concern for others' faith. A close to the story about John Wesley and George Whitefield. In the beginning, I was talking about "Is God sovereign?" or "Are we responsible in terms of salvation, sanctification, everything God calls us to do?" The answer is yes, we're not called to harmonize. We're called to believe and receive the God is both sovereign and we're responsible.

I'm going to share the story because in times like this, Satan divides the church by sowing seeds of suspicion. Are you truly a Christian? Are you truly walking with God? Are you truly fighting racism as much as I am? John Wesley and George Whitefield, they were used by God to bring thousands of people to faith in the 18th century. They were good friends, although they differed in their understanding of "Is God responsible, or are we? Is God sovereign? Are we responsible in salvation?" John Wesley put so much emphasis on the human responsibility in salvation that he doubted his salvation even on his deathbed, although being used by God to reach thousands of people. Whitefield on the other hand, a firm believer in God's sovereignty and salvation.

Reporter comes to Whitefield one time seeking a juicy bit of gossip, clickbait back in the day. He said to George, "Mr. Whitefield, do you think you'll see Wesley in heaven?" Whitefield's tongue in cheek says, "No." The reporter says, "What?" Do you mean you don't believe that John Wesley is converted and thus won't be in heaven?" Whitefield says, "You asked me if I would see him in heaven?" He said, "I don't believe I will, because John Wesley would be so close to the throne of God and I will be so far away that I will not get a glimpse of him."

I love that story, because it shows his own humility and understanding that God saved him, that God used him, but God saves others and he uses others. This humility is the thing we desperately need if we're going to be united on God's mission, proclaiming the Gospel, extending the Gospel, expanding God's kingdom in this chaotic time.

At this point, would you turn with me to prayer? Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that you've given us in the Holy Scriptures with a timely word, always is. We thank you, God, that you are in control. Yes, we are responsible. We're responsible now for the salvation of someone else in terms of working it out, but in terms of our own salvation, which then gives us strength as we are sanctified, filled with your spirit, as we are empowered to go and help others as well as pour out our lives for their salvation. Lord, thank you for the reminder that it's not the only thing we do, it's the most important thing we do. No matter what comes out, no matter what challenges arise, the answer is always the same, Jesus. Jesus, we thank you are our strength, and we strengthen ourselves in you. We pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to another edition of our Mosaic Boston Brookline online worship services. So glad that you are with us tuning in. Say hello in the comments section below if you're on Facebook live. Also, just a word to our regular attenders, if we have your email address and you are on our newsletter, you have received this week a survey, and we would love if you could give us the feedback, fill it out. It would help us tremendously in gathering all the information we need to gather so that we open a Mosaic and open well.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you, Lord, that you are Father, and that you have many children, and that when you call us to be one of your children, you call us into a family. And Lord, we know in any family conflict arises. And I pray, Lord, that you today show us that by the gospel of Jesus Christ through grace you humble us. The gospel is the only force in the universe capable of humbling us, of getting us to the point where we crucify flesh and deny ourselves and follow you and serve others.

Lord, I pray that you bless us today in your word. Take these words, Lord, and apply them not just to our minds, but to our hearts. And empower our wills to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We are in a sermon series through the book of Philippians. This is sermon number three. Pastor Ivy kicked off the series week one. Last week, we looked at Philippians chapter 1:12-30. Today, we are in Philippians 2:1-11. Title of the sermon today is Humility, the Key to Harmony. Humility, the Key to Harmony.

One of the things that quarantine has done is it has surfaced any relational conflict we have with our roommates or our family members. And we're thankful for them because now we can work through those issues by the gospel of Jesus Christ, and humility is truly a key to harmony.

One of my mentors is Bill Wellons, and he defines humility like this: "Humility is nothing to prove and no one to impress." Nothing to prove and no one to impress. I really, really like that. Scripture teaches that pride is the root of all sin, and sin is what keeps us from living the lives that God has intended us to live. Pride gets in the way of enjoying God. Pride gets in the way of enjoying people and enjoying life.

Sometimes pride surfaces in our lives where we think too much of ourselves. Sometimes pride surfaces as insecurity where we think too little of ourselves. But in either case, we're thinking of ourselves. Too much thinking of yourself, that's what pride is. C.S. Lewis said, "Pride isn't thinking too much of yourself, it's thinking of yourself too much." Pride isn't thinking too much of yourself, it's thinking of yourself too much.

Peter Kreeft, one of my favorite philosophers says, "Pride has ingrown eyeballs. Humility stares outward in self-forgetful ecstasy." What a place that is, self-forgetfulness. And that's where the gospel intend to take us.

One of the things I will mention about preaching through Philippians, this is my second, maybe third time preaching through Philippians chapter 2:1-11. And I was reading through my notes from 2015, and I was struck by the thought of, "Oh, wow. The guy in 2015, Jan Vezikov in 2015 five years ago had no idea how much he was struggling with pride." I'm doing so much better in 2020. And as soon as you get there, you realize, well, that is so proud. And this is the thing that you see with pride. You never attain humility. It's not about getting to the destination of humility, it's all about the journey. Are you growing in humility? Are you growing in repentance of pride?

We're about to encounter one of the most theologically, Christology dense scriptures and passages in scripture, but this scripture wasn't written for theologians alone. This scripture was written to common people, to regular people, regular Christians dealing with regular problems, to business people, to working people, soldiers, wives, husbands, parents, children. It's not just about Christology, it's about dealing and getting along with one another.

So would you look at the text with me? Today we are in Philippians 2:1-11. Philippians 2:1-11. "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my job by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interest of others.

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." This is the reading of God's and infallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

The keys to harmonious relationship, I already mentioned, is humility. And we got to ask ourselves at least five questions from this text to diagnose whether we are growing in humility. First of all, am I motivated by God's great love? Second, am I seeking unity or my own way? Third, am I growing in selfishness or humility? Am I putting the interests of others above my own? And number five, am I thinking with the mind of Christ?

So first of all, am I motivated by God's great love? I love how St. Paul starts with this. He could've just rebuked them. He could've just said, "Why is there disunity in this family, this family of God in this local church in Philippi?" He doesn't. He doesn't start with a harsh rebuke. He starts with God's tender love. Why? Because God's love is the only force powerful enough to get us to a point where we humble ourselves, where we seek to crucify our pride, and ourself, and our ego.

Here he says, "So if there is, so therefore ..." The word so means therefore. Wherever you see a therefore in scripture, you got to ask what it's there for. Well, it goes back to 1:27, Philippians 1:27, which is maybe the thesis of the whole book. He says, "Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear that you are standing firm in the gospel, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel." Are you striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, you brothers and sisters? Are you united in pursuit of the mission of god, the expansion of his kingdom of love?

It goes back to we need to stand firm in unity. And the context is that seeds of disunity have been sewn in the body in Philippi. So St. Paul starts with Christ and the gospel and the word if. So if there is. If isn't a word of doubt or certainty. It's a word that means since. And he gives us a fourfold rhetorical question. There's four things. He says, "If since you have this in the gospel." Then he goes to what he wants them to do in light of that.

Why does he start with the gospel? He starts with the gospel to get us into a point of indebtedness. There are two ways of living through life, entitlement or indebtedness. Pride leads to entitlement where you think that you deserve. And the gospel gets you to a place of indebtedness where you realize that the only thing you do truly deserve is hell. It's separation from God for all of eternity. If you hear this for the first time, by the way, it sounds so harsh. It sounds so abrupt. It's so unpalatable. But, the scripture always does this to awaken us, to awaken us from our pride, to awaken us from our spiritual stupor.

He says, "Because so if there," that's verse one, "If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy ..." And I'll just break this down. He starts with encouragement and Christ. It's a Greek word paracleses. Jesus uses this word to actually describe the Holy Spirit who is the Paraclete. He is the helper. He is the comforter. He is the encourager, the one called alongside to help, as scripture says in John 14.

St. Paul starts here in terms of encouragement because relational conflict is always a source of discouragement. And at such times when you're discouraged by the people closest to you, you have a choice. You have a choice to either remain in that discouragement or turn to Christ who is the encourager, who by the Holy Spirit is our sufficiency. And he has promised to never leave us or forsake us no matter what. There is encouragement in Christ.

Second is participation in the spirit, participation or fellowship. When a person turns from sin to Christ, repents by grace through faith, trusts in the Lord, you are at that moment indwelt with the Holy Spirit. You're baptized into the body of Christ. And the Holy Spirit draws us into fellowship with Christ and with one another. This is what it means to have fellowship in the spirit. You have fellowship with God. And you have fellowship with those who have the Holy Spirit, and that's our fellow Christians, our brothers and sisters. You can't have love for God without love for Christians, as first John says.

If there's any affection and sympathy, the affection and sympathy here, St. Paul gets to the emotional element of God's love. He doesn't allow us to just stay at the level of logic where many of us naturally want to stay. He descends further into our heart, into our affection and he says, if you have in your heart this living experience of God, how can you but not share those affections, extend those affections to others?

It's the same word that's used in Matthew 9:36 where it says that Jesus, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion. He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. It's the Greek word splagchnizomai. It talks about the internal organs. Jesus internally, he felt love. He felt empathy and compassion.

Every relation with conflict, every relation with problem is an opportunity to learn more of what Christ felt. Do you feel offended by the people around you? Well, no one was treated as offensively as Jesus Christ. Have you ever abandoned by your friends? Well, Jesus invested three years into his 12 disciplines, was abandoned by 11 of them. Have you ever felt betrayed? Jesus was betrayed by Judas, and still he loved. Still he extended his love so much so that on the cross he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." So if we have this affection, this sympathy, this encourage, if we have all of this in Christ, participation in the spirit, how are we not to be motivated to love others when we're motivated by God's great love?

Second, am I seeking unity or my own way? Philippians 2:2, he says, "Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." This, by the way, this is such incredible lesson in leadership. It's an incredible lesson in marriage. It's incredible lesson in ... This right here is such ...

St. Paul does not tell them what to do. That's not where he starts. He first starts with the gospel, if you love God, if you have experienced God love. Then, he says ... Then he goes to himself. Do you love me? If you love me, complete my ... I'm going to start doing this all the time with my daughters. I think I'm going to start doing this. "Oh, Sophia, complete my joy by making me an omelet. Oh, Elizabeth, complete my joy by washing the dishes. Catarina, complete my joy by not watching three more hours of whatever you're watching. Don't. Milana, complete my joy by not screaming so much. Please, please, complete my joy." And this is Paul's tactful way to appeal to them. Rather than rebuke them for the disunity, he appeals to the fact that they love him.

In here, he says, "Complete my joy by being of the same mind." Now, what's fascinating, he repeats this, being full accord and of one mind. Here he's not talking about uniformity. He's talking about unison. That's why I use the word harmony, that humility is the key to relational harmony, that we are not singing one voice, different voices, but we're singing in harmony. It's not uniformity, it's unison. And Paul's joy is wrapped up in their unity, in their unison, not their uniformity.

Harmonious relationships, they don't happen by accident. If you see a couple who've been married for decades and you see them holding hands as they're walking on the beach, there's a beautiful sunset, and they're always wearing shirts with khaki pants. Always. Always. And you see that. And as they're holding hands, you say, "Oh, they're so lucky. They're so fortunate." I'll tell you something. They didn't get there because of luck or just because of natural compatibility. They got there. They got there because of hard work. Relationships, they take work. And harmonious relationships take this mindset that St. Paul's talking about, mindset that works toward unity, works towards singing in unison and not uniformity.

He's not talking about drab intellectual conformity. He's not talking about thinking the same things. He's talking about not just being on the same page, he's talking about moving in the same direction, being on the same journey. It's not an expression of intellectual agreement but one of intent, one of disposition. We all have our different roles on the team. So we must all be growing and experiencing this desire, and this comes from the mind of Christ.

And by the way, this is so different from worldly conflict resolution, going to see a therapist or a marriage counselor who has no grounding in the gospel. Usually, the way that they seek resolution is by saying, "What do you want? And what do you want? And how can we get you to the point where both of you get what you want? What do you need to sacrifice a little bit? What do you need to sacrifice a little bit? And we'll get you to that ..." Scripture says no. No, that's not the way. The way to this unity and unison, the way is for you to sacrifice your own self. That's why he says same love. Have the same mind. Have the same love. The same love is talking about the love of Christ that's revealed in his incarnation, life, death, burial, and resurrection. We'll talk about that.

The final phrase in this verse is being in full accord and of one mind. And here, it's a little different in the Greek where he talks about being of one soul, that true unity isn't just organizational or outward. It's a matter of the heart. It's not automatic. It's deliberate action. I choose to be united. I choose to seek unity.

Christian unity is categorically different from any other kind of unity. And our world, by the way, celebrates unity. One of the reasons why it celebrates unity is because there's so little unity in the world. Perhaps unity around a sports team or common effort in a charitable cause, running a 5k together, going on a hunger walk. But usually, unity that's found in the world today is unity with people that think precisely like you do, that look precisely like you do, that vote precisely like you do. Christianity says no.

The gospel of Jesus Christ takes very different people, categorically different people and brings them together into one family. Unity is so rare. It's so hard to achieve and so difficult to preserve and sustain. That's why when the world sees it they're shocked by it. That's why Jesus said, "The world will know that you are my disciples because of what? Because of your love toward one another."

I'm going to pause here and say one of the things that I love so dearly about Mosaic is that we are a true mosaic. People from all over the world, people speaking dozens of languages, people in different life stages coming together and worshiping the same Christ, our world desperately needs more of that. And we've seen this with people dying because of racism. We've seen this with George Floyd. And this is over and over. It's people remembered by hashtags because of racism, because of institutional racism.

Now, I'll tell you this, it's not just a skin problem. It's a sin problem. And scripture says that every single one of us is a sinner. Every single one of us is driven by pride, be it racial pride, or financial pride, or national pride, and the gospel says no. We are to repent of that pride and accept the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Third, am I growing in selfishness or humility? Philippians 2:3 says, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility, count others more significant than yourselves." I'll just let you meditate on that. I can say so much about this, and I've learned from my own personal experience there is no amount of homiletical function that I can give you to get you to the point where you can do this. I can't do that, but the Holy Spirit can. This is so unnatural.

And St. Paul here says that the true obstacle to true unity isn't just a difference in opinion. That's not the obstacle to unity is that people have different opinions. The obstacle to unity is selfishness, and it's vanity. That's why I said humility is the key to true unity to relational harmony. Worldly conflict resolution goes like this: Stand up for your rights, be assertive, negotiate what you want. The technique is really balancing your needs against another person's needs, and here he says no. Stay away from selfish ambition. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.

Here, in the Greek, this is a party spirit or a political spirit where you try to build up a following for yourself, putting your opponents down. And scripture says in Galatians 5 that both selfish ambition and conceit are fruit of the flesh. And conceit here is empty conceit, or in the Greek it's vain glory, kenodoxia, useless glory where you're puffed up with the sense of your own self-importance and you forget that everything that you have is from God.

1 Corinthians tells us, who made you to differ? Who made you to be a little different than anyone else? Who made you to be unique? It was God. He gave you the gifts. He gave you the abilities. He gave you the opportunities. He gave you the strength. He gives you every single heart beat. So why? Why are we puffed up with our useless glory?

He says, "We are to seek humility of mind. But in humility, count others more significant than yourselves." We're too self-focused. Even our insecurities, too much self-focus. We need to get our thoughts away from ourselves to the needs of others. And here the question is, am I supposed to be some kind of doormat? Am I supposed to just allow people to walk all over me? No, of course not. Of course not. But we are to start thinking about the needs of others. We are to realize that everything I have, intelligence, money, work ethic, everything is from Him and for Him. Also, we are to ...

This is where the gospel does truly humble us, where it brings us face to face with our sinfulness, with our own depravity. And if you're not growing in a deeper realization daily of your sinfulness before God, then you're not growing spiritually. The closer you get to God, the bigger he looks, the small we look. And that's a great place to be.

Four, am I putting the interests of others above my own? This is verse four. "Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others." By the way, this doesn't mean that we never say no to people. Jesus had moments where he would receive from the crowd. He would back away from the crowd in order to go and spend time with God, the Father. He knew that he was getting to the point where he was running on fumes, running on empty spiritually speaking. He needed to refuel and recharge. He understood that if he wasn't in a strong place spiritually and physically, he couldn't help people. Jesus often would say no to the needs of the crowds to spend time with the Father or to train up his disciples. So, he did have priorities, and he did all of that in order to make sure that he was a better servant of God.

Here, a question is, count others more significant than yourselves. Look to the interests of others. Whom are you not counting more significant than yourself? Whose interest of the people in your circle of influence, whose interest are you not looking to? Do you even know the interest of others? Are you a good listener? I say that a little tongue in cheek because people think I'm a terrible listener. I try. I'm growing at listening, and this happens only by the power of the Holy ... Are you a good listener? Jan Vezikov. Keep growing in that.

Number five, am I think with the mind of Christ? I'm going to spend the bulk of our time on this point because that's where St. Paul spends the bulk of his time. Am I growing? Am I thinking with the mind of Christ? How? By meditating on the incarnation, on the miracle that the incarnation is. This is verse five. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." You have access to the mind of Christ. You have access to the mind of the God of the universe. And the closer you get to God, the more time you spend with God, the more you study the holy scripture, you begin to think the thoughts of God. Your mind become in sync with the mind of Christ, and that's how transformation happens where your mind is in lockstep with the mind of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Look at Romans 12:1 and 2. "I appear to you, therefore, brothers, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, which is what is good, acceptable, and perfect."

You see that connection? Between being transformed by the renewal of your mind and discerning God's will, what's the connection there? The connection is when your mind is connected to the mind of God, of Christ, that's where transformation happens, and that's when you begin to understand what God's will is.

A lot of people ask, "What's the will of God for my life? What's the will of God for this season in my life?" I'll tell you what it is. The will of God for this season in your life is for you to start thinking the thoughts of Christ, and we get that by the power of the spirit from the holy scriptures. Jesus voluntarily left the highest position in the universe. This is the incarnation. Voluntary left the highest position in the universe. And from the highest of heights, he goes to the lowest of depths in order to rescue us from God's judgment, people, us, people who in no way deserved rescuing.

When we meditate on the incarnation that Jesus left the splendor, the purity of heaven, he comes into this wicked world and he actually ... Scripture says he doesn't just take our sin upon himself, he become our sin. He who knew no sin becomes sins that we might become, the righteousness of God. No personal sacrifice that we make can ever match what the glorious savior did for us.

"He existed in the form of God," verse six says. And the preexistence of Christ is that he was God. He is God before he was born to the Virgin Mary. Jesus Christ is not a created being. He's the second person of the triune God. John 1:1-3 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." John 1:14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father full of grace and truth." Jesus in John 8 says, "Before Abraham was born, I am." Not I was, not I will be, I am. Jesus is God. Before he came to earth, he dwelled in indescribable glory, one with the Father, blessedness of divine being, and he was willing to leave all of that to come to earth. He humbled himself.

I don't know how to describe how hard this is. If anyone's become ... If you're a parent, you kind of understand this, especially if you had a career prior to having children, you've had career success. Then, you become a parent. Then, you're spending hours a day talking with a two-year-old. Then you start thinking like a two-year-old. There's a humility that needs to happen for you to connect with this person who's so little, and so dumb, and so brilliant at the same time. There's something like that. When you've tasted height, it's so hard to go low.

This past week, my brother got married. Actually, I'm preaching on Thursday. So he's getting married on Friday, but you're watching on Sunday, so he got married on Friday. Hopefully, Lord willing, that's going to work out. But, we went to New Hampshire to celebrate his this like a bachelor getaway of some friends. We rented a Ford Expedition, brand new. This things massive. We drove in comfort, in luxury. I came home, and I got into my Toyota Highlander, and I got a glimpse of what Jesus ... No. You can't even compare. But, it's something like that. There's incredible humility that happens with Christ.

And here, in verses 6 through 11, St. Paul gives us the Carmen Christi. This is a hymn. This is a song. The early church sang this in order to remind themselves daily of what Christ went through. Verse six, "Who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." Jesus didn't treat his equality with God as a treasure to be greedily clutched, he resigned the glories of heavens for us. Verse seven, "He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." He emptied himself. What does this mean? What does it mean that he made himself nothing?

Well, God can't cease to be God. Jesus didn't give up his divine attributes. However, he voluntarily limited his independent use of certain attributes, of certain prerogatives. His preincarnate glory was veiled, as scripture says, except for a brief time. We get this in the mountain of transfiguration where he takes three of his disciplines and he goes up in the mountain and they say his glory. They were struck by his glory. Or perhaps this glory was unveiled just a little bit when the soldiers came to the guard in Gethsemane in order to arrest him. They fall backwards after a flash of his glory.

How? How did he empty himself? How did he make himself nothing? By becoming a king, by coming as a glorious earthly ruler? No. He takes the form of a servant, the Greek word doulas of a slave. He didn't cease to be God in any sense, but he added to his divine nature, human nature, just like ours. It's not mixed, it's not blended. He was without sin, but he was subject to the consequence or results of the fall. Jesus grew tired. Jesus aged. Jesus died.

There was a time when God, the Son, was not a man, but there was never a time when God, the Son, was not. He became a man by taking flesh, adding flesh to himself. He didn't cease to be God, but he became man also. And by his union of natures in his person, he remains in that forever. In heaven, he is the God man with two natures inseparably joined, fully God and fully man.

Philippians 2:8, "And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." He took on a human form. He looked normal. He was a normal-looking guy. However, he was also glorious. He was God, and he humbled himself.

One of the catechism says that he is undiminished deity and perfect humanity united without confusion in one person forever. To deny that he was fully God or to deny that he was fully man, fully human is to veer into heresy. He didn't just become human. He didn't just become a servant or slave, but he actually subjected himself to death, and not just any death, the most embarrassing, humiliating, shameful death imaginable.

Jesus, he could've come down to earth as a king. He could've come down to earth in a different time. He could've come down to earth and forced people to serve him. He does not. He comes down. He serves, lives a perfect life, and then he goes to a cross crucifixion. It was a death that was anything but noble. It was horrible. It was ignoble. It was the death of a common criminal. For Jews or Hebrew theologians, dying on a cross was the lowest death you could possibly die because Deuteronomy says that he who hangs on a cross, he who hangs on a tree is accursed by God. For gentiles, death by crucifixion was the lowest, most despicable death imaginable.

The Roman poet Cicero says, "Far be the very name of a cross, not only from the body but even from the thoughts, the eyes, the ears of Roman citizens." It was the ultimate indignity beyond contempt, excruciating physical pain was only magnified by the degradation, by the humiliation, by the death of the ego, by the humility. So Jesus goes to the height of heights to the depth depths.

And by the way, not until I can give you all the words I can think of to describe how low this was, but not until we can get to heaven will we be able to ... When we see Christ in all his glory on that throne will we then begin to understand just how vast the chasm was of his drop from the height of heights to the depth of depths. Why? Why, Christ? Why'd you do that? Because of his vast love for us. And that right there, that's ... If that doesn't melt your heart, if that doesn't melt you, nothing will. And when your heart melts because of the gospel, that's when you can go back to verses three and four. That's when you can start thinking of others as more significant than yourselves because Christ did that for you.

Pride says my will be done. Humility, that's Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. Not my will, but yours be done. This is why humility is the heart of Christianity. Chris Austin says, "Humility is the foundation of Christian." Agustin says, "The precepts of Christianity are first, second, third, always humility."

C.S: Lewis says this the Mere Christianity, "Pride has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Pride always means enmity. It is enmity. Not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God. In God, you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that, and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison, you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. Proud man is always looking down on things and people. And of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you." Christ comes down to get us to look up away from ourselves, away from naval gazing to Christ.

Practically, how can I get to a place where I treasure Christ's love more than ever? I'll tell you how. Try loving unlovable people. Try loving people who are hard to love. How do you love a porcupine? In the comments below. Chicken wing. How do you love a porcupine? Carefully. There's a lot of people that you're going to love carefully. And when you try to love unlovable people, you begin to realize how hard that is. You begin to realize how much effort it takes, how much you got to sacrifice your own comfort, sacrifice your own time, sacrifice your own desires. Then you begin to understand, oh my, that's what Christ did for me. He loved me not because I was lovable but because I he's loving.

And when we love people with action first, people for whom we do not feel love, I'll tell you this, that the feelings, the affection, they always follow the actions. Affection always follows action. In any single relationship, when you see that you have yourself sacrificed for this person, you heart begins to warm up to them. As you act lovingly, the feelings follow. Feelings follow action.

In Philippians 2:9, "Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name." The crucified, risen, ascended Christ is in a place of supremacy on the throne at the right hand of God, the Father today. He's highly exalted. That's the only time in all the scripture the word is used. He's super exalted. He goes from the height of heights to the depths, a depths of depths back to the height of heights. Say that 10 times fast.

Jesus didn't exalt himself, he was exalted by God, the Father. I love that. I pointed this out multiple times. There's a humility in the trinity that God, the most glorious being, God the Father could say, "Worship me. Worship me. Worship me." Instead, he says, "Worship Christ." Holy Spirit says, "Worship Christ. Worship the Father." The Father and Christ say, "Worship the Holy Spirit." They deflect glory. They deflect exaltation. What an incredible God he is.

Acts 5:30-31, "The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." Well, what is the name that God the Father gave Christ? Is it Jesus? Not just Jesus. Is it Christ? Not just Christ.

Look at verse 10. "So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He's Lord to the glory of God the Father." Lord, this is the equivalent in the Old Testament for Yahweh, the name of God, a name so sacred that Hebrew believers, when they would read the Torah, when they would read the holy scripture, the Hebrew scriptures and they would get to the name of Yahweh, they wouldn't say Yahweh. They would say Adonai because it was so sacred.

And this sacred name is given to Jesus Christ. He is Lord. The one who made himself a slave, the one who made himself to serve, the one who empty himself, made himself nothing is Lord. When we see what he did, that gets us to a point where we realize how full of ourselves we are. If the God of the universe can empty himself by grace through faith, we can empty ourselves of our ego, of our pride, of our selfishness.

To get the full meaning of what scripture is saying here that Jesus is Lord, you got to go back to Isaiah 45. This is the text that St. Paul is actually quoting where God says, "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. By myself, I have sworn from my mouth has gone out, for my mouth has gone out in righteousness, a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow. Every tongue shall swear allegiance to me." To whom? To God. To Yahweh. St. Paul says, "God the Father gives Jesus the name Lord, a name that is above every name, and every knee shall bow to Yahweh, to Jesus our Lord."

Peter says this in Acts 2:33-36. "Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, the Father says to Jesus, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.' Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, that Jesus, this Jesus whom you crucified.'"

St. Paul says Jesus has a name above every name. Jesus is currently sitting at the right hand of God the Father and we can have fellowship with this same Jesus through the spirit of Jesus, which is the Holy Spirit, as we learned in chapter one. And he says, "As sure as Christ has risen, verified historic fact, as sure as by fully God, fully man, the God man sitting on the throne in heaven, as sure as that, as sure as day, as sure as the day follows the night, every knee will bow to Jesus Christ, either willingly in humility in this life or forcibly, forced humility in the next." He says, "Every creature will submit to Christ. In heaven, that's all of the angels who bow willing before Christ. On earth, that's every Christian who will bow willingly before Jesus." "And every one else," he says, "under the earth that Satan and his powerful demonic forces and those in hell who will have to acknowledge the lordship of Christ."

Jesus dethroned himself to serve us, to forgive us for throning ourselves, to getting on the throne of God. He does the opposite of what Satan did. Pride does what Satan did as described in Isaiah 14. Isaiah 14:12-15, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn." That's a reference to Satan. "How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high.' But you are brought down to Sheol, hell to the far reaches of the pit." Pride does what Satan did. Pride is the utmost complete anti God mindset, and humility does Jesus did as described in Philippians. Jesus descended. Jesus humbled. Jesus emptied. Jesus died for us.

And when you see that, when you see what Christ did, when you live your life at the foot of the cross, you can't but grow in humility. You meditate on the cross. When you look up to the cross and see that God man crucified for you, blood poured out in anguish, forgiving us, cut off from the Father and from the Holy Spirit, alienated for the first time in all of his existence where he cries out, "My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?" A reference to the Father and a reference to the Holy Spirit. My God. My God. He did that for us. And when you live your life at the foot of the cross, you can't but grow in humility. And that's what St. Paul does here. He tries to turn our sight to Christ.

Have you bowed a knee to Christ? I call you to do that today. I plead with you. Bow not just your heart to Christ, bow your knees to Christ in repentance. Trust in Christ. At this moment, at that moment, all of your sins are forgiven. You're a child of God. Welcome to the family. That said, please pray with me.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word. Wow. What a rich, rich, incredible text this is. Lord, it's a text that easier to understand than to live. Actually, it's impossible to live. But Lord, I pray by the gospel and power of the Holy Spirit make us a church that embodies this text as the body of Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Whatever time you're watching, thank you so much for tuning in to another edition of our online worship service. Take a moment to say hello to the people. If you're watching on Facebook live, in the comment section, send some emojis, some care emojis, heart emojis, whatever. Good morning. We're so glad that you're tuning in with us.

If you're from the Boston area, from Massachusetts, you know that this week, Governor Baker issued the first stage of reopening the State, and religious gatherings are included in that stage, in that phase. And we are excited about that and optimistic. However, we are cautiously optimistic. Mosaic is a larger church. And in larger church, decisions like this are much more complex. There's many more moving pieces.

So, we are taking this next week, couple weeks, to gather as much information as we possibly can to make the most prudent and informed decision we possibly can. So, we will, as a pastoral staff, send out this week an email with a survey, and we ask that you please fill it out. Let us know as much information as we need to know to open up wisely, and in a way, that blesses our community and the community around us. It's exciting that the end of the tunnel is near.

Praise God, hallelujah. I can't wait to meet in person. I can't wait to sing even if through a mask. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy in their infallible word? Heavenly Father, we thank you for the fact that you are, the fact that you care, and the fact that you steer us by the power of the Spirit into your will. And I pray, Lord, may your will be done in our lives and in the life of the church, and in the life of the city.

Holy Spirit, come. You are the Spirit of Jesus. And today, we focus our eyes on Christ. Let us seek that which is above. Let us set the eyes of our hearts and our souls on the Gospel, from ourselves, from our circumstances, from our problems on Christ. And Jesus, when we are focused on you, that's when true joy is poured into our hearts. And we ask for that, despite circumstance, despite happenstance, may our hearts be full of joy. May we choose to rejoice.

Bless our time in the Holy Scriptures. I pray you send the pastoral staff, wisdom. I pray you send all the members, depending on how they fall, where they fall on this issue of reopening, how soon and how to do it strategically. And Lord, I pray that you send us kindness toward one another. Send us empathy to help understand the people on the other side. And we thank you for the gift of grace.

And I pray that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit to extend grace to one another, to be more unified than ever in this season as a church for your glory. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen. So, as we learned last week with Pastor Ivey kicked off our Philippians series, he did a tremendous job, by the way, phenomenal. I really enjoyed it, blessed my soul, blessed my family, so as we watched together, worshiped together.

Thank you, Pastor Ivey, for that. And if you're tuning in from Mosaic JP today, welcome. We love you. And the reason why Pastor Ivey and I switched off, number one, is to give each other a break since we've been preaching, I think 13, 14 weeks straight. But then, also to remind everybody that we do have a partnership in the Gospel, that we are together. That we are soldiers to soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, preaching the Gospel, advancing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We love you, Mosaic JP. We're praying for you. We miss you. Today, we are in Philippians 1:12-30. And here's what I want to say in the beginning. I challenge you not just to read this book in the sermon series, not just to study it. I challenge you to memorize it. It's doable. It's possible. Ten minutes a day, one to two, to three verses, whatever your capacity, I challenge you to memorize it.

If you need some help, Dr. Andy Davis has a little guide, a PDF that you get online for free and extended. It's a guide to extend the scripture, memorization is profound. I actually did this in seminary. I took a full class, a full semester class on the book of Philippians where we studied every week for three hours in the original Koine Greek. We exegeted the hermeneutics. We did the diagrams and word studies. It was a profound time, a really incredible time in God's word.

In the final exam was, our professor said, Dr. David Alan Black, he said, "The final exam is going to be a couple verses from the book of Philippians. You don't know which ones, and you need to exegete them and you need to translate into English. So, I cheated, but it was like spiritually edifying cheating. So, sanctified cheating. So, I memorized the whole book just in case, and I came into the exam, and I finished the exam in five minutes.

So, praise God, hallelujah. But it was a really, really blessed time in God's word. Here, by way of introduction, just a couple thoughts from the life of Jan Vezikov. The end of May is a special time in my life. This week marks 15 years from when I graduated college, by God's grace. And on May 22nd, just the backstory of my senior year, my best friend in college, Jarrod Lynn, a great guy, he's actually preached here at Mosaic, guest preached.

He's a missionary for Campus Crusade with his family. And he's actually in Puerto Rico right now. He and I committed that we are going to spend an hour in prayer every day from Monday to Friday to pray for God's will in our lives, to pray for God to bless us in the next season of our lives, and to give us His grace and the power of the Spirit to help us make wise decisions about career, about marriage, et cetera. So, there's not many Christians at Brown University. A reporter came that spring, and they found out that there were actually Christians at Brown University. So, a reporter from the New York Times came, and she took a picture of us in our prayer meeting. And on May 22nd, 2005, The New York Times ran an article called... the headline was, On a Christian Mission to the Top. And it just so happened that she took a picture of me and my friend, Tim Havens, praying.

And you could actually find the article online. I'm much more baby-faced, same hair though, same hair. Praise God, hallelujah. I still got the hair. One of the things that that showed me was that God had a very particular plan for my life. And as I was praying, "Lord, what do you want me to do with my life?" I knew that God was telling me, "I want you to maximize your life to exalt Jesus Christ."

And the other reason why this week in my life is important, is 2009, I graduated seminary, packed up a truck this week, 11 years ago in 2009, and moved up to Boston to church plant. And I look back now, and as people are having conversations about essential services and et cetera, let me just say this. Preaching the gospel is the most essential service that any Christian can offer. We exist for the glory of God. We exist to further the common good.

And we exist to advance the gospel. And I want to encourage you to start thinking more like that. How can I, in this season, in the next season, how can I commit my life to advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ? There is nothing more important. That's the title of the sermon today, Advance the Gospel. And as we're having this conversation, as we're reading through the Holy Scripture, one thing I do want to mention is, as people are asking, "What's going on in the world?" As people are asking, "What's going on in my life in this season?"

I want to submit to you that you can't figure out a direction for your life unless you know exactly what your purpose is. Without a purpose, there is no direction. And the simple way to do that is ask yourself, "Why?" Do you have a clear reason, why? Why do you do what you do? Why do you do what you do in your job, in your career? Why do you do what you do with your relationships? Why do you do what you do? What is your why?

The main why behind every single decision that you make. By way of illustration, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat. She says, "Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?" And the cat replies and says, "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." Alice responds and says, "I don't much care where." "Then, it doesn't matter which way you go," says the cat. "You're sure to get somewhere if you only walk long enough."

Do you have a why? Unless you figure out why, why do I live? Why do I do what I do? There's no point in asking about direction in life. With no purpose, there's no direction. The context today of our text is that St. Paul and Pastor Ivey did a phenomenal job last week setting the context. But for the last four years of St. Paul's life, he has lived in miserable physical circumstances. He spent two years in prison in Caesarea on trumped up charges.

And then, he was put on a ship to go to Rome to appear before Nero because he appealed to Caesar as a Roman citizen, he wanted to stand a trial. He wanted to get a hearing. And on the way to Rome from Caesarea, the ship gets shipwrecked, and he gets stranded on an island bitten by a poisonous snake. God heals him miraculously. And then, St. Paul uses that opportunity to preach the gospel to the islanders.

He winters there, continues to Rome, spent another two years in prison awaiting execution. And during those two years, he's chained to a Roman Imperial Guard, 24 hours a day. Circumstances were demeaning. They were demoralizing. They were dehumanizing. However, St. Paul wouldn't allow those circumstances to be discouraging or despairing. He says in our text, Philippians 118, "I rejoice and I will continue to rejoice." It's a choice to rejoice.

He makes that choice, and that changes everything. St Paul, what's your secret power in confinement, in isolation from brothers and sisters, from community, what is your secret? His secret is he had a why. He knew exactly why he was doing, what he was doing, and that was to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ. Athletes know this. Athletes know when you have a goal that you have set, no matter how much suffering you go through, no matter how excruciating the pain, you power through it, and you develop a higher pain tolerance.

There's a story of Greco-Roman Olympic wrestlers, a story of Milo from Croton. And the way that he trained, he was a seven-time Olympic champion in wrestling in the 540 BCs. The way that he trained, and this what made him stronger than anyone prior to him, is as a teenager, there's a calf born in a farm next to his home. And he took that calf and he carried it for as long as he could every single day. And he did that for four years until he wasn't just carrying a calf.

He was carrying a four-year-old bull. It's the idea of progressive overload that made him stronger. And this is why we can read St. Paul, and St. Paul is rejoicing despite the circumstances, despite the suffering. And that was a classic, a very long Jan Vezikov introduction. Let's look at the text, Philippians 112 through 30. And I'm going to read the whole text, because it's so rich.

"I want you to know, brothers, or brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill.

The latter do it out of love knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.

As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith. So, that in me, you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but if your salvation and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engage in the same conflict that you saw I had and now here that I still have." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Man, what a text so rich, so dense. There's so much in it.

And I can't wait to unpack some of the highlights. Where is your joy? Where is the fullness and satisfaction of Jesus Christ in your life? And I'll show you if you answer the following questions. First of all, and this is the outline, where are your eyes? Where is your heart? Where is your honor? Where is your citizenship? Where is your gratitude? First of all, where are your eyes?

St. Paul isn't focused on the problematic circumstances, the uncomfortable circumstances that he finds himself in. He looks farther. He looks further. He's not short-sighted. He's not myopic. He's not just focused on what's in front of him. He's not just focused on the physical. He doesn't allow his problems to be all consuming. How do you that, St. Paul? He does it by doing what he tells us in Colossians 3.

He says, "If you are in Christ, set your minds on the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God." Set your mind on the things that are above. And this is why we close our eyes in prayer, not just to get rid of the distractions. We close our eyes in prayer so that we can focus the eyes of our souls on God. So, we can focus on the spiritual realm. And that's what gives us perspective. St. Paul's eyes are on God.

They're on Christ. And he sees through the physical problems. He sees the gospel advancing. That's what he says in Verse 12, "I want you to know, brothers, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel." Now, this is really interesting. And through the whole quarantine, I have my job as a pastor, and I've been trying to do my best by the power of the Spirit to encourage people.

But along with that job of encouraging, the other job in my life of encouraging my wife and my four daughters, of encouraging the five female roommates that I find myself quarantined in, and encouraging myself as well. St. Paul, I guarantee you, that there were moments as he's in quarantine, as he's imprisoned, I guarantee you there are moments where he grumbled from the flesh, where he thought thoughts of complaint, if not voice them.

And we see in the book of Acts, there were moments like glimmers of St. Paul's flesh coming out. But here, what he does, is he's writing this book in the power of the Spirit. And the power of the Spirit, what the Holy Spirit allows us to do is see through the circumstances and see God's purposes for the suffering. And the purpose is to advance the gospel. He says, "My suffering," and he used the word serve, "that God's sovereignty uses my suffering to serve His purposes by advancing the gospel, by serving the people around me."

Paul doesn't play the victim card. He totally could have. He totally could have gotten bitter at God. He has done everything that God has told me. He says in 1 Corinthians 9:23, "I do all things for the sake of the gospel." So, he could have said, "God, I've been doing everything right. Where are you? Why am I suffering? Why am I in prison? I've got work to do. God, I've given my life to you." By the way, St. Paul is the main architect, other than Jesus Christ.

St. Paul is the next in line. He's the main architect of the greatest movement of the greatest faith and the greatest religion, the most diverse movement in the history of the world. He's the one that spearhead. He was the trailblazer. He was the catalytic leader. And here, we have this guy whose talents were unparalleled, leadership skills unparalleled. He could go to any city, any sophisticated Metropolitan, sophisticated city in the Greco-Roman world, and he could set up shop.

Literally, just go into the public square and start debating anybody and everybody. I think the closest person in our lifetime to this skillset is probably Ravi Zacharias. He passed away this week and we're praying for him, and for his wife and his family. And he's in glory. But he is a giant in the faith. He was a virtual mentor to me. I loved listening to him. I loved listening to him debate people. St. Paul had those skillsets. And yet, he finds himself in a place where he can't use those skills publicly.

But he sees God's purposes in the suffering, and he understands. You know what? Even in prison, you know what, I can pray and I can write. And I can encourage the saints and sees this obstacle as an opportunity. And as bad as it is, God was working it for both historical and personal good. How many letters were written by St. Paul as he was in prison, as he was in house arrest in the last four years of his life?

Some of the most important literature written in all of history, the most influential literature ever written. And God used that time for His glory. St. Paul's in chains for Christ. In Verse 13 he says, "It's become known throughout the imperial guard and to all the rest of my imprisonment is for Christ." How do they know? They knew because Paul was a different prisoner. Other times that he was imprisoned, we're told that he and Silas were singing.

How many prisoners were singing? Men singing in prison. Men don't usually sing unless alcohol is involved. And St. Paul, filled with the Spirit, is singing. He's rejoicing. He is sharing the good news. He is sharing encouragement. The result of these problems is that nonbelievers are being witnessed to because of St. Paul's attitude toward his suffering. Why is St. Paul in prison? He's in prison because Nero Caesar wanted to shackle the gospel.

He wanted to muzzle the gospel. You can't muzzle the gospel. The gospel goes out. And St. Paul proves this that the gospel cannot be quarantined. He says the whole imperial guard is the Praetorian Guard with the elite troops of the Roman Empire. The best of the best soldiers were recruited personally for Nero's guard. That's what he's talking about. These are Caesar's bodyguards. They were the highest paid people of the Empire.

And they served for 12 years in the Praetorian Guard after which they were given leadership positions, strategic leadership positions, in the Roman Empire. So, from a strategic perspective, there is no one more influential in the Roman Empire other than Caesar than these guys. And St. Paul, how did you start conversations with the Imperial Guard? How did they know that your imprisonment is for Christ?

Well, they knew, because for 24 hours a day, every single day for the last two years of St Paul's life, there was one of these soldiers chained to St. Paul for up to four hours, and then they would change guard. So, St. Paul, the most effective, the most convincing, the most articulate evangelist who's ever lived other than Jesus Christ, he has a captive audience for four hours that every single one of these Roman soldiers, they would rotate.

What's he doing? I wish I was a fly on the wall. I wish I made videos. I can't wait to be in heaven and watch these reruns of St. Paul having these conversations of these guys who are hard-bitten, just hardened by war, maybe mean-spirited, pagan Praetorian Guard. And St. Paul is sitting there, having casual conversation, maybe singing hymns, sharing the gospel, telling these guys that no matter what they've done, no matter the sins they've committed, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, and because of His physical resurrection, the resurrected Christ who revealed himself to St. Paul.

St. Paul saw Him with his own eyes. And Christ's glory actually blinded St. Paul for a while until he was healed, St. Paul is sharing that good news. I wonder if any of these guards got saved. They did, they didn't. How do we know this? Well, St. Paul gives us a little evangelistic flex at the end in Philippians 4:21 through 23. It says, "Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. And the grace..." What, what, what, what, what?

"All the saints greet you, especially those..." whose household? Caesar's household. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." He says, "I'm sending you greetings from these soldiers, from these body guards of Nero who actually got saved." And actually, history tells us that Nero had his wife, his mother and children murdered, killed because they had become believers. St. Paul sees God sovereignly using his suffering and service to others and to advance the gospel.

So, here, the main lesson is, whatever you're going through, whatever change you're confined by channel, your chain is to advance the gospel. Result number two of this is the unbelievers are being witness to and believers are being encouraged by seeing St. Paul's suffering. So, well, this is Verse 14. "And most of the brothers haven't become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment are much more bold to speak the word without fear." Confidence, fearlessness and speaking the gospel, where did they get that?

Well, St. Paul's courage is contagious. Meaning, that prior to St. Paul being in prison, prior to him suffering, the believers lacked confidence. They were fearful of speaking the word. Friends, if you're a Christian, we are called to do good works. We are called to love. We are also called to speak, speak words of the good news. And St. Paul's encouraged that most of the brothers are doing evangel... these are a lay people speaking the word without fear.

St. Paul sees that God has a purpose for our problems in Romans 8:28. It says this, "And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to His purpose." All things including our suffering. Matthew Henry, a theologian a long ago, he's commenting on this text of Romans 8:28. He said, "God is the only true alchemist." Alchemist, this comes from alchemy in the Middle Ages.

People were trying to figure out how to turn lead into gold, where lead is our suffering, and God, the great alchemist, turns the lead of our suffering into the gold of glory. So, focus your attention on God, then everything else will come into focus. That's one, where are your eyes? Point two is, where is your heart? Meaning, what do you love most? What do you desire most? And suffering exposes what we truly desire. When you feel, unexpected pain, the real you comes out, right?

When you hurt your foot, when somebody by accident bumps into you and drops something, when someone cuts you off on the road, something erupts from the inside, and you're like, "Sorry, I don't know what got into me well." Well, what got into you is what's in you, and that's your sin. And St. Paul here is revealing that sin is actually misordered love. It's loving things in a primary way that should be loved in a secondary, tertiary way. We are to love ourselves, that's important.

But the best way to love yourself, God actually says, is to deny yourself. The best way to love yourself is to follow Christ. The best way to find your life is to lose your life in the upside-down Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Loving God more than yourself is the best way of loving yourself. That's where true freedom is found. John 8:36, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." 2 Corinthians 3:17, "Now the lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

If your heart is in the right place, you will always be free to rejoice. Wherever you are, even in prison, you can be free from anxiety, free from sin, free from depression, from lust, from compulsion. Free to enjoy God wherever you are, however you're going through the season, enjoy God. Spend time with God. Make sure that your heart is in a place where God is number one. You love Him more than anything else. And this I get from Verses 15 through 18.

Some people who even preach the gospel didn't do it out of love for God. They did out of love for self. Look at Verse 15, "Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others for goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that I rejoice." He says, there's two categories of preachers.

One, Christians who serve God. Some Christians serve God out of love for God, out of love for people. Others serve God out of the unholy trinity of love for me, myself and I. And he uses the word, here, selfish. The term, selfish ambition, it was usually the politicians who tried everything they could to build a personal platform following. And here's the thing, he calls them brothers. He calls them brethren. They preach the gospel.

That's Verse 14, "And most of the brothers, some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry," in Verse 15. Out of jealousy, jealousy for Paul's perhaps talents. Jealousy perhaps because of Paul's influence or of his clout of how God was using him. And St. Paul says, "Nevertheless, they are brothers." And here, this is an illustration of how much wrong can be in a believer's life, and it should humble us as we recognize that there is still sin in our hearts, perhaps mixed motives.

And he used the word, envy and rivalry. And envy, you really got to watch out for envy. Whom do you envy? Whom do you try to rival? And this is comparing your life to other people. Instead of just focusing on the lane that God has chosen for you, ordained for you, you start looking side to side about the lanes that God has ordained for other people. Be careful of envy, because it's a joy killer. The fact that selfish and unworthy motives produce incidental benefits doesn't make them any less evil.

It's only by the grace of God that God used those preachers, used those Christians for His glory to advance His gospel. But the fact that God used them, that doesn't justify their wrong ambitions. And 1 Corinthians 4:5, St. Paul says, "Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God."

There is sin if there are mixed motives in our ministry to God and our service to people, and to repent and trust in the Gospel. Proverbs 16:2, "All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit." Proverbs 17:3, "The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord test hearts." Philippians 1:18, Paul says this, "What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice."

What does it matter? Who cares? Is Christ getting exalted? Is the gospel getting advanced? Yes. Great. Point three is, where is your honor? What makes you feel honored? What makes you feel ashamed? And these are two really important categories. Shame is a universal feeling. We have all felt it. We do continue to feel it in different seasons. And St. Paul here gives us the remedy, the recipe for overcoming our shame, is to seek the honor of Christ.

When we seek our own honor and things in our life are exposed, that there are chinks in our honor and cracks in our honor, that right there brings us shame. But when we focus on honoring Christ with our life, what it does is it brings honor into our own life, because the only honor that really matters isn't being honored by people, but being honored by God.

Look at Verse 18b, "Yes, and I will rejoice for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance. As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.

I'm hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me, you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again." He says, "I've been sustained this whole time by your prayers."

Thank you for praying. And I've been sustained by the power of the Spirit of Jesus, which is the power of the Holy Spirit. These two things have strengthened me, prayers and the Spirit. He says, "I trust that this will all be used for my deliverance." He's not talking about freedom from captivity. He's talking about freedom from sin. He knows what he believes, that this is true. These are facts.

And that even if he dies, all death is God coming, unlocking him from the prison of sin, from the prison over the fallen flesh, from the prison of the physical world to the physical realm. And he's ushered into heaven. C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock, he says, "You will never know how much you believe something until it is a matter of life and death. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable. Think of it as a place of training and correction, and it's not so bad."

He says if you think of this world as an all-inclusive resort and the food is mediocre, you're not so happy. If you think of this world as a boot camp and the food is mediocre, you're happy you have food. It's changed perspective. And Philippians 1:20, St. Paul says, "It's my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death."

He says, "My hope is grounded, anchored in Jesus Christ, not in myself. And it's not my honor that I'm worried about." He's not worried about getting attention. He's not worried about his reputation. He's not worried about his own honor. Therefore, there's nothing that can really shame him. This is about a year ago, I'm walking to church with one of my daughters who shall remain unnamed for the purposes of the story.

And she asked, she said, "Dad, what are you preaching on today?" And I said, "I'm preaching on the topic of shame." And she said, "What's shame?" And it just so happened that that night, she had an accident in wetting her bed. And I said, "You know that feeling of when you woke up from doing that?" She said, "Yeah." So, that's shame. She said, "Yep. That makes sense." We all have experienced shame. We all continue to experience shame.

And that's partially because we think too much of ourselves. We're too focused on self. And then, when we, ourselves, don't live up to our own expectations of our own greatness, we feel shame. Well, if we change perspective, or it doesn't matter what people think about me, we're freed from fear of people. All that matter is what God thinks of me. And the way that we can battle shame is just really practically. Ask yourself, whatever you do, whatever you're tempted to do, "Will this bring Christ honor? Will this action bring Christ honor?"

And if not, then probably after this action, I'm going to feel shame. And that's an uncomfortable place to be, because God uses the Holy Spirit to convict us through that feeling and use our conscience to convict us through that. So, why I do this to get to a place where I feel depression, where I feel anxiety, where I feel shame? When I can focus on doing everything I can by the power of the Spirit to bring honor to Christ?

And this is what frees us from that feeling. And it frees us from the idle of acceptance. I'm free from fear because I know what's most important, and that's God. And I fear Him and Him alone. And St. Paul also says that this is the purpose of life. This is his why. Remember we start at this, what's your why? What's your why for living? What's your bottom line for living? In Philippians 1:21, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Boston College philosopher, Peter Kreeft, says, "This is the most perfect simple statement ever written on the meaning of life and death, 'For me to live is Christ, and to die his game.'" He's not suicidal, but he's anticipating death. That it is coming and he's not afraid of dying. Dying is just on to better things. It's a graduation. It's a mission accomplished. Dying is like celebrating graduation during the season where you worked so hard and you're about to graduate.

You wanted to celebrate, and you can't. So, you put on the cap and gown, and you go to campus with a mask. And you have someone take pictures of you by yourself. That's what death is in that the graduation isn't here for us. We live, we fulfill the mission that God has for us, and we die. And the graduation is in heaven. Here's how I think about it, and I don't know if this is just my sanctified imagination.

I think about death as running through the tunnel into the stadium, Gillette Stadium, if you will. In the good old days when Tom Brady was still here before he betrayed all of Pats Nation, before he became Tampa Brady. But his run out, running out through that tunnel, into the stadium, is one of the most epic run outs ever. That's going to be us. That's maybe not you. It's definitely going to be me running through that tunnel or running through that passage between life and death, running into heaven. And St. Paul says, "That's gain. For me to live is Christ." I live for Christ. I live with Christ. I abide with Christ. I live for Him to exalt Him, to glorify Him. And then, in heaven, it's gained because I get more of Him. I get Christ physically. I can hug it out with Jesus. And gain also, yes, intimacy, and yes, more of God. And that more of God is the return on investment. But the word gain here is actually a financial term. It's an accounting term.

He's saying, "I have invested my whole life. In that return, the ROI on this investment. Perhaps I'm not going to see here, but I will see it in heaven. And that's going to be closer proximity to the Lord." So, how would you answer the question, for me to live is what? Practically, like honestly, what do you live for? Is it for possessions or pleasure, power, position, prestige, popularity, what? What is it? Is it death? If you live for any of those things, then death is the end of those things. If you live for Christ, ultimately, you just get more of Christ in the end.

St. Paul here has a very profound view on life. He knows that his why is strong enough to fortify him through the hardness, the hard season in life. Philippians 1:22 through 24, "If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which shall I choose I cannot tell. I'm hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account."

What I want? Here's what I want. I'd love to be with Christ right now. So, that's what I want. However, what's best for you? Well, what's best for you, St. Paul says, "Is for me to still be here to care for you, to disciple you, to encourage you, to lead you in following the Lord." I'd much rather go and be with Jesus, but I am going to set my desires aside in order to care for you. Analyze Paul's priorities here. Analyze Paul's priorities. What are Paul's priorities?

Christ first, others second, Paul third. He's going to deal more of this in the text next week where he says, "Count others more significant than yourself." I find this to be really relevant for this season as we think about reopening worship gatherings and how to do it, and this is the mindset each one of us needs to have. I know what my personal desires are, is to meet last week, is to meet a month ago. That's my personal desire.

But I also understand the sensitivity of the other side. And here, we need to make these the priorities, God first, others second, our desires last. And this is what it means to live a God-honoring life. He says, "To die is gain." And I'll mention here that he's talking about death. And he's talking about the fact that the die and gain are connected together. And he says, "I'm going to depart and be with Christ." It informs our theology of death, that death isn't soul asleep.

It's not annihilationism. It's not reincarnation and it's not purgatory. There's no such thing as purgatory. So, if you come from a Roman Catholic background and you were taught the purgatory is a thing, it's a category. That is false teaching. It has no basis in Holy Scripture. That doctrine is a doctrine of error. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that purgatory is a place of purifying fire. And the only support for this is a tiny little reference in 2 Maccabees in which isn't part of the Koine. It's apocryphal, 2 Maccabees 12:46.

And the doctrine of purgatory was invented by Pope Gregory the Great in 593. So, we're talking about five centuries after the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ. And it wasn't accepted as official Catholic dogma until 1439. Philippians 1:25-26, "Convinced to this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith. So, that in me, you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again." That's the goal of this ministry, their progress and joy and the faith.

Fourth is, where is your citizenship? Verse 27, "Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but if your salvation, and that from God."

The phrase in the very beginning of Verse 27, "let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ," is a Greek word. Politeuomai, which means to live as a citizen, and this is a very important word. It's a politically-charged word. Because Philippi was a palace of the Roman Empire and politeuomai is citizenship. And he says, "Live like citizens, not of the Roman Empire, but of your kingdom in heaven." Live as citizens of heaven. And this is crucial for the Roman soldiers.

They gave years of their life to earn citizenship. It was that important to them. It gave them rights, and it also came with responsibilities and honor. Remember traveling? Remember flying to places? Oh, I miss that. I never like the flying process in the sea. I don't really fit in airplane seats, but I miss traveling. And one of my favorite places to travel in the whole world is the place in the world that I'm from, which is Estonia, and my ancestors are from Finland.

And Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. So, I grew up speaking Russian. So, that area of the world is near and dear to me. But I love going there as a citizen of the United States. And here's why. Here's what happens. When I go to Finland or Estonia, or Russia, everybody, 95% of the people look like me. I look like them. They look like me, the size and all this. We're similar but we're different. As soon as we start having a conversation, they realize, "Oh, wow, where are you from?" "I'm from the United States. I'm a citizen of the United States."

And I do my best to be a good citizen of the United States to fight the idea of the cliché, dumb American whatever a tourist know. I want to represent my country, because I love this country. Well, why I'm here for a reason. I love the people of this country. This is what St. Paul is talking about, live in a manner worthy of the citizenship that you have, and this should inform our political views. And this should inform how we analyze the political decisions of the people around us.

We're citizens, primarily not of here. We're in the world, but not of the world. Point five is, where's your gratitude? Verse 29, "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake and engage in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have." This is a challenging verse. He says, "It's been granted to you. It's been gifted to you. God gives you a gift."

And this gift comes with another gift. There's two gifts here. Analyze the text, "It's been granted to you, gifted to you for the sake of Christ you should not only believe." Meaning, it's been granted to you, gifted to you that you should believe. Faith is a gift. It's crucial. If you are a believer, you're a believer because God gave you the gift of faith. And if you are not a believer, ask for the gift of faith, God gave me this gift. It's a gift. It's not something that you earn.

It's not something that you achieve. It's something that you receive, believe and receive, receive and believe. This is how the Christian life works. We live from life, not to life. Our life for God is a gift returned for His far greater gift given to us. He gives us the gift of faith. And God, we are thankful to you for that gift. And that gratitude for that gift, for that grace, is what actually propels us forward. Our strength in the Lord is the joy of salvation. We're rejoicing. Oh, my, whatever happens in this life, I spend eternity with God.

I come to God. I ask for forgiveness of sins. I give my life over to Him. I entrust myself to Him. I submit myself to Him, and I have eternal life. And this is what propels us forward to accept the second gift. Look at the text, "It's been granted to you for the sake of Christ. You should not only believe in him but also suffer for His sake." Gratitude for the gift of faith. That gratitude gives us the power to accept the gift of suffering, recognizing that God uses suffering sovereignly in service to His kingdom.

St. Paul here says this is conflict. Faith is war. Fight the good fight of faith. And I'll close with this. In this season, many of us are experiencing sadness and anxiety, and depression. And if you focus your life, if the why of your life is happiness in season like this, it's impossible to experience happiness and sadness at the same time. But if your why is the glory of God furthering the common good and following Christ, if that's your why, if to live as Christ and to die is gain, if that's your why, God gives you the gift of joy.

And joy is so much deeper than happiness. You can experience joy and sadness at the same time. You can experience joy and sorrow at the same time. We can grieve but not as those without hope. We can experience joy and pain, joy and heartbreak, joy and devastation. The way to pleasure is power. The way to happiness is happenstance. And the way to joy is Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this great word, what a dense, rich, theologically profound text, and so practical. It's so relevant for our day. Lord, I pray by the power of the Spirit, take this word. Take these words and massage them into our soul so we are transformed, so we are encouraged. So, our hearts are filled with joy as we continue to live for your glory to further the common good by advancing the gospel, and bless us all this week. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Online. Good morning, Brookline. Good morning, Jamaica Plain. We are for the next few weeks here doing a series in Philippians. And so Pastor Jan and I are going to be switching back and forth in an act of gospel partnership, and we'll be talking more about that in just a minute. So thank you for being with us today. If you're new and you're watching, we encourage you to comment in the chat and let us know you're here, and we'd love to be able to talk to you more. If you have any questions about the message, if you have any questions about the service of the church, please get in touch with us.

Also, the Connect Card is the best way that you can do that. We have a digital Connect Card and you can put as much information on there as you're comfortable with and we would love to get back in touch with you to help you stay connected to Mosaic, help you stay connected to anything really that has to do with the church. We would love to talk to you, so please fill that out if you want to know more. We are going into the book of Philippians, and it is all about having peace in the midst of chaos. And that's pretty relevant to where we are today. I want to talk about my wife for a second, and I don't know if this is bragging or what it is, but she gave me permission to tell this story.

Most people, if you're going to work with somebody, you want to work with somebody who gives 100%. We say, "Oh, I really like them because they just give their best." Every once in a while, you find people that go above and beyond, and you might say, "Wow, they give 110%." Well, my wife, Allie is not the person that gives 100%, not the person that gives 110%, she thinks those people are lazy and scoffs at them. She gives 150% at everything she does. It is in her DNA as a person to give more than everybody else. You might say that her spiritual gift is extra, that's at least what I like to tell her. I remember when we were at Chick-fil-A as teens, the general manager would get her to clean different things because she'd always do an excellent job at cleaning a certain part of the store.

So he'd say, "Clean the back of the store." And in one instance, she had to clean the whole kitchen. Well, she said, "It's not good enough to clean the whole kitchen from top to bottom, I'm going to clean the entire store from top to bottom." And she did, and she did an excellent job. She even went out into the foyer and was polishing brass on a flag that was out in our foyer. On Maggie's first birthday, the one that she'll never remember, Allie did a life-sized Candy Land game where full grown human adults could collect candy in a game of Candy Land life sized.

If you have ever gotten her to make a meal for you, you’ll know that she'll probably make you enough food that it'll last three days, and then she'll probably also try to cook for you for the rest of the week, and it's a massive blessing. So if she ever offers, make sure you say yes, I think her cooking is pretty good. Last week, sadly, was our pastoral resident, Dominic's last week with us. And we hated to see him go, and I asked Allie if she would get him a gift card, a card, write a little thank you, that kind of thing. Just a small appreciation. And so she went to the store and she comes back now with one gift card, she comes back with three different gift cards and a basket full of all kinds of goodies that he can have on his trip back to Texas.

Her spiritual gift is extra. If you've been watching her Mini-Mo lessons, you probably know this, and if you haven't, you should go watch a couple of them. Now, we are in a chaotic time, and during chaos like this we have different ways that we can go about it. Some of us can retreat, we just back off. We don't want to be a part of anything, we want to just stay isolated from everyone. And not just in the sense of physical isolation, which we're having to do legally, but in terms of relational isolation, we just want to back off. Others of us play it safe, we don't want to give too much because we don't want to wear ourselves out. And some of us, even land in apathy, we just can't seem to get motivated to do anything during this time.

Life is too chaotic, it's too strange and we don't know what's coming next. Maybe we can't find the motivation or we're scared or we're worn out. And all of those things are true, because some of you, I know that although a lot of people have lost jobs, have had hours reduced, some of you are working more than ever and you are just plain worn out. It is a chaotic time. We have coronavirus that could seriously kill us, has caused a major threat to our population. We've seen thousands and thousands die, and some of them close to us, and that poses a real threat. But on the other side of that, if we don't die, what kind of world are we going to be entering into after all this is over?

And so in the midst of this, the Apostle Paul, someone not a stranger to chaos and struggle and pain, the Apostle Paul comes to us and he says, "In the midst of this raging sea, there's something you need to remember. You need to remember that you are on the boat, Gospel and you have a captain who is Christ. No matter how the sea is raging around you, you can stay above it." And if that's true, then we can have inner peace in utter chaos. And if we have that inner peace, if we have security that our foundation, our boat that's making it through the sea is the gospel and our captain is Christ, that means that there is no reason that we can't all go all in and give 150% to the mission of God to what he has given us.

See, the circumstances of our mission have changed, there's no doubt about that. Things are very different, the fact that you're watching from home right now means that it is very different. The circumstances have changed, but God's mission to us as his church has not. God's mission to us as his church across the world and his mission to us specifically as Mosaic has not changed even though the circumstances have. Now, Paul in the first 11 verses of Philippians is going to use this word several times, All. And he's going to use it four times explicitly, you'll see it in the English, you'll see it there.

And he's going to use it another level, 11 times hidden in the words that you and your, because in English, we don't have second person, plural. So here in New England, every time you see the word you, you might say, "You guys." If you're down South, you might say, "Y'all." If you were in Pittsburgh, you might say, "Yenz." And if you were in New Jersey, you might say, "Youse." So every time that he is saying you are your here, all is embedded in those words. And so 15 total times he refers to the Philippian church in whole, in completeness, in all. See, in the midst of the chaos, he's telling them, "You can't retreat," but that all of them in the midst of their circumstances should go through together giving 150% all-in for gospel partnership, working together as God's church.

And so today, we're going to read Philippians 1:1-11. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you, always praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. I am sure of this, that he who started the good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Indeed, it is right for me to think this way about you because I have you in my heart and you are all partners with me in grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel. For God is my witness. How deeply I miss all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And I pray this, that your love will keep on growing in knowledge, in every kind of discernment so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

Let's pray. Father, today we go into your word to hear from you. I pray, Lord, as we examine this book of Philippians, this letter written to the Philippian church, I pray that you would speak to us through it, that we could hear how your word has been moving through the generations and through the years to meet us today in the midst of our chaos. And Lord, I pray that in that we could find utter peace in the chaos that we live in. God, today I pray your word would speak to us, and when you speak to us today, we would obey. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Now, Paul, as we read this passage just a moment ago, he is in deep love with this church as a whole. It seems like he just really, really likes these people. Maybe you've had people in your life that you just really wanted to be around, every time you got around them, it was an enjoyable time. And it seems like that's Paul here, he just loves this church and we see all of this start in Acts 16. It's a fascinating story. Paul was on a missionary journey and he was going to a certain place, and on his way to that place, God interrupted him with a dream. In his dream, this man came to him and beckoned him to come across the water to Macedonia. And Macedonia is the region which Philippi was in.

And so Paul gets this dream and he wakes up from the dream and he says to his brother, Silas, he says, "We have to go to Macedonia." So they head into Macedonia and they end up at Philippi. Once they get to Philippi, they meet a Jewish fashionista named Lydia. She made purple cloth, and it was the most expensive cloths. She was probably pretty wealthy. She and several other ladies were gathering by a local river to worship and pray together. And Paul shows up. And when Paul shows up, this authority to teach them, these ladies are thrilled to have someone that can teach them because Philippi is not a very Jewish city. In fact, it probably didn't have enough Jewish people in it to have a synagogue. It required 10 men in the city to have a synagogue, in there doesn't seem to be a synagogue, which is why they're meeting by the river.

And so Paul shows up, he begins to teach them in the midst of that, he gives them the gospel and Lydia hears the gospel for the first time, and she is transformed by what she hears the Apostle Paul telling her. And then she goes to her household, she gives them the gospel and they're saved and they're all baptized that day in believing. And then Lydia in her hospitality asks Paul and Silas to come stay with her as their own mission in Philippi. To stay in Philippines a little bit longer, stay on mission a little bit longer and they can stay in her household while they're on mission in Philippi.

So they go about their mission and they're doing all the different things they're going to do. But everywhere they go and every turn they take, there's a young girl, slave girl following them. And this young slave girl's demon possessed. And everywhere they go, this demon-possessed slave girl is trying to put a curse on them. And they can't seem to get away from her. And eventually, Paul just gets so frustrated that he turns around and yells, "In the name of Jesus Christ, get out of her." And the demon leaves the girl and she's freed and made clean, and she's transformed in that moment.

The problem was, is that she was earning money for her master's through divination. And so when Paul cast out this demon, she's no longer able to do the magic and doesn't want to do the magic that she was controlled by the demon to do. And so the masters get angry at Paul and Silas and they get them arrested and thrown into prison. When in prison, Paul and Silas do what Paul and Silas do, which is they start a worship service and start preaching the gospel. And they're in there and singing, and in the midst of one of their hymns, an earthquake happens and the shackles come loose and the gate flings open, and they could escape; God's freedom.

But God had a different plan. You see, the jailer, who was probably a Roman veteran, he was going to kill himself because he had failed. In a culture of shame and honor, it was shame for him to let those in the prison go free and let them escape. And so he was going to kill himself, he's going to run himself through the sword. But before he can, Paul yells out, "Don't do it, we're still here!" And he runs in there and he gets his torches. He gets all his men and they go in there to the cell and there's Paul and Silas still there in the jail cell, even though they are free to go.

It's this moment that is so powerful to the jailer, and I think he must've been listening to them sing, he probably was a little frustrated with them because they wouldn't shut up. And he must've heard the gospel because immediately, he falls on his knees in front of them and he says to them, "How can I believe? How can I know Christ?" And they say, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." And so, what we see is that this new church is started by a former pharisee, a fashionista, a slave girl, and a Roman veteran. It's so strange, it sounds like the start of a joke. They start this new church in Philippi, and the household of the prison guard comes to Christ and they're all baptized and there seems to be this fledgling growing church in Philippi.

Paul becomes very close to these people in his subsequent visits to them. But in the passage that he writes today, in Philippians, a lot of things have changed over the years. You see, Philippi not being a very Jewish or Christian place was hostile to this new religion that seemed to be taking over their city and persecution became very strong against them. Well, Lydia was probably quite wealthy because of what she did, it seems that she had given up her wealth for Christ, not on purpose necessarily, but because it was taken from her, that she was persecuted for her beliefs. And the same for the jailer and this little slave girl that they had been persecuted and they were in absolute chaos at this moment. Life was hard and difficult.

That's where the Philippian church finds themselves at the beginning of Philippians chapter one. Paul finds himself in a difficult and chaotic situation too. Again, he finds himself in prison. If you're paying attention he says he is in prison right here at the beginning of Philippians. The he is also in chaos, and he's probably under house arrest and he's chained to a Roman guard and at home without a job or any support and not a whole bunch to do. Sound familiar? Maybe you can relate right now. You would expect him to be sorrowful in this moment, to be sad about how the Philippian church is going, to be upset about his current circumstance, but that is not what we see.

Paul here in Philippians writes his happiest book. He writes his happiest letter out of all of them, it stands out. A lot of times he goes in these letters, he's telling people off. And this is no perfect church, he will get to telling a few people off a little bit later. But the general tone of this letter is joy in happiness. That is so strange, in the midst of all this difficulty, in the midst of all this chaos, they have such peace. And what is it about them? What is it about the situation? Why and how do they have this piece in utter chaos. And I think it comes down to this gospel partnership that they had. It was this unlikely foundation and this fellowship that they had in the gospel and these very different people from a slave girl to a prison manager to a fashion guru can start a church in Philippi.

In this series, we're going to see how Paul and the Philippians live above the chaos to find peace. And our first stop in this is going to be seeing how they persist in gospel partnership even in the midst of chaos, they persist in gospel partnership even in the midst of chaos. And so, all-in gospel partnership, point one if you're taking notes. All-in gospel partnership looks like cultivated longing through prayer. Listen to how he starts his letter here. He says, "I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you. Always praying with joy for you, for all of you in my every prayer."

Paul probably had a lot of time. He was stuck in that house, had a lot of time to think, had a lot of time to write, had a lot of time to pray and study, and this Philippian church I assume, came to his mind often. And every time they came to his mind, he'd throw up a prayer, he'd start praying for them, and with joy and thanksgiving. Listen to how he describes his love for them. He says, "I have you in my heart." That's like how you would talk to someone you love, maybe a girlfriend or a wife or fiancé. You'd say, "I have you in my heart." And this is what he says to this church, he says, "I have you in my heart, for God is my witness how deeply I miss all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus." He's saying, "My affection for you, it rivals that of Christ."

Verse nine, "And I pray this, that your love will keep on growing in knowledge, in every kind of discernment." That love is not just a feeling, although we feel love, but it is a knowledge of each other and a common foundation in the gospel that stirs that love in us and out of it pours joy and out of that joy comes peace. This is no random church to Paul. We said these are people that he is thinking of, faces that he remembers, names that he can recall, and probably is praying specifically for people. He sat down with their families and had meals with these people, and he wanted to be back with them, not just so he could go visit another church so he could, I don't know, preach another sermon, but he wanted to be with these people because he loved them so much.

See, his love and his longing for them was good and he cultivated that longing through prayer for them. He prayed and that longing just continued and continued. Maybe in this time of isolation, we can relate to the Apostle Paul here because he is isolated and far away, and it can feel like him to a much lesser extent, let's be real, but it can feel like we're in house arrest. We haven't seen our family that we love so much, and Zoom is like a Band-Aid for community, it's all right but it's like a cheap Band-Aid too that doesn't stick enough to stay where it's supposed to stay but also sticks too much when you pull it off. You know what I'm talking about? It's like we don't quite get what we need.

And I'm thankful for the technology that allows us to do it, but we still long to be with each other, we long to see our community groups face to face, those people that we've spent, some of us spent years in community with, we want to see them. We want to see our church family, we want to love them. We want to hear those singing that we are used to, hear singing behind us or in front of us. We were just talking that there's some people that we're used to hearing them say Amen all the time, and we haven't been able to hear that, and it's been strange. We've been separated, isolated. I'm reminded of my friend Jimmy who comes to our CG. He came to our CG before the coronavirus and shows up in Zoom every single week.

And every week the first thing he says to our group, he's like, "I miss you guys." And we're like, "We miss you too, Jimmy." He makes sure to text that to me every week too, he's like, "I miss you guys." And I think we can all relate to where Jimmy is in that, because the church is a family, we love each other. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC said this weekend on Twitter and spoke to me. He said, "Many in the media and government seem to think Christians want to be in churches. They've misunderstood what church is. It's not a sacred space we long to be in, it's a people we long to be with. We want to be together, a symbol, a church, wherever it is we meet."

The point he's trying to make is that even though we're in this time and even though we're trying to keep each other safe, and even though we're following the law, which are all good things, we should still long to be with each other. We should not just be like, "I want to say like this forever." We should desire to be with each other. When Allie and I were engaged right after I asked her to marry me, and this was on purpose, she went off to summer camp. I was saying, "Yeah guys, she's mine and I'm hers and we're going to get married at the end of the summer." And so she goes off to summer camp after she's engaged and I missed her like crazy. We would sit there and talk on the phone, man, I don't know if how it is when you're just absolutely in love.

We'd just talk on the phone forever and it's all gushy and mushy. And if anybody was listening, they'd be like, "Ugh, this is disgusting," kind of thing. But that's just how it is. And we loved it. We longed to be with each other. I wanted to be with her so bad and just talk to her and see her face. This was before FaceTime or anything like this, we were just talking on dumb phones. And I asked her if she would get a stuffed animal she had and spray her perfume on it, and she did that for me and it made me feel like she was there. And so it was like this longing and desire. I know, it's super mushy gushy, and that's how I love is, especially when you're engaged.

This longing for her is what I had. Listen, you shouldn't be spraying perfume on a bear, that's sort of weird, but we should be longing to be with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, that we should want to be with each other. And we cultivate that through intentional prayer for and with each other. I'm always so encouraged when I get texts from friends that they're praying for me. Sometimes I'll be having a bad day for whatever reason, just things aren't working out like I want or the news has just depressed me again and I don't know what's going to happen or what's going on with the church, what's going on with the world or man, it just seems like a crazy time. And I'll get a text from a friend, I'll get a text from a pastor, I'll get a text from a family member, it says, "Hey, I just want you to know today I prayed for you." And I see that, and it encourages my soul. And so my longing to be with them is increased and their longing to be with me is hopefully increases, we pray for each other.

Sometimes in the midst of chaos, I receive peace when someone prays for me, but other times in the midst of chaos, when I am in my most chaotic time, times in life, I pray for others. And in that prayer for others, I also receive joy and peace that comes from that. And then if I have their number, I text them and say, "Hey, just want you to know, I prayed for you." And hopefully if they're going through something that day, it's meaningful to them. I believe that the Lord has brought them to my mind on purpose, and whenever they come to mind, as Paul says here, I want to pray for them. I've woken up in the middle of the night and pray for people.

I don't text them overnight, but I've woken up in the middle of the night and pray for some of you just because you're on my mind for no reason, just the Lord has puts you on my heart, and so I pray. And I think that in the church, we have this economy of prayer that is, I pray for you when you pray for me. We both long to be with each other and there's this community that ultimately points us toward heaven, the time when we will always be together and be perfect community. It's this beautiful economy of prayer that leads to peace and joy. And so this week I want you to do an exercise.

This is your homework because we're separated, the temptation is to stay isolated. But what I want you to do is instead of thinking about your chaotic situation, because we all know that we're in the midst of chaos, some more than others and on different levels, but in the midst of your chaos, I want you to take your mind off yourself. I want you to put your mind on others. I want you to think about those in your community group that you haven't been able to truly see face-to-face, that they've just been pixels on a screen for several months now. I want you to think about them, I want you to pray for them, I want you to remember those around you in your church shows, in your volunteers, in many Mosaic your pastors and worship directors.

I want you to think about them and pray for them, and if you have their number or a Facebook or Instagram or whatever, just send them a message, say, "Hey, I just want you to know... " You don't have to get into a lot of details, you don't have to start a whole conversation, "I just want you to know I prayed for you today and I'm praying for you." I guarantee you that's going to encourage them in this time. So pray for each other and grow that longing in your heart, cultivate it so that it can bloom into something beautiful for the gospel.

Now, Paul's joy is magnified and his longing for them is continued through prayer, but it's magnified because they cared for him. Listen to what he says in verse five, he says, "Praying with joy for all of you in my every prayer," verse five, "Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now." The reason that he has them in his mind is because they've already shown him care, they've already shown him affection. The word partnership here is koinonia, it means fellowship, and it's often used for business agreements. And so in this instance, the connotation that it has is a financial transaction, that they were financially generous to Paul and it just stirred love in his heart because they were providing for him.

And this time while he was in house arrest, he wasn't able to work, he didn't have food on his own. The only way he lived was by the outside support of others. He wasn't able to make tents while he was in prison. And so they provided for him, them and other churches. We know that they were a generous, poor persecuted church because this is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians eight, he says, "During a severe trial brought about by affliction, the Macedonian churches," that's who he's talking about here, "Abundant joy and their extreme poverty overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part."

Paul is saying to the Corinthian church here that poverty and persecution didn't stop the Philippian church from being generous, "And so Corinthian, your wealth shouldn't stop you from being generous." And so we see that first, all in gospel partnership looks like, cultivated, longing through prayer. And second, it looks like unusual generosity, unusual generosity, that we as God's people should be so generous that it's a little weird, that even in the midst of our struggle, we are still being generous. I know it's a difficult time right now, for a lot of people, you've lost jobs, others of you, you aren't getting the hours you want. Some of you, you don't know when the cuts are coming, you hear rumblings of it.

And so it's a difficult time, but no amount of insecurity or lack of job should ever stop a follower of Christ from being generous. Let me say this to you, you cannot afford to not be generous. I know a preacher talking about money and on TV, this is really a bad combination here. Let me say that, generosity is not less than money, we always should have that in the equation of our generosity. But generosity is more than money, it's not exclusively our finances. It might be a couch given to a friend who for whatever reason has been evicted or whatever, they don't have a place to live for a moment. Maybe it's just fixing leftovers or buying groceries for someone that's in need.

Perhaps it's shopping or getting the medicine for someone who's elderly that can't go to the store and get it for themselves, you use your time. Perhaps you are writing letters for those on the front lines. Maybe it's sharing time with a friend who's dealing with difficulties, mental health difficulties, this time being alone is difficult for a lot of people. And I am really blessed, sometimes it can be frustrating to live in a house with six other people. You heard me right, I have six other roommates and a lot of them are small. And I can be like, "Ugh, there's people all around me all the time, I can't get out of here." But I know there's a lot of you out there I've spoken to you that it's difficult because you're all by yourself, your roommates has left, there's no one around and you are by yourself.

And so maybe you can be generous or maybe someone else can be generous to those who are struggling with mental health. And in a few chapters, we will see how Epaphroditus came and visited Paul in the midst of prison and offered him company, he was generous with his time to offer him company. And just because you don't have any finances right now, I get it, just because you don't have, that doesn't mean you can't be generous in other ways, and so I would encourage you to be generous. There's two big things that I am just so thrilled about Mosaic doing. The first is that through our COVID-19 fund on the JP side at least, we've raised almost $2,500.

Our little church raised almost $2,500 to give away to those in the most need around us. Those inside the church, those outside the church, and we have given away every dime of that money to help people. That's really been encouragement to me to see your generosity in doing that. I heard of a couple that adopted a family and for the past eight weeks, they have been providing groceries for this small family. They thought, "If God's given us extra, we might as well let that overflow into other people." I just love hearing about these types of things, and it's the generosity of God's people that is uncommon and different and we should never be out-done by those around us.

We should never be the most scared, we should never be the ones that hoard, but we should be the ones that always have our hands open wide because we know that none of it's ours anyway. Everything we have, our time, our money, our possessions, all of it belongs to God and so we should give it as he gives opportunity. Now, Paul ends off this section by encouraging them to let go of the non-essentials. So he says, "You need to long to be with each other. I long to be with you, pray for each other." He says, "You need to be generous and you have been generous to me." And so then he says this, "All in gospel partnership looks like essential business.".

Let's look at verse 10 real quick. He says, "So that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ." Essential business. We've been hearing a lot about essential business and essential workers, and those are the people that have to keep working. And maybe you're part of that crew, you have to keep working for the world to continue. Some of us, the government says that churches meeting is not essential, I disagree, but we want to abide by the laws of the government. Strangely enough, the act of pastoring is on the essential worker's list, so I can still do the pastoring thing in the proper ways. But we have all this discussion about what is essential and what isn't. And Paul says here, "You need to be down to essential business only."

That in chaos, we can try to keep up with the things that are out of reach. We could still try to be, I don't know, bring bagels to all your houses or something. Like we eat bagels on Sunday morning, make sure that we order coffee for everybody and it comes here. We love doing all those things together, but that is not the essential of the church. I love a good cup of coffee and Mosaic has the best coffee of any church in Boston in my humble but correct opinion. But we've now come to a point where we have realized the things that are just most essential that we don't have buildings, we don't have a crowd, we don't have sound systems, we don't have the coffee or the bagels, we aren't shaking hands and we aren't hugging, and all those things are very difficult.

We're on CG through Zoom, but we're not eating meals together, and all these things we want to go back to. But in a sense, like Paul, for a time period, we've stuck to the absolute bare minimum essentials and found joy in the midst of those as we are under house arrest. God, help us look and see those things that are most essential. Matt Redman is a worship leader in the UK. If you're like me, you're old and you remember some of his songs from the '90s, some of the most popular ones are probably Better Is One Day, I don't know if you've ever sang that before or Blessed Be Your Name. A more recent song, only seven years old is a song called 10,000 Reasons that you might have sang.

One of his most popular songs was a song called The Heart of Worship. Now, the story for this song comes, the pastor of his church in United Kingdom was looking around one day at worship and he said, "Wow, I feel this has become too much of a production, it seems as though this is all about the show. I'm not even sure if people are worshiping or they're just being entertained." And so what he did for this church is he said, "We're going to cut out all the bands, we're going to cut all the instruments, we're going to take out all the lights. We're going to come on Sunday mornings, it's going to be God's people. It's going to be the word of God, it's going to be acapella singing, and we're just going to be worshiping together and we want to see, do we still have something to bring to God without all the extras."

Matt admits that it was most awkward for him as the worship director because he didn't really have a job anymore. They just had hymns books in front of them and they were singing acapella to the Lord. He wasn't even up there leading them, he was just part of the congregation. He was like, "What is my job here anymore?" And they did this for weeks and weeks like 10 weeks. They worshiped this way, just bare essentials. And it was in the midst of that, that God started to work in Matt's heart. And he said though it was awkward for a moment, the worship, true worship began to make more sense to them and more sense to him than ever before, because he realized that it was never about the extras.

It's nice to have a full band, I love it. It's nice to have the lights, it's nice to have all the extra stuff that we have. It's nice to have all those things, but it comes down to Jesus, worship to Jesus. And that is what it's all about. So this is the song he wrote, The Heart of Worship. He says, "When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come longing just to bring something that's of worth that will bless your heart. I bring you more than a song for a song in itself is not what you have required. You search much deeper within, through the way things appear. You're looking into my heart. I'm coming back to the heart of worship, and it's all about you. It's all about you, Jesus."

"I'm sorry Lord, for the thing I've made it, when it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus." It's moments like this that God removes the clutter, he takes off the layers and he helps us see the beautiful face of Christ better than ever before. We see the essentials. And during these times, we should long to be together, we should long for the days when we're coming together, but we shouldn't fret where we are, that we should stay satisfied in Christ. And so we should love Jesus, which means we worship him even if we're home, even if it's in our quiet times, even if it's with our family and not sitting in chairs in a church building right now, we should love Jesus and worship him every day.

We should love our church family, which has served those inside the church, care for those, care for their spiritual and emotional wellbeing, care for their needs, serve each other, and we should love our neighbors, which is really to evangelize and care for those outside of the church. And when we do those things, and one day the extra stuff will come back, but we will have a deeper appreciation and a new perspective on what matters most, our Lord Jesus Christ. All of it's been peeled away and we can more clearly see the essentials and it's a person, Jesus Christ. Maybe if you're like me and maybe it's just something I think about, I know there's a lot of different struggles and worries out there, but if you're like me, it can seem like the church is possibly fizzling out.

For me as I think about the future, as I try to be a visionary leader, this past year, I set out this great vision that we were going to complete and then a few weeks later, here we are. The future can seem foggy, I don't know if I can see much. There's a quote from Martin Luther as he talks about what's on his calendar, and I think it's pretty wise, particularly as we think about where we are right now. And the quote says, "I have two days on my calendar, today and that day." And by that day, he means the day that the Lord will return. That he lives in today and he serves Christ today.

And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, particularly where we are right now, because if we worry about the future too much and don't place it in God's hands and we worry that is there going to be a church when this is all over? Is there going to be enough people left that God can do what he's called us to do? We can worry ourselves to death and we'll miss it. You see, in the midst of absolute chaos, Paul is satisfied, he is joyful and he's at peace. It doesn't seem to work. Paul should have been really thrown off, he was in prison. Can you imagine how he felt, he was locked in prison for the better part of two years? It seems like such a waste for the Apostle Paul. And here he is.

But it's in this prison that writes some of the most significant literature in all of history. The book of Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon and Philippians is written in this prison. See, the prison wasn't a pause on ministry, I think that's how I first sinfully approached this coronavirus, this was a pause on ministry, that once this is all over, we'll go back to doing things as normal. And that was foolish of me because this time isn't a pause on ministry just like the prison wasn't a pause in ministry for Paul, it was always a part of his mission, and this here today, right now is a part of our mission, Mosaic.

See Mosaic, God is not done with you yet, there is no wasted time when we are willing to all go all in 150% with God's mission. Listen to what Paul says in verses five and six, and I think this is just the most encouraging part of this whole thing. In the midst of all this chaos, this is what he tells him, "Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now," pause for just a second. From the first day when he meets Lydia down by that river, she partnered with him in the gospel until now to the day he's in prison. Verse six, "I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ."

That what God started here in Mosaic is going to keep pushing forward. The gospel will keep pushing forward, people's lives will keep being changed. The Holy Spirit hasn't stopped working in hearts, he is still working in hearts and he's hopefully working in hearts right now at right this moment as you watch this, Christian be praying that he is. The gospel can't be stopped and won't be stopped and I am sure of this, Mosaic, the Christ that started this good work in you will carry it on to completion to the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, so be faithful in gospel partnership. This is not a pause for your ministry, this is part of the mission.

And what I hope, and what I pray for, is that when all this is over, that we can look back at what God was doing and the things we can't see yet, the things that are hidden from us right now, we will look back and see all the God was doing in hearts, all that God was doing in lives and how he was transforming people. And we will see the branches of righteousness way down with the fruit of the gospel from how we were faithful during this time. I'm excited to see the all that God is going to do. So my all in gospel partner, stay faithful and watch God work. Circumstances may have changed, but God's mission has not changed. So keep on, all in gospel, partnership with Christ, we're partners with Christ and we're partners with each other in this enterprise of the gospel. So keep at it.

Some of you today, you've tuned in online and maybe you haven't gone to a church service in person, maybe you have, but you've been dabbling in Christianity for lack of a better term. And this time is a time where maybe for the first time you realize the all in call of Christ. The Christ isn't looking for people that are just sticking their toes in the pool, but Christ is looking for people that go all in. Today, I want to encourage you to do is if you're not a follower of Christ, if you've just been hanging around and haven't made a choice to follow him, what I want to encourage you to do is make that choice today. Follow him with all your heart and like Lydia, the jailer and the slave girl, come and be transformed by the work of Christ on the cross, that you can receive forgiveness of your sins through what he did on the cross and you can receive the life that he gives and prove that he was able to give when he rose from the dead.

So just like the Apostle Paul said to the jailer that day, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved today." I say to you, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Will you do that? Do you want to follow up? If you want to talk to someone, you can put it in the comments, you can ask for prayer, you can put on a card. Please talk to somebody today. Don't let this day go by without continuing this conversation of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Let's pray. Father, today I'm just so excited to be on mission, such a faithful church like Mosaic. God a church that the essentials are in our DNA, literally, it's on everything that we have, printed on everything we have, God.

That we want to stick to the essentials, we want to stick to who you are and the mission that you've given us. Even in this time of difficult, even in this time of chaos, may we stick to the mission you've given us in gospel partnership. And I want to pray that because we are resting in you Jesus, because we are trusting in you, because we are on mission with the gospel, that Lord, we aren't worried about what the future holds. We are wrapped up in the chaos and tangled in our circumstance, but we are at peace. And it's going to seem strange to the world, people may think we're not taking it seriously enough, but God, you give us peace that surpasses all understanding, and that's good. Let us have peace in chaos and let us follow you into the mission you've given us. In Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic church Brookline. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. Hopefully you've got a nice mask like I do. I got this from my dad. My only problem with this thing is, fogs up my glasses so can't see a thing. Happy Mother's Day, everyone. Here in the beginning, just a quick announcement. Could you do me a favor? If you're watching on Facebook right now, could you please hit the share button? I hate to ask. Feels like self-promotion, but it's basically the easiest way to share the gospel ever. Just press that button. Or if you're watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, and like, and comments and all that. It helps us get the word out. Also, if you are visiting, welcome. If you're not part of the Mosaic Brookline community, we'd love to connect with you and we do that through the connection guide. The link will be down in the comments on the Facebook Live premiere. And then also, we have another connection card either on our website or in our app, which you can get in the app store or Google Play. Just search for Mosaic Boston.

We're so glad you here. Happy Mother's Day. We're so thankful for our moms. We love our moms and we're praying for them. We're thinking and honoring all the mothers in our community. And this day and age, mothers are clearly, clearly essential workers. More work than ever. Salary has not increased. I see this with my own wife, Tanya. She's an incredible mother to our four daughters, working harder than ever. So we're praying for you. I'm praying for the fruit of the spirit in your life, in particular, patience. As we pray for our mothers, we also pray and honor those who are pregnant today in this crazy season to be pregnant. You are already mothers and we're praying for you, for the Lord to strengthen you and comfort you and sustain you and bless you and the child.

We're also thinking of those who would like to be mothers and are not. Jesus didn't have children. St. Paul didn't have children. There's many great, godly people in scripture who didn't have children. And from God's perspective, spiritual children are as important, if not more important, than physical children. I know many strong, powerful young women in our church who have seen people come to faith through their ministry. Those are your children, and we are to be fathers and mothers to them. Also for anyone who's lost a child, we pray for you, and God the Father knows what you're going through, what you've gone through. He too has lost a child. So here in beginning, I would just like to pray for all the moms and bless them in the name of Jesus Christ, by the power of the spirit. Would you pray with me?

Heavenly father, we're so thankful for the gift of life and we're so thankful for the gift of new life. Lord, we're so thankful for our parents, our fathers and mothers, they're alive. Lord, we pray for them. We pray that you bless them today, in particular the mothers. You told us to honor our fathers and mothers, so we honor our moms today and the moms in the community, moms of physical and spiritual children. I pray that you give them wisdom and knowledge and discernment to raise up these children in the knowledge of the Lord, love for the Lord. Holy Spirit, I pray, fill them with your power, with your fullness, with your love and comfort and wisdom. And I pray that through their ministry at home, what an important ministry that is, what a calling that is. Lord, I pray that you through the spirit bear much spiritual fruit in their lives. Lord, and help us be great children to our parents, to our moms, to honor them well as you've commanded us. And Lord, bless our time in this tremendous book, brilliant book of Ruth. We thank you for the time that you've given us in it, and I pray that you bless the preaching of holy scripture and we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

If you are tuning in today, if you're new, we've been going through the book of Ruth, all three sermons. The previous ones are online, and we'd love for you to listen to those. They've been a blessing to our community. Next week we are starting a new series through the book of Philippians, so definitely come back. Philippians is a timely book. The title of the series is inner peace in utter chaos, and St. Paul is writing this book about joy and peace that transcends all understanding and he's writing it from prison, from quarantine. Today we're finishing Ruth. We're in Ruth chapter four. The title of the sermon is The Heart of the Deal, not the art of the deal, but The Heart of the Deal, and at the center of the chapter is a transaction between Boaz and another gentlemen and Boaz is motivated by his heart. He's motivated by love.

The story of Ruth, it is a love story, but more importantly it's a story of redemption. Redemption and love are inextricably intertwined because at the heart of redemption is sacrifice. At the heart of love is sacrifice as well, and that's where they meet together. It's not just a love story of hormonal surging love like rom-coms. It's a love story of sacrifice and of redemption. It's a story of costly sacrificial love. And the story of Boaz and Ruth and the whole book of Ruth, it's a prequel to Jesus. Both Ruth and Boaz, they point to Jesus Christ and his redemptive love and that's what we'll talk about today. One of the reasons why we love the story of Ruth, it's such a great story because it points to a greater story. Jesus Christ takes the stories of our lives and when we give him our lives, he takes the tragedies and triumphs and he weaves it into the ultimate tragedy; the death of Jesus Christ, and then the ultimate triumph, which is his resurrection.

Every true story, every powerful story has the same arc; creation, fall and redemption. Think of the greatest stories that you've ever heard, the greatest books you've ever read, the greatest movies that have a lasting impact on your life. If there's no redemption, if the story just ends with loss, fall. If the story is just a descent into lossness, like Camus' The Stranger, Beckett's waiting for Godot, you're left with emptiness. You're left with a pit in your stomach, a bitter taste that you can't get out of your mouth. We long for an ending that's happy, that's full of joy and enduring Christianity is the universal explanation of reality, therefore if we take this our creation fall, redemption and we through it look at the stories that have had a lasting impact, shown endurance and popularity, they all use the same pattern and this can be statistically proven. Of all the books that have ever written, the most popular books of all time, number one is The Bible. Over five billion copies published and so many more now with apps, et cetera. Number two is the writings of Mao Tse-Tung, more than five billion copies as well.

The Bible has been valued for its blessing to the largest religious group on earth and the history of the earth, and Chairman Mao's book has been popular because it's been printed as governmental propagation within the largest nation. Then come the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Chinese Dictionary, Boy Scout Handbook, all around a hundred million, but if you look at pure literary works of fiction, Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, 200 million. The Little Prince, 200 million. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, 150 million. The Alchemist, 150 million. Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, a hundred million. Tolkien's The Hobbit, 100 million. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 80 million. All of them creation, fall, redemption, and they try to give a glimmer of restoration. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, all the stories that have endured and were massively popular, same exact arc.

And that's why we love the book of Ruth. Same exact arc. The heart of the book is a story of redemption. What is redemption? Just to define our terms, redemption is a pattern of debt and repayment. A debt was owed and it was repaid by someone who paid it at a personal cost to themselves. It's loss and reclamation, it's deliverance upon payment. It's rescue from bondage or enslavement or destitution. And most popular enduring works, more or less, they have a Christ-like Redeemer at the heart of it. Dostoevsky and Brothers Karamazov through Father Zosima, this is what he say;, men are always saved after the death of the deliverer. This is the heart of Christianity; that we are lost, that we are spiritually destitute, in poverty, ostracized from the presence of God. And a Redeemer comes in, a kinsman Redeemer, someone just like us to represent us and pay a debt that we owed.

The context of Ruth chapter four where we find ourselves is chapter three. Interesting chapter. As we learned last week, Ruth proposes that Boaz propose. Boaz goes asleep, he wakes up and the first thing that he does is he wants to handle the situation so that he can marry Ruth, but there's an obstacle. He's not the first person legally in line to marry her. We'll talk about that. There's another guy who's got the right to marry her. So, the text is actually a legal transaction before court, so to speak, and Boaz has to handle some business before going on the honeymoon. So would you look at Ruth chapter four with me? I'll read verses one through 12 now and the rest later. Now Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there. And behold, the redeemer, of whom Boaz had spoken, came by. So Boaz said, "Turn aside, friend; sit down here." And he turned aside and sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, "Sit down here." And they sat down.

And he said to the redeemer, "Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. So I thought I would tell you of it and say, 'Buy it in the presence of those sitting here and in the presence of the elders of my people.' If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you." And he said, "I will redeem it." Then Boaz said, "The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance." Then the redeemer said, "I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it."

Now, this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. To confirm a transaction, the one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the redeemer said to Boaz, "Buy it for yourself," he drew off his sandal. Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, "You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day." Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, "We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman."

This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points. To frame up our time, first Boaz the Redeemer. Then we'll look at Ruth the Redeemer, and both point to Jesus Christ; Jesus the Redeemer. First, Boaz the Redeemer. In verse one, Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there. Boaz wants to marry Ruth, but he wants to do it in the right way. He wants to do it honorably. He wants to do it righteously. He wants to do it biblically. And there's an obstacle in the way, but he's motivated by love. And when you love, obstacles are turned into opportunities and whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice, whatever needs to get done, you will do everything you can. You have to biblically, morally, righteously, legally to be with the beloved.

One of the things that we're dealing with at the church is lot of young couples had wedding plans for this season and things have had to change. Wrenches have been thrown into plans. My brother, Vlad the drummer, who's usually behind me during worship band, shout out, Vladdy, and Sarah were supposed to get married at the end of May. The banquet hall that they had scheduled they said, "We can't do any meetings." So they've had to adapt. They've had to overcome and they're having a ceremony. It's going to be smaller ceremony. I can't wait to preach at it, do the homily. And I'm also the best man. Can't wait to do the best man speech. I know so many stories, oh so many. But this is one of the things that we see is that love is willing to sacrifice. Love is willing to adapt and overcome. The other thing that we see here is in this relationship, as Boaz wants to marry Ruth, who sacrifices more? Is it Boaz or is it Ruth? It's Boaz. Boaz has to make the greater sacrifice financially and personally and emotionally and socially.

And actually, we see this pattern throughout scripture. And no matter how much our culture fights this, it's still true that the man leads with sacrifice. Who pays for the engagement ring? The man does. That's always been true, no matter what our culture says, because it's written on our hearts. So but Boaz goes to the gate. Towns were on hilltop, so he went up to the gate. The gate was a combined town hall and a courthouse and archeological studies show us that along the walls next to the gate were benches and whenever anyone came to the gate and sat down, that meant this person had to do, wanted to do some official business. Boaz spent the previous night at the threshing floor and the text insinuates that he didn't even go home. First thing that he does as he wakes up, as he goes and handles some legal business.

So he sees the gentlemen, this Redeemer friend gentlemen. He says, "Turn aside, friend. Sit down here." Great move. Good start. Disarm the guy. Proverbs says, "A soft tongue will break a bone." He says, "Friend, sit down. Let's chat." Verse two and he took 10 men of the elders of the city and said, "Sit down here." So they sat down. He gets a quorum of witnesses in order to officiate or in order to confirm the decision, the contract that will be made. It says, "And behold the Redeemer," or friend, and he calls him the Redeemer. This gentlemen, according to Leviticus 25, it was his obligation to redeem Naomi, to redeem Ruth, to redeem the land. He was spiritually obligated as the closest living male relative to Naomi and Ruth to take care of them. Did he know that Naomi and Ruth were there? Of course he knew. We see this in chapter one that as soon as Naomi comes back to Bethlehem, the whole town knew. In a small town, everyone knows your business as well, maybe even better than you do. He had known that they were there.

Why didn't he do anything? Well, that's really the problem here. He didn't do anything. Scripture gives us different categories of sin. There are sins of commission where we do the wrong thing, and then there are sins of omission where we don't do the right thing. Scripture says, "He who knows what is good to do and doesn't do it is in sin." This man knew his obligation according to the law was to take care of Naomi and take care of Ruth, but he doesn't. And we see that he commits the same sin that Adam committed in chapter three of Genesis; the sin of cowardice or the sin of not doing his duty, not fulfilling the job that God had for him. There's weakness and there's cowardice and there's a lack of leading, a lack of intention.

Ruth chapter four verse three and then Boaz said to the Redeemer, "Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Elimelech." The backstory is Joshua, when he comes into the promised land, one of the things that he did was divide the promised land amongst all the families. And God knew that there would be ups and downs in life. And because of the vicissitudes in life and because of the variations in ability and variations in diligence of work ethics, some families would lose their land and enter into poverty and end up selling their land or leasing it out. So God made two, and these are very interesting laws, to offer these families a second chance. The first was the year of Jubilee. God said every 50th year, whoever has bought the land, whoever has leased the land, has to give it back to its original owners. It was after the seventh segment of seven years. After 49 years, the 50th year, that's the year of Sabbath. That's when land goes back. But before the 50 years were up, land could be bought back, but only by a kinsmen or someone related to the family.

The reason why God gave these laws, and I love the theology here and how practical it is, because in God's vision, he didn't want society to be characterized by incredible divergences of the richest and the poorest. He didn't want the top, top, top, top 1% and the bottom, bottom, bottom 1%. He wanted people to give, if you're wealthy, to give generously, to provide meaningful work for those at the bottom to help them rise up. These laws are meant to keep families together so the land stays in the family. Now, scripture says that Naomi was selling her parcel of land. She was selling that little piece of portion of the promised land. And by the way, this piece of land was never meant to permanently leave the family.

So, something happened. When Elimelech and Naomi, when they left the promised land, most likely that they leased the land out to someone else. They gave someone else the ability to use the land while they were gone, probably for some on the front end and made some kind of deal that when we come back we would like to purchase the land back from it. Now, this whole leasing, there's a word for it. It's usufruct. I'm sure you know this word. It's an SAT word, if you studied it. Here is the challenge of the day. Chicken wing, usufruct. Who can spell it quickly right now? You get a chicken wing, and I am good on my promises. So usufruct is from the Latin, you get to use the fruit of the land. So, what Naomi is doing now is she isn't giving the land away to someone forever. She wants someone to buy back the land that she had leased before she left, and she wants that person to be a kinsmen Redeemer, whoever buys this land. So, this kinsmen Redeemer gentlemen would take a lump sum of money, pay the current users of the land, and this gentleman would come in and use the land in order to sustain himself, but also Naomi and Ruth, and raise an heir so that by the time the heir gets to legal age, that land goes to the heir.

So that's what's going on. Ruth 4:4, Boaz says, "So I thought I would tell you of it and say, 'Buy it in the presence of those sitting here and the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you.' And he said, 'I will redeem it.'" Now, this is fascinating. It's fascinating because Boaz is so committed to God's law. Despite the fact that he loves Ruth, he is willing to give her, he's willing to sacrifice his own desires so that she is cared for. He loves her enough to sacrifice the possibility of marrying her. And what's fascinating is this gentlemen, he's thinking about making a great deal. He's thinking with a deal. Boaz is thinking heart of the deal. For him, this gentleman thinks, "Oh my, I buy this land and I can use it. This is a tremendous investment. I'm so glad. I'm redeeming. I'm buying it." And Boaz is so shrewd that he didn't lead with what he says in verse five. He led with, "You get the land," and then brings in a stipulation. This is verse five.

"Then Boaz said, 'The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.' Then the Redeemer said, 'I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.'" So you can imagine the scene. You can imagine Boaz handing a contract to this gentleman, this Redeemer friend, and he says, "Great, let's make a deal. Sign here. Sign here. Initial here." Pages flipping, pages flipping, pages flipping. "Oh yeah. By the way, last page. Along with the land, you have to marry Ruth and you have to start a family with her. And if a son is born to you, that son will not carry your last name. He will carry the last name of Ruth's previous husband." So with the land, you have to care for Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law. What's her name? Mara. Bitter. She used to be sweetheart, turn a little sour, so you get her thrown in with Ruth. You have to have a child. Three mouths to feed and when the child gets to legal age, you have to give everything up to him, and that child also gets to split the inheritance of your other children and everything there.

As soon as this guy hears all this, he says, "Oh, no. No thank you. I don't need to do this." When he thought the deal would benefit him, he was all for it. As soon as he counted the cost and realized what kind of loss it would bring him, he backs out of the deal. Boaz here is incredibly shrewd and one of the things that we see with Boaz, scripture says he's a worthy man. He knows God, he knows the law, but he also knows people. There's a godly wisdom that he's developed by applying God's word in his life over the long haul, over decades. He's built himself up spiritually, emotionally, theologically, financially. He was ready when God presents him with the situation. He strategically invested his time in the previous seasons so when the new season of opportunity presents itself, he is more than ready.

When you're a single man or a single woman, it's not an opportunity to extend adolescence until marriage. And too many men, especially young men, they think, "Okay, marriage is going to turn me into a man." No, no. What turns you into a man is submission to God, to his word. What turns you into a man is fighting the good fight of faith on a daily basis, fighting your sinful desires, fighting sins of omission and commission. What makes you a man of God is time with God. It's walking with God. Boaz was ready when God said, "I'm giving you my daughter." I did this little thing last week where I said, "Here's all of my standards. Here's all of my tests that I'm going to make any potential suitors for my daughters to go through. Here are my standards." Some of them are superficial for comedic effect. Homiletical effect, you know that. Okay, you get that, but the most important ones? They're true. Are you a Christian? Do you love God? Do you fight your sin? Have you led yourself well? Have you protected yourself from sin? Have you provided for yourself? Have you pastored yourself? Well, if not, how are you going to do those things with my daughter?

God does the same thing with his daughters. If you want to marry one of God's daughters, you need to meet the standards that God has for a man of God, and Boaz was working on that. He was working on that for decades. He was becoming the man that God wanted him to be, so that when God brought him into the situation and when he introduced him to Ruth, he was ready. He was ready to pastor her, to provide and to protect because he's done that with himself. That's my just pastoral and brotherly encouragement to the brothers in the church, to the sisters in the church. Don't waste the season. Use the season to build yourself up in the Lord, build yourself up for whatever the next season is, marriage or not. And God definitely does bless that.

Ruth 4, 7 through 10. Now, this was the custom of the former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. To confirm a transaction, one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the redeemer said to Boaz, "Buy it for yourself," he drew off his sandal. Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, "You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day." He signs a contract with the gentleman. That's what's going on with the sandals. Kind of weird, but what he's doing, signing a contract. He's signing a contract with another believer.

Now, this is just biblical wisdom in terms of doing business with people. If you're doing business with an unbeliever, you sign a contract. If you're doing business with the believer, you've got to sign at least two. It's important. Why? Because the world is fallen. Things take longer than anticipated, cost more. Things tend to go bad. I've seen this practically that when deals go bad or business goes bad, in the church community, the right hand of fellowship quickly devolves into the left fist of disfellowship. So don't do that, sign contracts if you're doing business with one another. Ruth 4, 11 through 12. Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, "We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman."

What's fascinating here is they welcome Ruth into the community. They welcome her into the house of God, into the people of Israel. She was an immigrant. Wrong race, wrong faith, wrong language, wrong everything, and she trusts in the Lord and they welcome her into the community. So to speak, they're naturalizing her. If you're an immigrant and you've gone through naturalization process of becoming a U.S. citizen, you know how meaningful that is. I know how meaningful it is. I've gone through it. My wife has gone through it. Basically saying, "You're one of us. You were an outsider. Now you're one of us." And they bless her and they invoke the names of Rachel and Leah. This is important because Rachel and Leah were barren just as Ruth was up to this point, and Leah was the mother of Judah, the ancestor of the tribe of Boaz and Naomi.

Why is Perez mentioned here? First of all, Perez is the ancestor of Boaz, but he's also a product of one of these Leviticus 25 Levirate marriages between Tamar and Judah. The problem was, Judah did not fulfill his obligation. He backed out of his obligation. He was passive and not fulfilling the obligation in the same way that this Redeemer friend was passive. And Tamar pretends to be a prostitute, seduces her father-in-law, kind of a story, and Perez is an ancestor of Boaz, and Boaz did not. He did not follow in his ancestor's sinful patterns, sinful decisions. He broke the generational sin by following God. This is important, because if you did not come from a family of believers, if you were not raised in the faith, if you have seen pattern of generational sin in your own life, if there is a legacy of sin, you don't have to follow in those footsteps. By grace through faith, God can redeem you from that. That's what we see here. So Boaz, he makes the decision to marry Ruth. All of her liabilities, all of her debts now belonged to Boaz, and all of Boaz' money, all of his finance, all of his wealth now belong to Ruth. All she has is his. All he has is hers. There's a transfer of debt and a transfer of inheritance. Praise God.

Boaz is a Redeemer, but we also see that Ruth as a Redeemer. Look at verses 13 through 17. So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, "Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel. He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him." Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi." They named him Obed and he was the father of Jesse, the father of David. Ruth does for Naomi what she could not do for herself. That's what a Redeemer does. Boaz does for Ruth and Naomi what they could not do for themselves. That's what a Redeemer does.

Naomi had nothing. She couldn't work the fields, was too elderly, can't have kids, so no family. Economically, spiritually, emotionally without hope. No family, no land, no name. And Ruth says, "I will do everything I possibly can. I will sacrifice everything I need to sacrifice to redeem you from this situation." She practices chesed, which is kindness. It's sacrificial love and she also redeems Naomi and everyone in the community realizes this and they said, "Naomi, do you not see what a treasure your daughter-in-law is? She is better than seven sons." Why is this important? Because in ancient Jewish customs, ancient Israelites, for them, seven sons constituted an ideal family. This is one of the most shocking texts in this ancient scripture, where they're saying, "Your daughter-in-law is better than ideal family." The original audience would have had goosebumps at this point.

Orpah left Naomi. She was left destitute. Ruth stayed and what Ruth said was, "Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Wherever you go, I am going to go. I'm going to immigrate with you." Here's the thing about immigrants. I come from a family of immigrants. You immigrate from one place to another. My family went from the former Soviet Union to the United States. You go from one place to another in the hope of a better life, in the hope of more freedom, in the hope of more prosperity. And Ruth is saying, "I know I'm going to a land where I will always be looked at as an outsider. I will be ostracized. I don't look the same as everyone. I'll always have an accent. No one will welcome me into the community." She was willing to immigrate for a worse life and she expected that eyes wide open. She said, "I'm becoming a follower of God because God is true. She's basically becoming a Christian because she believes in this as true, not because there's a promise of better life here on earth. She would rather live worse materially, socially, economically. She would rather live worse than live better in a lie. She says, "I'd rather go where I have access to God's people."

Ruth knows that if she leaves Naomi by herself, Naomi was likely to perish. So if Naomi is going to have a life, Ruth has to lose her own. If Naomi's going to have a name, Ruth has to lose her own name. If Naomi's going to have to get land and we'll have a family, Ruth has to give up everything; her family wealth, everything. She impoverishes herself so Naomi can eventually prosper. She suffers outside the gate. She becomes an alien and a stranger. She leaves the familiar to go into unchartered territory. As a result, Naomi is redeemed. Ruth also along with redeeming Naomi, redeems Boaz, and Boaz says as such. Ruth 3:10. And he said, "May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich."

The key, the secret to a loving marriage, an enduring marriage, a marriage that gets better with time like fine wine, the secret is recognizing the other person's sacrifice for you. Recognize it, name it, call it out. Talk about it. Thank you. I'm so thankful. As soon as you start feeling entitled, that is the first step to being pulled apart from one another. Sacrifice and recognize the sacrifice of the other. Ruth sacrifices to redeem. Boaz sacrifices to redeem. The Lord blesses them, gives them a baby son. In the previous marriage, Ruth didn't have children, and God here in their honeymoon gives them a baby.

Point three, Jesus the Redeemer. Both of them point to Jesus Christ. Where do I get that? Verse 14, "Then the women said to Naomi, 'Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a Redeemer.'" Who are they talking about? Are they talking about Boaz? That's what it sounds like. Let's keep reading. Without a Redeemer. "May his name be renowned in Israel." Whose name? Boaz' name is already renowned in Israel. 15, "He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age." Is that Boaz? Boaz has already done the restoring. He's already done the nourishing with the grain and with his love. Let's keep going. Restorer of life and nourisher of your old age. "For your daughter in law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him." Who are we talking about? You see what's going on in the text? Who's the him? You were just talking about a Redeemer. You were talking about restore, a nourisher. We thought it was Boaz and then it says, "You have given birth." She, Ruth, has given birth to him. What is going on?

What's going on is this baby is pointing to the ultimate Redeemer. This baby is a child born in Bethlehem, pointing to another child born in Bethlehem. Ruth 4:17, "The women in that neighborhood gave him a name, saying, 'A son has been born to Naomi,' and they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David." Obed means servant of the Lord. There's another one who's called servant of the Lord. This is talking about Jesus Christ. It's a prophetic passage. Naomi is redeemed by Ruth. Ruth is redeemed by Boaz. Boaz and Ruth have a child who is the ancestor of a king who will redeem all of Israel. That's King David, and King David, he was promised by God, on your throne, King David will sit my son for all of eternity. Who is that talking about? It's talking about Jesus Christ and that's why we have a genealogy at the end of the book. That's why the happy ending of this book points to not just redemption. It points to restoration.

Verse 18, "Now these are the generations of Perez. Perez fathered Hezron. Hezron fathered Ram. Ram fathered Amminadab. Amminadab fathered Nahshon. Nahshon fathered Salmon. Salmon fathered Boaz. Boaz fathered Obed. Obed, fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David." The book isn't about Ruth primarily. It's not about Boaz primarily. It's not about Obed primary. It's not even about David primarily. It's about Jesus Christ and it's about us. Ruth and Boaz lived their lives in view of eternity. They lived for the long term. They lived to leave a legacy, not have a good time. The choices that we make by the prompting of the Holy Spirit have ramifications far beyond our greatest, wildest dreams. God graciously provides Boaz to redeem Ruth. God graciously provides David to set Israel free, and God graciously provides Jesus Christ to set the world free, set us free.

The way that you become a Christian isn't to say, "I want to be more like Boaz," or, "I want to be more like Ruth." Those are all great aspirations, but that's not where it starts. Where it starts is we say, "You know what? I can't be like them by myself because they weren't themselves. They weren't what they turn out to be by themselves. All by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was all by grace through faith." The way you become a Christian is to truly believe in the one who went outside the gate, as Hebrew says. To the one who was truly ostracized, to the one who truly suffered, to the greatest alien and the poorest person spiritually speaking; Jesus Christ on the cross. He was cosmically homeless, cosmically alone, cosmically spiritually destitute. As he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus Christ was forsaken by God the Father so that we would never have to be.

The gospel we see from Ruth is that Boaz sacrificed everything to get Ruth, just like Jesus sacrificed everything to get us. And Jesus doesn't just redeem us from physical debt or from the debt of sin. He doesn't just save us from the captivity to Satan. He saves us from death. One way or another, everyone searches for a way to make themselves right, to justify themselves. And even in a sense, pay a ransom for what they've done, and to pay a ransom to find a rescue from death. In some societies, that payment comes through ancestor worship. That's how you try to overcome death or pay that ransom. Other societies like ancient Egypt, immortality came through elaborate burials or mummification. We live in a culture where we try to pretend death isn't a thing. We try to extend life as long as possible, remain as youthfully looking as possible, but death is coming and we need to think about it.

Deep down in our souls, we understand there's got to be some kind of payment for our sins, some kind of payment to overcome death. Be it through works, and it's always ... This is what it boils down to in any other religions. Always works. Hinduism is devotion to the gods and living according to one's dharma. Buddhism, control of passions to attain nirvana. Either Jewish theology, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Shintoist, Taoist, Confucians, atheist. It's all work-based righteousness. Here's how I justify that I am a good person, that I am worthy, that if there is a God, he definitely needs to let me in to heaven. He needs to give me eternal life. That's what he owes me.

And someone could push back and say, "Isn't Christianity about works?" Not in its foundation, not in its essence. The rules that God gives us about how we are to live, one of the primary goals of those laws is to expose our sin, expose our brokenness, expose our need for redemption. Galatians says, "The law was our tutor bring us to Christ." The way that we are redeemed by Jesus Christ is by grace through faith, believing and repenting, and Christ's sacrifice is accounted to us. Our debt is paid, and not only does he pay our debt, he offers us his inheritance. I love the word inheritance. I love the idea of inheritance; that you just get this surplus of cash, of whatever, this windfall financially. That's what inheritance is. But there's also a tinge of sadness to inheritance, because for you to get an inheritance, someone else had to pay for it and someone else had to die. And Jesus Christ to cover our debt and offer us an eternal inheritance, he had to die as a sinless substitute.

As sinners, there's nothing we can do to redeem ourselves, and for someone to cover our sins, they had to be sinless, a sinless substitute. Not only that, to cover the sins of all of humanity who would turn from their sins and believe in Christ, that Redeemer had to be divine. So Jesus, the sinless human being, our kinsmen Redeemer, was also divine and he alone can save us. As C.S. Lewis said, "The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start." Everything we read in the old Testament, it all points to Jesus Christ. The greatest redeemer doesn't save himself. He save others. The greatest redeemer doesn't just pay money to save. He gives the greatest thing he has himself, which is his life. Jesus is greater than Boaz. Jesus Christ is our kinsmen redeemer through the incarnation because he became one of us. Jesus paid with a sinless life to redeem our sinful life. Jesus isn't forced or obligated to do it. He willingly laid down his life out of love just like Boaz out of love redeems Ruth.

Ruth says and does nothing in this redemption process. Redemption to her was a gift and she lovingly, willingly accepted it. Would you today accept the gift of grace, the gift of redemption? You do that with a quick prayer or a long prayer. Just pray. Just talk to God. God, I am a sinner. I've fallen short of your standards. I've committed sins of omission and commission. God, I haven't loved you with my whole heart, soul, strength and mind. I haven't loved neighbor as my self. Lord, forgive me. Lord, redeem me, and Lord, I want to be in a loving relationship with you. Romans 3:24. "And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Redemption is only in him. It's a gift. Receive that gift today. And if you do, would you let us know? Would you follow up via the connection card? We'd love to connect with you. We'd love to help you take the next steps of following Christ as Lord and savior.

Last, Bible trivia. Question for the chicken wing. We see Boaz, we see Ruth, we see the elders. What was the first ... the guy who was first in line to redeem Ruth and Naomi. What was his name? Type in the comments section. He doesn't have a name. He's called friend and he's called redeemer. His only lines are verse four, "I will redeem it." Verse six, "I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance." And verse eight, "Buy it for yourself." The guy who is so focused on himself, the guy who was so focused on his life now, the guy who was so focused on the short-term loses eternal impact, misses out on the blessing of becoming an ancestor of Jesus Christ. He wanted to keep his name, keep his line, keep his legacy, and his name isn't even mentioned in the book.

But you know whose name is mentioned? Ruth, because Ruth was willing to give up her name, give up her legacy, give everything up, deny herself and follow Christ, follow God, and she becomes an ancestor to the one who has a name above all names; Jesus Christ. Do you want your name to be remembered? Connect your name to his. Become a Christian and live for him. Weave your story in with his and he'll make your story as good, if not better, as the story of Ruth. What a story this was. We're so thankful for it. I can't wait to be in heaven. I can't wait to meet Ruth. I can't wait to meet Boaz. What a couple. What a story, pointing to the greatest story. Ruth in this story celebrates Mother's Day with the birth of a baby. Naomi celebrates Mother's Day by becoming a grandmother, so happy Mother's Day, everyone. God bless you, praying for you, love you. Let's pray.

Heavenly father, we're so thankful for this book. What a rich book it is. What a blessing it's been to our souls, to our community. I pray, Lord, help us follow Christ our redeemer with more vigor, with more passion, with more zeal, knowing that the decisions we make to follow Christ have an impact not just in our lives, not just in the lives of our families, not just in the lives of our community, but they have an eternal impact. Make us godly people who follow Christ who are saved by grace through faith, make us men like Boaz and women like Ruth. Make us more like Christ, the ultimate Redeemer, in whose name we pray. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello. Welcome to our online service, Mosaic Boston Brookline. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. We're so glad you are tuning in.

Here in the beginning, I want to tell you a story. The story is of my third daughter, Katarina, who is also known by Ekat, AKA Katya. Three names, three separate personalities. Katarina is her Russian personality. She grew up speaking Russian at home.

We recently discovered that she speaks fluent English without us ever having taught her a lesson. On top of that, we realized that she doesn't just speak English. She can speak valley girl English. And we found this out because Tanya, my wife, opens up her phone, and she finds a video of Ekat recording herself. And she goes like this. "Hi guys. My name is Jasmine. And I'm from Australia. And I'm a Christian and I love God. And by the way, can you guys comment and subscribe and like below?"

First of all, we have no idea that she watches YouTube videos. We need to do a better job with that. Second of all, I say all that to say, please comment and like and subscribe. I hate saying it, but it helps us spread the good news.

Okay. Let us pray before the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the gospel. We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us. We thank you, Jesus, that you satisfy us, that you give rest to our restless hearts, that you fill us in times of emptiness. Many of us are running low. It's almost as if we're running on fumes that pray today, fill us and refill us both spiritually and physically bless our time and the Holy Word. And I pray you continue to build us up, continue to build up the church and continue to build up your kingdom during this time. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

So, if you're tuning in with us, this is the third week in the Book of Ruth from ruin to redemption, the story of tragedy turned into triumph, of despair that leads to deliverance, from ruin to redemption. And today, we find ourselves in chapter three. One of the things that we've noticed is that the story isn't just about Ruth. The story isn't just about Naomi or Elimelek, or Boaz. The story is about God, as the divine director orchestrating the story, the details behind the scenes, the divine matchmaker, brings people together.

And Ruth is an incredible woman of God as we've learned. She's got noble character. She's a woman of excellence. The word in Hebrew for hesed means kindness. She's a woman of kindness, willing to sacrifice her own desires for the one that whom she loves. She's a hard worker. She's strong. She loves sacrificially, cares deeply and serves selflessly, and she knows that God is in charge. She knows that God is guiding the events of her life.

And that's a very unique view of life. That God is in control. That God is sovereign. That God is directing the details of our lives.

The story goes during the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the '60s. There were competing and conflicting views of God transmitted from the space capsules to Earth.

Yuri Gagarin was the first Russian cosmonaut. He was the first human being in space who reported back from his trip in 1961. And he said, "Землю вижу бога не вижу. " I see the earth. I don't see God. I didn't see God from space." We don't know if it's true, if it was Soviet atheistic propaganda.

Then in 1968, the American crew, the first manned mission to the moon radioed a different message, not that they had seen God, but that they had seen God's handiwork. They saw God's majesty. They saw God's fingerprints, spellbound world was watching them the first lunar trip and they heard how the three Apollo 8 astronauts took turns reading from the Book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

These views are completely different. They're completely diametrically opposed. They're conflicting views of reality. Which one is true? Which one of these polarized views is true? Well. We look at our world. We look at the details of our lives. We look at Holy Scripture. We have the testimony of the Holy Spirit. We have the person, the work of Jesus Christ. We believe that God is and that God continues to orchestrate and he is sovereign, and we can find hope in that message today.

Today, we are in Ruth chapter 3. Would you look at the text with me. It's a puzzling, curious text, so brace yourselves. Ruth, chapter three. Then Naomi, her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter should I not seek rest for you, that it may be well with you? Is not Boaz our relative, with whose young women you were? See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor."

Wash therefore and anoint yourself, and put on your cloak and go down to the threshing floor, but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to do. And she replied, "All that you say I will do."

So, she went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had commanded her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly, and uncovered his feet and lay down. At midnight the man was startled and turned over, and behold, a woman lay at his feet! He said, "Who are you?" And she answered, "I'm Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant for you are a redeemer." And he said, "May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman."

Now, it is true that I am a redeemer, but there is a redeemer near than I. Remain tonight, and in the morning, if he will redeem you, good. Let him do it. But if he's not willing to redeem you, then, as the Lord lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until morning.

So, she lay at his feet until the morning but arose before one could recognize her. And he said, "Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor." And he said, "Bring the garment you're wearing and hold it out." So, she held it, and he measured out six measures of barley and put it on her. Then she went into the city.

And when she came to her mother-in-law she said, "How did you fare, my daughter?" Then she told her all that the man had done for her. Saying, "Six measures of barley he gave to me, for he said to me, 'You must not go back empty-handed to your mother-in-law.'"

She replied, "Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest but we'll settle the matter today."

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word and he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

What just happened? If this is the first time you're reading this chapter, what in the world is going on? Seems so strange?

Well, it's strange because the chapter begins with the advice of Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law. Now, here's the thing about mother-in-laws and their unsolicited advice. There's a lot of things about mother-in-laws and their unsolicited advice, in particular when the son is not in the context to provide context and to provide nuance to the advice. So, you got to take it with a grain of salt.

More than that, you got to take it with six bags of grain of salt. That's point one. That's the point of the ... Be careful with advice from mother-in-law's deep biblical wisdom here, because this advice is actually foolish, potentially sinful. She's advising Ruth to take a turn from the straight and narrow, to go serpentine, to go around the straight and narrow and this wrong turn could potentially lead calamitous consequences. It's sinful advice.

But this chapter reveals something really important. This is really deep. It reveals the complexities and the contradictions of our hearts, even the hearts of believers. And it also shows a God who by sovereignty, super intense our sin, and uses it ultimately to fulfill his plan. Because God's plan always comes to fruition.

The chapter is composed of three scenes, it's like a scene in a movie. It's like a season in three parts and there's terrific cinematography here. And the action is broken down by three parts of the day.

Verses one through five is the opening dialogue of Naomi. After Ruth has just come home from working all day in the field. She's exhausted. It's late afternoon, early evening. The sun is setting. The shadows of the afternoon are setting in. And Naomi has a plan. And she proposed that plan to Ruth to secure a husband for her, but the feeling is foreboding. As the sunsets, there's darkness and it feels as if this plan is tinged with darkness as well. It's a terrible plan. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The next scene is verses six through 13, it's the dark hours of the night, once Boaz has fallen asleep. Everything's dark, he's fallen asleep. Cue the scary cello music. I don't know why cello music is scary, but it is. It can be potentially. And you see the spiritual tension. You see moral alarm, as her heart is beating. Our hearts are beating. We're like, what is about to happen? Is it going to be as bad as I think?

And then verses 14 through 18 is the final scene. What happens when the sun comes up. And there's a palpable sense of relief. Boaz is a good guy. He's a godly man. And Ruth is a worthy, kind, godly woman. And what we learn here is that God can't be outmaneuvered, even by conniving Machiavellian mother-in-law named Naomi, who nicknamed herself Bitter. God's plan always comes true. That's what I want to talk about today.

Three points, number one, sin in believing hearts, two, rest for restless hearts, and three, fullness for empty hearts. First of all, sin in believing hearts. Naomi's advice in the very beginning was good advice. Once she heard that Ruth on her first day in the fields, actually met Boaz she said, "Stay close to him. Stay close to his women. Stay under his wing, under his protection."

And obviously she knows what's going on, that Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. He's a distant relative. He can redeem Ruth and Naomi. He could solve all of their financial problems. However, time has elapsed from day one to now this is the end of the barley harvest, about seven weeks. So, we go from end of April to probably mid-June, something like that.

And now, Naomi's getting worried. Boaz isn't hustling. He's not showing initiative. He's not making moves. We don't know why. Perhaps it's because he's older. He liked Ruth in the beginning. He took a liking to or he noticed her. He had nice conversation with her, but it's barley seasons, it's harvest season. He's got to work hard. Also, he's older, and it would be unseemly to make the first step as a much older man.

So, we don't know why he didn't hustle, but we see that Naomi is getting impatient. Could this be the one? Well, why isn't he making moves? Should we help?

And by the way, the Lord's bless them financially, has provided for their needs. He's given them a ton of grain that will last them probably over a year. And Naomi says, "I don't want just grain. I want to main for my girl, Ruth." That's what's going on.

It's not ideal, right? The situation isn't ideal. One of the things that you need to learn about scripture is when stories are presented, narrative is presented, you got to ask the question, is this prescriptive? That this is how we are to act? Or is this descriptive of how we shouldn't act?

And there's a lot of examples in scripture. Noah gets off the ark, gets drunk and naked, weird story. Descriptive or prescriptive? Descriptive. David commits a sin of adultery. Descriptive or prescriptive? Peter cuts off the ear of a servant in the Garden of Gethsemane. Descriptive or prescriptive? Descriptive. And as the stories are described, we need to interpret those stories through the prescriptive texts and that's how we interpret scripture.

Ruth 3:1, Naomi, her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter, should I not seek rest for you that it may be well with you." She's seeking rest but she's restless. She's seeking rest restlessly. Her desire with the rest is security and peace and provision.

Ruth 3:2a, she says, is not Boaz our relative, with whose young women you were? So, Naomi knows about God's provision for widows in the God's love, provision for rest. And she's now starts thinking maybe I need to intervene. Maybe I need to force the hand of God by forcing the hand of Boaz. God's taking too long. We need to do something.

Something happens when scripture presents the script of texts, where the real of what happens false so short of the ideal, God often intervenes with grace. When the real does not meet the ideal, there's grace available to turn the real into ideal.

What's the ideal for a young woman like Ruth? The ideal is for her, obviously, to be born in a solid Christian family, a family that loves God, submits to God, that teaches God's word. The ideal would be for her to have a father who cares for her and who teaches her and a father who actually vets her potential suitors.

Now, I preached this text in 2015 when things at home ... My daughters are younger. Now, I'm getting to the point where this rant that I'm about to go on is beginning to be real. And here's how I am going to proceed. Here's how I am going to vet potential suitors for my daughters. I am going to grill them. Sit down in a chair. We're about to take a four-hour polygraph examination and hair follicle drug tests.

Tell me about your family. Tell me about your upbringing. Tell me about your faith. Tell me about your theology. Tell me about your church participation. Are you a member of a church? If you're not a member of a church and you're not committed to the bride of Christ, then why in the world do you think you can be committed to a bride? That's number one.

Give me your pastor's phone number, number two. Tell me about what you do, your education, your job, your craft, your ministry. How much do you make? Honestly, I want like taxed ones. How much have you saved? What's your debt? What's your credit score? Where do you live? If you live in your mom's basement, that's already a red flag because scripture says the man shall leave his father and mother before cleaving to his wife.

Do you workout? This is really important. How much can you deadlift? Squat? Bench? How fast can you run a 40? How healthy do you eat? How healthfully do you eat? Do you have any habits hazardous to your health? What's your height, weight, IQ, dental records, background check. Can you pass a TSSCI? I want to see God's skills and life skills.

Ruth didn't have a dad like that. And Naomi isn't doing the vetting for her. Naomi isn't giving her godly advice. It's good intention and we understand her heart. And she's seemingly motivated by love. She wants the best for Ruth, cares deeply for her. But whatever her motives, she is too impatient. She's trying to outrun God's providence, trying to run ahead of God's providence. And that just doesn't work. A lesson we can draw here is that the single people and their parents and friends, be careful of an unhealthy obsession to get married. It could lead to trouble. Follow God, learn to be satisfied with Christ and whatever your life stage. That's what gives true satisfaction.

If you're not satisfied with Christ now, you won't be satisfied in your marriage later. The way you prepare yourself to be in a godly marriage, to learn, to be satisfied with Christ, learn to follow him. Ruth 3:2 through 5. This is the advice. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Wash therefore and anoint yourself, and put on your cloak and go down to the threshing floor, but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to do. And she replied, "All that you say I will do."

Remember that last part, all that you say I will do. No matter how you slice it, and I've read every commentary on the text. No matter how you slice, no matter how you interpret, this is distressing counsel. It's both risky and it's risqué. Is she saying what I think she's saying? Yeah. She's saying get dolled up and wait until he gets lubed up. That's exactly what she's saying. It's advice that is fraught with moral danger.

Twice we've already learned from the lips of Boaz and from the lips of Naomi, that this is a dangerous culture for a young woman. That there's a danger of being assaulted.

So, Naomi says, "Stay close to Boaz's people." Boaz says, "Stay close to my people so you don't get assaulted." And now Naomi, driven by impatient sends her single, young, vulnerable daughter-in-law into a vulnerable situation, into a threshing floor, at night, alone. This is alarming.

And by the way, threshing floor was a place of indiscretion in that culture. What's going on here? What's going on, Naomi? What's going on in your heart? What the text is teaching us is you can take the woman out of Moab. But it takes a while to take the Moab out of the woman. You can take a person out of Moab, but it takes a while to get them out. We can get the Moab out of them.

She's giving her pagan advice. This isn't godly counsel of believing mother. This is a plan that was saturated with prayer. You can't cut corners and expect God's blessing. And this is the way of Moab that was a very sexually confused culture. And this is the way of our culture. We live in a culture that's also confused.

We've lived in this world for so long that we think the world is as it ought to be. It's not. What's normal isn't normative. How things are isn't how things should be. So, we need to always, always look at our decisions, look at our plans, look at our strategy through scripture and with prayer. Holy Spirit, what are you telling me to do?

The lesson here for all of us is be suspicious of yourself. Question yourself. Don't give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You need to know that, yes, even though you're a Christian, yes, you have a regenerated heart and you have the Holy Spirit. Yet, we're still in the flesh. And our decisions, our plans always have a tinge of the flesh in them. So, you need to be suspicious of yourself. Watch. Be on guard, scripture says. Fight the good fight. Make sure that sin doesn't flare up with renewed vigor.

And it happens when we begin to fall asleep, when we put our guard down. The punch that knocks you out is the punch that you don't see coming.

Jesus says, watch and pray because the spirit, the will, the desire, perhaps strong the flesh is weak, sin crouches at the door. The desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Be careful of the flesh in our decisions.

God got you out of Moab, perhaps he got you out of sinful life, but it takes a lifetime to get Moab out of us. That's why we need daily time with the Lord. We need daily time with Holy Scripture. That's why we need community. That's why we need the church. That's why we need accountability.

So, that's point one. Sin in the believing's heart. Point two is rest for restless hearts. So, this is the second part, the second scene of this season of this film, so to speak. The sun sets, verse six, so she went down to the threshing floor and did justice her mother-in-law had commanded her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down. And at midnight, the man was startled and turned over and behold, a woman was at his feet.

So much going on here. First of all, I want to say the word drunk doesn't mean that he was drunk. It's that he had drunk, that's just grammar in English. It's that he had some wine along with the grain as they were celebrating. And there is a godly way to celebrate, sanctified way to celebrate. But scripture does say that has to be controlled by the Holy Spirit.

So, he's lying down, he's sleeping. She comes, she uncovers his feet. His feet get cold. He wakes up and he startled, behold a woman lay at his feet.

We see his initial reaction proves that he's a godly man. His very first initial reaction is what. He asked her a question. Who are you? And that's a good question. That's actually a mark of a godly man. Ruth 3:9, and she answered, "I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer." Pause, pause.

What was the thing I told you to remember? Type in the comment section? Whoever types the first gets a chicken wing. I owe Natalie VanDusen a chicken wing. You can redeem it from me.

What did she say to Naomi? She said everything that you tell me, I will do. Something changed here. This isn't the script. That's not what you're supposed to say, Ruth. You're simply supposed to proposition yourself. You're simply supposed to present yourself.

And something happened along the way when Ruth changed the script. She goes off script. Was that Ruth or perhaps as her heart was beating, as she begins to realize potential consequences of this decision, perhaps you start praying and asking for wisdom and guidance from the Holy Spirit. I submit to you that it's the Holy Spirit that changed the plan. It's the Holy Spirit that changed the script.

She doesn't just present herself. She says, spread your wings over your servant. This is a euphemism for proposal. Spread the corner of your garment over me. It's the phrase that God uses metaphorically to describe his relationship, his covenant relationship with his people, Israel. In Ezekiel 16a. He says, I will cover you I will forever cover you. I'm your cover. I'm your refuge. I'm your shelter. I'm your rest. I'm your peace. And that's what she's asking for.

Naomi's plan, seduce him. Ruth's plan with the Holy Spirit, I'm offering you the opportunity to propose. I'm proposing that you propose. That's basically what she's saying.

And I love this part of the story because I love it when God's sovereignty overrides our sinful will. I love that. It's part of God's grace, that he keeps us from ourselves, that he keeps us from our own desires. This is what it means Lord, don't lead me into temptation, meaning Lord, I'm led into temptation, please lead me away from temptation.

If you're struggling with sin in this season, don't just fight it on your own. You got to fight it by the power of the Holy Spirit, asking the Lord to fill you on a daily basis and to protect you from sin and temptation.

And this is a highly irregular situation. It's a woman proposing to a man. It's a younger woman proposing to an older man. It's an immigrant proposing to an Israelite. It's a field worker proposing to an owner.

In the world's eyes, Boaz and Ruth are completely incompatible. But that's because the world's eyes only see the superficial. In God's eyes, completely compatible. They're both people have said kindness. They're both people of worth. They're worthy. They add worth to the people around them. They're both God-fearing people of integrity. They love God. They love his people.

Lesson here is, single people beware as you think about marriage. Beware of paying too much attention to superficial compatibility. And then married couples, continue to deepen the relationship that matters. Continue to deepen your ability to see character and worth and traits that God cares most about. Continue to deepen not just a physical relationship but a spiritual heart to heart, soul to soul relationship.

And also, I love how smart Ruth is. She's sharp. Verse 12, as she's proposing to him, proposing that he propose, she uses his words and this kind of tongue in cheek like a wink. Like remember when you said that? And she uses words from Ruth 2, chapter 12, the Lord repay you for what you have done and a full reward be given to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. That's Boaz talking to Ruth and say, may God bless you because you have placed yourself as a little eaglet under the big wing of Papa Eagle God and you are going to be protected.

And then Ruth says, would you mind being an instrument of God's wing? Would you cover me with your wing? And God's wing is over your wing. Would you fulfill your obligation and she says, "You are a redeemer." She plays that card. You're the redeemer. It's your job, start doing some redeeming.

And by the way, Boaz just woke up. He worked all day, then had a nice meal, a couple of drinks. He just woke up in the middle of night and she drops this new con ham. And obviously, this isn't the first time he thought about this. He's been praying about this. He's been praying for the Lord to show what his will is.

Verse 10, he said, "May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman. And now it is true that I am a redeemer."

Boaz doesn't take a shortcut. He doesn't go wayward from God's straight and narrow. He doesn't see this temptation as an opportunity to sin. He doesn't say, "Oh, that's great. We can be married in God's eyes." And accordingly, he doesn't take advantage of a situation. He doesn't take advantage of a situation where he has the leverage of power and influence. No.

And by the way, most likely she looks better than he's ever seen. But it's dark. I don't know. But he doesn't focus on that either. What's he talking about? He says, I know you're a woman of character. I know your kindness, your hesed.

This is the sacrificial love. You've shown sacrificial love to Naomi. It actually doesn't make sense to the world. Did you have ulterior motives? But he's like, no, you're kind to her. And then he uses this phrase, you are a worthy woman. We've heard that phrase before. We've heard that when we met Boaz last week, that Boaz is a worthy man. He adds worth to the people around him by blessing them and adding value to their life.

And Ruth is a worthy woman. What's fascinating is, in the English Bible, the Book of Ruth follows the Book of Judges. In the Hebrew canon, the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Ruth follows the Book of Proverbs. And Proverbs 31 is about whom? It's about a noble woman. It's about a worthy woman, a woman of God. And the very last verse of Proverbs 31 right before Ruth 1:1.

Proverbs 31:31 says, give her the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates. Literally, that last line is all the gates of my people know you are worthy woman, a woman of noble character. Wherever she goes, she has the reputation, the perfume, if you will, of godliness, of honor, of worth. She is a walking Proverbs 31. She embodies Proverbs 31. Oh, may God send us more women like Ruth. She's got godly courage, godly determination to live as a true child of God, a true daughter of God in a place where very few are doing that.

So, that's great views, commencer character but Ruth 3:12, yet there is a redeemer nearer than I. It's a closer relative, but he says I'll take care of that business in the morning.

Verse 13, remain tonight, and in the morning, if he will redeem you good, let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, as the Lord lives I will redeem you. Lie down until morning.

He says, "I want the best for you, Ruth." That's what true love does. I want the best. And I'm willing to sacrifice my own desires. If this other guy who's a closer relative wants to redeem you, you'll find rest. If not, I'll take care of it.

As the Lord lives he said, I'll do it. One way or another, you'll find rest. And Boaz here is pointing to a greater Boaz, to Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself because he loves us so that we can find rest, to provide rest, so that he could put his arm, his wing around us in the same way that Boaz ultimately does with Ruth.

Boaz points to Jesus Christ, who said, come on to me all who are burdened and heavy laden, I will give you rest. That's what we need, rest for our restless souls. A great quote from St. Agustin, Our hearts are restless until they find the rest in you.

Have you found your rest in Jesus Christ? And particularly in our season where perhaps you're growing impatient. You're growing restless. God, when are you going to intervene? When are you going to provide? When are you going to redeem? And God says, I will give you rest. Come on to me.

Point three is fullness for empty hearts. Verse 14, so she lay at his feet until the morning, but arose before one could recognize her. And he said, "Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor." He's concerned for her reputation. She probably made a mistake and coming at night to the threshing floor. But this is what love does. It covers a multitude of sins.

And in relationships you need that kind of covering. In any relationship, in friendship or marriage, or at work, once forgiveness is asked for, once a person has repented, we are not to bring up their sins. There's got to be a covering motivated by love.

Ruth 3:15, and he said, "Bring the garment you're wearing and hold it out." And she held it, and he measured out six measures of barley and put it on her. Then she went into the city. Six measures of barley, absurd amount. We're talking about 60 to 70 pounds of grain. That's like putting two medicine balls 30 pounds each on your back or one of my kids, right?

That's what's going on. It's so big actually. He has to help her get it off the ground. He lifts it up. She's getting lifted on her own. She staggers back out of breath to her mother-in-law, Naomi. And Ruth 3:16. And when she came to her mother-in-law, she said, "How did you fare, my daughter?" And Ruth says, here's the report. Here's how I fared. And throws the bag of grain on the floor, just dumps the bag.

Verse 16b, then she told her all that the man had done for her saying, "These six measures of barley he gave to me, for he said to me, 'You must not go back empty-handed to your mother-in-law.'" Don't go back to your mother-in-law, empty handed. This is the punch line.

And let me explain what's going on here. Boaz with this massive bag of grain, he's winking at Naomi. And he's saying, I know who's behind this plan, behind this seemingly subtle, not subtle. Behind this surreptitiously, I know who's behind it, Naomi, it's you sneaking around trying to play matchmaker.

It's a message from Boaz to Naomi that I am providing. I am going to redeem, but it's also a message from the Holy Spirit through Boaz to Naomi. Why do I say that? Remember, in chapter one, Naomi changed her name when she came back to Bethlehem and she said, "Don't call me Naomi, pleasant, sweet. Call me Mara, bitter."

And then what did she say? This is Ruth 1:21. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. And this is God through Boaz say, you've been empty. And you've been trying to manipulate me into giving you fullness because of your fear, because of your insecurity. You haven't trusted me to provide. Now, here's a visual aid so that you remember for the rest of your life, that when you are in need, I will always provide. He dramatizes the promise of that fact. You will no longer be empty. You actually have full and you will have overflowing. That's a promise of God. That God provides for his children.

This week in community group in our Google meet community group, by the way, if you're not in a community group and you from the area, please join the community. We have awesome community groups.

But we were talking about God orchestrating providence and growing and sensitivity to God's providence and we're talking about God's providence in particular when we have financial need. And it was a really relevant topic.

And we were just sharing some examples and I kicked things off and I shared a story when, in 2010, so a decade ago, Tanya and I, we were living in Lanark Road in Brighton and our lamp broke in our little entryway. Our lamp broke and we needed a new lamp.

So, Tanya went to Home Depot. She picks out a lamp, nice lamp is $140. She goes to the register. The guy rings it up and it comes up as one cent. He's like what's going on? Rings it up again and it says again, one cent. Now, there's a line forming. He rings it up a third time and it says one cent. And he looks at my wife and he says, "Ma'am, can you give me one cent?" So, he rings it up. She gives him the cent. She takes the receipt where it says one cent. She goes to the car in the parking lot and she calls me and she says, "What do I do? They charged me one penny for the lamp."

And you already know what I did. I said, "Baby, start up the car and get home ASAP. It's a gift from the Lord." So, I shared that story. Because in that season of our life, financially we were hurting. And I shared that story. And then I said, does anyone have stories like that to share?

And then this nice gal in the church says, "I've been hurting financially and I've got a complicated family situation." She said, "A friend of a friend of a friend heard about me hurting financially and sent me $10,000 this past week." Whoa, that went from one cent to 10 grand. I was like your story is so much better.

And then I asked, "Does anyone have a better story?" This other gentleman who was at dental school, he said, "When I applied to dental school, I didn't even know they're doing scholarships. And then I got an email that said, 'Do you want a scholarship?'" And he says, "Sure." And he said, "How much?" And they said, "$25,000 a year, for four years, 100 grand," just answered a prayer.

So, we went from one cent to $10,000 to $100,000. And then I said, "All right, we got to go 10 times more, right? So, who's got a million-dollar story?" And this gal says, "I hadn't make a decision when I was immigrating to the United States where I would live. And I felt that God said, you got to go to the Boston area. And that's when I got connected with this church. And that's when I met in community group, my husband, and he's better than a million dollars."

So, it's ought to say if you've got stories like that, do share them perhaps in the comment section right now if you're doing the full live stream.

The point is that God provides. That's the point. God is a good father and he provides for the needs of his children. So, be honest with those needs. Be patient in him providing and Naomi got the message from God. And her bitterness starts to evaporate starts to melt away.

God says, "My time will come don't force my time. Trust me to fill your emptiness." Jesus said, "I've come that you may have life and life to the fullness, life in abundance that will overflow."

Ruth 3:18, she said, "Wait, my daughter." That's funny. The woman who was impatient says, wait. She heard the message loud and clear and it resonated. "Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest but will settle the matter today." He will not rest until you find your rest.

And what is God's ultimate demonstration of his faithfulness that he will fill our lives, fill the needs in our lives? Well, it's not the cross and the empty tomb. Because the tomb is empty. God fills our life with grace, with mercy and not just with barley, not just with dollars, but with himself. He offers himself to us to satisfy our souls and hungry hearts.

God is for us who can be against us. He who did not spare his own son, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things. Turn to Christ today. Turn from sin, turn to him and follow his way. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word. What a delicious word this was. So satisfying to our souls. Lord, I pray that you make us godly people, worthy people, people of hesed, people of kindness, sacrificial kindness, where we make other people's business our own business and their care is our own cares and their worries, our worries. And we try to meet any way we can.

Lord, we thank you for the generosity of the body. We thank you for the generosity of Christians, meeting one another's need, what a miracle that is. Lord, I pray that you continue to fill us with the Holy Spirit and equip us to serve you in whatever you've called us to do. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello, welcome to the Mosaic Boston Brookline, our online worship experience week, I've lost track. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're watching. We're so glad that you tuned in. Today we are continuing our sermon series through the phenomenal book of Ruth. One of the things I've been meditating on regarding preaching is in the preaching process, it feels like cooking. God often compares God's word to food, be it bread or spiritual manna or honey, and one of the challenges of preaching into a camera is I'm cooking and I don't see you eating, and that's part of the joy of cooking is seeing people enjoying the meal. However, people have been writing and people have been messaging us that God's word has been impacting them. It's been changing them, it's for nourishing them, and we are so thankful for that. God's word is powerful and God's word does nourish our souls and this is what God's word does.

God's word is a feast presented to us. When we come humbly before him, we get satisfied. It doesn't just feed us. It also transforms us to be the best versions of what we are, what we're designed to be by God. And there's something about nutrition where if you eat correctly, you absorb the nutrients, etc. However, when you train, when you put your body under pressure for time and pressure and then you eat, actually you get more of the protein, more of the nutrient, there's something like that that goes on with God's word in a time of pressure that when we are going through suffering, when we are going through difficulty or hardship, and we eat God's word, it builds us up fortifies us. It makes us stronger. Diamonds are formed under heat and pressure over time. And that's what we see happening with our community and that's what I pray happens with you as well.

So feast on God's word today. Today we're in Ruth chapter two. And if you are new to the book of Ruth, one of the things that you realize is it's a literary masterpiece. It's one of the most profound works of literature in all of the history of the world. And it reads in four parts like a Shakespearean play and today we are in the second part. The context is that Ruth and Naomi, Naomi is Ruth's mother-in-law. They returned from Moab. They had a really difficult time in Moab and they returned to Bethlehem because they heard that God had removed his hand of rebuke and the famine is gone and the house of bread has been restocked. Ruth has been hopeful. She has developed a new faith in the Lord. Naomi on the other hand, has grown bitter against God's hand of affliction.

She actually tells everyone in Bethlehem, don't call me Naomi, which means sweet, call me Mara, which means bitter and perhaps in the season you're going back and forth between Naomi and Mara. On the one hand you rejoiced to see what the Lord is doing. On the other hand, you're bitter at the negative consequences and this is where Naomi is and she says, "It's exceedingly bitter to me. The Lord has gone out against me." She recognizes God's sovereign hand in the difficulty. It might not be directly from God, but it certainly passes through his hand. She says, "For the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty the almighty." She says, "Has brought calamity upon me," and she doesn't realize the blessings that God has sent to sustain her in this difficult time. And that's Ruth.

Ruth has incredible blessing to Naomi and God blesses Naomi through Ruth. And Naomi also doesn't know that God is in the details. God is behind the scenes, God is working. She doesn't know that God has preserved a kinsman Redeemer. And we'll get into that from Naomi's husband who will ultimately Mary Ruth and preserve Naomi's life and name. So Ruth and Naomi, they arrive in Bethlehem at the time of the barley harvest. That was the last verse of chapter one and this coincidentally was towards the end of April. And that's where we find ourselves. But there's no such thing as coincidence with God. It's always Providence. So would you look at a text with me today where in Ruth chapter two verses one through seven to begin with, and we'll read the rest of the text during the sermon. Ruth chapter two verse one "Now, Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech whose name was Boaz.

And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor. And she said to her, go my daughter. So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz who was of the clan of Elimelech. And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and he said to the reapers, the Lord be with you. And then answered the Lord, bless you. Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this? And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, she's the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers so she came and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest."

This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Five points to frame up our time together, grow in truth, grow in sensitivity to Providence, grow in capacity to bless, grow in humility to receive and grow in faith and works. The title is sermons grow in grace, and these are the five steps that we can glean from this text in order to grow in grace. So first of all, grow in true worth. Perhaps some of you have taken an economic hit. You're worried about your net worth with this whole Corona epidemic. Well, there's something more valuable and more important than a net worth. It's a true worth, a true worth from the perspective of God. And Boaz is here characterized as a worthy man, worthy, not just in terms of wealth.

He wasn't just a wealthy man, he was a man of God. And the Yiddish, there's a word for a man like this. It's the word Manch. And this is exactly what Boaz was. He's wealthy, yes. He's built up a business, yes. He's worked hard, yes. He's been diligent, yes, but he's also got a great reputation. People around him love him. He's been adding value to everybody around him. He's been building everyone up around him, not just himself. God has blessed him and he has been a blessing to others, which is rare in Bethlehem at this time to find a worthy man. The book proceeding, the book of Ruth is the book of Judges. And the book of Judges there's two little episodes bookends about the town of Bethlehem. The first one is a story about the grandson of Moses who leaves Bethlehem and then leads the Danites in idolatry.

And the second time that we see Bethlehem mentioned in the book of Judges is really sordid story, a tragic story about a concubine from Bethlehem. And what happened with her actually resulted in civil war in Israel and led to almost obliteration of the whole tribe of Benjamin. So this is unique to see a man from Bethlehem who is a worthy man, a godly man, a righteous man, a man who cares about the people around him, a man who uses his strength to bless others, to protect others, to provide for others. May God send more men like Boaz, like this guy. He adds value wherever he goes. His name literally means strength or Valor or warrior. And this is fascinating because Ruth's former husband, the name of the Hebrew means frail or sickly. And now we meet Boaz who is a warrior of man of God.

He's a man of wherewithal, despite hardship during a famine. He capitalized on the situation, perhaps bought up some more real estate and actually got into the farming business, the barley business, and he's doing really well for himself. He's older in years. Ruth at this time is probably late twenties, early thirties and Boaz considers her a young woman. So there was an age gap. Perhaps he's in his late forties or mid fifties. We're not sure. We're not told he's not married. We're not sure why he isn't married. Most likely it's because God has been saying, "No, it's not time. Focus on the duties that I have for you. Focus on my will for you. The time will come." And there's lessons here that we can apply to ourselves. So Ruth wakes up they just moved to Bethlehem. She wakes up in the morning and she's looking for a way to provide for Naomi and for herself.

And she knows, and perhaps Naomi taught her about the laws of Moses and Leviticus. The laws about gleaning God had included in the law provision for the immigrants, for widows, for orphans. And he did that by stipulating the harvesters must leave grain on the edges of the field and that farmers can't pick up the ears of grain that they drop. This is fascinating and we can glean from this theology of God's view of the economy, that God means to provide for people through work and through the blessing of other people. It's a redeemed view of capitalism, of industry, of work where people in need could come and they weren't just given handouts. They weren't just given social services or this wasn't just a soup kitchen. They were provided with meaningful work and the crucial difference between this and a handout was they did have to work and it was hard work and it was hot work.

It was almost as if you compare it to today, it was like trying to subsist on collecting cans and bottles and recycling them, but it was enough to meet a means. And I just want to pause here and mentioned that God has been doing this throughout ages through the church. We see this in the book of acts and the very beginning that the church met one another's needs and we've been seeing this during the crisis. I want to thank everybody in the community who has been generously, sacrificially contributing to the COVID-19 fund. Your funds have paid for rent, they've put food on tables, they've paid for medical bills. Thank you so much, and may God bless you abundantly. So we see that God does care. He's got a heart in particular for the disenfranchised, particularly the weak and those on the fringes of society.

And he writes into his law provision for the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. And we see that Ruth qualifies on two accounts. She is an immigrant and she's from a different people and she is a widow and she is a worthy person as well. We'll deal more with her in chapter three that she too is a worthy woman. She is a Proverbs 31 woman and what's fascinating is in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Proverbs ends with chapter 31 and very next book in the Hebrew Bible is Ruth. She is a Proverbs 31 woman. She's the epitome of a godly worthy woman. It's lesson here is grow in true worth as defined by God. Second, grow in sensitivity to God's Providence to Providence. This is Ruth 2:3, "So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz who was of the clan of Elimelech."

So we hear that Boaz was Ruth's husbands, distant relative, and that's repeated again in the text, meaning he qualifies to be a kinsman Redeemer. We dealt with this last week and we'll deal a little more with this next week, but the kinsman Redeemer, the job was to keep the name of his relative going and you do that by marrying the widow of your relative. What's fascinating here is that in the text, this is emphasized that he's from the clan of Elimelech. It's emphasized because to the original audience, this detail queues that we are now in a romantic scene. It's as if the lights are cued and the music is queued, and now we're in a love story of developing a love story. Now for us, this little detail about Boaz being a relative of Naomi or of Ruth's husband, it doesn't cue romance for us unless you're perhaps from Alabama or Mississippi.

Just kidding, but it did for them. For them, they realize, "Oh wow, there's hope for Ruth. There's hope for Naomi," and what the original readers immediately recognized is, "Wow, there's something going on behind the scenes. There's director guiding the events behind the scenes." And this phrase that she happened to come... in the Hebrew it literally says her chance chanced upon this as it turned out, as luck would have it. What a stroke of fortune that Ruth, it just so happened that she moves with Naomi to Bethlehem. It just so happened that they needed food. It just so happened that she woke up with a desire to work. It just so happened that she went to a field. It just so happened that she went to the field of Boaz who is single and he's wealthy and he's a worthy man and he loves God and he's literally the most eligible bachelor in Bethlehem and it just so happened that Ruth goes to his field and what the text is emphasizing is this is not happenstance.

This is not coincidence. This is not circumstance. It's not chance. This is Providence. This wasn't serendipity. This was God's Providence. It's not just a happy convergence of events. It's an orchestration of events that God himself is orchestrating every single one of these details. Sometimes God works through his visible hand of miracles. More often than not, he works through his invisible hand of Providence. And the lesson I want to draw out here is that we need to develop a sensitivity to God's Providence. We need to look at events happening in our lives and learn to discern God's hand behind the scenes. And one of the ways we do this is by studying Holy scripture and by recognizing God's hand of Providence and Holy scripture. And then you begin to see that same hand, the same fingerprints in your life. I'll just give you a couple examples of the story of Esther. Tremendous story of a girl that goes from a nobody to a queen and she's put in a position of influence and power for a time such as this in order for God to use her to redeem his people.

The story of Joseph, he goes from being sold into slavery, from jail, from captivity to becoming the CEO of Egypt. And when his brothers came to visit him, this is what he said. "You meant this for evil, but God, he meant it for good. God sent me ahead of you down to Egypt." Do we see God speak in this story? Did we see angels coming from heaven? Do we see a burning Bush? No. Ruth woke up. There was no angel. There was no prophetic word. There was no burning Bush. She woke up with a desire to do her duty, which was to provide for herself and for her mother-in-law, and God used that moment. We are to learn to see God's hand both in suffering and blessing. In suffering, Naomi saw God's hand and she said, in Ruth 1:13, "It's exceedingly bitter to me for your sake, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me."

In Ruth 1: 20-21 she said, "Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara for the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me and the almighty has brought calamity upon me?" She saw God's providential hand in that. But we are to also see God's providential hand in blessing and God does a blessing. And here he's beginning to bless. I've been meditating on this idea of God's hiddenness, God's at work and every single detail in our lives, but he often remains anonymous and there's incredible humility in that. When you recognize who God is, he created everything by the power of his word and humbly stands behind the scenes and we have to develop a sensitivity and when we begin to see his hand at work, we can glorify him for his greatness.

There's many of you perhaps in quarantine have been watching more television or Netflix or whatever than usual. There's a way to watch a movie or a show where you just experience the story as it's presented to you and you're just there. You're just consuming. But there's another way to watch. You can watch the movie or the show as a producer and then you start thinking about all of the decisions that are made behind scenes, about the camera angles and about the script and about the plot as it's developed. And this is what I'm talking about when I say you got to develop a sensitivity to God's Providence, and this is where pride gets in the way. Pride makes us the primary character of the story, and we're so absorbed by our own life that we can't see the hand of God's Providence and this is what the gospel does, it humbles us and then we begin to see God at work all around us.

You begin to see how meaningful your life is that every detail in your life is supercharged with significance. Ruth makes a freewill choice to go to this particular field and God uses her freewill. He uses her decision in his plan and as the ultimate matchmaker brings her together with Boaz. Edward Lorenz about 50 years ago. He's a mathematician and meteorologist. He developed computer models in order to map and predict weather patterns and actually that work was a major contribution to chaos theory. This is really fascinating. If you have time to do read up on this. He discovered that when he ran data on a very, very rudimentary computer and when he ran data... he ran a few data sets and one of the data sets he ran with a number 0.506127 he ran a second one of these tests and he rounded off by accident that number 2.506 so just cuts out 0.000127 and he realized that after about a month those two data sets led to radically different weather patterns.

And one of the things that he drew out of this was that miniscule statistically insignificant variables lead to massive difference in weather outcomes. And he coined the phrase the butterfly effect and I'm sure you heard of the butterfly effect and he said that a butterfly in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. The tiniest details in our lives have seismic implications. Scripture says that God has a book with our lives. Our lives are detailed in that book and every single one of our days is ordained before us as yet one of them has come to be. So don't worry. Give the weight of tomorrow to God. Jesus says, "Do not be anxious about anything today, has enough problems, let tomorrow worry about itself." That's a lesson we can draw from it. The other lesson is Ruth focused on her duty. She prayed and then she acted, and my question is where in your life in terms of your obedience to the Lord are you leaving out the 0.506127?

Tiny little details if you fix them, if you turn to the Lord in those areas of your life, it can have a dramatic effect. Three is grow in capacity to bless. Ruth 2:4, "And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and he said to the reapers, the Lord be with you, and they answered the Lord. Bless you." And we see in this one interaction, we see how amazing this guy Boaz is. Imagine if your boss walks into work back when we go back to work. When your boss walks in and says, "God bless you. Oh my dear employees, I love you so much. May you starts benedicting them in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, God." Etc. But he does that. He's created this really happy, healthy work environment where his employees respect him and honor him and he treats them fairly.

He was a pious man. He was a godly man. If you want to see how healthy a person's relationship is with God, look at the details. Look how much the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of God has saturated the practical details of life, including work relationships. How did Boaz get here? He grew in his capacity to bless. We don't know how he developed his business. We don't know how big his business was, but it's large enough so that he can help others put food on the table. He's grown in a capacity to bless materially and spiritually. Verse eight "Then Boaz said to Ruth, now listen, my daughter do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women." So he's asked the question, who is this young lady? He's come from Bethlehem.

He goes to this field, he immediately notices Ruth and he already knows about her. In a small town everyone knows your business as well as you know your business and he asks about her and then he talks to her. Verse nine, "Let your eyes be on the field that you are reaping. Go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn and she fell on her face, bowing to the ground and said to him, why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner? But Boaz answered to her all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me and how you left your father and your mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. The Lord repay you for what you have done and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

Then she said, "I found favor in your eyes. My Lord for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant though I am not one of your servants." If you watch romantic comedies, I do not, but I've learned that apparently in romantic comedy is there's a plot device called a meet cute, meet cute and it's used to introduce characters in how they meet one another. It's the moment of character meets another character and there's a romantic spark. They bump into each other ice skating or someone drops a pen, they hand it to this other person and there's a spark of chemistry. Mistaken package delivered. You bring it to the other person.

All of a sudden sparks fly. This is what's going on with Ruth and Boaz. This is the very moment they meet. In any couple... a married couple like when you get to know a married couple what's the first question you ask? How'd you guys meet? And for some reason the beginning infuses the whole relationship with meaning and that's why although meeting online apparently is a thing no one wants to say, "We met online, we met on bagel and coffee or whatever that," but for them this was meaningful and we see that Boaz noticed her. Why did he notice her? Does she look her best? Obviously not. She's farming, but that's not what caught his attention as a man of worth who is concerned for his own character. Before even seeing her, he's heard of her reputation of her character and even here we see that she's humble and she's grateful.

She uses the word favor twice and she begins the text by telling Naomi, I'm going to go find a field. Perhaps I'll find favor. The word favor means grace. There's no entitlement. There's no pride. She doesn't believe that anyone has to give her something. She doesn't believe she deserves anything from anyone. And she says, "I found favor in your eyes." Humility and gratefulness. Recipe for happiness. She's not looking for a handout. She's a hard worker. She's honest and he's attracted to her faith. I've heard that you believe in God. I've heard that you are faithful to God and you're faithful to Naomi. You're faithful to your people. He's recognized the sacrifices she's made. You love the people around you through sacrifice. And that right there is what he notices. So he tells her, don't glean anywhere else. This is verse eight he says, "Don't go to any other fields." In a lawless society, this is a big deal.

She didn't have any protection, doesn't have body guards, she doesn't have someone to look over her. So Boaz says, "I'm taking you into the community, I'm welcoming you in. I'm giving you my hedge of protection." He's providing, he's protecting and he speaks God's word into her life. So he's also pastoring. One commentator says that Boaz is here by instituting the first anti sexual harassment policy in the workplace, recorded in the Bible. He's not a chauvinist. He's chivalrous. He treats her not like an immigrant. He treats her not like a foreigner. He treats her like family. And that's part of what it means to be a worthy person. And this is what it means to be a Christian. God said, "Love your neighbor as yourself as much as you love yourself." That's how much you are to love your neighbor, meaning treat your neighbors like family.

He, says, "Help yourself to water." He gives her food and generously, verse 12 she says, "The Lord repay you for what you have done." This is what he says to her. "The Lord repay you for what you have done in a full reward. Be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel. Under whose wings you've come to take refuge." He says, you've come to Israel, you've come into close proximity to God. You're taking refuge in God's shadow. May God bless you for that and this is fascinating and he talks about reward. May God give you a reward for taking refuge under his wings. What does this mean? Does that mean this is like a paycheck or like a salary? Like God pays you for taking refuge in him? No, that's not how this works and this is why the imagery of the Eagle is so important here.

God doesn't have employees. God has children so God doesn't give paychecks. He gives gifts. And this is why the imagery is so important. He says, "God is like a Papa eagle." It's a father Eagle and Ruth is like a little eaglet coming into safety under daddy's wing. And may God reward you with gifts. I love this imagery so much. I've been blessed with kids. My daughter Sophia, she loves reading. And with the whole quarantine library's been closed, she's been really blessed with a Kindle. She asked a long time ago, she said, "Dad, I want a Kindle. How can I get a Kindle? Can I get paid to wash the dishes?" And I said, "No." There's a rule in our household. There's no financial transaction for work. I'm not going to pay you for what you're supposed to do, so start washing... We are to help around the house.

But you want to Kindle? Yeah, I'll give it to you as a gift. That's how it works. Do your duty and God gives gifts. That's how this works. Psalm 57:1 "A Miktam of David when he fled from Saul in the cave, be merciful to me. Oh God, be merciful to me. For in you, my soul takes refuge in the shadow of your wings. I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by." And I want to emphasize the word for. Be merciful to me Oh God, for because in your shadow... my soul takes refuge in you, in the shadow of your wings. God, be merciful to me because I've seen in you the source of ultimate security. Be merciful to me because you are great and you are good. And that's so different than how we often come to the Lord.

We often come to the Lord and say, "Lord, be merciful to me. Send me blessings because I have been good." That's workspace righteousness, workspace salvation. We come to God, appealing to our own goodness. God bless me because I've been good. And the Psalmist says, "Lord bless me because you are good, Lord you are merciful. You are the great God of the universe." And when you come to God like this, humbly not appealing to your own righteousness, but to his goodness, he can't but bless you because he is great, because he is good, because he is merciful. We appeal to his goodness, not our own, and Ruth recognized that she hasn't earned anything before God. She hasn't earned anything from Boaz. Everything is grace, and she honors him for his generosity and she takes refuge in his generosity and the lesson here is that we are to take refuge in the generosity of our savior.

And this is the message of the gospel. Even in the old Testament as well as the new Testament, God will have mercy on anybody, a Palestinian or an Israeli or a Moabite or an American. Anybody. Anybody who humbles himself, like Ruth says, "Lord have mercy on me. Not because I'm good, I'm not, but because you are good, you're the great God of the universe." This is the same language that Jesus used when he was talking about the hard-hearted Pharisees in Matthew 23:37 he says, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones, those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!" All the Pharisees had to do was turn from their self righteousness from their self justification. I take refuge in Jesus Christ, take refuge in the grace of God, so I wonder, are you viewing your relationship with God as an employee boss relationship? Or God, this is what I'll do and this is what I expect.

Or do you view your relationship with God as an eaglet coming to a Papa eagle and they're completely different. God's looking not for employees, but he's looking for people who will take refuge under his wings. Ruth 2:13 then she said, "I found favor in your eyes, my Lord for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant though I'm not one of your servants." She calls him Lord, so she's giving him respect. There's a toughness to him. He's strong, but then she says, "You've comforted me." You've spoken kindly to him. Boaz is both tough and tender. He's strong and sensitive.

In Ruth 2:14-16 we see the generosity of Boaz emphasized again, "And at mealtime Boaz said to her, come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine. So she sat beside the reapers and he passed to her roasted grain and she ate until she was satisfied and she had some leftover. Then she Rose to glean and Boaz instructed his young men saying, let her glean even among the sheaves, do not reproach her and also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean and do not rebuke her." Boaz is a man of action. He likes Ruth and he immediately acts with wisdom and there's strategy here and I just want to pause right now and explain the strategy. This tact. He's very tactful. Perhaps you've heard of the adage that the way to a man's heart is through the stomach. Well, I think that applies to everybody and Boaz knows that the way to Ruth's heart is also perhaps through yes, generosity, but a throw, nice meal.

Come, let's have a nice meal. Let's have some carbs, a little bread. Little roasted grain. Never had roasted grain, but that sounds delicious. A little wine. Let's strengthen ourselves, enjoy the community and enjoy the fellowship and then go back to work. In the ancient East. This was more significant than it is today. Today to have a meal together, a cup of coffee or lunch. Yeah. It's meaningful in the ancient East to welcome someone to your table is to welcome them into your life. It's to approve of them. It's to accept them is to say, "I want to walk this walk with you. I want to live life with you." The fact that Boaz ate with his people tells us a lot about him. The fact that he is so generous to Ruth by giving her water and a meal tells us even more and then he goes on and he says to his guys, "Let her work. And also I want you to toss grain out."

And what he's saying is I don't want just to fulfill the law of Leviticus. I don't want to just not completely maximize my profits. I want to actually lose money. I am intentionally losing money to bless this person and we see radical generosity. He's going above and beyond the law and he's saying, "I don't want to just fulfill the law. I want to give grace and I want to give grace upon grace, upon grace and this kind of generosity, this kind of kindness, this reveals the heart of Boaz and it reveals the heart of God. Generosity does take finances. This is important lesson the scripture does teach us. And Ephesians 4:28 says, "Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need." God says, "Don't just work to provide for your own needs and the needs of your family, but work to have a little leftover so that you can be generous." And this is how we grow in our capacity to bless. 1 Peter 4:9 "Show hospitality to one another without grumbling." I can't wait for the quarantine to be over to start showing hospitality again.

Ruth 2:17-23, "So she gleaned in the field until evening and she beat out what she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley and she took it up and went to the city. Her mother-in-law saw where she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. And her mother in law said, where did you glean today and where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you."

"So she told her mother-in-law with whom she worked and said, the man's name with whom I worked today is Boaz, and Naomi said to her daughter in law, may he be blessed by the Lord whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead. Naomi also said to her, the man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers and Ruth the Moabite said, besides, he said to me, you shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women less than another field, you be assaulted. So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvest and she lived with her mother-in-law."

We see Boaz as a worthy man. We see Boaz as a man sensitive to the Providence of God. We Boaz as a man who has been increasing his capacity of blessing. We see the same in Ruth that she has increased her capacity of blessed through her industry and hard work. Four is grow in humility to receive. This is Ruth 2:17, "So she gleaned in the field until evening and she beat out what she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley." She worked all day and at the end of the day she even ground the barley, meaning she takes the opportunity that God gives her and she runs with it. She gleans everything that she can possibly glean 12 times the word glean is used in the chapter that to emphasize the fact that she wasn't too proud to stoop down and pick up what God is giving her and there's such incredible lesson here.

That God gives more to those who are willing to be faithful with what he has already given. God gives her a little bit and then blesses it and multiplies it. Sometimes we miss out on so many of God's blessings because we're too proud. We pray. God give me a field. God give me a huge harvest and God says, "Hold on. Before we talk and start talking about real estate deals. How about you take what I'm already giving you? I'm providing for your needs."

We see incredible humility that then leads to more and more blessing. It's humility to receive what God is giving you. Now, do you have that humility? Are you humble enough to receive what the Lord gives now and the ephah is about 29 pounds. She got 29 pounds of grain. This is a ton. Probably her biggest problem at the end of the day was figuring out how to carry this thing home in one day. She makes enough to feed her and Naomi for about two weeks and then Boaz said, "You can, you can keep doing this every day until the end of the barley harvest season." That's about seven weeks, so meaning in seven weeks, if she got as much as she got in the first day, she'd have enough food for a full year. Verse 20, "Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, May he be blessed by the Lord whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead! Naomi also said to her, The man is the close relative of ours, one of our redeemers."

The word Redeemer... and we talked about this last week and we'll talk about this more next week. It's used over 20 times in this book. It's the kinsman Redeemer redeem. What it talks about in the mosaic law and the law of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, that a near relative becomes responsible for the economic welfare of a family when that family is in distress. So if the family is in debt, the kinsman Redeemer pays off that debt. If the family had to sell themselves into slavery to pay off a debt that kinsman redeemer pays off the debt and then also redeems them from slavery. He's responsible to maintain wholeness and security and the welfare of the family. And this is a hint of the gospel that God provides Ruth a Redeemer.

And through Ruth he provided a Redeemer for all of Israel in King David and through David, God provided a Redeemer for all of humanity in the King of Kings, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. And God defines love as sacrifice. Boaz sacrifices Ruth sacrifices. And that's the show is that true love sacrifices. The God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life. The gospel is that you and I, we are Ruth. We are pagans and idolaters and sinners and rebels, and we come from the wrong background and we come from the wrong pedigree and we come to the Lord empty handed and needy and the Lord Jesus, he's our Boaz. He comes, he redeems, he provides, he protects and he pastors are weary souls. And the same way that Boaz doesn't just fulfill the law in providing for Ruth, he goes above and beyond and gives her grace upon grace.

And scripture says that Jesus Christ comes and he is full of truth and grace and from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace, not just the law. We found favor now in the eyes of God. He delights in us in the same way that Boaz delights in Ruth. 2 Corinthians 8:9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you by his poverty may become rich." God who gave us his son, who gave us his best. This is a God whom we can trust with the rest. He's provided for our greatest need. Obviously he'll provide for our lesser needs. What's fascinating is that God isn't just the director of the story talks about God's hand of Providence. He's behind the scenes. He's not just the director. God writes himself into the story. He puts himself front and center. He becomes the main character of his own story in order to redeem us and in that story, what do we do with God? We killed him.

And he allowed that to happen, to provide a way to kill our pride, to kill our sin, to kill our rebellion, and then offer us the riches of his grace. This is how I think of grace. I think of grace as an acronym. It's God's riches at Christ's expense. I like that. God's riches at Christ's expense. Grace is free because someone paid for it. That someone is Jesus Christ. Point five is grow in faith and works. We see this in both Boaz and we see this in Ruth that they believe and they pray, but then they also act and they also act it to answer their own prayers, so to speak, and we see this incredible intertwining of God's sovereignty and human responsibility, faith and works.

You believe and you do. What's fascinating about Boaz is he's a wealthy man and he lived a very spiritually, apostate, morally corrupt environment, but he still by faith kept a relationship with God in a place where it's really hard to be faithful to God. On top of that, Boaz doesn't come from a great spiritual pedigree. Who is Boaz's mum? Bible trivia. If you get this right, you get a chicken wing right now. If you answer, type it in the comments section, Facebook go. Boaz's mum. Boaz's mum, her name is given to us in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

In Matthew 1 genealogy of the King of Kings, Matthew 1:1-6, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac, the father of Jacob and Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers and Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram and Ram, the father of Amminadab, Amminadab, the father of Nahshon and Nahshon the father of Salmon and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the King." From the story Rahab, Rahab was a former prostitute. Remember the story of Jericho that she hid the spies from Israel and then her whole family was saved.

Rahab was Boaz's mom. Boaz doesn't come from a great spiritual pedigree, but nevertheless he believed in God and when you believe in God, when you believe in God's redemptive grace, your past does not dictate your future. Grace changes that, you're on one trajectory. This is where repentance does. It turns you from that trajectory and now you're a completely different trajectory. You're on a trajectory of blessing and Ruth was a poor Moabite woman, extremely vulnerable. She too overcame her circumstance, overcame her past with faith in God believed and they acted on that faith. They believed that God is true. His word is true. His will is good, and then they align their life with his will and it completely changed everything. They planned and the Lord established. We plan and the Lord establish and we believe the Lord establishes our works.

Verse 12 and Boaz says, "The Lord repay you for what you have done. A full reward given you by the Lord, the God of Israel under whose wings you've come to take refuge!" This is a prayer. He's praying for her. May God bless you. May God provide refuge for you and Boaz becomes the answer to Boaz's prayer. We see an incredible intersection of faith and work. Sometimes prayer moves the hand of God and sometimes prayer changes our hearts and we see something similar on the cross where Jesus Christ on the cross has been crucified. He says, "Father, forgive them." People crucify him. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. They don't know what they're doing. They're still guilty. They still need forgiveness. Father, forgive them. Jesus, prays this and then he answers his own prayer through his sacrifice, the intersection of faith and works, God's sovereignty, human responsibility.

Philippians 2:12-13, "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only is it my presence, but much more my absence. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." You work it out. "For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Work out yourself to focus on your duty and then recognize that it's God who's giving you the energy. God is the one who's working through you. Sometimes we need to look to the Lord in our prayers and ask him for help and then we need to get up off our knees and use his spirit that he's given us to work. The five points if you missed them, grow and true, worth to grow in sensitivity of Providence growing capacity of blessed, grown humility to receive and grow and faith and works.

Boaz and Ruth probably did not see David's greatness. He came. He was their descendant, most likely they didn't see his greatness. Most likely they didn't really understand all the blessing that God would provide through their faithfulness. God found in them faith that he used to bless not just their life, but generations beyond. G. Campbell Morgan said, "You may be God's foothold for things of which you cannot dream." So friends grow in grace because you don't know how much you will impact eternity. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this time and the Holy scripture. What a rich word this is. What a feast you've given us today. Lord, I pray that you make us more like Boaz and Ruth, and we love them so much because they reflect the greatest character of our scripture and that's Jesus Christ. We see Christ likeness in Boaz, we see Christ likeness in Ruth. Make us a people like this and give us the power of the Holy spirit to do it. And we pray all this in Christ. Holy name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Boston Brookline online. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic and we have been praying for you, continuing to pray for you, continuing to miss you, thinking about each one of you and praying for the Lord to continue filling you with the spirit and sanctifying you.

This is the seventh week that are holding an online service instead of an in-person worship gathering. As strange as it is, we're here. I've never thought we'd become a televangelist ministry, but here we are.

We're at the point in the pandemic where perhaps you're there, perhaps you can relate where we're beginning to worry about some of the superficial consequences of the pandemic. We're worried about the deeper ones and perhaps you find yourself with a corona fatigue. The conversation I'm having with some people, I'm beginning to worry about things like their haircuts. I haven't had a haircut in way too long. I'm at a point where it's either a pandemic mullet or I cut my own hair or my wife cuts my hair. I'm not sure which one's worst or better. Sorry, baby.

Perhaps you worried about staying in shape, gaining Corona-15, something like that. Or perhaps worried about getting back to work, getting back to life and the government has begun speaking about how we can reopen the country. And as we have conversations like that, we also want to have a conversation about how we get back from where we are spiritually speaking. And if you're tuning in, hopefully, you are worried about that. You are worried not just about your physical health or your haircut, but you are worried about the state of your soul and where we go from here.

So that's why we're today starting a brand new sermon series in the book of Ruth and we are calling it from Ruin to Redemption. It's a profound story about a powerful woman of faith, a godly woman who lived not for her best life now but who lived to leave her best legacy. And that legacy actually included a king, King David, and then the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

So, would you pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word. Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for this opportunity to gather virtually as a body of Christ. And I pray, Holy Spirit, that you speak to us, that you speak profound truth into our souls. Make us a people who aren't blinded by the short term, a people who are not spiritually myopic. But give us a vision for our lives to leave legacies, to leave legacies of thousands and tens of thousands of people worshiping you. Draw out these lessons from this incredible book of Ruth and apply them to our hearts, and we pray all these in the beautiful and holy name of Jesus Christ, amen.

One of the things that I've noticed with ESPN and NFL network don't have live sports to show so they've been showing replays or getting people to watch games that have been played a long time ago. One of the things I noticed is, we all know the outcomes of the games and if I know that my team, my favorite team loses, no matter how good the game is, no matter how good the good plays are, it's not very satisfying.

For example, like the 2007 Pats playing the Giants, could not rewatch that game. However, if I know the ending and if I know that my team wins, no matter how bad the bad plays are, they're filled with hope because I know the outcome like for example, when the Pats came back from 28-3 against the Falcons in 26th season.

Something like that is happening with the book of Ruth. The context is that the book is given to us after the book of Judges. The book of Ruth is the eighth book in the Bible right before 1 Samuel. And what we see is that at the end of the book of Judges, it's the darkest of the darkest times in all of the Old Testament. And God gives us a glimpse of hope in the book of Ruth where he says, "Let me show you the end." And the end is that the people of God win, because God's people always win.

In all of the Old Testament, this is one of the brightest rays of hope that we have and actually, the very first time that the word "hope" is used in the Bible. In the eighth book of the Bible, it's used in chapter one of Ruth. And the word for hope here is much more robust than our English word for hope. The English word for hope is you hope or you wish something will happen that you really desire to happen but you have no certainty that it will. It's a very fickle hope.

When Scripture talks about hope, it talks about a true reality that is coming, a foundational reality where we can anchor our souls on this truth. Holy Scriptures says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, it's the conviction of things not seen. You see, when Scripture talks about hope, it talks about hope as truth. This is true, therefore, we can build our lives upon this.

The job of faith is to work itself out of a job. The stronger your faith, the stronger your realization, that what's coming is as true as what it is today, that gives us strength to overcome the darkest moments of today. And that's what the book of Ruth does for us. It reshapes our entire outlook on life, that the best for the Christian is truly yet to come because of, as we learned last week, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And we need this hope in the darkest of times, that God is still at work even the mundane details of our lives, and the ordinary details of our lives. The book of Ruth is given to us for people who ask the question, "Where is God? Where is a vision from God, a word from God, a prophecy from God?"

In the book of Ruth, God doesn't speak once. However, we see God's good hand of providence, guiding the minutia, the details of the story weaving it all together. As a good director, he's behind the scenes, but it's his script and his plan of redemption is unfolding. The name of God is named 18 times in these four short chapters.

So, here's what I'd like you to do in the next few weeks, read this book. Read it over and over and over. It takes about 10 minutes to read quickly, 20 minutes with meditation, 30 minutes with meditation. And it's a word of hope to us in particular as we're going through a season of loss. And life, we go through seasons of losses and crosses. But God sows his seeds of grace in winter time and they will bring an abundant harvest.

And the book is named after Ruth which is actually remarkable. It's the only book in the Old Testament named for a non-Israeli. Ruth is actually in this book named five times, Ruth the Moabites. Meaning she was from a different people, a different culture, a people who worship different gods. And she's not even the main character of the book. It begins and ends with Naomi and Boaz is at the heart of the story as the redeemer. And more than half of the story is dialogue, 678 words of dialogue. Boaz has 281 of those words. Naomi 225, Ruth speaks the least, 120 words of dialogue. But when she speaks, she speaks the most profound words of faith in all of Holy Scriptures.

So, would you look at the book of Ruth with me. Today, we're going to be in Ruth 1. I'm going to give you my three points prior to the texts and then with each point, we'll go through pericopes or paragraphs of the texts. The points are from Bethlehem to Moab, and that's verses 1 through 5. And then point two is from Moab to the Crossroads, and that's verses 6 through 18. And then finally, from the Crossroads to Bethlehem, that's verses 19 through 22.

Here to begin, I'm going to read Ruth 1:1-5, from Bethlehem to Moab. Would you look at the texts with me? "In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion."

"They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives, the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband."

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word, may write these internal truths upon our hearts. The context is the days when the judges ruled. If you read the book of Judges, it's a story of dark times. A story of serial unfaithfulness where God's people were given God's law. They were brought from captivity into the Promised Land.

And God said, "If you obey me, you will be blessed. If you disobey, curses will come upon the land." And you see this cycle of disobedience that leads to idolatry, that leads to enslavement. Finally, people come to their senses and then repentance and deliverance.

When you see this cycle over and over and over and each reoccurring cycle is darker than the previous one, it's almost as if there's this downward spiral out of control. And the book of Judges ends with the following verse, Judges 21:25. This is the verse preceding the book of Ruth. "In those days there was no king. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

It's almost as if this is the description of the United States today. Everyone does what's right in their own eyes. Everyone defines their own truth. Everyone defines their own morality. Everyone defines their own reality and it leads to chaos. So, we see moral chaos that leads to political instability, that leads to financial crisis.

That's the book of Judges, not the United States although we see that same pattern over and over as people leave God, as people leave God's word. There's a famine of God's word that leads to a famine of food. So, we meet Elimelech and Naomi. Elimelech, his name in the Hebrew means God is King. Naomi's name means sweet. She's a sweetheart.

They start as children perhaps of believers from faithful families in Israel, in Bethlehem. Something happens along the way with their faith. We're not told what it is. Something happens where their faith is shaken. And one of the reasons perhaps why their faith was shaken was because of the famine. The famine led to a crisis of faith for them, financial instability, financial crisis led to a crisis of faith.

Why would that happen? Well, when we expect God to exist for us, when we expect God to give us what we define as is good or the ultimate good. And then we don't get what we want from God, there is a temptation to get angry at God, to get bitter. When we don't get what we want and when we get what we don't want, there is that temptation and I wonder if that's what happened with Elimelech and Naomi.

You see, some of that bitterness with the names of their children. Their children perhaps were born in the famine surrounding the nation and the first son they named Mahlon, which in the Hebrew means sickly. And the second son they named Chilion, which means spent or frail. They named their sons sickly and frail. Why would they do that?

I think it's because they were bitter at God. "God, we didn't want these circumstances. God, we didn't want this financial ruin. We didn't ask for this. If you're a good God and an all-powerful God, why would you assign this ruin to our lives?" So, they make a decision to leave the Promised Land where they had an inheritance, to leave the people of God, to leave covenant community in search of financial wealth. And this is what we see in the text that they went to sojourn in the country of Moab. And the word "sojourn" means, this was supposed to be temporary. The Scripture say that we are resident aliens. Our life here on earth is but a sojourn to eternity. There was no initial intention to settle down. It's a temporary residence. They were just visiting the country of Moab because it promised financial benefit. Ruth 1:2, it says, "They went into the country of Moab and remained there."

It's supposed to be temporary, but they stayed and however well intentioned, perhaps it was. Just from a worldly perspective, this was very sensible. And it could be rationalized. Well, why would we stay here? Like yeah, we have our church. We have our community of faith but we're not living the best life that we possibly could. And by the way, this famine, it wasn't a famine that annihilated everyone because afterwards, Naomi does come back to Bethlehem and people were living, and people were prospering like Boaz.

It's just that they weren't living as comfortably as they could have. So they leave. And they could justify it. Elimelech might have justified it by saying, "I need to provide for my wife. I need to provide for my kids and God isn't giving me the provision that I want." So, they go. And it doesn't seem that far away, 50 miles. We go back and visit our family every once in a while, on holidays, we'll come back. But this was a faithful decision.

And here, this brings me to a short discussion about discerning God's will? How do you know God's will is for your life? And perhaps Elimelech was wrestling with this question, "What does God want me to do? There's famine in the land. We're struggling financially. What does God want me to do?"

One of the things about discerning God's will through circumstances is that we need to interpret those circumstances through our God's word. You can't understand God's will unless you understand God's word, because God will never say something through circumstances that contradicts what he's already said in his word.

And in God's word, God had explicitly told the people of Israel, "Do not go live in Moab. That is a land full of idolatry and paganism." And Elimelech and the family weren't going as missionaries to tell these people about God. They were going in order to get upward mobility et cetera, et cetera.

So, whenever you ask, "What is God's will for my life?" First of all, you got to say, "What does God say in his word?" And then you got to go to the covenant community, brothers and sisters in your life and say, "Help me interpret these circumstances through God's word. You have the Holy Spirit. I have the Holy Spirit. There's the Holy Spirit in Scripture, let's do this together." They didn't ask.

And mostly likely, Elimelech didn't even ask God himself. "God, where do you want me to live? God, where do you want me to set down roots? If it's here in Israel, despite the fact that it's hard now in the temporary, I trust that you will provide because your will is always good."

This was a faithful decision. Scripture says that Elimelech dies. And we see Naomi's pain and we see her bitterness as well but she still had two sons. And we see that these two sons, they marry Moabite girls. They put down roots. And on the face of it, it doesn't seem like this is a big deal but Holy Scripture explicitly forbids intermarriage between believers and unbelievers. And this isn't a question of culture. It's not a question of race, it's a question of faith.

And yes, they sinned in marrying these ladies. But you got to go back to Elimelech who made the decision to bring his children into a land full of paganism. So, Elimelech's unfaithfulness leads to generational unfaithfulness because Elimelech was worried about living his best life immediately right now, his most comfortable life right now, it leads to sin in his own life and then the sin in his children's life.

And one of the things that we get from all the Scripture and one of the biggest lessons that we get from the book of Ruth is that we are not to live for our best life now in terms of our immediate comfort. We are to live lives from the perspective of eternity. We are to live lives to leave a legacy.

So, they intermarry and they lived 10 years with their wives and there were no children. And from the Old Testament perspective and from biblical perspective, children are a blessing from the Lord. And we see whispers of God's hand of disapproval or God's hand of disfavor upon this family.

So, the sons died and all three, Elimelech and his two sons are buried in a Moabite grave and Naomi buries her husband and she buries her two sons. Devastation, there's bereavement and loss. And now, we find ourselves in the story where there's three widows particularly in a time where without a family structure, they were especially vulnerable and the story wants us to get to a place where this is heartbreaking.

What seemed as a wise sensible plan from a worldly perspective, from a financial perspective, from a physical perspective ends in devastation. Elimelech, he just wanted to take a little detour from God's path and it leads in devastation. This is what happens, friends, when we walk by sight and not by faith. When we look at the facts as they are before us instead of interpreting the facts through the truth of God's word.

Earthly wisdom, it makes sense in the short term, never in the long term. Temporal provision leads to ultimate devastation. The other thing I want to talk about here is how subtly sin ensnares. You give sin just an inch, it's going to take a mile. Someone once said that sin will take you farther than you want to go. It'll keep you longer than you want to stay. And it will cost you so much more than you are willing to pay.

Be careful of sojourns around God, around God's word, sojourns into sin. You might find yourself in a land far away from God ensnared and not able to come back. Elimelech, his name means God is king. And for Elimelech, God was king in name alone. When he needed comfort, he didn't seek it in God who's a refuge. He sought it in provision, physical things.

Quick comfort kills. And this is a really important word for us today as we're going through a storm. One of the greatest temptations as we're going through a storm is to stop building a house of obedience on the rock of God's word, because it's difficult. Instead, we're tempted to build sandcastles of disobedience, of sin, of seeking comfort, of seeking pleasure and sin. Oh, friend, don't go there.

There's a deep lesson that we can see from Elimelech. Where do they live prior to going Moab? They live in Bethlehem. Bethlehem of Judah, it's mentioned twice here in this text. It's also mentioned twice in the book of Judges. It was an insignificant little village in this period of time. However, we know from the book of Micah is that Jesus, the Messiah, is going to come from Bethlehem. Jesus, the Word of God, the Bread of Life, was going to be born in Bethlehem and that's what the word Bethlehem means. It means house of bread.

So, if God names a town house of bread in Israel, it has an incredible meaning. And that house of bread was in the Promised Land, a land that was supposed to be flowing with milk and honey and there was famine in the house of bread. And that wasn't by accident. That was by God's providence. Why would God allow a physical famine in the house of bread? To show his people that they have a spiritual famine of the word of God.

See, spiritual famine of the word of God always precedes a physical famine of food. You see this promise in Amos 8:11-12, that when people turn from God, it says, "'Behold, the days are coming,' declares the Lord GOD, 'when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it."

A famine of God's word always leads to a famine of food. Why? Scripture says that people shall not live by bread alone but for every word that precedes from the mouth of God. As much as our bodies need physical food, our souls need to be nourished with God's word. So, we see a famine in every conceivable sense, famine spiritually and morally, of trust in the Lord, a famine of faith.

Famine was ordained by God to awaken his people from spiritual sleep. It's designed to awaken. It's designed to sanctify. God designs famine often as forced fasting, to get us to a place where we realize, "Oh, my. I'm addicted to physical pleasure. I'm addicted to physical comfort. God, remove these things so that I can see you and see your will more clearly."

Famine and economic crisis in general, crisis in general is designed by God to make us turn to him in repentance, to run back to God. One of my favorite quotes on this is by C.S. Lewis who says that, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience but he shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

When God sends a suffering like perhaps he's doing today, all around the world, he does it intentionally. He does it to awaken us and he gives us the choice. You can either run to God or you can run from God. You can run to God and find blessing, to find your blessed life. Or you can run from God in search of your best life.

And those two, often they're diametrically opposed. Read the beatitudes where Jesus talks about what a blessed life is. He says, "Blessed are you who are mourned. Blessed are you who are meek. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are you when others revile and they persecute you." It talks about blessing as counterintuitive, that the blessed life is often the opposite of the best life in the short term but in the long term, the blessed life is the best life.

Elimelech didn't understand this. So, they moved from Moab to Bethlehem that leads to devastation and then we see Naomi moving from Moab to Crossroads and this is in verses 6 through 18. Would you look at the text with me? "Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. So, she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah."

"But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, 'Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.' Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept."

They hear that Bethlehem, the house of God has been restocked with bread by God. Perhaps the people have finally turned from their disobedience and idolatry, enslaved into sin back to repentance and God delivers them. And we see Naomi and her daughters-in-law, they are moving together from this place of Moab to Bethlehem. They're on the path together. And we see that perhaps they get to the border, perhaps her daughters didn't understand the finality of the decision, the immensity of the decision to leave their homes and to go with her.

Obviously, their relationships are really deep. 10 years they've known each other at least deepened only by grief. And perhaps Naomi waited until this moment where they were at the border crossing. Perhaps she waited until this moment where they see the signs. They see a sign at the crossroad. One of the signs says, pointing to the direction that says Bethlehem. The other sign points back and says Moab.

And at this moment, she wants them to make a decision and this is a really emotional scene that's deeply stirring. And here you got to ask, "Naomi, why would you tell your daughters-in-law to leave? Do you want them to go with you to the people of God?" Obviously, she does. The best thing for her is for them to come with her so that she has some kind of support structure as she is rebuilding her life in Bethlehem. But she sacrifices what's best for her, for what's best for them in her mind.

And that's what love does, love sacrifices. She knows that ultimately what's best for them is to be with God and to be with God's people, but she wants them to make the decision with eyes wide open. She wants them to make the decision between the blessed life and the best life, and she wants them to understand that the best life is a life full of sacrifice. It's a life full of self-denial. It's a life often full of suffering.

She wants them to know that they're about to become immigrants in a foreign land. And not only immigrants, widows who are immigrants from a different culture, from a different race, from a different faith. She knows that they will always have a difficult time integrating in society, that they will be ostracized and outcast.

And actually, we see glimmers of this when Naomi goes back with Ruth and the people don't even acknowledge Ruth. There's almost as if there is a conspiracy, a communal unspoken conspiracy against even acknowledging this foreigner. So, she makes them realize the decision that's before them. Most likely, you won't get remarried. Most likely, you will not have a family. Most likely, you will live in destitution. But you will be in proximity to God and his word. Is it worth it? Count the cost.

Verse 10, "And they said to her, 'No, we will return with you to your people.' But Naomi said, 'Turn back my daughters. Why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back my daughters. Go your way, for I'm too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.' Then he lifted up their voices and wept again and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law. But Ruth clung on to her."

And this is what Naomi is saying is from a human perspective, there is no hope. There is no hope for a comfortable life. There is no hope for rebuilding a family. It's hopeless to go back. And what she says seems terribly strange to us. And here, it's almost absurd what she's saying but she is referring to Deuteronomy 25. She's referring to God's law.

She's remembered God's law. She's remembered God's word and she's referring to the levirate marriage. In a levirate marriage, when a husband dies and the wife is alive, the obligation of the nearest of kin of the husband is to marry the woman in order to keep the name alive, in order to keep inheritance in the land, in order to provide heirs.

It doesn't mean much to us but it was a matter of enormous cultural importance to them. And she says, "There's no hope for any of that. There's no heirs, there's no hope of family." She wants them to count the cost, that if you'd come with me, there's no immediate guarantees of comfort. And that's very similar to coming to Christ. Christ often talks about, "Hey, before you follow me, before you follow me on a daily basis, I want you to count the cost."

No one goes to war with an army of 10,000 when they realize that there's an army of 20,000 coming at them. That's why you count the cost. Do you have what it takes? Now, it's hard. It's difficult. There will be suffering.

Acts 14:22, "Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God." When we come to Christ, there's no guarantees of a comfortable life. There's no guarantees of a life free from pain and distress, of difficulty and hardship. There's no promise of wealth and health and a long life. Actually, Jesus does promise, "If you follow me, you got to take up your cross and follow me daily, that there is suffering."

One of the things that our culture doesn't understand is that suffering often is a gift. It strengthens us. It purifies our character. It purifies our soul. The book of James says, "Rejoice when you meet trials of various kinds." Often, God does ordain suffering and he does it for our sanctification. He offers us eternal comfort, he does. But there's no guarantee of temporal comfort.

And the world does the opposite. The world says, "There is no eternity. We can't offer you anything in eternity, so eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." It offers us temporal comforts. But we know this even physically that if you pursue temporal comforts through food, ultimately, you will harm your health. If you pursue temporal comforts through finances, you just spend everything that comes in and live lavishly, you will bear the fruit of the consequences of that decision.

We understand that in the short term, often, we are to sacrifice short term pleasures for long term comfort, for long term flourishing and God speaks not from a perspective of our life, he speaks for this perspective of all of eternity, that every decision we make, we need to make from the perspective of eternity. How is this decision going to impact my life 10 years from now, 20, 30, a thousand? How is this decision going to impact not just me, how is it going to impact my children? How is it going to impact their children?

Or, from spiritually speaking, Scripture talks about evangelism as having spiritual children. The decisions that I'm making, how are they impacting eternal souls around me? Are they drawing people closer to God or farther away? We are to count the cost. In John 6, Jesus says this to many of his disciples.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "'This is the hard saying. Who can listen to it?' And after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So, Jesus said to the 12, 'Do you want to go away as well?' Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.'"

Some of Christ's teachings are hard to hear. A hard words make for sort hearts. And when our hearts are soften to God, he leads us in the way of righteousness. He leads us in the way of blessing. And the way of blessing often is counter to what the world says the best life is.

So, we see that Orpah leaves Naomi. And this is interesting because most likely to marry one of the Naomi's sons, she had to at least profess faith in God and then something happens where when the cost is too high, she walks away from God. She walks away from Bethlehem and she turns to Moab.

And perhaps you're in a similar situation. Perhaps you go to church or you observe Christianity because you love someone who does, perhaps it's a spouse or it's your parents. You're deeply committed to them and because you honor them, you honor what they believe. You respect what they believe. But personal loyalty or religion of a family or the tradition of parents, they're never enough to break the pull of Moab, the pull of the world.

When there's a cost to following Christ, it's so easy to walk away when you weren't really following Christ but you were following someone who was following Christ. Christ to you was a friend of a friend, and that's what God was to Orpah. God was a friend of a friend. And as soon as her husband was out of the equation, she had no relationship with God.

I wonder what happened to Orpah. We're not told, but I wonder what happened. As she went back, did she marry? Did she have children? Did she live long? Did she have a comfortable life? We're not told. But as far as this book is concerned, as far as the unfolding story of God's redemption, she's gone. She's out of the story. We don't hear about Orpah anymore.

And this brings us to really important point. A lot of people talk about God who has a plan for your life. And it's easy to interpret that to believe that God exists for me, that God has a great plan for me, and that leads to all kinds of wrong-headed theology. Instead of asking, "Does God have a plan for my life?" You should ask, "How does my life fit into God's plan?" If you ask that, and if you make decisions based on that question, you will live your most blessed life now and leave a blessed legacy and a blessed eternity.

Orpah was convinced by Naomi. Ruth wasn't, you see this in verse 15. And Naomi says to Ruth, "See your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. And Ruth said, 'Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die."

"And there will I be buried, may the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.' And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said, 'No more.'" Ruth clung to Naomi and same word that's used in Genesis 2:14 talked ... The Genesis 2:24 talked about marriage.

And then also, this is one of the richest phrases of faith, articulations of faith in all of Holy Scripture. This is covenant language. "May your people be my people, and may your God be my God." Where did she get this idea? And she even invokes the name of Yahweh, may the Lord do so to me than more so, talking about death, if I don't follow through. Where did she get this covenant language?

She got it from Exodus. Exodus 6 through 7 where God says, "I will take you to be my people. And I will be your God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians."

Ruth takes a promise of God, a declaration of God and she turns it upside down and she says, "Yeah, God promised that and I am taking that promise and I am declaring it. I'm owning this promise. I'm identifying myself with this God." And it's fascinating that we're not told that Ruth had some kind of audible experience or some kind of physical manifestation of God revealing himself to her, how did she know about God?

Well, she learned about God from Naomi. All she had was God's words spoken from Naomi and she had Naomi's testimony. By the way, it was a faulty testimony. It wasn't a perfect testimony. Naomi knew God's word and she wasn't happy about it. Often, she even says that she was bitter but yet Naomi clung to God, and Ruth says, "I believe this word."

This is where we get the true robust hope. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Where do we get this kind of faith? We get it from God's holy word. That's all Naomi had. She built her life on it and that led to incredible legacy for the future.

So for that, I just want to remind you in this season where perhaps you've got more time on your hands than usual, read God's word. Study God's word. Meditate on God's word. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Don't be conformed to this world. This world is giving us all kinds of sensible messages about what it means to live an enjoyable life.

In particular, those messages are really easy to accept. They resonate with us in a season of suffering because what suffering does is it makes us really selfish. This is what we see with Elimelech, what's best for me. We see this with his sons, what's best for me now? That's what suffering does. It makes us really selfish.

And then the world gives us these messages of, "Hey, following Christ in obedience in your marriage is difficult. Get out. Following Christ in obedience in your singleness is difficult. Get out, et cetera, et cetera." No, friends, build your life on God's word even in this time of suffering.

The other thing I just want to point out is that Naomi's testimony to Ruth led to Ruth's conversion, although her testimony was imperfect. Although her walk with the Lord wasn't perfect, but yes, she shared God's word and she shared honestly her struggles. Why am I a Christian, because I'm perfect in and of myself because I follow religiously, perfect ... No, of course.

I'm a Christian because I need grace. I'm a Christian because I struggle. I'm a Christian because I need God's word in my life. I need God's spirit in my life. I need God's mercy and grace on a daily basis. We're not Christians because we have it all together. We're Christians because we don't and we need God's grace.

So, Ruth turns back from her idols and she turns to God as they move from the Crossroads to Bethlehem. And suffering often exposes our faith, the strength of our faith. For Ruth, suffering strengthened her faith. For Orpah, suffering weakened or even destroyed her faith and we have a decision, will you allow suffering to strengthen your faith or will you allow it to crumble your faith?

This brings us to point three, Crossroads to Bethlehem, Ruth 1:19-22. "So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, 'Is this Naomi?' And she said to them, 'Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me."

"'I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?' So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest."

People didn't recognize Naomi. One of the reasons why they didn't recognize Naomi is just because of the natural process of aging. The time sketches lines into our face. Tragedy does more than that, it etches lines into our faith. Crosses often they do even more than that, they chiseled lines into our faith. Her appearance was changed. Perhaps her fair color was changed. Her life tasted bitter.

When we follow the Lord, God often does lead us through seasons of struggling and often I hear people say something like, "God won't give you more than you can handle." Oh, that's not true. God often gives us more than we can handle. But as he gives us more than we can handle, he also offers us grace to handle it. 1 Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has overcome you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

God often leads us through the valleys of the shadow of death but he's right there with us if we continue to hold onto him. Psalm 34:19, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all." Naomi said, "Don't call me sweet. Call me bitter." She's bitter. She's bitter at the circumstances, but she still holds onto faith in the Almighty, brings in and invokes the name of the Almighty. And we see a glimmer of hope in her testimony.

In that, she invokes the name of God and also she returned to Bethlehem. If she was bitter beyond coming back to God from backsliding, she would have stayed in Moab. But she doesn't, she returns to the Lord. By the way, this is a word that's repeated often in this chapter. This is one of the primary themes of this chapter. Eight times, we see the word "return".

In verse 6, "Naomi and her daughters return from the country of Moab.' Verse 7, "They went on the way to return to the land of Judah." Verse 8, "Go return each of you to your mother's house." Verse 10, "No, we will return with you to your people. Verse 15, "Return after your sister-in-law." Verse 16, "Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you." And verse 22, "Naomi returned and with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law. They returned from the country of Moab."

Why is this word used so often? Because this right here is a word that's taken from the book of Deuteronomy. In the book of Deuteronomy, in chapters 28 through 30, you can read through that text on your own. God said, "I'm giving you the law and if you obey the law, I'm going to give you a life of blessing. If you disobey the law, it's going be curses."

Pick one, choose today. You want life, or do you want death? And in that same text, God says, "But then when you come to a point where you cry out to God in repentance and sorrow, in prayer and fasting, when you return to the Lord, God will welcome you. God will give you forgiveness and mercy and prosperity."

And this is why the word is used. And the word "return" just means repentance. When we choose our own sinful way, they way of Moab, perhaps you've stayed there way too long, God is calling you today to return. Return to him, that's what repentance means. Come back to Bethlehem. Come back to the house of bread. Come back to the God who is bread, the body of Christ is bread. His blood is the cup, it is the wine and his blood cleanses us from all sin and shame and guilt.

We see three forms of returning in the text. Orpah, she was an almost believer. She was halfway to Bethlehem. and when the cost is too high, she walked away. With Ruth, we see she's a new believer. She's following. She doesn't know what's ahead. She doesn't know all of theology but she knows that, Lord, where else am I going to go? You got the words of eternal life.

And we see Naomi, she's a backslidden believer. She knew the truth, walked away from the truth. And then God awakens her with suffering and she comes back. And she understands much of the difficulty in her life is just a consequence of her sin, of her decisions. And God promises when we come to him, he offers us restoration even from those consequences.

The other thing I want to point out here at the end in closing. In Deuteronomy 23:3-6, God in his law said that, "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you."

"But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam. Instead, the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you. And you shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever."

God says no person from Moab can ever enter the assembly of the Lord. And the word "ten" here is a number of complete exclusion. Ruth was a Moabite. And even if we take this number 10 literally, there weren't 10 generations between Deuteronomy and Ruth. So, what's going on here? We read this and it seems like the prohibition is so stark. It's so unqualified that no one from Moab has access to God. No one from Moab has access to the people of God. And yet we see Ruth, this powerful lady from Moab.

She doesn't just get welcomed into the Lord's assembly, she actually has a book of the Bible written after her, named after her. And not only she accepted, but she's blessed. And the blessing is so striking that she's blessed so much so that she becomes the great grandmother of King David. She becomes an ancestor of King David, the greatest king of all of Israel, and all of the history of Israel and even more than that, she becomes an ancestor of the greatest King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

Well, how could this happen? How could this lady where God says, "No one from these people can ever become one of my people?" How did this happen? Well, it happened because of the grace of Jesus Christ, the same grace that's offered to every single one of us. Jesus Christ didn't just come from Bethlehem, he came from heaven.

And he descended to Bethlehem and he too came to a crossroads in the garden of Gethsemane where he says, "Father, let this cup pass from me. This cup of bitterness, let it pass from me." And at that moment, he chose the hard path of obedience. He chose the path from the crossroad to the cross, and he bore our sin upon himself. He bore our curse upon himself. He dragged the cup of bitterness, of God's wrath down to the dregs and he did that for us. And he was buried and he was resurrected in order to give us life.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" Same thing about this woman from Moab. "You can't enter the kingdom of God. Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. But such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

In and of our selves, there's no hope. But because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when we turn to Christ through faith and repentance and we follow Christ, it's a difficult path. Count the cost. But it's the most blessed life eternally and also now.

The book of Ruth is a book that tells us there is a path from ruin to redemption because our God is a God of the business of redemption. The word "redemption" is used 23 times in these short chapters. We see the unloved who become loved. We see the poor restored. We see inheritance that was lost because of sin restored because the generosity of another.

We see people going from bitterness to sweetness. It starts with death and it ends with life, starts with barrenness and leads to blessedness. It starts with the person in ruin and then when the person is redeemed, this person rejoices and the blessing it is to be in the presence of God.

So, today, turn from sin, turn to the Lord and follow him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this incredible book of Ruth. We thank you for blessing our time today and we pray that you continue to bless our time in this book in the next few weeks. I pray, Lord, apply these truths to our lives. Make us a people of faith, people who believe not just because we hope it's true but because we know it's true.

Make us a people who understand that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. And I pray make us a people whose lives mirror that, reflect the truth of the gospel. And we thank you that there is a path forward from ruin to redemption. We pray all these in Christ's holy name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello welcome to our online Easter service. Greetings, happy Easter, happy resurrection day, we're so glad you're with us. It's strange not worshiping together on Easter. However, we have access to Jesus Christ because of his resurrection from anywhere anyhow even in our PJ's, we will worship him. One of the things that we do at Mosaic as a church on Easter Sunday is we do a call and response. That's been done in the church throughout the ages. I say 'Christ is risen' and I welcome you to say, 'he is risen indeed' three times, louder and more emphatically every time. So would you join in with me? Christ is risen. Christ is risen. And Christ is risen. Praise God.

Let us pray over the preaching of God's holy word. Heavenly father we thank you for your resurrecting power. We thank you that because of the death, the burial and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have access to you, to worship you the great God of the universe in spirit and in truth no matter where we are, no matter where we're from no matter our background we come to you Lord. We bring our worries, our anxieties, our burdens and we ask that you replace them with joy and peace and gladness. And we today want to celebrate the resurrecting power of Christ. Lord, we thank you that you make sense of all the pain and the suffering. Because of the resurrection, because of Easter Sunday, because of Christ rising from the dead, you shine your light of brightness upon our darkest moments and you redeem them. And I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures. Administer to each one of us and fill our hearts with joy. And we pray this in Christ's holy name, amen.

Boston is a city of champions. It's a city built on comebacks as our fearless mayor Marty Walsh said recently in a news conference. We will come back from this. We will come back stronger and we will come back stronger together. However, my prayer is that we come back stronger and we come back to the Lord. That our strength isn't just in ourselves, it's not just in our pride or ambition or our resilience but it's in the Lord.

The title of the sermon today is, 'There is a Cure'. A cure not just to corona or cure to our physical ailments. There's a cure to the worst disease that besets all of us and that's the disease of sin. Because of the Lord, Jesus Christ has sacrificed his death, his burial, we have a cure that's greater than the polio vaccine or penicillin or insulin or even a corona vaccine that hopefully will be created soon.

We have a cure for our greatest problem. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God took the most hopeless, the darkest, the saddest, the ugliest most miserable event in the history of the world and he transformed it into the most hope filled, the most beautiful, the most joyful event and that's the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Today we're gonna look at Matthew 28 and the resurrection account and the context is that on Friday, on Good Friday, Jesus Christ, the king of the universe, died on a cross through crucifixion. He was bruised, he was bloodied, he was scourged, and he died and with his last gasp, it seemed that we lost our last grasp of hope and on Saturday, Jesus was just a corpse in a tomb. Just, rotting away.

And the disciples were despondent. They didn't know what to do, they were weeping and Sunday morning, they went fishing. However the ladies, the women who followed Jesus, they woke up early at dawn and they had a mission to come and to finish the burial process, to anoint Jesus' body and yes they're grieving as well. However, they want some closure. And on the way to the tomb where Jesus was buried, they start wondering, how are we going to move the massive stone with which the tomb was sealed? Perhaps we'll ask the Roman guards that were placed there to keep the disciples from stealing the body as the pharisees had warned. Who will roll away this weight? Who will remove this burden? Who will get rid of this symbol of death? And as they approach, they feel the ground rumbling and they even stumble a bit and that's where we find ourselves in Matthew 28 verses one through 10, Matthew 28, one through 10, would you look at the text with me? "Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he's going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, 'Greetings!' And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Here in the beginning, I just wanna focus on a very curious detail perhaps that you, a detail you haven't noticed before. We know about the angel, we know about the stone being rolled away but the angel which is a massive warrior of the Lord, like lightning, it says he looked like lightning. He was glorious, when angels appear in holy scripture, people would fall down in trepidation and even were tempted to worship them. This wasn't just a little chubby little baby with a diaper and a harp on a cloud. An angel's a warrior of God, descends from heaven to roll away this stone. And he does this effortlessly, it's like a Tic Tac like a cookie that he just flings away from the entrance and what does this angel do? This angel takes a seat on the stone. He sits down on the stone. He sits on the rock. Can you see this, can you imagine this? Can you see this in your mind's eye? This glorious figure who has come from heaven, removes the stone from the tomb and he sits down.

I like this angel, I can't wait to meet this angel. This is an angel with personality, this is an angel with attitude, just sits down on the stone. First of all you gotta ask why is this detail even included? What does it do to further the plot? It does nothing to further the plot. Why is it included in this text? Because of the eye witness accounts. The Marys couldn't forget this image. It was emblazoned on their hearts. An angel of God, sitting on the stone.

We remember the most important details about, the most important memories in our lives. Just think about memories in your life that are vivid. That are it seems emblazoned on your heart and sometimes in particular when they come as a shock or perhaps with death. I remember where I was when I heard about Princess Diana dying. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about 9/11. It was freshman year in college and I remember walking out of my dorm room and as I was walking out the building, there was an all purpose room with a television. Everyone was crowded around it, I remember vividly that moment. And I remember details, strange details, like the color of the couches in that room. I remember the moment when Kobe Bryant died, when I heard about this news. I was actually in a membership class here, Mosaic, in the basement of Temple Ohabei.

There are memories that are incredibly vivid, we remember the details, it's almost like we can't forget them. I remember when my family immigrated to the United States, I was five years old and I remember that my dad gave me two cans of condensed milk and he put one in one pocket and one in the other jacket pocket and I remember that memory vividly. I remember my first bike, a red bike with a little pouch I would hide matches in from my parents. I remember first day of high school. I remember getting my first car and I remember the smell of it. I remember the first fight I ever got in. I remember the second fight I ever got in which was against two guys and they remember that fight better than I do. And I remember, you have memories like this as well. I'll never forget the day I met my wife. I remember exactly what her hair looked like, exactly what she was wearing.

The most important memories in our life come with details and they're vivid and we see this detail here. That Mary Madalene and the other Mary, they saw this angel and it was sitting on the stone. The other reason why it's included, not just because it happened, but also because there's deep theology in the stone. There's deep theology in the geology, if you will. What is a stone, a stone is dust that's been compressed over the ages, over time through heat and pressure. Well scripture talks about dust in Genesis three when humanity rebelled against God, the curse came as ascendance for our sin and this is what that sentence said. This is what God said to humanity. Genesis 3:19, "Till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken for you are dust. And to dust you shall return." The stone is symbolic of death. Compressed over time, pressure, heat and lots of death.

And here the angel was sitting on the stone, a symbol of death in front of the tomb, a place of death and the angel was sitting on the rock of the grave, his job is done. He's just admiring the work of his hands. Just sitting there, just relaxing, just chilling out on a tombstone. And I love this image, the angel hanging out. This image is refreshing, I don't know if it is for you, it's refreshing, it's like a vacation for my soul. This is beauty in motion, poetry in action and he's not sitting because he's tired. Angels don't get tired. They don't need to rest. He's sitting because he's literally mocking death. Death has been humiliated and he's sitting there with disdain, big smile on his face, content. Just cheesing at this incredible work of redemption. Sitting defiantly, cool, calm, collected. Cool as a cucumber, cooler than the other side of the pillow he's at rest. Tranquility.

And this is one of the things that Easter offers us today. It offers us rest for our souls, for our weary, sin sick souls. Jesus Christ says, today, everything around us might be shaking. The ground might be shaking, the guards in the story are shaking. But we don't have to be shaking, we can be at rest in Christ. Matthew 11:28, Jesus offers us incredible invitation. He says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." We can have rest from our anxiety, from worry, from our burdens, from fear. Matthew 28, five through six, this is what the angel says to the women. "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here for he has risen as he said. Come see the place where he lay." This is incredible detail. He gives them a tour of the tomb, come, look, it's empty. Look to the left, that's where his body lay, it's gone. He's not here. The tomb is empty and there's an interesting detail here that the angel did not come down, did not descend in order to roll the stone away to let Jesus out. Jesus was already gone, he's already resurrected. His glorified body, he could move through the stone just like later in the text, he moves through walls. No, the angel doesn't come down to let Jesus out, he comes down to let Mary in, to let the disciples in. Come and see that because the tomb is empty, life is full of meaning and the resurrection power.

Matthew 28 nine through 10, Jesus meets the Marys right after this account. "Behold Jesus met them and said, 'Greetings!' And they came up and took hold of his feet, they worshiped him and Jesus said to them again, Do not be afraid." This is what the stone is communicating, this is why that detail is there, the angel sitting on the stone. The stone is communicating, the stone is preaching. The stone has been transformed into a pulpit to communicate that sorrow has been rolled away. Grief has been replaced with glory. It's been transformed.

All throughout scripture, you see stones as memorials used to remind people of the work of God. In first Samuel, there's a stone called the Ebenezer stone. It's the stone of help where Samuel says, God has helped us until this moment. We sing this text and these lyrics and come thou found, here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come. And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home. Jesus Christ tells us that we have a greater stone of remembrance and it's not just the stone that was rolled away. Yes that stone is important. That stone is given to us as a sign. We actually don't even have the stone. It's the most important stone in the history of the universe and it was used to seal off the most important tomb in the history of the universe and we have neither. Why, because for the early Christians, this wasn't that important. The memory to which the stone pointed and the memory to which the tomb pointed were more important than the memorial signs themselves. We don't need the memorial stone because we have the person of Jesus Christ with us.

Easter doesn't mean that sad things do not happen. Sad things do happen. Good Friday was heart breaking. However, what Easter does is it shines light, it shines brightness on our past mourning. It makes sense of our suffering. It infuses our pain with purpose. On Good Friday, nothing made sense. On Easter Sunday, everything made sense. The gospel makes sense of everything. Easter illuminates yesterday's tears. It illuminates yesterday's tombs. Everything sad will come untrue. This is what Easter promises. The resurrection turns a sign of death, the stone, into the ultimate sign of life. The stone still weighs as much as it weighed on Good Friday. On Easter Sunday, same weight but now the weight isn't a weight of grief, it's a weight of glory, it's a sign of victory, it's a trophy of the ultimate victory that Jesus Christ took a stone and he hurled it at the Goliath of death, a stone cold killer and Jesus Christ smacked right in the forehead and he's toppled. And in the death of Jesus Christ, we see the death of death itself where Jesus takes the sword of death and chops off its head with its own sword.

Jesus Christ tells us, the stone is a sign. What's it a sign of? It's a sign of the fact that we have victory. It's also a sign of the fact that we have a sure foundation to build our lives on and that's the foundation of Jesus Christ and of the gospel. In Matthews seven, Jesus tells us that storms come to everybody. And what matters most in how you get through the storm is what is your foundation? Matthews seven, 24 through 27. "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on the that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it." Oh dear friend, are you building your life on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the only sure foundation that's been proven, it's been tested, it's been verified by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The rock became a footstool for the angel as a symbol of Jesus Christ sitting down on this throne when he's ascended and scripture says, "He will put his enemies and use his enemies "as a foot stool for his feet." And the ultimate enemies Jesus has conquered. Satan, sin and death, Jesus conquered death. He's the ultimate victor, the ultimate conqueror and in Christ we are more than conquerors.

Today we celebrate life. Easter tells us, the message of life is a message from God who is the source of all life. He is the life giver and no matter the darkness in our life, he brings light down. We love life. I love life, yes sometimes things are hard and there are dark times but there are moments when everything clicks. There are moments where everything flows, everything comes together. Almost magical, majestic. You wake up in the perfect mood, the perfect amount of sleep, even your hair looks perfect. You have a perfect cup of coffee, there's a perfect amount of sunlight coming through the window. Nothing annoys you, no one around you annoys you, everyone's in a tremendous mood. Perhaps it's your birthday and all you hear is good news, that's the only news you get all day, you got that promotion. You got that raise. Your favorite team just won. You're planning the perfect dinner. Perhaps the perfect steak or perfect salad or perfect steak and salad, both and. You read a perfect book, you watch that perfect movie. Wear that perfect pair of jeans that finally fits because you woke up five pounds lighter. How did that happen, I don't know. You put on a crisp tee shirt, your friends text you and they send you the funniest memes or you go to a concert and it's spring. You feel reawakening in the air or you're at vacation. You're at one of those nice resorts with the drinks with the umbrellas and crisp ocean breeze or a Red Sox game on a balmy Sunday night. The kiss of a beloved, the smell of a baby that's not screaming, you sign the last check for the last payment of your school loans. The last payment on your mortgage and you're moving in to your dream house. And Tom Brady is still a patriot and he's won his seventh Super Bowl against, finally the Giants, it's perfect life. Peace, joy, happiness.

We have moments like that and every single one of those moments, they whisper. They're whispers of eternity, they're whispers of something greater. They're signs to something more satisfying. This is how life should be but isn't. Why? 'Cause no matter how good life gets, there's always that reminder. That death is coming. It's coming for each of us. This is why we hate death because life is such a great gift. We despise death, it's an enemy. Scripture says that it surprises every single one of us. Catches us off guard although it's with us and it's such a downer, it's the ultimate kill joy. It's a cosmic buzz kill. It destroys and devastates and separates families, it separates parents from children and vice versa that leaves dreams and hopes shattered. And works unfinished be they symphonies or art or albums or books.

Why is there so much death in this world? Scripture says that was part of the curse. Part of our rebellion against God because of sin. What's the connection between sin and death? Well sin is death. Sin doesn't just lead to death. Scripture says that sin is death. The sting of death is sin. When you think about sin like this, it makes more sense. Sin isn't just breaking commandments. Sin isn't just doing the wrong thing. Sin isn't just mistakes or screw ups or foibles or character flaws or being naughty. It's not Las Vegas and it's not Lynn, it's death. It's death of self. It's self destruction, it's self sabotage, self subversion, self deception.

We know that we're supposed to be better, better versions of ourselves. We know what we're supposed to be, we know what we're supposed to do and we're still powerless to do it. Why? Because we're sick with sin.

And the gospel says that Jesus Christ came. He took the weight of our burden, the stone of our sin upon himself. He took the sting of sin and he vanquished it. See, the gospel of Jesus Christ isn't just fire insurance just in case. The gospel of Jesus Christ is medicine for our sin sick souls. It's medicine for our stone cold hard hearts. Sin isn't just action, it's a condition. An incurable condition. Jeremiah 30 verse 12 says, "For thus says the Lord, Your hurt is incurable and your wound is grievous. There is none to uphold your cause, no medicine for your wound. No healing for you." That was the old testament. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross in our place, there is a medicine.

Four practical points, my dear friends, four practical points, we're all infected with sin so practically, number one, accept the diagnosis. Number two, take the medicine. Three, visit the doctor often. And four, share the doctor's contact info.

First accept the diagnosis. The diagnosis is dire. We're not just suffering a fatal injury, a life threatening injury. It's terminal. Condition. Every single one of us suffers from this condition and there's no cure for it in and of ourselves. We can heal ourselves, there's no person who can heal us. There's no one else who we can trust in. We're all going to die. What this corona pandemic has shown us, it's that we can't get away from this. We're all dialed into the fact that we are mortal and we are mortal. And it's showed us that we need salvation. We need healing. Like we need healing from corona so much more, infinitely more we need healing from our sin.

And God gives us signs of the fact that we are terminal through chaos and pandemics and calamities but he also gives us the law. In holy scripture, God gives us a law, the 10 commandments, and he gives us the law not so that we save ourselves by fulfilling but gives us the law as a divine diagnostic tool. We diagnose how sick we are by looking at the perfect law. Looking at the 10 commandments which Jesus summarized and he said this is the essence of the commandments. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.

We don't love God with all of our fiber, with all of our being because there's so many other idols vying for our affection. We don't love neighbor as self because often we're too self absorbed. We fall short of the law and the law is given not to us to show just how sick we are. It can't cure us. It can't cure us of the disease, it's powerless to do that. It just shows us how far we're missing the mark that we don't measure up, that we're not good enough. All it does is diagnose, yes, test positive for sin. It can't do anything to cure us. So first of all, we need to go to the doctor and accept the diagnosis, yes I'm sick. And the doctor says, well I've got good news, I've got great news. There's a cure that Jesus has procured the medicine, so take it. We can't cure ourselves. No one else can cure us, only God can cure the incurable. And he does that by actually burying our sickness upon himself. Absorbing our sickness. Scripture says that he who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. The moment you trust in Christ, repent of sin and believe in him, that moment, you're immediately cured. You're immediately cleansed from sin. Jesus swallows the incurable disease. Allows it to kill him and then comes back from the dead and his blood has an immunity to it and when we believe in Jesus Christ, his blood is in us. His blood, spiritually speaking, is in us and when God tests us again for sin, we test negative. Because in us we have new blood, the blood, the blameless blood of Jesus Christ. First Corinthians 15:54 and 56, "Death is swallowed up in victory. Jesus swallows up death. O death where is your victory? O death where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Jesus is victorious, Jesus has won, Jesus will win and in Christ we are more than conquerors. This winning, I will never get tired of. In him we are victorious.

First Peter 2:24, how? "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed."

There's an old paradox where the question goes like this, what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? What happens when an irresistible meets an immovable object? That's what happened on the cross. The immovable object is God's holiness, his justice. The justice and condemnation wrath that we deserve for our selfishness, for living as if there is no God. For living lives indifferent toward God, for living as if we are our own God. It's an immovable object but there's an irresistible force and that's God's love. It's his determination to heal us and expense himself to heal for his own glory. And when an irresistible force meets an immovable object, what's gonna happen, well something incredible has to happen only a truly extraordinary event can resolve the paradox and that's what happened at the cross of Jesus Christ. God's justice and God's love, they come together. Where Jesus Christ sacrifices himself, absorbing God's wrath in order to forgive us. And that's what happened on the cross, this collision of our incurable disease, of our incurable wounds and God's irresistible power and desire to heal us. God himself in the form of Christ, stepped in to suffer our incurable pain, our incurable disease so that we might be made well, so that we might be healed. So that we might have life, true life.

God does something incredible. He doesn't just forgive us of our sins, he doesn't just diagnose the problem, doesn't just give us medicine to heal us of our sickness, he does something else. He transforms us. He transforms us through the gospel by grace through faith in Christ, he transforms us and he does so by taking out our heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh a heart that beats for Christ, a heart that loves God, longs to love God more, loves neighbor as self. A heart that's filled with new affections and new desires. Desire for righteousness. And this is what the way of righteousness is.

Lots of people think that following God is gonna keep me from enjoying myself, false. False. What God does is he says, I'm not taking good from you. I'm giving good to you and I'm protecting you from everything that would harm you. I'm protecting you, I'm protecting your soul. So walk in the path of righteousness. That's what God does by giving us a new heart. And also this medicine turns bad fear into good fear.

You see fear mentioned several times in this text. There's bad fear and the bad fear is the fear of the guards. The guards tremble as they see the angel. They see the resurrection happen. They see the angel come down, it's miraculous. And instead of placing their trust in Jesus Christ, instead of falling down at his feet and worshiping him, they tremble and they fall like dead. This is bad fear. That's Matthew 28, four. "And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men." Bad fear is when what you revere most is threatened. That's actually all fear. When what you love most is threatened, when you think that what you love most what's most precious to you will be taken away. Well the guards, when they saw Christ, the resurrected Christ, when they saw the angel, they feared. They didn't love Christ, they feared because they saw in Christ an enemy to what they really love, to their true idols. And that was power or prestige or their positions. Perhaps it was money. Perhaps it was their life. They feared that Jesus would take their life and they loved their life more than Jesus. And that's why for some, Jesus Christ is a stone of stumbling. Where you look at Jesus as an opponent, as a threat to what you truly love.

And this is what the gospel does, it transforms our affections, what we love most and it turns bad fear into good fear. Mary, both Marys, they fear as well and the angel says, don't fear. Jesus says don't fear and Jesus meets them and they fall down at his feet and they worship him and he says, "Do not be afraid." They were afraid because they thought they had lost that which was most precious to them, which was Christ. They didn't fear that they would lose life, they feared something that they loved more than life which was Christ. To them, Christ is life, he's the precious cornerstone. He's a stone more precious than diamonds or rubies or gold or silver. And when Christ appears, they worship him. He is life. There's nothing greater than Christ. That's why I say, in Paul it says for me to live is Christ. That's life, he is the life. He satisfies the soul, he fills our hearts with joy and gladness. And to die is gain, even if we die. That's why Christ said, don't fear those who take away the body. And can do nothing after. If our eternity is secure, if we are spending eternity with Christ in heaven, if he saved us from hell, there's nothing to fear. Bad fear is transformed into good fear.

The greatest day in all of your life, if you live the best life, the little mental exercise that we did where you wake up on your perfect day, it's your birthday, et cetera et cetera. You can go through a day like that and still be empty on the inside. You can still feel dissatisfied. You can still feel tinges of shame and guilt and regret. But you can have a day without any of that. If you have Christ, you have everything that you need. He is life. Jesus Christ came back from the dead so we will never lose him. And because he was resurrected physically, he can resurrect our souls and ultimately, he'll resurrect our bodies.

So accept the diagnosis. Take the medicine and visit the doctor often. Perhaps you've already done step one and two. Perhaps you have repented of your sin, yes Lord I'm a sinner, yes I need the grace but we need to go to the doctor daily, hourly. We need to make sure to keep the disease of sin in remission. You need to open your life to the doctor daily. Don't hide anything from him. Apply his healing thoroughly and completely.

Why am I Christian? Why am I a follower of Jesus Christ? Because Jesus Christ came back from the dead. And Jesus Christ has changed my life. And he changes my life on a daily basis. Jesus is a person and when we fellowship with him, when we abide in him, when we have a relationship with him, his presence and his power come into our lives and they transform us.

Sin leads to death. Sin is when we look to tombs for satisfaction. We go to the grave site, we go to the tombs in order to find life and Jesus takes stones away from the tombs in our life and says no, stop seeking life here, there's only death. That's what the good doctor does. And he does that through holy scripture where he says, this is the way of righteousness, this is the way to life.

We also, we need the holy scriptures. Go to the scriptures daily, find satisfaction in the scriptures and also we need the church. Like never before, we need the church and not just to meet physically but we need to be interconnected with one another because we together are living stones built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood.

And four, share the doctor's contact info. If you find a cure for corona, if you find a cure for cancer, if you find a cure for sin, you trumpet it from the rooftops and here's what's fascinating. We have the medicine but it needs to be distributed. We need a core of spiritual doctors to get this medicine out and that's all evangelism is. We're not converting, we're not proselytizing, we're not recruiting, we're just sharing the doctor's contact info. His name is Jesus and you can call him through prayer. Speaking to him. Say, Lord Jesus, forgive me of my sins today. Help me trust in you, I believe in you. I believe, help my unbelief, help me follow you.

Do what the angel did, the angel shared Christ. Do what the Marys did, they shared the message of the resurrected Christ. Matthew 28 10, "Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me." Jesus Christ says, in John 11:25 and 26, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?" Do you believe this? Are you moved by this truth? The whole world was moved by this truth. The earth was moved, the angel was moved, the guards were moved, the women were moved, are you moved by the gospel of Jesus Christ? How do you know if you have been moved? That medicine, the medicine, you ask for it, you receive it, and it begins to take effect. It begins to cure.

We know that Jesus was resurrected and we live in the already but not yet. Jesus has won and he will win. Revelation 20 verse 14, "Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire." Revelation 21:4, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away." Christ is risen. Christ is risen. And Christ is risen. Let's pray.

Lord we thank you for the great news, the gospel. Thank you that you conquered Satan's sin and debt, Lord we thank you for this angel who sat on a tombstone ridiculing death, mocking death because you have conquered it. Give us strength to repent of sin, give us grace to believe in you and follow you daily. We love you, we thank you, we glorify your name, we worship you. We pray all this in the beautiful name, Jesus Christ, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good evening, welcome to this online experience of Mosaic Boston Brookline. Today we are celebrating Good Friday. So happy Good Friday, and it is a celebration. To understand the greatest news in the history of the world we need to understand Good Friday. One word to our listeners, one word for those listening online.

In the same way that I have had to adapt to preach God's word, and it does take adaptation, I ask that you dear listener adapt to listening to God's Word on the screen and it's a different skill. It's different. I work really hard to communicate God's word so that it's heard. And I ask that you work as hard to listen in order to hear.

And I say that because there's distractions. You're at home, your phone's right there. If you're watching with somebody, it's easy to start into commentary on everything. And so I just ask that you set everything aside, and that you focus on God's Word. In particular, you focus today on the sufferings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Would you pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Holy God, we thank you for this moment. It's a holy moment in a Holy Week. And today, we descend into the darkness of Good Friday in order to on Sunday, ascend into the brightness of the resurrection. Lord, remind us today that in the most hopeless moment in the history of the universe, you were there. Therefore, whatever we feel now, whatever we're going through, we can trust you that you are here with us. Because God, you have the power to take the darkest moment and redeem it into the brightest moment. I pray that you strengthen our hope in you. We trust in you. Jesus, we thank you for taking the thorns of our sin upon yourself, absorbing that in order to redeem the thorns from our souls. I pray that you focus our time in the holy words, send us the Holy Spirit, speak to us. Reveal yourself in a way that perhaps you have never revealed yourself yet. Show us the extent that you are willing to go in order to save us because of your great love for us. And right now, bless the preaching of your holy word. I pray, help us to remove any distractions and let us focus on the gospel. And we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The title of the sermon is Corona of Thorns. The word Corona in Latin means crown. Today I want us to focus and meditate on the crown of thorns that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wore, was pounded into his skull. And the reason why today I want to meditate on thorns is because we find ourselves in this historic moment where it feels like we have been covered with thorns, from every which sides, like we've been crowned or ensconced in thorns and not just a needle here, they're piercing at us. It's thorns coming from every which way which go deeper, some less perhaps the thorns are just inconvenience of life, but inconvenience that's coming from every which way, from us it's much much deeper and leads to suffering and sorrow. But our Lord Jesus Christ wore the crown of thorns. Often the Lord sends thorns for a purpose, he always has a purpose for our suffering. We find ourselves in a moment where all of humanity has been humbled. That is the purpose of all of God's thorns.

We actually find a text in the Holy Scriptures in 2 Corinthians. And this isn't the text that I'm preaching on today. But I find it to be particularly relevant that St. Paul, one of the Godliest people whoever lived, the second most influential person in the history of the world only after Jesus Christ, he talks about this divine experience that he has, he gets a glimpse of heaven. And as he describes that experience, he also talks about a thorn that God sends him in order to keep him grounded, in order to keep him close to the Lord.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10, "So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. “For when I'm weak, then I am strong."

He says in order to counter my conceit, in order to counter my pride, by the way, this is a really holy man and he says still struggle with pride. God sends a thorn, a thorn to humble. St. Paul says, "I welcome it gladly." Here we see his humility. And we humble ourselves under the good hand of God. A hand that sometimes sends us thorns, thorns that draw us near to him. He says, "I will gladly boast in that." Why? It sounds so counterintuitive, that in order to make sure I don't get puffed up with pride, God sends a thorn and I will be proud, I will be boastful of this weakness, of this thorn.

It's so counterintuitive. Well, it's counterintuitive because it comes from the upside down kingdom, that when we go low, that's when we are raised high. When we humble ourselves under the good hand of God, he raises us up. Jesus Christ said that if you want to be great, you are to become the greatest servant, if you are to find your life, you are to lose it. It's more blessed to give than to receive, counterintuitive truths from the upside down kingdom.

And today I want to focus on the king of the upside down kingdom, a king who comes in humility. But Jesus Christ is a God man. It's God become men. God came down in order to close that social distance between us and God. He descended in order to raise us up.

We live in a world where everyone is trying to get ahead, everyone's trying to move up, everyone's trying to climb higher in the business world, they're trying to get up the corporate ladder, get the bigger job, bigger office, bigger income.

In politics, everyone's trying to position themselves for prominence, for power to raise the poll numbers, and Jesus was literally at the very top of every single ladder. He was ensconced in the glory of heaven. He was robed in majesty and he comes down. He is born to a family of peasants, husband and wife, Mary and Joseph who were peasants. They were the poorest of the poor. And when Jesus is born, they lay him in a feeding trough for a crib and Jesus lives most of his life in obscurity and works hard with his hands as a carpenter.

He's humble. And this is to show us, this is what it means to be glorious. This is what it means to love, to humble, and to humble yourself, and to serve. And this is contrasted with Satan who was proud and was the first one who tried to usurp God's throne.

C.S. Lewis said, "Pride is a telescope turned the wrong way. It magnifies self and makes the heavens small." The bigger we think that we are smaller, God looks. The Great God of the universe makes himself small.

Scripture says, he comes down like a seed, a seed that dies in order to bear much fruit. When God enters time and space as a human being, the boundless becomes bound. Jesus becomes bound with time and space. He becomes imprisoned, so to speak, with flesh. He's restricted by a body, by hunger, by thirst, by weariness. The unlimited God becomes limited, the limitless becomes willingly limited.

I always wonder if Jesus was ever tempted in his earthly life to reclaim this boundlessness. Were there moments where he was tempted? Because being bounded is so difficult. Just walking around the roads of Palestine, was he ever tempted to say, "You know what, I'm sick of this. Time to teleport, time to fly." Was he ever hungry and said, "You know what, I'm gonna turn these rocks into food," didn't like the weather, just change it. I like to think of Jesus as this great God because He is a great God and he's tempted, perhaps was tempted in order to use it but he never used his power for his own comfort.

Philippians says that, "Though being in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." Meaning he let go of that, making himself a human, being born in the likeness of men. He never gave into these thoughts, not once to the use of supernatural powers for personal comfort. And I say all that to bring us to our text.

And our text today, we're gonna look at Jesus Christ who is suffering at the hands of people who hate him. With one thought, he could have killed his executioners. With one wave of the hand, he could have paralyzed those in power. We see a glimpse of this when Judas brings a band of soldiers to the garden at Gethsemane. And Jesus asked him, "Who are you looking for?" And they said, "We're looking for Jesus of Nazareth." And he says, "I am here," and all the soldiers, it's said they fell just at the sound of his voice. All that to say that Jesus Christ was not crucified because he couldn't stop it. Everything he did, he did because he chose to do it. Things weren't just done to him. He orchestrated this. And there's a deep, deep truth there.

The context of our texts, we're gonna look at Matthew 27 today. The context is this that for the past 12 to 15 hours, Jesus has gone through the tense atmosphere of the upper room. Then he was betrayed by Judas. Then he goes through the agonies of the garden of Gethsemane where he's under such intense anxiety as he sees what's coming. It says that the capillaries in his face bursting in sweat, blood, then he's arrested, deserted by his disciples, he's taken before the hypocritical trials of the Sanhedrin. And then he goes from one set of trials to another series of these kangaroo court trials. And then he ends up finally before Pilate and Pilate realized that Jesus isn't guilty of anything. And he wants to let Jesus go. A Pilate is so near to the truth, even asked Jesus what is truth when truth is standing right before him. But Pilate fearing men more than God, desiring to please people more than God does not submit to that truth. And he tries to wash his hands of Jesus, but no one can wash their hands of Jesus.

And that brings us to our text today, Matthew 27:27-31, a short text but a profound text, would you look at that text with me? "Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they said stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him and twisting together a crown of thorns. They put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, 'Hail King of the Jews,' and they spit on him and took the read and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him." This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word, may you write these eternal truths on our hearts.

The big idea, the text, and one big idea and that's all I want to focus on. All I want to meditate on is the crown of thorns. Jesus took crown of thorns for us. Jesus took off his crown of glory and took on a crown of thorns to save us from our crown of thorns and to lift us up into glory.

In this text, we see that the soldiers do three things. They put a crown of thorns on his head, they put a reed in his hand, and they put a purple scarlet robe on him. But most likely, there's a worn out cap of one of the soldiers, a fake crown, a fake reed and a fake robe for, as they thought, a fake king. It was all to mock him, the reed was empty, it was hollow as a symbol of weakness. Jesus often referred to reeds as shaking in the wind. They said, this is you, this is the fake king shaking in the wind, and we know who Jesus was, who he is, he left the Regal robe of glory in order to put on this robe of mockery.

The Romans were masters of political theater, everything they did, they did with intention from the triumphal arcs that they built to celebrate conquering cities. So when you entered your city, you had to enter through the arc underneath the arc as a symbol of this empire, who has power over you. They put insignia of the Emperors all over everything they build to create a personality cult. They never miss an opportunity to underscore who's in charge, the Imperial authority, the supremacy of the Romans, and the weaklings that have to submit.

Last week we talked about Jesus entering Jerusalem and everyone welcomed him as the king. The text says, "Behold, your king is coming to you, gentle," and the Romans couldn't understand a gentle king. And they're mocking him. "Oh, you're king, what kind of king are you? "We've never seen a king like this, a gentle king, "homeless king, a weak king. "No, kings are not like this." So they scourged him and the scourging was different from flogging. The Jewish leaders had a punishment called flogging 39 stripes, 13 for each shoulder and one for the loins. Now, this was different. This was a scourging. This is what the Romans called a half way death. A trained professional would take a tool called a flagrum, also known as a cat of nine tails. The wooden handle and leather strips and tied to the end of each leather strip was either a splintered bone of a sheep or steel or sharp edged rock. And that was take the prisoner Jesus in this case, and take off his clothes and tie him up to a pole, his hands as high as possible to make the back as tight as possible so that with every slash, with every whip, his back would tear. The tighter the flesh, the deeper the tears. And this was of course, prophesied over 700 years before even the birth of Christ. And the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 50:6, "I gave my back to those who strike and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard. I hid not my face from disgrace "and spitting."

The whole process of crucifixion was sadistically designed to put someone through the worst pain imaginable, get them to the brink of death, or balance that out and make sure that the person doesn't slip into unconsciousness so that they feel every single ounce of pain. The Persians had invented crucifixion, the Romans, they had perfected it.

I want you now in your mind's eye to go there, it's hard, but it's important to go into that scene to paint the picture of Jesus tied to this pole, to hear the whistling of the whip, to see his flesh torn, his arteries revealed. And this scourged him so bad that there was no part of his body left unbloodied except for his head. And now they turn to the head, it must suffer, too. Why, because the goal wasn't just to kill the prisoner, it was to deface, it was to degrade, and to dehumanize.

What's fascinating about the Gospel accounts of the suffering of Jesus Christ is they don't tell us anything of how Jesus felt. They don't tell us about his cries. They don't tell us about the excruciating agony. They don't give us any of those details. Why? Because the goal of the Gospel accounts is not to make you feel bad for Jesus. It's not to make you feel pity for Jesus. No, the goal isn't for you to think about Jesus pain and just end it there. The goal is to see in Jesus Christ, the vicarious nature of suffering. He didn't have to do this. He chose to do this. Well, why did the God the universe choose to do this? Well, because he loves you. And he loves me. He loves humanity. And this is the only way for us to be made right with God for someone to pay the penalty for our sin. You see, there's no part of our humanity that isn't tainted with sin. There's no part of our humanity without sin. Therefore, there's no part of the God man of Christ humanity that can be left without suffering. So they inflict this physical pain, but that's not their end goal. They want to pierce the pride, they wanted to crush the dignity of the prisoner. They said, "We'll play the game. "Let's play make believe king, let's pretend."

Kings in the ancient world wore crowns. It was a universal symbol of royalty and also divinity and victory. The crowns that Caesar and the leaders wore were plaited leaves of laurel and they were encased with precious metal. Well, they didn't have one of those crowns and they didn't want to give Jesus a real crown. They wanted a fake crown. What kind of crown can we think of, let's give them a crown of thorns. By the way, this took work. To find the thorns took work. No one planted or cultivated thorn bushes in the middle of a palace in the middle of a city. So someone needs to go out, someone needs to find the thorn bush to give to this worthless man, seemingly giving worthless claims, a worthless crown made out of a worthless plant.

And I want you to imagine the scene of the soldier who found the plant, who found the thorns, as he's sitting there, hardened through war. And you see that in his face, he's sitting there diabolically, perhaps even enjoying sadistically weaving this crown of thorns looking at Jesus. And perhaps he pricks a finger or two and perhaps he curses and perhaps he even uses the name of Jesus Christ as a curse word like so many of our movies. And then he takes this crown. And by the way, this crown is made out of thorns, not briars. These aren't small, tiny little things like we see in movies. Even in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, I don't think it does justice to exactly what's going on in the text. This wasn't a crown for decorative purposes. This was a crown for destructive purposes. This wasn't just to sting a little, it was to savage, it was to destroy. And the thorns are referred to here, they're not just these tiny things, they weren't just half an inch, they were at least two to three, maybe three and a half inches. Sometimes the thorns themselves were used as weapons, as knives. And if you pierce a vital organ, you could actually kill someone. And they take these massive thorns, and they create a crown. They place it on Christ's head, like a crown of nails and they pound it in to the skull. So much so that Isaiah 52:14, another prophecy about Christ says, "As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.”

After the hardened soldiers had finished this ghastly work, Jesus didn't even look human. He wasn't recognizable. And it's gruesome. And it's ghastly. And you got to ask, why, Lord, what is the purpose? You orchestrated every single detail of the Gospel accounts, so much so that we know that you are in charge here of every detail, why? What are you trying to communicate to us, and this is what God is trying to communicate to us. This, when we see Christ, when we see the crown of thorns, nailed down, pounded down into his head, when you see just how destructive this punishment was, you begin to see what sin does to the image of God and each one of us.

God created us in His image and likeness, and it was perfect but because of our rebellion, God's image in us is fractured. So God sends his son, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect image, the exact imprint of God's nature. And then that image is marred so that we could have access to healing. Scripture says that by his wounds, we are healed. By his wounds, we can be healed.Sin makes us a mangled mess of humanity, it mars God's image in us. The more we sin, the less we look like God, the less we look like we were intended to look. It distorts our intended image. It tarnishes us beyond recognition. It makes us misshapen and malformed. And this is really what brings us to the meaning of the thorns. We see Christ in the man with the thorns and brings us to the meaning of the thorns, but they mean something.

Jesus Christ didn't come just to take the throne of Rome or just to take the throne of Jerusalem or just to take the throne of the United States. He didn't do that. He came to take the throne of all of creation and to be king of all of creation. Only a crown of thorns would do. Why? Well, what do the thorns symbolize? They symbolize the curse, that because of our sin, and because of our rebellion, there's a curse in the world. And that curse, the consequence of it is thorns. Where thorns are found, that's where the curse is found. Where the curse is found, that's where thorns are bound inextricably intertwined. The curse comes with these thorns. God created humanity and he created everything perfect in his image and likeness. And he created humanity to rule with God, to rule together, to rule underneath his sovereign rule. And as we submitted to God, God's authority was delegated to us so that we could fulfill His will and yeah, we rejected his rule. We decide to be the kings of our own little kingdoms, to make up our own rules. We want to be kings of ourselves. And we crowned ourselves and it turned out that this crown is the crown of thorns. And that's why when God tells us of the consequences of our rebellion, in Genesis 3:17-18, we see thorns. "And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have been of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you should eat the plants of the field."

See, when God had created the world, there were no thorns. Even as you look at a rose, perfect rose in the Garden of Eden had no thorns, there were no thorns, that wasn't part of God's creation. It wasn't part of the original plan. Why, because thorns are a sign of the consequences of sin. They're a picture of unfruitfulness, they're a picture of desolation. They choke out life. They hurt and they harm and they wound. They're ultimately only good for burning. Each thorn that we see in the world is a painful reminder what Jesus had to do. In order to get rid of thorns of our lives from our souls, he had to absorb those in himself.

Romans 8:22 says, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." When sin enters the world, the world was crowned with the crown of thorns. The thorn symbolize sin, they symbolize sorrow, they symbolize sweat, they symbolize rebellion from God. And every single thorn with its piercing pain is a sign, it's a symbol of what sin does to our soul. Sin as it enters, it goes first, it goes slowly, pierces and then it wedges in, it takes up more and more and more and more and it wounds unless until it completely kills. Proverbs 22:5 says, "Thorns and snakes are in the way of the crooked, "whoever guards his soul will keep far from them." Thorns are symbol of what sin does to the soul. It pierces, it wounds, it harms, it kills.

Matthew 7:16, "You will recognize them by their fruits. "Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" It starts in the soul, and Jesus Christ said, "Whatever's in the heart, that's what comes out." From the heart, we see the fruit of our sin. Therefore, the thorns are such an integral part of God's redemption. They're a sign of the consequences of our rebellion, but they're also part of God's plan to redeem us from our rebellion. And you see, clusters of thorns as part of the redemptive story. I'll give you two and then I'll give you a third later. In two hear, we see is that when God comes to Moses, God brings a word of redemption to Moses. And he says, "I'm going to use you "to bring people out of captivity." And he brings that word in what way? He speaks to Moses from where? From a burning bush. What was that burning bush? It was a bush of thorns and thistles reddened by the fire and God's word comes through that. And then Jesus Christ is the ultimate Word of God. And again, we see the ultimate Word of God given to us through thorns and thistles, a crown of thorns also reddened not by fire, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. He's crowned with thorns and as Jesus is crowned with thorns, the Word of God falls silent.

Why all of this, is because a holy God is bound by his divine nature. He's just and he can't just forgive. It's the only thing he can't just do because to just forgive would be to contradict himself. He can't forgive sin on a whim. A price must be paid. A price must be exacted, every sin exacts a price. The beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the price that God demands is also the price that he provides as the price that he procures. So every single bundle of thistles, of thorns is a sign of God's grace. Yes, it's a sign of the consequences of our sin, but it's also a whisper of grace, of redemption.

So Jesus here, he steps down from glory. He descended down to us because he's motivated by love. He was in heaven, adored by the angels, by the Cherubim, the Seraphim, they obeyed every single word he said, and here he is. And just imagine the contrast, the weight of the contrast. I want you to feel it, how he's mocked, he's scorned, he's ridiculed. And as he's mocked, he's still Lord and he could still call down 12 legions of these angels to stop these people from inflicting any more pain on him, yet he doesn't. Why? Because he chooses to be there. He's willingly caught in these thorns. He's a willing sacrifice willingly caught in the thorns. And this is, of course, a sign of something that came thousands of years before.

What's fascinating is that when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, he built it on Mount Moriah. Another time that Mount Moriah shows up in Scripture is in Genesis 22. Another image that we have of thorns reddened by blood. And it's the story of Abraham and Isaac. I'm sure you know the story. Abraham waited for a son. God promised a long awaited son. Finally, toward the end of his life, God does send him a son, Isaac, a son whom Abraham loved with all of his heart. And God comes to Abraham, Genesis 22, and says, "I want you to take your only son, your beloved son, and I want you to sacrifice him," a demand that doesn't make any sense to us until we read the end of the story. So Abraham, in obedience to God, takes this son, they go on a three-day journey up to Mount Moriah and they take the fire and they take a wood and Isaac looks at his father and he says, "Father," this is Genesis 22:7, he says, "My father," Abraham says, "Here I am my son." He said, "Behold the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham knew where the lamb was and doubtlessly choking back tears, he answers Isaac and says in verse eight, "God will provide for himself the lamb for burnt offering, my son."

So they went both of them together. They take the wood, took the fire, and they took the sacrifice. They go up to the top of the mountain. And Abraham looks at his son with tears in his eyes, and says, "Son, my beloved son, my one and only son, you are the sacrifice." Lays him down on the wood. Takes up a knife. And as he's about to sacrifice his own son, as the blade flashes in the sunlight, an angel of God speaks, his voice erupts. In Genesis 22:11, the angel says, "Abraham, Abraham!" "And he said, 'Here I am.' "He said, 'Do not lay your hand on the boy "'or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, "'seeing you have not withheld your son, 'your only son, from me.' And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son."

The thicket here, of course, literally means a thicket of briars and of thorns. That's why Jesus talking about Abraham. He said this, he said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad." Abraham saw the shadow of the cross cast into the Old Testament, he saw that shadow in the story of God providing a sacrifice, of God asking Abraham to do what God would then do himself, that God himself would give his one and only beloved son. And his son willingly took on the thorns in order to redeem us.

The thorns are symbolic of our sin. They're symbolic of our excuses, and of our procrastination. They're symbolic of procrastination because we say, "I'll turn to Jesus at another time. And right now I want to enjoy my life. I want to enjoy my youth." And those thorns go deep and as they go deeper, they take away more and more of our life. These thorns are symbolic of excuses. I'm not sure if Jesus is the Son of God. I'm not sure that this is how I want to live my life. I'm not even sure that this is true. And we stopped there, instead of pursuing the truth and looking for evidence of the truth, foundation of the truth. Why does so many people believe? Why are so many people transformed by this gospel message we turned from it? But most importantly, the thorns symbolize our sin, sins of pride and greed and lust and envy, gluttony, sloth, wrath, they are all spikes, spikes, spikes, spikes to the head of the Son of God.

What do you crown him with? And this is what I really want you to meditate on this. What am I crowning Jesus with? Am I crowning him with glory, or am I crowning him with thorns? Do I bring good fruit or do I bring thorns? If Jesus Christ is God, we are to serve him. If he is king, we are to obey him. But if he is neither, don't profess him. Don't take his name in vain. He is God, and he is king.

And again, Jesus isn't seeking our pity. We don't see any description of his pain, his exquisite agony, or tears or groans. What he wants us to see is that he is willingly taking on our crown of thorns, our crown of sin. He's crowned with our sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Jesus is king over our sins. Therefore, we can have dominion over our sins. He is king over my sorrows. The man of sorrows absorbs my sorrows. Therefore, I can rejoice even in the midst of sorrows. Jesus Christ is king over our suffering. He suffered so that we could triumph. And even in the midst of suffering, we can have peace and tranquility and joy and gladness.

And Jesus Christ is also the king of our distractions. And this is an important note for us today in 2020. Even with extra time perhaps, we're so easily distracted from spending time thinking about what matters most. Holy scripture says, "It's better to go in the house of mourning than to house of feasting because in the house of mourning, we're reminded of the end of each of us." The end that meets each of us, lessons, the most important lessons that we can draw about life and by the turning to a house of mourning. So we take this moment to meditate on the mourning of Christ, but he is king of our distractions.

Another time that Jesus talks about thorns, thorns that crowd out the word of God. In Mark 4:7, he talks about preaching of God's Word or God's word is seed, and "Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain." And then his disciples come to him say, "Jesus, what does this mean? What do these thorns symbolize? Explain the parable to us." And Jesus says, in Mark 4:18, "And others are the ones sown among thorns. They're those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires of other things enter in and choke the word and it proves unfruitful." Today, let Jesus Christ reign over your cares. Let him reign over the deceitfulness of riches of your temptation to pursue worldly riches as the ultimate. He is king over the lust for things, for materials and he's king over all of that. He's king over our distractions. He is king over our cares.

So today, what are the cares that are burdening you? What's on your heart? What's causing you to panic? What's causing you to be anxious? What's causing you to fear? What's weighing you down? Lord says in Psalm 55:22, "Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved." Our hearts can be caught in the thorns of anxiety, of disgrace, of discouragement, of fear, of shame, of guilt, of sin. And up until this moment, Jesus had never experienced the thorns of sin. He had never experienced the piercing power of sin on his soul. And he comes, and he takes all of that. And all of the thing is pressed in to him. It's pounded in to him. And all of the emotions tumble out and we see this in his final words on the cross, especially in the crescendo where he cries out to his father in Matthew 27:46, "’Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ That is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" He cries out to the God of the universe, this father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We heard an echo of this early on with Isaac asking, "Father, where is the Lamb?" Abraham says, "God will provide."

God has provided his one and only son. He forsakes his son on the cross. He abandons his son on the cross. He distances himself from his son on the cross. Why? Because his son is bearing the thorns of our sin. They're pressed upon his head and they're pounded into his soul. Why? This is the only way for God to close the distance that's separating us to bridge the chasm that's separating us from a Holy God. Jesus Christ is paying the penalty for our sin. To take off our crown of thorns, he had to put it upon his own head and into his own soul. And we see Jesus suffering in isolation and abandonment. Why? So that he can extend his love to us.

Jesus Christ chose that crown. He chose the nails. Jesus Christ chose the crucifixion. And he chose the pain. And he chose the agony, the abandonment, the betrayal, the denial, he chose all of it and he welcomes it in and he says, "I embrace all of it." Because that was the only way to embrace us, to embrace you. That's why even God designed Christ dying on the cross, his hands nailed into a cross as a sign of God's embrace. He says, "Come, let me take your spikes, let me take your thorns. Let me take everything that is ravaging your soul." And he embraces that in order to embrace us.

Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanging on a tree." Isaiah 53:5, "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed." Romans 5:8-9, "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?"

Because Jesus Christ bore every single one of our thorns. He bore the greatest thorns that face us, Satan, sin and death. How much more so can we be assured that he can help us with whatever thorns that we're going through, whatever thorns that are in our side now. And even if they're still here, we know that there's a purpose for them. And the main purpose is to humble us and draw us closer to him, so that we know that when we are weak, he is strong. And we are strong.

We can't talk about this crown of thorns without talking about the crown to come and I'll close with this. Jesus knew that as he went through the suffering, he experienced the excruciating pain of crucifixion. Because of the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross because he knew that there would come a time where he would reclaim his crown authority. And in fact, it's many crowns of authority, many crowns of glory, and we see this in Revelation 19:11-16. And this day will come. "Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, many crowns, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury "of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe, and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords."

In his first coming, Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the second he comes in a white stallion. In the first coming, he came to be judged by people. In the Second Coming, he will come to judge. And that's where we find ourselves. We find ourselves in the already but not yet. We find ourselves in this moment where God is still extending to us grace, he's still extending to us his pierced hands of forgiveness and saying, "Come, give me your thorns, give me your thistles. Give me your sin. Give me your brokenness, give me your guilt. Give me your shame. And in return, I give you forgiveness, and purity, and healing, and grace." In the first coming, he came and received a crown of thorns In the second coming, he will receive a crown of victories and keep these two images in mind, a crown of thorns and a crown of glory. How vast is the distance between the two? Well, it's infinite. It's a sign to show us this is how big God's love is for us. It's an infinite love. And because he was willing to give up his crown of glory to take up a crown of thorns, he can forgive. He can heal, he can provide.

This is what makes Good Friday so good. Now, it's not just Good Friday, it's a great Friday. And a greater Sunday is coming. He was crowned with thorns, he will be crowned in glory. Today's Friday but Sunday is coming. I can't wait. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the promise of the resurrection. And we thank you, that you went through hell in order to give us heaven. You went through the crown of thorns in order to be crowned with glory in order to welcome us into your glory. So we glorify you now, we repent of sin. And, Lord, we thank you. Our hearts are filled with so much joy that you were willing to do this. This is what it took and this is what you were willing to take because of your vast love for us. We thank you and we love you and pray all this in Christ holy name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello, welcome to this worship experience online from Mosaic Boston Brookline. We're so glad you're here. If you are a member of Mosaic or a regular attender, thank you for tuning in. We love you, we miss you. We're praying with you personally and as a staff, we're praying with you. I've been using the phrase, "Praying with you with all of my essence and with everything I've got," and I know many of you are struggling and in this difficult time, we need to lean into the Lord like never before.

If you're not part of the Mosaic community, welcome as well. We'd like to use this opportunity to welcome you into the community. We miss the normal. I miss normal. I miss normality, and that's one of the reasons why we this week, are specifically celebrating Holy Week. Today is Palm Sunday. On Friday, we'll together worship the Lord, Jesus Christ and remember his suffering on the cross. That'll be Friday at 7 PM. Then that following Sunday, Easter Sunday, we'll have another service.

I miss normal. I miss worshipping together. I miss singing with everything I've got. I miss my kids going to school. I miss Starbucks. I miss good coffee, not the Trader Joe's coffee. I miss Red Sox and I miss sports and perhaps that's ... I even miss the traffic in Boston. I do. I miss the angry Boston drivers so much.

In this difficult time, we need the normal I think more than ever, and we can rest assured that God hasn't changed. The omnipotent God of the universe is perfect. He doesn't need to change, and we can lean into that stability and anchor our souls and our emotions in that truth. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you for this time that you've given us together, to worship together in spirit and in truth because you are God of spirit and truth. Lord, fill our hearts with your love and peace. A peace that transcends all understanding. Now Lord, I pray that you minister those who are struggling. There are many who are struggling. Lord, be close to them. Fill us with your strength. Help us focus on the gospel. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

If you know me, I'm not an emotional guy. I don't express it and this week's been a roller coaster of emotion. I feel like one moment I'm encouraged in the Lord by everything that He's doing and I see so much of what He's doing drawing people close to Himself. The other, like the very next minute, you almost feel hopeless. One moment you're encouraged and excited by God building his kingdom and then sorrowful at all the suffering around us.

I miss preaching to people. Right now, I'm in a room with a camera. I miss the tit for tat. I feel like preaching at Mosaic on a weekly basis is like tennis, you hit the ball and everyone responds and they hit it back. Right now, it's like playing golf, you hit it and it goes God knows where. God does know where. In a week so full of the ups and downs of emotion, I had a conversation with a buddy of mine who is a financial professional. We were talking about the stock market and he said, "It's a roller coaster and the only one that gets hurt riding a roller coaster is a person who jumps off." I encourage you, don't jump off. We're not jumping off, we're in this together.

As we enter Holy Week, Holy Week was a week full of emotion as well. It begins with people screaming out, "Hosanna, God save us. Jesus, you are king. Lord, you are to be worshipped," and then almost immediately, there's confrontation and then betrayal and denial, and trial and scourging, and crucifixion and a tomb, and then it all crescendos with the most electrifying sentence ever uttered, "He's not here. He's risen. Jesus is alive."

Palm Sunday today marks the remembrance of the beginning of the most important week in the most important life of the most important person who ever lived. I challenge you this week to read these accounts. To sit down and read these accounts, perhaps by yourself or with your family in Matthew, it's chapters 21 through 28. In Mark, it's chapters 11 through 16. John, chapters 12 through 21. Read it. Read it prayerfully. Read it and meditate upon these deep truths.

The context is late March, and it's fitting because we've gone through perhaps the worst March of our lives. I've been entertained by all the creative genius that's coming out of this crisis despite the fact that it's a crisis. My favorite memes are the ones where it's a picture of someone at the beginning of March and a picture of someone at the end of March. My favorite one was baby Yoda. March 1st was baby Yoda and then end of March was real Yoda, and that's kind of how we feel and that's kind of the sense that we're about to enter into.

There's excitement at the beginning of Jesus entering into Jerusalem and the excitement is palpable. It's palpable in the crisp, cool, spring air in Jerusalem. Thousands of Jewish spiritual pilgrims have entered Jerusalem from all over the world for the upcoming Passover feast, and the word has spread that Jesus Christ, Jesus this itinerant rabbi, this teacher, this prophet, this healer, he's here. Jesus has just resurrected Lazarus. Brought Lazarus back from the dead by saying, "Lazarus, come forth," and people have seen that. They've heard the message. They've seen Lazarus. Perhaps Lazarus is right there with Jesus as Jesus is entering Jerusalem.

That atmosphere is filled with messianic fervor and also at the same time, mixed in with hatred for Roman rule. Jesus observed the Sabbath from Friday to Saturday evening at Bethany and then he woke up Sunday morning to enter Jerusalem, and this is the first day of the last week of his first earthly life. Would you look at the text with me today? We're in Matthew 21, 1 through 11. Matthew 21, 1 through 11.

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once." This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'" The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, "Who is this?" And the crowd said, "This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee."

This is preaching and reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. I want to give you a dose of normality. We're back to our points. I've got four points for the sermon today. We'll talk about Jesus as the rightful king, the gentle king, the zealous king, and the victorious king.

First, Jesus is the rightful king. Just to set the historic and literary context right before this text, Jesus Christ has actually just healed miraculously a blind man. This is the story, Matthew 20, verse 29.

And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!" The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!" And stopping, Jesus called them and said, "What do you want me to do for you?" They said to him, "Lord, let our eyes be opened." And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.

Now what's fascinating about this text and the reason why it's important that it comes right before Jesus entering in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, is that they cry out and say, "Lord, please save us," and the term that they use is Son of David. It's a messianic title. It's a title that was prophesied centuries before, that the Messiah is coming. The Messiah will be a Son of David, and He will sit on the throne of David and rule eternally.

Every single time that someone actually proclaimed Jesus as a Son of David prior to this text, Jesus always rebuked them and said, "Keep that to yourself. Don't make that public. Not yet. It's not time." Now Jesus, He takes it and He says, "Yes," He responds to the call and says, "I am the Son of David. I am the ultimate king," He openly declares Himself as king. That's the texts that proceeds our text when Jesus, as He's entering into Jerusalem. He sends out two of His disciples and that's verse 1, and he says to them verse 2, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord needs them," and he will send them at once."

Now this is interesting. He doesn't tell them ask for permission. He just said, "Just do it. Go up to this house. You see a donkey, just take it. Don't ask anyone for permission. If anyone says anything, you tell them, 'The Lord needs it,'" and uses the term kurios for himself, "I am the Lord." This is really important because Jesus right here, He is orchestrating. He is directing everything. Nothing here surprises Him. He wasn't surprised by the fact that people are going to welcome Him and proclaim Him as the Messiah. He wasn't surprised by the fact that He would be confronted. He wasn't surprised by the fact that He would be betrayed or denied. He's orchestrating every single one of these details because He is king of everything.

He plainly refers to himself as Lord, and here, we can just apply this to ourselves now. God is sovereign, over every single detail of world history, of every single detail of our lives. We can trust Him, that His plan is good. For those who love God and are called to be His, everything together will work for the good. We can trust Him. The disciples immediately and humbly submit to this command.

In Matthew 21:6, The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them.

Sometimes the Lord calls us to do something that seems trivial, that seems incredibly insignificant. We've been talking, perhaps you've been talking about essential work and non-essential work, and scripture offers deep theology of work that anything done to the glory of God is essential work. In particular, anything that we do that will obey God is essential work. Caring for yourself is essential work. Caring for those who are close to you is essential work. Husbands to care for your wives, you have that responsibility, that's essential work. Wives tenderly love and respect your husbands, that's essential work. To keep ourselves in the Lord right now, it's essential work to fight sin. It's essential work, there's no excuse right now. There's no excuse. Despite the pandemic, there's no excuse to seek comfort in sin.

Matthew 21: 4 and 5, This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'"

Charles Jennens in 1741 wrote the lyrics for Handel's Messiah. Incredible work with incredible lyrics. What's fascinating about the lyrics of Handel's Messiah is there's very little content about the life of Jesus, and the teachings of Jesus. It's focused on the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the redemptive story, God's redemptive work. It goes from Christmas to Good Friday and there's one moment where the angels sing, "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, goodwill towards men," and then, "Behold, the lamb of God, who's come to take away the sins of the world."

One thing that Charles Jennens included in the lyrics of Handel's Messiah, one thing he includes is this triumphal entry. He alludes to it by quoting Zechariah. Zechariah 9:9, this is a prophecy written centuries before Christ was even born.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your kind is coming to you: righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

When Jesus mounts this donkey and specifically, a purebred colt as promised, Jesus is presenting Himself as Israel's king, as the promised king. That's why it says, "Behold, your king has come." An even older prophecy written centuries before the one in Zechariah that's often overlooked is when Jacob pronounced the blessing on his son Judah in Genesis 49: 10 and 11.

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.

The prophecy's given to us in the book of Genesis. The book of beginnings promises that the Messiah will come. The true king will come from the tribe of Judah. In some way, He's going to be associated to the colt of a donkey. The crowds recognized this, that Jesus as He meekly rides in on a donkey. He's fulfilling a prophecy. He's doing what Solomon did in riding on David's donkey in order to begin His reign. This is how the crowds react, verse 8 ...

Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!"

Jesus is the Son of David. He comes in the name of the Lord. He is the Lord of the name that is above all names, and they welcome Him with a procession of praise and they give Jesus exactly what He deserves. They give Jesus exactly what He's worthy of, because He is the true and rightful king. The application here for us is do you recognize Jesus's kingship? Do you recognize that He is glorious king? If so, we are to submit and worship Him. In the same way that the crowds cast down or threw down, laid down their garments, we are to lay down our hearts and lay down our wills in absolute surrender to the God of the universe, Jesus Christ the king above all kings.

We are to welcome His reign. Lord, govern us. Lord, govern our thoughts and our hearts and our wills, our desires. We praise you. Govern everything about our lives. Order everything in our lives. From our feelings, to our finances, to our sexuality, to our understanding of gender, to our understanding of politics, of everything. Lord, govern us.

Verse 10, And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, "Who is this?" And the crowd said, "This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee."

Jesus is the rightful king. He's also the gentle king. In ancient times as kings rode into cities after coming back from war, they would display their power and their wealth, and the expectation is that Jesus, if you are the king of kings, where is your mighty army? Where are the spoils of victory? Why aren't you bearing the prizes of this dazzling victory in showing us exactly how great of a king you are?

Well, it's to show us that the rightful king is actually also a gentle king. There's no pomp and circumstances. Humility and meekness, and that's why Zechariah prophesizes and says, "Behold, your king, he's humble or he's gentle." Gentleness is symbolized here by the mode of transport. Kings when they came from battle, they had a war horse, a stallion. Jesus, where's your stallion? He's riding a donkey, a borrowed donkey at that. Donkeys were like the Toyota Camrys of modes of transportation. I can say that because I've driven a Camry for the past 15 years. Love Camrys. Trusty, but it's a Camry. That's what He's driving.

It's to show His gentleness and then also, we see the gentleness of the king and the fact that in the prophecy it says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you." It doesn't say son of Zion, it doesn't say song of daughter. God does that intentionally. What God here is communicating, this is what He's communicating, that He loves us with a tender and gentle love, as a father, a good father has for his daughters.

Been blessed with four daughters and they're all incredible, so precious. Sophia, Elizabeth, Katarina, she goes by Ekat, or Katia, and Melana, 11, nine, five, and two. I love them with this tender love. With all of my strength, I pour into loving them tenderly, and that's what the text is communicating. That's who God is. He loves us with a tender love. Do you know this God? The God who loves with a tender love.

However, we are not to confuse God's tenderness and His gentleness with weakness. With the same strength that I love my daughters tenderly, I will martial every single ounce of that strength to protect them. I've got lots of strength. Some of you are missing the gym. I'm not. I've got a gym in my basement. It's called the Vezikov Powerhouse Gym. I've been chasing gains daily. If push comes to shove, if someone wants to inflict harm on my daughters, I will martial every single ounce of that strength to protect them. This is what the text is communicating. That God is tender in His love toward his children. However, He's not weak, and He will protect.

The proceeding verses in Zechariah 9 talks about a God who will destroy His enemies. His enemies who want to inflict pain on His children. Following verse after the promise of the gentle king, the following verse in Zechariah 9 shows that He will conquer mighty armies, and this is Zechariah 9:10. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

That's why in Handel's Messiah there's a line that says, "He shall speak peace onto the heathen." The reason why they use that verse, the heathen is a godless pagan and perhaps that word rubs us the wrong way, "What does he mean calling us heathens?" Well, he's saying this is each of us. We're godless pagans in and of ourselves, and Jesus comes offering us peace. He comes offering us reconciliation. Jesus is the prince of peace and the king of kings. He's the universal king, to save people from every people, tribe, language, and nation.

Now the question is, will you receive this peace? Will you receive this forgiveness? Will you receive this acquittal? If so, then Jesus is the prince of peace, and God loves you with a tender love. But peace can only be had if we submit our weapons of war against God. Peace can only be had if we disarms ourselves. If we recognize that deep in our hearts we rebel against God. If we're honest with ourselves, we don't want God to rule over us. Deep inside if we're honest with ourselves, when we look at some of the teachings of scripture, there's something that arises within us. A rebellious spirit. It's like our hearts are full of hissing scorpions when we hear about God's reign.

Jesus comes and He says, "I'm offering you peace. I'm offering you shalom." Shalom is the presence of welfare that's only given after there's an absence of warfare. Jesus says, "I want to give you welfare. I want to give you this presence of universal flourishing, but you need to repent. You need to humble yourself before the God of the universe." He is God.

We are to lay down our weapons against God, and this is what repentance is. God forgive me. God, I have rebelled against your will. God, there are things in scripture, things that I read that I am uncomfortable with, but Lord, I know that you are a God who loves gently and tenderly so I submit to your goodwill and your good purpose. There's this deliberate juxtaposition of majesty and meekness. Meekness of course, isn't weakness. Meekness is actually strength or power under control.

You see that the omnipotent who's gentle and He's gentle with the humble, but He will vanquish His enemies. He will vanquish the proud. For the proud, He has a rod of iron and for the gentle, for the humble, He has a scepter of love. That's why Malachi asks in the day of judgment, "Lord, who can stand before you in the day of judgment? Who can abide at the day of judgment before you?" Jesus here is the one who says, "Those who are in me, those who are mine, those who have humbled themselves before me, they will be protected."

Jesus is our king. Once we enter His kingdom, once we're transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved son, He is a good king. He's gentle toward His subjects. Think of how gently Jesus healed. How gently He healed the blind men who cried out, "Jesus, heal me. Jesus, I'm blind. Jesus, I want to see." When we cry out to God, "Lord, save me," He gently touches us and gives us sight. He gives us spiritual sight.

Think of how gently Jesus heals, how children are brought to Him and He lays His hands upon their heads and He prays for them and He blesses them gently, tenderly. When Peter cuts off the ear of the servant when Jesus was being arrested, Jesus takes the ear and gently puts it back. The same way when we come to the Lord and we ask for His gentle touch, He has the authority and the desire to heal with the same regal grace He helps everyone who comes to Him.

When we come humbly and repentantly, He treats us lovingly. Not roughly or abusively. He rules with a gentle strength that brings healing and wholeness, and when we are disobedient, He gently restores us to the right path. When we are disheartened, He gently encourages us. When we are downcast, He wipes away our tears. He has the power to help in the gentleness to heal. He reigns upon a throne of grace and we have access to this throne of grace even now.

How are we to serve this king? We are to do it with gentleness. Gentleness is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and we are to live lives demonstrating the meekness and the gentleness of Christ. Scripture says, "Let your reasonableness or gentleness be known and evident to all." We worship a king who rode in on a donkey. Some people are still at war with this king, because we're still sitting on our high horse. We are to get off and get on our knees and cry out, "Lord, save us."

The same gentleness actually changed the life of Handel, of George Frideric Handel, naturally he wasn't a gentle man, actually he was difficult to work with and harsh in judgment. Yet after composing this work, he donated all of the proceeds of this work to the poor and needy. According to an 18th century historian, he says, "From that time to the present, this great work has been heard in all parts of the kingdom with increasing reverence and delight; it has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan ... more than any single production in this or any country."

Though humble and modest, Jesus is still king. "Behold, your king is coming to you." Here are the texts, this is what God is ... He's forcing this issue. He is humble and He gentle but He is not modest. Jesus is actually the most immodest person who has ever lived. He declared Himself the king of the universe because He is the king of the universe. He's riding a donkey, but He's still the king. Why? This gets to the heart of the gospel.

Sin is us usurping the throne of the king. The servant taking the place of the king. We don't want you to rule over us. We don't want you to define life. We don't want you to define reality. We don't want you to tell us what to do. God sees our hardness of hearts, and He sends His son Jesus Christ and Jesus is the king submitting to the punishment that the servant deserved. That's what happened on the cross. Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins, bearing the penalty that we deserve for our rebelling. It's the king dying for the servant, to forgive the servant, to pardon the servant, to make the servant a child of God.

Jesus says, "I'm the king but I'm not a king like you think." What if Jesus did free the people of Israel from Roman rule? That's what they wanted. They didn't want pardon of sin. They wanted Jesus to take over. They wanted Jesus to free them from the Romans. Imagine if Jesus did that. Imagine if Jesus today, if the only thing He offered was to save us from Corona? That's not our greatest enemy. If that's all He did, what would happen to our guilt and our shame? What would happen to the spiritual emptiness we feel inside? What would happen to the emptiness in the sense of nakedness that we feel before a Holy God? What would happen with our desperation to prove ourselves to justify our existence, to justify our morality, to justify ourselves? What would happen?

Jesus didn't come just to free us from the Romans or from Corona, He came to free us from sin and liberate us from death. Matthew 21: 8 through 10 ...

Hosanna in the Hebrew, it means save us. Oh Lord, save us now. Please save us. Psalm 118: 25 and 26 ... Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.

Jesus is the rightful king, He's a gentle king and He's also a zealous king. In the text immediately following our text verse 12 ...

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers."

Jesus began His ministry by cleansing the temple and this is the second time He cleanses the temple. He began his ministry, John 2, by doing this, John 2: 14 though 16 describes this cleansing in verse 17 of John 2 it says, "Zeal for your house has consumed me." Zeal and love are intertwined. They're the opposite sides of the same coin. The more you love someone, the more zealous you are to protect them from harm. Jesus here is zealous for the glory of God and He's zealous for people to know the true God, to know the true way of salvation.

You could just imagine this scene, there's lots of people and talking about crowds now just doesn't make any sense. Just go back to the summer in Haymarket. There's thousands of people and that's what's going on in the temple. In the Passover week, people would come and bring a sacrifice to atone for their sins according to the Old Testament, ceremonial laws and in a typical week, 255,000 animals were bought and sacrificed.

Now people saw an opportunity to make money off of these spiritual pilgrims and their laws made that Roman coins were unclean and they couldn't be used and that's why you have money-changers who are making money off those transactions. These people are selling animals as people traveled to the temple, they couldn't carry animals or bring animals with them, they had to purchase them at the place. It was the only place to purchase the animals so obviously, the prices were absurd. They're making money hand over fist and they're profiteering off of these people who want to meet God. They want to worship God. These profiteers are preying upon those who want to pray to God.

What they're doing is, and this is what makes Jesus so angry, they're selling access to God. They're selling access to God through themselves and Jesus here, if you're not familiar with Christ, if you're not familiar with the readings of scripture, you might be surprised that Jesus here is so angry. One of the reasons why you might be surprised is because you don't attribute anger to God. God is the Holy God, of course.

Anger in and of itself is not sinful. There's holy anger and there's unholy anger. Jesus here feels anger at people mis-characterizing God. Why? Because He loves God so much and He loves people so much. If God is mis-characterized, then people can't meet God, the true God. We as believers, we are to feel a zeal as well. Back in the Old Testament, people are selling access to God and saying, "This is how you can be made right with God, buy these sacrifices."

In our day and age, we have the opposite problem. The pendulum has swung in the completely opposite direction. Back then they said, "You have to make yourself right with God through these actions." Nowadays, mis-characterization of God is you don't have to do anything to be made righteous before God. There's no need for sacrifice. You're fine. The only thing that you need to do to go to heaven is die. You die. You go to heaven. That's a lie. It's a mis-characterization of God.

Jesus here is zealous for God. He's zealous for the people and He's angry at the extortion or He's angry that people are making money the holy of holies. He goes and He cleanses the temple in Jeremiah 7: 8 through eleven. He says, the prophet says, "Behold, you will trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me, which is called by my name, and say, 'We are delivered!' - only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?"

Jesus walks into the temple and says, "This is my temple. This is my house." He's the rightful king, He's the gentle king, He's also a zealous king. He says, "You can't just go living your life any way that you want and then come to me, pretend that you worship me and continuing to live in abominations." He goes and He tips over their holy cow so to speak, their holy cow was money. It was the financial system. This is what God Jesus killed. Jesus tipped over their idol.

We have other idols in our day and age. For some, it's money. Others, they submit to the God of the universe because of God's teachings on sexuality or the family. Those are our holy cows. If Jesus ... Jesus is here today. Jesus is tipping over that holy cow to show us, "Do not mis-characterize me. This is my house and I get to rearrange the furniture anyway that I want." Jesus is humble and He's gentle, but He's the most immodest person who ever lived, and He's forcing this issue of His identity. "Do you know what I am? I am the king of the universe. Have you come to terms with that? Do you accept my rule or do you reject it?"

Jesus will not just be liked. A lot of people say, "Yeah, Jesus, great. I like Jesus. Big fan of Jesus." Jesus says, "You either crown me or kill me. You either love me or hate me," but Jesus will not allow us to settle in this tepid lukewarm understanding of who He is. He's the God of the universe. Jesus doesn't just do this in Jerusalem, goes and cleanses the temple. He does this with each one of us.

He enters, He comes into our lives, and He says, "I am the king. This is my house. I'm going to rearrange the furniture." Many of us are happy with Jesus as consultant, as counselor, as comforter, as friend, as redeemer, as spiritual support, as a shepard, as a brother, as a guide. He is all those things, but only if you first realize Jesus is the king. He's the sovereign God of the universe.

Revelations 3:15, God says, "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."

Jesus will not accept a tepid response. Perhaps this isn't sitting well with you. I got a lot of good feedback from my sermon last week. I also got a lot of pushback. I'll tell you this, if I wanted to be liked, if that was the number one priority in my life, I would've become an ice cream truck driver. I would've become a driver for Uber Eats and I would've been on time every time.

The Lord has called me to be a minister of the gospel and I'm literally just reading what God said. Jesus is saying here, "Either crown me or kill me." We worship a God who was crucified. Why was He crucified? This is exactly why He was crucified. Jesus is confrontational and Jesus says, "You are my temple." Scripture actually says that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

First Corinthians 6: 18 through 20 ... Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Glorify God. Repent of sin, accept God's rule and live to glorify Him. If you have a God who never challenges anything that you believe, if you have a God who never convicts you, if you have a God who doesn't have a hard edge to His will, if you have a God who doesn't make you uncomfortable at times, if you have a God who agrees with absolutely every single one of your decisions, you don't have a God, you have a cheerleader. That God is actually a fabrication of your imagination. That's not the true God.

How do you know that God is in your life? He's constantly rearranging the furniture in your life. He's constantly cleansing. Truth faith by Christ's definition always involves surrender to the will of God. Today, we don't have a temple. We don't have sacrifices, we don't have priests. Why don't we have that? Because Jesus is the ultimate temple, He is the ultimate high priest. He is the sacrificial lamb who sacrificed for us. He takes us into the holy of holies and he's the final atonement for our sins.

Jesus is the rightful king. He's the gentle king. He is the zealous king. He's also the victorious king. This is Zechariah 9:9.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Should aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he.

That phrase right there, "Having salvation is he," that's a weird turn of phrase. What does it mean that he's righteous and having salvation? Well, in the original Hebrew, it's translated, "He is righteous and saved, that He has been saved." Here you got to ask the question, does the rightful king come to save or does He need to be saved? Is He bringing salvation or does He somehow need to be saved Himself?

Now strange enough, according to the prophecy, the king Himself will be saved. What does that mean? Well obviously, He doesn't need to be saved from His sins because it says that He is righteous. Jesus is righteous. Perfectly righteous and keeps all the commandments, has kept all the commandments. He's lived the perfect life that we couldn't and wouldn't live. He completely obeyed all of God's commandments. Submitted to God the Father's will perfectly.

First Peter 2:22 ... He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. In what sense did Jesus Christ need to be saved? Scripture tells us He was saved from death. That Jesus truly died, fully God, fully man, He died. He was saved from death by the resurrecting power of the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 72: 12 through 13 ... For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.

Jesus's life was saved and because He was resurrected, He now has the resurrecting power to bring us back from the dead. Perhaps the best translation of this verse is Zechariah 9:9 in the revised English bible, revised standard version, "See, your king is coming to you, his cause won, his victory gained."

Once we understand this is what Zechariah meant, that he is prophesying centuries before Jesus was even born, the scripture's prophesying that He will be brought back from the dead. "See your king is coming, he has won, his victory is gained." Once we understand that's what Zechariah meant, we understand why Matthew has not included that part of the prophecy in the text.

Matthew 21:5, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden."

And leaves out that last part about Jesus coming back from the dead. Matthew in his mind, he saw this verse, but he understood that Jesus's victory did not come on Palm Sunday. Jesus's victory was not complete on Good Friday, but on Easter Sunday when Jesus was resurrected, when he came back from the dead, he triumphed over Satan, sin and death.

Because He did, we now can trust in the fact that when we submit to Him, when we repent of sin and trust in Him, that we will live for all of eternity with Him. Now how to enter into this victory? Cry out what the people cried out. Cry out, "Hosanna, Lord, save us. Save us from our sins. Save us from our rebellion. Save us from everything that bristles within when we think about a God who has absolute control and sovereignty over us. Save us from that pride. We humble ourselves before you. Lord, we cry out Hosanna, save us."

We're not asking for just physical deliverance. We're not just asking for political deliverance. We're asking for spiritual deliverance. Save us from our sins. Save us from ourself. Oh Lord, save us. Friend, would you cry out to Christ today, even now. Simple prayer. A prayer is just talking to God. Say, "Lord Jesus, you are king. I have rebelled. I repent on my sin. I repent on my rebellion. You're the rightful king. You're the gentle king. You're the zealous king. You're the victorious king. Lord, forgive me, I trust in you. Thank you, I love you."

Let's pray. Jesus, all we can ask is save us, empower us, encourage us. We thank you for your love that's gentle towards your children. We pray that you continue to minister to us in this season. Pray this in Jesus's name. Amen.

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God Our Refuge | Luke 13:1-9

https://brookline.mosaicboston.com

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” - Luke 13:1-9

Audio Transcript:

Hello. Welcome to our online service. Thankfully the state of Massachusetts considers clergy and pastoral ministry an essential line of work and we're thankful for that. We agree. If you are tuning in and you're not part of Mosaic, welcome. If you are a part of Mosaic, a few words here about the state of the church. First of all, we love you and we miss you and we were praying for you, our whole staff is praying for you. In this age of social distancing, we actually haven't been distancing ourselves socially, but physically and socially.

And as a community, we're actually more united than ever and particularly with our community groups. We've actually had more people attend our virtual or remote community groups than ever before. So if you are not part of our community group, we'd welcome you to join. You can do that by signing up online or on the app. A word to our medical professionals in the community and beyond, we love you and we're thinking of you and we're praying for you. We're supporting you through prayer.

If there's anything else we can help with, we thank you for your tireless sacrificial work and just know that we do honor you. You guys are heroes and we're thankful for your work on the front lines. A word to the families in this crazy time. I feel your pain. My wife and I, we have four kids and they're out of school, at least until May 4th, according to governor Baker. This is a time where on a daily basis, you can add a rhythm in your life where you spiritually seek the Lord together, add a rhythm of family devotions, family worship, reading scripture together, praying and this is a time to build unity in the family.

Husbands and wives and couples, this is a time where you can work on your friendship, work on your relationship, and seek the Lord together, present to him together. For the single people, reach out to one another. This is a time where community and friendship is more important than ever. And strengthen yourself in the Lord. Proverbs 24:10 says, in the day of adversity, if your strength fails, how little is it? And we have a source of eternal strength, God our savior. And scripture says, be strengthened in the Lord, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

We're thankful for this church. In a time like this, church is more important than ever. And we realize how important membership is, how important it is to be united to the body. If we can't do it physically, we do do it spiritually and virtually. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly father, we pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to be poured out on our church, on ourselves, on our city, on our state, and on our country. Lord, we pray in this time of pandemic, in this time of suffering, this time of crisis that you draw many to yourself.

I pray that you will reawaken many to the realities of eternity. I pray, Lord, that you also send along with spiritual healing, physical healing upon those who are suffering. Send a physical healing upon our land. This is a time for us to be united. I pray that you heal any kind of partisan divide. Lord, I pray that you help us use this opportunity to pursue you and a loving relationship with you and pursue one another, in kindness and gentleness and friendship and civility and humanity.

Lord, we pray for our political leaders. I pray that you send them wisdom, supernatural wisdom. We pray for the leaders of Brookline and we pray for the leaders of Boston. Mayor Marty Walsh. We pray for our governor, governor Baker. I pray that you send him supernatural wisdom. We pray for congress and our senators. I pray that you bless each one of them and I pray that you draw them to yourself and use them powerfully for your ends. And we do pray for vice president Mike Pence and Donald Trump, I pray, Lord, that you bless them, that you give them divine wisdom, that you guide them and that you use them for your purposes.

And we pray for the world. Lord, in this time of crisis, I pray that you pour out miraculous, supernatural healing and spiritual great awakening. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures, whoever's listening online, Lord, I pray that you bless them, that you speak to them, that you reveal yourself to each person in a way that they've never known you before. I pray, bless our time in the holy scriptures, and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

So we're in a series that we're calling God Our refuge, and we are pursuing God and running to the Lord as our strength, as our help in this present time of need. We are living in a day and age where it's unprecedented. That's the word that's been used and we've known in this world that there are tragedies both public and private. But what this pandemic has done, and this is the reason why it's so unprecedented is because it is both public and private. All of us are afflicted and each of us is afflicted. All of us are suffering and each of us is suffering to some extent.

What this pandemic has also revealed to us is how fragile we are, how frail we are. It's revealed to us that we are mortal in a way that perhaps we haven't been as keenly aware of. It's as if death has been thrust right before us and we're faced with our mortality. We can't ignore death on a daily basis. And we've also had to face the truth that we can't save ourselves. The natural predisposition or the wiring of our heart is to be our self saviors, to seek self salvation, to be our own Lords and our own saviors, to justify ourselves.

And we realize that we can't save ourselves and that we are helpless. And it's natural in a time like this to ask why? Why is all this happening? Why the suffering, why this crisis? If God is good and God is all powerful, then why are so many good people suffering? Why are we suffering? Why would God allow this? Well, how does God respond to this question? How would Jesus Christ respond to this question? Jesus, how are we to understand the situation that we're in, this historical moment, this tragedy, this disaster that's massive in a global scale? God, speak to us.

And the Lord has a word to us from Luke 13:1 through 9 today. It's a heavy word, but it's an important word. Jesus is both a truth teller and a grace giver and we need both. Would you look at the texts with me? This is Luke chapter 13 verses one through nine, the words of Jesus Christ, the words of the Holy Spirit. There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No. I tell you.

But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No. I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." And he told this parable, a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, "Look, for three years now I've come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?"

And he answered him, "Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down." This is the of God's holy and they're infallible, authoritative word. May it write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The title of the sermon is God Our refuge, and I have one big point and that point is repent and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

As we seek answers from God. God, why are you allowing this? And as we turn to the scriptures, it seems as if Christ's words aren't what we're looking for. Jesus, this isn't very nice. It's almost like it's not comforting. It's not what we want, but it's exactly what we need to hear. We need to hear the physical disasters that we are facing are nothing compared to the spiritual disasters that are looming. And in this context, Jesus, in chapter 12 right before this text, he's talking to a huge crowd of people and he says to them that you can discern the weather, but you are oblivious to the signs of the times, namely in their context that the Messiah has come and the Messiah has come to bring good news.

In our times this text is relevant because there are signs that the Lord is showing through this pandemic. He's communicating something to us. This is a sign from God. Look at Luke 12:54 through 56, he said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the West, you say at once, 'A shower's coming.' And so it happens. And when you see the South wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat,' and it happens. You hypocrites. You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

He says you can read the weather, but you're oblivious to the storm clouds that are gathering, the storm clouds of judgment. The next illustration that he shows at the end of Luke 12 is he talks about this man who is being dragged to court and he's facing a losing lawsuit and he does everything he possibly can to settle before he goes to court, before it's too late. Luke 12:57, and why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way lest he drag you to the judge and the judge hand you over to the officer and the officer put you in prison. And I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

This is what Jesus Christ is saying, that we owe in infinite debt to a holy God. We are sinners. We are debtors, and it's smart to do everything you possibly can to settle your accounts with God, to declare spiritual bankruptcy, "Lord, I need you. Lord, I need grace. Lord, I am a debtor, I am a sinner," and cast yourself on God's mercy. Perhaps an objection is rising in your heart. Well, I can't believe in a God who judges or I can't believe in a God who has wrath. The God of just retribution. I just can't believe that. My question is, really? The principle of judgment and the principle of just retribution is written on our hearts. It's deep within our souls, it's built into us and it's woven into the universe. And if we're honest, we can't even conceive a world, a universe apart from judgment, without judgment. We judge all the time. You've been judging all week and these past weeks. You judge politicians that you haven't done enough. You judge politicians that you're doing too much, judging the media that you're fear-mongering and judging other parts of the media that that, "No, you don't understand the severity of this."

We judge people who are profiteering off of people's pain. People who are buying up hand sanitizer, marking it up ridiculously. We're judging people who don't take social distancing seriously. We judge politicians who profit and sell off their stocks months before this happens because they saw this coming. We judge people all the time. We judge people who deserve punishment for their crimes and we say things like, "Well, they had it coming to them." Or, "What goes around comes around," or, "They got what they deserve," or, "He has no one to blame, she has no one to blame but him or herself." We judge.

And a world without just retribution, a world without judgment is a world that is obscene. It would be ultimate obscenity if people lived any way that they want sinned and hurt other people incessantly and have the same fate as those who are righteous. It's impossible to conceive of a future where Adolf Hitler and Maximilian Kolbe meet the same fate eternally speaking. Maximilian Kolbe was a priest in the Auschwitz and he surrendered his life for that of another man who was married and had children. He said, "Let me take this person's place," and Kolbe died.

Without judgment, no one deserves anything, no one receives anything. Because to deserve punishment, there must be such a thing as punishment. And why does everyone get to judge except for God? We believe in justice and judgment because this principle has been so fixed in our hearts by God in whose image we are created. Where did the idea of judgment, the expectation, the practice itself, where did it come from if not from God himself? And Jesus is saying, "We need to wake up from our indifference to God, our indifference to eternal judgment."

Because all around us today, now, this week, these past few weeks, there's intimations of judgment. There's an anticipation of judgment, there's premonitions, foreboding, ominous signs that justice is coming. Why would we ever suppose that a world so full of catastrophe isn't preparing us for the greatest catastrophe? We all believe in heaven, virtually every single person does because we see signs of paradise all around us. We know we are made for happiness and joy and beauty and goodness and friendship. When life is good, all we can think of is this lasting, never ending.

Our experience of life and the goodness, the truth, the beauty of life, it prepares us for heaven. Heaven is the inevitable culmination of everything that is good in life. And likewise, hell is the consummation of everything that is painful, of everything that is evil, bad in life: alienation, misery, hatred, disappointment, regret, moral failure and darkness. As much of heaven as there is in the world, there is as much of hell. Heaven is right here with us. Intimations of it, premonitions, foretaste of it. Well, hell is also. Already so much of it is here.

The worm that does not die, the fire that is not quenched, the outer darkness so thick that you can cut it with a knife. The world is chock full of wailing and gnashing of teeth today like perhaps never before. How can you argue that there is no hell when there's so much of it here today? And don't get caught up in the metaphors that scripture uses? The fire metaphor isn't the searing of flesh, it's searing regret. Gnashing of teeth and wailing is dwelling on wasted life. And darkness, it's alienation from God, alienation from others. That's eternal quarantine and darkness. All you have is the past.

We'd rather not talk about this, but Jesus talks about this in particular when people were most sensitive because he wants to circumnavigate their self justification and speak truth to their hearts through their conscience. In hell people will spend eternity asking, "How did I get myself here? Why didn't I listen? How did I not see this coming?" That's why in the midst of tragedy, Jesus speaks truth, uncomfortable truth, but necessary truth. Look at Luke 13:1, there were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

So they come to Jesus on the same occasion where he's telling them, "You don't see the signs of judgment coming." And they tell him the story, "No, we do see," and they talk about this horrific situation where Pilate who was afraid of crowds sent troops in to Jerusalem and they slaughter people who are actually worshiping God. So much so and it's so gruesome that their blood flow together. The detail that's given to us in the text is that their blood was mingled together with that of their sacrifices grisly.

And Jesus uses this current moment. When people are all ears, he speaks to their hearts and he uses the massacre in Jerusalem and then brings in a catastrophe in Samaria, in verses two and three, to reinforce this point, makes the first point of verse two and three and then reinforces this point in verse four and five. The first massacre in Jerusalem was the atrocity, the public catastrophe in Samaria in verse four and five. Look at verse two and three. He answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

And it doesn't stop there. He's like, "No, it gets worse. Let me show you another case." Case in point, verse four, "Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No. I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." And Jesus is correcting false theology, false presupposition of his audience, one of which we might struggle with as well. The smugly thought that those who died deserved it, they died because of their sins.

And if we're alive, the fact that we are spared means that we're good with God, that we're pleasing to God. The theology isn't some moralistic theology and a lot of people actually believe this without even thinking it through, that bad people deserve bad things and good people deserve good things and that's what they get. It's a false theology. It's a theology of that Job, in the book of Job his comforters had that Job must have sinned egregiously against the holy God because of his suffering. And Jesus says, no, no. We are no less sinners than those who died.

And perhaps the reason why we're still alive is because we have not been reconciled with God because God is still patient with us and giving us a chance to repent. And twice he drives this home in verse three and five. Verse three he says, "No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish." In verse five, "No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish." Dear friend, if you don't repent, you will face God's judgment perhaps soon. To tell you this truth is my solemn responsibility as a minister of the gospel.

In the old testament, the false prophets were condemned by God because when God sent them to send a message of looming judgment, instead they came and said, "No, it's okay. You're at peace with God. You will get peace from God," when they were not at peace with God. So rather than asking in this moment philosophical abstract questions of why is this happening in the world, we need to ask, no, no, no. What is God saying to me through this? Why am I still alive? And Jesus's answer is that tragedies are signs. They are notifications, they're alerts from God that judgment is coming and it is imminent so we need to be ready through repentance.

Jesus doesn't waste time talking about how awful Pilate is as a politician, how cruel his strategies and tactics are. He doesn't waste time with philosophical questions about theodicy and where is God. He turns the attention to each person. He turns to the heart of each person and he doesn't want the audience to go away unchanged. Philosophy does not change our hearts. Politics does not change our hearts. Only the gospel can do that. And Jesus uses this opportunity to speak to the eternal soul. And Jesus gets personal, uncomfortably personal because when he starts talking about our personal sin, that doesn't feel good, but he does that as a good doctor.

He does that as a surgeon who is doing a heart surgery. It doesn't feel good in the beginning, but it needs to happen. There are two tragedies in this text. The first caused by Pilate, and that's an atrocity. It's caused by the evil of people. The other, he talks about this tower that falls, that's a catastrophe. That's an accident. Natural disasters are in the same category. Is this pandemic and atrocity or a catastrophe? We don't know. Maybe a mixture of both, but there's a worst tragedy than these and that's the final judgment. And Jesus uses the word perish.

We repent or we perish. And he's not talking just about dying. There's physical perishing or physical dying. But Jesus isn't talking about that. He's talking about spiritual death, which is not disappearing. It's not annihilationism, it's actually separation from God. It's not cessation, it's separation and when you're soul is separated from the presence of God in a place called hell. The words of Jesus in Luke 12:4 and 5, I tell you my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do.

He's saying, do not fear the Corona virus. What's the worst that it can do? It could kill you physically. That should not be your greatest fear. It says, but I will warn you, in verse five, I will warn you whom to fear. Fear him, who after he has killed has authority to cast you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. And we are to fear him. You are to fear him, be scared of the judgment. It's coming, beware. That's what Jesus is teaching. And he's teaching the most basic truth, that after you die, there's only one of two destinations and that's either heaven or hell and each is as real and as eternal as the other.

And unless and until we submit our lives to Jesus Christ through faith and repentance, we're headed for hell. Every single human tragedy, every single atrocity or catastrophe, it all stems from our rebellion against God. And Jesus assumes here what all of scripture teaches, that all people are by nature sinners and by choice sinners. And we sin sins of commission, sins of omission, we don't do what we're supposed to do and we do things that we're not supposed to do. And every single one of us, we deserve God's judgment.

So when we talk about good people or innocent people, these are relative terms. Nobody is good and nobody is innocent concerning God. Every single one of us has a wicked, self-serving, selfish, evil, self-righteous heart. And I know the challenge of when I preach this truth to people who are listening to a sermon. It's as if you're at your best right now, you are listening to God's word, you are seemingly pursuing God. So I can't be that bad. Well, take this truth and shine the light of this truth on yourself when you're alone, when nobody's watching.

Let this light shine into your heart to reveal what you truly think, what you truly want to say, what you truly want to do and you don't because God is restraining you. God's grace is restraining you. We all have sinful hearts and even the most righteous of us deserves God's righteous judgment. Our sin was the cause of the curse and every single natural disaster that stems from our rebellion, it comes from this curse. Floods and earthquakes and tsunamis, tornadoes and epidemics, diseases and accidents. And every single one of them is a sign, it's a reminder. It's a warning.

There will come a time when God brings down the new heavens and the new earth and God will wipe away every single tear from his redeemed. There shall be no more curse and no more death. But until then, God is giving us time to repent and get this message of faith and repentance to others. Twice Jesus asks, "Do you think they are worse sinners than all the others?" And twice he responded, "No. No, I tell you." And that's a false theology that's deep in every single one of our hearts, even in the hearts of the disciples.

When they saw a man who had been born blind, spent all of his life blind before Jesus healed him, they asked Jesus, "Why was he born blind? Because of his own sin or the sin of his parents?" And that's the wrong assumption. That if you suffer tragedy, you suffer because you're paying for your sins, not necessarily. The general principle is that God does bless those who pursue him and are obedient and that the sinful reap the evil consequences of their evil ways. But there are many exceptions.

I can't stand up here and say that death will not come to you. I can't stand up here and say that you will not die from this Corona virus, I can't say that. That could be part of God's plan and we humbly submit. Tragedy might come to any one of us. Scripture often shows godly people suffering and dying young like John the Baptist. And then you see ungodly people living long trouble-free lives like king Herod who killed him. But ultimately there will be a resolution to this problem of evil and suffering. And that's the last judgment.

Every wicked person who has not repented of their sins will bear the full wrath of God. And every single believer in Jesus Christ will be eternally rewarded. And lurking beneath this false theology, that bad people get bad things and good people get good things. And if I haven't received the bad, then that must mean I'm good. Looking underneath that is our self righteousness. Where we start thinking, "No, that can't happen to me." People say that all the time. I thought that would never happen to me. Why do we think that? Why do you think you will be immune from tragedy?

And the reason why we do that is because we judge others more rigorously than we judge ourselves. When we see someone else sick or someone else experiencing pain or tragedy, we draw a straight line from their tragedy to their sin. And Jesus here is saying, no, no, no, don't do that. When you see someone else suffer, when you see calamity, when you see a pandemic like we're in, from that, draw straight line to your own sin. Judge yourself as rigorously as you judge others. Tragedies remind us that life is fragile and that we must get right with God before we die and we face judgment. Don't let this pandemic leave you unchanged. This is my fear.

My fear is as this passes and Lord willing, it will. Then we just forget about it. God is using this moment to draw you closer to himself, to reveal himself. Don't just go back to life as usual. You need to ask and truly, yes soberly ask yourself, dead serious. What if I get sick? What if I end up in a hospital? What if I need a respirator or a ventilator? What if it's me? Am I ready to meet the eternal God? We don't know what's going to happen with us tomorrow, we don't know what's going to happen with us in the next minute.

We might succumb to this disease or something else. We might end up in a hospital today and we might end up in a coffin tomorrow or two days from now. So what happens to you when your body turns into a corpse? What happens to you? And I'm not talking about your body, I'm talking about you, the immaterial you, the imperishable you, your eternal soul. What happens to you? Are you ready to meet your maker? Sooner or later it will be me and sooner or later it will be you.

The Corona virus kills a certain percentage of people, but sin kills 100% of us. Death comes to each one of us. None of those Galileans who were going to the temple to bring sacrifices to the Lord, not one of them knew that that would be their final act on earth. Not one of the 18 people who were under the tower knew that that was the day that they were going to die. Not one of them woke up and said, "This is my last day." It could be for us and are you ready? We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We don't know what the next minute will bring.

You are a sinner and I am a sinner and we must repent. This is what God is saying to each one of us. Today is the day of repentance. You have no more pressing need than to make sure that you are right with God to do that through repentance. We're living through a global disaster, one that many of us have never seen anything the likes of. However, we're headed for a much more comprehensive disaster, a disaster unprecedented in degree and scale and it's eternal in its effects and it looms over all of us. And the pandemic is just a foretaste of that one of imminent judgment and every tragedy, every disaster like this one is a reminder, are you ready? Are you ready today to meet God?

Luke 13:2 Jesus says, used the word sinners, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the others?" Luke 13:4 uses a different word and he says, "Do you think that they are worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?" By offenders, the word here, the definition in the original is debtors. You've offended God and his objective moral code, his commandments. We're debtors against God and either we will pay this eternal debt, this infinite debt forever in a place called hell apart from God, or we trust in the sinless substitute Jesus Christ who died an excruciating death on our behalf, on the cross.

Tragedies should drive us to repentance. And repentance is what can keep us from perishing. This is the antidote. This is what can avert God's wrath. Luke 13:3, unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Luke 13:5, unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Two options. Two options. Repent or perish. I don't want to perish. I don't want you to perish eternally. To turn to God from your sin, we do that through repentance. What does repentance mean? Repentance begins with confession.

Lord, I confess that I've sinned against you. I confess that I've been indifferent to you. Lord, I confess that I've lived my life as if you don't exist. Lord, I confess that I've lived my life as if I'm my own. And then it's contrition. Lord, I've broken your commandments and I'm heartbroken over the fact that I've broken your heart as a good father. Lord, forgive me, I'm sorry, and then change. Lord, I want to change. Give me your grace to change. I don't want to love sin. I don't want to love idolatry. Lord, I want to love you above all else, and neighbor as self.

Repentance, confession, contrition, desire, change. But that's not enough. No amount of sorrow, no amount of tears can get us into heaven, not an ocean of tears. We need to trust in Jesus Christ. We can't trust in our repentance, we can't trust in our confession, our contrition or our desire to change. We need to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, that God the father sent God the son onto earth and Jesus Christ lived a perfect life for us. Lived the life that we wouldn't live. And then he died on the cross, an excruciating death.

Excruciating, not just physically, but on the cross. He felt what it means to perish. He felt that darkness. He felt that alienation. He felt hell on the cross. Jesus went through hell so that you wouldn't have to. When you trust in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes and applies that sacrifice to your heart and your sins are forgiven. All of your sins are forgiven. Jesus is the one that pays that debt that we owe. Jesus is the one who is the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus is the one who absorbed the tower of God's wrath so that you wouldn't have to.

Sin. You know what the essence of sin is? It's putting ourselves in the place of God. And the essence of salvation, God putting himself in our place. It's Jesus in my place. And God's more ready to forgive you than you are even to repent. So what's keeping you? What's holding you back from accepting this gift of grace and mercy. Jesus took our judgment upon himself, accept it. Accept that gift, receive that gift through faith and repentance. Why do bad things happen to good people? It's only happened once and he volunteered. Jesus did that for us. He's the only truly good person who has ever lived and he calls us to himself today.

God has the absolute right to judge sinners, that's the bad news. The bad news is that we deserve God's justice and the good news is that God absorbed that justice for us. God's holiness and his mercy, they meet at the cross. Would you receive that gift? Luke 13:6 through 9, Jesus reinforces everything he taught with this parable. He said the man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, "Look, for three years now I've come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?"

And he answered him, "Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you can cut it down." If a tree went three years without fruit, that usually meant that it would never bear fruit. And the point of the story is that God is a creator, just like the owner of the vineyard has a right to the vineyard, to its fruit. God has a right to have fruit from us. If we don't produce the fruit that God would have for us, if we don't live out our purpose, God has a right to judge.

He owns us, he made us. He can do whatever he chooses with us. He has the sovereign and just right as the creator of the universe to judge us. And the more clearly you see that, the quicker you will be to repent. We are planted in his vineyard, we breathe God's air, we drink God's water, we eat God's food. We enjoy God's creation and it's all given as a gift to remind us God is a good God and he wants a loving relationship with us. So why is that so many of us live without regard for God, without regard for a neighbor, with no desire to worship him? It's because of sin.

There is a holy God and he will judge and deep in your heart you know this is true. We hear the ringing of judgment all around us. So come to Christ. Life is fragile, the future is uncertain. So get right with God. Repent and believe. And how do I know that my repentance is genuine? Well, that repentance always leads to fruit. And what does he mean by fruit here? It's growth in holiness that begins in salvation and continues every single day. The first steps in the faith, the first steps to being reconciled with God is repent and believe.

And the next steps are repent and believe and the steps after that on a daily basis, the life of a Christian is a life of continual faith and repentance. As the owner of the vineyard expects figs from the fig trees, so God expects humanity from humans. This is what sin does. Sin dehumanizes us. Sin gets us to a place where we are not as we ought to be. And if you're honest with yourself, you know you're not as you ought to be. That's the presence of sin in your life. And what the gospel of Jesus Christ, what God's grace does, what salvation does is it rehumanizes us.

Sin dehumanizes, the gospel rehumanizes and we begin to grow in the image of the only perfect human being who ever lived, and that's Jesus Christ. Fruitfulness is Christ likeness where we grow in character and conduct to look like Christ. The fruit of the spirit, the most succinct list is in Galatians 5:22 and 23, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things, there is no law. Imagine of people like this. This is true humanity. Imagine if more people were like this.

Well, God is offering that gift of salvation and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to every single one of us. Imagine if we were like this. This past week, a video went viral where the video was comprised of little snippets of celebrities singing John Lennon's, Imagine. I'm sure you know the lyrics. Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today, imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. This song is all a fabrication of John Lennon's imagination.

There is a heaven and there is a hell and there is a God. And justice is imminent, justice is looming, but God calls us to repentance. If you get rid of God, you have no peace because you have no objective morality. And people don't grow together in unity, people don't grow together and brother in generosity, only Christ can do that. Christ calls us to repent of sin and trust in him, receive a new heart and grow in Christ likeness. And this is the only thing that can change you and this is the only thing that can change the world and change the trajectory of your eternal soul.

Christ is the only one who can bring us to unity. Christ is the only one who can bring us to a true brotherhood as human beings and Christ is the only one who can create truly generous hearts. So there's no need and there's no greed, it's just a people who love one another and share the good news of Jesus Christ with one another. And I'll close with just how amazing the role of the vine dresser here is. The vine dresser tells the owner, "Sir, let it alone this year only. Let me dig around it. Let me reveal the roots. The roots that are trying to find nutrients in places where there's arid ground, there's nothing there."

And this is a sign of God's patience, a sign of God's goodness and his mercy. And what God is doing now is same thing that this vine dresser is doing. He's urging you, he's pleading with you, he's coaxing you to repent of sin, to stop seeking satisfaction for your soul and things that only cause fire and anguish and outer darkness. And his patience is here, but his patience is running out. There's a limit to it. And don't mistake God's patience to mean that the ax will never fall.

If the master is giving you another year or another month or another day, don't waste it. Second Peter 3:8 through 13, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but he's patient towards you. Not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. The day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed since all these things are thus to be dissolved.

What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming the day of God because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Today repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Run to Jesus as your refuge. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, I pray that you continue to focus our attention on Christ, focus our affections on his love for us, on the sacrifice. And God the father, our Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, I pray that you use this moment to draw many to yourself, drum many sensitive hearts to yourself. Speak powerfully and save dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions despite this pandemic. Lord, we thank you and we love you and pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcrpt:

Hello. Welcome to our online worship service. Thank you for joining us. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic Boston in Brookline. First of all, word to our church, I really miss you. Last Sunday it was just weird not being together, not singing together, not praying together. I miss you, I miss our fellowship. I was just reminded what a gift the church is. I love you, our pastors and staff love you and we've been praying for you. In this time of distress, of discouragement, we turn to our God who is our refuge. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly father, you are sovereign and we submit to your plan. Lord, we know that absolutely every single detail in the history of the world is under your control. Lord, we are reminded of your promise that everything that happens will ultimately work together for the good of those who love you and are called to be yours. Holy Spirit come down and minister to each one of us. Encourage us in the Lord and the faith and the gospel. Encourage us despite all of the discouraging news around us, discouraging events around us. We pray for encouragement. Make us the people who are filled with your spirit, of people who are filled with your hope, are grounded and anchored in the gospel, people who don't forget that you have called us to a mission, in particular, in a time like this. I pray that you bless our time and the holy scriptures. I pray that our souls will be edified, our hearts will be encouraged and our wills will be energized to do the work that you have for us. We pray all this in Christ's Holy name. Amen.

If you're from Mosaic, we were going through a series called Stratagem in which we were uncovering the schemes or the strategies of Satan, of the evil one, of the enemy, to attack us and to pull us away from the Lord. It seems as soon as we started that series that all hell has broken loose with this pandemic and with the panic that is growing, and in the turmoil in the stock market. Our kids are at home, so going a little stir crazy. On top of everything, insult injury, Tom Brady decides to leave the New England... Sorry Tom, bad timing. We love you, we thank you, but that was... Thank you for everyone who reached out to me. That was a really difficult time.

Today I want to look to the scriptures, what the scriptures say when things are overwhelming, when there is incredible uncertainty, when we experience anger and frustration and anxiety and worry. One of the things that we need to realize is that discouragement is also a weapon of the enemy. He's a liar. He's a tempter and he's a discourager. A familiar legend goes like this, that the devil puts all of his tools up for sale. There's the regular ones, the ones that we're familiar with, hatred and lust, jealousy, deceit, sloth, greed. Along with these is a harmless looking, but well worn tool and it's marked up ridiculously compared to the others. A buyer comes up and says, "What tool is this?" Satan says, "This tool is the tool of discouragement."

The buyer says, "Why is it priced so highly?" Satan responds and he says, "Because if the other tools don't work on someone, I can pry open anyone's heart with this one tool. It's so well worn because it works on everyone and it works so well because no one knows it's mine." So where do we go from here despite everything that's going on? Well, like last week, we are reminded that God is our refuge, so we go to him. We move forward by going to the Lord and we move forward by fulfilling the mission that he has for us in this time. We're going to look today at 1 Samuel 30: 1-6. Just to set the context, if you're not familiar with the text, although you've had plenty of time to catch up on your Bible reading in the quarantine, the context is that King David was called... David isn't king yet, he was called by God to succeed King Saul in the throne of Israel.

David was faithful to Saul, and despite his faithfulness, King Saul repeatedly wants to kill David. David exhausted by Saul's relentless pursuit of him, David is driven to the land of the Philistines. He goes there with his 600 warriors and he actually pledges allegiance to King Achish. David, now living in Philistine territory, he moves his family to this town of Ziklag, and the Philistines decide to go to war against Israel. Now, David is in a predicament. Do I go to war against my brothers, Israel, or do I expose the fact that my loyalties are not with the Philistines? God in his grace intervenes and the Philistine generals refuse to take David with them and they send David and the 600 warriors back to Ziklag. That's where we find ourselves.

Would you look at the texts with me? 1 Samuel 30: 1-6, "And with David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amelakites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire, and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They killed no one but carried them off and went their way. When David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David's two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. David was greatly distressed; for the people spoke of stoning him because all the people were bitter in soul each for his sons and daughters, but David strengthened himself in the Lord his God."

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word, may you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Now, you can just imagine the scene after a three-day journey, David and his warriors, that they're excited to see their families. They're excited to be home and eat a home-cooked meal, to sleep in their own beds. As they're going over the hill, they're expecting to see a peaceful domestic scene. They're expecting to see the town flourishing and people rejoicing. Instead, they're horrified to see nothing but smoke pluming up, nothing but a pile of smoldering ashes. Their town is burnt to the ground. Their families have been taken, they've lost everything that they've worked for, worked toward, it's all up in smoke.

These men are warriors and they're in shambles. They're distressed, they're distraught, they fall, and they weep. 1 Samuel 30:4 says, "Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep." No one of their families had been killed yet, they didn't know that. Every living soul was taken, and they had little comfort in knowing that perhaps the family was alive because they knew the Amelakites and they knew what could happen. Best case scenario, that the their wives and their children would become slaves and treated cruelly. That's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, they didn't even want to go there and they weep until they had no sobs left. His soldiers, it says in verse six, were bitter in soul. David, the text tells us, is greatly distressed. It's a mixture of shock. I wasn't expecting this and anger, just frustration that why are we in this situation? How did this happen? Despair and gloom, overwhelming sorrow.

The word in the Hebrew for distress is a word that... It has to do with constriction or hampering or strangling. They feel like the walls are coming in, their souls and their hearts are being strangled by the situation. And if the situation wasn't bad enough, David's men in anger and frustration are looking for someone to blame and they start blaming him. They start asking questions, "How did this happen?" "Whose plan was this?" "How do we end up in the land of the Philistines? That was David's plan." "Why were we away from our families? That was David's plan as well." "Why did we leave them vulnerable?" Some of them start talking about even stoning David.

This week, perhaps you've experienced the anger and the mix of shock and anger, frustrations overwhelming distress, just worry, anxiety. I know every time I checked the news or Twitter, that's what I feel on the inside. As we do, we can be reminded from the scriptures, it's okay to weep and it's okay to feel distressed. Some of the greatest people in all of church's history and in the scriptures felt distress. Jesus Christ himself felt distress at times. But it's not okay to stay there. Weeping will not alleviate or address the significant distress, not longterm. When we're down, what the enemy wants to do is get us to a place where we think that we have it worse than anyone ever has had it. If Satan can get us to believe that we have it uniquely bad, we begin to believe that there is no way back. There is a way back, and that way back is forward. It's forward and following the Lord.

Today I want to draw seven lessons from this text. The first is, the way forward is decisive. Second, the way forward is personal. Third, the way forward is repentant. Fourth, the way forward is humble. Fifth, the way forward is obedient. Six, the way forward is trusting and finally, the way forward is generous. First of all, the way forward is decisive. David, at this very moment, he could have attempted to quell the rebellion of his disgruntled warriors, or he could have attempted to muster up or rally up the troops and go after the Amalekites immediately. However, David pauses. Verse six it says David strengthened himself. "But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God." This is one of the many howevers or buts in the Bible. Everything around David is gloom and doom. His property is destroyed or stolen. His family is gone and he doesn't know if he'll ever see them again, and he makes a decision, there's a pivot in the text and in his soul, but David.

This decision before us today, as there's doom and gloom and frustration and anxiety, but Jan, but you, but Mosaic, but Boston, but our country. David made a decision, he intentionally and deliberately rejected the faithless gloom and doom of his men, and he intentionally looked past the smoldering ruins of Ziklag to the greatness of his God. He made a decision to strengthen himself in the Lord. The Hebrew word here emphasizes that, his strong intention is emphasized with the tense, "He strengthened himself." There's a difference between strengthening yourself in the Lord and being strengthened by the Lord. There's no passivity here. There's nothing passive about fighting discouragement, distress and despair. This is intentional and persistent and continuous effort and it doesn't happen accidentally. Sometimes you've got to grab yourself by the lapels, by your ears, by your shoulders, and remind yourself to strengthen yourself in the Lord.

You see this over and over, even in the Psalms. King David repeats to himself over and over, speaks to himself, preaches to himself. Verse five of Psalm 42, "Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation." Same Psalm, verse 11 repeats the same thing to himself. "Why are you cast down, oh my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." If that's not enough, the very next psalm, Psalm 43:5, "Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." You got to do this to yourself constantly, repeatedly, not just daily.

In a season like this, you got to do this hourly. You got to do this every 10, 15 minutes. If you go to the news, you got to counter that with better news, the good news, the great news of Jesus Christ. Spend time in the scriptures. Remind yourself of God's past faithfulness, of his promises and remind yourself that he is still your God. Psalm 20:7, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Oh my soul, why are you disquieted?" Why? Because we often leave God out of the equation. When we weigh the problems before us with our strength, the problems outweigh our strength. When we measure the difficulty before us, against our ability, obviously the difficulty outweighs. Don't consider the situation from the perspective of your resources, consider the situation from the perspective of God's resources, his capacity. You put God back into the equation, problems are solved, difficulties removed, and the resources are provided.

So remind yourself who you are and whose you are. Fight your spiritual amnesia in this time with the truth of God's word. Perhaps David reminded himself of another time when he faced a giant, the giant of Goliath, and he took him head on because he knew that God was with him. In 1 Samuel 17:46-48, David, young David, fearless David, faith-filled David says, "This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down, cut off your head, and I will give the dead bodies of the host to the Philistines this day, to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves, not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand. When the Philistine arose and came and drew near to David, David ran quickly toward the battle line."

To me, the Philistine. When you remember who God is and whose you are, that you are in him and clothed in his power, you become fearless no matter how big the giant, how scary the giant before us. Psalm 27:1, "The Lord is my salvation, my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?" David strengthened himself in the Lord. Times like these, they bring out the best in us and they also have the potential to bring out the worst in us. Times like this reveal just how strong our faith is or how weak it is. Times like this God uses to reveal crutches in our lives, idols that we are so quickly to run to when we need comfort.

What are you strengthening yourself with in this time? Dear Christian, don't strengthen yourself with things of this world that do not satisfy. Whatever it is, remove them. Let God dismantle those idols and strengthen yourself in the Lord. David also strengthen himself with prayer. It's incredible that we have access to God, the very throne room of God, we run to him. David couldn't turn to the armies of the Philistines or the armies of Israel, but he could turn to the God who has all the armies of the heavens, to request his help. Jesus said we ought always to pray and never lose heart. Oh, what needless burdens we bear. We forget to run to the Lord in prayer. So when distressed, especially in the season when perhaps you have more time on your hands, run to the Lord, fellowship with the Lord. The way forward is decisive and second the way forward is personal.

In 1 Samuel 30:6, "David strengthened himself in the Lord his God." It's curious that David hasn't mentioned the name of the Lord since chapter 26. Four chapters, forgot about God. David, and like many of us, we turn to God when faced with tragedy. When faced with tragedy, David turns to God in a personal way. He knew God personally. God for him wasn't just the God of the nation, the God of his people, or God of his religion or his family. God was his God. He strengthened himself in the Lord his God. This is the only way to know God, personally. Can you say this about God? He is your God, that he is your heavenly father. Lots of people know lots of religious language, know a lot of eloquent prayers. But if you can't say that God is my God, Jesus is my Lord, then you don't know him personally.

We come to know God personally by coming to him personally, and bringing our sins, our personal sense to him and placing personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the fact that he lived for you and he died for you and he was buried for you and he rose for you, to save you. John 17:3, "And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." So, do you know God personally? Well, times like this reveal that, if God is truly yours, if you truly are his, or if God perhaps is a friend of a friend, you have a relationship with him through someone else. No, the only way to God is through Jesus Christ, so come to him today.

The way forward is decisive. The way forward is personal and the way forward is repentant. We see in verse seven that David said to Abiathar, the priest, the son of Ahimelech, "Bring me the ephod." So Abiathar brought the ephod to God. Abiathar is a priest and the ephod was God's way to reveal his will to the people of Israel in the Old Testament. The priest had a vest-like garment and in it he had the Urim and the Thummim. This is the way that people sought God's will in the Old Testament. What's fascinating is that David hasn't sought the high priest and the ephod since 1 Samuel 23. Even this decision to go to the Philistines, even this decision to pledge his sword to King Achish, this decision was made without seeking God's will, without seeking God's face. In fact, it explicitly violated God's prohibition against making alliances with pagans. David realizes that he has sinned and he realizes that the way back to God is through repentance. The way forward is through repentance. There was sin in his life. He had been harboring sin, been trusting in someone other than God for his ultimate security, and he turns around, and that's what repentance means. Repentance means to turn from sin, turn from idols, turn from these emotional crutches that you turn to, meaning turn from them and turn to God.

We at Mosaic have been planting this church and praying for a great awakening in our city. We've been praying for a great awakening in our country and our world. Perhaps this is God's way of awakening us. No one likes being awakened. No one enjoys being awakened from slumber, then some time passes and you realize you have overslept. Sometimes God's mercy comes as severe mercy. Sometimes God has to take in order to give something greater. Dear friend, I pray that God uses this time, that this time is not wasted. I pray that God awakens you to a deeper relationship with him, for you to understand who he is, to understand that life is short and eternity is long and that Jesus Christ is the only way for us to be reconciled with God.

We no longer have the ephod, but we have something better, we have access to God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We can come boldly to the throne of grace because of the sacrifice of Christ, by the power of the spirit. So come to God. The way forward is decisive, it's personal, and it is repentant, and also the way forward is humble. In 1 Samuel 30:8, "David inquired of the Lord, 'Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake it?'" This is a strange question. It's strange because the answer seems so obvious. Of course you should pursue, why even ask God whether to pursue? This is where we see that there's truly been a change of heart in David, you see humility in his heart. Why? Because when you ask God, "Should I do this, or should I not?" there's a potential that God says no.

Imagine if God did say no. Would David have submitted? I think it would have been hard, and we see other times in his life, for example, when he used loses a child with Bathsheba. God said no, and David humbly submitted. True humility and true repentance comes to God in God's terms. The God who gives, sometimes is a God who takes. True humility says, "If the Lord gives, or if the Lord takes, blessed be the name of the Lord. If he takes, it's because he's got something greater to give." This humility is contrasted sharply to Saul's pride. This is fascinating, that chronologically King Saul was seeking guidance at the same time that David is seeking guidance. Saul wanted to know whether God is with him, whether he should go into battle, and God had already told him, "I'm not with you."

Saul doesn't take God's no, instead he wants to circumnavigate God. He wants his will over God's will and goes to a witch and goes to a medium and he seeks life and he seeks the blessing and even through the medium. Response is he's promised death. David instead sought help from God and the promise was life and blessing. The way forward is decisive, it's personal, it's repentant, it's humble. This time has been humbling for us. The way forward is also trusting, trusting in God's sovereignty. David trusted God's sovereignty. He knew that everything that happens happens under the control of God, and this is what gives him strength to move forward. But God wasn't surprised by this. If God had allowed this to happen, God would use this for his purposes. God's sovereignty is evident in giving him his will through the ephod.

And then also we see later on in the story, you can read it in your own time in verses 11 through 15, as they're chasing the Amelakites, they don't know where the Amelakites are camped, and they come across an Egyptian servant. He was actually a servant from one of the Amelakites. They had left him for dead and David finds him and he cares for him. They feed him, and after the servant is strengthened, he tells them where the Amelakites are camped. This right here shows God's sovereignty, that even in the face of darkness, uncertainty, God was with them, even in the valley of the shadow of death, God was leading them. Verse 16, "When he had taken him down, behold, there were spread abroad over the land, eating and drinking and dancing because of all the great spoil that they had taken from the land of the Philistines, from the land of Judah."

The armies of the Amelakites were much greater than David and his men at this point. 200 of David's 600 men had stopped at the brook. They were too weary, too exhausted from travel and from weeping, from sorrow that they couldn't go on, so David only had 400 soldiers. God brings those 400 soldiers to this massive hoard of an army at a time when they were divided, when they were too drunk to stand up straight much less fight, and God gives them a great victory. The way forward is decisive, it's personal, it's repentant, it's humble, it's obedience, it's trusting and the way forward is generous. David though leaving the 200 soldiers, has this victory with the 400 soldiers. First of all, he's generous to the weary. Those who couldn't go forward he said, "It's okay. We will be strong for you. We'll fight for you. We'll care for you. We'll get your families back for you." In this time of uncertainty, the time of need, time of massive panic, the strong are to care for the weak.

If you are strong, if you have been gifted, if you have been blessed, if you have resources, we need to know it's not ours alone, it's God's. He's given us the strength. He's given us the resource to help those who are weary. There's many opportunities to do that. There's many opportunities to talk to your friends and to speak to your friends. I tell people that in a place like Boston, people talk to each other, strangers talk to each other on two occasions, Halloween and the first time it snows. Well, this year we didn't really have any snow, but right now I've had more conversations with my neighbors, people I've seen around, than I have in years. It's an opportunity to talk to people. It's an opportunity to make relationships. It's an opportunity to find out what needs people have. Sometimes just to encourage emotionally, sometimes just to empathize with, sometimes just to pray for, or perhaps there's material needs.

David shows that he has this mindset of generosity. 1 Samuel 30:22-24, "Then all the wicked and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said," and this is after their victory. "They said, 'because they, the 200 who did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered except that each man may lead away his wife and children and depart.' But David said, 'You shall not do so my brothers with what the Lord has given us. He has preserved us and given into our hands the band that came against us. Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike."

David recognized that all of our blessings are from God, we are but stewards, conduits of the blessing and we are to share, extend generosity. Oh, dear friend, will you be marked by this remarkable generosity in this time of need. The way forward is decisive, it's personal, it's repentant, it's humble, it's obedient, trusting, and it's generous. The main reason that God allows his children to despair, sometimes even of life itself, is so that we learn not to trust in ourselves, but to trust in God. 2 Corinthians 1:8-11 St Paul writes, "For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Failure is not final for the believer. One of the things I do want to mention here in closing is, on the one hand we are shocked, perhaps angry, frustrated, overwhelmed. On the other hand, I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is a great opportunity for the church of Christ. David was given a mission by God and he said, "Go and release the captives. I'm with you in this battle." David grabs his warriors, goes with them. They go and they fight for the release of the captives. God's commandments to us have not been lifted in this time. Before us we still have the great commandment, the great compassion, and the great commission. The opportunity before us is greater than I've seen in years. The great commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself, will you do that in this season? Is your heart open to loving your neighbors? The great compassion, will we care for the least of these? Will we care for those who need to be prayed for, and loved, and provided for? And then the great commission, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father of the son of the Holy spirit, and know I'm with you before the end of the age.

God has given us this moment. We are not to waste it, dear church. Are you thinking of those who need an encouraging word from you? Are you thinking of those perhaps you've never shared the gospel with, perhaps you would never share the hope of the gospel with? Well, this is the time to do it. Pray for them and share the great news that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 118:5, "Out of my distress I called on the Lord and the Lord answered me and set me free." Here in this text, God sketches a portrait, a silhouette, of the kind of king that he desires, a king after God's own heart. God desires a king that would seek guidance and strength from the Lord. God desires a king who will be compassionate for the weak and even extend mercy to his enemies, a king who trusts in God and not in himself for victory, a king who goes to battle for the captives even at the risk of his own life, a king who does everything and rules justly in accordance with God's gracious ways and words.

It's a king who is characterized by giving rather than taking. This king after God's own heart, it's not just David. It's a greater king, a descendant of David named Jesus Christ. Jesus related to God as his father and taught us to pray our father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus Christ trusted in God even in the face of taking on our greatest enemies, Satan, sin, death and despair. To extend grace to us, he died on a cross. His rescue mission came at the cost of his life, to free us from sin, and to free us from despair, and then he shares these spoils of his victory with us. He extends them to us freely as gifts just to be received by faith.

Ephesians 4:7,8, "But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men." Receive those gifts from the Lord, the gifts of grace and mercy and forgiveness, the gift of his Holy spirit. Even now, pray, pray to the Lord and be strengthened in his presence. Corrie ten Boom said, "If you look at the world, you'll be distressed. If you look within, you'll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you will be at rest."

When Satan tempts you to despair, look to Christ. Don't be overwhelmed. Keep things in perspective and strengthen yourself in the Lord your God. Let's pray. Lord, we humble ourselves before you and we do repent of sin, and sins; the sins of self-reliance, the sins of self-dependence, the sin of selfishness. In this time of need and pandemic, we turn to you and we ask you to forgive us and we ask you to encourage us and edify our souls, and then also energize our wills and let us see what a great opportunity is before us to be salt and light, to shine your light into the darkness of this situation. I pray, use this time to draw many to yourself and thank you for the gift of our church. We look forward to when we'll gather together and worship together, what a great reunion that will be. We pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Hello, Mosaic Boston family, and if you're joining us for the first time online, my name's Shane, and I'm one of the pastors at Mosaic Boston Brookline.

In just a moment, we're going to have a special message from Pastor Jan, encouraging us from the Scriptures. But before we do, just a couple of things.

First of all, we want to acknowledge that we understand that this is a bit weird. Two weeks ago, none of us could have imagined, expected, that this is where we would be, but this is where we are now, and so we want to make the best of it. With that in mind, just a couple of things.

First of all, it's important for us as a church to stay connected spiritually, and even virtually, during this time where we've been encouraged to distance ourselves from one another physically. And so, if you haven't done so yet, we would encourage you to download the Mosaic Boston app, keep up to date with the things going on, on our website, and check your e-mail often for further updates about what will be going on in the life of the church. We're going to try to keep you up to date, week by week, as things move forward.

Secondly, you can, if you're new to mosaic, download that Mosaic Boston app, and fill out one of the connection cards there. That's a great ways to start getting connected. You can leave prayer requests and things like that there, as well.

For the families at Mosaic, if you have children or teenagers, we would greatly encourage you to take advantage of the resources that we are putting out, for you to go through, together as a family. Our Mini-Mosaic Director, Raquel, and our Teen Director, Tyler, have worked hard to put those together, and we hope that they're a blessing to you.

Many of you have faithfully been giving to Mosaic Boston Online. If that's not something that you've done before, we would encourage you at this time. This is a great time to do it. Or you can set that up very easily on our website, through our secure giving portal.

And then, finally, we'd really encourage you as individuals, as friends within the church, and as community groups, to stay connected with one another. Check in with one another, encourage one another, pray for one another and be with one another, in spirit during this time that we are apart. We will be keeping you up to date, so check the website and your e-mail often, and right now, we're going to hand things over to Pastor Jan.

What a week it's been. So much turmoil, so much information coming at us rapidly. So many changes and so many feelings to be processed. How have you been processing everything that's been going on? My wife and I, we have four daughters. Our second daughter, Elizabeth, who is eight, she processes our feelings through poetry, and she wrote this poem last night. She wanted me to read it. It's called A Warm Wooden Cabin.

A warm wooden cabin sits in the woods. Inside, you see warm, hot cocoa. You sit down near the fire, and smell nice hot cookies, right out of the oven. You hear the wind outside. While you're reading a good book, you're bundled up in blankets about to fall asleep. When you hear a growl and a loud roar, you jump up and run away. But before you know it, you're in Heaven, eating ice cream and laughing at the bear. The end PS, God is good. Heart emoji.

A little dark, but she's Russian, so fits into the genre of Russian poetry. There's a lot going on. And I think as somehow, it's emblematic of where we find ourselves, where it seems like everything was going so well, for so many. We were experiencing prosperity. Then out of nowhere, we've been blindsided. So how are we to respond? And that's what I want to talk about today.

Would you pray with me? Heavenly father, we thank you that you, God of the universe, are our refuge and strength. You are our help in this time of need. Lord, I pray that you send us the Holy Spirit, and make your people a people who are characterized not by panic, but by prayer, not by fear, but by faith, not by anxiety, but by action. We pray, Lord Jesus, that you make us a people who are grounded in an unshakable hope, and ready to care for our neighbors, and ready to share the hope that we have in Christ.

Lord, bless this city, bless this state, bless this country, bless the world. We pray for our political leaders that you send them wisdom, and knowledge and discernment, and we pray for supernatural intervention, you send healing.

Most importantly, I pray that you awakened many from spiritual sleep, awaken them to the reality that life is short, eternity is long, and that we can be reconciled with the God of eternity through Christ. Awake people up from the false assumption that we are in control. We are not. And we cry out to you a God who is, and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

So, as you've probably heard, we have had to cancel our in-person gatherings. And why did we do this? Well, first of all, we did not cancel our services, because we ourselves are afraid of getting sick, or even of dying, because the scriptures, as Christian Scripture says that, "To live as Christ, to die is gain."

We have canceled our services and we forsake gathering in person, in large groups, for the sake of the most vulnerable neighbors around us. Jeremiah 29:7 says, "Seek the welfare of the city, where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare, you will find welfare."

Love is the reason why we are changing our practices. In the case of the young and healthy, this particular virus doesn't pose much more threat than the flu, but in the case of those who are immunocompromised, over the age of 70, this isn't just a flu, this is deadly, and they are potentially at grave risk. One of the central tenants of Christianity, one of the axioms of Christianity, is that the strong must consider and have regard for the week, and that's what we're doing. We're forsaking gathering not to minimize risk to ourselves, but to minimize risk to others.

At the same time, the disease can go unnoticed in the healthy, and those who are symptomatic, they can even carry the virus for long periods of time, while increasing the risk to others, without even knowing they're infectious. So we are minimizing physical contact and large crowds.

We're doing this at the counsel of medical professionals in our own church, and of those in the healthcare system. We don't want to overwhelm potentially the healthcare system, or cause a spike in other vital social service needs. It is sad. We love our church, we love our gatherings. It's sad that we don't get to meet in person, and it's even more sad that we have to keep physical distance from one another.

It seems so counter to our spiritual DNA, where we are drawn towards those in pain. We are called to embrace those who are suffering. It seems like this form of neighbor love isn't very loving, but at this one moment in eternity, we must take a step back physically, and draw near to one another virtually and spiritually.

Regarding community groups, we are leaving that up to the discretion of the leaders, who'll stay in communication. If it seems prudent, meet virtually on Skype, Google Hangout, Zoom. If you do choose to meet, please do practice the sermon. If you are showing any symptoms of illness, please stay home, or if you're in contact with those who are immunocompromised, or prone to risk, please stay home as well.

Our text for today is Psalm 46. Would you look at the text with me? Psalm 46, a timely text. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the Holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved.

"God will help her when morning dawns, the nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice. The earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth, he makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the chariot with fire.

"Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress."

This is the reading of God's Holy in there, and infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

One big point from the sermon today is that God is our refuge, god our refuge. God is sufficient to get us through. He has to this point. He will, from this point on, and we are called to lay hold of this sufficiency.

We see three scenes in the Psalm. First, God is the refuge against the raging of nature. Second, God is the resource against the raging of nations, and third, God is the ruler over the rebels of the earth.

First, God is the refuge against the raging of nature. We see, in this illustration, the first scene in the first picture, a cataclysmic earthquake. In Verse Two it says, "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling." The author of this psalm is imagining the absolutely worst case scenario, the most, the most cataclysmic apocalyptic event that he can imagine. It's an earthquake that that is so severe, that a mountain is swallowed up by the sea.

It's a natural order turned upside down. And what's the response? This is our response as the faithful, as those who love God. We run to him, to find relief and comfort, and God is described as refuge. He's described as our strength and our help.

Refuge, meaning, he is our shelter, he is our security, he is our protection, and God doesn't just provide refuge. He is our refuge, the one whom we shelter, and he himself is our defense, no matter what. He's also our strength. We are weak, he's strong.

He's able to meet us in our circumstances, provide us with the strength we need. And also, he's our help. Scripture says he's our very present help in trouble, and this is comforting, that the omnipresent God of the universe, who is always with us, extends his heavenly fatherly embrace, when we are particularly in trouble. You see this all over the place, in particular, Psalm 23.

"The Lord is my shepherd, O shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

Notice the change from speaking about God, to speaking directly to God. It's a change from the third person to the second: "He makes me lie down. He leads, he restores." It's almost as if he is theoretical, abstract.

Verse four, as the Psalmist finds himself in the valley of the shadow of death, when evil is before him, he goes from "he" to "you," from talking about God, to crying out to God, exceeding nearness. This text tells us that God can be trusted. In particular when the whole world goes crazy, God is the source of our calm in the midst of chaos.

The second scene we see is that God is the resource against the raging of nations. Psalm 46: 4-7: "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the Holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice. The earth melts, and the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress."

In this scene, we see a picture of a city engulfed by a massive siege. It is surrounded by enemies, an innumerable horde of enemies. And the Psalmist says, "There's a river whose streams make glad the city of God."

Jerusalem was one of the only ancient cities not built on a river, and ancient cities needed water close to them, especially in a siege. And when the enemy, Sennacherib, attacks Jerusalem in the Old Testament, he's sure that the lack of water will ultimately drive them to surrender. But unknown to Sennacherib, Jerusalem had a source of water.

A wise King named Hezekiah built an underground tunnel secretly, bringing in 1,777 feet of a trench, to bring water in through solid rock, from a spring in Gihon, to a Pool of Siloam. And here, the Psalmist says that this water symbolizes God's very presence, that he himself is our greatest spiritual resource. He is in our midst. He shall give us what we need to quench our spiritual thirst. He alone can sustain.

It's a God who speaks the siege into oblivion. He is the Lord of hosts, the Lord of angelic armies. In the old Testament, there's a story of the prophet Elisha, and he and his servant is surrounded by enemies. Thousands of soldiers surround them, and the servant is terrified, and he says, "Elisha, my father, what are we going to do?" And Elijah says, "Those who are with us are more than those who are against us. And more than those who are before us."

The servant's eyes are opened, and he sees a hail full of angelic soldiers, horses, and chariots of fire. William Plumer said, "No real harm can befall the child of God walking in the path of duty."

And the third scene we see that tells us that God is the ruler of, over the rebels of earth, Psalm 46: 8-11: "Come behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He turns the chariots, burns the chariots with fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress."

The third picture is that of a battlefield, after a battle is over. It's in the aftermath war. We see bodies, we see weapons strewn all over, and the text tells us that God himself will triumph over his enemies. The word of God tells us in the end times, the words of Jesus Christ. Wars and rumors of wars will come, but in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, believers are fortified with the confidence that all of the kingdoms of this world will one day become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.

Because God is sovereign, because God is great, because God will triumph, the believer is told to be still. No matter the turmoil, no matter the turbulence, be still, and know that he is God. We're told to avail ourselves of his sufficiency. We're told that when we rest in the Lord, it is well with our soul. We don't rest in ourselves and we don't rest in people or governments, but in God. The question that arises from this text is, how do I know that when Christ returns? Or how do I know when I die and meet Christ, that I will be accepted, that I will be welcomed, and I will not be on the side of his enemies? The word of God tells us that if you are in Christ by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, you become a child of God. And as a child of God, you have nothing to fear, outside of Christ.

The fear that we experience now, and the fear that we experience in the face of this virus, in the face of any adversity, is nothing compared to what we should really feel, which is fear of justice, the wrath of God for our sin. This is what makes the Gospel such good news. That Jesus Christ came, and Jesus Christ personified this psalm.

Jesus Christ is our present refuge and our future victory. Jesus personally promised that when we are in him, when we belong to him, he will be with us to the end of the age. That when we trust in Christ, repent of our sins, Jesus gives us the secret aqueduct of the Holy Spirit, who gives us rivers of living water. John 4:14: "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

John 7:37, Christ says, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" To give us this water, the water that leads to eternal life. Jesus thirsted to give us protection from the storms of life. Jesus absorbed the greatest storm known to man, which is the judgment for our sin.

Jesus, though he was sinless, paid the penalty for a virus infinitely more deadly than the one before us, and that's the virus of our sin. To give us refuge, Jesus lost refuge. To give us strength, Jesus lost all strength. To give us help, Jesus lost all help. He went through the greatest trouble known to mankind. He did that for us. On the cross, as he was being crucified for our sins. Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

He was forsaken by the Father, so that we would never have to be. So respond to this grace. How are we to respond? We're to repent of our sins, and repent of our fear, repent of our anxiety, and instead, accept the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he'll pour his spirit into your heart, and forgiveness and mercy and grace.

Once we're in Christ, there's nothing to fear. Don't panic. Instead, pray, plan, be prudent. We are to remain faithful, not fearful. As believers, we have to redirect our energy from anxiety and panic to love and service and preparation. Faith is surrender to the one who is in control.

This virus has brought the world to its knees. And from here, we pray. We pray to God, who is our refuge, and our strength, and our help. We don't overcome fear with just information. We overcome fear with faith, but we are to be informed.

There's a difference between fear and prudence, so be informed about this virus and its developments. Go to cdc.gov. If you are showing signs of illness, the best way that we can love others is to stay away. If you see symptoms of illness, call a doctor, hopefully get tested. As more tests come out, if you experience a fever, dry cough, shortness of breath, just a tiredness, or muscle or headache, stay at home, as instructed by medical professionals. Wash your hands. Work to prevent the spread, and pray. Pray for yourself, pray for the church, and pray for our community. In particular, pray for the doctors and medical professionals, who are courageously on the front lines, fighting and preparing for the fight across the country, and across the globe. The apostle Paul said, "I want you to be free from anxieties."

Philippians 4: 4-7 says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with Thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Matthew Six, 25 and 27, the Lord Jesus says, "Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?"

It feels like in the past few weeks, everything has changed, but at the same time, the most important things have not. God is immutable. He's still on his throne. Therefore, we have an unperishable hope, especially in the face of mortality. The storms of life, like this one, they expose our foundations. What are we trusting in? What are we building our lives on? Is the material rock, or is it sand? And Scripture says that only Christ is the rock on which we stand.

Suffering, or the prospect of it, reveals what we're truly trusting in, who our true God is. So even as Jesus spoke words of comfort, he made clear that his friends would suffer. He said, "In this world, you will have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world." Christ offers us a real hope, and the real Christian hope is our ultimate confidence. It's rooted in the historical life, historical death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Because of his resurrection from the dead, he's proven that he is the creator of the world, and also its Redeemer and sustainer. And he will return. And one day, he will renew the entire creation.

And this hope isn't just theological, it's not just cosmetic, but it's personal as is written, the astonishing and wonderful words of the Heidelberg Catechism. "What is your only hope in life and death? That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins, with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the Devil. He also preserves me in such a way, that without the will of my Heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head. Indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me hardly willing and ready from now on to live for him." The church has experienced epidemics. It's lived through wars and famines, and the church of Jesus Christ has responded, by offering a compelling hope, an unshakeable hope, of a kingdom that cannot be touched by these dangers. The church started in the Roman Empire in the Roman world, and it was a world full of plagues. Epidemics regularly decimated cities and regions, and though people didn't understand germ theory of disease, they knew enough to flee the cities, when they saw people getting sick.

And the first Christians, who saw themselves as missionaries, as emissaries, as ambassadors of Christ, that remained in the cities, did not flee the place. They stayed, and they served. Sociologist Rodney Stark in his work, The Rise of Christianity, makes a statistical argument that this commitment, by itself, is commitment to provide meaningful care for those who are stricken by the plague, that in itself, was a major contributor to the growth of the church in the first centuries of the common era.

When this plague passes, and it will, what will our neighbors remember of us? Well, they remember that Christians took immediate, decisive action to protect the vulnerable, even at a great personal cost, organizational cost. Will we as Christians be remembered, we are people not of panic but of prayer, not of anxiety but of action, not of fear but of faith, ready to serve as we are able, as we can, while protecting ourselves and keeping appropriate social distance, to provide for the needs of those around us, and most importantly, to bring hope.

Practically, if you know of someone who is elderly or immunocompromised or at risk, perhaps that you could reach out, and ask if they need help with grocery shopping. Or perhaps you know someone who is struggling with the economy, has been laid off. This is a great time to practice generosity, sacrificial generosity.

And most importantly, are you ready to give a defense for the reason for the hope that you have? With gentleness and respect, pointing people to the great news, despite all the bad news that's out there, to the great news, that in Jesus Christ, by grace through faith, through the repentance of our sins, our eternity is secure, no matter what happens, for me to live as Christ, and to die is gain. No matter what happens, I'll be in Heaven, eating ice cream.

Psalm 112: 6-8. "For the righteous will never be moved. He will be remembered forever. He's not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady. He will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries."

And I'll close with Romans 8: 31-38. "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? If he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus, the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. who will separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?"

Or COVID-19. "As it is written for your sake, we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor anything now nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord." God is our refuge. Would you turn to him?

Let's pray. Lord, we pray by the power of the Spirit. Intervene. Stop this virus. We pray, send healing to those who are suffering. We pray, fill our hearts with your Holy Spirit, and empower us, for the duty that you have for us, the mission that you have for us, to care for our neighbors, and to share the good news of Jesus Christ, and the unshakable hope that he offers. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly father, we have gathered here today to worship you, to worship you Holy Trinity: father, son and Holy Spirit, because you are worthy of worship. We don't do this because we have to, we do it because you are worthy. And Lord, I pray that you make us a people who are bold and fearless. You command us over and over, fear not for you are our God, for you are with us, you are a good shepherd. Lord, we pray for our city, we pray for our country, we pray for the world.

In particular, we pray for your supernatural intervention in curbing the Corona virus COVID-19. We pray Lord, send healing. We pray, Lord, that you stop the growth of this virus. You can, you have healed in the past, you do heal today and we thank you in advance. And we do Lord, thank you for the reminder that life is short. It is temporary, we're not guaranteed tomorrow. Our life is but a breath. We're here and then we're gone. And Lord, your word tells us and experience confirms that there's a virus that is even more lethal and that's the virus of sin.

And Lord, we thank you for coming and curating the medicine for this virus and that's the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, if anyone's not yet a believer, not yet a Christian, not yet a child of yours, I pray, send the gift of repentance and the gift of faith. Lord, bless our time in the Holy scriptures. Holy spirit, we welcome you into the space. Speak to us, minister to us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

So we're in a sermon series that we are calling Stratagem Know Thy Enemy in which we are exposing and revealing the playbook of the evil one of Satan and the demonic and we're looking at different strategies that Satan uses to pull us away from God. Today we're looking at Satan, the deceiver. Kanye West, and a long time ago, he said, I know that Satan is alive. I can hear him breathing. And when Satan breathes, he breathes out lies. Satan is a liar. He is sly, he is sneaky. He is a schemer and he's shrewd in pulling us away from the Lord.

Scripture teaches that Satan uses at least three forms in order to attack humans. He uses the form of the subtle serpent. He did that in the garden with Adam and Eve. He uses the form of the roaring lion and that's what pastor Shane talked about so compellingly last week. Today we're going to talk about Satan when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come with lies, his blatant lies, he covers them up. He masquerades his lies and presents them as truth with a capital T. He's a master of spiritual propaganda. He is a master of spiritual disinformation. He's a master at using the illusory truth effect.

The illusory truth effect is when "facts seem so good", they taste so good and they're repeated so often that they become plausible. We begin to believe them and we believe them because we want to believe them. He comes to us and offers us trues that are so compelling. There is no God, there is no Satan, there is no sin. You are in control of your own life. Your life is your own. Enjoy, enjoy your life. And we end up bamboozled. Today we're looking at second Corinthians 11 verses one through four and second Corinthians 11 verses 13 through 15 in which St. Paul reveals to us that Satan when he comes, he comes off through people, people of reputation, people that we look up to, people who are authorities in our lives and behind these ideas of these false prophets is the evil one. Would you look at the text with me?

Second Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through four. I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. That's the reading of God's Holy infallible, authoritative word, may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together. First, we'll look at the fact that Satan is a liar. Second, we'll look at Satan's top 10 lies and third, Jesus is the truth.

First, Satan is a liar. We're told over and over in scripture this is true. Revelation 12:9, Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. The words of Christ in John 8:44 he, Satan, was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. Satan can't but lie. This is his very nature and he speaks out of his nature and his strategy in order to undermine God's word, God's truth is threefold.

First of all, he comes in and he questions God's word. "Did God really say?" He asks Eve. After that, he denies God's word. No, no, no, you will surely not die on the day that you partake of this sin. And it doesn't stop there, he doesn't just deny, he doesn't just question, he also substitutes. He removes, supplants God's truth with a capital T with his own version, and he says, "For God knows that the day that you eat of it, you will be like God's. Your eyes will be open knowing good and evil." And here one of the things that we see, Satan's goal is to pull us away from a relationship with God.

God is a source of love, light, of everything perfect, of true beauty, of truth itself, and Satan wants to disconnect us from God or keep us from connecting with God. His goal is to make sure that we do not desire God, that our hearts aren't connected to God, but he doesn't often, and especially in a place like Boston, he doesn't start with affections. He doesn't start with desires, he starts with the mind. He starts with lies. He starts with planting different versions of truth. And what we see from this text is that the battlefield for your soul is your mind.

The battlefield for your soul is your mind. That's what St. Paul says in verse three, but I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And it begins with these fallacious thoughts, by which Satan pulls our devotion away from God. And what is this devotion that St. Paul is talking about? He says in verse two, I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

And here he's using the metaphor of marriage and betrothal from the ancient world in which the father of the bride and the best man, the friend, the best friend of the groom, their job was to protect the bride during the season of betrothal. Betrothal was this important in that culture, it wasn't taken lightly and unfaithfulness during the time of betrothal was considered spiritual adultery. And Saint Paul says, I introduced you to Christ and I'm here during this betrothal period while Christ hasn't come as the true groom, he says, I'm the bride of Christ.

I want to make sure that the bride of Christ, that her heart is continually connected to Christ. And he says, you're flirting with spiritual adultery because of these sinful thoughts, because of these lies that you are believing. And this is how Satan operates. Second Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ was the image of God. Satan blinds the truth with his own version of truth. He blinds the light with his own darkness so that people can't see that the gospel is true.

It's true in its nature and its veracity. It's a fact, but also it's true in its preciousness. That this is the only way to salvation, that God is worthy of our worship. And what we see is in this tactic as he attacks the mind, he doesn't present a lie as a lie. He doesn't present evil as evil. He doesn't present unrighteousness as unrighteousness. He masquerades lies and presents them as truth. He masquerades darkness and presents it as light. He masquerades evil and presents it as good.

That's why verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. Now, how does this apply to us today? Sometimes, yes, Satan does come through religious authorities and they preach a different Christ, but he's not saying be careful that these people come with lies. It says, be careful, they actually preach something plausible. It's something that's truly desirable in our belief.

And then also he says, these people are people that you respect. These are authority figures. These are people in your life that you look up to. These are people who are successful seemingly. And when they speak, their words resonate in our hearts because our hearts long to believe some of those lies. So he says, be careful. And the reason why Satan's lies are so plausible, so powerful is because they're always half truths. He presents this truth as a half truth, as a quasi truth, and presents it as the full truth.

And whenever a half truth masquerades as the whole truth, it becomes a total lie. I swear that I will speak the half truth and nothing but the half truth and a little truth and anything besides the truth to make sure that we stop asking questions. The greatest lie is when it's presented as the full truth. It's almost true, therefore it's got to be the full truth. The poet Tennyson says, a lie that is all of a lie can be met with and fought outright, but a lie that is partly the truth, is a harder matter to fight. That's what makes it so attractive. There's just enough.

He raps his lies in just a little truth. It's like putting bacon bits on a salad, just enough to make it palatable or digestible. If you're a vegan and vegetarian, the bacon is the evil. That's how he operates, it's just enough. And when he comes to us as a roaring lion and seeks to devour us, it's scary of course, but not nearly as dangerous as when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come knocking on our door and say, "Good morning, I'm Satan. I'm here to destroy your present and your future. I'm actually here to destroy your eternal life. I'm here to pull you away from God." Rarely does he act like that.

Instead, he says, "Good morning. I'm your friend. I'm someone that you look up to. I'm an authority figure. Perhaps I'm someone that you want to emulate and I want to introduce you to something that's alluring, that's exciting, that's fulfilling. It's going to make your life less boring. It's going to give you that little thing, that little extra, that little buzz that you're looking for and can't afford to miss it." And he speaks lies about God, about reality and about our nature. So Satan is a liar. And what are some of the top lies that he speaks? I'll give you 10 of Satan's top lies, and particular in a place like Boston.

First of all, there is no God who judges, there is no Satan. There is no sin. There is no truth. Stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. Eight, Jesus died so that you can sin. Nine, you don't need the church and 10, and God doesn't have a mission for you. And the most effective way to battle Satan's lies is to expose them as lies and to counter them with the truth which we try to do here in rapid fashion.

First of all, there is no God. In particular, there's no God who judges. Statistically, there's not that many atheists and particularly in the United States, not that many. You're talking about 1 to 2% of the population that are militant atheists confirmed in their atheistic worldview of their atheistic faith. Most people are agnostic or I would say just apathetic, ap-atheistic, I call them. Where it's like we don't know enough. I don't care enough. Perhaps there's God. We probably didn't come from nothing. Perhaps there's a God, but we don't know who he is. So there is no God. Or there is a God, but he's definitely not a God who judges.

He's definitely not a God who's going to make me give an account for my life, for my decisions, for my actions. And this is how the lie starts. God is love, period. God loves you, period. And as I go through this list about these Satan's lies, there's just enough truth where you're like, "Yeah, but no. Yeah, but there's more. Yeah, but let me explain." And Satan puts the period where God puts a comma or a semi-colon. God loves you the way you are and then he keeps going. He says, "God loves you the way you are, so you don't need to change." And you keep going. You say, "God doesn't care about sin per se. God just wants you to be happy. God accommodates sin."

This is the lie of tolerance. The God tolerates any single one of your decisions or your actions. Jesus talked about the way that leads to destruction's wide. It's tolerant, it's unchallenging, it's uncritical, it's uncaring. Jesus does love you, God does love you. But he loves you so much, he gave his one and only son to die on the cross for your sins. That's how much he loves you. God is a God who loves you so much that he wants the best for you, and the best for you is to be forgiven of sins and to be released from the power of sin.

So yes, God loves you and yes, come as you are to the cross of Jesus Christ and receive his grace. Colossians says that Jesus Christ took our sins, the record of debt against God and he nailed it to the cross. Our sins need to be nailed to the cross. Yes, new life is a gift. Forgiveness is a gift, but it has to be received. You can't be born again without first dying to self, dying to sin, dying to your old life. Our sin needs to be brought to the cross, so come as you are and repent of your sin. All your sins will be forgiven because God is and God judges by his judgment, his mercy come together at the cross.

Second is there is no Satan. And some of us, perhaps you're a little uncomfortable that we're talking about Satan and the devil in church today, especially in a place like Boston, and some of us were uncomfortable talking about transcendent evil or a personification of evil like Satan. Because when we think of Satan, we think of a guy in a red suit, pitchfork with horns and a tail. It's ridiculous, it's absolutely ridiculous, it's ludicrous to believe this on the one hand. On the other hand, if you are Satan and you've tried many of your strategies and you're like, "They're not that effective. I've demon possessed people. And then there's the Holocaust and then 30 million died during the Soviet Union, not that effective."

And Satan hires someone to help him come up with a new strategy, Bain Consulting for example. And no offense if you work at Bain Consulting, there was a guy in the morning service that works there. Sorry, I'm not saying they're diabolic, but I'm saying if Satan were to hire someone who would hire them. So if Satan hires a consulting firm and you're like, "Please help me with a new strategy in 2020." Or in this new postmodern post postmodern era, you know what they would tell him? Convince the world that you don't exist by mocking yourself, by ridiculing even the idea that you exist.

From the movie Unusual Suspects, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist and like that he's gone. If we can't even have a conversation about transcendent evil or personification of evil, how can we even understand the world? And this started with liberal new testament scholars. German new testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann over a century ago emphatically denied the existence of anything supernatural. He said they're all myths in the new testament and we need to demythologize the new testament. He said we can only understand what our five senses show us and reveal to us about reality and there's nothing else. The material is all there is.

And what happens is once we get rid of evil, personification of evil happens, we actually lose the resources to begin to understand the world as it is. Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University wrote a book called The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. The first line in the book is, a gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. We know that deep down and we know there's transcendent evil. If we get rid of this concept of personified transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand the world?

If you don't believe in Satan, I challenge, you go to Auschwitz, go to the concentration camps and stand there. You feel it, that it's palpable there. If there is no safe, if there is no transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand true systemic evil, racism, sexual trafficking? It begins with lies. Porn is harmless. That's a diabolical lie. Abortion is healthcare, that's a lie. It all begins with the demonic. Hitler's Superman, that whole ideology, that's a diabolical lie that led to the death of millions. Satan is and Satan is a liar.

The third lie is that there is no sin and similar to the first one, it begins with God loves you therefore, there is no sin. God loves you therefore, he wants you to be happy and happiness is whatever you define. God loves you and he doesn't discriminate against your life choices and it begins with a truth from scripture, God is inclusive. God's love is inclusive, he welcomes everybody. In Christ Jesus, there is no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, slave nor free. The lie comes in when Satan begins to link clearly sinful lifestyles to that list and our hearts willingly accept that lie because we have a sinful flesh. And this poisonous lie that masquerades as liberating truth begins to slither into our hearts and causes destruction.

In that same context, St. Paul says, "Yeah, there is no, in Christ Jesus, no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female." And then in that context, those are things that we can't control, but there's things that we can't control. He says, "If a thief comes to faith, let him steal no more, but let him instead work with his hands." There's got to be a transformation. When we meet the God of the universe and he forgives us of our sins. He doesn't just long for us to keep sinning, he wants to release us from the power of sin, but also from the presence of sin.

Richard Niebuhr in the book Kingdom of God in America, he said, a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the administrations of Christ without a cross. Many, many modern churches, this is what they believe is false gospel. And it begins with getting rid of a God who judges, getting rid of Satan, getting rid of sin. Once you do all of those things, you don't need a God dying on a cross for sin, bearing the wrath of God and there is no more Christianity.

Fourth is there is no truth. And this is where you could talk about this in the very beginning in Genesis three, he comes and he questions God's truth. He denies God's truth, but then there's no vacuum. There's no truth vacuum. This is how truth works. If you nullify truth, you have to replace it with another truth. If you say there is no truth, that now becomes a truth statement. And this is where we are, there is no truth. Relativism is all there is. It's just your truth and my truth. I'm going to live my truth.

Your opinion is valid as my opinion and that just keeps going and deepens where, "Well, my opinion is what I want and what I desire, what my feelings are and my feelings are reality. My feelings are truth. My life is my own." Jesus Christ comes and he says, "No, we are not God. We didn't create ourselves. We don't sustain ourselves. Our life is not our own. In creation, our life is not our own in redemption." If you're a Christian, you belong to Christ twice because he redeems us from our sins. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, capital T, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. He says I'm the, there's a definite article. I am the way, the only way. There's no other ways to God.

If there were other ways to God Jesus, the son of God, the second person in the trinity would not have had to die. He would not have had to bear the wrath of God on the cross for our sins. It's an absolute statement and it's an exclusive statement. And we know about the living word of God, of Jesus and the written word of God in the Holy scriptures which have proven themselves to be efficacious and powerful and they've self authenticated themselves in our own experience and throughout the experience of church history by transforming people's lives.

Number five is stop thinking, enjoy yourself. Usually Satan begins with these epistemological, existential questions one through four, but I think the most effective one in particular for young people is this one. Yet we can't know anything, so why even ask questions? Just stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Think about the things that you can control, don't think about the things that we don't know anything about and just enjoy yourself. And God wants you to be happy, right? If he exists and he's a good God and you define happiness as you want to define it, and usually that starts with happiness, but then it gets relegated to pleasure and says, "Just go, just enjoy yourself."

And what happens is we begin to numb ourselves with things that we think causes pleasure short term. Be it intoxication or substances, entertainment, comfort, what have you. And this is perhaps one of the most convincing lies. I mean, everyone around us is pursuing this route. And he diverts our attention for the most important questions about God, about the universe, about life. And we believe it because often we want to feel so good in the short term. And then scripture comes in and says, "No."

You never get from pleasure what you long to get from pleasure. In pursuit of happiness and pleasure, you never get what it promised you. It doesn't satisfy. C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters... If you haven't read it, it's a phenomenal little fictional work about the strategies of Satan. In this chapter about pleasure, this one line stands out. He says, an increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Whatever your thing is to get pleasure, you get a little pleasure and what it does, it increases your crave. You want more of it and you're chasing that first high, that first buzz and it gives you less and less, more diminishing pleasure.

The lie within the lies that pleasures the path to satisfaction to ultimate fulfillment, it's not. Happiness is in the mind, pleasure's in the body, but there's something so much deeper. There's something in the soul that we're longing for and that's fullness of joy, that's satisfaction, that's fulfillment and nothing physical can give us spiritual satisfaction. Only God can, fellowship with Christ can. Aldous Huxley says, facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. So even if you're just constantly pushing away these thoughts about God, these questions of where did I come from? What is my life? What is the meaning of life and where am I going? The facts remain, the questions remain.

Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seize the day, you only live once. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Check off your bucket list. While you're alive, just have fun, enjoy yourself and because there's nothing left. I remember I was trying to share the gospel with a coworker of mine back, I used to work in the FBI for a little bit and my office was in a closet thing, there were no windows and my coworker smoked two packs a day. He would just smoke all the time. So he reeked and I was like, "Bro, I think you're going to die soon. So I got to share the gospel with you." And then I'm like, "So what happens when we die? What do you believe about that?"

And I'll never forget his answer. And he says, "You get buried and then you push up daisies." So there's nothing else. Most of us, we don't just believe in annihilationism, that everyone just disappears. Most people what they believe is, there is an afterlife, but it's only heaven. And the only thing you got to do to go to heaven is die. That's the only qualification. You die, you're going to heaven. Where do we get these ideas? You go to a friend's funeral, everybody says the same thing. They get up and they say, I know that this person is where? In a better place. How do we know this? What is that based on? Did someone come back and tell us?

There's only one person that ever came back and told us about the afterlife and that was Jesus Christ when he came back from the dead. And what Jesus Christ told us is there's heaven and there's hell. Heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of the presence of God. And when we're disconnected with God because of our sin, this is where you spend all of eternity. A lot of people say, "Only God can judge me," and he will. Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, rejoice young man or young person in your youth and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment.

The words of Christ in Matthew 10:28, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus said that in order to awaken us from our spiritual stupor. These are incredibly words, that we will die and we will stand before God and the question is will you spend eternity in God's presence or apart from God in a place called hell? Jesus Christ came and he said that the only way into heaven, into the presence of God is by faith in Jesus Christ. Repent and believe, and those who believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and savior have eternal life.

You can either live once and die twice. Die physically, and then you spend eternity in a place called hell, that's eternal death. Death isn't just separation from... it's not cessation, it's separation from the body. You have an internal soul. It's either you live once or you die twice or you live twice. I'm born, I'm alive, but then I'm born again. I die to my former self. I'm born again. I live twice and I die once, and you do that by denying your sin, denying your former life and coming to Christ. C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces says, die before you die. There is no chance after die to sin, die to self reliance, selfishness, pride, and be alive to God.

Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. This is, works righteousness, self-righteousness. This is at the heart of every single religion except for Christianity, and a lot of Christians believe this too. They believe that the way that you can be made righteous before God is by helping yourself. God helps those who help themselves. We think of grace as just extra credit or a little fudge fact. I remember I had a teacher of chemistry in high school and on every test he would grade on a curve, but if you brought him chocolates, he would give you a little fudge factor. That's what he called it. I'll always finished with an A.

That's what a lot of people, they think, "Okay, I'm going to try hard. I got a 70 on the test and thanks Jesus for the little grace, a little fudge fact." No, that's not how Christianity works. The Christianity says there's nothing that we can do to make ourselves righteous before God. We come to God. The only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. We can't make ourselves righteous and we can never atone for our evil deeds or sinful deeds by doing good because even when we're doing good, we're just doing what was expected of us.

Eight is Jesus died so you can sin and this is more for people who have accepted Christ and have had some kind of spiritual experience, but it's very shallow. They have an understanding of cheap grace, that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, past, present, and future. He forgives you of the penalty of sin. And if you sin again, he'll just keep forgiving you because that's his job so you can keep on living in sin. And this is a lie from the pit of hell. Romans 6:1 through 2, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means how can we who died in sin still live in it?

When Jesus saves us, he doesn't just save us from penalty of sin, he wants to save us from the very presence and power of sin and he does that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Nine is that you don't need the church. In our radical, individualistic society, this is a lot of people. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Personal meaning private, it's just me and Jesus and that's all I need. And again, yes but no, right? All you need for salvation is a relationship with Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ loves the church and gave himself for her and the church is the body of Christ. So if you want Christ, you cannot want to be part of the church, which is his body, which is the one whom he loves. It's his bride. That's number one.

Number two, Satan wants to pull us away from the church because by doing so, he pulls us away from the means of God for our growth and our health. We grow when we push one another in the faith when we edify one another, when we hold each other accountable. We need community. A lone soldier is a dead soldier, and at best, a useless soldier. And this brings us to 10, God doesn't have a mission for you. If Satan can't get you to be faithless, he'll do everything he possibly can to get you to be fruitless and useless. Where, yeah, we're secure in our salvation with the Lord, but we make zero impact for eternity. We make zero impact for the kingdom of God.

We just live for ourselves in a little waiting room until we go to heaven. And this isn't God's plan for us. God's plan for us once he gives us the Holy Spirit is to lock arms with brothers and sisters in a commitment to a church and further God's mission, build God's kingdom and God through us bears fruit. Finally, point three is that Jesus is the truth. This is how we counter the lies of the evil one. Second Corinthians 11:3, St. Paul says, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

And I love the word here for sincere, it's a word that means sincerity, authenticity, but also the primary definition of this word is simplicity. It's haplótēs which means simplicity, meaning purity. This is the unadulterated form of faith, simplicity and pure devotion to Christ. This is the main thing of Christianity. This is the heart of Christianity, the main thing of Christianity is to keep the main thing the main thing. And this is what Satan does. Satan complicates everything including religion, including Christianity. And this is how he operates. It begins with a lie.

The lie is, "Well, because we're so complicated and life is so complicated. God is greater than us, so God has to be even more complicated. Greater in complication or complex." And this is the truth of scripture, that God is basically simple. And by simple I do not mean simplistic. It means that God is understandable. There are things about him that are absolutely clear, unadulterated, truth about God. And St. Paul says, I think Satan's pulling you away from the simplicity in Christ. The reason why he does that is because that's what transforms us and makes us effective.

Thomas à Kempis says, by two wings, man is lifted from the things of earth, simplicity and purity. The truly godly life as a simple life. And this is why the reformation was so important. The reformation looked at the Catholic church and said, "It's gotten way too complicated, let's get back to the scriptures. Let's get back to the gospel." And it simplified not only religion, but all of life. And what is the simplicity? Simplicity and purity in Christ. He's talking about a daily companionship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you sense the Christ is yours all day long? If you're in love, you know that feeling of being in love? My wife and I are coming up on 14 years of being in love. And you know the feeling of being in love of you wake up in the morning and first thought is like, "Still got it." Still got the little buzz and the first thing is you want to contact that person. You want to send a text, you want to phone call, send a meme just to brighten up their day, something. There's something there where even if you're far apart, there's this connection. That's what he's talking about. This fellowship. He's talking about the simplicity and purity and devotion to Christ.

A lot of Christians, they complicate this. By the way, this is what makes Mosaic Mosaic. Our values, are love Jesus and what? Simple. We're talking about this essential, the most important thing is our relationship with the Lord. Christianity isn't a creed, it's a relationship. And the danger for many Christians is you come and you start adding things to the relationship with the Lord. I need to grow in my faith therefore, I need another book. I need a course. I need a seminar. I need a conference. I need something else to supplement my faith because I don't feel like I'm growing. And the reason why we're not growing is because we're not deepening our relationship with the Lord, our fellowship with the Lord. First Corinthians 1:9, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is a living Lord, he's not dead. He's not just for Sundays, he's for every single moment of every single day he is with us. If you're a Christian, you're in Christ, you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You have access to Christ. This is why St. Paul says, for me to live is what? Christ. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I die, I just get more of Christ. Every single moment of every single day I have access to Christ.

Karl Barth was a grateful theologian, wrote tremendously effective studies, in particular on the book of Romans, revolutionized theology for decades. And he was at a conference at Princeton Seminary and he was asked the following question, what is the greatest theological thought that has ever crossed your mind? And people are ready for some kind of abstract answer that you don't even understand what he's talking about and this is what he said. He said the greatest theological thought that's ever crossed my mind, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

It does not get deeper than that. That's the essence, that's the simplicity of our devotion to Christ. It's easy to lose, especially in the midst of the business of our life. We get pulled away by lies. We get pulled away by pressures and anxiety of daily life. Then we get pulled away by sin, et cetera. Second Corinthians 11:4 he says, if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than we proclaim, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily. Just be careful.

Another Jesus, another sphere, another different gospel... And the message of St. Paul, the message of the Holy scripture, the message of Christ is very simple. It was that Jesus was crucified for our sins and he rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit is given to whomever believes. And anyone who accepts the gospel of Jesus Christ, who receives this through simple repentance and simple faith is reconciled with God, becomes a child of God, becomes a Christian. Simple, but it's not easy.

Repentance is simple, but repentance is extremely difficult for two reasons. Number one, because we like sin, sin feels good. Sin has an allure. And to die to sin, reject sin, that's painful. Number two, it's painful to admit that you have been wrong. It's painful to admit that you have been taken, that you have believed a lie, in particular, a lie about the most important fact of the universe. And there's something in our ego that would rather believe a lie than accept an uncomfortable truth, than accept the fact that God is God and God is in control and that we have to relinquish it and that we have to release it. But when we come to Christ, Christ gives us grace.

Christ gives us this balm for our souls to remove that pain and replace it with peace and comfort. Satan is and he is a liar, but he will not win. And how do we fight Satan? We fight Satan by holding on to Jesus Christ, he is our only power. He's our only path to victory. First John 3:8, the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Hebrews 2:14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

Colossians 2:15, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Before I moved to Boston to plant Mosaic, I believed in Satan. After a decade of ministry, I really believed in Satan. And I really believed his lies are incredibly compelling. They're incredibly plausible, but they lead to death and destruction. And Jesus Christ said that you can know the truth and the truth will what? Will set you free. And the truth that he offers us isn't just an abstract theory. It's a person that we can have fellowship with.

So how do we fight just practically here at the very end? Number one, he wants to pull you away from your devotion to Christ, and he does it through lies. So fortify your mind with the Holy scriptures, fortify your mind with the truth. Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect. Philippians 4:8, finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever's just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

And second Corinthians 10:4 and 5, I'll close with this. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. I have divine power to destroy strongholds, destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Satan is a liar and Jesus is the truth. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the Holy scriptures, what a gift they are. And we feel Lord, that your word is powerful, that you would cut through the lies that are so plausible. And Lord I pray that you make us a people who are not outwitted by the enemy. I pray you make us a people who are not naive toward his schemes, will make us a people who know the truth and are transformed by the truth and give us the power of the Holy Spirit to live in a manner worthy of this truth. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning and welcome again to Mosaic. We are beginning a new sermon series today that is going to take us through the season of lent all the way up to Easter and really excited about it. I usually go into these sermon series with a lot of excitement, but I am just upfront. This one is a little bit different. I'm excited, but it's a somber excitement. It's a very sober excitement. We have a very serious topic that for the next six weeks we're going to be looking at and what we're going to be focusing on throughout this series is the work of Satan and demons and how that plays a part in our lives and it's not a topic that we enter into lightly nor should we. A scripture frequently pulls back the curtain on physical reality and shows us that there is a spiritual realm and there is a spiritual war that is going on behind the scenes.

Ephesians six, Paul tells the church in Ephesus in verse 10, "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." And so we've called this series Stratagem. That if we are to defend against the schemes of this enemy, we need to know who he is, what he wants, what he is capable of, what are his strategies, what are his tactics? What's his M.O.?

Jesus told his disciples, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That Jesus has a mission, he has a church, and that this church has an enemy and it's not one that we should take lightly. Over the next six weeks, we're going to be looking at some of the ways that scripture depicts this enemy. And so we see that Satan is sometimes depicted as the deceiver, as the tempter, as the accuser, as the divider, as the thief, as the murderer. And today we're going to start things off by looking at his primary title, which actually comes from his name itself, the name in Hebrew, sâtan or in Greek diabolos. It's this idea that Satan is our adversary.

Now, as we start just going to clear the air, acknowledge the elephant in the room, because I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you guys, you're thinking is that guy really going to stand up there this morning in front of a room of highly edumacated Bostonian's and talk about our old cleft foot friend, the devil? Yeah. Maybe we'll get to big foot in the Loch Ness Monster while we're at it. But no this is real. And I understand that a lot of us, especially from more secular or Western cultures, we come to this with a bit of skepticism. Now, others of you perhaps have come from cultures in other parts of the world where you are painfully aware of the physical and the spiritual reality of evil. That you've maybe had personal experiences with the demonic as some of you have maybe even come from cultures that have even an unhealthy preoccupation with Satan and demons. Where people live with anxiety and fear of the spiritual realm.

That really shows us that there's two dangers that we can come to as Christians when we begin talking about Satan and demons. On the one hand, we can overestimate their power and their influence. And so you have Christians who, they see a demon hiding under every rock that everything that goes wrong in their life is spiritual attack. Everything they do wrong, it's like, "Well, the devil made me do it." And that's not biblical or helpful. But on the other hand, we're tempted at times to underestimate the power in the presence, in the influence of Satan and demons, or maybe even to dismiss them to the category of myth and legend and scripture will not allow that either.

And so what does scripture actually say? That's what we're going to be scratching the surface on this morning, and looking at over the next several weeks. And if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up. We're going to be in 1st Peter chapter five primarily today. Looking at verse one through 11 we're going to begin our series looking at how Satan is our adversary and how he is actively... this is one of the ways that he is actively at work in the world today.

So 1st Peter 5:1, "So exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

Be sober-minded, be watchful, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world and after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

Let's pray. God, we thank you for your Holy and infallible authoritative word for our lives. I pray today, Holy Spirit, that you would help us to see, to understand, to believe and to obey what you have to say to us. That you would use this word to shape us more into the image of Christ for the sake of your kingdom and glory. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Only have two points today, and the first point is pretty straight forward and it's simply this that we need to know our adversary. When I was in high school, I got really into Taekwondo, into kickboxing and I was always the smallest kid in class, but I was always also one of the fastest and most agile kids in class. And so I really picked the sport up really quickly. My friend and I, we would go and we would train like four or five nights a week. And I was really quick, I was really fast, I could also jump really high. And so my specialty, the thing that I poured the most time into perfecting was the spinning jump kick. I worked on this and actually, I got to the point where I could kick well over my head, six, seven feet in the air about as high as the instructor could hold the pad. And I was thinking about demonstrating that for you this morning, but this was like 21 years ago, I'll break a hip.

Anyways, loved it, got really involved and started entering tournaments. I remember the very first tournament that I ever fought in. It was a touch sparring tournament, which means you're not trying to hurt each other, you're just trying to make contact and score points. And because of that, there was no weight divisions. And I ended up in one of the rounds fighting against another guy who was actually, he was a police officer. He was much older, much, much bigger than me, but it really didn't matter because it was all about speed. It was just about scoring points and so I was just going to town. I was way ahead in the points and I don't know what was going through my head.

I was getting bored. I was like, "This is my moment to shine." I need to Jean-Claude Van Damme, this guy right in the side of the head, in front of everyone. Show everyone just how awesome I am." So I get ready, I square up, I take my step, I jump, I spin in, just perfectly execute the spinning jump kick. Now, here's some advice just in case you ever find yourself in a street fight on the main streets of Brooklyn, this is what you do. If someone comes at you with a spinning jump kick and this is what he did, you ready for it? You do this. They don't show you that in the movies, but if you just move your head like three or four inches, that's all you've got to do and they totally miss. And that's what I did. I totally missed. I land on the ground, my guard is down and he just side kicks me right in the gut and I fly back, literally like fly back out of the ring like 10 feet, so embarrassing.

Here's the point. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, doesn't matter if you're talking about kickboxing, boxing, warfare, sports, business, anything. You need to know your enemy, you need to take them seriously. You need to study the competition and anticipate their moves or you are likely to fail. And that's what we're doing in this series. We're trying to study the enemy so that we can anticipate his moves so that we can defend against his attacks. And now part of the problem is that there's just a lot of bad information, a lot of misinformation out there in our culture, even in spears of Christian culture, about who Satan is and about what he is capable of. So we're just going to begin by just taking a systematic look at what does the Bible say about Satan, about who he is, about where he came from, about what he wants and what he's capable of.

So first of all, who is he? It's important to understand that the Bible was not written to angels and demons, it wasn't written to the spiritual realm, it was written to us. And so the primary focus in scripture is us. It's our responsibility as human beings before God. So there's not a book of the Bible on introduction to Satan and demons. You're not going to find that but what you do find is you just find bits and pieces of information sprinkled in throughout the story of scripture. So, for example, who is Satan and where did he come from? Well, there's passages like 2nd Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6 that tell us that Satan and the demons were originally angels, right? Satan is not God's counterpart, he's not the yin to God's yang. He was an angel that God created, and in the beginning he was good. He was beautiful, he was holy and sinless.

But what these passages show us is that at some point in time between the end of creation, when God looks out and says everything was very good, between that point and the garden of Eden, where the serpent comes to Eve, somewhere in there, a faction of the angels fell under the leadership of Satan. They rebelled against God and they were cast out of heaven. You have passages like Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. These are passages that were prophetic passages and they were written about real earthly rulers who were prideful or rebellious toward God, and inevitably it was prophesying their fall. But when you read these passages, they're using heavenly angelic language and it's very clear that what's going on here is more than just what we see on the surface, that the authors, Isaiah and Ezekiel, the prophets were either using these stories to simultaneously teach us about the story of Satan and his fault, or at least comparing these earthly rulers to a story about Satan that the readers would have been familiar with.

So just for example, look at Isaiah 14:12. It's written concerning the King of Babylon, but this is what it says, it says, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn." Scripture frequently uses the imagery of stars as a metaphor for angelic beings and the day star, it's the last star to disappear from the sky in the morning when the sun comes up. So it's the most bright, it's the most glorious, the most powerful of the stars. And in this context it's talking about the most powerful and glorious of the angels. "How you've fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn." Actually when that was translated into the Latin, Day Star is where we get the name of Lucifer.

"How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will rule over all the other angels. I will set my throne on high and sit on the mount of assembly. I'll have equal authority to God. I'll start running the heavenly staff meetings," so to speak. "I will sit in the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the Heights of the cloud. I will make myself like the Most High. I will make myself God." But you were brought down to Sheol, to hell, to the far reaches of the pit.

Ezekiel 28 is very similar language, angelic language concerning the King of Tyre and I think these passages they're meant to teach us on the one hand that there is a fearful judgment awaiting earthly rulers who defy God, who used their authority in rebellion to God and misused their positions to do evil. Now, I think these stories are also meant to show us that the fall of evil earthly rulers is merely an echo of this original fall of Satan and the demons. That becomes much more clear when we read Revelation chapter 12. Revelation 12:7 says, "Now a war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting back against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down." That ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

So we see that the story behind perhaps these other stories of the King of Babylon, the King of Tyre is a true story. It's something that actually happened, that there was a rebellion in heaven that war broke out, that Satan and the demons were cast down in and that brings us to Revelation 12:12, "And therefore rejoice, Oh heavens and you who dwell in them for the Dragon's been cast down. But woe to you Oh, earth and sea for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows his time is short." That sounds a lot like 1st Peter five, your enemy prowls around like a roaring lion in his wrath looking for someone to devour.

And really I think that is what brings us to Genesis chapter three. That Satan falls, he's cast out of heaven, he fails to take God's throne in heaven. So he sets up a fraudulent throne on earth. He comes to Adam and Eve in the garden, and what does he do? He tempts them. He said, "You don't really believe that God is good, do you? You don't really trust him, right? I mean, he just wants to control you. He knows that if you break his commandments, that you'll actually be set free. You'll be like him, you'll become autonomous. You'll be a law to yourself. Independent. So do what? So join my rebellion, follow in my footsteps." And they do.

Now the irony of Eden is that Adam and Eve had been created in the image and likeness of God and yet Satan convinces them God's likeness is not enough. You need to be completely like God. You need to be fully a lot here. You need to be independent from him, but then when they fall for that deception, they don't find the autonomy that Satan was promising them. Instead, what they find is that now instead of being under God's good, gracious, loving rule in paradise, they come under a curse. They're cast out of Eden and they come under the harsh tyrannical rule of Satan's sin and death. See, Satan's sin was pride in his own glory and his primary agenda today is to kill and to steal and to destroy anything that would bring glory or honor to God. Where he failed in heaven at taking God's crown, he's in a sense set up a throne here on earth and that sounds strange, but you actually see this in scripture.

In revelation two, Jesus is talking to the church and he says, "I know where you dwell, where the throne of Satan is." If you read through the book of revelation, the symbol of a throne, anytime you see a throne in heaven, it's symbolic of God's good and sovereign rule that anytime you see a throne on earth, it's symbolic of Satan's fraudulent tyrannical rule. Satan is now rebelliously ruling the earth. And so we see in the book of job where Satan comes into the heavenly council and they ask him, "Where have you been?" And Satan is like, "You know, just walking around like I own the place." Like to and fro wherever I want to go, all over the face of the earth. Everyone down there bows to me." And God says, "Well, have you considered job?"

2nd Corinthians four, Paul calls Satan the God of this world. Ephesians two, calls him the Prince of the power of the air. Jesus in John chapter 12, John chapter 14, John chapter 16 refers to Satan as the ruler of this world. And we just looked at this a week or two ago, and 1st John five, the apostle John says, "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." That he's called the God of this world. Not in the sense that he's the God of creation, but in the sense that he is ruling over every person, every place, everything that does not bow before God and worship and confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, that Jesus is the true and rightful King. And this shouldn't surprise us, right? Because when you look out at the world around us, are you amazed at just how much of the kingdom of Jesus you see?

Like everywhere you look, it's just like everybody's worshiping Jesus, everybody's humble, everybody's loving their neighbors. No, you see pain, you see perversion, you see chaos, destruction, rebellion. You see the chief virtue of Satan's kingdom, which is pride, everywhere you look. Now, Satan is obviously not God or equal to God in any way, but when Jesus calls him the God of this world, we know what he's talking about. So let's move now from talking about just the world and people in general. Let's talk about the Christians in the church specifically because this is who Peter's is writing to and it's who he's talking about. Peter commands us to be sober-minded and alert to that we need to be aware of spiritual reality and we need to not let our guard down. Why? Because our enemy wants to kill, steal and destroy anything that would bring glory to God. And there are a few things that do that more than his children. So he wants to take us out. Stay with me because I know the first part of the sermon is pretty dark.

And Peter's painting a frightening picture. There's a light coming at the end of the tunnel, but we need to understand the fear of being out and you hear a lion roaring on the prowl but you don't know exactly where it is that it's hunting you down ready to strike. Most of us might have a hard time relating to this, but the closest that I've ever come was one time in high school my family had taken... we were on vacation at a cabin in a Lake in Northern Wisconsin and I was walking through the grounds. I came around the corner of a building where the dumpsters were, and about feet in front of me was a black bear and I just shipped back around the corner and just sprinted as fast as I could in the other direction. I don't want to mess with that. The closest thing we have to that here in, I don't know, is probably the turkeys in Brookline. They're pretty fearsome if you've ever gotten...

Actually this happened a couple of years ago, but I had dropped Owen off at daycare. I was driving home going down Tappan Street in Brookline and I see this high school kid come over the hill and he's just like booking it, running for his life, full sprint about 10 feet behind him and there's massive turkeys. Like fluffed up, chasing him down out for blood. Satan's not a turkey, he's a lion. He's hungry, he's fearsome, he's ferocious. He's roaring. He's looking for someone to devour. Now, here's what we need to know. There are two primary categories of tactics that he uses to attack the children of God as our adversary. And the first is the tactic of stealth. We're going to talk about this in a few weeks. I'm not going to talk about a whole lot now, but sometimes he comes in stealth, concealed, hidden as a serpent. He comes, scripture tells us, as an angel of light, as a Wolf in sheep's clothing, he comes and he seems so harmless. He might even seem good, but he's aiming to tempt and to deceive and to manipulate.

So Satan will use stealth. But here Peter shows us the other tactic, which is the tactic of terror. The Satan is a roaring lion and he wants to tear, a psychological warfare. Or you hear stories of Alexander the great and would ride into battle with war elephants to intimidate the enemy. I heard stories that he would actually have his blacksmiths make these massive suits of armor that were fitted for giant men. For men like eight, nine feet tall and he didn't have anyone that large in his ranks. But what he would do is when they would abandon a camp, they would leave these behind so that if an enemy were pursuing them, they'd come up on their camp and they'd find these massive suits of armor and they'd be demoralized, they'd be terrified of, "Oh, these guys has giants." And he would through this, win the battle before it even began. Satan uses this. He wants to demoralize the children of God. And the way he does this, the roars that he uses are those of suffering and persecution.

Peter talks about that here. And he will use the threat of physical harm for the purpose of doing spiritual harm, to demoralize us, to scare us out of the fight, to scare us away from the battle. So suffering. Now, this includes some of the more bizarre stuff that you think about like demonic affliction, demonic oppression, even demonic possession, nightmares, night terrors. Other things like unexplained physical or mental illness, abuse, alcoholism, compulsive lying, drug addiction, idolatry, death, calamity, disaster. Scripture at times, attributes all of these things to the work of Satan and demons. Now we've got to be careful because scripture doesn't always attribute all of these things to the work of Satan and demons. Sometimes there are other causes.

Primarily you think about like our own fallen bodies. Sometimes what appears to be a physical or a mental illness, it could be demonic and need spiritual attention or it could be physical and need medical attention or it could be both. You need to be wise. You need to be discerning, suffering caused by our fallen body. Sometimes it's caused by our fallen flesh, by our sinful nature that we as human beings are perfectly capable of sinning and doing evil without any help from Satan or demons. Yet 2nd Timothy 2:26, says that Satan can capture people to do his will. It could be our fallen bodies, could be our fallen flesh, it could be just living in a fallen world that creation is fallen, it's groaning and sometimes suffering happens and we don't know why.

And so we should be careful not to attribute every odd or evil thing to the work of the demonic, but we should also be careful not to write that off as a possibility because it doesn't matter where that suffering is coming from. Satan can still try to use it against us and what he wants to do is he wants to pull us away from God. He wants to pull us away from God's mission so that we're not abiding in Christ. Satan also uses persecution. Now, when you study the New Testament, and especially when you read through the book of Revelation, what you see is that there's three primary categories of persecution that the enemy uses against the church. There's social persecution, there's economic persecution, and there's physical persecution.

And so social persecution is, we're talking about when Jesus says, "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven." That if I am living my life as a Christian and if people find out, they're going to mock me, they're going to ridicule me, they're going to exclude me, they're going to slander me, they're going to label me as this or that, and they're going to destroy my reputation. Satan will use social persecution to destroy my reputation.

The second is economic persecution. You read in the book of Revelation that one of the things that the church was facing is that if you wanted to be a Christian business owner and participate in the marketplace, that in some cities they would require you to join their trade guilds and in order to be part of these guilds, you needed to participate in their idolatrous ceremonies to their patron deities. And so Christians had a choice. I can compromise my faith and my integrity in order to keep my business or I can be faithful to Jesus and lose and risk being pushed out of the marketplace, being not allowed where they would destroy my business. This happens in our country still today.

It's economic persecution and then the third is the one we think of most often, which is physical persecution that if I followed Jesus, if I'm truly faithful to him, then people are going to try to harm me or my family. Perhaps even wicked systems of government will seek to have us silenced, arrested, or even killed. Now, this is not one that we face much where we live today, but it's one that's faced by many of our brothers and sisters around the globe even right now. Now this is really important. This is profound. Peter's point is not, "Hey, you need to watch out. You need to be alert so that you can avoid the persecution of the enemy." That's not what he's talking about. He's saying, Satan can destroy your reputation and he can destroy your business or your bank account and he can even destroy your body, but he has no claim on your soul.

So don't lose heart, don't back down, don't compromise. That what he really wants to do is not just to harm us, but to terrorize us and to coerce us into compromising our integrity and denying our faith. That's what he's after. And so there's more at stake in the spiritual realm than even what we see going on in the physical realm. And Peter's trying to help us understand, and he's trying to help a church that's facing this understand. It would be better for you and more blessed for you to die as a faithful martyr for the name of Jesus Christ, than to back down from this terror and compromise. Revelation 12:10 says that the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. You see, we as Christians, we say that we trust Jesus and we say that we trust that he is going to work ultimately all things together for our good and that even in death he is going to raise us up and Satan wants to prove us liars. But you don't really believe that. This is crazy passage in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is talking to his disciples in verse 16 and he says, "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

Beware of men for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them and the Gentiles." And verse 28, "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but even the hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not therefore, you are more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my father who is in heaven."

This is one of the most terrifying, encouraging, scary, comforting passages in the whole Bible. But the point is, God loves you. Don't underestimate how much your father loves you. He's numbered the hairs on your head and He is strong. Do not underestimate the power of His sovereignty to work all things together for your good. So love God< Fear Him and you need not fear anything else. 1st John 4:4 says, "Little children, you are from God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." And Peter tells us in our passage today, "Resist him, therefore firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of sufferings are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace who's called you to His eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

That there's nothing Satan can do that God cannot redeem. There's nothing Satan can steal that God cannot return. There's nothing he can destroy that God cannot renew. There's nothing he possesses that God cannot revoke and there's nothing he can kill that God cannot resurrect. Satan's greatest act of defiance and evil was the murder of Jesus Christ in the cross. And yet God in His sovereignty, before the foundation of the earth had ordained that this would be the very means by which he would be most glorified and bring about the redemption of his children. Using Satan against himself. And what we see is that when we look at scripture, we as Christians, we are not called to fight for victory and we are called to stand in the victory of Christ, that the war's already been won and what we need to do now is we need to hold our ground, stand firm and spread the word that the rightful King is coming, that he's offering amnesty to all who would repent and put their faith in him before he does.

So that's like a little bit of the theological framework for the spiritual warfare, and now with that as the backdrop, we begin to see that Peter in our passage today just gives us some super practical instruction for what we need to do as Christians in order to stand firm in this battle. And so we need to know our adversary and point to is we need to know our army. I'm just going to read the first part of our passage again, and Peter says, "So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock and when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders, clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

As I was studying this, I mean, I've read this text so many times, I've studied it before. For some reason I'd missed something hugely important. When we talk about spiritual warfare, we often talk about what we need to do individually as Christians because there are things that we need to do individually as Christians, we each need to, as Ephesians Chapter six tells us, "Put on the full armor of God." Ephesians chapter six it says, "Put on the belt of truth." Right? If you're going to defend against the lies of the enemy, you need to know the truth, you need to abide in the truth, you need to love the truth. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. That personal righteousness doesn't save us, but it does give us protection. That when we're walking in unrepentant sin, we actually give the enemy a foothold in our lives.

It's like we have holes in our armor, and so we need to pursue personal righteousness. Now on the other hand, we're not saved by own righteousness, and so when we mess up, when we fail, when we sin, we rest in the righteousness of Christ that we are saved by grace through faith. He says, put on the shoes of the readiness of the gospel. Be ready to share the gospel. If you're not doing this, then you're not even on the battlefield. The enemy's not... He's already defeated you. The helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and wield the power of prayer continuously for yourselves and for your fellow Christians. We all have a personal responsibility individually to be doing these things as Christians. We also have a personal responsibility though, to not be doing these things alone.

And what Peter shows us is that a soldier without an army and without a commander is like a sheep without a shepherd in a flock and there is a lion on the prowl waiting for just such an opportunity for someone to devour. We need to be soldiers and we need to be sheep. We need to stand firm in the humility that we can't fight this battle by our own strength or on our own. to stand any chance against this line, we need to stay with the flock under the mighty hand of the shepherd. The practical application here, it might be surprising, but it's very clear. We need to be members of a church. We need to be healthy members of a healthy local church. I would say here at Mosaic what that means, you need to be in a community group. You need to be serving with fellow Christians. You need to be building relationships with people who are going to know you and care for you and holds you accountable and encourage you to fight the good fight.

Peter gives some practical applications. First of all, for pastors in the local church. He says, "Pastors, you need to humble yourselves under the authority of Jesus." It's not your church, it's his church. He's the chief shepherd. And so you need to lead the church with a gentle Christ like authority. Don't be passive and neglect your duties and don't be domineering or aggressive and domineer God's people, but steward the authority that you have been given with reverence to Christ leading by example, in order to equip the saints. In order to train, equip, to prepare the soldiers for battle.

In the same way Peter calls church members to humble themselves by submitting to their pastors oversight that they are His ordained means of leading and feeding and protecting his flock, the church. And then to everyone, he says, "Clothe yourselves in humility toward one another and humbly stand under the mighty hand of God." Under the hand of our chief shepherd Jesus Christ. Now, at first that might not seem terribly encouraging because when I think of a shepherd versus a lion, in my mind the lion has the upper hand. There's this epic dialogue in 1st Samuel where King David, when he's a boy, goes out to visit his brothers on the battlefield and when he gets there, everybody is cowering in fear because the Philistines have this giant Goliath they're all terrified of. And Peter's like, "Let me hurt him. I'm going to take them out. Let me go."

And King Saul's like, "No, you're just a boy. He's a massive brute of a man. He's going to eat you alive. And what does David say? In 1st Samuel 17:24, David says to King Saul, listen, "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father and when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and I struck him and I killed him. And your servant has struck down both lions and bears and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them of he's defied the armies of the living God." My first thought when I read this is modern men, we've got some work to do. I've barely killed any lions with my bare hands. And secondly, if a shepherd boy with just an audacious faith can do that, how much more confidence should we have in the object of his faith, which is the mighty hand of God, the good shepherd Jesus Christ.

See, whatever evil may come our way, be it temptation, be it spiritual attack, be it persecution, be it suffering. Romans 8:38, "Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Later in his life, King David wrote what is arguably the most famous song in scripture, maybe one of the most famous passages in scripture. Psalm 23 and he says that, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

John 10 Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd." The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And verse 27 he says, "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one." Peter says, "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of this God and after you have suffered a little while," verse 10, "The God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you."

The culture of Satan's kingdom is one of pride, anxiety, fear, darkness, and ultimately defeat. Christ Kingdom is one of humility, confidence, victory and light. Colossians 1:13 tells us that He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son and whom we have redemption, forgiveness of sins." And James 4:6 says, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." We're going to do that today as we celebrate communion together. This is a time where we as the church of Christ, we draw near to Him as we remember that the bread represents his body that was broken and given for us. The blood represents his blood that was poured out on the cross so that we could be forgiven.

And if you're new to Mosaic, the way we do communion here is the ushers are going to pass out the elements and you can take those as they go by and pass them down the row. Hold on to them once we've all received them. We're going to take communion together. And if you're here today and you're a Christian, we would welcome you to celebrate communion with us. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, we're really glad that you're with us this morning. We would ask that you refrain from participating in communion. It's nothing magical about this. It's not going to do anything for you. It's a sign for Christ in his church, but if you've made the decision today to put your faith in Jesus Christ, then we would welcome you to come, to draw near to Him and to join us as we celebrate our communion right now.

So I'm going to pray and then the ushers are going to hand out the elements. We'll just take some time to pray and meditate individually and once everybody's received it, I'll come back up here and we'll take communion together. So let's pray. Father, your word tells us that while we were dead in our trespasses in slaves to Satan's sin and death, that you made us alive with Christ. You forgive our sins. You canceled the record of debt that stood against us by nailing it to the cross and that Jesus, through your death and resurrection, you have disarmed our spiritual enemy.

You've put Satan and demons to open shame and triumphed over them on your cross, and we thank you that the war has been won. We ask that you give us faith to believe it, to stand firm in the battle as we await your return unflinching in our faith, even as our enemy roars against us. God give us the confidence to know that you alone are sovereign and to share the good news that the true rightful King Jesus Christ has come. He is coming again, and when He does, He will come with total victory and put an end to these powers of darkness once and for all. We thank you, we praise you for this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're new, if you're visiting, welcome, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you through the connection card and the worship guide or the connection card in the app that you can download in the app store.

If you fill out the physical connection card, please do so legibly and then you can either toss it in the offering basket after or redeem it at the welcome center for a gift. It's also a great opportunity if you have any prayer requests, list those there or if you today have made a decision to follow Christ or recommit your life to Christ, or if you're interested in baptism, please let us know there.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy word? Oh great God of the universe, Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is so good to be in your presence. We pray Lord that you today come into this place. You're already here, but in a powerful, tangible, palpable way. Come and speak to us. Lord there's nothing better than being in your presence when our souls glorify you and are satisfied by you.

Lord Jesus we thank you for revealing the way that we can be reconciled with you. We thank you for your sacrifice Jesus. We thank you that you, the God of the universe came, and you came into history into a time and place and space and you came as a human being. Factually, you are here. Historically, you are here and you prove to us the way of God by living the perfect life, dying the death that we deserved to die and being resurrected on the third day. We thank you Lord.

We thank you that there were eyewitnesses and we thank you that you give us testimony that's objective and testimony that's subjective by the power of the Spirit, so we pray Holy spirit come. And if there's anyone here who is not yet a Christian, I pray, give them the gift of faith. Open the eyes of their heart to see you and to behold how great it is to be in the presence of God, to be a child of God. How great you are.

Lord bless our time, the Holy Scriptures, we pray all this in Christ's Holy name. Amen. Today we're finishing our sermon series through 1 John that we've been calling meno from the Greek, which means to abide, to remain in. This is how we walk in the presence of the Lord. This is how we grow. Today is our eighth week finishing off this series. Next week, we're beginning a new series that we are calling Stratagem Know Thy Enemy where we'll talk about the different roles of Satan and the different attack plan strategies that he has to pull us away.

Today, the title of the sermon is faith and facts. Benjamin Franklin said, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Hopefully you've done your taxes. Deadline's coming up, sorry for the reminder. Of course, a wise man like Ben Franklin knew that there were other certainties in life and we as Christians know that there are many other certainties and of spiritual truth. We as Christians can say wholeheartedly, we know. We know who God is, we know God, we know the way to God.

We know the will of God and this is how John wants us to talk about faith, as knowing that this is true. He uses the word ‘know' 39 times and the Epistle uses it eight times in our text today in 1 John 5:6-21. Now, to say we know things of God is extremely counter-cultural, and might be strange to you. I had a conversation a few weeks back when a young lady approached me after a service and she's like, “You talk about this Christianity thing as if it's true.” “Well, yes.” “No, no, no, fact true not faith, true.”

“Yes, I believe that this is fact true.” Now, this is really fascinating. David Hume a long time ago, came up with this distinction, this faith fact distinction that there's truth when it comes to fact and there's truth when it comes to faith, and a lot of people in our culture, this is how we operate. That there's knowledge, fact which is objective. You can prove it in a lab. Objects fall, hot air rises, the earth revolves around the sun, facts.

And then there's faith truth, which is subjective. It's your opinions only. It might be meaningful to you, might not be to someone else. It could be part of your faith. Tradition has nothing to do with objective reality, and many people today are willing to believe about objective truth, fact truth when it comes to science or math, engineering, maybe history and that's up for debate. Definitely not. Faith, religion, ethics, morality.

Hardly anyone is consistent with this worldview and those who are fully consistent, those who have been historically consistent with this worldview were moral monsters, like Hitler or Stalin. Let me just give you a thought experiment. Human life is valuable, fact or faith? Human rights are real because humans have equal dignity, value and worth, fact or faith? Sexual trafficking is evil, diabolical evil, fact or faith? Love is of supreme importance, fact or faith?

There is true meaning and purpose in life, fact or faith? It's wrong for me to hit you, fact or faith? Fact, fact, don't hit me. Do you have this distinction in your mind of faith truth and fact truth? If so, why? Is that presupposition true or have you just believed in it? And this is something that we're going to talk about today in 1 John 5… the whole text of six through 21. I'm going to read six through 12 here and then I'm going to give you five certainties that you can build your life on. Five bedrocks for your faith, a substantiated faith.

Would you look at the text with me? Today, we are in 1 John 5:6, “This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His son. Whoever has the son has life, whoever does not have the son of God does not have life.”

This is the reading of God's Holy inerrant infallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. What can we know for sure, five things from this text? First, Jesus is God. Second, believers have eternal life. Third, God answers prayers. Fourth, Christians do not practice sin and finally, the Christian life is real life. It is reality. First of all, Jesus is God.

Here in verse six, John talks about three things that testify to the veracity, the historicity of Jesus as God. He came by water and blood. That's Jesus Christ, and not only by water only but by the water and the blood and the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is true, for there are three that testify, the spirit, the water and the blood and these three agree. What's he talking about?

In Jewish thought, to prove something in a court of law, you need to have at least two, preferably three testimonies, witnesses, and John brings forth the testimony of three witnesses, water, blood, and the Spirit. By water, what does he mean? He means the baptism of Jesus Christ. That Jesus did not have to get baptized because there was sin in Him. Jesus was baptized in order to identify with us.

At the start of His ministry, the blood is Jesus dying on a cross for our sins, bearing the penalty that we deserve for our law-breaking. That's the blood. He poured out His blood to cleanse us. That's at the end of His public ministry. The water and blood, two book ends of His public ministry and the Spirit was there at both of them. Jesus was getting baptized. The Holy Spirit comes down like a dove upon Him, to anoint him for the ministry.

As Jesus was being crucified, the Holy Spirit was right there. The sky darkened, the earthquake. People were resurrected, came from their graves and the veil in the Holy of Holies was torn from the top to bottom. The Spirit's witness was then confirmed in the resurrection of Christ, historical, factual resurrection. Over 500 people witnessed. Then Jesus was on earth for another 40 days showing Himself bodily resurrected.

Then Jesus ascends. The Holy Spirit descends again to testify the veracity that this is all fact. Upon the church on the day of Pentecost further affirms that witness through the miracles of the apostles finally inspiring the apostles to write the documents of the New Testament, and we have that witness in the Holy scriptures. What John is saying is, God has given us enough to believe.

There's enough factual evidence for those who have an open heart to see it, and this is a really important caveat because unless you're coming to God willingly and humbly and prayerfully, openly asking God, “Please reveal yourself to me.” With a searching heart, asking God to open the eyes of… your eyes to His truth. Unless you do that, God does not reveal Himself because God is not in the business of giving proof to proud sinners.

If you come to God as a proud skeptic and say, “God reveal yourself on my terms,” you will walk away with nothing. If you come to God with preconceived notions of what, “This is the savior I'm looking for. This is the God that I'm willing to submit to,” you're actually placing yourself over God, over His authority and Jesus Christ is not a savior that fits every single one of our whims and desires. He's got enough evidence.

For those who are looking, water, blood and the Spirit. Verse nine, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater for this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His son.” People often tell me, “I wish I had your faith. You've got so much faith. I wish I had your faith.” And my response is always, “Everybody's got faith.” The question is, what are you believing? What are you trusting in?

We can't but live in this world, survive in this world without exercising faith. Every single time you go to a doctor, you're exercising faith. Every time you go to a pharmacist, you're exercising faith. Anytime you order food at a restaurant, you're exercising faith. Anytime you get an Uber, you're exercising faith. Every time you go get on an airplane, every single day. Anytime you drive in Boston, you got to be a believer.

How do you not believe that the people next to you aren't going to merge into your lane? This is what He's saying. If you trust people, if you trust men, then why can't we trust God who is all truth? Verse 10, “Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning His son.”

He's not just saying, “Do you believe in God?” He's saying, “Do you believe God?” And if you don't believe God, he's saying that's tantamount to calling God a liar. To not trust God is to make him a liar and if God is a liar then nothing is certain. And this is fascinating, because he doesn't talk about unbelief as a misfortune to be pitied. “Oh, woe is me. I don't believe.” He talks about unbelief as a sin to be deplored and repented of.

Because to not believe in a God who is truth, who speaks only truth, is to ascribe falsehood to God. He's saying, “Repent of your unbelief. Repent of your audacity of calling the God of truth a liar. Receive His truth, receive His grace and as you do, you have a sure foundation of your faith.” And he says, “You have a testimony in yourself.” In the Christian faith, there's the objective truth, objective proof of God.

It's in the scriptures, it's in the archeological evidence, it's in history. He says, “But then you also have the subjective internal testimony of self-authenticating of the Holy Spirit that says, “Yes, yes. Deep down inside, I know that this is true. I know that God is Holy. I'm a sinner and Jesus Christ is the only way for me to be reconciled with God. I know this, with every fiber of my being, I know that Jesus is God.”

Second of all, “Believers have eternal life.” That's verse 11 and this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life. This life is in His son. God gives eternal life as a gift. There's nothing you can do to earn it. It's not about effort. It's not about living a good life. It's a gift. Just receive that gift by grace through faith, and we have that present possession and we already have eternal life, and the life doesn't come from Christ. It is in Christ.

That's why it's so important to abide in Christ, to walk in Him, remain in Him, and this is really the greatest gift that Christianity offers, that God offers as His son Jesus Christ. That you can walk in His presence by the power of the spirit. And if you don't have Him, you don't have life. You don't have eternal life. If you don't have Christ, you don't have eternal life. If you say, “Well, I have a connection with God, I have a connection with Allah, I have a connection with the spiritual realm,” if you don't have Christ, you don't have eternal life.

Christianity is Christ. All of God's promises are yes in Him. All that God offers us, He offers us in Christ. Verse 12 and 13, “Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” Are you going to heaven? Lots of people who identify as Christians answer by saying, “I hope so. I hope I've done enough. I've hoped that I've done more good than bad.”

That's not Christianity. That's not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ offers us assurance is security in our salvation, ultimate security. He doesn't want you to say, “I hope so.” He wants me to say, “I know. I know so, not because of what I've done but because of what Christ has done and I'm in Him. I trust Him. I love Him. I follow Him.” Every single person alive is looking for that place of comfort and security.

And that primal drive is why many people pursue sin because they're looking for that one place where I'm fully known and fully loved, comfort and security. We're looking for that place. Thought experiment. What is your favorite place in the world? Currently, not just historically. Your favorite place in the world, the place where you feel most secure and most comfortable. What is that place?

For me, it's being at home, and not just being at home, in a very particular spot at home. The left side of my bed, under the blankets. So much do I love this one position that there's a dent in the mattress that perfectly fits my whole body, and under the blanket from IKEA, the very warm one. In that one spot, I feel comfort. I feel security. I've tested other beds in the world. You travel, hotels. Airbnb isn't nothing. Every time I'm in a place I'm like, “I wish I was home. I wish I was home.” Every single time.

We're all looking for that comfort. Whatever your places, we're looking for that comfort and that security. We're all searching for it. And this security is utterly unique to Christianity that in the hands of God, you have ultimate security. You have eternal life. Most philosophies, religions, they reject absolute security, that it's impossible. Islam, there's no assurance of paradise in the Quran.

Even Muhammad himself had dark dreams about judgment day. You hope for the best, but who knows? None of the Eastern faiths offer this. Secularism has no answers. Nothing in the face of death, just helpless. Even certain Christian faiths, Catholicism, Russian orthodoxy, even Armenian evangelicalism, who knows? You might lose your salvation.

He says, “No, you already have eternal life. You are in the hands of God and nothing will pluck you out of the hands of God because your name is graven on his hands because of the work of Christ.” For Christians, there is eternal life. Third, we know, we can be certain that God answers prayers. Verse 14, “And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.”

Jesus in His earthly ministry, He helped people all the time. People would come and He would help earthly fathers help their children. Does the heavenly father help? Does Jesus still help? And he's said here, “Through our prayer, we come and according to God's will, God responds.” And I love how He talks about faith and prayer in the context of confidence. Prayer for Him isn't ritual. It's not obligation. It's not investment. You give a little to God and then God will give back to you.

It's a confident conversation between a child and a father. Very few people can wake me up at any moment of the day. Very few people could do it. Very few people have the privilege to do that. My kids can do that. They need help. They come to me. It's that confidence of if I go to my Father, my heavenly Father, any time that He will answer. It's genuine, personal, emotional, practical, it's confident conversation with God and you see how emotive, how viscerally motive prayer is in the scriptures.

Jacob wrestles with the Lord all night, is holding onto Him and says, “I'm not letting you go until you give me what I ask.” In the Psalms, you see an outpouring of emotion, personal appeals, crying out to God, rending their hearts before God. Jesus tells parables and is like, “This how you pray.” There's a guy that goes to his neighbor in the middle of night because he had a guest come. You didn't have any food to give him.

He goes to his neighbor and wakes him up, wakes up his whole household and says, “I'm not leaving until you give me some bread.” And Jesus said, “I want you to pray like that. I want you to pray with that tenacity, the tenacity of a widow who keeps pestering a judge, “Give me what I long for. I long for justice.” He says, “Pray like the tax collector who stands before the presence of God in the temple and says, “Please Lord, forgive me for I am a sinner.”

Honest heartfelt prayers, like the Lord and the Garden Gethsemane. The anxiety and the pressure of what is to come. He's going to the cross about the sip from… Drink down to the dregs, the cup of God's wrath, and He says, “If it's your will, let this cup pass from me, but it's not my will. Yours be done.” Here says that, “The Lord hears our prayers. When we ask, He hears our prayers,” but He hears everything. God is on mission. Why even tell us that? Because for God to hear a prayer is to answer it.

And of course, there are conditions to our prayers being answered. For example, unconfessed sin is a serious block to answered prayer. Obstacle. Psalm 66:18, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” Dear Christian, how many of your prayers are not answered because you cherish sin? Is there sin in your heart that you're cherishing? Sinful inclinations, temptations that are in your heart.

Perhaps you're not indulging in the acts, but they're in your heart and says, “That right there, cherishing that iniquity is an obstacle.” There should be a pattern in your life, dear Christian, where you can say, “Yes, I look back at my life, I can see that the Lord answered here, and He answered here and He answered here. He's proven Himself to be faithful and even when He said no, it's to say yes to something better.”

For married couples, conflict in a marriage can hinder prayers. This is 1 Peter 3:7, “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.” By vessel, the imagery is between the different types of vessels in the household, and he's saying, “Men are made out of clay and women are much nicer porcelain.” That's what we'll go with.

He says, “So there's got to be honor. Husbands, are you honoring your wives?” He says, “If not, they are heirs with you in the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered.” If there's conflict in your relationship, that conflict keeps the prayers from being answered. If there is conflict, husbands, wives, don't let the sun set on your anger. Reconcile and pray together, and just Christians in general, conflict gets in the way of prayers.

Matthew 5:23 through 24 so, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.” “Oh, my prayers' not being answered. I'm asking, I'm asking, the Lord's not giving to me.” Is there sin? Is there conflict in my closest relationship? Is there conflict between me and another Christian?

If so, repent, reconcile and seek peace. And then unless a believer's abiding in Christ in love and obedience, prayers aren't answered, this John 15:7, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” Do you abide in the presence of Christ? Do you seek Him through scripture, significant times of scripture, meditation and prayer, speaking to God, pouring your heart out to God, seeking to live according to His commandments? That's what abiding means, and everything will be done according to God's will.

And this condition, I've always thought it's like… It's weird that the Lord does this. Ask whatever you want, according to my will. It's as if one nullifies the other and it's like, “Great. Why even ask? The Lord's going to do anything that He wants, but one of the things that we need to know is that the Lord predestines the end, but He also predestines the means of how the end comes to pass.

If He has a will and you're like, “Yes, God, you're sovereign.” But His will is also that we pray. He says, “I want you to pray,” because He understands that our greatest need isn't just for our needs to be met. Our greatest need is to be in the presence of God. Jesus, what were His physical needs when He was on earth? Yet He's God, but He spent significant amounts of time in prayer because He needed the Father. He relied on the Father.

And according to the will, what happens when we pray is our will begins to align with God's will. There's a unity in our wills, so prayer doesn't just move the hand of God. It shapes our hearts. The Lord Jesus, He taught us to pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. We're not asking, “Lord, let my will be done in heaven.” I'm asking, “Lord, let your will be done on earth.”

Now, the question is, what about unanswered prayers? Moses prayed to enter the Promised Land. God said, “Stop praying. Stop asking for that. You're not getting it.” Jeremiah prays that God takes away the judgment on Judah and God says, “Stop. No, stop praying that.” Jesus in the Garden Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me, let thy will be done.” Paul asking for the removal of the thorn in the flesh, three times God says, “No, because my strength is made manifest in weakness.”

We need to understand that God's will is infinitely better than our will. When He says, “Ask whatever you want, I'll give it to you,” He's not relinquishing control of the universe. He's still in control. What He's saying is that, “My will is better than your will.” Often our will is very shortsighted, because our goal is our happiness. God's goal for us is so much greater than our temporary happiness.

It's our holiness, and sometimes He's willing to sacrifice our short term happiness for our long-term holiness, which will lead to greater amount of joy and happiness. For example, when have you ever asked for a thorn in the flesh? When have you ever asked for trials? “Lord send me trials,” because James said that, “When you meet trials of various kinds, count it as joy.”

When's the last time you said, “Lord, send me suffering. Lord, send me afflictions.” And yet the Lord knows we are not going to ask that, but sometimes that's what it takes to soften our hearts, to build our faith, to deepen our humility. The reason why the Lord sent Paul the thorn in the flesh was because Paul got a glimpse of heaven, and then he comes down. He has this incredible transcend spiritual experience.

Now, what could that potentially do to a person? It could potentially puff him up with pride. “I'm so much better than all of you,” and the Lord says, “Let me just remind you. You are chief of sinners.” His will is the one that we can count on as being universally always best for us. His will alone is invariably better and advances our true interests like nothing else. It's just like in a relationship with kids.

My youngest daughter is two years and nine months, Milana. She loves to eat, so good at eating. She's a great eater. That's a spiritual gift. If she comes to me and she says, “Daddy, can I have a third slice of cake?” Honestly, if mom's not there, I'm like, “Yes, okay." Now, because girls, first of all, so hard to say no to because it's so cute. Second of all, I don't want to deal with the drama. I just don't.

As I say no, I do it with a smile and I do it in the spirit of saying yes. “No? Because this is the best thing for you. You don't understand now, but you will. You're going to thank me, long-term. I'm going to save you from so much.” You know what I'm saying? He says no because He's got a greater yes for us. That's what John is saying and also there are some times where we just don't know His will.

It feels like He's impressed upon our hearts. “Ask for this. Ask for this. I'm a great God and I have great power. Ask for this and just that desired or common asks,” that's already an act of faith. But we don't know. We don't know if that's His will so we say, “Lord, not my will, but yours be done.” We walk by faith. We walk in the Spirit and God promises to meet our needs not our greeds. We're not beggars, but we're also… we're His children and we come to the wealthy Father who loves to give His children what they need.

I love verse 15, it is a fascinating twist… turn of phrase. He says, “If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him. We already have the requests. What's He doing here? What He's doing here is He's connecting our present in the future and He says, “Our present in the future are connected by faith, by prayer. We may not see the answer immediately, but we have an inner confidence that God has already answered according to His will."

For example, Abraham asked for a son, “God send me a son.” God says yes, and it's another 25 years until he's holding Isaac in his arms. But He says, “Believe that you already have the request.” Mark 11:24, the words of Christ, “Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” It's hard to articulate, but I had moments in my life where God just pressed something in my heart and I know it's already a reality.

I remember in seminary, we were praying, “Lord, where do you want us to go?” My wife and I were praying. We thought we were going to Russia or Ukraine as missionaries and the Lord was pressing on our heart. “You're going to Boston and you're going to plant a church.” We started praying about that and before we left, people came to us and said, “Are you sure?” Boston's lost. There's more Dunkin' donuts in Boston than there are Christians. That's a fact.

And I said, “I don't know how to articulate it, but in my heart, it's a reality. We haven't planted it, but in my heart, this is the truth that I already believe and because of that faith, I'm going to do everything I possibly can in my actions, from my will. God's given me the grace of faith and I'm going to do everything I can with that grace so that it's not in vain.” This is what He's saying. We might not see the answer immediately, but we have this inner confidence.

What breathing is to a physical person, that's what prayer is to a spiritual person, a Christian person. Luke 18:1, “And He told them a parable to the effect that they ought to always pray and not lose heart.” Pray without ceasing. The scripture says it's an attitude of the heart of dependence. “Lord, I need you, Lord. Help me, Lord. Lead me. Reveal your will.” Jesus depended on prayer, prayed all the time, spent full night in prayer. Would serve all day, wake up early and go pray.

And if the sinless Son of God needed to pray on the cross, prayed three times, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. If He needed to pray, how much more do we pray? Point four is, Christians do not practice sin. This is one of the more curious passages in the book, in scripture in general. Verse 16, “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him that brother life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death.”

But there is sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin but there is a sin that does not lead to death. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who has been born of God, Christ protects him and the evil one, Satan does not touch him. We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

Multi-dimensional texts, let me just unwrap a couple of the layers. First of all, in his mind and John's mind, and this is the same mind of Christ, there's only two sides. There's only two kingdoms, there's only two teams. There's team Jesus and there's team Satan. If you're like, “No. no, no, I'm not on team Jesus, I'm on team me. I'm on a team Switzerland. I'm neutral. Don't fight me."

And he said, “That's not a thing. Team me is actually team Satan. You're either in the Kingdom of light, in the Kingdom of Christ or you're under the rule of Satan. You lie in the power of the evil one. Then he talks about Christians who are in the kingdom, who are brothers and sisters who have been born of God and He says, “They do not keep on sinning.” And here, He's talking about the continuous pattern of sin, that Christians can't remain in this practice of habitual sin.

Christians obviously there's occasional slip-ups, occasional sins, but he's saying, “That's an exception not the rule. Christians' no longer defined by sin.” Now, he says that in the context where he's talking about seeing a brother in sin. It's a Christian, and he's saying that, for the Christian, “When you see a brother in sin, when you see another Christian in sin, we are to hold them accountable and it begins with prayer.” We pray for that person, but there… And God will give them life.

But there comes a point where even the Christian gets to a point where they commit a sin unto death. This is credible, incredibly sobering doctrine and you need to know about it. In the Old Testament, God often mentions people whom God removes from the world because of their sin. And these are people who were priests. For example, Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, the priest deliberately disobeyed God and they died.

Korah and his clan opposed God and died. Achan was stoned because he disobeyed Joshua's orders from God and died. A guy named Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant and God removes him from the world. And you say, “That's the Old Testament. We're in the New Testament. We're under grace.” Well, let me just say, “To whom much is revealed, much is required. Who much is given, much is required.”

To a believer today, you, dear Christian, have more revelation than the Christian… than people in the Old Testament. We have the Holy Scriptures and we have the internal witness of the Spirit. In the New Testament, Ananias and Sapphira lied to God about an offering and died. Believers in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 11, took part in Holy Communion without discerning the body and blood of Christ and says that some of them were sick and some of them died.

In 1 Corinthians 5:1 through 5, a person that is in egregious, unrepentant sin and St Paul says later that if that person had not repented and confessed, they would have died. This is called the discipline of God the Father. It's outlined in Hebrews 12, and it begins with, so to speak, God's spirit convicts and then there comes a discipline from the Lord or a spanking of God's rebellious children.

But it gets to a point if a Christian does not yield his will or her will to Christ, does not repent of a sin is stubbornly sitting, the Lord might and has removed people from this world in order to not lead others astray and not bring further disgrace on his name. Hebrews 12:9, besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? Why am I saying this to you? Same reason John is telling us this, the Apostle John, that sin is not to be trifled with. Look what it cost God to save us from our sin, the sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ.

And He does not save us so that we can continue living in sin. He saves us so that we can be sanctified, so that we continue to be transformed to the image of Christ. And He says, “If a Christian sees a brother committing a sin we should pray for them, but if in our praying we don't sense that it's God's will to forgive them, then we stop praying.” That's what He's saying. Sobering, sobering truth and here's how I apply it to my life.

I hear this, I'm like, “Where is there sin, unrepentant sin that I'm allowing in my heart, in my life, repent of it, leave it, follow Christ.” Finally, Christian life is real life. He tells us in verse 20 and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who is true in His son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life, fact and faith. Facts and faith, for Him it's one in the same.

We believe in these facts because they're true. It's not our believing that makes them true. We believe it because it true. He is the true God. He is the true son. He is true knowledge. He is true reality. If we fellowship with Him, we have fellowship with the God of reality. It's not a copy. It's not counterfeit. Jesus is the true light, the true bread, the true vine, truth itself. That's why verse 21, He says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

And in the context, it's not idols like images and wood and stone. What He's talking about in this context is false conceptions of God, false conceptions of Christ. Whenever you go to the scriptures and you're like, “Ah, I don't like that God. I don't like that attribute of God. My God wouldn't say that. My God would not demand that.” He's saying, “At that moment, what you're doing is, you're creating an idol, god of speculation, not a God of revelation.”

Do you allow the truth about God from the Holy Scriptures define God for you or do you define God yourself? He's saying, “Be careful, that's idolatry. Keep yourselves from idols.” Fact or faith? Jesus comes and He says, “I am the truth and faith.” How are we to live? “I am love.” He's truth and love, He's light and love, and He molds the two together, the fact and faith.

Christianity isn't denying reality. It's not our escape from reality. “Oh, you're a Christian. You escape from reality, the truths of reality. On Sunday morning, I escaped from the truth's reality and Friday night.” Now, what He's saying is that Christianity isn't denying reality. It's discovering reality. The world talks about enlightenment. We're so enlightened. Christians walk in real light because God is light. The world talks about love all the time and they have no idea what real love is.

Real love is sacrifice and commitment. It's eternal. It's the love of Christ. The world displays its wisdom and learning and Christians say, “We know the truth in a humble, confident way.” God is light, love, truth, and these together make a life that is real. As we walk in Christ, abide in Him, we love Him, we know Him and we follow Him. Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Missed any of the points, what can we know for sure that Jesus is God? Believers have eternal life, God answers prayers, Christians do not practice sin and Christian life is real life. Let's pray. Lord I pray if there is anyone here who is not yet a Christian. Not yet a follower of Christ, is not yet abiding in you, is not in Christ. I pray today. Draw them to yourself. Show them that these facts are true and that we believe them because they're true, they're not true because we believe them.

We thank you Lord that you came in the testimony of the blood, the water and the Spirit together. They give us a substantiated foundation for our faith, an anchor for our souls. Lord I pray you make us that people who abide in you. We thank you for these weeks that you've given us in 1 John, what a book. And I pray that you continue to keep us close to you and clean from sin so that you, by the power of the Spirit, can cultivate much fruit through us to your glory and for our joy. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Holy father, you are a good God and you want the best for us so we glorify you, great God and we thank you for your law. We do confess that often as we look at your commandments, it does seem burdensome. It seems difficult. It seems as if life would be simpler without them. I pray today, Lord, forgive us of breaking your commandments. We thank you for the cross of Christ and the work of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ who fulfilled all of the law and extends to us a righteousness, forgiveness, grace and mercy and also Lord we thank you for sending us the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live a life in line with your will, to cry out and pray. Lord, may your will be done in our lives as it is in heaven.

Lord I pray today that you show us that when you give us the law, it's not just a dry codex for how to live, but it's actually a manifestation of your grace. It's an extension of your grace. You show us who you are through us, so show us that you are beautiful and therefore your will is also beautiful. It makes the people who love the law and enlarge our hearts so we can run in your ways and we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

We are coming to the end of our sermon series in 1 John, we've been calling it meno, which is the word that he uses more often than any other word in the text. He uses it 23 plus times and what he's saying is this word meno encapsulates what it means to be a Christian, that you remain in God, that you are connected to him, that you walk in step with him in following God's ways. Another way of thinking about that is God's law. The title of the sermon is loving the law, which sounds like it's a paradox. It seems like love and law are mutually exclusive, especially when we think of human laws.

Many of the human laws that are written are good and they're for the betterment of society, but often they're actually seemingly arbitrary and actually they do not lead to result they're intended to lead to. I'll just give you a few examples. In Mexico City a little time back, they said there's too much pollution in Mexico City so we are going to ban driving cars every day. Depending on what your license plate was, you can drive on some days and you can't drive on other days. What did people do? What do people always do when there's a law that seems arbitrary, they circumnavigate, they get around that law, they find the loopholes so what people did was they actually drove more, a lot more and some people did all the driving in days that were allowed. Other people just took taxis some days that weren't and other people just bought a second car and got another license plate.

In the European Union, they set up a fishing quota to penalize people who caught too many fish and the heart behind is good and we want to prevent overfishing. What happened? What did the fishermen do? As they're catching fish, they kept all the good fish and all the bad fish they throw back in the water, often dead lead to more dead fish. Increasing the minimum wage. The heart behind it, we want to increase the wages for low level workers. What often happens is what do business owner do. They just increase the prices on everything. I was in Copenhagen a little while back and I went to Burger King. I was like, oh, cheap place to eat. A Whopper was $14. Starbucks $9 for a cup of coffee. Why? Because minimum wage is $20.

We see the beauty, we see the value in the intention of human laws, but often they're flawed. This past week we had an intense national debate over airplane etiquette. Can you recline your seat? Did you weigh in on that? A lot of people did. Here's my position about reclining seats on airplanes. Everybody is allowed to recline their seat except for the person in front of me. That person cannot. I'm six two, don't do that. That's kind of how we view the law. Yeah, I see the point in prosperity and betterment for everybody but could I be the exception? And we look to be the exception because deep down inside we have this aversion to authority. We have this aversion to being told what to do and we're born with it. Children do not need to be taught to be disobedient. Naturally they are.

I've got four daughters. My fourth daughter, her first word ever was no, her second word was mine. No and mine. Today we learned that she knows the word move. She went up to my older daughter who was eating breakfast and she pushed her and she said, "Move Sophia" She couldn't even say Sophia. She's calls her like Safa or something. Just says move. That we in ourselves, in our nature, we have an aversion to the law and a lot of times this is how we look at God's law, that it's burdensome. Sometimes it feels like life would be so much easier, less complicated if God did not make demands of us. It feels like his law is a burdensome and what John wants to say is naturally yes, but when God regenerates your heart, his law becomes beautiful from drudgery. It becomes a delight and as he's landing the plane of this letter, his three streams of one cord have been... threads of one chord have been faith, love and obedience. They go together.

There's a doctrinal test. Do you believe in Jesus Christ as who he is? There's the moral test. Do you obey him? And there's the relational test. Do you love him? It's faith, love, and obedience and one of the things that he does toward the end as he culminates this argument is he says, I want you to see just how amazing God's love is. God's love isn't seen just in that he forgives you of your sins. It's so much deeper and when you understand his love, when you're rooted and grounded in his love, then you have the energy to walk in his ways. All these three: faith, love, obedience, they belong together. Depend on one another and draw strength from one another.

I'm going to give you my three points here in the very beginning, just so you see the string of thought. The three points are love leads to faith; God's love leads to our faith; faith, which is a gift from God, leads to our loving God and that love toward God leads to life and this is obedient life, life to the full. Point one is love leads to faith. Here in the beginning, I'll just read one verse and we'll cover all the verses as we go. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who knows the father, loves whoever has been born of him. This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Love leads to faith. Why? Why this phrasing? I get it straight from verse one where he says, everyone who believes, anyone who's a Christian, anyone who is believing currently that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and for John the tense is really important. It's a perfect passive tense and what this tense shows us is the timing. Did you become a Christian because you believed in Jesus Christ? Were you born again because you believed in Jesus Christ? What comes first? This is really important for John because if our faith causes our regeneration, if our faith causes our salvation, then we still had a part to play and we can still take some credit for our salvation, which in a sense diminishes our understanding of God's love. Yes, Jesus died on the cross for my sins but I'm the one who accepted the gift. I'm the one who chose to believe. I'm the one who chose to follow and John says, that's not how it works.

He says, what comes first. Believing or being born again and by using that perfect tense, has been born. Not is born, has been born, shows that being born comes before the belief. Birth proceeds belief in the same sense that your birth preceded your breathing, our second birth, our regeneration precedes our believing and this isn't the only place that... we see this in scripture. In John 3, Nicodemus, a religious teacher comes to Jesus by night because he doesn't want the other religious teachers to know that he is interested in Jesus and his teaching and he comes and he says, "Teacher, we know that you are from God, that the works that you do, no one has ever done. What is the way to get into the kingdom of God? How can I be sure I have eternal life?"

Now, if someone comes to me, "Pastor Jan, how do I become a Christian?" You know what my response is? Repent and belief. You have sins. You've transgressed God's law. Just trust in Jesus Christ. Follow him, come to Mosaic, become a member. That's also important, but that doesn't save you. That's a sign of salvation. That's how I would present it. Here's what you do. Why do I present it like that? Because scripture does call us to repent. It does call us to believe that's not what Jesus does. You know what he tells Nicodemus? You must be born again and then Nicodemus is baffled, although he knows all of the Holy scripture and he says, "What does that mean? Do I like physically... does a grown man go back in your mother's womb, that's impossible." They have that conversation, that's in the Bible in John 3 read it, and then Jesus says, "No." And this is his answer. How do you get saved?

Verse seven John 3, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes so it is with everyone who was born of the spirit. You must be born again. That's an imperative. It's a passive imperative. You can't give birth to yourself. You can't give life to yourself and then he says, and the wind blows where it wishes. You're talking about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives life to whomever he gives life. If you are a Christian, he wants you to know this immense depth of God's love for you.

If you're a Christian that is miracle of God. God gave birth to you. God gave you new life. 1 Peter 1:3, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Ephesians 2:4 and five. God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we are dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. This is how he shows the immensity of God's... look at God's love. Look at the great love with which he loved us. He gave birth, so it was life. He regenerated us. He chose us before we chose him.

Dear Christian, you believe you have faith because God caused you to have faith. It's a gift. God and love begat us. He birthed us. Regeneration is totally a work of God. It's not me 1%, God 99%. That's how my salvation happens. God 100%. Now this is important because many mistakenly think that it's my will. It's my free choice that caused me to be a Christian and I choose when I can become a Christian. Now, Christianity is not this nominal ascent to some doctrines. Christianity is rebirth. You got to have a brand new nature and you can't do it. It's only a work of God's grace and certainly we must choose to trust.

You see this in John 1:12, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, but it doesn't stop there. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. You didn't choose to become a child of God, nor the will of man, but of God. It's entirely a work of God according to his sovereign will and the reason you choose to trust in Christ is because God has raised you from spiritual death. Christian faith at the heart of it is a result of new birth, not the cause of it. Then Saint Paul, obviously many times he says, faith is a condition to becoming a Christian. We're saved by grace through faith, but even that faith is a gift. Ephesians 2:8 says, the condition we must meet is the very thing God must create in us.

Now you're going to answer the question, well, how can God call me to believe in Christ if I can't do it? How can God demand that I believe if I cannot do it. The most powerful illustration of this reality, of this tension, of our responsibility and God's sovereignty is when Jesus hears that his friend, good friend Lazarus is dead. He was sick and then he died and he was buried for four days and Jesus goes to the tomb. After Jesus wept, Jesus goes to the tomb, and what does Jesus say? He says, "Lazarus, come forth." Lazarus, come out, speaks a word to a corpse to do something that the corpse obviously can't do, but his word is efficacious. His word is an extension of his power and his word gives life. Breathes that life in and Lazarus comes out. That's what happened. That was an incredible miracle and sometimes we read the scripture and we're like, wow, I wish we had miracles like that.

Anybody becoming a Christian is a greater miracle than Lazarus coming back from the dead because Lazarus died again. If you become a Christian, you become a child of God. You have eternal life. Life for ever. This is where I start with love. God's love is so great that he gives us this gift of regeneration and the gift of faith, and he says, whoever has been born believes continues to believe. It's not you believe one time and then you live your life any way you want or faith begins to change life. The assurance of my salvation and how do I know I'm saved? How do you know you're saved?

The assurance of your salvation isn't based on the fact that you had at some point believe. It's based on are you believing today? Are you trusting in Christ today? And the faith isn't just faith in faith. There's incredible power in motivational thinking or positive thinking. A lot of people's lives have been transformed, but we're not talking about faith in faith. We're not talking about faith in you. We're not talking about a self-confidence. It's faith in Christ. John 20:31 and these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, that by believing you may have life in his name. Do you believe that Jesus Christ, the son of God, do you believe that he's the Christ, the Christos, the Messiah? Yes, he's the word of life. Yes, he's our advocate. Yes, he's our atonement propitiation. He's the Messiah and the Messiah means you're anointed, anointed for what?

Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit for the offices of prophet, priest and king. The prophet comes and speaks the word of God. Jesus is the word of God, shows us the message of salvation. Jesus is also the priest, priest brought sacrifices. Jesus brings himself, he says, I am the sacrifice for your sins and Jesus is the king. He doesn't just come to pay for our sins. Give us a get out of hell free card and say live any way you want. No, he's our king and he has dominion over every single square inch of our lives. He says, this is what it means to live a life of a child of God, to be saved. In a Matthew 16 Jesus comes to his disciples and says, what do people say that I am? And they said, well, some people say you're a prophet. Some people say you're a miracle worker. Some people say you're starting a movement.

Lots of people said lots of things and then Jesus gives them the most important question that you will hear in all of your life and you need to answer this question, but who do you say that I am? There's no more important question than that and Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, and true faith isn't just, yeah, I kind of believe that. True faith is, yes, I entrust myself to Christ. We live by faith all the time. Anytime you get in a plane, you're living by faith. In the plane itself, in the pilot crew. Anytime you get an Uber, you got faith in your drive... anytime you go to a restaurant and you eat food prepared by someone else, you got faith. You're living by faith and here he says, do you entrust yourself completely, wholly to Jesus Christ your whole life to him? Do you believe that he paid the debt that you owe to God and there's nothing that you can do to pay that debt or to pay down that debt.

Are you trusting in Christ or are you trusting in yourself? And he starts that God's love pours out regeneration, which gives us faith and that faith transforms us, so we're not just nicer people, kinder people or sweeter people. We're brand new people which leads to a lot of love and that's point two, faith that leads to love. Love leads to faith and faith leads to love, love for whom, love for God and love for people. 1 John 5:1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who loves the father, loves whoever has been born of him. And he says, if you've been truly born of God, reborn, regenerated, then you can't but love God.

In the same way that it's natural for a child to love their parents. It's natural for one who has been born of God to love God, the father. My youngest daughter, Milana, she's two and a half, almost three and she wakes up in the middle of the night. She comes to our bedroom. She does this every night. This past week she came with a flashlight. I thought that was pretty, pretty... found a little pink flashlight, walks in the room and every morning and like, it's cute. It sounds cute. Messes up my whole sleep cycle. I'm out of the REM cycle. I have a conversation with her every single morning. Milana, why did you come into my... why do you come into my bed? She gives the same response every time. She says, "Papa, because I love you." That's her response. I'm like, ah, kind of not answer, but also the best answer ever. Like it's natural. She didn't have to be taught to love her parents.

In the same way if you're a Christian, you don't have to be taught to love God the father. What we do have to be taught is how to love our brothers and sisters, so he continues and he says, whoever has been born of God loves the father and loves whoever has been born of him, starting with Christ, but then God's other children. A lot of Christians live their lives as only children. They think that you are... you think you are the only child of God and what happens is we isolate ourselves from Christian community, from our brothers and sisters, from covenant membership, from church. And you go to God as an only child. God meet my needs and then you leave after he has. And he says "no". The sign that you are a true child of God is that you love God, you love Christ and you love his other children.

Verse two by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. We love God, which leads to love for his children. How do we know when we love his children? Because we love God. That's his train of thought and that right there, and I got to set this up. Faith leads to love, this love... love leads to faith. Faith leads to love of God and we need that love because if you truly love God, you want to live for him and this is really, this is the breaking point in a lot of people's lives, this is where they misunderstand Christianity. Incalculable millions of people who consider themselves nominal Christians have missed the point of Christianity. They think Christianity is God came to make you moral or nice or kind and you think God demands only that you come to church on Christmas and Easter and do charitable things every once in... God demands your whole life. That's what it means to truly feel the love of God.

By the way, this is hard to live completely for God and Christians have always struggled with this. The Paul century or the Lübeck Cathedral, Lutheran church building was built in Germany. You can actually find it on Google Maps. It's got over 2000 reviews, 4.5 rating. Apparently it's really beautiful. It was started in 1173, completed in 1230. On one of the walls, there's an inscription in the church and this is what it says. You call me master and obey me not. You call me light and see me not. You call me way and walk not. You call me life and desire me not. You call me wise and follow me not. You call me fair and love me not. You call me rich and ask me not. You call me eternal and seek me not. Gracious and trust me not. Noble and serve me not. You call me mighty and honor me not. You call me just and fear me not and if I condemn you, blame me not.

That conclusion seems like it came out of nowhere, but this is the words of Christ. He said on that day, many will stand before me and say, "Lord, Lord, did we not do a lot of great things in your name? Did we not do a lot of good things for you? Didn't we do enough to earn our right into heaven? Didn't we do enough?" He said, "I never knew you." Like we didn't have a relationship. You did things for me and actually often to avoid me, to pay me off. Tip me off, get you off my back. We didn't have a relationship and this is essence of God's law. The essence of God's law is, do you love God? Jesus was asked to summarize what is the law, and he says, this is the law. This is the essence of the law. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself, but if you do, if you love God, then you want to honor him. You want to delight him. You actually begin to love his law.

1 Samuel 15:22 the prophet says to Saul, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord, behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. He said, okay, you want to do a lot. You want to sacrifice a lot. You want to give a lot, but do you obey? Do you love? Do you have an obedience that's motivated by love and that's point three. God's love leads to our faith. This faith that he's given us is a gift that leads to our love. Now our love for God leads us to life. What do I mean by life? Jesus said that the enemy has come to steal, kill, and destroy but I have come to you may have life and life to the full, and this is fascinating because Jesus here talks about like Christianity as the way to human fullness, to life to the full and that's not how a lot of people think about Christianity.

It's not a lot of people think about God's law. A lot of people think about God's law as fence that keeps us from fun and he says, no. The law is given as a guardrail to keep you from falling off a cliff and it's given as a path to show you this is true life, satisfying life, joyful life, meaningful life. God's law and love they're two sides of one coin. I love you, therefore I want the best for you. I'm telling you things to not do and so that you are free to do the things you were designed to do, so this is verse two. By this, we know that we are the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. You see they're intertwined, love and law, complimentary.

Verse three for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Why aren't they burdensome? Because we have a new nature, new desires. We actually thrive on such obedience, even though it doesn't come naturally. Naturally we're rebellious. Naturally we bristle against God's authority. Naturally our flesh says it feels like heavy handed, but deep down inside, if you're a Christian, you long to obey even in the teeth of the opposition of sin, Satan and the world.

Deuteronomy 30:11 says, for this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. I bring in Deuteronomy here because a lot of Christians, and I don't know if it's... we live in a very individualistic society. A lot of Christians today have an antinomian streak. Antinomian means against the law. Nómos Greek for law, and here's how it plays out. A lot of Christians think that in the Old Testament people believed, those who believed God believed because they had to, because of duty alone. There was no love for God and now Jesus doesn't care about how we live. It's not about duty. It's not about obligation at all. It's not about fulfilling commandments, it's all about love, all about grace, all about mercy, but I want to show you that in the Old Testament when God talks about the law, he says, look, I've saved you from captivity therefore walk in my ways because I want the best for you and these ways are not too hard for you because I'm going to strengthen you in these ways.

Many Christians today think that the law back then was burdensome, was a yoke. It was heavy chains and Jesus came and abolished the law and he says, no, it's all about affection. It's all about love and the point of verses like Matthew 23:4, and I say this because this is bifurcation in many of our minds between love and obedience, love and duty. Matthew 23:4, Jesus talking about the Pharisees, they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. Fascinating. The word burden here that the religious leaders are putting on the people, on their shoulders is the same word in our texts where it says God's law is not burdensome, so seems like a contradiction in terms. Is the law a burden or is the law not burdensome? Well then you got to keep going. Acts 15 has something similar. Now, therefore, Saint Paul says, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? This yoke that he's talking about isn't like, to understand that cont... it's not God's law. The yoke, the burden that he's talking about, the burden that Jesus is railing against is not the 10 commandments. It's the corrupt, Pharisaical law where they added layers to God's law. It's human invented 1,001 rabbinical regulations. True believers in the Old Testament, they understood that God's law is good. It's not burdensome. It's actually beautiful.

Psalm 119:97, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. He's gushing with affection for God's law and why is he doing it? Because he understands that God is beautiful and God's mind is ordered and God's law is a reflection, a manifestation of God's character. That's why. That God has given us the law because it's the best thing for us. It's how we flourish. Here's just an illustration to communicate what I'm talking about. When a young man wants to marry young woman and he proposes to her, there's certain protocol, there's certain etiquette to follow.

He cannot get on a knee and say, will you marry me? And she says, yes and that's it. No, no, no. He needs to extend a hand with a product in it. What product am I talking about? A very expensive product that has to cost at least six months of your monthly wages, at least and like new societal laws have come into place where now you need it documented, if you didn't document it, it never happened. Someone got to be in the bushes. The phone with the video camera. Someone... and you got to put it on social media and the next thing is you got to tag your beloved and say, now our relationship status has changed.

There's all kinds of things you got to do and this... why? Preparation to the wedding, you got to get the registry, you got to go a bed bath and beyond with a little scanning shooter thing and you've got to pick your products and then you've got to have et cetera, et cetera. You get the point. Why do people do this? Where do these laws come from? Where do these societal norms come from? I don't know. Corporate America, I don't know, I don't know. Here's the thing. We are more than willing to submit to societal laws. As a young man, I could not wait to do that. Did all the cliche stuff, did it all. Like met the law to a tee. Fulfilled the whole law... Why? What are you motivated by? The consequences of not doing that? Kind of, but no, you're motivated by the love for this person.

If our societal norms, which are in many ways arbitrary, if we're willing to submit to them if we're motivated by love, how much more so to the beautiful law of God and it is beautiful. This is what we... even if I were not a Christian and if I were looking at the 10 commandments, I'm like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Like if people live like this, the world would be so much better. If individuals live like this, it will be better for them. If you look at God's laws and commandment number one, thou shall have no other gods before me. He's saying, be careful what your heart loves. That's what he's saying, that there's lots of gods vying for the affections of your hearts. Our hearts are an idol factory.

Be careful not to worship and give your life to something that is unworthy. Have no other gods except for one who is worthy. Don't make little statues of God, and he's saying don't miniaturize God. God is great and he's glorious. Don't point at an object and say, that's God. God's name is powerful, so don't use it in vain. There's no higher authority. Don't abuse it. Don't misuse it and don't attach it to your own agenda that contradicts with God's. Take a day off. That's a sabbath. You don't run the world. You're only human. Take a day off. It's for your own health physically and also for your spiritual health. Honor your father and your mother. Respect those who have given you life, paved the way, sacrificed so much for you. Don't murder, human life is a gift. No unnecessary killing. Preserve it. Don't take it.

Thou shall not commit adultery and he's saying sexuality is powerful and keep the boundaries on your sexuality because outside of those boundaries, it's like a fire. Outside of fireplace can be incredibly destructive. Don't steal, property's important. Respect property of others and work hard to have your own property to be able to share with others. Don't make up things about other people's reputation. Don't cave to jealousy, envy about someone else's life, family stuff. Imagine if people live like this. Imagine the world if it were like this. Imagine if your life if you had not transgressed some of these laws and each one of us has, and this is the beauty of the gospel. Though we are guilty, though we have transgressed and reaped not just the consequences of breaking those commandments, but we actually stand in condemnation before God. This is why Jesus Christ came.

He fulfilled all of that law perfectly. Had never sinned, not sins of omission or commission and then goes to the cross to offer his life as a sacrifice for us as atonement for us, and his perfect record is counted to us. Our fallen record is counted to him on the cross as he bears God's wrath for our sins. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ when you believe all of your sins are forgiven, when Jesus is your Lord and savior. Forgiven for the negative side of the law, for breaking the law, but also there's a positive side of the law. God doesn't just say don't do these things or else he says and do these things. There's the positive side of the law where we see how much better God's plan is. That it's beautiful, that when we live by the spirit of God in the confines of God's will, it actually leads to freedom. Is God's law a burden only in the sense that a birds wings are a burden?

Are a birds wings a burden? Sometimes, maybe. It's the only thing that allows it to fly. He says, true freedom is found when we submit ourselves to the will of God. Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Where the spirit of the Lord is there freedom is. When we see God's law, we see wisdom, goodness, blessing. We see fulfillment. We see satisfaction. We weren't created to be free of God. We were created to obey and to adore and that's where true freedom is found and this right here, and he concludes with verse four and five and he talks about victory and this is really fascinating. Verse four, he says, everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that has overcome the world. Our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes in Jesus and Jesus is the son of God. First of all, I think it's fascinating and I don't know if a lot of Christians think like this. That he talks about the Christian faith and walking in God's ways in terms of winning and losing. He uses the word victory over and over, overcoming, conquering, and the Greek word is it's Nike. Then we get the word Nike from it. He's saying like... He's talking about competition, about winning and losing and we're not competing with people. We are competing and he says, overcome what? Overcome the world. Now what is he talking about? First the world. We'll get back to the competing part. What is the world? He's not talking about physical world or creation. He defined this in chapter two where he says, this is the world. It's the desires of the eyes, desires of the flesh and pride of life.

Desires of the eyes is I see it, I want it. Desires of the flesh is I want what I want and the pride of life is I want to be wanted and he says those right there. If you give yourself to that, and that's the world, like when he's talking about this is the world as opposed to God. It's a worldview opposed to God. When you live for stuff like I see it, I want it. I see it, I want it. I want to feel this thing. This is what my flesh wants. I want accolades. I want applause. I want to be revered by people. He said that right there, that's loss. You go down that path and it's going to be loss after loss after loss, loss of your own spiritual life, loss of relationships, loss of things, loss loss. You're just taking L after L after L after L. Why? Because that stuff never satisfies and he says, this is why faith, that's what he says. Faith is the way we overcome.

What is the victory? It's our faith. What does faith do? God gave me faith. Now I get to see God for who he is. I get to see that Jesus Christ is immeasurably more beautiful, more satisfying than the desires of the eyes. That intimacy with Jesus feels so much better than any physical feeling that the world has formed. Jesus bed pride of life. I don't care what people think of me. I've got nothing to prove. No one to impress because God is glorious. That path right there, that's W, W, W and this... I like thinking about like this, about the Christian life like this because I like winning. I like winning a lot. This is why I did sports. I wrestled in high school. I played football. That feeling of victory no matter the sacrifices I had to make, that feeling of winning like it's the high is so much better than all the lows of all the sac... Any athlete knows this. Any student know this.

You understand that short term sacrifices, they make all the sense when you got the win and he says that's why a lot of people they go down the path of the world where in the short term feels good, it feels good, it feels good and it just leads to loss and loss, loss. The Christian path yeah, it's difficult. Obedience is hard, but when you see that this is the best thing for you, when you see that proximity of God, there's nothing better. The God's law becomes not burdensome but actually beautiful.

If you're not yet a Christian today, we welcome you to believe and repent and look to Christ, see how much he's loved you. The very moment that you trust in Christ and trust your life to him, all of your sins are forgiven. You become a child of God and you believe because you are a child of God, and I'll close with a few texts from the Psalms, just reveling in the law of God. Psalm 11 through two, blessed it is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 19 verse seven, the law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together more to be desired are they than gold. Even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings in the honeycomb. Moreover by them is your servant warned and keeping them there is great reward.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the word. We thank you, Jesus, that you are the word that you came to reveal the way of salvation, that you procured sacrifice for salvation in yourself and we thank you that you sent us the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, continue to empower each one of us to live victorious lives, overcoming the attacks of the enemy, overcoming our sinful flesh and overcoming the world and as we do so to abide in you, to grown our relationship with you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com

Holy God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you are a great God and we confess that. We confess that you are glorious and majestic, and that you are exalted, that you are transcendent, and that you are imminent. You are above and you are here with us today, closer than our very own hearts. Lord, we thank you that you have loved us so much. Your love is greater than the distance between the earth and the highest of the heavens.

We thank you Lord that you proved your love to us through your sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that Christ you poured out your blood for us to redeem us, to make us twice yours. We are yours in creation, and yours as children of God, the Father. Holy Spirit, come and show us where in our hearts we are esteeming ourselves as great and esteeming you as lesser than you are.

Show us in our lives where we deem people as big and you as small. Allow us to find peace and joy and satisfaction, the reality that we are not God and we don't have to be, we are not in control and we don't have to be. Give us the grace to cast all our burdens and our worries and anxieties upon you. And Holy Spirit, develop in every single Christian here today, develop in us spiritual discernment, so that we know your voice when we hear it, and we know that when someone comes speaking on behalf of you and it's not from you, we know clearly. Bless our time, the Holy scriptures, and we pray all this in Christ's Holy name. Amen.

The big idea of the sermon today is that ideas have consequences and spiritual ideas have real, true consequences as well. Ideas have consequences, just to prove that, think of the greatest, most consequential ideas in all of world history. Here's my little list, fire, that's a big one, the wheel, whoever invented that, thank you very much, farming, electricity, scientific method, paper, the printing press, communism, free market economics, democracy, the enlightenment, evolution, relativity, internal combustible engines, sanitation systems, refrigeration, gunpowder, Freud's unconscious mind, or the new order that was developed by Hitler, human rights, personal computer, the internet, smartphones, and last but not least, Uber Eats, very important, very consequential.

Ideas have consequences. We know that some ideas have good consequences, some ideas have bad consequences, some are for the betterment of humanity, some for its devastation. And this is something that is beyond argumentation. We know there are some ideas like human rights in general. Why is everyone equal in dignity, value, and worth? What does that grounded in? That's a great idea with great consequences. Some ideas like Hitler's, the New Order, not so much, actually evil consequences. And when you think about ideas and consequences like that, and then you begin to understand what the Apostle John is telling us today. He's saying that when someone comes to speak on behalf of God, that we as Christians need to develop a spiritual discernment to test whether this is true, whether it's from God, or whether it's from the enemy, whether it's from Satan.

So today we're going to talk about spiritual ideas having consequences. We'll look at First John chapter 4, we'll focus our attention in the first six verses, and then some of the other verses in chapter four. Would you look at the text with me? First John 4:1, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this, you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word. May it write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

First before we jump into our points, verse one and you see what he's doing here. Don't believe every spirit, and then the parallel with every spirit, test the spirits to see whether they're from God. For many false prophets have gone into the world. There's spirit behind teaching narrative or sermons about God. These people are speaking on behalf of God. Some of them are true prophets, some of them are false prophets and there's a spirit behind any idea about the spiritual realm. There's a spirit of truth, that's the Holy Spirit, and there's also a spirit of error, and that's from the demonic.

Verse 6, "We are from God, but whoever knows God listens to us, whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of error and the spirit of truth." So behind every false teaching is an evil spirit. The reason why he has to tell us this is because Satan doesn't usually come blatantly saying, "Hi, I'm Satan, please worship me, or today we're going to talk about child sacrifices," and things like that. The reason why he's saying this is because when the false teaching comes, often it's very persuasive. It comes through very attractive personalities and convincing arguments, and the teaching is so appealing because it makes sense from human perspective. It seems so familiar and it does not threaten our worldview. It actually helps us remain where we naturally are, where we've remained comfortably.

That's why Jesus, when he talks about these wolves coming into the flock, he says, "Don't be wary of the wolves," because obviously the sheep already know where are the wolves... The reason why he has to tell this is because they come in sheep's clothing, they disguise themselves as apostles of Christ or servants of righteousness, just like Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, not of darkness. Matthew 24:24 Jesus said, "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray if possible, even the elect." So sign of spiritual power does not mean that it comes from God necessarily.

Therefore, First Thessalonians 5:20 says, "Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast when it's good." So dear Christian, this is what we need to develop. We need to develop our ability to test teaching, test spiritual truth, to develop the sermon. I like this, this is really important because true faith isn't just a blind leap in the dark. True faith is substantiated, it's an examined faith.

So before I give you the points of how to develop the spiritual discernment, here's why this is important. Number one, if you move from Boston, hopefully look for another church, and when you look for a church, when you're church shopping, you need to be able to discern, is this a true teaching? Is this a church that's faithful to God, faithful to Christ, faithful to the scriptures? That's number one.

Number two, there's so much preaching, so much spiritual teaching on the internet and social platforms. Anyone with a smartphone can develop a platform, build a platform, speak on behalf of God. So Christians need to develop the spiritual discernment. And then also, we need to be able to look at our own belief system and analyze it and discern whether there's any falsehood in what we are believing. So, and by the way, that that's belief system, but also spiritual experience, supernatural experience, sometimes emotional ecstasy. Did that come from God? Or prophetic word, did that come from God?

So here's the test. To test the spirits, ask, "How does this teaching affect my view of God, of Christ, of the scriptures, Christians, the self, the world, and sin." So to test the spirits, ask, "How does this teaching affect my view, first of all, of God? Does this teaching... How does it affect my relationship with God?" But also, "How does it affect? Is God glorified through this teaching? Is he magnified in my heart through this teaching, or is he diminished?" In Isaiah 42:8 it says, "I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory, I give to no other."Why? Because Revelation 4:11, "Worthy are you O Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." God is worthy of all glory because he is the most glorious being in all existence, number one.

Number two, he's glorious because he created everything. He created everything by speaking, by the word of his power. Everything that is came from God. So he deserves glory. All of the great things in life, they're created by God. We worship a God who created truth, he created beauty, he created art, a God who created all of creation and all the beauty of creation, all the good things of creation. God created food. Whoever created... When someone cooks me a meal is delicious, I can't but be grateful. Now, what if you invented food as a thing? Sunsets, babies, the smell of little infant baby, oh my God, God created that. The smell of grass after it's just mowed, incredible. God created everything. He's worthy of all worship and praise. He created, He created music, he created... Okay, so you get the point.

God is worthy of all glory. That's why we glorify him, that's why we worship him. However, we also do that because God designed us with this desire for something greater than ourselves. We can't but long for something greater than ourselves, than our lives. We are people who need glory, we need to be awed by something. God created us this with this need to glorify him, and when we glorify him, we are most satisfied in him. That's when we find peace for our souls, that's when we find love and joy in our hearts. God created us with this need, He demands it from us because it's the best thing for us. So because God is worthy of all glory, if a revelation is from Him, if a spiritual teaching is from him, it always has the purpose of glorifying Him.

And conversely, anything that diminishes God's glory is not from God, any teaching that takes the focus off of God to us, or to the teacher, is not from God. It's from the flesh, or the world, or Satan, and here's... And it's not that easy to recognize. Here's how it works, and I've actually seen a lot of spiritual teachers, because of a good motivation, they want people to know God. And this is how they present the teaching of Christianity, the teaching of the gospel. They start focusing all of the attention on God's gifts instead of God, focus the attention on God's gifts at the expense of the giver.

Come to God and he will forgive you of your sins. Is that true? Yes. But that's not the end goal. The end goal is because your sin is now forgiven, you get God. Come to God and you will spend all of eternity in heaven. Is that true? Yes. By faith in Jesus Christ, you're spending eternity with God. You have eternal life. But what's the greatest thing in heaven? It's God. Come to God and he will bless you, He'll make you healthy and wealthy, and you'll prosper. Is that true? God loves to give good gifts to his children. But the greatest gift that He can give anyone is Himself. And by subtly focusing the attention from God to the person, God becomes a means to an end, and that end is you. You become the purpose, and the soul, and the center of the universe.

So the question we've got to ask whenever we hear spiritual teaching is, "Does God appear more wonderful to you, is God magnified? Does it purify your concept of His being? Does He increase and you decrease?" And when that happens, that's when we find joy and satisfaction and peace. Second of all, how does this teaching affect your view of Christ? How does this teaching effect my attitude toward the Lord and savior Jesus Christ? Does it magnify him? Does it give him the first place or does it also subtly shift the focus from him to myself?

So verse two, by this, the spirit of God, here's the test. "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already." He says, "Be careful." This is the test, false teachers come, and they may be gentle and loving and persuasive, they might even do miracles and speak prophetic words and speak in tongues, and at the same time be leading people to follow a false god.

And here's how you know. Do they confess that Jesus is both human and divine, both as humanity and divinity? So first he says that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. We read it, it seems as if the focus is only on coming in the flesh. But he says, "Has come in the flesh." Has come from where? And this right here presupposes the preexistence of Jesus Christ as the eternal son of God. So in one phrase, Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. We see that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am."

John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And John here, in one full swoop, is dealing with two false teachings, diametrically opposed teachings. One was the Docetis, and they taught that Jesus did not come into flesh because matter is evil. That right there, that's not as compelling to us, primarily because we live in a day and age where we have built philosophical... Our lives are built on a philosophical foundation that the material is all there is.

So for us, it's the other heresy that John is dealing with, is the Cerinthian Gnostics. We're taught that Jesus was just a man. He was just a teacher, and at some point God used him powerfully, but then he still died. So John then, verse 14, he emphasized, "No, Jesus was also God." In verse 14, we see, "And we have seen and testified that the father has sent the son to be the savior of the world and whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God abides in him and He in God. So we have come to know and to believe and to love that the love that God has for us, God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

Both deity and humanity, fully God fully man, why is this important? Because if Jesus is just human, then when he dies on the cross, he cannot assume the penalty for our sins. He can only atone for his own sins maybe. And if Jesus is not human, then he cannot represent us. So this is the beauty of the gospel. Jesus is fully God, fully man. On the cross, he bridges the chasm between fallen humanity and the Holy God. And he bears the penalty for our sins.

And this is why John... This is the crux of Christianity. Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man, on the cross. And he says, "This is what it means to know the truth. You confess it." By confessing it, it doesn't mean just to say that it's true. Intellectual ascent, "Yeah, Jesus is fully God, fully man. Okay." Even the demons do that. To confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh means to submit your life to him. It means that Jesus Christ is Lord and that you are willingly submitting to his Lordship over every area of your life. You don't do it perfectly, but you're attempting to grow in it on a daily basis.

And this right here is very controversial in our culture, and this is how the false teachings come. They don't focus on Jesus as King, that's offensive. We don't want... Jesus, don't meddle in my finances, my sexuality, my relationship, let's not meddle there. Let's present Jesus as a counselor. When you need some help, or need a word from God, when you need some emotional therapy, you go to Jesus. Jesus is a counselor, he'll help you out. You get your fix and then you leave. Or Jesus is presented as a consultant. Come to Jesus, he'll help you in whatever you're dealing with, he'll help you fix your problems and then you go live your life.

Everyone wants Jesus as counselor or consultant, but not as King. That's highly offensive that Jesus gets to be God. And this is where false teaching goes. False teaching has no problem with presenting a God who's there as a friend, a God who's there as a divine ATM, a God who is there as a spiritual pinata, you keep whacking him until he gives you what you want. Where do you find a the like that? God can be a God like that, just don't let him be God over my life.

So is Jesus Christ at the center of this teaching? Now, if you have dozed off for a little bit, come back, this is really important. This is a very important part. Right now at this point of the sermon, you guys say, "Doesn't this point contradict the first point?" The first point was, does this teaching put God at the center? Is it God glorifying? And point two is, Christ needs to be at the center, Christ needs to be glorified. Aren't they contradicting each other? No, because of the Holy Trinity.

One of the problems that people have with the whole idea of God demanding glory, God deserving glory, is they say, it just seems so... Why would God demand glory from us? And I already explained because that's how he's designed this, but also I want to point out something in the Trinity. God is worthy of all glory and yet inside the Trinity there's incredible humility. The reason why Jesus is at the center of Christianity is because God the Father wants Jesus at the center of Christianity. God the Father says, I'm giving you a name that is above every single name. Jesus Christ gets that glory, he deflects it back to the father. He said, "I didn't come to glorify myself, I came to glorify the Father." The Holy Spirit deflects glory, both the Father and Jesus. And inside the most glorious being, the Holy Trinity, you have incredible humility.

That's why I want you to say, "Is this teaching God glorifying and Christocentric, Christ-centered?" We get this straight from scripture, Acts 4:12, "And there is no salvation. There is salvation. No one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Jesus' name is the greatest name." And Jesus... This is why at Mosaic Jesus is at the center of everything we do, and our values. Love Jesus, simple. He's at the center. Why? Because that's what God the Father wants. That's what the Holy Spirit wants.

And then also, if you ever have a conversation with a Jehovah's Witness, I've had conversations with Jehovah's witnesses and I've pointed them to verses in the Bible, where clearly Jesus is God, but the main one, the main thing you got to do in a conversation and say, "Why is Jehovah the most important name for you?" First of all, Jehovah isn't God's name. That was actually a spelling mistake, it's Yahweh. That's number one. Number two, Jesus' name is higher than any name. Then why are we worshiping Jesus Christ? And why is Jesus at the center? Because Jesus reveals to us our greatest need. And Jesus reveals to us how God meets our greatest need.

The reason why a lot of false teaching removes Jesus Christ because it's offensive. It's offensive to tell people that they're sinners. It's offensive to tell people that we are under condemnation from God. But if you don't get people past the bad news, you can never get them to the good news. Jesus is our wisdom, he is our righteousness, he is our sanctification, he is our redemption, all of deity dwells in him bodily. He's our hope, he's our life, he's our all and in all.

So anything that makes Christ less than what God declared him to be must be rejected. Why? Because Christless Christianity is a counterfeit Christianity. So even if a church, or even if a ministry has the word Christ in the name, but doesn't put Christ in the center, it's not true and it's all in vain, and we need to be wary of it. Does this teaching enliven your heart with love for Christ? Does this teaching may Christ dear to you that it's from the Lord?

Third of all is how does this teaching effect your view of scripture? Does this teaching effect your love for scripture? Do you get a hunger for scripture? And not just this teaching, but this experience or revelation, is it from the scriptures or is it from something else? So verse six he says, "We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of truth and spirit of error."

First of all, everybody does what he just did. Every religion, every worldview, anyone who's trying to peddle a book, anyone who's trying to make a few bucks, this is what they say, "Don't listen to them, listen to me. Don't read that book, read my book, and it's on sale right now on Amazon, the Kindle version for 9.99. Don't listen to... Those teachers listened to..."

And so why is he doing this? First of all, you need to realize that John isn't just the regular Christian. It would be the height of arrogance if he were just speaking as an individual. But the apostles were entrusted with a special authority to lay the foundation for the church. They were with Christ, they were eye witnesses to his teaching, they were eye witnesses to his miracles, they saw his perfect life firsthand, they saw his death, his burial, and they were there when Christ was resurrected. And God gave the Holy spirit to the apostles to write the New Testament scriptures.

So the New Testament scriptures are our measure, our standard. And apart from the New Testament, apart from the standard, every single person's ideas about the spirituality are just that, they're opinions. They're Christless, and I say that because a Christless Christianity always begins with a scriptureless Christianity. And sometimes it happens subtly. "Oh, that's not what the scriptures meant, or they had cultural goggles on, or we have progressed past that, we have new light, we have new revelation. And at this point John says, "Hold on."

And what's really important to know is this warning comes in the midst of a discourse on love, this whole chapter's on love, this whole book is on love. And he pauses to say, "Test the spirits in the context of love." Why? Because a lot of false teachers make appeals in the name of love. They try to circumnavigate the mind or the intellect, "Don't worry about truth. Let's focus on love. And by love we mean the emotional impact of this teaching."

Some teachings about God, about the divine, about spirituality, they have an emotional impact. You feel emotional ecstasy. You feel like you are connected with the supernatural. It has nothing to do with the truth of God. I took a class with Dr. Kent, he was at Westminster Seminary. And one of the things that he was talking about when it comes to that, he says, "Be careful of manipulating people emotionally. You can do that. At the end of the sermon, when you're telling people about the cross of Jesus Christ, just have someone play the violin."

And that resonated with me because like four times I got saved at youth conferences and youth camp. When the violin comes in at the end, oh my, the tears start flowing, the waterworks are going, and I want to get saved. Jesus Christ died for my sins. And I understand that we care about emotions, we're not just brains, we're hearts. I understand all that.

But then Kent Hughes told the story. He said, "I saw the power of just focusing on the emotions when one Sunday I got up and I told people about what happened that week. That week I lost my dog, my dog died. I got up and I just talked about I had a hard week. We had the dog from when he was a puppy and my kids loved him, play in this pictures and then he died." And he said, as he's telling that story, grown men are weeping in the congregation. And he said, "It has nothing to do with Jesus. And yes, it's sad." So all of that I'm trying to say here is that the emotional impact isn't the goal.

And a lot of false teachers come and they say, "Look, this feels more loving, so let's focus on this." And John says, "Be careful when you try to separate love from light, God's love from God's truth." Also, this whole idea of just because we're alive today means that we are smarter or wiser than people who came before us, this idea is inherently false. It's called chronological snobbery. C. S. Lewis has done a lot of work on this. The idea that just because I'm alive today means I'm smarter than everyone who came before me.

First of all, try reading Jonathan Edwards. Try taking a volume of Jonathan Edwards' sermons, read anybody from 200 years ago. You can't even get through a paragraph without spending like, "Okay, that's enough. Can I get Twitter or Facebook, or something that stimulates my attention. So that's not true. But this is what false teachers do. They come and they say, "I have new light. We're advanced past the experience of Latter Days." And scripture says, the exact opposite happens. Once God has given light, he doesn't give new light that contradicts the past light.

So First Timothy 4:1-2, the spirit expressly says that, "In latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciousness is seared." So beware of anyone who claims to be wiser and holy are more spiritual than the prophets, than the apostles, than Christ himself.

Does this teaching deepen your hunger for the scriptures, your love, your steam for the scriptures? Because growing in acquaintance to God and the Holy Spirit always grows your desire for the Holy scriptures. You can't love God the Father without loving Christ, and you can't love Christ, the living word of God, without loving the scriptures, the written word of God, and you can't love the Holy spirit without loving the book that he wrote.

Fourth of all, how does this teaching effect your view of Christians, your relationship with other Christians? If you hear a teaching, or if you have a spiritual experience, supernatural experience, does it cause you to withdraw from Christian community, find fault in Christian community, or exalt yourself over Christian community? And I've seen this happen at Mosaic... I've seen this happen in my own life, where you have a spiritual ecstatic moment and you come back to church and you start looking at everyone and you're like, "You're Pharisee, you're a hypocrite, you know nothing about Christianity, I've just experienced God, I've come down from the mountaintop."

I remember I had this incredible spiritual experience and I was like, "I'm going to cut out all the sin of my life, anything worldly out of my life." I was driving to my sister's school, and she put a Jessica Simpson CD in our CD player called Sweet Kisses. And as soon as I heard that pagan, satanic music, I just hit the eject button and rolled down my window and tossed it out the window. And by the way, at the same time, I was going home and pirating music on Morpheus where my screen name was John the Baptist, so all kinds of inconsistencies there.

But you have this experience where like, "I know God, I saw the face of God," and you want nothing to do with Christians. And John says, "No, that's false. If you know God the Father, if you have a deeper experience with the Father, you want to have deeper experience with his children." And we never graduate past needing other Christians in our lives. Verse seven, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God, and anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love."

Growing in grace always leads to growing in love for God's children. Verse nine, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world, that we might live through him and this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his love to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." What's the connection between God giving his son, loving us, not because we loved him, but because he loved us. Why could... How does he connect that with loving one another?

What he's saying is, God loved you before you were lovely. God loved you, not because you loved him, God loved you as a one way love, and then that love transforms you. So in the Christian community, when God tells us to love people, the assumption is it's hard, and sometimes we've got to love unlovely people, and it's sacrificial, and it's costly, and it's uncomfortable, but we do that because God did that with us. By the way, if you've been following along with the sermon series, you're like, "Are we talking about love again?"

And this is how I felt when I'm writing the sermon, like, "What do I do with an another chapter chuck full of love, I already preached that sermon two weeks in a row. And like I mentioned in week one, he's not writing a philosophical treatise. What he's doing is, it's like a song, it's lyrics, and he wants you to remember the most important love. And this is why he's emphasizing love because there's nothing more important in the Christian faith.

The church Father Jerome, he tells a story of the Apostle John in his old age, and he couldn't even walk to the church gatherings anymore. He had to be carried in. And at the end of the meetings of the services, they would bring him to the front and they would hold him up for his final exhortation. And he would say the same thing every time, "Little children let us love one another." And one of the deacons or elders said, "Hey, don't you have something else? You say the same thing every time." He said, "No, I say the same thing every time because it is the Lord's commandment. And if this only is done, it is enough."

Ideas have consequences. And the greatest idea, the most consequential idea for all of the betterment of humanity has been this, that God loves us so much that he gave his son so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Whoever believes receives that love and then we love one another. And that idea has transformed the world for the good like nothing else. If you don't believe me, just imagine, thought experiment, imagine the world and world history without Christianity.

And there's so much that Christians have done, so much good that Christians that brought into the world, and fine arts, and science and education, and healthcare. The first hospital ever built was built by St. Basil in 369 in Caesarea. The whole idea of private property and the dignity of work comes from Christianity. The whole idea of human rights, that we are all equal in dignity, in value and worth. Where does that come from? What's the foundation for that? It's that we are image bearers of God.

Modern science, started by Christians, the calendar, you measure your birthday from the birthday of Jesus Christ. The first 123 universities in the United States were started by Christians as schools, to study the world and study God's word. The printing press invented by Christians. You look at art and you look at music, God's love filling the hearts of God's children, bringing that love to those who don't deserve it is what changed the world.

The Greek writer, who's not a Christian, Lucien writing in the second century, he says, "It's incredible to see the fervor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing, and their first legislator, Jesus has put it into their heads that they are brethren." We are. We're family. If God is our father, we are brothers and sisters and we are to love one another and serve one another and this right here is what furthers the kingdom of God. Because Jesus said, "The world will know that you are my disciples." By what? "By your love for one another."

Five is how does this teaching affect my view of myself? Does this teaching show me who I am in comparison to God? Does it feed myself? Does it feed my pride? Or does it grow me in humility? Does this teaching point me to the true Trinity, Father, Son, the Holy spirit? Or does it point me to the false Trinity of me, myself and I? And again, I've already dealt with that, God is a means to an end, but the Holy Spirit and our fallen self, our sinful, rebellious self, they're diametrically opposed to each other. Galatians 5:17, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

The inner war inside between God's light and our fleshly darkness, that war, if it's waging in your heart, in your life, that's a sign that you have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is displacing your sinful nature and replacing it with the image of God. So does this teaching that you're listening to, does it help you see there needs to be war on the inside? I need to mortify my flesh and I need to vivify my affections for God.

And this is why false teachers often gain a huge following because they never talk about the sinful flesh. They never talk about sin. What they talk about is how wonderful you are. You're wonderful and you know what, that feels so good in the short term. I love when people tell me how wonderful I am. Thank you so much. But then if I keep coming and I keep hearing how wonderful I am, I'm like, "Dow, okay, I don't need you anymore." So in the short term, it's effective to grow crowds. In the long-term, it doesn't change their life. It doesn't help them with the true problems going on inside. And then they leave. And that's why whenever people move away from the gospel, from the scriptures, in an attempt to grow the church, what happens is actually the opposite.

Six is, how does this teaching affect my view of the world? And by world, I don't mean God's beautiful creation. I don't mean God's image bearers, God so loved the world that he gave his son for it. What I mean is the sinful thought process, or the systems in the world that pull us away from God by replacing glory that God deserves, and giving it to people. So this is verse 16 of chapter two, "For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever."

So this is the word by which we must test the spirits. Does the teaching increase my desire for the flesh, desire of the eyes, and the pride of life? Or does this teaching show me that those things do not satisfy? No matter how much they pull, no matter how strong the siren song of these desires, I understand that nothing satisfies more than God, that nothing satisfies more than Christ.

And finally, how does this teaching alter my view or affect my attitude towards sin? Does this teaching cause me to tolerate sin? Or does this teaching make sin intolerable and holiness more desirable? And often it comes like this, "God loves you so much that he died on the cross for your sin. He forgives all of your sins. Accept that forgiveness and now go live any way that you want." And it presents Jesus Christ only as savior. Yes, he's savior. And he's Lord. He saves us from sin so that we live a life following him. And this is true grace. True grace turns our hearts away from sin toward holiness.

Titus 2:11, "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, and training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ." Grace that saves is also grace that teaches. So anything that weakens your hatred to sin and your love for holiness is not from God.

This is... I was watching the Kobe Bryant tribute that the Lakers had at their first game after Kobe's passing. And they played Amazing Grace. It was so powerful. And one of the most powerful lines in amazing grace is this, "It was grace that caused my heart to fear." What does that mean? It's God's grace that awakens in us a realization of our fallen flesh, a realization that we have followed the ways of the world, a realization of my own personal sin. And there's fear there, there's condemnation there, when we realize this is how serious God is against our sin, about our sin. This is what it took for God to save us, the death of his son.

And then the next line is, "In grace, my fear's relieved." Grace awakens my fear and it relieves my fear. This is what it took for God to save you, the death of his son on the cross. But this is how much God loves you, that he was willing to take it. And that's how glorious God is. If the glorious God in the universe who created everything, if he's so big and I'm so small, and I'm worse than small because I'm sinful and I rebelled against him, but he still loves me, then that right there just stokes my love, my affection, my worship for him.

I'll conclude with this, just a verse about the immensity of God's love. Psalm 103:11, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." He removes our transgressions because of the cross of Christ. All you need to do is repent of your sin and believe in Christ. And he removes your sin from you as far as the East is from the West. Why? Because this is how much he loves you. How much? As high as the heavens are above the earth.

How high are the heavens above the earth? Just to get to the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way, you have to travel at the speed of light for a hundred thousand years. What's the speed of light? It's 188,000 miles per second. When you snap your fingers in that time span, that takes to snap your fingers. Light can travel around the world six times. How far? Well, the universe isn't just our galaxy, the universe consists of 80 billion galaxies. That's more than 10 galaxies for every person that's alive today. You get a galaxy and you get... Everybody gets galaxies. That's how massive the universe is. And to travel from earth to the edge of the universe as we know it would take 15.5 billion years. God's love for you is as vast as the heavens are above the earth. How do we know? Because of the cross of Jesus Christ, his death, his burial, and resurrection?

If you missed any of the points, they're up here, if you're not a Christian today, we welcome you to receive the love of Christ, the grace of Christ. We all need grace. We all need forgiveness, accept it, accept him as Lord and savior and accept his love.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the immensity of your love. It's beyond our ability to even comprehend. And I pray that you make us a people who revel in this love, who glorify you because you are great, and glorify you because you are good. I pray, pour your love into our hearts so we continue to love you and one another. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Heavenly Father, on communion Sunday today, we just want to take a moment to confess that we are sinners, that we are selfish, that all too often our own self-interests dominate our thoughts, dominate our imaginations, and take up our energy. Lord, I pray today that you focus our gaze from ourselves and refocus it on you. We are not glorious. We are not infinite. You are glorious, and you are infinite, and you are love. We thank you, Lord, that you showed us with true love is, that you, the Father, gave your Son, your beloved, the one in whom you delight, and, Jesus, that you showed us what love is, that you gave yourself for us on the cross, that you through the gospel defined for us that true love is action, that true love is sacrifice of self for the benefit of others and that sin is diametrically opposed. It's seeking self-interest even at the sacrifice of the interest of others.

I pray, Holy Spirit, show us that deep inside our hearts, we're still struggling with hate. Even as your children, as your beloved, there's still this darkness, this streak of Cain within each one of us. I pray, little by little, incrementally, remove it and transform us into the image of your Son. Holy Spirit, we pray that you come and speak to us, speak a word that every single one of us needs to hear, specific words from you. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen. We're in a sermon series through the epistle of 1 John, the apostle of love. We're calling it Meno. Meno means to abide in the original Greek, abide, to be connected, to keep in step with the Spirit, to have our heart be intact with the heart of God, the Father.

John, if you haven't noticed, John is a person who understands that the world's divided into two, two kingdoms, one of light, one of darkness. There's two fathers, God, the Father, and the enemy. There's two DNAs spiritually speaking, two spiritual essences. There's righteousness and unrighteousness. Today he wants to delve into the topic of what love is, and he compares and contrasts love with hate, love and hate. The word love, not just in the English language, but in every language, it's one of the most elastic words. It's been stretched to mean so many things. It's one of the most misused and overused and abused words, used in so many ways of so many things, and often it's employed actually to describe something that is opposite of what love truly is from God's perspective. I'll just give you one example of this from the Old Testament.

It's the story of Amnon and Tamar in 2 Samuel 13. Scripture says that Amnon fell in love with Tamar. He loved her with an incredible love, and he does everything he possibly can in order to woo her. In pursuit of this "love," he deceives her, ultimately rapes her, and ruins her life. Then, as scripture says, almost immediately after that heinous act, it says that his love for her morphed into a hate that was even more intense than the intensity of the love that he had for her. Love for him wasn't a true love. It wasn't a sacrificial love. It was actually just a synonym for selfish desire, which is actually hatred. Scripture says that true love isn't just sentiment. It's not just affection. True love is self-sacrifice for the benefit of the beloved. Hate is the opposite, where you're willing to sacrifice the best, the benefit, the interests of the other person for self, for your yourself.

Here, as we get into the text, one of the things that the apostle John wants us to realize is that, in and of ourselves, naturally speaking, we can not love like this. We can not love with this kind of love. Naturally, we love people that can benefit us in some way. We love people that can help us in some way. We love people that love us. Oh, you love me. Thank you. You have such good taste in people like me. Thanks so much. I love the fact that you love me. Supernatural love isn't just loving people who are lovely or loving people who love us. Supernatural love is I'm willing to sacrifice even for enemies. That's what Jesus said. Love your enemies even as yourself. It's a supernatural love, and we can only do it by the power of the Spirit.

Today we're in 1 John chapter three verses 11 through 24, 1 John chapter three 11 through 24. Would you look at the text with me? "For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. From whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him, and by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given to us." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points, the first two really straight forward. Stop hating people. Number two, start loving people, and, number three, greater than your heart. First of all, stop hating people, kind of common sense. John, why do you even have to tell us? In particular, he's writing this letter to Christians. You are children of God. You have God's love in you. You have experienced God's love. Why does he need to command us to do what we should do naturally? This is verse 11, "For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." Then he brings in a case study. "We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous." It seems like this case study's out of nowhere. Talking to Christians, you should love another. Okay, great. Now he's like, "Let me contrast that. Let me bring in the most severe example I can have the opposite of love."

Why do we as Christians need to hear this? Well, first of all, he's dividing the world, again, into two categories, those who love and those who hate, those who are of the pattern of Abel who was righteous and was saved by grace through faith and those who were like Cain. He says you have been saved to be like Abel. You have saved by grace through faith. You are now loving. However, be careful of the streak of Cain that every single one of us is susceptible to. Though God has given you a brand new heart, a heart that loves God and loves people, if you do not practice this love, the hate within can dominate. There is a little Cain within each one of us. He starts talking about this hatred and murder, and it seems so extreme. Why are you telling us this? It seems extreme if we look at love and hate in terms of our cultural definitions.

Love for people today is just kindness or being a good person or being nice to people, and hate is just an extreme reaction emotionally speaking, but when scripture talks about love and hate, it doesn't talk about emotions per se. Love, Biblically speaking, is self-sacrifice for the benefit of other. Hatred is being willing to sacrifice others for self. Now we got to ask, "Why is Cain the epitome of this hatred? Why is he the example?" Well, he's the example, and primarily because Cain and Abel were the first people born under the curse of sin. The curse of sin's deep within every single one of us. It's a bent toward self. It's the self-centered bent of human nature. I'll help you if it helps me. However, if helping you doesn't help me at all, then if it's going to be too much of a hassle, if it comes down to you or me, obviously I'm going to choose me. If push comes to shove, I will push, I will shove. That is human nature.

Now he brings in the example of Cain, and this is a really fascinating case study because Cain and Abel are brothers raised by Adam and Eve, their same set of parents who discipled Cain and Abel the same way. Abel, he worked with animals. He was a shepherd, and Cain was a farmer, different livelihoods, different vocations, however, same parents. One of the things that we realize is the contrast here isn't between Abel, who is like a Christian and a religious person, and Cain, who is an atheist. The contrast is between a person who by faith responds to God's commandments and one who responds by works. Now, here's how it played out. They both bring sacrifices. Abel brings an animal sacrifice, and Cain brings vegetable or plant sacrifices, but both bring from their first fruits. Both bring from their livelihood. The question there isn't about the type of sacrifice.

The question isn't about what we bring in our hands to God. The question from God's perspective that it's most important isn't what we bring in our hands but what we bring in our hearts. Abel, Hebrews 11:4 says, comes to God and brings a sacrifice by faith. Cain does not. This shows us that his relationship with God is already tenuous. There's something going on in his heart. Well, what's going on? We see later on that God rejects Cain's sacrifice, and Cain begins to seethe. There's anger in his heart. God then comes again and says, "Look, Cain, be careful. There's sin crouching at your door like a predator. If you do not control, if you do not overpower, it will overpower you." Why that reaction came to God's saying, "Look, I'm giving you another chance. Now come to me with faith instead of works," well, we see what's going on in his heart before he lashes out at his brother and actually murders him by slitting his throat.

That's the word spousal in the Greek. He slaughters and butches his brother out of hate. Before he had hate in his heart towards his brother, he had hate in his heart to God. Now we need to analyze what was that hate in his heart to God. Well, with what kind of posture of heart did he bring a sacrifice to God? Love? No, indifference. He comes to God in order to manipulate God. He comes to God, gives God what he thinks God wants to get God off his back. God sees that. He sees the manipulation, and he rejects it, and then we see Cain lashing out at his brother. What's going on in his heart? Well, John tells us this. He says Cain was of the evil one. Cain's spiritual DNA is similar to that of Satan. Now we do a little more analysis. What made Satan Satan? Satan was the greatest angel of all the angels, of the greatest army of angels, he was in charge. He was the number two before God.

What made Satan Satan? What made Satan Satan was he wanted to get rid of God. He wished that God were not. He wanted to mentally murder God. That's what made Satan Satan. Here, John tells us that Cain is of the evil one. What does Cain want to do? Cain hates the implacable fact that God exists, that God is omniscient, that God is omnipresent. He hates that fact. He can't get rid of God, so he wants to pay God off, manipulate God to ultimately get what he wants. Cain was of the evil one because Cain wanted God gone. He wanted God to be dead to him. That gets to the heart of what hate is. Cain, ultimately, he can't get rid of God, so now he turns to his brother Abel, hates Abel. What does he do? He physically murders Abel, but the physical murder came only after there was mental murder or heart murder. He wished that Abel were not. That's what hate is.

Now we can apply this. With this definition, we see hate in our hearts all the time. You're driving. Someone's going 45 in the high speed lane. I wish that you were not in the lane. That's what I'm saying. You don't vocalize this. Someone's not using their blinker. I wish that you were not. Double parking on Beacon, I wish that you were not. You're in the self-checkout lane at Stop & Shop and someone uses it for the first time ever. I wish that you were not. Now, you can apply this to your boss. You can apply this to colleagues with whom you're competing for promotions or someone that you competing with for a grant or a scholarship. My life would be easier. I wish that you were not. Now, the reason why John uses this story, employs this story, is because these are brothers. These guys know each other like no one else knows them.

I'm telling you you've heard the adage, the line between hate and evil is thin. That's a thin line, in particular with people who are closest to you. Have you ever thought that, "I wish that you were not," about a sibling, about a child, about a spouse? It's so crazy. One moment, you love them so much. You're snuggling. Everything is great. Then another moment, you're like, and something's going on. That's that streak of Cain that John is talking about. He says be careful. In particular, he's talking about the brethren, brothers and sisters in a church where God makes you spiritual siblings. You didn't choose one another. You're spiritual siblings. You can think of the people closest in your life. These are the people where it takes a sacrifice of self, of convenience, of comfort, of your own preferences in order to love.

The fact that we do love, the fact that we want to grow in love is a sign that we have become children. That's verse 14, 1 John 3:14, "And we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death." Here we got to ask ourselves, "Are there specific brothers and sisters in my life, Christians in my life whom I'm seeking to love?" If so, that's a sign that we are children of God. If not, perhaps you have not... If that's not even a category in your mind, that I should pursue loving other Christians, if that's not even a category, perhaps you need to ask, "Have I passed from death into life?" The assumption here is that people don't begin neutral spiritually or basically good. Ephesians 2:1 says that we are born in a state of spiritual death. John 5:24, "Truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life."

If you're unsure of your salvation, if you're like, "I don't know if I'm a Christian," scripture says all you need to do is place your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, repent of sin, and now you pass from death to life. The signs of that life, the signs of that first heartbeat, are love toward God and love toward neighbor. Verse 15, "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Again, he gets to the final consummation of what happens when hate is birthed in our hearts. What it does is lead to ultimate murder. That's the end. We want that person gone, but Jesus doesn't focus on the murder. In Sermon on the Mount, he says, "If anyone is angry toward a brother or sister or another person, you have already committed murder in your heart." He's saying that murder in the heart, hatred in the heart, is tantamount to real murder because you are wishing that they were not.

The other thing I will just mention here, he's talking about murderers and that murderers are representative of their father, of Satan. Scripture says that anybody who's done absolutely anything can come to God and repent of sin. Even the sin of murder can be forgiven. Any person who's still alive, if you're still breathing, you can be made right with God through repentance. The moment you repent and believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, your sins are forgiven. This is the only way our sins are forgiven. Our culture is at a point where the only thing you need to do to go to heaven is die. That's false. You need to repent. You need to believe. That's the only way. Stop hating, and we're all struggling with that. How do we get rid of the hate in our heart? We need to grow in love or start loving people. Again, love is action. Love isn't just emotion or feeling. It's action. It's what we do.

What are we doing to love the people in our lives? What are we doing to encourage, to help, to care, to lift them up? What are we doing to grow in generosity? We're doing this not because they deserve our love. We're doing this, we're loving them, not because we're just responding to their love for us. We're loving them in the same way that Jesus Christ loved us. How did Jesus Christ love us? When we are yet sinners, when we're still enemies, he gave himself for us. This is how we truly understand love. In verse 16 he says, "By this we know." How do we know? By this we know that he loves us, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. He says this is the definition of love. It's laying down your life for another, sacrificing the greatest thing that you have for the benefit of the other person. I love the sublimity of thought and simplicity of words. I understand every single one of these words, and you bring it together and it's like, yeah, that is the greatest love.

The greatest movies you've ever watched, there's always someone giving their life for friends, for other people. We understand this is the greatest sacrifice. This is how scripture talks about love. That the greatest, most supreme demonstration of true love, it's always the cross. Whenever the New Testament talks about God's love, it always talks about God's love in the context of the cross. John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." You see this Galatians 2:20, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 5:25. This right here, this is true love. When you realize what Christ did for you, it melts your heart, begins to push the darkness out and replaces it with love. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. Hatred even just for hatred can't get rid of hatred. Only love can dispel the hatred in our hearts."

When we experience God's love, we begin to experience that God is true love. This right here allows us to sacrifice self-interest for the interest of others. It's a miracle. It's miraculous when it happens. Every time when it happens in your life, you need to attribute it to the work of the Holy Spirit and give God the glory. One example of this from game theory, if you study game theory... This is first semester econ in college. We're going to go back there to the prisoner's dilemma. Remember the prisoner's dilemma? There's two prisoners, and both of them have been arrested. They committed a crime together, maybe, allegedly. We're not sure. They're in different rooms with detectives. If one guy confesses, gets off scot-free, and the other guy gets 20 years. If one guy does not confess, say, "I didn't do it," and the other guy says, "I didn't do it either. We didn't do it," they get off but only after like six months prison sentence.

If each of them confesses, they get 15 years.Now you got to do the math. What do I think my partner is going to do? Are they going to confess or not? Well, it's in their best interest to confess because if they confess and I don't confess, they get off, I get 20 years. It's also in my best interest to confess because if they don't confess, the same thing happens. If both of us confess, we get 15 years, which is bad, but it's not as bad as 20 years. What economists say is like most people are reasonable actors, and most of them act in their best interest. Most people say, "I'm going to confess because I'd rather take 15 years than 20." Now, I'm not saying we're prisoners. We didn't commit crimes, hopefully.

Here's how it applies to us. Imagine if everybody lived like this. Imagine what the world would be if everybody acted not in their own self-interests but in the self-interest of the other person. This is so great. Deep down inside we know that this is how we ought to be. This is the is-ought dilemma. John's like, "You ought to be loving. Why do I have to tell you? Because you're not loving." Everybody in the world, we know that the world would be a much better place if people were loving. Where do we get the power to do it? We get the power, the spiritual resources to do that from the Holy Spirit, from Christ. John talks about this is the greatest love. We should love like this, and the greatest level of love is to give your life for the brethren, give you your life for other people.

Here he's asking us a question, "Would you honestly be willing to die for another person, in particular other Christians? Would you be willing to die?" You've got to meditate on that. It's easy to say, "Yes, I would," until that moment comes. That's where John takes us emotionally. Are you willing to die for other Christians? Then he gives us verse 17. Wat he's saying is, "If you're willing to die for them, then why aren't you willing to live for them? If you're willing to give the greatest sacrifice, which is your life, then why aren't you willing to sacrifice things in your life for this person, be it time, convenience, comfort, money, what have you?" That's verse 17, "If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, sees other Christians in need in particular, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth."

Are you growing in love? Well, let's look at your life. Let's look at what you do. Let's look at your calendar. Let's look at your budget. Are you budgeting for generosity? Are you budgeting margin in your calendar in order to act out love, in order to give acts of love? You see all this throughout scripture. The greatest example is the story of the good Samaritan. A priest walks by, a rabbi walks by this person who was mugged. Then, finally a Samaritan walks by, a person of the wrong race according to the cultural Jews. He comes, and he's inconvenienced for his time. Now he lost a day from his schedule. He's going to make up all that work. Now he finances the guy's stay at a hotel, finances the medical attention. He's inconvenienced. He's sacrificing time, convenience, comfort for the benefit of the other person. Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."

Are there people in your community that you're looking to bless, looking to love just in action? That's number one. Number two, scripture teaches that we are to have a posture of heart. We're ready for it, where we do. Some of them was godly Christians I know at Mosaic, I know that they do this personally because they come to me sometimes. They're like, "Pastor Jan, we budgeted this much to give people in need. To whom should we give?" That's so inspiring to actually practice this systematically, to help others, and to love others. Obviously this doesn't mean that we indiscriminately dole out money to people who are irresponsible. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 through 12 says, "For even when we were with you, we would give you this command. If anyone was not willing to work, let them not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living."

If you're running out of energy to love people, and I'm here. I'm here every once in awhile, mostly Mondays like before 10:00 AM, before my coffee. You feel like it's the energy to love people is gone. You've just given so much. Where do you get the energy to keep loving and keep giving? John would say you just need to spend time in the Lord, abide in him, in his love. Meditate in what God has given you. He's given his Son so that you can give now of yourself. He's forgiven so that you can now be forgiving. He's served so that now you can serve. The other thing I just want to point out here before we move to point three is that we love not to earn affection from God, not to earn salvation from God, not to earn acceptance from God. We love because we are his children and we can't but love.

The imperative to love flows from the indicative of this is what's happened to you. You love because you have become loving. You see this in 1 John 13:14. He says, "We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. We love the..." This is what he said, "We love the brothers." John, why do you need to tell us to love the brothers or love Christians or love people if we already do it? That's verse 14. You are a Christian. You are beloved from God. You love people. Then he tells us verse 11, "This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." That's the imperative. We love. You should love. Verse 16, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." We love. You ought to love.

Verse 18, "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth." Again, the imperative, and the imperative flows out of the indicative. What's going on, he's like, "You have been miraculously regenerated. God has made you his child. The DNA of God's seed is within you now. Practice love. Grow in love. Make sure of your salvation and your calling and your election," scripture says. Possess your possessions. Be who you are. We need that reminder every once in a while. We kind of forget with the hustle and bustle of life, with jobs and busy schedule. We kind of forget. This is who I am. My nature is that I'm a child of God. God has loved me. I am his beloved, therefore I am to love.

Point three is greater than your heart. Stop loving, start loving greater than your heart. What's John doing here? Well, John has written this letter for the purpose of helping Christians realize that they're Christians, to have confirmation. I want you to know that you have eternal life. Simultaneously, what he wants to do is if anyone is not a Christian to awaken them from this lie, the self-deception that they are Christians. John here, and we've talked about this in the first sermon, he gives these three tests over and over with which we can examine our salvation. Test number one is doctrinally. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he died on the cross for your sins, that he bore the wrath of God that we deserve, that by grace through faith when you believe in him, all your sins are forgiven, there's no condemnation now?

Doctrinally, morally, do you seek to obey God now? Do you seek to live righteously, honor him, and please him? Then relationally, do you love God? Do you love people? Now, he sets the standards so high, and he understands that for some some Christians who are true Christians, when they see how high the standard is and how far they fall short of that standard, that their hearts begin to condemn them. That's the scene that he sets in verse 19 and 20, "By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. For whenever a heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything." He says at some point, even for Christians, our hearts will condemn us. The scene that he sets is that God is judge. There's my heart who's the lawyer that's accusing me and then myself.

Sometimes Satan accuses us. Sometimes it's own heart, where our own heart says, "Look, you're as loving as he ought to be. Look, the pattern of your life is so selfish. The pattern of your life is so unrighteous. You're probably not a Christian." John would say go through those three tests, but then also he says, verse 19, "By this we know we are of the truth and reassure our heart." When our hearts condemn us, he says, look to this. By this... What's the this? That's the previous verses, 17 and 18, where he says that we love the brethren. We sacrifice. We give of our physical goods, and we give of our time, and we give of our money. There's a track record in our life of loving people in a supernatural way.

He says so even if today your heart is condemning you, questioning your salvation, look at your track record since you became a Christian. Have there been moments of supernatural love, and are you growing in that? If so, if you can point to times in your life and like, "That definitely wasn't me. Wow, God really showed up here. God showed up here. God showed up here. God helped me love this difficult person and this difficult person and that difficult person," that right there is proof, that track record is that, that you are a child of God. When we fall, he's saying, when we have moments of doubt, self-condemnation, don't focus on the failures. Focus instead on this track record of growth in the Lord. Refocus on the times that God's love has flowed through you. That's verse 19. He says, "Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything."

Assumption in your heart is not infallible even as a Christian. Then the other thing that's really fascinating is that he brings in God's omniscience, that God knows everything, and he brings it in in order to bring comfort and relief to the Christians instead of a cause or a concern. Whenever I think that God knows everything, knows all of my sin, knows all the sinful inclinations in my heart, like it scares me. John says, "Look, for the true believer, God knows that you want to obey him. God knows that you want to grow in love, and he knows your battle. He knows your temptation. You can be reassured that if there is this track record, you can be reassured that God knows. He knows the imperfections. He knows your desire to love, obey for Jesus' sake, and God will continue to equip." You see this in Romans eight verse one, "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

If you're in Christ, there's no condemnation. Then, in verse 31 through 34, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who was at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who is going to condemn us if we are in Christ Jesus? Not even our own fallible hearts." One example of this is the heartbreaking story of Peter, the apostle Peter who denies Jesus, three times denies Jesus. In John 21, Jesus, the resurrected Christ, meets the disciples on the beach. He's got some fish that he's broiling for them. He's cooking for him. It's a wonderful scene, just a brunch on the beach.

Then Jesus says, "Peter, let's go for a walk." This is where Jesus asks him the three heartbreaking questions, where he says, "Peter, do you love me?" Peter said, "Oh, you know I love you." "Peter, do you love me?" "Yes, of course I love you." Finally, "Peter, do you love me?" Peter's response is, "Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you." This is a fascinating response because what was happening in Peter's life was a crisis of faith. Do I? I think I love him, but I just denied him three times. Jesus here reinstates Peter, gives him more grace. Peter's saying, "Lord, as far as I know, I do, but you know greater." That's what John is saying. Even for the Christian who's struggling to love, struggling to follow, who's struggling to obey, if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you are attempting to grow in love and there's a track record of growth, God is going to give comfort to the heart. He will give a confident heart.

That's the phrase that he uses in verse 31, "If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God." God brings confidence to our condemning heart and gives grace. We have confidence before God. The word means boldness of a child coming to the father as opposed to the accused appearing before a judge. Then he gives us these two benefits of walking with the Lord, two benefits of the confident heart when you know that you're in Christ. The first is answered prayer. This is verse 22, "Whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him." By the way, this is a staggering claim, that a child of God, whatever you ask, God will give it to you, but there's conditions. The first condition is that we seek to grow in obedience. We're seeking to obey his commandments and do what pleases him, meaning that if there's disobedience in your heart, knowing sin, like sin that you know of in your heart, it interferes with our prayers to God. It gets in the way. That's number one.

Number number two, we need to understand that whatever we ask, it has to be in accord with God's will. That's what in Jesus' name means. A lot of people pray whatever they want and they think, "If I tack on Jesus' name at the end, like, 'Lord, please let me win the Powerball, and I'll tithe the off the winnings, post taxes, in Jesus' name.'" That's not... In Jesus' name means according to God's will, for God's glory. He says, "Are you seeking to live an obedient life?" The Christian who's seeking to live an obedient life, praying in Jesus' name for God's glory, can point to prayers in their life that have been answered, one after another after another after another. Some of the most righteous people I know in my life, whenever I come to them with a prayer, this is why they're on my team, I ask them to pray, and you just see there's this track record.

Scripture says, "The prayer of a righteous person availeth much." It's powerful. Are your prayers being answered? God often doesn't answer in our timing, and God often answers with what we really need, what we would have asked for if we knew everything that God knows. One of the prayers that I've always been curious about is when Jesus to Peter, as he prophesies that Peter is going to deny him, Jesus says this, "I've prayed for you that your faith would not fail." I've always thought that's a fascinating prayer. Jesus, why are you praying for his faith to not fail? Why not pray for him not to deny you? That's a puzzle, but Peter needed to go through that trial to cement his faith for everything that was coming. Jesus will always give us, to his children, what we really need, not necessarily what we desire at the time.

Then, the second blessing after the answered prayer, verse 24, "Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us." This is incredible because he says when we keep his commandments, when we're striving to keep his commandments, we understand that it's the Spirit at work with us. The Spirit of God is abiding in us. This is an important verse because when a lot of people talk about the Holy Spirit, they connect the Holy Spirit with subjective experience, emotional experience. Oh, I felt the Spirit today in worship. I got some goosebumps. I love when I feel the Spirit. I love when I feel the presence of God, when the presence of God is heavy in a place. I love those moments. However, that's not what he's focused. He's not just focused on the subjective experience of the Holy Spirit.

He's not saying, "By this you know the Spirit is with you because you feel him." He says, "By this you know that the Spirit is with you. Whoever keeps his commandments," meaning can you look at your life and say, "I desire to keep God's commandments. I desire to live according to the will of God. I desire to please God. I desire to believe in Christ"? If so, that right there is miraculous, and that is a sign of the objective work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Stop hating, start loving, and God is greater than our own condemning hearts. At this time, we're going to transition to holy communion. Holy communion is an opportunity for Christians who are repentant to celebrate God's grace. For whom is holy communion? It's for anyone who is repentant, anyone who has repented of sin and today continues to repent of sin.

If you're a Christian and in your life there is sin, in particular relational sin that we talked about, hate, hostility, bitterness toward another person, today's an opportunity to repent. We are called to repent before we take communion. If you are not a Christian, if you have not repented of sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service or repent of your sins today, and then you're welcome to partake. The way that we celebrate communion is the ushers are going to hand out the elements, the bread and the cup. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ broken for us to heal our souls, and the cup symbolizes the blood of Christ that was shed for us to cleanse us from sin and guilt.

The ushers are going to hand them, out the elements. Please hold onto them, and then we'll partake together afterwards. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time in the holy scriptures. Lord, what a word that you've given us, that we can be your children and that we can grow in love, not to get something from you, not to earn acceptance, but because you have loved us. You have made us your beloved children, and you have made us loving. Now help us grow in that love. Jesus, we thank you that you showed us what true love is. You met our greatest, most tangible need, which is reconciliation with God the Father. We thank you for your sacrifice, and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly father, we thank you that you are our father, and Lord, we do not take that for granted. And for those of us who do, Lord, I pray today, reignite in us desire and affections for a relationship with you where we understand that you are father. We don't take that for granted. We understand that we were children of wrath. We understand that we are under your judgment. and still Lord, you came and you poured out your love on us by giving your son. To give your love, to give your forgiveness, to give your grace, you had to first give your son. And you have so loved the world, you have so loved us that you gave your son.

Jesus, we thank you that you came and died on the cross for our sin to save us from the condemnation in order to reconcile us with the father. I pray, Holy spirit, show us that if we are your children, born again, regenerated by the spirit, that we are to grow in resemblance with the father, we are to grow in your likeness, in your image, growing, giving, and serving and sacrificing in the same way that you give, serve and sacrifice. Lord, we pray that you bless our time in the Holy scriptures and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

We're in a sermon series that we are calling menó. And menó comes from the original Greek, Koine Greek. It means to remain, to abide in, to strengthen a relationship by walking in step with the spirit of God. And why are we using this term? Because 24 times in the Epistle of first John, the book we're in, he uses this word, this is a big theme of his book, that what it means to be a Christian isn't just intellectually saying that we believe in God, it's actually to be with God, to live with God, have God abide in you and you and him. And today, the Apostle John focuses our attention on the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, that God is father, son and Holy Spirit, equal in essence and still three individual persons.

And one of the things that John wants us to know is that God loves us with a fatherly love. My wife and I, we have four daughters, and I've been a father now for 11 plus years. I tell people I've got a PhD and a half in raising daughters. I'm pretty good at it, not the best, I'm okay, growing at it. We had our first baby when I was 26, when we had Sophia. And Sophia is 11, Elizabeth is eight, Ekaterina just turned five, and Milana is two. I love being a dad, I love it so much. Obviously, it's hard, there's always challenges.

Will Ferrell has three sons and he recently was talking about that and he's like, "Actually, raising kids is like operating a mini correctional facility." I'm like, "That's good." He was talking about water cannons. I was like, "Not going to go that far, maybe water pistols." Yes, there's challenges, but there's so many blessings, so many benefits. I made a list of all my favorite stuff about being a dad. Number one, and this list isn't in order of importance, but maybe it is. Number one is I love providing, I love to provide, in particular food. I love watching them eat food that I bought, food that I cooked, that I cut. I love it so much. I don't know what it is, it brings so much joy to my heart.

We were cooking steak the other night, Friday night, that's what we do. And I cut up a steak and I put it on a big plate and my daughter Milana, who's two and a half, she didn't point to the little plate that I gave her, she said, "No," pushed the little plate away, pointed to the big plate. Obviously she got the big plate and devoured most of it. It brought joy to my heart. I love that. I love discipling. I love watching them grow. I love teaching them to read. I love caring and nurturing and snuggling. My daughter's very affectionate. My five year old just spontaneously comes out and she says, "Dad, I love you so much. I love you 1,040." Same number every time, I don't know why.

And my response is always, "I love you 1040 plus one," and she's like, "Ooh, that's a lot." Same response, we have the same conversation every day. My two year old, I ask her, "How much do you love your dad?" She says two, because that's the only number she knows. I'll take it. I love being a dad. And one of the things that I've noticed is, people come up to us, and my girls are really beautiful and whenever they say, "Oh, your daughters are so beautiful," I always say, "They take after their mom, praise God."

But there's a clear physical resemblance of me in them. I look at them I'm like, "Yeah, you're mine," especially my youngest, that is mini me. And one of the things as we raise kids is you do see that they don't just physically resemble you, they begin to resemble you in speech patterns, in humor, they begin to resemble you in character, in self-control, in all the most important things, but in particular the begin to take on or emulate your relationship with the Lord. We want them to emulate us in all the most important things, but in particular in having a relationship with God the Father.

And this is what Saint John talks about today, is that we as Christians are made children of God through heart surgery, that God takes out our heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh, a heart that's numbed her toward God is replaced with a heart that beats for God. Now we have a spiritual DNA, the God's seed is in us and we begin to grow in resemblance of God, and that's what we're talking about today. That's the title of this sermon is Growing in Resemblance of the Father. That God is Father, Jesus is our older brother. One of the things I will mention is, this is what happens to many people. When we hear about God the Father, we begin to measure God the Father through our earthly fathers.

And lots of work has been done about the father wound and father issues, and here's the thing, every single one of us has been raised by a fallen father. And I got to be careful here because my dad is actually here in the crowd. What's up pop? If you see the guy who looks like Sean Connery right there, he's right there. Great, great dad, phenomenal dad. But every one of us, we're fallen and we're raised by fallen parents. So there's all these some kinds of dysfunctions. So here's what I ask you to do, despite the pain, do not measure God the Father by your earthly father.

Instead, measure your earthly fathers by God the Father. And by the way, the reason why the father wound is so deep for so many people is because in our heart of hearts, we know what a good father should be like. How do we know that? God has planted that in our hearts, he's written that on our hearts so that we don't seek that completely fully in our earthly parents, but in God the Father. And today we're going to look at 1 John 2:28 through 1 John 3:10, so please look at the texts with me. 1 John 2:28. "And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming."

"If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that every one who practices righteousness ha been born of him." See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness."

"You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you, whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes the practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sitting from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God."

"By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. One big idea in three points, born again to abide, behold the father's love, and three, resemble the father. Here in 0.1, born again to abide. John begins by calling the Christians children. He's not talking to little children per se, he's talking about Christians, who from God's perspective are his kids. And he says, "Abide in him."

At the end of verse 29, he says, "Whoever practices righteousness has been born of him." Here he's giving us the doctrine of regeneration. The doctrine is what I mentioned in the beginning that you are born again, you are born to new life, you have a new identity and new responsibilities. Now, when it comes to the term born again Christian, it has all kinds of political undertones. So one of the things I want to do here is just reclaim it from all of that baggage. I was at a lunch yesterday visiting a dear sister who's in a nursing home, she had a pizza party.

And whenever I get invited to social events, I'm always seated at the table with the non-believers, be it baby showers or weddings or dinner party, anything. So I'm at the table with the non-Christians because I'm a professional Christian, so that's what I do. So I'm at that table and a lady from the Christian table looks at me and she says, "Oh, you're a pastor?" I said, "Yeah." She said, "Oh, that's great. I'm a born again Christian." And I felt the unease immediately from everyone at my table, and I was like, "Yeah, I'm a little uneasy too." And usually when you think of a born again Christian, there's all kinds of things that come to mind in a flag-waving and etc.

What I want to do is I want to show you that from John's perspective, saying born again Christian is like saying Christian, Christian. For John it's the same reality. If you're born again, you are a child of God, you are a Christian. For John, this is what happens when a person becomes a Christian, they are reborn. And that leads to growing resemblance of God the Father. That's why he says whoever has been born again, perfect tense, that person practices righteousness. What comes first? It's being born again. So you practice righteousness, which is what it means to grow in resemblance of the father because you have been born again.

The righteous life is evidence of the new life. It's not cause, it's not a condition, it's the effect like begets like, God The Father begets children who are like God the Father. The son of a fish is a fish, the son of a duck is a duck, the son of God is a godly son or daughter, that's what he's saying. And he points out, what does he say? What's the main verb here? What's the imperative? He says, "Little children, abide in him." And this is really important because a lot of people are overwhelmed when they come to Christianity or they're trying to explore Christianity, and they're overwhelmed by all the theology, they're overwhelmed by scripture, which is 1,189 pages in my Bible.

Just overwhelmed by all of this, and you feel like you need a graduate degree in Christianity to be a Christian. And he says, "No, you're a child of God. Revel in that." Now what do you do? Just spend time with God, that's what it means to abide in him. You have everything you need for growth in the Lord, and scripture is part of it, you spend in scripture, you spend time in prayer. Just spend time with God. How do children grow in their relationship with their parents? They have conversations, they spend time together. There's the gift of presence where you're present with one another. So as a child of God, abide in him.

And he says, "Abiding in God prepares you to meet Christ." And here he starts talking about second coming in verse 28. "Now, little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming, Jesus has come once, he will come again, he will come suddenly, unexpectedly, without warning. Jesus said, "Be prepared for you don't know the hour or day that he comes." New Testament talks about the second coming all the time. One in every 25 verses in the New Testament talks about the second coming. In 260 chapters in the New Testament, it's mentioned 318 times.

And every single book of the New Testament except for the particular epistles of Galatians second, third John and Philemon, and he says, "Be prepared. That's how you get prepared, is by abiding in him so that you have confidence so that when he appears," meaning he's already here, that's why he uses that phrase, so that when he appears, meaning he's here, God is omnipresent, but he will physically appear and is coming. As the word Perusia, which in that context meant the coming of an emperor or a King, or Caesar is an event of a lifetime. And he says, People will have two reactions when Christ returns. Either they will be confident, a fearlessness. You're glad that he's here, you're rejoicing that he is here as judge and King because your sins have been judged on the cross because of repentance.

And he is your Lord, he is your King and you have been attempting to follow him all of your life, or he says you will shrink back from him in shame. Shrink back from him and shame, meaning there's something to be ashamed of. And he says, "Which one will it be?" Well, are you abiding? And this idea of shrinking back in shame, you've probably experienced this, it's when you haven't been doing what you should be doing. I remember at my first job out of college, I got yelled at by a CEO of the company who was in a meeting. I didn't know that he was the CEO, I know he was in a meeting, and I was buying a car on Craigslist. He saw that on my screen and he yelled at me in front of everybody. So that job didn't work out.

And so I learned my lesson. And then my second job, I applied for a job with the government and had to take a polygraph. And it was a four hour pilot polygraph, and by that point I was like, "You guys know everything." I told them everything I had ever done that I thought was wrong, and I was ready for this exam. And I was like, "They can throw nothing at me because I've already told them everything." So it was at peace and I passed the polygraph. That's kind of what repentance is. You come to the Lord Jesus Christ, you confess of all your sins, and you're in confidence because you're abiding in him, so there's transparency.

In Proverbs, it says that the righteous are bold as lions, they've got nothing to fear. So faithfulness leads to fearlessness, that's what he's talking about. So are you ready? Are you confident in seeing Christ? And John uses this word confidence four times in this text, twice is the confidence at the second coming, twice is the confidence we have when we pray. The way you prepare for the confidence in the second coming is you're with confidence come to the Lord in daily prayer of confession and adoration and just spending time with the Lord. So abide in the Father, abide in his love. That's what happens when you're born again.

The question arises here is, how do I become a child of God? How am I sure that I'm a child of God? And this is 0.2; Behold the father's love. In verse one of chapter three he says, "See what love the father has given us." "Behold," the King James version says, which I think is a word with more gravitas, it's not just the look in, it's the stare at, direct attention, reflect and ruminate upon this amazing love. And he says, "Behold, what kind of love." It's an incredible word that has to do with be amazed It's a sense of wonder he's trying to evoke, "Be in awe." It's only used seven times in the New Testament. Mark 13:1 the disciples with Jesus are walking out of the temple, and as they came out, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, teacher, what wonderful stones. What wonderful buildings, this is all incredible."

When Mary heard from the angel that she was going to give birth to the son of God, she said, "What kind of greeting is this?" Another definition of this word is, what kind of world is this message from? It's so unearthly, it's coming from a different planet. And why is John so amazed by this? He's so amazed because we get to call God Father. In all of the Old Testament, not one individual person calls God Father, directs a prayer to God as father, not one. Collectively as Israel they said you are our father, not individually. They called God judge or protector or provider or sustainer or ruler or creator, never father.

Jesus Christ comes, revolutionizes our relationship with God, and how does he teach us to pray? Our God in heaven? No. Jesus also doesn't pray to Jesus. Jesus prays to whom? Our father. Our father who art in heaven. Revolutionizes our relationship with God. And he says later, "God doesn't just call us his children. And so we are," he says. He makes his children not just entitled but actually in nature, we become the children of God. And we should be amazed by this, this should be... If John were texting us, if we are in a text chain with John and the Apostle Paul, and John were texting us, he would say, "Behold, the love of God that we are his children. This is how he loves us. Behold, his love."

And then you would send us the Paul Rudd meme. I don't know if you've seen the meme or the GIF, whatever, I always mix those up, where he's sitting with someone and he's opening a drink and he says, "Look at us. Look at us." You know that one? I love that one. "Look at us. Who would have thought? Not me." That's the reaction that Christian should have, "Not me. Why? I can't believe that I am a child of God." Now, here's why we don't have that reaction. We don't have that reaction. If I tell you that you're a child of God, you're like, "Yeah, okay." If I tell you that Jesus loves you, you're like, "Yeah, I know. Everyone loves me."

It's not shocking to us because we feel like we've earned it, we feel like we deserve it. "God exists, he made me, therefore I'm his kid." And one of the reasons why we believe this is because we have swallowed wholesale liberal theology that came to us in the 18th century, 19th century after the enlightenment and it went like this, it was the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of humanity. And it goes like this, that every single person who's alive, just by virtue of being alive is a child of God. And every single one of us we're brothers and sisters, we're all together, universal brotherhood. And that theology is nowhere to be found in scripture. Why? Because that theology, it jumps over the fall. Yes, God creates us, and Adam and Eve are children of God and then we sinned.

Now, scripture says, because of our sin, there's something in between us and God, there's a chasm between us. Therefore, this chasm is the chasm of God's wrath that we deserve for our sin. So God goes from being father to judge. Now, how do we go back to having a relationship with God, the father? And this is what makes Christianity so incredible, that because of Jesus Christ, because God gave his son to bridge that chasm, to absorb the wrath that we deserve for our sin, and by grace through faith in that sacrifice, you can be a child of God, you can be born again.

In John 1:12-13 says, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Nor of the will of a man. It's not because you chose to be a child of God, it's because God chose to make you his child. That's what it means to be born again, that we were dead in our sins, meaning we don't deserve any of this. That's why we should marvel. We don't behold, and we don't marvel getting a paycheck. Like if you get paid biweekly or at the end of the month, it gets deposited into your account, you don't look at the deposits like, "Behold, I got paid."

You don't do that, because you earned it. And if you are beholding, you're probably stealing from the company. No, you behold at grace, "I did not deserve this." 2 Peter 1:4 says, "By which he has granted to us the precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. Having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." Holy scripture teaches that in our flesh we are not children of God because in us there's a corrupt DNA. And actually in this text, he talks about being children of God and children of Satan, that there's godly, divine DNA and there's ungodly, satanic, demonic DNA in each one of us.

And before you check out, I know exactly how we react because I preached through this text when we just launched the church. We were like two months in 2011, I preached these texts and I had a guy send me an email. I was reading the email recently and he's like, "I liked everything except for the part where you call the Satan spawn." And I was like, "I just read the Bible verse." Let me just do a little explaining. Who is Satan? Satan was an angel. Satan was the premier being, he was the number two in all of God's army, of all the beings in the universe. He was number two. So what made him Satan? What caused the fall?

In Isaiah 14, I can't get into this text now, but go home and read it. In Isaiah 14, we see the progression. He got to the point where he got puffed up with pride and he says, "I will ascend to the throne of God. I will make my throne with the most high. I will be God. I am my own." And in that text you see, I, I, I, I. What made Satan Satan wasn't that he just broke God's law. What made Satan Satan is that he got, attempted God... Get rid of God. He wanted God to worship him instead of worshiping God. And that's the temptation with which he tempted Jesus in the desert. Remember, Jesus is fasting, Satan comes to him and he says, "Fall down and worship me." That's what makes Satan Satan.

It isn't just breaking God's law, is trying to get rid of God and putting yourself at the center of the universe, putting yourself on the throne of God. So when you understand that that's the DNA, the DNA of satanic, DNA as John talks about, that it's a selfishness. It's living as if you are God and there is no God as if you are the giver of your own life and sustainer of your own life, that every single good gift that you have is from yourself. Who made you to differ? Scripture says, was it you yourself? No. It was God.

And that's what makes this DNA so insidious, there's DNA of spiritual darkness and then you compare it with the DNA of Christ, spiritual DNA, godly DNA, where Jesus Christ in Philippians two it says, "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing." Satan said, "I will ascend." Jesus said, "I will descend." Taking the form of a servant and coming to serve us and ultimately going to the cross and paying the penalty for our sin to save us. He didn't say, "God serve me." He said, "Father, I'll serve you. I'll worship you, command me."

This is like, when you become a Christian, you get this godly DNA in you, but then you got to grow this DNA, so this DNA overpowers the corrupt nature. Then this is the battle between the flesh and the spirit. And I shared this illustration in my newsletter, but one detail I didn't share, if you read the newsletter you... This gentleman Chris long had, he was suffering from leukemia, had a bone marrow transplant, and he was working in as a criminologist in a crime lab. And one of his colleagues said, "Hey, you had a bone marrow transplant, let's test your DNA and see what happened."

So they test his DNA and they find, there was his strand of DNA, but then there was the donor strain of DNA, a German gentleman for 5,000 miles away, and that DNA was overpowering his own, so that in many facets in his body, his own wasn't even visible. This idea is called chimera where you have two kinds of DNA. And this is an illustration of what happens, and this is what John is saying. You have this new seed that has been planted in you through the preaching of God's word. Now, you need to grow it by abiding in Christ. In verse one he says, "Look at the love that the father has given us."

God loves and he proves his love by giving. Remember John 3:16 the small famous verse in all of scripture, "For God so loved the world that he gave his son." And he says, God gave his son to give us his love, and against the perfect tense of the word, he has given us, and that means it's perfect. You didn't earn it and it can't be withdrawn, when God makes you a child of God, you are a child forever. And he says, "Look, he calls us his children and makes us as children of privilege that he didn't even give to the angels." God could have just forgiven us as judge and that would have been great, but he doesn't just forgive us as judge, he loves us as a father, which is so much greater.

Now the reason why John is also very amazed here is because he's writing to a culture where parenthood and fatherhood and motherhood were not honored because children were not treasured. Now, in the Greco Roman world, fathers were aloof, not affectionate, and never equitable, not fair, and a lot of the time children were abused and often left unwanted. The church, father Tertullian talking about... he was writing under the proconsul ship of Tiberius in North Africa. He said, "A lot of children were left to die in the woods or killed through drowning or exposure to cold and hunger and the dogs."

In that culture, John is saying, "Look how shocking is, the God is a father who gives and he loves and he's with you always and loves you as a child." And by the way, it's as shocking in our culture where parenthood is diminished and fatherhood is diminished and we live in a culture of abortion are on demand. And as shocking it was to know then that God is father, it's also shocking that God is a great father. Dear Christian, do you understand the fatherhood of God? J. I. Packer wrote this book called Knowing God, which every Christian should read and reread and he's got a chapter on what makes Christianity Christianity.

And he says, "I know that a person understands the depth of Christianity by how they pray. Do they pray just to God in general or do they pray to the father, as a child coming and pleading and conversing and just enjoying the relationship with God." And the other thing before I move on to point three, why is John bringing this up now? Why focus the attention on the father's love, that God is loving and that we are children? Well, he says this in the second part of 1 John 3:1, says, "The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him." The reason why the world doesn't know us is that it did not know him. And the reason why he mentions that is because they don't feel like God is with them, they don't feel that God is present. They don't feel like they were in God's hands because they're suffering at the hands of the world.

They're asking question, if God is a good father, why is there suffering? Why is there schism in the church? Why is the world so sinister and hostile? And he said, "Look, if the world is being hostile to you as his children, is because are first hostile to God the Father. They don't know him. Like you love God the Father so much and you can't believe that other people don't love this great God. That's how we feel. But he says, "You need to understand that they're on the other side and they don't see this. They don't understand this relationship." And that's why we share the gospel with them and show them how great the father's love is.

A former member of the church texted me recently and he texted me a meme of a pie chart. And the pie chart had three parts. And the first part it said 1%... It's a football metaphor by the way, sorry. 1% is San Francisco fans who are going to root for San Francisco in the Super Bowl. 2% is the chiefs fans who are going to root for Kansas city in the Super Bowl. And then said 98%, the rest of the country who's just glad that the Patriots aren't in the Superbowl. And he said that to me as a jab. And I was like, "I just don't understand. I'm on the right team. How can you not love the right team? Sorry for equating the Patriots with God the father, from all metaphor's breakdown.

But that's what he's saying, the world doesn't understand. So we love them and we pray for them, and we ask for the Holy spirit to regenerate them, but we still keep shining God's light and we keep spreading God's love because that's what the father does. And the more that we resemble the father, and this is point three, the more that the people around us will long to know the father. So verses two of chapter three he says, "Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is." And this is incredible. That DNA, that seed of God in you, that divine nature that's in you, he's saying, ultimately it will be brought to completion or combination and we will be like him.

We will not just be called children of God, we will be like him, not just act like him, but be like him in nature. And that hope of one day having a sinless body and this is the doctrine of glorification in heaven, that hope of being with the Lord in a sinless body gives us strength in verse three, to purify ourselves, "And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." In 1 John chapter one he said, "Whoever confesses their sin, you can be sure that God is faithful and just to cleanse you from all sin." To forgive you and cleanse you, to purify you. And now he says that, "Because you've been purified by Christ, we are to purify ourselves." It sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is not.

And you know the adage, God helps those who help themselves? I'm sure you've heard that. It's false. It's a false theology. And this idea that God shows up when you've done everything you possibly can. That's not how the world works. That's not how Christianity works. It begins with God helps you, God purifies you, God gives you a new birth and then he equips you to purify yourself. So if I could change that, I would say God helps you to help yourself. Not God helps those who help themselves. It begins with God doing 99.99% and then the other 0.09% he equips you to do. But we are to purify ourselves. Can we be absolutely pure of sin in this world? No.

But, the sign that we actually have a new life is the fact that we want to grow in grace. The more intimate your relationship with God, the more you're exposed to his light, the more the light exposes your darkness. The closer you get to the light, the more darkness that you see. So he's purified you, so now you have access to the light. You abide in him, and then you see more and more darkness. So, you thought the sins that you were dealing with were bad and God gives you strength to overcome and you purify yourself because he's purified you more, and then you go deeper and deeper and deeper. And this tension is always here.

On the one hand, we understand we're fallen sinners. On the other hand, we understand we're children of God and we are to grow in resemblance. And we do that every single day by grace, through faith and repentance. But this is really important because some traditions of Christianity focus all the attention on you purifying yourself. How's your week? Were you perfect? Did you sin? Oh, if you sinned, you lost your salvation, that's terrible. And John says, "But you're a child of God. God doesn't lose children. He doesn't divorce children, he's adopted you for eternity. That's the rule. Other traditions are all about you're saved by grace through faith and Jesus died for all of your sins on the cross so you can live any way you want. God loves to forgive, you love to sin. You get to do what you want, he gets to do what he wants.

And John says, "No. If you've become a child of God, you hate sin and you grow in hating sin and you want to purify yourself." How? You do that through practicing, and that's the phrase that he uses in verse seven, and he says, "Little children, no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous." It's a matter of practicing that the more we practice a thing, the easier it becomes. The more I practice not working out, the easier it is to not work out. The same thing with food, the same thing with anything. But once you get in a routine, it gets easier and easier because your willpower isn't used because it become a part of your character. And he says that the people of lawlessness or the people of the satanic DNA, they practice lawlessness, it becomes easier and easier and easier. And he said, we got to do the opposite.

In verse eight he says, "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. For the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, of the evil one." And again, it gets back to this idea of lawlessness and he separates sitting and lawlessness. Sinning is transgressing God's law. Lawlessness is getting rid of God and getting rid of his law. And if you're like, "I don't know about sin, I don't know about transgressing commandments." Well, the question that John will put before you is, what are you living for? Like what is the ultimate purpose of your life? What do you find more worthy of your time, of your money, of your talents than anything else?

Well, whatever the thing is that you're living for, whatever you find more worthy than anything. That is what you're worshiping. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, it could be a good thing. And you take the good thing and you put it in place of God and now it becomes a bad thing. Worship is building your life or meaning on anything other than God. The other thing before we close, I just want to deal with this, verse six and verse nine he says, "No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. " Verse nine, "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning." And a lot of Christians read that and they're like, "What does that mean about my faith? Like I have sinned."

And again, the emphasis is on the practice, it's on the personality. It's on what's progressive on the life pattern, on the character. What are you practicing? What is the habit of your life? What is the culture of your life, the ethos of your life? Is it the same as the ethos of the father's family? Is your life resembling the father. And I'll close it with this illustration from F. F. Bruce. Every family has rules, every organization has a culture. And my family, I tell my girls, there's only two real rules. Rule number one, no screaming, rule number two, no complaining. The screaming one, you can make, we live in Boston and we have neighbors on three sides of us, so don't scream and I don't like it either.

Complaining biblically speaking, God punished Israel for 40 years and made them walk around in the desert in circles because they complained. So don't do that. No screaming, no complaining. We don't do that here. Now, I use that phrase all the time with my daughters, we don't do that here. And in response you could say, "I just did that here." And that's kind of what John is getting at. And so F. F. Bruce, I'll close with this illustration and then we'll pray. F.F. Bruce was a New Testament scholar in the 20th century, probably the greatest in the 20th century. And he went to this private school that was founded in the year 1224. 1224 school of tradition.

And in his commentary in first John, he talks about, in the school, whenever a student would act out or disobey or misbehave, what the teachers would say is, "We don't do that here." And F. F. Bruce was like, "I just did that. I was just saying, I just did that." And then he concludes and he says this, "But the literalist might reply, "But obviously it is done. This boy has just done it, but he would be deliberately missing the point of the rebuke. The point of the rebuke is such that this conduct is disapproved of in this school, so anyone who practices it can normally be assumed not to belong to the school."

Fellowship with the sinless one and indulgence in sin are a contradiction in terms. We don't do that here. As part of this family. We don't, we don't abide in sin, we abide in the savior. So for the Christian, we're born again to abide. And how do we abide? We behold the father's love, and that's what allows us to resemble the father. If you're not a Christian, today, look to the father, look to Christ, look to the Holy Spirit, beg God to forgive you of your sins and turn to him in faith. And at that moment, and when you do a wholeheartedly, he will pour out his love into your heart, you will be regenerated and you become a child of God. So as we pray now, you're welcome to do that and we ask you to do that. Let's pray.

Heavenly father, we thank you for grace and we thank you for the gospel. We thank you father, that to give us your love, gave your son for us. We thank you Jesus, that you were willing to give your life for us to make us children of the father. And we thank you that you are our older brother and you are your brother's keeper. And we thank you Holy Spirit, that you are here with us now, and I pray that you grow us, each one of us, in our obedience to you, in our abiding in you, so that we continue to resemble the father. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a God who came down. You did not leave us in our sin, you did not leave us in our fall, you didn't leave us in our darkness, but you sent your son, Jesus Christ who came through the incarnation. Jesus, fully God, fully man. You came and the eternal broke into the temporal, the infinite broke into the finite and Lord you came to save us because there's nothing that we can do to save ourself and we thank you that salvation, true salvation monergistic.

You're the one who starts our salvation, you're the one who sustains our salvation, you're the one who ultimately secures our salvation. We thank you that you do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, we thank you for anointing us for those of us who are Christians. And for those who are not, I pray today, Lord, regenerate hearts, turn on the lights, anoint and separate those who are in darkness and transfer them to kingdom of your beloved son.

And Lord, show us that along with the truth, along with the salvation that God, you create, sane comes and offers us a counterfeit that's often so tempting, but it's false. And I pray that you make us a people who are discerning, who have a critical mind, who have skepticism when it comes to figuring out if something's true, if something is not. And I pray that you strengthen our trust and faith in the ultimate authority, which is the Holy scriptures, which are self-authenticating along with the Holy Spirit.

I pray, bless our time in the Holy scriptures and I pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Fake news. You've heard that term bantered around in the last few years, probably a lot more than in the past. And it has to do with spin, it has to do with pushing a narrative or an agenda from the different media outlets. So we as discerning people, we've learned to develop a critical mindset. We've learned to check the sources, we've learned to examine evidence and see who else is reporting the story, look for images or videos that are doctored.

We know that not everybody is just giving us straight truth, it always comes from their particular perspective. If that is true with information about politics, information about the economy, information about what's going on in the world, it's even more true when it comes to spiritual reality, spiritual information. And that's why the apostle John writes this epistle to these young Christians.

He calls them children. As a father in the faith, he writes to them and he gives them this epistle, this incredible letter inspired by the Holy Spirit so they know that they know the truth. So that they know that they have eternal life. We're in the series that we're calling Meno, M-E-N... In the Greek, it looks like a V, but that's an N. And the W is an O sound, Meno. It means to abide, to remain, to be connected to, and it has to do with our relationship with God.

That if you are a Christian, you abide in Christ, you abide in the Holy Spirit, you abide in the scripture, you abide in the church. And John is writing this letter today, in our text today where we're in particularly talking about the topic of the antichrist. The topic of the antichrists, plural as well. And when we hear the word, perhaps you've heard it, if you've grown up in the church and even if you haven't, you probably heard about this shadowy figure that's coming.

Many of us that think it's a political figure or someone who wields all kinds of influence and what John wants us to know is that the antichrist isn't just a person of physical power or a person of political power, it's a person of ideological power. And he comes and the power is found in the ideas, ideas have consequences, spiritual ideas have consequences. And what the antichrist ultimately does and what the antichrist today do is present a false gospel.

God creates the gospel, the good news, Satan counterfeits that gospel and makes it pretty good news, mediocre news, an okay news, spiritual fake news. And the consequences of believing the spiritual fake news is significantly higher than just misinformation. The stakes are so much higher than just being misinformed or misinformation. The stakes are condemnation or eternal damnation. Our eternal souls are at stake and the enemy is an enemy of our soul, is like a roaring lion seeking to devour those who are with Christ, seeking to devour those who want to know about Christ, saying praise on the praying.

That's what first John is all about. We must develop biblical discernment, we must remain vigilant. So today we are in first John chapter two verses 18 through 27, would you look at the text with me? Children, it is the last hour and as you have heard, the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy one and you all have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, this is the antichrist he who denies the father and the son. No one who denies the son has the father, whoever confesses of the son has the father also.

Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you if what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you two will abide in the son and in the father. And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you for the anointing that you have received from him abides in you. And you have no need that anyone should teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie just as he has taught you, abide in him.

This is the reading of God's Holy and narrative fallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The title of the sermon is also the first point of our three points, which are: beware the lies of the antichrist, confess the truth of the Holy one and abide in spirit, scripture and church. First, beware the lies of the antichrist. In verse 18 he addresses them as children. He's a spiritual father.

He loves them and he longs the best for them so he teaches them the truth. He says it is the last hour. And that's an interesting phrase that a lot of people misinterpret. The phrase, the last hour, talks about a span of time from Jesus's first coming to a second coming from the ascension of Jesus going up to heaven sit at the right throne of God, the father to intercede for our sins to the return. And he is coming back. Since John has written these words, 2000 years have elapsed. So what does it mean the last time?

Well, from God's perspective, there is no time. From God's perspective, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. Why doesn't Jesus come sooner? Well, the reason why and the apostle Peter says that God is patient, that God is loving, that God wishes all to repent. If he comes now, those who have not repented, have not accepted God's free gift of grace, at that moment and when he comes, now he comes not as a savior, but as Lord and as judge.

So God is waiting for everyone to repent of those who are called to repent. And the apostle Peter tells us that the day of the Lord will come and it'll come abruptly like a thief in the night, and the heavens will pass away with a roar. No one knows when this period will come, but he tells us that the last hour is here in order to instill in us a sense of urgency that Jesus may come at any single moment. A lot of people say, "You know what? I'll go to church later on after I have some fun in my life. I'll go to church when I have kids, and then I'll bring them up in the faith," and et cetera, et cetera.

What if Jesus comes today? What if you die today? There's no guarantee. Not one of us is guaranteed tomorrow. So Jesus says in Mark 13:33, "Be on guard, keep awake for you do not know when the time will come." And he says, "We know it is the last hour." He says, why? Because the antichrist is coming and the antichrist have already come. So first of all, he is the only apostle who uses the term antichrist. He uses it five times in this epistle, once in second John.

And this refers to the figure that is coming, the figure who will be used by Satan in the end times. Daniel seven talks about this person, the antichrist as the horn. Revelation 13 talks about the beast and second Thessalonians to Saint Paul says, this is the man of lawlessness. The coming of the lawless one is by activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders. Who is this evil future leader?

Many Christians throughout church history have pointed to specific people and said, "That's the one." Christians in the first century said, "Nero. Clearly it's Nero." Other Christians during the reformation, Calvin and Luther would point to the popes. Clearly it's the popes. Other times they would point to political figures, Hitler for obvious reasons. Some people said Obama, some people say Trump, some people say Putin, whoever. Some people said Mikhail Gorbachev because he had a birthmark on his forehead. Clearly the mark of the beast. Who knows? We know. We have no idea.

John isn't talking about the physical qualifications, the physical characteristics of the antichrist. What he wants us is to develop a sixth sense, spiritually speaking, for what the lies of the evil one will sound like. He wants us to know that the antichrist will come with ideas that are anti Christ, not just antichrist. And the word here for antichrist in the Greek, that prefix means in opposition to. So the one who will come will come opposed to Christ but also means instead of, and that's what John wants to focus on.

He wants to focus on the antichrist who have come now and they're presenting a different Christ, and they're antichrist because they're presenting a Christ instead of the true one. And this is the main surprise of the text. That these antichrist have come from within the church, not from outside. They're not political figures, they're not economical figures. They're coming from within their spiritual figures, perhaps pastors or elders.

Saint Paul warned the church in Ephesians verse 30, from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. These are people who present a gospel that sounds mostly true. And the most insidious lies are mostly true, there's just a little that's off. And that's exactly what they're doing. We have a deeper secret, we have a deeper knowledge. We have a special anointing follow us, and they appeal not to the scriptures, not to the apostles, not to the historic Orthodox faith. They appeal to themselves, to something subjective.

And the surprise here is that Satan operates in the realm of religion and spirituality. Second Corinthians 11:14 to 15, and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. So the apostle wants Christians to develop the sense where they know that's the sermon, where they know what's true and what's false and be able to say, "That's true, that's false."

And we as Christians, we need to dwell this ability and be able to say it, have the strength and courage, the audacity to say it. Mormonism is not true, Jehovah's Witness, not true. Unitarian Universalism, not true. Islam, not true. Judaism, not true. And I know how that sounds because I've heard done in the first service, I understand the unease that we feel. Why do we feel that unease? The apostle of love looks at the false teachers and says they're liars. They're anti-Christ.

The apostle of love that seems so unloving, he says, "No, what's unloving is actually calling darkness light and a lie the truth." That's what's unloving. And it says in first John 2:21, I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. You know this truth. He's not writing to inform them of the truth. He's writing to confirm them in the truth. You know and the truth is self authenticating. The Holy Spirit within you confirms that this is true.

Verse 26, I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. And this is how the enemy works, sows confusion. So here we need to pause and say which theological issues are you talking about John? Which theological issues are so clearly essential that schism is preferred to compromise? What are the close hand issues we're not budging here, and what are the open hand issues?

When it comes to the methods of gospel dissemination, when it comes to the method of music, when it comes to the method of how we do church, we can budge there. We can contextualize when it comes to the message, John says the message of who is Jesus Christ that cannot change? Augustan said, inessentials' unity and non-essentials' liberty in all things love. I love that quote. But what are the essentials? And John would say, "Well, who is Jesus?" What did these teachers say about Christ?

And he says, "They deny the son. They deny that he's the Christ, that he is the Messiah, that he's fully God, fully man, that he came, lived the perfect life, but he died a death that we deserve. And on the cross through his atoning death, through his propitiation, we have access into the presence of God. He died, he was buried, and then he was resurrected on the third day." Who was Jesus? What did he come to do? What did he teach? And if you deny that, he says that is antichrist. That's a false Christ.

And in our culture, and part of the reason why we have such a hard time of calling the truth the truth and calling a lie a lie when it comes to spirituality is because spirituality has been relegated to the realm of preference and feeling. If I feel that a spiritual truth is true, then it's true. So we put on our glasses, our goggles of feelings, and we interpret facts or reality through our feelings. And Saint John says that's not how it works.

When we talk about spiritual truth, he says you know the truth. It's an absolute truth. We need to put on the goggles of this truth and then interpret reality through that. You can sincerely believe something about God and you can be sincerely wrong and it has real consequences. This has to do with reality just like gravity is part of reality, just like laws are part of the earth. You can sincerely believe that you don't have to pay taxes because you're a libertarian. You can be sincerely wrong and sincerely spend time in prison.

You can get on route 90 and think you're going East, but you're actually going West and you go through all the tolls you end up in Albany, New York and all of a sudden you're sincerely wrong, you're going to turn around and the whole trip is going to cost you over $50 because we live in Taxachusetts. You're sincerely wrong. One of my daughters, she shall remain nameless. Yesterday when it was snowing, my wife and all my daughters, we have four daughters, so it's hard to watch all of them.

And they went outside and one of my daughters decided it's a good idea because she saw this in the cartoon to... she walks up with a fire hydrant and she sticks her tongue on it. And my other daughter saw that and she's like, "You're just joking around." She runs up to her and tackles her tongue. The top layer gone, blood everywhere. And I was like, "Why did you do that?" She said, "I saw that in a cartoon and I was experimenting to see if it were true." It's like, "Why not just ask me? I'll teach you in the ways of the truth of sticking your tongue on metal objects when it's cold."

There's consequences to folly, there's consequences to breaking spiritual realities. And that's why John is so categorical, it's clear cut. He's making these incredible statements that are so countered to our culture because we've been brainwashed with relativism and pluralism. John's saying theology, if you get it wrong about the person of God, it's not just defective, it's diabolical.

And what these antichrist came teaching, they said, "We have this new knowledge from God and we have the special anointing from God. And what God taught us is that Jesus was not God. Jesus was a human born as a human, died as a human, and there was some kind of spiritual, godly, divine emanation upon him for a little while during his ministry and then he was gone." And the reason why they pushed this narrative is because they couldn't believe that God cares about what we do with our bodies, about the physical realm.

So let's just focus on the spiritual realm. I'll pray, I'll sing to God, I'll read the scriptures. I'm going to live my physical life any way I want. I'll do whatever I want with my physical time, with my physical body, with my sexuality, with my finances, with my job, with my relationships, that has nothing to do with my faith. And that right there, that is a tempting, tempting worldview. And by the way he writes this.

If the apostle John showed up in Boston, Massachusetts today in 2020, over 90% of the churches in Boston he would go into and say, "These churches are run by antichrist. Not just an opposition of Christ, you're presenting a false Christ. It's a different Christ." Was he fully God? Was he fully man? Did he come as Lord, telling us what to do, not just with our spirits and our souls, but also with our bodies?

And as soon as you begin to redefine who Christ was, you begin to redefine the God had, now there is no Trinity. Now what Christ did on the cross wasn't just die for our sins, bearing the wrath of God to save us from eternal damnation, a place called hell, now Jesus just came to show us what love is, to show us how to live our lives, to teach us morality. As soon as you redefine who Jesus is, you invariably redefine what Jesus did and you change everything. You alter reality.

So at the heart of what John is saying is what do these teachers teach about Christ? And that's what we need to say. What are they appealing to? Are they appealing to the scriptures? Are they appealing to subjective philosophy, subjective experience? Point two is confess the truth of the Holy one. That's the way we beware. That's why we stay away. Our vigilant against counterfeit gospels as we stay true to the created gossip, God's gospel.

And he used the word anointing here in verse 20, 21, 26, 27, I'll read those, but he used the word anointed, which is an interesting word. In the Greek it's chrisma. Remember that as C-H-R-I-S, chrisma, anointing. And if you come from some denominations in Christianity, like Baptist church or Presbyterian churches, you probably never heard about anointing. You're like, "No. Anointing, that's strange."

If you come from other denominations like Pentecostal denominations or Charismatic denomination, they talk about anointing all the time. Every single day, you're being anointed, this anointing and that anointing. This might be new to you. The apostle talks about anointing. Well, what does he say about it? In verse 20 he says, but you have been anointed by the Holy one. You all have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. That's an interesting connection.

Christians had been anointed by the Holy one and that leads to truth, knowledge of the truth, confirmation in the truth. Verse 26, I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you, but the anointing that you received from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie and just as he has taught you, abide in him. Same connection.

Holy one, anoints and you know the truth. You're confirmed in the truth. What is this language of anointing? It comes from the old Testament where fine olive oil was rubbed, poured from a horn or vessel upon a thing or a person that was separated by God for special work. You're separated with this anointing. So the most common reference is that of kings, kings were anointed. Saul was anointed, King David is anointed, Solomon was anointed. The high priest was anointed.

Aaron and his sons were anointed, the prophets were anointed. Sometimes objects were anointed like Jacob anoints a pillar in Genesis 28. And the word is Chrisma. It's the same root word that's used in Christos, Jesus Christ. What does that mean? A lot of people think that Jesus is his first name, Christ is his last name. My daughter asked me recently, "What was Joseph's and Mary's last name?" I said, "Christ," and she's like, "That makes sense." I was like, "No. Bad theology."

That's what a lot of people think. Christos is a title for Messiah, and what Messiah means in the Hebrew is the anointed one. Jesus Christ is Jesus the anointed one. Was he anointed with olive oil? No. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. In Luke he says, the spirit of the Lord has come upon me and because he has anointed me... In Acts the apostle say, God anointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Hebrew says that God anointed you with the oil of gladness talking about the Holy Spirit.

So when he says that you Christians have been anointed with the Holy one, you've been anointed with the Holy Spirit, in the same way that Jesus Christ was anointed by the Holy Spirit. In second Corinthians 1:21 through 22, and it is God who establishes us with you and Christ and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. Why are you telling me all this?

Because the false teachers came in and they said, "Stop listening to the apostles. We've got a special word. We got a word from God." How do we know you have a word from God? Because I am anointed. How do we know that you're anointed? Just listen to me. Don't read that book, listen to this book. Does this happen today? Yeah, all the time. There's plenty of false teachers out there, and I can give you names who espoused false gospels.

They have nothing to do with the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and then when people ask, "How do we know this is true?" I've been anointed. I've been anointed to preach this gospel, to espouse this gospel. So we as Christians, we need to be discerning. Okay, what are you appealing to by anointing? Now we've all been anointed. That's what John is saying. Every single Christian has been anointed by the Holy Spirit. We are Christoi, Jesus is Christus.

He's the anointed one, and we are anointed ones. The antichrist comes and he opposes the anointed one. The antichrists, plural, come and they oppose the anointed ones, us. And it has to do with seeing Christ for whom he is. You're anointed by the Holy Spirit to see and know the truth. There's a story about a blind man, a person who was blind, born blind, and Jesus heals him in the gospel of John chapter nine. And it says that Jesus anointed him, and now he saw.

And Revelation talks about spiritual anointing, that Jesus comes, anoints our eyes with the spiritual balm, and now we see true spiritual reality. So how do you know you've been anointed? John says, "You know that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Fully God, fully man. You believe that he has come in the flesh. You believe in what he taught, you believe that he died for your sins, was buried and rose for your forgiveness."

How do you know that's true? Because of the anointing. How do you know you've been anointed? Because you know it's true. This is the miracle of salvation. The miracle of salvation is that God comes down to save. John focuses on this, focuses on the gospel and he says, "This is what Satan wants to attack because this is the sum of the gospel. Who is Jesus? What did he come? God came to save. Jesus came to save. The son of man came to save and seek that which is lost."

And by the way, I don't know if you have ever thought about this. Why on all of our materials do we say that our values at the church are loved? Jesus, simple. Why don't we say love God, simple? Why don't we say love Trinity simple? We say love Jesus, simple. Because this right here is the test of true Christianity. If you move away from Boston and you're like, "I'm looking for a church," what does that church believe about Jesus Christ?

If you remove the truth about Jesus Christ, you talk about God in general, creator in general, the blesser in general, you get something that's far removed from Christianity. So John says, this is the sum. This is the total. This is what separates Christianity from everything else, from every other religion. Every other religion is our attempt to get to God, Islam and Buddhism and Judaism, all of them. This is what we do to get to God.

Christianity comes and says, "You can't do anything until you get the God. Only God can save us. God comes down." I had a roommate in college who was Jewish and we lived together for three years actually. So he kind of practiced. So he identified as not Jewish but Jew-ish. So there'll be some things that he would do, not other things. But one of the things that he was kind of pretty good at was eating kosher. And that's how he grew up eating.

He was kosher all the time, except for when we order pepperoni pizza. All of a sudden his kosher laws were out the window and kosher laws don't allow you to eat meat and dairy products. So pepperoni pizza, that's a big no-no. So he would devour his pepperoni pizza. And I was like, "Hey man, how do you reconcile this with your beliefs about kosher eating?" And he's like, "I don't think God's a stickler for the details." Much to be said there.

But there is hundreds of laws, are incredibly detailed. Unlike all the other kosher laws, I think he cares about the details. If you study biology, if you study the atom, if you study a cell, if you study DNA, there's detail, God is in the D... And I think that's the way a lot of people approach God. It's like, "I'm going to try really hard and then God's going to give me this fudge factor and get me into heaven and I'm good." Christianity says no.

And by the way, I totally, totally relate and sympathize with the slackers, the spiritual slackers. In every single one of us, we have a spiritual slacker streak where it's like, "You know what? I'll be good this day. Today I'm going to take it out." And Christianity says, "You know why? Because we are not good. We are not basically good. There is a sinful nature to every single one of us. We can't do anything to reach God."

Christopher Hitchens said, if God wanted man to live up to his standards, "he should have taken more care to invent a different species." I think that's how... How can God demand this from me? Love God with all my heart, soul, strength, mind, love my neighbor as myself, perfection, righteousness. How can God demand that from me when I can't do it in and of myself? Well, if you start wrestling with that question, you begin to understand the bad news.

The bad news is that we are sinners, that we cannot save ourselves. There's nothing that we can do to make ourselves righteous with God. We are helpless, we're spiritually bankrupt, morally bankrupt and we need the Holy Spirit to save us. We need God to save us. And this is what Christianity comes in and says, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you can't reach God. And even if you're Holy today, and righteous today, that's not enough to atone for past sins. So God had to become a man. God had to come down. God had to come to save us.

And Jesus Christ came and he paid a debt that he did not owe because we owe a debt that we cannot pay. Jesus came to pay a debt that he did not owe because we owe a debt that we cannot pay and that's the debt of our sin. So Jesus comes, he pays it all and he offers us grace. C.S. Lewis said, Christ offers us something for nothing. He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consisting accepting that very remarkable offer.

If you're not a Christian, what is keeping you from accepting forgiveness? What is keeping you today from accepting God's grace? Give him your sin, your guilt, your shame, and accept his grace. It's the only thing that can save us. And this is why John is so adamant about this. We can't budge on the gospel. By the way, this confession changes everything. It changes the way that we live our lives and it changes the way that we view death.

If you believe that Jesus Christ came and he lived and he died and he rose from the dead, if you really believe that Jesus Christ in his body, in his work defeated death, and the death of Christ was a death of death. If you believe it, it changes your perspective on death, the thing that haunts every single one of us. And I don't know if you think about death, you should. And we're not guaranteed another day. And this is the spirit of this text, he says, "We live in the last hour."

My wife and I, we talk about death actually pretty often because she's Ukrainian and there's a negative streak, like a dark... And she's like, "Are you afraid of death?" And we have this conversation. Honestly, the only thing when I think about death, the only thing I'm worried, I'd hate to leave. I'd hate to die before her, I'd hate to not see my daughters grow up and see there... I'd hate that part. But I know in my heart of hearts that the very moment I die, I don't die, I just pass from this life to the next.

And it absolutely changes the way that you live your life. I'll just give you one example, and this is true example by a guy named Jeff Struecker. He wrote this book called “Road to Unafraid,” and the movie Black Hawk Down is based on his life. And he's a believer and he was sent to Somalia. And in Somalia this guy comes to power named Mohamed Farrah Aidid. And he starts killing UN workers sent into Somalia to provide food for the starving population during the famine. And as he's killing those rangers are sent in to seize him, to arrest him.

And as the helicopters come in over his base, one of the soldiers who's repelling down, he slips on the rope and he falls 70 feet and the helicopter is getting shot at, so they fly away. And so this guy, Jeff Struecker is commanded to go in and save the soldier who fell. They go in and they're being shot at and they were ambushed and they finally get the guy, they bring them out, there's one casualty. And as they were leaving, the helicopters got shot down.

So he comes back to base and that base is told, "You got to go back again." And at that moment he says this, this is where he writes. He says, "God, I'm going to die tonight. That's what I thought." He said, "I didn't know what to do or say. And I did what many Christians do in this situation. I prayed to God. God saved me. I need your help. I'm in over my head." And then he said, "I pictured Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane praying, Lord, let this cup pass from me."

And then he says, "Then I remembered what Jesus said next. Not my will, but yours be done." And he says, "At that moment I realized something I had known since I'd become a Christian, as a Christian, no matter what happens to me in this life, if I live or die, I'm firmly in God's hands. My wife Donna just written to tell me that she was pregnant. I thought I'd never see her again or hold my child. If by some miracle of God I survived the situation, I would go home to my family. And as a Christian I also knew if I died, I'd go home to heaven and be with my savior.

So no matter what, no matter what happens to me tonight, I'm going home. I'm going to be safe, I thought." In the face of death, I don't know if you've ever been a situation in the face of death. This is where if you don't have a true foundation anchor for your soul, what do you do? And this is what John says. I want you to know that you have eternal life. I want you to know, and this is the first John 2:25, this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life.

It's promised. You don't earn it, he gives it to you. You just need to accept it. So Struecker goes back and he saves half of the troops and then they drive back and he goes the third time, packs 15 soldiers in the Humvee and comes back and live to write about it. So this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The true son of God came, he died for our sin, he rose on the third day and the forgiveness, the grace of God, his righteousness is imputed to you, given to you. You just need to accept it.

Point three is abide in the spirit, scripture, and church. So once you accept it, how do you protect yourself, guard yourself from believing the lies, from being pulled away by the evil one? Where there are three safeguards that he gives us in this text, the Holy Spirit, the Holy scriptures and the Holy church. First John 2:27 talks about the spirit, but the anointing that you received from him, from the spirit, abides in you. And you have no need that anyone should teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as he has taught you, abide in him.

He says, God has given you everything you need to know. He's not saying you don't need teachers, you don't need the scriptures. You don't need to study theology because that would defeat the purpose and contradict the purpose of this letter that would contradict Saint Paul who said that God sends teachers and pastors to equip the saints for the work of the ministry grow in maturity. What he's saying is you know the truth.

If you've been anointed by the Holy Spirit, you know the truth because you know the voice of God. You've heard the voice of God. You know the voice of the good shepherd. There's a self authenticating power. You know truth because the Holy Spirit in you confirms that truth. First Thessalonians 2:13 puts it like this, and we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of man, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in the believers.

So we don't need a special elite class of clergy or those who are specially anointed to know what's truth about the essential oils in the scripture, about the essentials of the gospel. Obviously we are to study the scriptures and study theology and have a good study Bible and we recommend the ESV study Bible and commentaries, things like that. But Jesus promised, I will send you the spirit and he will teach you all things. So the safeguard of the Holy Spirit, safeguard of the scriptures.

First John 2:24, let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you then you too will abide in the son and in the father. What you heard from the beginning, from whom? From the apostles. This is the gospel. The apostles were eyewitnesses. This is the primary documents about Christianity. Saint Paul had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, saw the risen Christ and received the gospel from him. So God gives us the scriptures to confirm teaching.

So when you hear teaching about Christianity, teaching about the faith, check with the scripture. John's not just writing to the pastors of the church, he's writing to Christians. Every Christian has the responsibility to confirm is what the teacher at church preaching, teaching, is it true? Is it in the scriptures? Is he appealing to the scriptures or is he appealing to some speculative, subjective philosophy?

And the beauty of the Holy scriptures is the Bible is the only book that you can read and you always have access to the author, always. You read and you say, "God, what did you mean? God, please elucidate, please illuminate." And it's important to have the Holy scriptures and the Holy Spirit together. Some churches are all about the Holy scriptures, never talk about the Holy Spirit. Some churches are all about the Holy Spirit, nothing about the Holy scriptures. They're together, Holy Spirit wrote them Holy scriptures. They're together. Don't pit them against one another.

So dear Christian, do you know scriptures? Do you love the scriptures? Do you safeguard your faith with the knowledge of the scriptures? My wife and I, we got on the show recently. Not only getting into shows because I have an addictive personality. The show is on the history channel called Alone and we're in season three, so good. And season three they're in Patagonia. So they take these 10 people and they give them a week of training of survival in the wilderness.

And you're given 10 objects that you can choose, like how to live in the wilderness, no electronics, nothing mechanic. You can take an ax or a knife, you can take some fishing hooks. And as I'm watching this, like you watched them build shelters and you watched them... As I'm watching I'm like, "I could do that better. I could fish better, I could do that. My shelter would have a door. I'd have a two story shelter. I'd build the tree house." That's number one.

Number two, that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that they are lonely. They're by themselves. Most of the people that quit, they quit because they just can't handle the loneliness. And I was like, "I know exactly how I'd take care of that. I would bring the Bible and I would just abide in God's word. I'd just read it all day and talk with the Holy Spirit. I'd just memorize books of the Bible." And I'm talking about all of this as my Bible is laying on the table and I'm like my fourth episode in binge watching the show and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

So love the scriptures and then the church. First John 2:19, they went from us, that's the false teachers, because they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. One of the things I want to point out here is when he's talking about us, it's clear. He knows exactly who the us are and it's not just the universal church.

This is a particular letter written by a particular apostle to a particular group of Christians, a church. And as they're reading out loud, they know exactly who's us, who's in. So if you are a member of the universal church, you are to be a member of a local church. We talk about this all the time because a lot of Christians do not have an ecclesiology, have not developed an ecclesiology. John says it's clear who the us are.

And I also want to point out that if you're a member of a local church, it does not mean that you are a member of the universal church. So a lot of churches have a list of members and many of them don't know the gospel, they're not saved. And this is why we have requirements. We have a whole process, we have a membership class coming up soon if you want to know more about membership. The other thing I want to point out is that if someone calls themselves a Christian and they start off gray, start off strong. That's not what matters.

When people tell us that they have received Jesus Christ, that they are now Christians, we rejoice in every profession of faith and then we cautiously wait. Is there fruit? Are they walking in the light? Are they walking in love? Are they growing? And we do everything we possibly can to help them with that. The parable of the sower talks about some people receive the word with joy and then when the spiritual trials come, when difficulties come, the cares of the world to see fullness of riches and those things draw the person away from the Lord.

True faith always, always passes the test of time. True believers can't fall away, false believers always do. And if you are a true Christian, you will abide. We don't believe in once saved, always saved. We believe in once saved, always persevering. This is the doctrine of perseverance of the saints that God will preserve in faith those whom he has chosen for salvation. God's love is immutable. When he loves you with a salvific love, a love that saves, he never removes that love.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. John 10:28 and 29, I give them eternal life, says Christ, and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one who was able to snatch them out of the father's hand, not even ourselves. If you are a Christian, you can't even snatch yourself out of the hand of God. God won't let you.

And one of the greatest examples of this in church history is a guy named Sheldon Vanauken, and I'll close with this story. He wrote this book called Severe Mercy. Vanauken was a spiritual skeptic who was searching his God truths, Christ's truth. Started reading C.S. Lewis, and he and his new wife, Davy, went from the US to England and C.S. Lewis discipled them. They became believers. On his return to the US, Sheldon's wife, Davy, dies unexpectedly, still a young woman.

And so Sheldon now is wrestling with, "Is God loving?" How could a loving God allow this to happen? It seems so cruel. He found Christ and lost his wife in short order and then he decides to leave the faith. And he writes about this in Severe Mercy, he said, "I'm done with this. I can't follow God any more." And this is what happened. He says, "And then I found I could not reject God. I could not. I cannot explain. This one discovers one cannot move a boulder by trying with all one strength to do it. I discovered without any sudden influx of love or faith that I could not reject Christianity. Why? I don't know there it was, I could not." That was an end to it.

Salvation comes from God. Jesus saves. We don't start our salvation. We don't sustain our salvation and we don't secure our salvation. God does all of that. Our job is to accept the gift and abide in him and he's the one that gives us strength to do that as well. If you missed any of the points, beware of the lies of the antichrist: confess the truth of the Holy one, abide in spirit and scripture and church. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the Holy scriptures. We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us today. If anyone is not yet a Christian, I pray today, regenerate them, draw them to yourself, anoint them with the Holy Spirit. And for those of us who are Christians I pray that you help us develop a spiritual discernment, give us a hunger for the Holy scriptures, a love for the Holy Spirit and a love for the Holy church. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Holy God, heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a noble God, a personal God in the sense that you want our person to relate to your person, to know who you are and you want us to know whose we are, that we are yours and we're bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, we confess even now that often we live as if we are our own. We live as if we are at the center of the universe. It's so tempting to feel like we are the center of our lives and we are not. Remind us that Lord you are the center. You are the point. You are the essence and the total of reality. And we thank you for sending your son, Jesus Christ to show us that, to show us what it means to live in obedience to you, to show us what it means to live a life of love toward you, love towards people.

And Jesus, you proved your love through sacrificial offering on the cross as the propitiation for our sins. And because of your sacrifice, your death, your burial, your resurrection, you now are an advocate before the father on our account and we thank you for that. Holy spirit come down and speak to every one of us wherever we are in our spiritual journey. If there's anyone here who is not yet a Christian, not yet a child of God, I pray today convert them, shine your light into their heart and transfer them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of your beloved son. For those who are baby Christians, I pray today Lord that you show that we are to grow in maturity. That in the beginning it feels like the father carries us in his arms, but then after a while, Lord, you want us to not just trust in our feelings of you but the trust in the truth of you and stop thinking that you exist for us, but that we are called to serve, serve you and serve others.

For those who are young men and women in the faith, I pray show us that there is a battle before us and that we are strong and strengthened when we abide in the word of God and when he abides in us. And for those who are more mature in the faith, I pray show us that you call us to be fathers and mothers to those who are younger in the faith, to care for their needs, to provide guidance in wisdom and discernment and encouragement and correction. I pray Holy spirit, bless our time, the Holy word, and we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

Wilbur Reese wrote a poem not too long ago about how often we come to God just to get something from him and then we leave. It goes like this. I would like to buy $3 worth of God please. Not enough to explode soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant worker, I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy three pounds of God please. And I start with that because often in our culture, when people think of the divine, they think of something that leads to excitement, that leads to some kind of spiritual experience, leads to some kind of enhancement. And when people hear that you go to church or that you're a Christian, they say, "Oh, that's nice." You get your spiritual fix at church. You get your enhancement for life there.

I get my spiritual fix at yoga or soul cycle or hiking or smoking weed or et cetera. You get your ecstasy there, I get my ecstasy here. And the assumption behind that that our culture has accepted wholesale is that the divine exists for us. Therefore, the divine does not obligate anything from us. And often people approach Christianity with that cultural lens and they think, yes, I'm going to come to Jesus, receive everything that he can offer me and he doesn't obligate anything of me. I can go and live as I want. But 1 John writes and he says, no, if you met Jesus, you can't but grow in him. You can't but become Christ like. You can't but submit to the father's will and serve others because that's exactly what Jesus did. We're in a series that we're calling meno. The word meno is the Greek word that's used over and over and over in 1 John, it means to abide, to remain in, to be connected to, rooted in.

And as we're rooted in Christ, dear Christian, what happens is that changes our lives, it can't not. That our profession of faith begins to shape our practice, that our beliefs begin to shape our behavior, that our saying needs to impact our doing. And what 1 John, the apostle John is, he has this question before us and he says, "Look, obviously there's a chasm between your belief and your behavior when you come to the Lord." But is that chasm getting shorter? Is that chasm being bridged? If not, if there is no growth, that's probably a sign that there was no life, that there was no regeneration. So we need to ask ourselves, are we truly in the faith? Why does he do this? Because globally and historically, most of confessing Christians were nominal only, in name only. Today if you look at the stats, over 2 billion people are Christians and saint John writes to us to make sure that we truly are, that we test our faith.

And Jesus talked about this often. In the greatest sermon ever preached a sermon on the mount, Jesus concludes that sermon with a warning and he said, "In the last day at the judgment, many will come to me stand before me." Jesus says, "And they will say, Lord, Lord, did we not do incredible things in your name?" And Jesus says, "Depart from me for I never knew you." He tells us parables of the 10 virgins, half of them are outside of the feast. The door shut in their face. They thought they were in the faith, they were not. Saint Paul writes and says, examine yourselves to ensure that you are in the faith. So perhaps you're a Christian. You're struggling with the assurance of your salvation. Am I a Christian? Well, this book is for you. Or perhaps you've always thought of yourself a Christian because that's your heritage, that's your family because the part of the country that you're from believes that or the country you're from.

And he says, "You need to test your faith to see that it's genuine because this is the most important question before us. Are you a Christian? Are you a child of God? Have you been reconciled with God?" This is the big idea of the text. One of the things I will say about this book is that saint John, the apostle John style is radically different than saint Paul's style of writing. Saint Paul is a philosopher. He thinks very linearly. You can write three point sermons from saint Paul's writings and it's all very clear cut. Yes, and a lot of us, that's how we think. So that's why we're drawn to saint Paul's writing. John does not write like a philosopher. John writes like a musician. He writes like a songwriter, like a lyricist. Therefore, so he gives you an idea and then he gives you another idea and it goes back to the first idea and then gives you a third idea.

And until you understand his style of writing, you're going to have a hard time understanding what it means. You understand the words, you don't understand what he's talking about. And like when you listen to a song and it's repetitive, you're not like, "Oh, we got to cut that out." Songs aren't AP English essays. Songs are meant to be sticky, to inspire the imagination center. That's how John writes. His style is called amplification, where he gives you a point and then he hits it louder and louder. And in order to make it more and more emphatic. And the big idea is, I want you to know that you are gods, that you belong to God. You do that by growing in Christ's likeness. And he gives us a triad of Christ's likeness. How do I know that I'm growing in Christ?

Do you know him doctrinally? Do you know the trues about him? About the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, what he taught, what he's about. Do you know him? Doctrinal? Do you obey him? That's the moral test. And then do you love him? That's the relational test. Do you know? Do you obey? Do you love doctrinal moral and relational and they're all interconnected. They're all tightly wound together. What does it mean to know Jesus? You obey Jesus. What does it mean to obey Jesus? You love Jesus. What does it mean to love Jesus? You know Jesus, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a word about his style. Today we are in 1 John 2:1-17. Here in the beginning, I'm going to read the first six verses and we'll get to the rest in the sermon. "

My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, 'I know him,' but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The question before is how do you know that you know God? And the four points are you obey, you love, you grow and you deny.

First you obey. We'll start with verse two and verse two saint John says that, "Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." He doesn't start with our obedience because that's not how we are made righteous before God. That's not how we are accepted with God. We don't earn our salvation. It's not. We follow the rules, we obey and therefore we accept that it's Jesus has obeyed, followed the rules, and because of his sacrifice, we can be accepted. That's where he starts. It's not about our obedience, it's about Christ. He uses the word propitiation in the Greek. It's hilasmos. It's a multidimensional word. The first dimension is a claim against you has been satisfied. A claim against you has been satisfied. That's propitiation. And what he's talking about is that there's a claim against us before God, that when God looks at us, he looks at us as sinners and there's evil in our hearts and God being a just God cannot but have a claim against our sin.

He says, "A claim has been satisfied." And you can understand this from a legal ... You get an accident, someone's got a claim against you. Recently this past August, I was in Philadelphia doing some doctoral studies. I went to visit a pastor at 10th Presbyterian church in downtown Philadelphia. And if you think the parking laws in Boston are terrible, so much worse than Philadelphia. You need, honestly, it's one of these signs where it's like 12 signs on one post and you need a law degree in contract law to exegete what's going on. So I parked my car. I went to a seminary, I studied exegesis, I exegeted that okay, I understand. Okay, I go to the station, I pay for two hours, $8 and I'd take the ticket and I bring it back to my car and then I go meet with the pastor. I come back to the car, orange ticket on my windshield. It's like, what is going on? No, not fair, injustice and I appealed.

So I sent them, I went online, I send them a picture of my little parking ticket and a picture of my car and I thought I was set. It's $51 right? If it was less than, maybe I wouldn't go. Finally like end of November, I get a letter from them. Your appeal has been denied. Legalists. And then they're like, "You got to go online. Here's your number, you type it in and we'll tell you why you got denied." And I go online and they have a picture of my card, not the picture that I sent in. They have a picture of my car that the person, the parking attendant took. And the picture showed that my bumper was in the loading zone. Six inches my bumper is in the loading zone. It was $51, $4 for the credit card fee, $55. And at that moment I'm like, "My goodness, I got 2007 Toyota Highlander. My bumper's not worth $55. Can I just send that in? Can we just trade it out?" And as I'm going through this, I'm fuming. My wife walks in and she's like, "What's that? And I was like, "It's the ticket."

And she's like, "Why don't you tell me about it?" I was like, "It wasn't going to bless your soul. I didn't want to get into ..." So I paid that. Why claim against me and the claim would only grow. That's the word. The propitiation was I paid for this ticket. Now what he's saying is he's not talking about we can pay God, that we can supplicate God, mollify God, appease God, we can't do anything in and of ourselves because what is the penalty? What do we owe God? What's the claim that we have against God? Well, we sinned against an infinite God, an infinitely glorious God, an infinitely honorable God, and the penalty for that sin for dishonoring an infinite being is an infinite penalty. We can't pay that in and of ourselves. Now, a lot of people have a problem with God's wrath in that they say, "Well, is this making God out to be capricious or arbitrary? Does he lose his temper? No, this is anthropomorphic language.

From our perspective, we're using human language to talk about God. Obviously it doesn't communicate everything when you communicate. So when God has wrath toward our sin, it's not a sinful anger. It's a just anger. He's not irate, irritable or irascible. God's wrath is his holiness and his justice in action. He is righteously set against evil. Cruelty is immoral, justice is not. So when God has wrath against our sin it's because of his justice. And to get rid of God's wrath is to get rid of justice. And just a thought, just imagine this world without justice. We long for justice when we see the terrible injustices on a weekly basis that happen in the world, that happen in our world. What's shocking is not that God is a God who has wrath. He's angry about our sin. You've got to keep going to get the full view, to understand the full reality of the person of God. It's not shocking that he's angry at sin.

What's shocking is that God takes the initiative to placate that that wrath. God's not demanding that we somehow pay that price. He knows we can't, so God volunteers to satisfy God's wrath. God the son volunteers to satisfy the wrath of God, to absorb the wrath of God, to pay for the wrath of God with his sacrifice on the ... that's the most shocking part of Christianity. And why did he do it? What was he motivated by? He was motivated by his love for us. 1 John 4:10, "And this is love. Not that we have sinned, but that he loved us ... And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins." So he doesn't look down on us and see how loving we are. It's he's motivated by our love when we wanted nothing to do with him. When we were living as if we were our own, when we're living as if God didn't exist, living lives of cosmic plagiarism thinking that everything we have is ours.

Nothing remotely like this exists in any other religion or any other philosophy. Yes, it's propitiation to be sure, but nothing like the world has ever seen before. Augustus Toplady he wrote this couplet to encapsulate this idea. He says be mindful of Jesus and me. My pardon he suffered to buy and what he procured on the tree, on the cross. For me he demands in the sky. He demands it and he procures it. He's just, and the justifier. This is the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The claim against you has been satisfied if you just ask for it. If you just ask for forgiveness and you repent of your sins and on that cross, every ounce of the penalty that we deserve for our sin was poured out in the wrath of God on Jesus Christ.

This is why the cross was so gruesome, so gross and so gory because that's our sin in the sight of God. The gospel requires that we believe two really difficult things at the same time. The first is that you are so bad that Jesus had to die for you, and that Jesus is so good that he was glad to do it because of his love. 1 John 2:2 he says, "Jesus is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." And just one comment here, because this verse has been misinterpreted to justify a lot of false theology including Unitarian theology. This does not mean that everyone's sin has been expunged at the cross. That's not what he's saying because in the same letter, the apostle John actually says that there are those who are still in their sin and they need to be saved from those sins.

What's he talking about? He says that anybody, anybody, no matter what you've done, no matter where you're from, no matter who you are, anybody, the moment you repent of your sins and you believe that you accept Jesus' propitiation for your sins, that you can be saved. His sacrifice is sufficient for all but efficient for those who believe and repent. Sufficient for all, efficient for some. 1 John 2:1, "My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." And he uses the word advocate here. And in the Greek it's parakletos power clay toss. It's used of Jesus only in this text. It's a word that Jesus often uses.

John 14, 15 and 16 he describes the Holy spirit with this word. He said, "I will send you another parakletos, another advocate, the great comforter, the great helper, that's the Holy spirit. By another he means that he is the first advocate. In this context it means a helper, especially if you're guilty in court. So the image that John is giving us is God the father is a judge and we are guilty before him. Jesus comes in and he begins to advocate for he is our just lawyer. And what is the plea? It's not not guilty. That's not the plea that he offers, he enters a guilty plea. We are guilty. But then he says, "But father, you can't hold yon sin against him because I've already paid for it." This is how he's advocating. I've already paid for your sin. He's standing before the father and he's advocating, and how do we get Jesus to be our advocate?

First John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." That we are his because of the sacrifice of Christ and because of his advocacy for us we're with him. I was at a conference with pastor Shane and pastor Andy we went to this preachers conference, gospel coalition, held this conference in Indianapolis last year. And whenever you have these conferences, they give you a lanyard. In the beginning they're like, "Here's your lanyard, you register, you paid, now you have to wear this lanyard everywhere." And the lanyard is a little badge with your name on it. And I don't like legalism and I don't like manmade rules. And I was like, "That's dumb. I'm not wearing this."

So I intentionally forgot it in the hotel room. The next day we come in and it was the best session, the keynote speaker, I forgot already, it wasn't that memorable. So we go there and I forget the lanyard. So I'm with pastor Shane and pastor Andy, and we walk in and the security guard lets them through and says, "You can't go in." I was like, "What? This is a Christian conference. You don't believe in grace?" He was like, "No." And then he's like, "No, this is really important. We can't let you in." And I was like, "What do I do?""You need a lanyard." So I go to the front desk and the front desk I tell him the whole ... I explained the whole thing. They pull up my name. Yeah, you paid okay. I was like, "Can you help me?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Why not? Do you need a lanyard?"

They said, "You need to buy a new lanyard." And I was like, "How much?" They said, "$5.""No, I'm not doing it." Why? Because I'd be a bad steward of God's money. Not doing it. Nickel, you Pharisees. Then I go back and I'm like, "I'm just going to sit by the door and livestream listen on my phone." And I'm sitting there and Andy Davis, Andrew Davis walks by. Andrew Davis is a great friend of the church. He's a pastor at FVC Durham. Incredible, incredible guy. Over 30 books of the Bible memorized, written a lot of books. He comes and he's like, "Young, what are you doing?" I was like, "They won't let me in.""How come?""No lanyard." Okay. He's like, "Don't worry about it. Come with me." Walks right up to the same security guard, the same person. And he just, "Hey, how are you?" And just keeps walking. And then the guy's like, "No, no, no. He can't come in."

And pastor Andy says, "Don't worry about it. He's with me." And I was like, "I told you, Ferris." It's all to say that's kind of like what it means to have Jesus Christ as your advocate. He's done everything. All you have to do is be with him. That's what meno means. And that's how we're reconciled with God. And he writes, why is John writing about propitiation? Why is he writing about advocacy? So that our sins are forgiven and that Jesus advocates for us, and then we can live any way that we want? No. If you truly understood grace, you won't pervert grace. It's not a cheap grace. You don't use the grace as a justification to continue sinning. So he says in 1 John 2:1, "My little children, why am I writing this? I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin." What's he saying? Obedience leads to grace. No, it's grace that leads to obedience.

If you've understood what Jesus Christ has done for you on the cross, what it cost him, how much it cost him, how much he loves you, you can't but want to delight him, live for him. That's why he says verse three, "And by this we know that we have come to know him. This is the test. If we keep his commandments, whoever says, 'I know him,' but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him." It doesn't matter what you say by your confession. What does your life say about your confession? That's what he's saying, "But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected, and by this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked."

As you grow in the faith, you walk with Christ, the chasm between belief and behavior is to be bridged, it can't but be bridged. You have a new heart, new desires, new affection, which leads to new fruit. One objection that arises here is, but if I sin, does that mean that I'm not a christian? And this is something that I wrestle with, this is something most likely you've wrestled with, every serious christian has. And I just want to point out the context says, "Yes, I'm writing so that you don't sin if you do sin, Jesus is a our propitiation. He is our advocate." Don't forget that one of the commandments that we are to keep is repent of your sins. On a daily basis the christian is to repent. And as we grow in the faith, we realize that we have more and more to repent of. It's a daily practice, confess and repent. And also obedience doesn't mean perfect obedience.

Saint Paul writes in Romans 7, "As a believer, the things I want to do, I can't do, the things I don't want to do, I do. It's always this battle between the true self and the shadow self. Scripture divides all of humanity into two categories. The righteous and the unrighteous. David was righteous and he was an adulterer and a murder. Moses was righteous. He was a murder and also disobeyed God and wasn't allowed in the promised land. Peter was righteous but betrayed the Lord at the worst possible moment. Paul was righteous but despaired of his continuing sinfulness. So righteousness biblically is position. We are in Christ by grace through faith. He robes us in his sanctified robes of purity, the clothing of holiness. And then what happens is the fundamental commitment of your life, the root direction of your life, the truest characteristic of your life is to grow in obedience.

Do we do it perfectly? No. When a Christian sins, you have remember the Holy spirit convicts so much so you beg God, please take this sinful desire away from me. Any true Christian, if you're awakened in the middle of the night by Jesus Christ and he says, "Do you want me to take away your ability to sin?" The true Christian says, "Yes Lord, please." That's how you know you want to obey, you long to obey. However, scripture teaches us we're still in a fallen world, in a fallen flesh. And our true self, our true identity is battling with our shadow identity. It's the fight between the spirit and the flesh. And when we sin, you're not just being untrue to God. You're being untrue to your real self dear Christian. Saint Paul says, "It wasn't I that sinned, it was the sin in me." And that's not just a cop out or an excuse, it's simply the truth that we have a new identity, new heart, new affections, and we are to grow in that.

And how do you do that? Particularly by growing in love. And this is point two, how do you know that you know that you're a Christian? You obey, you seek to grow in obedience, and you seek to grow in love. And he says in verse seven, "Beloved, I'm writing, you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have heard from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing you, which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he's in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness and whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But wherever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes."

What does he mean by new commandment old commandment? He's not talking about chronological. It's not time thing, old and new. It's a quality thing. It's the same commandment on old and new Testament that the essence of the law is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself. He's saying it's new in the sense it's new to us. When you hear the gospel, which is a timeless gospel, it's an old gospel but it's a timeless gospel and you hear it for the first time, it's brand new. Everything is brand new. That's what he's saying, new heart, new affections, new desires. And he says, "The way that you know that you have true love for God is you have true love for your brothers and sisters in the faith." If God is your father, you can't love your Christian siblings, your brothers and sisters. And the reason why, why are you telling us this?

He's telling us this because it's hard. It's not natural. And particularly, he focuses on loving the brothers and like Christians close to you who know you best. He focuses on that because some of the hardest people in the world to love are your siblings. The people that know you, they know how to push all the buttons, they know exactly what to say, how to say in order to set you off. And he says, "Loving those people who are hard to love," particular people, not just Christians in general. Like Linus from peanuts, his famous line was, "I love mankind, but it's people I can't stand." And that's a lot of Christians are like, "I love the church. I love Christians worldwide." Okay, show me your community. Show me the Christians that you are walking with. Show me the Christians that are hard to love. That's what he's saying.

And by the way, this isn't like a temptation for us that like it's easy to love God. It's people that are hard to love. That's been the temptation all throughout church history. Like in the modern excuses, I'm an introvert. I can't stand people. No, get away from me. I just want go. This has always been an issue. Like the monastic movement started because people are like, "I can't stand people. I'm just going to go and live in a cloister with an Abbe and just pray to God all day." And one of the famous examples of this is Thomas à Kempis in the 15th century. He was a Dutch monk who wrote The Imitation Of Christ. And if you don't know The Imitation Of Christ, it's a phenomenal book that teaches you how to grow in your relationship with Christ. And it's second only to the Bible in its influence on Christian, on the church throughout history. It's been printed in 6,000 separate editions.

Love the book. Here's my only knock against it. Not one word about loving Christians or people in general. Actually, this is what he says, "Desire the fellowship of God alone and his Holy angels and shun the acquaintance of men." I'm going to force my daughters to memorize that and just that's our new motto. But he's saying, "All you need is a relationship with God. People, get away from me." He missed the whole point of 1 John. He missed the whole point of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He missed the point of love. The other thing I'll say here, not much on this point because this is a theme that John's going to get back to more. We got to define love biblically and not culturally. In our culture, to say that you love and that we are to be loving is to say that you are nice, that you never say anything that upsets anyone. You never do anything to confront someone. You don't talk about sin. Just be a nice person. That's what it means to love.

And if that's our definition of love, then we have no idea how to explain some of the things that Jesus did. Going to the Pharisees he says, "Woe to you Pharisees for you are like whitewashed tombs," calls them serpents, all kinds of names. Yeah. Talking to a crowd, he says, "You unbelieving and perverted generation. How long shall I put up with you?" Peter, when he was being selfish, Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." Seemingly unloving, but actually he's telling them exactly what they need to get them awakened from the spiritual stupor. He's sacrificing comfort to do a very difficult thing because that's the best thing for that person. There's other examples of this in scriptures.

Paul in the book of acts talking to this guy named Elymas, he says, "You are full of deceit. You fraud the son of the devil, enemy of all righteousness." And then he strikes him with blindness. It seems unloving, but it's probably the most loving thing that he could do to awaken him from a spiritual blindness. So what I'm saying is we need to expand our definition of love. Our love is not just niceness, our love is sacrificing self and comfort to do the thing that's best for the beloved. And the great example of that is the cross. Point three is that we grow. So we are to obey, love and grow. Grow in what? Obedience and love and following Christ. And 1 John 2:12-14 he gives us three groups that he addresses twice. Each group for emphasis and this is the lyricism of John.

He says, "I'm writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I'm writing to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I'm writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you children because you know the father. I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one." First thing that he starts with is that we are children of God because of Christ name's sake, in his name's sake. So we're not forgiven of our sins because of our repentance or our faith or our actions, our good works. So repentance and faith in and of themselves have no power. Repentance and faith are like a key to a car. The key has no power in of itself, but the key accesses the power that's not within. It accesses doesn't create.

So the way that we access God's power, the way that we gain access to is through faith and repentance, but not for our namesakes, it for his. The other thing I want to point out here is he's talking about levels of spiritual growth in health and maturity. He's not talking to little children particularly, like physical little children. He's talking about to people who are new in the faith. So you can be 60 and if you have a just met Jesus, you are an infant in the faith. Or you could be 25 or 20 and if you've been walking with the Lord since you were a child, you can be a father or mother in the faith. So he's saying that the idea behind is that there needs to be growth and health and maturity. So dear Christian, are you stuck in a season with a lack of growth?

If so, you need to ask why. Children he's saying, "Children, you need to grow out of the state of thinking that everything exists for you. If you've been around kids, kids just have no idea that they're not at the center of the universe. They just assume this, mom and dad exist for me. My daughter's favorite, my youngest daughter, her favorite word is mine. She comes to me, papa is mine. She fights with my five-year-olds over, no, mine. But she thinks that literally we exist for her. And a lot of Christians assume that all the other Christians exist for you and then you come to a church with that mindset. It's fine for a season, but at some point you've got to trade your bib for an apron. And he says, "Another stage is young men and young women and that you fight the evil. You've overcome the evil one." Why? Because the word of God abides in you. This is when you realize the spiritual walk is a fight on a daily basis. You've got to fight.

You take responsibility for your own walk and you fight the good fight. And then as you do that, as you progress to get to a stage where you understand your spiritual father and mother, that it's our responsibility to care for those who are younger or those who are less mature, unhealthy. And so we serve and we guide and we care. And also that shows us that we got to be patient with people in different levels of the faith. And how does growth come? Growth comes through grace. That's all. That's what he focused on, propitiation and advocacy. We focus on Jesus. We focus on the grace that we received. We eat from the word of God on a daily basis and we get strengthened as we apply that word, and particularly through the rhythms of the spiritual life.

How did Jesus practice the spiritual life? Like if John's telling us we're going to walk with Jesus, become like Jesus, well, how did Jesus and walk on a daily basis? What were the rhythms of his life? And I'll give you a few. Silence, he would go and spend time with God in silence and solitude, sacrificial and simple living in the Holy scriptures. He would immerse himself in the scriptures, meditate on the scriptures so he truly knew who God was. He truly knew what mercy and justice and grace were. So all he did flowed from those practices of silence, solitude, sacrificial living and scripture. So we are to obey, love, grow in obedience and love. And we can't just focus on the positive things we've got to focus on there are some negative things that we got to cut out from our life.

So if you want to get healthy, it's not just about eating the right things and adding more supplements into your life. You've got to cut out the junk. And this is point four that we got to deny desires that pull us away from God. And this is point verse 15, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever by world." It's the Greek word cosmos. He's talking about humanity that is united in rebellion against God. Humanity that is United against God and Jesus talking about the world.

It's not the physical world that God created, it's the sinful structures in the world. And Jesus said, "The world hates me." He said, "The devil is the prince of this world. The whole world is under the power of the evil one." Jesus said, "I pray for my disciples not in particular for the world." This is why Jesus came to save the world. So John 3:16, "For God so loved the world ..." A lot of people translate that to mean the world was so great that God loved us and the onus is put on us. It's not endorsement of the world. It's a testimony to the character of God. He didn't love us because we were lovely. He loved us because he was loving. What was shocking about that verse isn't that God's love is to be admired because the world is so big, that God's love is to be admired because we were so bad. That's the world that he saves us from.

So scripture says that, "When we repent and believe in Jesus Christ, we are transferred from the world, the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's light." So in a sense, Christians are in the world, but not of it. In a sense no Christian actually lives in the world. No, the world contains no Christians because Jesus has chosen us out of the world. Everything that's antagonistic toward God. So if we've been taken out of the sinful structures, why in the world would we be pulled back in? And he's saying this because the allure is so powerful. This is the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes and the pride of life. Desire of the flesh, this is sensuality, the desires of the eyes, this is materialism and the pride of life, this is self glorification.

And once you have these three categories, you begin to see this everywhere. You see in marketing, you see this in social media. You see this all like half the economy is built up on the pride of life, desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes, and it's the same temptation over and over. This is the same pattern that Satan used attempt Eve. Eve looked at the fruit, that it was good for food, that it was pleasing to the eyes, and that it would make wise. Desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes, pride of life. Satan comes to Jesus when Jesus was fasting and he tempts him. Turn the stone into bread. Desire the flesh. Hey, I'm going to give you all these kingdoms. Desire of the eyes. Hey, jump off the top of the temple. Self-glorification. The allure is there. So dear Christian, where are your affections pulling you away from God and toward the world?

And the fight for faith is the fight for desire. And that desire, Jonathan Andover said, "True religion, consistent holy affections." We are to vivify our affections for God, give life to our affection and then kill our sinful desires. This is the mortification of the flesh. C. S. Lewis talked about the sweet poison of the false infinite, the sweet poison of the false infinite. It looks so sweet, but it's poisonous. It looks infinite. It looks like it'll last forever. This feeling, this relation, whatever this ends up pulling you, it looks infinite, but it's temporal. G. K. Chesterton said, "The acid test of any religion is what do you deny?" So dear Christian, as you follow Jesus, we can't but deny. He says, "Follow me and take up your cross daily." Where are you growing in self-denial? Where do you need to grow in self-denial?

So how do you know that you know God? You obey, love, grow and deny. I'll conclude with this. Robert Robinson lived in the 18th century in London. He lived a life of debauchery in his youth as part of a gang. Did all kinds of horrible things. At age 17 went to hear George Whitfield preach the gospel. He gets saved, radically goes into the ministry, becomes a pastor and an age 23 he writes, one of our most beloved hymns that we ever sing is come thou fount. Writes his incredible hymn, it's inspired like we still sing, it's so powerful. Then after a while, his love for the Lord began to cool off and he walks away from the faith, goes through a season of severe depression and sin. He was traveling and as he's traveling he meets a Christian young lady and they start conversing and she realizes that he is educated in the terminology of the faith and she says, "Okay, have you read this hymn? I just recently came across this hymn. It touched my soul powerfully. Maybe it'll bless you.

And at that moment he started weeping. She takes out come thou fount. And he says, "I am the poor wretch that wrote that hymn many years ago and I'd do anything to experience again that joy that I knew." And she all she did, she pointed him to the lyrics and she said, "Look, the streams of God's mercy are still here. Just come and stand under his streams of mercy and he will cleanse you of sin." Robinson wrote in that third verse owed to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. We need that. We need God's grace to bind our hearts to him, to terraform us into the image of Christ. And Robinson's own hymn was used to turn his wandering heart back to the Lord.

If you're not a Christian, accept God's grace. He is your propitiation, he is your advocate, accept it, repent it, listen and believe. If you're a Christian, you need to grow in obedience and love and growth and denial. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time that you've given us in the Holy scriptures. What a powerful word you've left us. And we thank you for the Holy spirit. Holy spirit we thank you for continuing minister to us, continue to grow us and continue to grow us in maturity and health so that we can help others grow in maturity and help bring people to you to be introduced to you and be transformed by you. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you, the God of all light did not leave us in the dark, did not leave us in our own darkness. Instead Lord, that you came and you exposed our darkness through the truth of your son, Jesus Christ. And we thank you Jesus that you didn't just expose our darkness with your light, but you also showed us your love, of how much you love us, that you are willing to die on the cross bearing the penalty for our darkness.

We thank you, Holy Spirit, that through you, we can have fellowship with the father and with the son and with one another because of the gospel. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures. I pray that you give us grace to confess our sins, reveal where we are still in darkness, the patterns in our life that are still pulling us away from you. I pray, expose those, and as you give us grace to confess those sins, I pray both forgive us and cleanse us. And we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So we're kicking off the year with a brand new sermon series that we are calling, Meno, Living in Light & Love. And it's a series through 1 John. The word meno is from the Greek, they coined a Greek, the original Greek that the New Testament is written in.

The M, you understand, the next letter, then E, then the V is an N sound in the Greek, and then the W is an O sound, meno. So that's your Greek lesson for the day. You're welcome. So why this word? This word means to abide, to remain, to be connected to. John uses this over 20 times in his very short epistle. And the idea is that we thrive, we flourish, we live life to the fullest when we are connected to God and we are connected to God through Jesus Christ. And we remain in him by walking in light and walking in love because God is light and God is love.

And this whole idea of walking comes from the very beginning of scripture where Adam, he walked with the Lord in the quiet and the cool of the garden. He had a personal relationship, an experiential relationship with God, which then was severed through sin. But then, we see glimpses of this relationship come up in the Old Testament where Enoch walked with God, Noah walked with God, Abraham walked with God.

Jesus Christ comes and he calls his disciples. He said, "Follow me. Walk with me," and this is what the Christian life is. It's not just about rituals and rules, it's about a personal relationship with the god of the universe. Who wrote this epistle? It was the Apostle John, the Disciple John, one of the closest apostles that Jesus had, one of the closest disciples, he had three in the inner circle. He had 12 disciples, but three in the inner circle, Peter, James and John.

And he knew Jesus, he walked with Jesus, he was an eyewitness to the miracles of Jesus and he was actually the one who reclined closest to Jesus at the last supper. He was the one to whom Jesus Christ entrusted his mother, Mary, from the cross. She is now your mother and you are her son. He's the one that actually outran Peter to the empty tomb.

And how do we know that he outran Peter to the empty tomb, and how do we know that he was Jesus' favorite disciple? We get that from the Gospel of John. John wrote that about himself. If I outran the first apostle, I'd write that too. And he's like, "Yeah, Jesus loved me more than anyone else." So John is the guy who he understood Jesus' heart.

Early on, he had anger issues along with his brother, James. They were called the sons of Zebedee. Jesus actually gave them a nickname, the sons of thunder. They would go into a village and the village wouldn't repent. And they're like, let's call down fire from heaven and incinerate everyone. Jesus like, "Hold on." And then actually, the love of Jesus Christ transforms him. And by the end of his life, he's called the apostle of love.

So he writes as a father. He's probably in his late 80s, perhaps early 90s and he's writing to these Christians who are second generation Christians. He calls them beloved. He calls them my little children in the faith. And he writes to them with the purpose of showing them that God's word is timeless, therefore, it's always timely.

They're second generation Christians and the false teachers are coming in and the world is pulling them away from the Lord by saying, "Hey, don't believe in that stuff. It's outdated, it's outlandish, it's outmoded, it's regressive, we're progressive, it's antiquated and we're modern, it's old school, we're new school."

And John says, "No. I'm not even having that argument. I want to show you that this isn't about progression, it's about being outside of time, that we are people in time and we need a word that is outside of us, outside of time. We need an eternal word," and that's how he begins his epistle. This is 1 John 1:1-10. Would you look at the text with me?

That which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and reclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest to us that which we have seen and heard.

We proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light. In him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word, meaning, write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First of all, you can know Christianity is true. Second, you can know that you're a true Christian. Third, you can show that you're a true Christian and you can show Christianity is true, and those three at the end are the doctrinal test, the moral tests and relational test and I'll explain what that means.

So first of all, you can know Christianity is true. John is writing as a person who has seen Jesus Christ, has heard his words, has actually touched him, has had fellowship with him on a physical level and on a spiritual level and he understands that this is true, like you and I are true, you and I are alive. This is as true as life and death and this is really important because here at Mosaic, and this is what historic Orthodox Christians believe, that Christianity isn't just true because we choose to say it's true.

It's true for everybody if you choose to believe or not, just like gravity is true for everybody, and this is exceptionally counter-cultural because we live in a day and age where the only thing you're allowed to be certain about is that we can't be certain about anything. The only thing that you're allowed to be sure about is that we can't be sure about anything. The only thing you can have true conviction about is that we can't have true conviction about anything. The only authority we're allowed to talk about is the authority that we question.

So John comes in and he's incredibly countercultural. He says that you can know that this is true. You can know that Christianity is the truth from God. And he uses these words over and over. Uses the word ginosko 15 times. The word ginosko in the Greek means to observe and to experience. You observe the truth, you observe Christians, you observe the church, you observe world history and church history and you got to experience it.

Oida is used 25 times, that you can know by reflection. When you take God's truth and you meditate upon it with an open heart, it comes inside your heart. Phaneroo means to make known. It's used nine times. Parrésia, confidence used four times in this epistle. And what he wants is he wants to leave us with certainty that this is true.

1 John 1:1-3, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, which we have … By the way, the first time I've ever read this, eyes glare, like what is he talking about? If you separate each one of the words, you're like, "Yeah, I understand those words." But when you bring them together, you're like, "Why in the world?"

And by the way, this is his introduction. I remember at homiletics class in seminary, I was told, whenever you give a speech, whenever you give a sermon, you got to give a very clear introduction that captures people attention, that shows them that you're worth listening to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. John does none of that. He begins this epistle with a word that, that which.

John, why are you doing that? Well, what he's doing is he's framing up the very central idea within a few sentences, and I'll explain exactly what he's doing, but what is the subject of this letter? What is the subject of this paragraph? He says, "That which was from the beginning," and use the word which, which we have seen, which we have looked upon, and then at the very center is a subject concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen and testify to the eternal life, which was with the father, verse three, that which we have seen and proclaimed to you, et cetera, et cetera. He said, "This is the subject. The subject of everything I'm talking about is life." It's at the very center of this paragraph. And by life, I mean eternal life and by life and eternal life, I mean Jesus Christ who is the source of all life.

Everything was created through him, flows through him. He sustains all of life. It's the message of life and the messenger of life and they're rooted in eternity. It's unchanging. It's fixed. He's saying this to show us that this truth is eternal. This isn't a truth that can be deemed progressive or regressive, this is a truth that's outside of time because God is outside of time.

There's a church in Coolidge Corner, a very nice building. They have a sign outside that says, putting the progressive back in Christianity. And John was saying, "No, no. Christianity isn't about regressive or progressive, it's actually outside of time because God is outside of time." 1 John 1:8 says, that which was from the beginning.

He's talking about the life, the life that which was from the beginning, Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father, but through me." Jesus has always existed. There was never a time when he was not. He had no beginning, will have no ending. The preexistence of Jesus Christ is the presupposition to the incarnation. He was before he was born.

John actually talks about this in John 1:1-3 in his gospel and there too, he doesn't have a very captivating introduction, but it's theologically sound. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. The logos in the beginning was Christ.

And what's fascinating is that in both our epistle, 1 John 1 and in the gospel of John, in the Greek, he doesn't use a definite article because in the Greek, there were no definite articles. And the definite article, by the way, this is English refresher from ninth grade. Definite articles are the, indefinite articles are a, and here where it says in the beginning, definite article, that's not in the Greek.

So in the Greek, what it says is in beginning was the word, in beginning was word. And in 1 John it says, that which was from beginning. I'm going somewhere with this. Hold on for just a little second. It doesn't make any sense in English because we need the definite articles to make sense of it. But if you speak another language, some other language don't have the definite articles. Russian for example, no definite articles, no indefinite articles.

So if you meet a Russian speaker and you're like, I have no idea what they're saying, now you know. They don't have definite articles. So if you read this text with the Russian accent, it makes all the sense in the world. That which was from beginning. Yeah, I get that. In beginning was word. Very good. If you wanted to develop the scariest accent that exists, the Russian accent, that's all you do. You just drop the definite and indefinite articles and just talk angry and there you got it.

And this is all to say which beginning, which beginning, which beginning is he talking about? The beginning for us. The beginning for us was not the beginning for the word because Jesus was outside of the word. He has always existed and he comes into the world to bring the light of God. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory as the gospel of John says.

So in 1 John 1b and 2b, John says, "This word, which was from the beginning, before the beginning, we have heard, we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon, have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen and testify to and proclaim to you the eternal life, which is what the father was made manifest to us, that which was eternal became temporal. The infinite became finite for a while, the spiritual becomes physical and we have seen the manifestation of this word in Jesus Christ. He is life itself."

Verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, this word that became flesh was spiritual and becomes the flesh and now, I proclaim to you that same spiritual word through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he says three times in the first three verses, we saw the incarnate son of God. John is saying, "Why should you listen to me? What are my credentials? On which authority am I standing? Why listen to me? Is it because I have theological degree? No. Is it because I have studied the Greek? No, it's because I was with Jesus. I was with him. I've spent time with him."

John said, "I've heard his voice. I know the tone, the tenor, the cadence of his voice. I know what Jesus smells like. I've seen his miracles. We feasted together. I've seen him in a mountain of transfiguration. I saw his glory. I saw him and the crucifixion on Golgotha. I saw him bleeding for us. The eternal was dying," he said.

And by the way, he's not just saying this so that you can know factually that it's true, you can, because of the historical evidence, because these are true historic events, because the apostolic witness, you could know those things objectively. But John says, "No, it's deeper than that. I don't want you to just know the good news of Jesus Christ in your mind. It's not just cerebral." He says, "I want you to know it in your heart."

And here he talks about the subjective evidence, which is actually objective, and when you think about, but the subjective evidence is you know deep in your heart that it's true. There's nothing more true than the fact that Jesus Christ, the son of God, died for your sins and rose on the third day for your forgiveness.

He said, "I know it's true because the illumination of the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit allowed John not just to hear Jesus' voice, but to have it still ringing in his ears and in his heart. He saw Jesus, but now, he sees Jesus on a deeper level and hear what he's talking about is that Jesus Christ, the life, the reality underneath all of reality is the one who makes sense of all reality. The life underneath all of life is the one that makes sense of life.

He says, "I met him and I found meaning for my life through him. I know my purpose through him. I know where I came from. I know who I am and I know where I will spend eternity because of him. The life Jesus Christ." C.S. Lewis has this quote where he talks about Christianity and he says, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else. I believe in Christianity like I believe in the sun, not because I've seen it, but because by it, I see everything else."

This is what Jesus does. Jesus makes sense of every single part of our life, every single part of reality, and Jesus Christ is the only one who can truly satisfy our minds and our hearts. Why do I say that? Because we have these moments in life that you experience this moment and you're like, this is what life is all about, and they're so fleeting.

These little fleeting moments when you feel alive, you've had those moments. Perhaps it's graduating from a program, perhaps victory in something. Perhaps you're on vacation, you're traveling, this is life. I want this to always be, and then like three days later, you're like, I want to go home. They're fleeting. Like the first time you experienced romance or falling in love, you're like, God, this is life. I am pulsating. I'm fully alive.

The first time you get a job, you're like, this is my dream job. And then like a week later, it's just work. That's why they pay you, because you wouldn't do it for free. But it's like a thrill of victory. You won the Super Bowl last year and then every single year, everyone expects you to win every single game. Come on, let someone else win.

And he's saying Christianity is true because historical evidence, the apostolic evidence, you can know all that, but it's true in your heart. When the Holy Spirit illuminates your heart, regenerates your heart, you're given a knowledge, a certainty, a conviction and you don't need physical eyes to see it, to know that it's true.

Lots of people saw the historic Christ. Lots of people saw Jesus Christ come back from the dead. Not everybody believed. 1 Peter 1:8, though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. He fills your heart with this joy in a spiritual level, it's inexpressible, and you see with the truest eyes that you can see the eyes of your soul.

So you can know that Christianity is true. We don't stop there. John doesn't stop there because some people say knows that Christianity is true, the demons believe and they're in trepidation at the fact of God, but there's no love for God. So John says, "You can know that it's true, but then also, you need to know that you're a Christian, that it's transformed you." And this is 0.2, you can know that you're a true Christian, and this is the doctrinal test.

And John does this all throughout the book, and I'll just give you these points here. But for him, the doctrinal test is that you cannot believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died on the cross for your sins and rose on the third day unless the Holy Spirit has quickened your heart, regenerated your heart, unless the Holy Spirit lets the lights go on, the illumination of your mind by the Holy Spirit, this illumination, you didn't invent, you didn't cause it to happen and you cannot undo it.

The Holy Spirit has shown this light in your soul and you can't turn it off if you tried. And this illumination, perhaps doesn't prove that Christianity is true. Objectively, that's a historic evidence, the apostolic evidence, but it proves to you that you are a Christian. The most important question that every single one of us needs to answer in this life today is, are you saved?

Are you saved from the wrath to come? Have you been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred in the kingdom of God's light, the kingdom of his son? Are you saved? Are you a Christian? And if the answer is maybe, this book is for you. If you're not sure of your salvation, if you're not assured that you are a child of God, this book is for you. John wants you to have this assurance.

This is why he's written the book 1 John 5:13. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. Do you know? Can you say with full conviction, full assurance? Yes. If I die right now, I will spend eternity with God. I will spend eternity with Christ. When it comes to Christianity, how you know that you're a Christian isn't because of the works that you've done or the works that you will do, we're saved by grace through faith.

The moment that you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died on the cross for your sins and you repent of your sins, that very moment, you are a Christian because that repentance and that faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit. And if you're like, I'm not sure. This is what I recommend. I recommend you take the gospel of John and that you sit down with an open heart and you ask God, God, please reveal yourself to me. God, is this true? Is this true? Help my unbelief? Is this true?

And I promise you, he will reveal himself to you because the very fact that you would do that with an open heart and desire to be saved, desire to be a Christian is already a sign that he is working in your heart. That's already a gift. And to bolster our assurance, he gives us three tests in this book and we'll deal with this sequentially over the course of the next eight weeks in this series.

The doctrinal test is, do you believe this? Do you believe in the teachings, the word of God concerning Jesus Christ, the God-man and saving work? And then there's also the moral test. Now, if you are in the kingdom of light, if God has shown his light in your life, are you walking in the light? And that's a 0.3 and then 0.4 will be the relational test, so doctrinal, moral, relational.

Three is you can show that you're a true Christian. You can know that Christianity is true. You can know that you're a true Christian and you can show that you're a true Christian through the moral test. Does your life show it? 1 John 1:3, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ.

And then he uses that same word fellowship two more times on this text in verse six, if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So for him, light and truth are synonymous, darkness and lies are synonymous. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

Jesus is reality. The word fellowship in the Greek is koinonia. What the word fellowship means is a personal experience of sharing something that's significant. You share something that's significant. Fellowship is the deepest level of friendship. You make it faster. I remember in college one time, I went to a concert with a friend of mine, kind of a friend, he lived down the hall. And we went to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. And after that, we were in the mosh pit together. And after that, he's like, "Man, I feel like we bonded." And then I never spoke to him again. Very superficial.

The deeper the thing that unites us, the deeper the thing that you share, the deeper your friendship. And the deepest thing that we can share with someone is God. Faith in God, love God, delight in God, desire to obey God. And he says, "We have fellowship with the father and with the son by the power of the Holy Spirit."

And Christianity is a relationship. It's a fellowship with God. It's not just about what you do for God or what God has done, it's about you walking together with God on a daily basis. The fellowship with God, he's saying, is a relationship. And every single relationship takes effort. We're saved by grace through faith. So our relationship with God is without earning, you can't earn it, but it's not without effort.

Every thriving, enduring, flourishing relationship, it takes work. And marriage, it takes work, with your children, it takes work, at friendship, it takes work, our relationship with God takes effort, and that effort is are you pursuing the light? Are you pursuing the light of God? Are you pursuing the truth of God? Are you pursuing to walk in the holiness of God?

And this 1 John 1:5, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light, in him is no darkness at all. And this is really fascinating because he could have started with God is love. That's true, but he doesn't start with that. Although that's more inviting. Why not just start with God is love? God loves you, Jesus loves you, he starts with God is light.

And the reason why he starts with God is light is because that's how God reveals himself. God reveals himself first of all through his holiness, through his light and then through his love. This is the revelation of God. And John starts with the person of God, not us. And the reason why he does that is because our deepest problem, every single one of us, is that we're self-centered. We are so self-focused, we're selfish.

And I catch myself with this once in a while. How many times today this morning did you think of yourself? In December, I only preached one time here in Mosaic. And I got to listen to the sermons and I came to worship service and I came to every single one of the worship service and I love it. I love being here. But as I'm sitting here, I was just analyzing myself. I'm listening to a sermon and I'm worshiping and I worship for a little bit and then all of a sudden, I'm thinking about I'm hungry or it's too cold or it's too hot. What am I doing after church? Am I going to Los Amigos today?

The music is not as good as usual, or this, or that. And then as I'm sitting, I'm in the presence of God. I am here to focus on God. I'm here to encounter God. I'm just focusing on myself and I'm a professional Christian. And if I do this, you definitely do this. Every single one of us, we're focused on ourselves. Before I got married, I thought I was the most selfless person. I actually told my wife early on. I was like, "You have won the husband lottery. You're welcome. You are so lucky."

She has needs, but I have needs. And then we got through that by the grace of God and then we have a kid and my goodness, they are so selfish. It's all about their needs. What about mine? And here's the thing, a lot of people come to God like that and a lot of churches cater to people and allow people to come to God from a very self-centered place. You approach God and you say, what can God do for me? Why should I follow God? Why should I obey God? Why should I sacrifice for God?

Yeah. If he gives a little joy, I could have a little more happiness. Can God make me happy? Yeah, I want something. Could God give it to me? Or I've got so many problems, can God solve them? And when you approach faith from a very self-centered place, it only deepens your self-centeredness and never fixes it. So John starts here and he starts with, God is light. He's absolutely holy and there's darkness within us and something needs to be done about the darkness in our hearts, about the selfish and the self-centeredness in our hearts. We need to be delivered from it.

And here, the reason primarily why he does that is because we'll never understand God's love until we understand God's light. We'll never understand that when God's light shines into our hearts and exposes the sin and the vile darkness within, until we see who we are before God, we'll never understand his love. We'll never understand the cross, that the cross is the path of salvation. Why can't God just forgive me? He created everything with a word. Why can't he just say, I forgive you? Because he's holy. That's why.

We'll think of the cross as meaningless or unnecessary. And also, starting with God's holiness and God's light, exposes any false claims of fellowship with God. Yeah, I love God. Yeah. I pray in my spare time. I'm a spiritual person. To whom do you pray? Do you pray to a God who is love? Do you pray to a God who sees the sin in your life?

And also, starting with a God who is light allows us to understand what we truly deserve. And this is really important I think because we go through these moments in life when we suffer perhaps or we don't get the things that we expect that we deserve to get. An entitlement begins to creep in and you get something in life.

You're like, I deserve so much better. I expected that I'm going to be in a different place than I am now. God's light, God's holiness shows you know what we deserve? We deserve eternity in hell apart from God experiencing the conscious wrath of God. That's what we deserve. Everything else is grace and it gives us spiritual fortitude to go through the suffering, go through trials, understanding that God is sovereign and also starting with God's holiness.

When we understand this is what we deserve, but this is what God offers because the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, he offers us eternal life, he offers us forgiveness, he offers us cleansing of all of our sins, fills your heart with incredible light and love and joy and we deepen our fellowship with God by pursuing our walk in light, not in darkness. 1 John 1:6, one six I'm going to give you these three verses and just look at the parallelism.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness. If you say, yeah, I'm a Christian, yeah, my sins are forgiven, but you're pursuing darkness. He says, "We lie and do not practice the truth." Verse eight, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 10, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

And John here is writing against the false teachers who came into this community. And one of the things that they said was, you know what, it doesn't matter how you live in the flesh, in the body, all that matters is what you believe. All that matters is what you do in your spirit. And by bifurcating the spirit from the body, from the flesh, they said nothing that you do in the flesh matters. You can live any way you want.

And then at some point, if you want, come to God, he'll forgive you of your sins and then you keep going to live any way you want. So your spirit is in the light. It doesn't matter what your flesh is. And John says, "That's not how it works. God doesn't just care about our souls. He cares about our bodies because we are embodied spirits. We're spiritual bodies. It's all interconnected." So God does care. And this is why Jesus comes into the flesh. And this is why we can't excuse sin by saying it was done in the flesh.

And here, he says, "Walking in light and walking in darkness." What is he talking about? What does he mean by darkness? He's talking about that sinful part in our hearts that we're deathly afraid to look into. You know it's there. Everybody knows it's there. We know that there's evil, a darkness inside. Movies and books have been written, songs have been written. There's a dark passenger inside.

My high school football coach, Coach Ogletree, great guy, kind of an alcoholic, and he would come to practice drunk. And I remember one time, sophomore year, I was in the varsity team and I was hanging out with some of the older students. So my coach comes to me, he takes me inside, he said, "Jan, do not go over to the dark side."

And I knew exactly what he meant. Just like, you know exactly what I mean. You know exactly what I'm talking to. There's a darkness deep inside. There's things inside that we are deeply ashamed of. It's in every single one of us. So the first thing that we need to do, and what it means to walk in the light, it means to approach God and say, God, you're light. There's darkness in me, but because of the grace of Jesus Christ, because of the blood of Christ, there is cleansing. There is forgiveness.

I'm going to take steps toward you as I do. I see more of my darkness because there's more of the light. I'm not running. I'm not turning away from the sin. I'm not ignoring. I'm not denying my sins. I'm not customizing truth to my life. I'm customizing life to the truth. I'm adapting my life. I'm approaching the light, not running from it.

1 John 1:7, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. I love this verse because this verse shows us that despite how much darkness there is and despite how many times I fall, and despite how many times I dishonor God with thoughts and inclinations of the heart and desires that are far from God's will, when I approach him and I desire to walk in the light, there's always cleansing. There's always forgiveness.

And what's fascinating is, what he's saying is that there's cleansing not just for people who are in the dark. He's not saying the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin when we're walking in the dark because we need cleansing, he's saying, even when you're walking in the light, meaning, even if you are walking with Christ every single day of your life from now on until you die, you still need cleansing.

The closer you come to the light, the more exposed, the more you realize that you need cleansing. And verse nine, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What's fascinating is he doesn't just say that Jesus forgives us of our sins. He doesn't just say that Jesus forgives us of our unrighteousness, he says that Jesus cleanses us from our sins.

I like that. Do you know why this is important? Because I feel this in my own heart, that as you're walking with the Lord, there are seasons where it's like, yeah, I know my sins are forgiven. I know I'm not under the condemnation of God, but I also feel like my soul is gunked up.

If you think about cleansing, perhaps it's after the holidays, you just ate so much junk and you're like, I need a cleanse. I need to fast. I need to become a vegan. I need to do something. I need a cleanse. Something like that happens on our souls. The best shower that I ever experienced of cleansing is from a long trip. You take a long trip, like you're traveling back from Europe, couple of planes, and you go home, that first shower.

Airlines know this. If you've ever flown Lufthansa, they give you that little warm towel. You're like, thank you. I had no idea how much I need it. I'm disgusting. We need cleansing. What he's saying is, yes, our sins are forgiven, but dear Christian, you still need cleansing. So where in your life do you need cleansing? Where in your life is there a darkness? Where in your life are you mired in sin? Perhaps a pattern or habitual sin that's pulling you away from God? Perhaps strongholds, secret sins, dark secrets.

And he says, come to God. Come to God, confess your sins and he is faithful and just to cleanse you and to forgive you. Christ didn't die to make us comfortable sinners. And 0.4 is you can show Christianity is true. And this is verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. And that's fascinating.

John with you? Yeah, he's talking about himself. He's talking about the apostolic witness. You can have fellowship with the apostles. What does he mean? Where's John right now? Well, he's dead, but his body would turn into a corpse. But where's John right now? He is in the presence of God. He is already experiencing eternity with God, but he's saying you could have fellowship with God the father and God the son, vertical fellowship.

And as you do, you can have a horizontal fellowship with Christians from before you and Christians that come after through this faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's a fellowship with the father, son and the Holy Spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit. Verse seven, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another as well. So we don't just have fellowship with God, we don't just have fellowship with Christians before us, the Christians after us, we have fellowship with Christians who are here now.

Do you have fellowship with Christians? Do you have fellowship with brothers and sisters? Because God is your father. Not just friendship, but a fellowship. Now I'll say, look at the connection in verse seven. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. What's the connection there? The more we pursue God's light, the more we pursue to walk with God. The more we want to spend time with God's children.

The farther we walk away from God's light, the less of a desire we have to spend time with God's children. I've seen this over and over and over where the first sign that someone is walking in the dark, is walking away from the Lord, is they walk away from community with other brothers and sisters who have the Holy Spirit.

So we are to pursue fellowship. We do that in Mosaic through our worship services and our community groups. We pursue fellowship with one another, fellowship that's deeper than friendship. Can you be friends with unbelievers? Yes. Can you have fellowship with unbelievers? No. You can't have the deepest form of connection, intimacy, spiritually speaking.

2 Corinthians says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, but what fellowship has light with darkness? And what we try to develop is light in terms of sharing what's going on in our lives and sharing our failures and our fears and our flaws and our faults. Sin is like mushrooms. It grows in the dark. So we expose those areas to our brothers and sisters and we repent to God and we also confess to one another.

James 5:16, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed and the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. So John says, "The eternal life has come. We proclaim it to you and as we proclaim it to you by grace through faith, you believe in it. You have fellowship with God and we have fellowship with one another and it leads to joy."

And that's verse four 1 John 1, we're writing these things so our joy together may be complete, may be full, may be satisfying so you can know that Christianity is true, you can know that you are a true Christian, you can show that you are a true Christian by walking in the light and you can show the world that you are a Christian, that Christianity is true through your love for other Christians. That's what Jesus said. The world will know that you are my disciples because of your love for one another.

This time, we're going to transition to holy communion. Three things in the holy scripture are called the body of Christ Jesus' physical body, the church which is the body of Christ and also the bread at communion, the bread and the wine are called the body of Christ.

The reason why we celebrate communion is because Jesus told us, "Do this in remembrance of me." We come to holy communion with contrite repentant hearts. Who's the welcome to take part in communion? Anyone who repents of sin. If you are a Christian who is unrepentant, we ask that you refrain. If you are not a Christian and you haven't repented of sin, if you have not believed in Jesus Christ, we ask that you refrain, but even if today, you repent of your sins, say, "Jesus, I confess my sins, there's so much darkness inside. Please forgive me," he forgives you instantaneously and you're welcome to partake.

The usher is going to hand out the elements. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ that's broken for us. The cup symbolizes the blood of Christ that was shed for us to cleanse us from sin. Once you receive the elements, please hold onto them until everyone has received them and then we'll partake together. Would you please pray with me?

Jesus, we thank you for the gospel and we thank you that you didn't just give us words of light and words of love, but you brought both together and both your love and your mercy and your justice and your holiness come together on the cross where, Jesus, you connect us with God, the father. By grace, through faith we can have fellowship with you, fellowship with the father and fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

We want to take some time now to confess our sins. They are many. All too often, we do not love you as you ought to be loved. We don't love neighbor as self, we're too self-focused. Lord, right now, we ask that you ensconce us in your presence, clothe us in your presence so that we focus on you and turn our gaze to you and to the cross of Jesus. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

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Good morning church. Welcome to Mosaic Boston, Brookline. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm the teen director here and I am really excited to be worshiping with you this morning. And I say that partly because I was real nervous coming up to this. I always get nervous before I preach, but as amazing as our worship team is, even they could not have planned how perfectly those songs line up with what we are talking about today. Each and every verse in those songs, I was like, "Oh, I'm talking about that. Oh, I'm talking about that." And so it is clearly moving of the Holy Spirit and I'm encouraged by that and I hope you're encouraged by that too. But before we begin, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly father, Lord, we come to you and we thank you and we praise you that you are king, that you are the ruler over all the universe, but you are also the ruler of our lives. We pray that if we have not yet, we will give you. We will help you reclaim your rightful throne as the king and ruler over our lives and that we will proclaim the truth of who you are to those who don't yet know. And this time come and speak to us through your word and reveal your majesty, your greatness and awe of you through your kingship. We pray all this through your wonderful son, Christ Jesus. Amen.

I'm very excited and happy to be concluding our advent series through the different roles of Jesus Christ. Pastor Shane started the first week going through Jesus' role as Messiah, what it means for Jesus to be fully God, fully man, and to come and to deliver his people. Pastor Andy talked to the next week about Jesus as prophet, Jesus coming proclaiming truth, proclaiming the word of God and giving meaning to our lives. And last week, Pastor Yann talked about Jesus as priest, Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, the sacrifice of bringing us, reconciling us with God. And today we're talking about Jesus as king. And I think for me personally, thinking about a king can kind of be fantasized because we don't really live in a culture with kings right now. We can't really think of very many kings in power today. And most of our thoughts about kings come from storybooks or from fantasies.

But one of the things that I think is consistent with our understanding of a king is that they are powerful, that they rule. And when people come to them, they are in awe of the majesty that is around them. And part of my goal today is to have an awesome sermon. And when I say that, I don't mean that I do a good job. I don't mean that you leave here thinking, "Oh Tyler, he was great, or I remember that sermon so well." No, what I mean is I'm going to the dictionary definition of awesome, which is profoundly reverent or inspiring awe. What I want this time to be is a time where we grow in reverence for Jesus Christ in his role as king and to be inspired to be in all of his greatness and his majesty. And the reason for this is because this idea of awe I believe is inherent to Christmas, is inherent to the holidays because this is something we are all waiting for.

For me as a kid, I would wake up super early Christmas morning so early that my parents had a rule. I wasn't allowed to leave the bedroom until at the earliest 6:00 AM. But they hoped to it was more like eight or 9:00 AM because they knew that I was up at three or four every Christmas morning and I was ready to go. And so instead I had to take the action figures and the stuffed animals off my shelves and I had to play games with myself and it seemed like an hour would pass. And I'd check the clock five minutes, could play another game, make up another scenario, continue going another five minutes. And it seemed forever. But the reason was because I was so excited for Christmas and in the newsletter I explained about a particular present that my parents gave me that inspired me to awe.

But the reason why I was so excited about Christmas was because of this feeling of all that came with the day, not because of presents themselves, but the feeling of awe. And it's not always presents. For some of us, it's that holiday meal, holiday ham. For my dad, it was a holiday steak and potato latkes and it was a beautiful meal. But then the biggest thing that I could think of when I think about what inspired me to be in awe at Christmas was a Christmas light show. I don't know how many of you have ever been to a Christmas light show, but I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone decorated their house for Christmas lights everywhere. And when my parents said, "We're going to drive to a different neighborhood, to a different house to see a light show." This was intense.

"I've seen light shows. All these houses here have lights. What is so great about this show that we're going to be driving to?" And as we drive and we get there, I'm a little kid, I'm looking up and this house is covered every inch plastered with lights. Not only is the house covered, the lawn is covered, they have a front lawn and a back yard, and they actually let you walk into the backyard. And there's different paths in the back yard that you wind in and out of seeing different Christmas light displays in different shows of Christmas. But that's not even the best part. The best part is that the lights, they change colors, they flash and they're synchronized perfectly to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Carol of the Bells. Oh wow. And as a kid, and as I'm standing there being in awe of the bright lights, the flashing colors, the precision in the synchrosy, the powerful chords that are being played, the brisk air around me so that my fingertips are starting to lose feeling.

I can't feel my toes. And the only warmth is coming from that sweet cup of warm, hot chocolate with many marshmallows. That's important that I'm holding awe, amazement and this comes not because it was Christmas or because it was lights, but specifically because of the greatness of the thing I was experiencing. I was overwhelmed by the greatness of it. And so when we're talking about awe and we're talking about awe involving Christmas, the point is that we are to be overwhelmed by the greatness of Jesus' role as king specifically as it relates to Christmas. So today we're going to be spending our time talking about three different points. The first point is a question, are you the king? The second point is awe of the king and the third point is align to the king and we're starting with the question, are you the king?

Because the people of Israel had been waiting centuries for the promise of a king. This is what Pastor Shane addressed in the first week going through Isaiah nine specifically in the text verses six and seven that promised a king that would be born, whose government would be forever and that government would bring peace. And then we told that we will know that this is the king. When a Virgin conceives and bears a son and is called Emmanuel. This is what Pastor Yann talked about last week explaining how Jesus is Emmanuel. Jesus is God with us. If you haven't listened to the sermons, I'd encourage you to listen to them. They are great. They're encouraging and they're uplifting and they're important to what we're talking about today as well. And so when Israel sees, when Mary specifically gives birth to a son and sees, wow, I'm told that he is the one fulfilling this prophecy of being Emmanuel, he's fulfilling the prophecies in Isaiah.

We see in the last few weeks how he has fulfilled the role of Messiah, prophet and priest. He should also be fulfilling the role of king. So as Mary gives birth and watches her son grow, as Joseph watches Jesus grow, as the people of Israel are listening, he gains disciples, they're watching him grow. The thought in their mind is, when are you going to take this mantle of king? And this isn't an idea that I'm placing in their minds. To be clear this is an idea that was inherent to the people at that time because when the wise men came to visit Jesus as an infant, they go to Herod and they say, "We are looking for a king. We are going to worship the king." And Herod is so frightened by this idea that there is a king that he seeks to put Jesus to death because he understands what it means if there is a king in Israel.

And so as we see Jesus grow, the Pharisees and the religious leaders at the time are threatened by Jesus. They say he is teaching with authority, he is teaching with more authority that we have. And so they seek to put Jesus to death. And in the Roman Empire occupied nations such as Israel were allowed to convict people of crimes, but they were not allowed to convict people to death. That was part of the Roman Empire's job. And so they delivered Jesus over to Pilate saying that we want him to be put to death. And this is where our main text is today. In John chapter 18 we see that Pilate is going to meet with Jesus and in chapter 18 and verse 33 he says, "So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews?" And this is the question we're starting with because this is the important question.

"Jesus, you say that you're king. These people are condemning you saying you are king, but are you? Because honestly Jesus, you don't look like any other king I've ever seen. Jesus, where's your army? Jesus, where's your crown? Where's your robe? Where's your sword? Who is fighting for you? Jesus, are you a king? Are you specifically the king Isaiah prophesied about?" And Jesus responds saying, "Do you say this of your own accord or did others say it about me?" Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?" Again, it's clarifying that the charges that are being brought against him is that he is a king. He's claiming to be a king that could potentially overthrow the Roman Empire. So they want him to be charged with that and Pilate's saying, "I'm not convicting you. Your own people are convicting you. What have you done that these people say that you're a king? What have you done?"

And Jesus' response is bookended by two statements and this is a rhetorical device he used to make sure that you remember. This is the important thing. If you take anything away, remember this? And Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I may not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world." And Pilate said to him, "So you are a king." And Jesus answered. "You say that I am the king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"

You see Jesus' response starts and ends with my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is not from this world. And if you're looking at Jesus in this situation, you're saying like, "Well Jesus, couldn't this just be like a little cop out? I don't see your army. I don't see your men fighting. I don't see your crown. Your kingdom's from a different world. What does that mean? What is the proof that you actually are a king?" And the proof is what comes in the middle. It's only one sentence because he doesn't need much proof to prove he is king. But he says, "My servants would have been fighting that I may not be delivered over to the Jews." He's saying, "This is common sense. If I was a king of this world, if I was the king you expected me to be, I would have trained my servants to be fighting to protect me. I would have trained them to defend me so that I wouldn't be so easily captured and overthrown and brought to you."

And we actually see Jesus actively do the exact opposite of this. In the same chapter in chapter 18 in verse 11 as Jesus is being arrested, his servant, Peter pulls his sword from his sheath trying to defend Jesus, attempts to kill the servant of the high priest who's arresting Jesus. And because Jesus didn't train them to be a soldier, he missed and he cut off his ear and Jesus then heals the man's ear and he commands Peter saying, "Put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the father has given me?" You see, Jesus' kingdom is a completely different type of kingdom than any other person had ever expected. And he proves this by saying, I am not training soldiers to fight in the way you expect. What kind of king actively tells his soldiers to put down their weapons and not just for any reason he says, "So that I can drink the cup of my father."

This is specifically God's cup of wrath of judgment that Jesus bears when he dies on the cross. So not only put down your weapons, you need to put down your weapon so that I can die. Jesus, I think you misunderstand what a king is. A king is supposed to take a throne and sit in power first, live a long life, rule well and then maybe they can die of old age or in battle. You're not supposed to die first. Jesus' kingdom is completely different than anything else, but he says that he does have a kingdom. He confirms he is a king. So Pilate's response, "So you are a king." Jesus answers kind of puzzling. He says, "So you say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." And then Pilate asks the question, "What is truth?" And we often make this question some high philosophical claim as to there's no such thing as truth.

What is truth? That could be part of it, but the primary thing is this is actually a legitimate question, a logical question to have. Jesus says, "I am bearing witness to the truth." Pilate's saying, "What is this thing you are bearing witness to? What is truth?" And thankfully Jesus gives us a very dictionary definition like a tale, a story, definition of truth. He says earlier in this book in chapter 14 when he's teaching, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also from now on, you do know him and you have seen him." Jesus' primary role as king was first and foremost to bear witness to testify to the truth of who he is, that he is the only way, the only way to the father, the only way to enter into the kingdom of God and that also he is one with the father.

He says, "If you have seen me, you have seen the father. If you have known me, you have known the father." And this is really, really important as we are thinking about an understanding, this idea of what it means for Jesus to be a king because he is saying, "I am equal to my father who all of Israel will rightfully say is sitting on throne in heaven. I am the rightful king of the Jews. The answer to the question, Jesus, are you the king of the Jews is a resounding yes because I am divine, I am God and my father and I are one."

And this is well and good for us to sit here or stand here and say, Jesus is king of the Jews. Yes, that's awesome. But to the people of Israel, to God's chosen people, this statement means something so much greater than we can really fathom and so I'm going to try my best to help us understand this because in order to understand this, we need to go back to 1 Samuel chapter eight to see the very first time a king is put into place in Israel and why this happened.

In verse four it says, "Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to them, behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the things displeased Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord and the Lord said to Samuel obey the voice of the people and all that they say to you for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them out of Egypt, even to this day forsaking me and serving other gods. So they are also doing to you. Now, then obey their voice. Only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king shall reign over them."

They have rejected me from being king over them. You see God never designed or desired for there to be a king over Israel in the way that we have seen throughout history. Why? Because God himself is the only rightful king of Israel, the only rightful king of the Jews. And so when we're here saying that Jesus is the rightful king of the Jews, this is calling back to this. This is a position that only God is able to possess. And this is why in the prophecy in Isaiah that we have mentioned already today and that Pastor Shane preached about in chapter nine verse six says, "For us a child is born to us a son is given." This is Jesus. The child is born, a son is given. "The government shall be upon his shoulders. He is a king and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

See, in order for Jesus to be able to fulfill the rightful role of king, he has to be God. He has to be able to be called mighty God. He has to be able to be called everlasting father. This is why it's so important that Jesus was testifying to the fact that he and the father are one, and so when we're talking today about Jesus's role as king, we're not just talking about him as a king. We're talking about him as this king. The king rightfully reclaiming his throne as the Lord and king and ruler over his people. See, Israel rejected God. They said, "We'd rather rule over ourselves. We want to do this on our own. We want someone like us to rule over us." And God didn't force them to be obedient to him. He allowed them to choose to be the own rulers of their lives.

But when Jesus Christ comes and when he's fulfilling the role of king, he is rightfully reclaiming his throne as king of our lives. When we understand the role of king in this way, and Jesus says this king, the only accurate response is awe. And it might be easy for me to stand up here and say that the fact that Jesus is the rightful king over our life should inspire awe. But honestly, history of kings has slightly jaded us to this idea because just because someone is the rightful king doesn't mean that they are a king deserving of awe, doesn't mean that they're a king that we should worship. So much so to the point that as I was preparing, I was trying to think of good kings throughout history and I was like, okay, we're obviously not talking about Jesus and let's say not David, let's not use the biblical examples. Even the most biblical examples are evil kings.

Who's a good king in history? My first thoughts were Azlan and Aragon, both of which are fictional characters, one of which is a lion and not even a person. And this is because throughout history and history classes and school, as we study kings, the kings we know the most are the kings that have wielded their power for destruction, that have wielded their power for evil. And it's hard for us to imagine just the fact that a king is the rightful king, that that also means they are a good king. So the question then is, Jesus, what kind of king are you? Sure you're the rightful king, but what type of power do you hold and how do you wield that power? Because good kings needed to have power. A good king if you had no power, you couldn't protect your people.

You couldn't protect your country, your kingdom, so you couldn't be a good king if you had no power. But also if you wielded that power for evil, you cannot be a good king. So Jesus, what type of king are you? And in Revelation chapter 19 we see this image of how Jesus rules from heaven. "Whoa, Tyler, Revelation in an advent series, what are we doing?" This is important because it displays to what power Jesus really is.

And so in Revelation 19 starting in verse 11 it says, "Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it called Faithful and True." Truth, Jesus came to bear witness to who he is the truth. "And in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire and his head are many diadems and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood and his name by which he is called is the word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepresses of the fury of the wrath of God, the almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written king of kings and Lord of Lords."

The questions I asked earlier, Jesus, where's your crown? Here it is. Jesus, where's your army? Here it is. Jesus, where's your followers? Where's your sword? Here it is striking down the nations. And when it says that the sword is coming out striking down the nations, what that means specifically is it's striking down the kingdoms that are opposed to him and that is specifically the kingdoms of darkness, the kingdom of sin, of death, and of Satan.

Jesus completely destroys them and this is an imagery meant to be intimidating. It is meant to be. It's meant to strike fear in anyone who dares oppose this king, but it's also meant to rally and galvanize the troops that are on his side fighting for him to have confidence. This is the king we serve. He is powerful. He is great. And I was trying to think of some examples to sort of make it more relatable today because honestly not many of us have followed a king into battle or even a commanding officer into battle and that's just not something we experienced as much in our culture. And if you have served in that way, we are thankful for you and for your service. And so the closest thing that we honestly have in our culture is sports. And I say that because sports are designed for this purpose.

The creation of sports started because they needed men to do things besides fight each other. And the greatest, I think sport that relates to this is any of this fighting sports because you are actually fighting. And I chose specifically boxing because there's a character in boxing history that I think we can relate to and understand, and that is specifically Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali. And I actually changed this example this morning because as I was thinking about it, one, I need to be clear that no one can come close to a comparison of the greatness of Jesus. This is an example that it's not even scratching the surface. It might be barely rubbing against it, but not making a dent in the comparison to Jesus. But this is a person that he was equivalent to boxing to what Tom Brady is to football, except even more so. And I say that, and I'm not a Patriots fan. I just know most people here are.

But, however great you think Tom Brady is, even more so was the greatness of Muhammad Ali. And if you're on Mohammed Ali's corner, if you're in his corner, you're supporting him. Oh, you have confidence. You know the power that he has. You go into it knowing and expecting to win. And if you're standing in the opposing corner going up against him, there's fear struck in your heart because you know his greatness as well. You don't deny his greatness, but you don't want to have to face it. And the reason why I chose this because in the basement of my parents' house, there's a picture of Muhammad Ali specifically when he knocked down Sonny Liston. I don't know if you've seen this picture. You probably have, even if you don't recognize it, but there's this man muscular laying flat on the ground and over top of him is towering another man, Muhammad Ali standing firm, flexing his legs, showing his muscles, but he's also flexing his arm in a bicep, standing down over him, staring him down and screaming, just a blood curling power, intimidating.

And this is sort of the idea, this is a glimpse into the imagery we're seeing here in revelation that's supposed to galvanize us and encourage us because when Jesus is showing his power, he's not just standing in a boxing ring fighting a person until they get knocked out and then saying, we're all good. No, he's up in heaven in the throne room of God and he's not just standing there. He's riding a horse into battle bolder. How many men do we know today that can even ride a horse? And when I say ride a horse, I'm not saying sit on it and walk around as a trainer leads them around. I'm talking about riding full sprint, full gallop into war and Jesus isn't just standing over staring at them. He is riding forward with fire in his eyes and he isn't wearing that thin little satin robe that boxers put over their head as they walk into the ring dancing as they go in. No.

Jesus is wearing a royal robe, the robe of a king. And as he's riding the horse, his leg comes out and it shows his thigh and it's even more muscular than Muhammad Ali's. It makes his leg look like an infants and on his robe and on his thigh are his name, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And the greatest thing about this, I like to imagine that it's probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic or some foreign language because other languages are just inherently more cooler in tattoos than English, but unlike our friends that get tattoos in different languages and don't actually understand what it means, Jesus knows what it means and he owns it and he is the King of Kings. He is the Lord of Lords. The words Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords, we often get desensitized to because it's so common during the holidays, it's something we say a lot, but this idea of King of Kings is sort of two fold.

It means that he is king over everything. Everything is in subjection to him but it also means he is the greatest king that could ever exist. He is the greatest. We would say he is the GOAT and when we are following Jesus, we can have this image of his greatness and of his power in our mind, understanding that this is the king we are following. This is the king we are serving, but the difference is Jesus isn't just powerful in imagery, he isn't just powerful in the way he goes to battle conquering. He is powerful in character. In the book of Hebrews in chapter one verses two through four it's described, Jesus is saying he, Jesus is the heir of all things. Everything in creation belongs to him. Why? Because through him he also created everything. Jesus doesn't just own everything. He created everything.

And it says that he is the radiance of the glory of God. Muhammad Ali in that picture standing over, he's sweating a little bit, so there's a little bit of a glimmer that's nothing. Jesus is a radiant. He is a shining sun brighter than any sun or star that has ever been in the sky. He is radiant. He is the exact imprint of the nature of God. He is divine. He is God, and then this is the one that always gets me, that always gets me. He upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Jesus not only creates, he sustains. The very fact that the chairs that we are sitting in have atoms that are holding them together that exist is because of the power of Jesus. The very fact that we exist here today, that we have skin, we have organs, we have blood, we have air in our lungs is because Jesus chooses to use his power to sustain us, to sustain his creation. And then it says he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high claiming his rightful toner and he's ruling over all creation. So we get the power, we see the power, we see the majesty, we see the might. How does this king wield his power? How does this king wield it? He wields it by bringing about Christmas and this is why Christmas is so awe, inspiring and why Christmas is so great because this all powerful king ruler of everything. Nothing can get in his way. Nothing can stop him from accomplishing his goals and bringing in his kingdom.

What does he do? He leaves it all behind. He says, "I'm willing to put that down and come to earth, be born as a baby, an innocent, vulnerable, helpless baby lying in a manger. This is not what we expect of an awe, powerful king. But the reason he did this is because of his character of loving you and loving me. He came to earth as a human. So that way he could live a perfect life. Proclaim the truth of who he is. Bear witness to his identity, die on the cross. Taking that wrath of God, taking the wrath that we deserve, the punishment for our sins and saying, that's on me. I'm taking it. And then defeating the kingdom of sin when he died on the cross and defeating the kingdom of death, when he rose from the dead so that we can now enter into the kingdom of God.

So the question is, are you a citizen of the kingdom? You see, Jesus has done this to bring you into his kingdom. He wants you to be a citizen. Join him. This is the great king that we serve. But if you're here today and you haven't confessed that, I have wrongfully taken the throne of my life and put myself on it or put someone else on it and I need Jesus to reclaim that rightful place on his throne over my life. I need him to save me from my sins, from anytime I've rebelled against God. Anytime I was disobedient, anytime I put myself on the throne, Jesus rightfully deserves, I would urge you to confess and ask him to take the throne of your life today. And I urge you not because I want you to do it out of me urging you or out of compulsion or out of fear. I'm doing this because I want you to understand what we were talking about, about how great this king is. He is powerful, but he sacrifices all because he loves you. Join his kingdom, become a citizen.

And part of the role of king that Pastor Yann mentioned in the sermon last week and has to do with what we're talking about today is that a king brings order and Jesus first raw order by realigning the priorities in order of our life that he is king. He is first and foremost in our lives. We are not. But then he also brings order by giving decrees, right? When I was studying what makes good kings, the first thing that came up consistently in all the different sources I found was they make strong enforceable laws. Well, Jesus said he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law and he has given us his decrees. We have 66 books with his decrees, but the greatest thing about this, the greatest thing about how good Jesus is as king, he doesn't just give us decrees and then say, "Do it or else." He says, "I lived it, I lived it."

And this is what we mean when we say align to the king because the king lived it out. And so we can try and strive to align our lives the way we are living after the model of what Jesus did for us. He didn't just force us, he showed us. And we can now align ourselves, prioritize God is on the throne for our lives. And now I can align myself to the way he lived. And as we were talking about this, I was thinking about what is one of the most important roles of a citizen of a kingdom? And one of the things that makes the kingdom of God unique to many different nations and kingdoms we've seen in the world is that every citizen of God's kingdom is also a soldier. And when I say this, I want to be clear. We're not talking about fighting, we're not talking about violence.

We're not talking about fighting with swords. Remembering that Jesus in John 18 stopped his servants from fighting with swords. That's not what we're talking about. But we are soldiers. And in order to understand this, I want to draw some comparison to the US soldiers because we have some notion of what they are. We have an understanding. And this is a little bit more relatable to us. And as we do this, I want to also be clear we have gratitude and we have utmost respect for the men and women who sacrificed their time and their lives to serve and protect this country. And as we're drawing comparisons and noting some differences, this is not a commentary or a reaction to the US soldiers. This is just to help us understand what it means to be a soldier better. And so if you go to the US Army's website, they say that there are three different types of soldiers, active duty, army reserves and army national guard.

And here's a little quote from their website to find what these are. "Active duty soldiers are part of the army 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Army Reserve soldiers are part time and are able to work a civilian career, go to school and live where they want. Army National Guard is an essential element to the US military protecting communities across the US while serving part-time. These three roles are vital to our army in this country today. However, God's kingdom only has one type of soldier. God's kingdom only has active duty soldiers. It's a 24 hour a day, seven day a week job. It's not just the job though. It's a commitment. It's something that we have committed to. We have enlisted ourselves into when we have put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and so this job, it's not a reserve job.

It's not a job that we can say, "Hey, Jesus, I'm enrolled. I enlist, but I'm going to continue doing everything the way I've been doing it before." It's not a job we get to say, "I'm going to continue to live my life and do everything the way I wanted to. I'm going to continue to party the way I wanted to. I'm going to continue to date the way I wanted to. I'm going to continue to live life exactly as I wanted to, and then when something dire happens, when you really need me or I really need you, then I'll be enlisted." All right? Because we like to do this right. We'll say, "I'll get serious about my faith or my commitment to Jesus when I get married because then it's not just me, it's someone else or I'll be serious about my faith and committed to my faith of Jesus when I have kids because we all know that kids are just evil on their own and so they need to be raised with some sort of God or some sort of help."

Or we say, "When I have my career in order, my finances in order and I'm out of debt, then I'll be serious, but right now I need to focus on my job." Or the one that is the most stereotypical. But I have actually heard many times when discussing this idea with my family and with my friends is that, "Oh, when I'm on my death bed, when I'm about to die, then I'll be committed to Jesus then." Don't we? Jesus calls us to be 24 hours a day, seven days a week Active Duty soldiers. It's not a reserve job and it's also not a part-time job. It's not a part time job in the sense that we are scheduled certain times where we are to work and serve and scheduled certain times where we're not.

It's Christmas season right now. So this is the time we're all scheduled. Yeah, I understand. I'm scheduled to serve Jesus now. I'm scheduled to go to church to read scripture, to sing songs about Jesus. We sing the good Christmas songs, the type that Mosaic has on their EP, not the type that are about Santa and things like that. No. That's not what we're talking about. You see, you can't do that and then say, "Oh, it's February, it's cold. I'm tired. I've forgotten about new year's resolutions already. This is my schedule to break. And then Lent will come and then Easter and that will be my schedule to break back on. And then summer will come and I just want to go to the beach and have a good time. So that'll be my scheduled break again."

And it's cycles year after year, after year. No, it's not a reserve job. It's not a part time job. It's a commitment each and every day. And part of what it takes is to be committed every day. It's hard to think about the long-term of the year and be committed for the whole year. That can be hard. But what is easier is to wake up each day saying, "I'm committed today. Today's the 24 hours I'm serving." And you wake up the next day. "Today is the 24 hours I'm serving as a soldier."

So what do we actually do as soldiers? Also from the US Army, they say that each soldier has three different roles and these three different roles I think are really helpful in us understanding what it means to be a soldier in the kingdom of God. The first point that every soldier in the US Army has to do is protect themselves. So my challenge to you guys today is are you protecting yourself spiritually? Are you spending time in God's word, understanding his decrees so that you can be rooted in the truth of who he is, but not just rooted in truth. Using that truth to galvanize yourself, to stir up that love and that awe for the king that is on the throne and reminding ourselves why Jesus is on the throne, why he deserves to be the rightful king.

Are we Sabbathing? Are we taking rest from work and saying, I am taking a day. I am committing my day to prove to you, Lord, that you are more important than my job. You are more important than my career and I can figure out the work. I can trust you that the work will get done if I'm committed to you first. Ephesians six is a whole sermon on itself, but it talks about putting on the armor of God. And so when you leave here, I'd encourage you to read it and to think about what that means to put on the armor of God, but it's rooted in truth and putting on the helmet of salvation, leading with the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, covering ourselves with his grace and with his mercy. And as we talk about protecting ourselves spiritually, it's also has to do with protecting ourselves mentally and emotionally.

A lot of times we'll have thoughts that we are just, "Whoa, where'd that come from? I wasn't thinking about that thing, or that's not me. I don't think about those things. Where did that thought come from?" And this happens to me all the time honestly. And part of my job as a soldier of protecting myself is to speak truth to those things. Not let those evil thoughts fester. Not let those things continue and to dwell on them. But to tell myself, no, I am not being obedient to these thoughts. I'm being obedient to Christ first. Then also protect yourself emotionally because we often have emotions. We feel hurt, we feel pain when things happen and it's real. It's honest. It's okay to feel that way. But there are times when we have these very real emotions and that's not the best thing to be feeling at the moment.

Sometimes we have to speak truth to our emotions that yes, I feel this way. It is true that I feel this way, but I don't have to feel this way. I can trust Jesus to protect me from this. And are we praying regularly? Because the whole point of the second point of the awe of God is to show how great of a king he is. And so if we are praying to this great king, we are trusting him to protect us as well. And so we need to be praying consistently. If he is powerful enough to ride a horse and a sword to come out of his mouth and defeat all of his enemies, he is powerful enough to protect you. He's powerful enough to help you. The second role of a soldier in the army is to protect each other, protect others.

As Christians the reason why I come up every time and I say good morning church is because we're all in this together. We need each other. We are one body in Christ and part of the role of soldier is to protect each other. Are we actively seeking out our brothers and sisters in Christ and figuring out how we can pray for them? And when a prayer request is brought up in your community group, do you pray for it then and say, check, done or do we say, no, this is real, this is important. Let me spend time throughout the week praying for them and then check up and follow through with them again and say, "Hey, how did this thing go? What happened? How are you doing? How are you feeling?" And this is something that is convicting me because I like checks. I like to be able to say done. I did the thing and so it's easy for me to say, "Oh, I prayed. I said I was going to pray. I prayed, done." No. We are called to constantly be encouraging each other, pray for each other regularly. And when a friend comes to us and says honestly I'm still struggling with this thing or I'm still hurt by what happened or I don't know what to do in this situation. We should still be praying and encouraging them. Do we speak truth to each other in these times? Do we just say the things we think that they want to hear or do we say the things that they should hear? This is obviously done in grace and in truth and with patience, but are we willing to say the things that need to be said?

Are we willing to instruct and give guidance, but also are we willing to encourage, are we willing to build up and to have patients and bear with each other as we struggle and are we willing to let others do that to us? That's the hardest part. It's easy to say that I can do this for someone else, but why I don't need help. We do. We need help. Are you willing to let other brothers and sisters in Christ protect you? And if you see a brother or sister in Christ in need and you have the means to meet that need, do you actually do it or do you put it off to someone else or the church in general? If I'm in a situation where I see a brother or sister in need and God has put in my heart that I have the means to meet it, it is my duty. It is my responsibility to meet that need.

Doesn't matter what I feel, what my pride is. God's kingdom is more important than my own. And lastly, the way that a soldier is meant to serve, they say in the US Army a soldier is to protect the United States, we would say is to protect the kingdom of God. And this one's the easy one, I think. And I think this one is the most fun because again, this, remember the imagery of the great king who is going and protecting his kingdom. He does an excellent job. We really don't need to do that much when it comes to protecting the kingdom of God. Really all we need to do is expand it. Is to bring it to places where it is not yet been or to people who do not know it or not part of it. And to be clear, again, this is not by force.

This is not by coercion. By strong language saying, "You must believe me." As I said, when I urge you to let Jesus sit on the throne of your lives, that's not going to convince anyone. It's only the Holy Spirit that changes lives, and so we are called to expand God's kingdom, God's way. How did Jesus expand his kingdom? He bore witness to the truth. He testified to who he is. That's our job as Christians. That's our role in protecting the kingdom of God is to declare to others the truth of who Jesus is and to declare to them why we know it's true.

If you are a Christian, if you have already put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, your testimony is a powerful tool to proclaim the gospel to other people. It's one thing for people to hear these stories about Jesus and to read scripture. It's another thing for someone that they know, for someone that they love and someone that they trust to proclaim to them why? Why they believe. And with all of these things, and as all of these things build as we strive to be good soldiers, as we strive to be obedient to the decrees of the king, what we can always go back to is the awe, the greatness be overwhelmed by the greatness of Jesus Christ as king coming and saving us. The act by which he deemed and showed that he loved us.

Will you pray with me? Heavenly father, Lord, we ask in this time that if we have put ourselves on the throne of our lives and kicked you off of it, we ask that we repent. We ask that we say we're sorry, and that we invite you to reclaim your rightful place in the throne of our lives. Lord, we ask you that as we strive to be soldiers in your kingdom, as we strive to live for you, that you are galvanizing us. You are reminding us of your greatness, that we can be inspired by who you are, the type of king you are, the loving, all powerful king. I pray all this through your wonderful son, Christ Jesus. Amen.

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Heavenly father, we thank you that you are God of love, and you have proven your love to us by giving the greatest gift that anyone has ever given to anyone else, it's your son, Jesus Christ. God the son, we thank you so much for the incarnation. That's what we're celebrating today, that you took on flesh, that you veiled yourself in flesh in order to tear down the veil that stood between us and you, you a holy God, and us an unholy people, and Jesus, you came to reconcile that breach, and thank you for the life that you lived, a perfect life. You lived perfectly, you died shamefully, and you rose victoriously, and now you reign supremely. We thank you Jesus, that even now you're at the right hand of God, interceding for each one of us and Lord, we need that intercession, we need an advocate, because we have an enemy who wants to pull us away from the living God, and Lord keep us in your hand. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, come now and fill us, every single one of us, and continue to transform us into the image of God the son, and allow us to image forth the God of the universe to the people around us.

Jesus, we thank you that you're the great high priest, and just sacrifice an animal, you sacrificed yourself, the all sufficient supreme sacrifice. Bless our time, the holy word today, and we pray this in Jesus name, amen. Did you get a Christmas tree? Anyone a real Christmas tree? Anyone? For the past nine years, we have a family tradition. There's a parking lot right across from The Draft bar in Allston on Harvard Ave next to ACE Hardware, and every single year I've taken my daughters, and we go, we pick out a tree, and I snap a picture with them next to the tree, and I've got a whole collection of these pictures that I'm going to put together into a slide show, and I'm going to show it at their weddings, or graduate, or whatever in the future, and this year, I was away last week, and I was visiting some family in Estonia and Finland, and my wife texts me, and she says, "Can we go get the tree without you?"

I was like, "Sure, go to the same place that I go to, but you got to know they haggle, you've got to haggle, or they inflate the prices." And she said, "Well, how much do you usually pay?" I was like, "They usually say 65. I bring it down to 55, because I'm a hard negotiator." She texted me with a picture of a beautiful tree in our living room, all decorated, and I said, "How much did you pay?" She said, "$35." I said, "How'd you pull that off?" She said, "I showed up and I told them I'm only spending $35." It's the Ukrainian way. She knows, that's the way you got to do it. We like the Christmas tree in our household, and we like the gifts. We do that, and the symbolism behind it is that God has given the greatest gift, and that's his son, but also, there's a symbolic nature in giving gifts to the Lord.

We see in the very beginning of the Christmas narrative that the Magi, or the wise man, they came to Jesus, and they came with gifts, and they came with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and that those are incredibly symbolic gifts. Why? Because the Magi understood that Jesus Christ was the embodiment of the three great offices in the Old Testament, the prophet, the priest, and the King. The king, the priest, and the prophet, so they bring gold, which was a gift given to majesty, precious metal given to kings, and Jesus is the king above all kings. Frankincense, they brought frankincense, incense is in that same word, that it was symbolic of the incense that was burned in the Holy of Holies in the temple as a sign that we're bringing our prayers to the Lord, and Jesus was the ultimate priest. He's the king, he's the priest, and he's the prophet. That's what the myrrh symbolize.

Myrrh was the anointing oil with which prophets were anointed, and prophets would then anoint both priests and kings. Jesus is all three. How do the Magi know this? They knew this from the prophetic passage of the Old Testament. Moses promised, he said, "God will raise up from amongst you a prophet greater than I am. Listen to everything that he says." The Magi knew that text from Deuteronomy 18. They also knew the text where David says in Psalm 104, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." They knew that, Daniel promised a king above all kings is coming. King David promised an eternal king is coming, and that's Jesus Christ. He's the King above all king. The Magi knew this. That's why they brought the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh, and that's why this advent season, that's what we're focusing on. The offices of Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate prophet, the ultimate priest, the ultimate King.

Last week we talked about Jesus as the ultimate prophet who tells us the way, he tells us the way that we have gone away from the Lord, that we are sinners, and the king comes to tell us that our lives are disordered, that we are to reorder our lives, but the message of the prophet is not good news, and the message of the king is not good news until we have the message of the priest. The prophet tells us we're sinners, the king tells us how to live righteously, but it's not until the priest comes, and says, there is atonement for your sin. There is someone who takes your guilt away, who takes away the corruption from your heart, and that's what we're focusing on today. The heart of the sermon is that Jesus Christ is the ultimate priest, the high priest, and to focus our time in the word we're going to look at Matthew 1:18-25, this is the beginning of the Christmas narrative. Would you look at the text with me?

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and her husband, Joseph being a just man, and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly, but as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded, he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

We're going to focus on the passage where the angel says, "His name shall be Jesus. His name in the Hebrews Yeshua. Jesus is the Hellenized or Greekinized version. It comes from two words. Ye means Lord, and shua means save. Jesus saves. This is his identity. What does he do? He's with us. He's Jesus and he's Emmanuel, so that's what we'll focus on. His name, Jesus, and Emmanuel, God with us. How is he with us? Today, we're focusing on the role of Jesus Christ as the high priest, and as the high priest Jesus does four things, and this is our outline for today. Jesus saves, Jesus knows, Jesus prays, and Jesus sends. Jesus saves, knows, prays, and sends. First of all, Jesus, the great high priest he saves. What made Israel different from all the other peoples on earth was not that there was something special in, and of themselves. It's that God had chosen them, and specifically, chosen to be with them.

He allowed his presence in a very palpable, tangible way to manifest itself amongst them, so when he leads them out of Egypt into the wilderness, he tells him them to build a tabernacle. In the middle of the tabernacle was the Holy Place, and God's presence descended like a cloud, encouraging that God is with us, that God was with them, but also, terrifying. They knew who God was, that he was a Holy God. God had a given him them a law by which to live, and they understood they could not by themselves keep even the basic laws, so if they're guilty, and God's presence is with them, it's terrifying, how do they live with God in his presence? Well, God made provision. The sacrificial system as administered by the priests, and for the Jewish people the high priest was central to their worship. The high priest would offer gifts and sacrifices on behalf of the people at the temple and in the tabernacle. Why? Because this is how they mediated between a holy God, and unholy people.

Why? Because our God is a holy God, and our God because he's a holy God he opposes evil. He cannot be in the presence of evil. This is why he's worthy of worship. There's nothing wrong in him. He's never sinned, he's never done anything unrighteous, and the priest would stand in the place of the people satisfying God's judgment through an animal sacrifice, simultaneously demonstrating both God's mercy and God's judgment. The judgment that we deserve for our sin. When the temple came, this is how the priests brought the sacrifice once a year on the day of atonement Yom Kippur. The high priest would enter the Holy of Holies, only he could enter. If anyone else entered they died right on the spot, and he entered after a very meticulous preparation process through special washings and ablutions. He would put on special clothing, and bring burning incense in order to cover his own eyes from the presence of God, and he would bring a sacrifice of animal blood to sprinkle it on the judgment seat of mercy.

What's important is the Holy of Holies was square-shaped. Why is that important? Because the book of Revelation tells us that new Jerusalem when it comes down onto earth, is also square shaped, so the Holy of Holies was a foretaste of heaven that is to come, and symbolically that no one can enter heaven unless there is a blood sacrifice, unless there is preparation, and the Holy of Holies was separated from the people through a thick curtain, and the curtain was made out of fine linen, blue, purple, scarlet yarn, and embroidered on it was a cherubim, which is an angel ,and the veil was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and four inches thick. Why? Because it shielded God's people, a sinful people from a holy God. There's a picture that you can't just trifle with God's holiness, that we can't enter God's presence carelessly or irreverently, and this is why Christmas is such good news, that Jesus is Emmanuel. Jesus is God with us. Jesus comes to be with us, and to save us as the great high priest, to mediate between us and God. Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man because of his ransom for our sins. Jesus Christ enters the Holy Place on the cross. He enters the Holy Place, and doesn't just bring a sacrifice of an animal, he brings the sacrifice of himself, the all sufficient sacrifice. If Jesus were just a prophet he would come and say, "All of you are sinful." If Jesus were just king he would come and say, "You need to reorder your lives." We're ignorant, we need a prophet to tell us the way. We are corrupt, we need a king to tell us how to order our lives. If that's all that Christmas was a prophet and a king, it would not be good news. What we need is someone to come, and not just tell us that we're sinners, and we need someone to come and say that your guilt has been dealt with. Your shame has been dealt with. Your sin has been dealt with. The God of the universe has borne in himself.

We don't just need instruction, we don't just need consulting of how to live better a life. What we need is someone to come and take our sin from us. What is sin? Sin is cosmic treason against the supreme sovereign of the universe. It's the act of ultimate ingratitude to the one to whom we owe everything. It's saying, I'm better at being God than God. God has no jurisdiction over me, and Jesus Christ comes and he says, "I'm not just telling that you're unholy. I'm not just telling you that you're a sinner. I'm not just telling you how to make yourself righteous. I've come in order to be the high priest and the ultimate sacrifice to reconcile you with God." Jesus comes and he does something that no other religion can do. Other religions come, and they tell us this is how you can make your way to God. This is how you can be righteous before God, be accepted before God, be justified before God, every other religion. This is the path, this is the way. These are the steps.

And, it can do one of two things. If you follow the steps, and you do all the prayers, and you do all the traditions and the rituals, you get really proud. I'm a much better person than anyone else, or if you don't, if you can't do it, you get really despondent and despair and Jesus Christ comes in and says, "No, Christianity doesn't make you either proud or it doesn't lead you into despair. Christianity comes and says to be righteous before God you got to fulfill the whole law." No one can do that, not one of us can do that. That automatically humbles you, and then, Jesus Christ comes, and says, "I fulfilled the whole law." And, brings us out of despair. How? Because Jesus Christ took flesh, lived a perfect life, died shamefully on a cross, and he's risen victoriously. Lived the life that we should have lived, couldn't, wouldn't, and he dies the death that we deserve to die.

Where did Jesus die? On the tree? On the tree, and that's what the cross is called in 1st Peter, it's called the tree. 1st Peter 2:24, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin, and live to righteousness by his wounds you have been healed." The cross is the ultimate tree of Christmas. It's the ultimate Christmas tree that Jesus Christ, the ultimate gift of the universe is hanging on that tree in order to give us gifts. What gifts? As soon as you believe in him, as soon as you repent of your sin, as soon as you follow him, he gives you the gift of justification that you are acquitted. All of your sins of forgiven, all of your guilt, all of your shame is removed. You have peace with God. This is what the angel said, "Glory, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace." There's no more enmity between us and God.

He also gives us access to God. What do I mean? The very moment that Jesus Christ died on the cross it says that he said his final words, "It is finished." What's finished? The process of salvation is finished. You don't have to add anything else to your salvation. It is finished, it is completed, it is efficacious, and at the very moment that he said it is finished, the veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies was torn, and it wasn't just torn from the bottom up. It was torn from the top to bottom. This incredible veil, 60 feet wide, 30 feet high, four inches thick. This is like a dictionary thick, this is a phone book thick torn from the top down. Who could do this? Who would do this? Only God himself, and what does he do at that very moment? He's saying now because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have access into the very presence of the Holy of Holies. We have access into the presence of God. We have access to the ultimate source of love, of hope, of joy, and of peace.

Jesus Christ made the ultimate offering for us as the great high priest. He literally went through hell absorbing the wrath of God for our sin so that we could enter the Holy of Holies, so that we could enter heaven. Jesus comes to the great high priest to save, but Jesus also knows... what do I mean here? Here I'm going to look at his name, Emmanuel, that God is with us, and isn't this strange? God is with us. I thought God is always with us. I ask my daughters all the time. I'm like, "Where's God?" My youngest always say, "He's in heaven." Like, that's nice, but MiniMo needs to add a little more theology, a little depth. Yes, he's in heaven, obviously. Jesus in our hearts by grace through faith, but also Jesus is everywhere. The transcendent God of the universe, he's omnipresent, so what does it mean that Jesus is Emmanuel, that Jesus is with us? Something changes when Jesus was born, the God in the form of humanity choosing to be with us is with us entirely different ways, so much so the change is so dramatic that Jesus needed another name.

In Israel, God was with them in the Holy of Holies. He was present with them, but he was not necessarily with them. He wasn't with them relationally, he wasn't with them intimately. They knew he was there. They knew he was holy, but they navigated his presence. They walked around him as we would navigate a nuclear plant. We understand the power, but we need a few buffers of protection between us and until the issue of sin was completely dealt with, God was quarantined from us so that his presence wouldn't kill us. More specifically, we were quarantined from him. When Jesus came, he was literally with us, no longer separation from us, though he was completely separate from sin. Hebrews 4:14-16, "Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God. Let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who was unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need."

Though he was transcended, he's passed through the heavens, he's imminent. He is with us, he's no longer removed from us. He's a sympathetic high priest and the word for sympathy here is deeper than just the English word, sympathy. In English you have two words that are almost synonymous, sympathy and empathy. Sympathy, when you know that someone's going through a hard time, it's a feeling of pity, or of sorrow for them. I feel bad for you. I'm sorry for you. Please accept my condolences. We simplify and sympathize with those with whom we do not share a history. Empathy is deeper. Empathy is a shared experience. Empathy isn't just, I'm sorry for you, I'm sad for you, but I'm sad with you. I'm despondent with you, I feel what you feel. I share your feelings. It's the nod of a veteran when they see another veteran. It's the same feeling that siblings feel when they've lost a parent. It's when a mother who has miscarried meets another mother who's miscarried. I'm not sad for you, I'm sad with you.

Scripture says that Jesus isn't just a sympathetic God, that he's above and beyond our pain, and our sorrow, and our agony, our temptation. Jesus is with us in that, he is empathetic. He's gone through it. He didn't just feel sorry for our play, he came and became part of our plight. He wove himself to the fabric of the story of humanity, he too was tempted, he too was weak, and feeble, and hungry, and thirsty, alone and rejected. He slept, he learned, he was glad, sad, angry, grieved, troubled, disappointed, he prayed, he sighed with an aching heart, he felt the full spectrum of human desires and emotions. Why is Christmas good news? It's good news, because God knows whatever it is that you're going through, and he knows that at the same level that you do, if not more. He's been lonely, he had family that didn't support him, he had friends that turned their back on him. Lies and rumors were spread about him. He had a close person to him die and he mourned. Jesus knows exactly what you're going through.

The weakness here isn't just physical weakness. He's with us in our moral weakness, and temptation. He's overcome it. Therefore, he can overcome it. The other way, and this is really important, he had to be with us in order to bear the weight of our sin. 2nd Corinthians 5 says that he actually became our sin, meaning that whenever we sin, whenever we follow the darkness that's in our hearts, whenever we hurt ourselves, and we hurt others by sinning that Jesus is with us, he's right there at that moment, and because of his death, his burial, his resurrection, he can forgive us of all that guilt. He could forgive us of all that shame. In the Old Testament, God's presence was in the Holy of Holies. After the veil was torn, God's presence is still with us, because Jesus is with us, but now it's with us by the power of the Holy Spirit where the very moment that you repent of sin and you turn to Christ, God is in your heart. Your heart becomes the Holy of Holies in order to do what?

It's not enough that God just knows what we're going through. The fact that he knows what we're going through gives us power to be transformed. This is the theology of the image of God, we're created in the image of God. His image in us is marred. Jesus Christ comes as the perfect image of God, and at that moment, when we believe in him, he begins to transform us, re-transform us into the image of God. Let me give you an illustration. I'm sure that you've heard of Grace from Boston. Grace from Boston, her husband got her a Peloton and there was a whole brouhaha, like that's the most terrible gift ever. I think he just got it for himself, and he had to justify it. The whole thing with Pelotons, I don't have a Peloton. I've watched the commercials. I've been really intrigued with Pelotons, because you got to pay $2, 500, then you've got to pay another 40 bucks a month, just whatever. It's a stationary bike with a TV. It's a 22 inch screen television, and on the screen you can have live spinning classes piped in for your workout. So, you're working out in the comfort of your mansion, and as you're working out you have this person on the screen. The person is part motivational speaker, part DJ, part mentor, part drill sergeant, and they're right there, they're screaming at you, and they're getting you pumped to be enthused. As you're working out, you look down on the screen and the screens is designed so much so that you barely see your reflection, but what you see is that person, and after a while you begin to emulate this person, and the more that you follow this person, the more that you will prentice this person, the more that you obey this person you become like this person hopefully, or else it was a waste of $2, 500. That's the, perhaps, the illustration. It does it for you? Perhaps not. This is kind of what happens when we follow Jesus. It's not enough that Jesus knows our plight, Jesus also knows how to get us out of our plight, because he's been through it. The more you believe in Jesus, the more you stare into the gospel, the more that you worship him, you become like him, so Jesus saves, and Jesus knows, and also Jesus prays. Jesus makes continual intercession for us.

Perhaps you don't know this. Romans 8:34 says, "Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us." Right now at this very moment, Jesus Christ is praying for you, he's interceding for you if you are a Christian. 1st John 2:1, "My little children I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one." The risen, and ascended, the divine, and the human great high priest, Jesus Christ at this very moment is praying for you dear Christian, 24/7, 365 and because he's eternal, he never has to renew this office. He never has to take a break. He never falls asleep. Death will never prevent him from executing his duties. He's a great high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, is a royal priest king whose priestly reign never ends.

How does Jesus intercede for us? I think it's similar to how he interceded for Peter. Jesus tells Peter, "Peter, you are going to deny me. Not once, not twice, three times. You are going to deny me." Peter says, "Never, even if I go to the death, never." That's how sure he was of his faith. That's how resolute he was in following Christ, and Jesus tells him at that moment, Luke 22:31,32, "Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned again strengthen your brothers." Satan demands to have every single one of us, and the great high priest is interceding for us. He's praying for us. I'm not sure of my faith. I'm not sure of your faith, but I'm sure in the sacrifice, and the prayers of Jesus Christ, he's praying for us.

I love being prayed for. There's something really special about someone praying over you, someone laying a hand on you, praying for you. My wife and I, we pray with, and for our daughters every night, and we pray for them by name, and I change up the order every time. I don't just pray for one, two, three, four. I mix it up so that they feel special, and the other night I was praying, and I started with my youngest. I started with Milana, "Lord bless Milana." All of a sudden, huge smile on her face, and she has massive cheeks, so it's not that easy to smile. It takes a lot of effort. She's cheezin' and just staring at me, and I'm like peeking at her, and I'm praying for her to start obeying. She's like, "I will." I'm praying for her to go to sleep. She's like, "Yeah." I'm praying for her to stop being a drama queen, she's like, "No." There's something special about someone praying for us, and I don't know about you, but the more spiritual person is, the closer they are to God, it feels like the prayers are stronger.

James tells us that the prayer of a righteous person availeth much. It's got more power. I remember one time was at a pastors conference, and at this conference there's like thousands of pastors. This is early on in my ministry, and I'm by the door, and Rick Warren comes in, the patron saint of the Evangelical Church. Rick Warren walks in, comes right up to me, and says, "Hi, my name is Rick. What's yours?" I was like, "I know it's Rick." He's like, "No, what's your name?" I was like, "Oh, it's Jan." He's like, "What are you doing?" "I'm planting a church in Boston?" He's like, "Can I pray for you?" "Yeah." And, he's like, "Lord, I pray that you fill Jan with the spirit, and that you give him a double of the anointing that you've given me." Wow, praise God. At that moment I felt fire come down from him. I don't know.

And then, I was like, "Thank you Pastor Rick." I took a selfie with him of course, and then, I see him walk up to another pastor, and he's like, "Hi, my name is Rick. Can I pray for you?" I was like, "Come on pastor Rick, you can't cheat on me." He prayed the same thing, "May you give a double anointing." I know God has all the anointings in the world, but still I look at that moment, I'm like that that was special. Imagine how much more special is that the God of the universe is praying for you. Jesus Christ our great high priest, and what is he praying? We get a glimpse of it in John 17:20-24. He's praying that we have unity with God, and that we have unity with one another. The words of Christ, "I do not ask for these only..." His disciples, "... but also for those who will believe in me through their word..." That's us, "... that they may all be one just as you father are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one, I in them.

And, you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me maybe with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world." Practically, what does it mean that Jesus prays? It means that you can come, and take all of your prayers to Jesus, and Jesus intercedes for you, confess your sins to Jesus primarily. Jesus is our great high priest. We don't need to go to a priest to confess our sins. We can go directly to Jesus Christ. It's a great hope of Christmas. You don't need to go to a priest for spiritual direction. Go to Jesus, take your sin, your guilt, your shame, everything that you've done, take it to him, and look, we all feel guilt. Every single one of us, Christian or non-Christian, we all at some point, maybe even daily feel guilt.

We have these rules that we have set up for ourselves, or the culture has set up for us and when we don't meet that law, meet those standards, we feel guilt. Perhaps it's for try things like being late. I always feel a little guilty when I'm even like a minute late, oh, I lied. Apparently, you feel guilty when you've forgotten your kid's birthday, that's bad. Perhaps you feel guilty when you forget your marriage first anniversary, that's bad too. Don't do that. Perhaps you feel guilty about being impatient with children, with people. Perhaps you feel guilty for not recycling correctly, for procrastinating, for eating your kid's chocolate. I don't feel guilty about that. If we feel guilt for not meeting our own standards for our lives, how much more guilt is there when we don't even take into account God's standards for us? God's law, morality is written on our hearts, every single one of us, and it's not subjective. It's objective. It's an objective law.

God's given it to us through the 10 commandments. Jesus, summarized the 10 commandments like this, love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. Who's done that? Nobody, so this is our sin. We take it to Jesus, our great high priest. Hebrews 3:1, "Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession." Focus on him, focus on Christ. His prayer is efficacious. It helps, it comes to our aid. Hebrews 2:14-18 says, "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death..." That is the devil, "... and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it's not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful, and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered, when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted."

Jesus saves, Jesus knows, Jesus prays, and finally, Jesus sends. Jesus the great high priest, when he forgives us of our sins, he gives us a new calling. He gives us a new name, a new identity, we're now his, we are a kingdom of holy priests proclaiming the excellencies of Christ, kings, prophets and priests. In the Old Testament, the priests had two jobs, and we see the jobs in the Old Testament. The first job was they could actually come to the presence of God, pray to him, worship him, and know him. It was a great privilege and responsibility. The second of which was to represent God to others. They could know God, and they can make him known. 1st Peter 2:5 says, "You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a royal priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." We're a holy priesthood. That's what we are dear Christians, this is our job to know God, and to make him known, and when Jesus Christ comes, he separates, he takes away the separation between us and God. We can know him, we can make him known.

But, the way that we do this effectively, dear Christian, is by continuing to pursue holiness. A lot of people think of grace as a cheap grace. I come, I get my sins forgiven so that I can go and sin more. Scripture says no. When God forgives you of your sins you're given a new identity. You are now a holy priesthood, by holy scripture means that you are set apart, that you now are to be a counterculture, that you are to be distinct, completely different, separated from the world, and when we're separated from sin, from folly, separated from following the enemy of the world, we can be useful to God. Here's an illustration. What's the most holy thing that you own? It's your Bible, of course. That's always the first answer. The second, what's the second most holy thing that you own? For me personally, I think it's my phone. If separated from everyone else, don't touch it. That's mine. It's always with me. It's there. I think the third for me, it could be second for you, the third most holy, distinct, separated from anything else thing that I own, the object in my life is my toothbrush. It's holy. It's used only for one purpose. If it's ever used for another purpose, cleaning sneakers, cleaning grout, used to clean my kids' teeth. I love you, but no, it's getting tossed. Now, it's become unholy. It's no longer useful, desecrated, it's an abomination in my eyes. When we're saved God gives us a purpose. We're to be a holy priesthood proclaiming the excellencies of Christ, and the reason why we are not fulfilling, perhaps our full purpose that God has for us is because we have taken ourselves a holy object, and we're using it for unholy things. We don't lose our salvation. Well, we no longer fulfill our purpose. We become vessels for dishonorable use as 2nd Timothy says, therefore the priest of Jesus Christ is such a gift.

We can come to him every day on a daily basis. Repent and believe, Lord, forgive me, Lord, I trust you that your sacrifice is effication that you've forgiven me, and I pray Lord, redirect me, fulfill the purpose that you have for me, and that purpose is to minister to one another. Yes, Jesus is our only priest. We only need to come to him, but at this point a lot of people might say, "I don't need the church." This is where we need to minister to one another. We need the church, we need Christians in our lives to pray for, to minister, to use our time, talent and treasure, and we need unbelievers in our life to minister to them. Whenever people hear the word evangelism, a lot of times people would just get frightened at the challenge that evangelism is. Here's a great definition for evangelism by J. I. Packer, evangelism is a Christian living as a Christian in the world. I love that. It's a Christian living as a Christian in the world that we image forth God, reflect God, show the world God, help the world know God by loving, and serving, and sacrifice, and speaking because we are distinct, separated, we're a counter culture.

You're holy, we're to live holy lives not perfectly, but separated, so live out your identity. In conclusion, Christmas is full of joy because the world often isn't. Jesus came to live here in this world where we do, where everything breaks, where everything beautiful at some point turns ugly, where nothing lasts, where everything precious dies and Jesus knows what it's like, because he, the most beautiful person to have ever lived, he too died, and God took the ugliest act in the history of the universe, the death of Christ on the cross, his death, he resurrected him and turned it into beauty and this is the beauty of Christmas. That God is with us, that Jesus, the great high priest he saves, he knows, he prays, he sends. Everything else passes, all of our gifts that we buy one another it'll all pass, and only Jesus Christ can meet our greatest need.

He can fill our doubtful hearts with hope. He can fill our lonely hearts with love, he can fill our restless hearts with peace, and he can fill our saddened hearts with hope, love, joy, and peace. The gifts of Christmas. Let's pray. Holy God, we thank you that you made a provision for us an unholy people to be reconciled with you, that you have made a way for us to enter heaven, the Holy of Holies, where you are, that we can approach the throne of grace boldly to receive mercy and grace. I pray if anyone has not done that, has not received mercy and grace, I pray, Lord, give them a gift today of repentance, and fill their hearts with your presence, your hope, love, joy, and peace. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

I'm going to read from Acts 3:17-26. This is not the most Christmas-y passage, but it comes in the time of Pentecost after Jesus has died and resurrected and ascended into heaven. The spirit descends upon the apostles and they begin teaching about God. Where do they go first? They go to the Jews, who missed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the anointed one. The apostles heal a man who's been lame his whole life and he begins leaping and walking and it's drawing attention to the crowd, so this is the sermon that Peter delivers to that crowd.

Acts 3:17-26, "And now brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers, but what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. The times of refresh may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his Holy prophets long ago. Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaim these days.

You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, "And in your offspring shall all the families of the Earth be blessed." God having raised up his servant, sent him to you first. To bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.'" Please, this is the word of God. Please join me in prayer. Lord, since the fall, it's inherent in our nature to question your authority, to question our need for you in our lives, to question just the use of your word, your direction, towards us. We want to be independent from you, Lord. Even those of us who know we're saved by grace through faith, we have a tendency to want to stray, to lean on our own strength, to push forward to find meaning and things that are not you. But Lord, we realize that that is impossible and today we repent of the tendency to just want to be autonomous, to be separate from you, to take pride in our own actions and strength.

Lord we pray, Holy spirit, convict us of our need for your word in our life. Let it fill and satiate our soul. Bring us refreshment today through your word. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Today, we are in our second week of advent. We did not make it easy for ourselves as pastors and staff this year. We're doing some theology, some Christology. Every year that we choose a theme to cover for advent. We're talking about just the man, Jesus Christ. Last week we talked about Jesus, how he was the Messiah and he needed to be God and man, and what that meant for us. This week we're talking about Jesus as prophet, next week, priest and the week after, King. The name Messiah, the name Christ, has requirements to it. And that's that Jesus, it says Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures and he fulfilled these roles as prophet, priest, and King. And so, today, I want to explain to you, what does it mean that Jesus was our prophet, and what does that mean for our lives?

To start, I want to just emphasize, what is advent? I think this is a good starting point. I grew up in church. Every week we lit four candles, at the center was the Jesus candle. That's about all I remember. I didn't learn much about the meeting, so advent is a season where God's people, Christians, wait for the return of Christ in glory to consummate his eternal kingdom. Why do we do this? We do this because, the church is in a similar situation to Israel at the end of the old Testament. We're in exile, we're waiting and hoping and expect prayerful expectation for the coming Messiah to come back to make all things new. Why do we do this? Israel looked back to God's past actions when he freed them in the Exodus from Egypt while they looked ahead for the first coming of Christ. In the same way that church during advent, we've looked back upon Christ first coming, his incarnation, and we do celebrate that, but at the same time we look forward in anticipation and longing that he is going to fulfill those promises, that he's going to come back.

Advent is a period of tension. The song that really captures it is, "Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the son of God appears. Rejoice, rejoice, Emanuel shall come through thee, oh Israel." On one end, it's a solemn period in the sense that, we are waiting for Christ's return. If you just can think of the old Testament community, those faithful, the remnant Jews just waiting, "Is God actually going to deliver on this promise?" The prophets have stopped speaking, the presence of God is not at the temple. Is the Messiah ever going to come? They had said, "Okay, he came, he freed us from Egypt." Now, we as Christians, we look back. Christ didn't come. We're waiting for him to come. The hard part about celebrating, acknowledging the advent in our culture is that, we have Thanksgiving and then immediately Christmas starts.

I think I heard Christmas music actually in October this year and, the whole period, instead of this period with a bit of solemnity mixed with joy, there is hope, it just becomes this busy season of party after party. Church gathering after church gathering, work, our jobs celebrate Christmas and the new year. A lot of time we're busy, we have a lot of excitement. By the time we get to Christmas, Christmas is supposed to be that point, the solemnity goes away. Jesus Christ has come. We sing joy to the world with full authority but, ironically, Christmas is that time where we feel the most loneliness. We feel isolation. Joy, peace on earth, Goodwill to men, are you serious? I have to spend the week with my in-laws. I have to spend the week with my parents who are going to remind me of my singleness and my childlessness. Cousin Eddy and his kids and his RV are going to be here freeloading for a week. God, help me more than ever. Give me your presence more than ever in this period.

And so, we kind of have reverse. Advent's full of hype, full of emotion, full of excitement. Christmas, just the way it tends to go. We feel this deep isolation. What does that look like for some people? Some people don't actually get to take off from work. They look at everybody else celebrate and they don't get that. That's really isolating. Some people don't have friends or family and they see everybody else gathered. They feel the loneliness. Some of us are crippled on the holidays just thinking of just people that have died recently that were close to us, relationships that have ended. Even if we have time with our large families, a lot of us when we spend that time, we realize we don't even know the people that were spending time with. How do I not know my parents anymore? I used to spend all this time with them. Even spouses, you get to a point where you are spending time with each other in an extended fashion for maybe one of two or three times throughout the year, and you're like, "I don't even know you. What do we do together? How do I interact?"

It's just, you either just ignore it or there's a lot of explosion and just that feeling of isolation. Contrastingly, the holidays can be great. We do spend that time with others. We feel this sense of joy just being surrounded in a community of love, of talking, being heard, knowing and being known. What I want to emphasize here is that, there's something inherent in our nature that the holidays bring out. That we want to be heard and we need somebody to talk back. That's a part of our nature. It's a part of the way we were created. That's essentially what Christmas is about. Man needs God. He needs God's direction in life. Adam walked in the garden, he needed God to guide him, to help him to interpret the world around him before he fell and Adam sins. We need a means to have that connection with God again. How does God do that? He comes in the form of a baby and provides that.

But just thinking about the tension, whether the extreme loneliness and isolation you associate, the extreme joy and bliss that you feel at Christmas. It tells us something about ourselves and I'd argued today, this is, these emotions that are exacerbated by Christmas, they show us our need for Jesus as our prophet, somebody who talks to us and somebody who we need to respond to. I'm going to make three points today. Jesus, our prophet, is the source of truth, source of meaning and the source of freedom. Just very simply, I want to speed through Jesus as our prophet. He is the source of truth. Verse 18 and 22, tell us that Jesus is a prophet, "They tell us that Jesus is a prophet, but what God we're foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he's thus fulfilled."

Moses said, "The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you, and it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people." So Jesus is a prophet. All the prophets were pointing to him. I just want to clarify from the front, we're not going to get into mystical prophecy talk today. Just basic definition of a prophet. Pro, for me, it means, the roots of the word means before speak. We're not talking necessarily about something that will happen in the future in detail today. A prophet, before anything, was a spokesman before God. An example of this from scripture is, that just clarifies my point is, it comes from Exodus seven. The relationship that Moses and Aaron had, that God appointed.

God told Moses, "See, I've made you, Moses, like God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of this land. Aaron was the prophet that spoke with the authority of Moses. Moses got everything from God himself. And so, prophets, they did tend to have a foretelling meaning, a prophetic ability to speak about the future, but they also had this forth-telling in a similar sense that they were like preachers of their day. They're inspired by the Holy Spirit. One thing to think about prophecy is that they didn't just speak from their own minds, their own opinion, their own state of consciousness, they spoke from, the way they finished or began their words were "thus sayeth the Lord." What they said was what God says.

And so, Jesus came into the world and he did function as a prophet. He represented the father, John 15:15, "But I've called you friends for all that I've heard from my father. I've made known to you." Jesus gave us the scriptures in order that we might believe and have life. But these, the scriptures, are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. We need, going back to Adam in the garden, God gives us general revelation. All people are image bearers of God. We can look at the world around us and we can discern through beauty, through majesty, through the way of simple equations, explain how the world works. We can know that there is a God, but we need special revelation.

We need God to speak to us, to tell us the means to have peace with him, and that was the way in the garden. Adam always had a communication or relationship with God. Jesus is still prophet, just to finish the theology of it all. Jesus is still serving in this office. He provides for the building up of the body of the church today, and he sends the Holy Spirit to equip the church to do the work of the ministry. This is Ephesians, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all tend to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son God. "To mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes."

So Jesus came, he was a prophet, he is our prophet, and he spoke with the same authority as the prophets of old. Said thus sayeth the Lord. This is the word of God and just this idea that this is the word of God, Christianity says we have the source of absolute truth. Why do I need to harp on this right now? Because, there's a lot of people you talk to, even in our church, that say like, "This truth, I like that it's good for you, maybe not for me." I talked to a girl recently who was in a religion 101 class and she had to interview a religious professional and she said this, "Thank you for telling me about this. I'm glad that this is the truth for you." As Christians, we don't have to fight back, but we should explain, we don't view ourselves as one truth. One means to God amongst many other. We believe that Jesus came and taught us the truth and he speaks to us through scripture and he, in fact, spoke in his physical presence to us.

There is, I just want to dig into it, there are a lot of different forms of opposition to this stance that Christians have, that we have the absolute truth and we don't hold it over other people in disrespect. But we need to know how to engage these arguments and just locally, two of the primary just challenges to the authority of God's word are science and new age spirituality. Science, This isn't something new. It says, we've learned more and more about the natural world. We don't need religion anymore to fill in the spaces. We just accept that we are formed by a random crash of molecules and we take what we learn from it. We take those laws and we just accept our state of meaninglessness. But the challenge of science is weakening. There's a new book, Rebecca McLaughlin wrote it called, Confronting Christianity. She gives a whole list of current MIT professors who are Christian.

She goes in detail about Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, his conversion to Christianity after not growing up Christian. Basically, there is a lot of people in science saying that science is limited. It can only speak into things pertaining to science. A quote from Rebecca says, "Science has a place, a vital one in modern society. We can all benefit from the knowledge we have gained through the scientific method, first devised by Christian scholars." Of Christians. Were not saying, "Stop listening to science." We're saying, "Look at it from the proper lens. Science is good." At Mosaic, and if you go through the books of our members, a huge percentage of people are scientists.

"But if we elevate scientific truth above all other kinds, and believe that the scientific script rules out other stories, we have no grounds for morality and no basis for rebelling against our genes. We are bags of cells and waste with an expiration day, and it doesn't mean anything. And so, we as humans, we believe in these ideals of love and justice and mercy, and it doesn't check with our nature to view ourselves in the way that science does." So the argument of science has shaken, but there's a new challenger here and, especially here in Brookline and Boston, that's new age spirituality, this consciousness movement. It's starts with the opposite. God is in all of us. Bring out the God within you. What can one do to obtain different levels of consciousness and perspective? What are those spiritual-physical experiences, yoga experiences, chemically-induced travel and intellectual experiences of which you post photos of on social media. That help you become or ascend the better version of yourself. It's just confusing.

We live in this age of science, but now there's this trend towards spirituality. Pew Research Center released the results of a survey in 2017 that concluded that about a quarter of U.S. adults, 27%, now say they think of themselves as spiritual but not religious. That percentage is up eight percentage points in five years. That's quite a leap. How do I know that this is a movement, and it's dangerous to Christianity because there's a spirituality, but it's still rejecting the authority of a sovereign God. We have two yoga studios, three to four blocks this way, three up the road at Coolidge corner. There's six in Brookline village. I don't know about, you when I drive here in the morning, there are just people pouring through those doors, and it's all day into the evening. The church I grew up in, I get Facebook invites for yoga classes there.

Is the challenge on Christianity as blatant as science? No. Here's what this challenge typically sounds like. I'm quoting from a website for January 1st, "Kick Off Your Year Right event. After staying out late on New Year's Eve, sleeping in and going to the brunch in the South end, at two o'clock you can attend an event called Renew To Be You: Connect, Inspire, Uplift. The workshop. We'll begin with a reflection on what has passed to release old ways of being and tap into untapped potential. We will then flow through a heart-opening vinyasa class, incorporating pranayama mantra to connect and unite the breath, mind, body, and spirit. We will end with a guided visualization to help you see and realize the dreams in your heart. Following this movement practice will put pen to paper and set some intentions for the new year to come."

It's talking about this practice of emptying yourself to allow for new, as you ascend to a different level of consciousness or try to force yourself to that point, this new vision for your life. That's the opposite of what scripture says. Scripture says, "Be filled with the spirit." Open your Bible every day to try to know the will of God. Be careful when you open your heart, open your mind, to be filled after you empty yourself. You are susceptible. Christianity says, "Susceptible to spirits that are antagonistic." That know God and reject him and they're trying to recruit you to his side. We live in this age where truth is being attacked on all fronts, and we have several sermons on this if you dig the Mosaic history. The confusing thing is that both of these do attack just this idea that, when I wake up in the morning, I answer to somebody. I answer to God. It's rarely just one of these two. I think there's science and then there's this mysticism, the spirituality, coming from Eastern influence on our society. And the movie Avengers, Endgame, shows this.

If you haven't seen the movie, you've had enough time, but Thanos, the villain, who at the snap of fingers has the ability to decide who survives and who does not. He seemingly beats the Avengers and, what does he do after this big fight that lasts several movies? He goes into a garden and lives in a shack with a nice fireplace that takes us back to the imagery of the garden of Eden and all of a sudden the Avengers do show up. It's mutated animals. It's scientifically, genetically-modified humans. It's these better versions of ourselves that show up and they take Thanos down in that moment. That doesn't give away the whole movie, but it's not just the scientific influence, it's Dr. Strange, the Eastern mystic, was crucial in taking down Thanos. And so, this is creeping into our society.

This view that science, that mysticism can fill this hole for a gap of truth. But Christianity just says, no, to that. We get applications to Mosaic saying like, "I want to become a member because this is the truth that is for me." That is not the Christian stance. We say this is the truth for everybody. Everybody, the greatest news they could hear is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The prophets, you think of the prophets back in the day. Elijah faces the prophets of Baal. Did he just say, "Oh, you guys are right. Let's sit down and have a Ted circle"? He said like, "Let's throw it down, my God versus yours." Now, we don't do that in an active sense. We're not there walking on the streets fighting people, trying to call God down to bring fire on people. We trust in the Holy spirit.

We trust in God's great justice that he will bring when he comes back to make all things new, but we stand on this truth, and Jesus stood on this truth. There's no way around that, and just, I want to emphasize, truth is not something that is inside of us. It's outside of us. It's not this New Age Movement that says that we have it within us, we just need to bring it out. This need for truth outside of us has been the case since the garden of Eden. Theologian Richard Gamble says this, "Well, Adam was dependent on God for his understanding of general revelation before the fall. Pre-lapsarian, pre-fall Adam, was not to understand God's creation by observation and experimentation alone, but was to work in conjunction with God's supernatural communications to him.

Like us, Adam was not merely to observe and interpret the world. Unlike us, however, Adam was able to receive the precise meaning of all creation directly from the artist and architect himself. Today, we also turn to the artist to interpret his beautiful creation, but must turn to God's self-revelation in scripture to accomplish this task. God was present with Adam from the very beginning. Adam's first experiences were connected to hearing God's word. God's command, his law to Adam and Eve, was meant to determine the course of their lives. It gave them their understanding of themselves." So the Bible doesn't talk about truth of scientific facts. It doesn't talk about subjective experience being the determining factor of truth, it talks about absolute truth that comes through embracing that we are created beings in need of direction, the source of truth, our creator.

And so, Jesus Christ is the prophet that preaches that truth. He did that in his life. Point two though, Jesus was more than just a prophet. I want to build on this. Jesus our prophet is the source of meaning, and so just want to look, emphasis is on all in these verses. "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaim these days of Christ." The emphasis is on all, all of the prophets spoke of this coming, this Messiah, this man Jesus Christ. There's something special, God is speaking in a way through Christ that he never spoke before. I want to go through a couple of verses that also emphasizes and explain a little bit more.

Hebrews 1:1-3, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. He used to speak through the prophets now, but now he speaks through the son again." I just want to read one more passage. John 1, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and then the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."

Verse 14, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth." A lot of verses. These are to emphasize, Jesus doesn't just bring the word, he is God's word. And there's something special about him coming. It's not just the words that he said, it's the way he lived his life, who he was, was an expression of who God is. To understand this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, we can use it to explain, Jesus was the creator. Part of the Trinity was with God when he created the heavens and the earth, but John here, he's also in a day influenced by Greek thinkers. In the beginning was the word, logos. Logos is a word that had implications for people of that culture at that time. Greeks were looking for centuries for this principle of the logos. Logos would be the thing, it was the central principle that all of life was going towards and it would explain meaning.

It would give life meaning if we could understand it. John here, he knows that. He's not saying Jesus ... The Greek culture, they fluctuated. How do we find meaning? You look at the history of their culture. It was through asceticism, living mystical lives, seeking wisdom, trying to understand the soul on one side, and they had generations of that. They had other generations that said, "Eat, drink, be merry like true materialists," and they didn't find satisfaction. Ultimately, you see, they were able to accomplish a lot to civilize the world, but ultimately, their power structures fell down. They didn't have God to clarify, it's the unity of the spiritual and the material that we both need and Jesus Christ provides meaning for both. He is the unity of the spiritual and physical. He is the logos, and he's the exact imprint of God's glory in this life.

And so, we have these abstract standards of love and joy and mercy, and they are without definition until we actually see Jesus came and he was the embodiment of those things. So, how do you find logos? How do you find meaning in your life? We place our faith in the prophet, verse 18, "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." This author's saying that the Greeks, their culture never settled. They never had a reason to promote that asceticism, never had a reason to promote that materialism. Actually, both the material and the spiritual matter and the way that we find meaning is living for this creator, Jesus.

He's the one we were created by, the one we were created for. And so, when we place our faith in the fact that he suffered for us, we can have meaning. We can have purpose. We can see God for who he is, see the world properly. And so, the best way to really understand this though, is to think of the ... For those who are skeptics, who are atheists, who are true materialists, all that we have is this world. This material, and we're sacks of cells. You're saying you do not have a logos. There's no source of meaning. Your world is unintelligible. If you're not an image bearer of God with a soul as different from all of the animals around us, God breathed life into men, you don't know who you are. You don't know where you came from, how to get rid of the guilt that you have or even understand why you experience guilt in this life and, how do you get rid of that guilt?

You can do that by trying to create your own logos, create your own meaning and relationships and looks, money, accolades, children, whatever it is, but everything is going to crumble. They're not substantial grounds to stand on. Also, your position says, we can't speak to each other. What does that mean? Like John Lennon, some people might think all we need is love. What is love if not defined by an absolute standard? And so, you spread this message of love and you get that message in some experience that raises your consciousness. Maybe someone else has an experience that raises their consciousness and they say, "In order for the world to have peace, for the world to flourish, for us humans to have joy, we need to eradicate the lands of this specific people group."

Your communication has no meaning in the sense that you have no standard to appeal to. Neither side can say what is right and what is wrong. And so, CS Lewis, he took this view. He was an atheist before he became Christian and he wrote about where he was. "My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust, but how had I got this idea of just an unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. "What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show is bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be a part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it? Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own, but if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too.

For the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist, in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless, I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality, namely my idea of justice, was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. Just as if there were no light in the universe and, therefore, no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." Some of you just resist Christianity because you take the sense, you think about suffering and evil and death in this world and you view them as, you say, "It's not fair. It's cruel, but you're appealing to standards and understandings of what is good and fair and just that are your own.

If you don't have a God, you don't have a basis to express this anger, this frustration towards God. But Christians, we do have a reason. Jesus is our rock and we normally talk about that in an emotional sense. Like, he gets us through those hard times, and that's true. We need to turn to Jesus. We need to listen to worship songs when our emotions are pouring out, but Jesus is also as our prophet who comes in, not just brings the truth, but as the truth. He's our grounds for having confidence that we can stand on being Christian intellectually. We can say what is right and what is wrong and not being consistent with our beliefs. We can preach the gospel with confidence. We can hold each other accountable. We find our meaning, our logos, in serving the one who created us.

We serve the church. We love those in the church. We have a reason to do all of this and, you get rid of God, there's no point doing it all. If God's ever proven false, we shouldn't be here. But if you don't have this view, you have no reason to hold anybody accountable to any form of morality. People in Boston are really difficult. The locals, you've survived this cold, you've survived these rising rental prices, you've built up resilience. You say like, I don't ..." You resist this need, this pull towards God that is on your soul. If life is meaningless, like, "I'm okay." Transplants, you are people who made it somewhere. You've been able to just climb the different echelons in your career. You've had success, you've had relationships, you're building the family and you're saying like, "If life is meaningless, it doesn't matter. I'm okay." But scripture says you take that view, eventually, Christ is the rock you need to build on, all other ground is sinking sand.

If you really are a child of God and you start placing any of these experiences, these relationships, these things to give you meaning, he's just going to be painfully strip those from you until you give him the worship that he desires. So Jesus gives us meaning. Finally, Jesus, our prophet is a source of freedom. Verse 19. "Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." I love that word, refreshing. That's like, who here needs refreshment today? If you live in Boston, you need it all the time. This is such a good word. If I could describe my life before I became Christian, it would be, "I'm tired." it was five years of living in an inconsistent manner as a "Christian." The question was like, "Andy, how are you?" "I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm just tired." This is the talk of people in despair. I'd went through every method.

In college, I went to the counselors. I tried to build my identity, find fulfillment, find meaning as an athlete, as a student, through relationships, through accomplishments, nothing landed. The last thing I wanted to do was to actually, I knew the gospel. I knew it well enough. The last thing I want to, like when I'm mad, I want to get mad at ... When I'm bitter in a bad mood, not filling my mind with the word, I want to look at my church that I grew up and say, "Man, you didn't teach me that gospel good enough." But I knew it. What I resisted was submitting my ... While I tried out all those other methods, I just didn't want to submit my life to God, submit my life to his word. I knew he offered freedom, but I didn't want to give up the sin in my life. These idols I had in my life.

So, we get refreshment when we come, we say, "God, I believe your word. Jesus, You are my savior." We get refreshment when our sins are blotted out, when we realize that Jesus dying on the cross, he washed our sins white as snow. That's what refreshment is. And so, some people they, the truths of scripture, Jesus appeals to them, but you're just resisting. You don't want to give up those things that you're clinging to. You know God is going to ask you to repent, turn away from some things, turn towards some behaviors and actions. He's going to ask you to spend time in community to share your fears, share your worries, share your triumphs, share your failures, share your sins, spend time with the stinky people and people who look different than you, and you're just resisting.

God offers us refreshment. Proverbs 3:5-8, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil." Here's the best part, "It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones." I want that. Who does not want that? Why resist? Does that simple short-term pleasure, is that worth this healing to our bones and human to refresh, or refreshment to our bones? Is that not better than just that thing that you're clinging to? A famous author of the 20th century was, he was at least honest.

He said, "For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of the system claim that it embodied the meaning, the Christian meaning they insisted of the world. There is one admittedly simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt. We would deny that the world had any meaning whatever." Now, I don't know if he was taught a poor presentation. The Bible says sex is good within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman.

I don't know if he ever learned that view in several periods of the last century where sex was taught wrongly, but he's an extreme example of somebody who has clung to, clung to something. He knowingly pushed against the word of God, and so, what is it for you? I asked, what is freedom? Freedom is typically viewed as the lack of any restraint. To be able to do what we, want when we want. That's how it's defined in our world, but just look at the world. What is freedom? When I write my sermons, I have a public room in the building I live in, I live downtown. I just see, literally a minute after minute, these giant airplanes taking off and they're coming towards the skyscrapers of downtown and they're turning and they're veering away. And it's just thousands of pounds of metal in the air with just chemicals that could just explode if not handled properly. I'm like, "How does that work?" Somebody observed the laws of aerodynamics and that's what enables the plane to take off.

We as humans are no different. We find freedom when we live under the structures that God created us to live under, and that goes back to Adam in the garden. Adam, you have freedom to live in the garden of Eden. Do what you want, but don't eat from this one tree. Adam had to give it to God that God was God, Adam was the creature. Adam was dependent on God's instruction, God's word in his life. Freedom, as a Christian, when we live under God's design, we live under his word. We treat it as the absolute truth that we should follow. We don't do it in spite, not religiously, not Pharisaically. We do it out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. When we understand that, we get to become the person we are created to be. People ask me, "Why would you go to ministry?" Honestly, I just think I'm doing the thing that God created me to be. I saw myself, as I took different steps in the church, I saw myself fulfilling my potential, and other people were affirming that. like, "What is that for you?"

If you're not submitting your life to God, you can't see the world properly. You can't see your life properly. Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, regarded as the best sports movie ever by many. He said, "When I run," his sister is yelling at him for not going to China, not leaving Scotland to go to China after he's qualified for the Olympic games. He eventually goes on to win a gold medal. He responds to his sister, and he says, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure." When we submit to the Lord in gratitude and thankfulness for the fact that we had a single problem, our sin, that prevented us from getting access to God. We believe that God came into this world as a baby and he lived the life we didn't live, died the death we deserve, conquered the penalty for sin once and for all, we can have freedom in him. Some of you push, you're pushing against just God's truth. You're trying to define it on yourself.

Your journey towards becoming a person you were created to be was taking God's truth and seeing them. This is the truth that I need to surround my life around. Some of you are just, again, you're angry at God. You think, "This is not right. There's suffering, there's evil. Now, God, how could this be a part of your plan? This is unjust." You want to shed this influence of God on your life, but you have no means to do that. There's no meaning to your argument if there aren't standards given by God. We might not ever understand why things in this life happened the way that we do, but the fact that God came into this world to care for our problem of sin, to address it, to give us access to him, to be able to receive his instruction, it shows us that the answer can't be that he doesn't care.

Some of you, you want freedom. You might come to church and you come around the holidays. Every once in a while you read a spiritual book. You pray when things get hard, but you've never said like, "God, I submit my life to you. Thank you for sending Jesus. Thank you for taking the punishment I deserve. I submit my life to you." You just don't know this freedom. You have to surrender all of yourself and, how are you sustained in this life, you go to the gospel each day. This Christmas story, my struggle with Christmas is that we feel this tension. We need to be waking up every morning and just filling our minds with the word of God that we needed. Our sin was so bad that he had to send a baby to come save us. I don't understand the holidays because, I was so convicted of my sin at one point, and my need for Christ, and resounded in the freedom of that, that I just don't ...

Fortunately, by God's grace, I'm growing to the point I don't need the holidays for that strong reminder. That should be all of us. How are we sustained? We wake up, we fill our mind with the gospel. The message that the prophets proclaimed in the old Testament and on throughout the new. Jesus is the means for our salvation. We have this free gift of grace from God and one day he will return to come and make all things new. We need to fill our minds with that every day, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."

Please join me in prayer. Lord, we repent of attempting to assert our authority from you. We repent of saying we don't need you. We repent of anger and angst towards you that was baseless and not justified. Lord, we know that in coming in the form of Jesus Christ, you do care for us. We know that Jesus Christ was given all authority on heaven and earth and his promises will be fulfilled. He will return one day. Lord, as we live in this tension where you've already won the battle to establish your kingdom, Lord, sustain us as we wait the day that you return and just reign in full. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Summary:

Why do we long for a hero? Why do our heroes always let us down? This Sunday, we will begin a new Advent series, and look at how all these longings point to Jesus. He is the quintessential hero, the chosen one, the Messiah. Who He is makes Him the only hero who can truly save us, and what’s He’s done proves He’s the only hero who will never let us down.

Audio Transcript:

We are starting a new sermon series today. I'm excited. Advent is here. Christmas is coming. We've got our first snow day in the books, and I love December in Boston. It is that like one magical time of year where everything slows down, people chill out a little bit. You might even have someone smile and say hi to you on the T as they shove you out of their way. I don't know. I'm not a particularly sentimental guy, but I can appreciate the sentiment around Christmas, and a lot of us have a lot of nostalgic, cherished memories of Christmases growing up.

For me, one of my things that I always look forward to as a kid, and this might make some of you sad because I don't think this is even a thing anymore, but I loved, I waited. I couldn't wait for that massive JC Penney catalog to come in the mail, just page after page of pure plastic joy. It always got my greedy little heart like right in the Christmas spirit. I'd take that thing and I would just comb through it and I'd assess the inventory, and I'd very carefully make my decision. I'd find a big red marker and I'd go through and I'd circle everything that I wanted on my list.

The strategy was you had to first circle a few little things, like a few practical things, because then grandma would see how humble and pure your heart was and your odds would just be that much better when it came to circling that ridiculous thing that was like way over priced and out of your league. Grandma always came through though.

It's hard to talk about Christmas without talking about gifts. And we can bemoan, right, the materialism and the commercialization of the holiday season, but the reality is at the center of the Christmas story is a gift, an unimaginably costly gifts that God loved the world to such an extent that he gave his most valued treasure, his beloved, his only begotten son, Jesus Christ.

Over the next four weeks, we are going to be looking at four distinct ways in which Jesus is God's gift to us. Next week, Pastor Andy is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our prophet. The week after that, Pastor Jan is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our priest. And then the week of Christmas, our Mosaic Teen director Tyler Burns is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our king. Prophet, priest and king. Jesus is not just a prophet, priest, and king, but he is the prophet, priest, and king that every other prophet, priest, and king points toward and finds their fulfillment in. So remember those three titles, those three offices, prophet, priest, and king. We're going to be talking about those over the next couple of weeks.

Today though, we're going to start by looking at how first and foremost God gave Jesus to be our Messiah. Now, I don't know what comes to mind when you hear that word, because it's not a word that we really use very often in our modern vernacular. You might hear it has almost like a mystical, a mysterious sound to it, but it's actually a very meaningful title.

We're going to be looking at it today, and as we do it, we're going to be looking at a passage of scripture found in Isaiah chapter nine. Isaiah nine was a prophetic passage written about the birth of Jesus Christ, but it was actually written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ and it communicates the hope, the hope that ancient Israel had as they longingly waited for the Messiah for that first advent, the Adventist, the Parousia, the unveiling of the Messiah to be born.

To really get us in the Christmas spirit, we're going to be framing up our time with three familiar points this morning. Point number one, Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Point two, a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. And point three, his law is love and his gospel is peace. We're going to be in Isaiah chapter nine. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along. Otherwise, you can follow along on the screen as well.

Isaiah nine starting at verse two. "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them light has shown. You've multiplied the nation. You've increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with the joy at the harvest as they are glad when they divide the spoil, for the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the trampling warrior and battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire."

"For to a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this."

Would you please pray with me before we get into the sermon? God, we thank you for your Holy inerrant, inspired, and authoritative word, and we pray today that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would write these words, these truths on our hearts. Help us to understand them. Help us to not only that, but help us to believe and to love and to obey them. God, we pray that as we do, the hope, the love, the joy, the peace of Jesus Christ would come to rule in our lives and in our church. We ask this in his name. Amen.

Just to set the context, of the prophet Isaiah, this is a prophet writing in the Old Testament to the nation of Israel, and he's writing to a people who are on the brink of doom. The Assyrian empire, this massive war machine, is looming on their horizon ready to strike, and it is going to come down and it's going to crush them at any moment and carry them off into exile. It's hard for us to relate to their context of what it would be like to live in such a dangerous and volatile place. While we might not be able to relate to their specific context, all of us can relate to one degree or another of what that those feelings of fear and anxiety are like.

The prophet, he describes this. He paints this vivid picture of the land. It's a land that is covered in deep and constant darkness. Even that, the weightiness of that, it's easily lost on us. We live in a world where the light is always just a flip of the switch away. Now, they lived in a world that was lit only by fire, and it's hard to imagine the despair, but we need to try to feel what he wants us to feel here. The feeling that he's trying to convey is that of hopelessness, of lostness. We need to understand this, because to properly understand this prophecy, we need to understand this is not just about Israel. He's also talking about us.

One of the things that you need to understand when you're reading scripture, and particularly when you're reading prophecy in scripture, is that prophecy in scripture almost always has a threefold fulfillment. What that means is there's usually an immediate fulfillment that happens within the same historical context of its original audience, but if you really look closely at these prophetic passages, you realize there's something deeper going on, that there's the immediate fulfillment, but there's also this greater fulfillment. We see that greater fulfillment often being fulfilled by Jesus Christ, either through his birth, through his life, through his ministry, through his death, through his resurrection, or through his reign over the church. Then even beyond that, there is an ultimate fulfillment that we see in many of these prophecies that will not take place until Christ returns in glory.

We see the prophet Isaiah. He's writing, and on the one hand, he is addressing the contemporary political climate of his day and he's trying to warn the people of Israel. He's trying to prepare the people of Israel to see how God's sovereign hand of judgment and of redemption is working through their circumstance.

But when you really look closely at this passage, you see there's something deeper going on as well, that the physical oppression of the Assyrian empire, as bad as it was going to be, and it was going to be bad, it was merely a temporary manifestation of the spiritual oppression that all humanity faces from Satan, sin, and death. The reality is that the crisis of humanity is, when properly understood, even greater than the crisis of Israel, that all of us, we have an inward enemy of sin. We have a sinful nature. Our hearts are these darkened battlefields, enemy occupied territory. Most of us might even be afraid to really take a hard look inside, because when we do, we see these desires that are twisted, that are perverted, that are sometimes even evil, and it can scare us. Even at our best, our motives are tinges with selfishness, with pride, with greed. We understand we have this inward enemy.

We also have an outward enemy. Scripture talks about there's demonic powers at play in reality that are against us, that Satan, he's described as our adversary, our tempter, our accuser. He roams around like a roaring lion seeking who to devour. We have an inward enemy, an outward enemy, and then we have the ultimate enemy of death, completely inescapable, always looming on the horizon, able to strike at any moment.

Pastor Jan did a great job. He talked about this in detail last week. These are enemies that we cannot defeat, that we cannot battle on our own. We know this about death, but it's true about Satan and sin as well. We need something from outside ourselves to save us.

One of my favorite Christmas carols, it puts it like this. It says, "Oh, come though rod of Jesse," referring to the Messiah. "Oh, cones are out of Jessie. Free thine own from Satan's tyranny. From depths of hell thy people save and give them victory over the grave." We need something to rescue us from these three enemies that we face.

You've probably thought about this before. If not, just take a moment to think about the stories that we tell through books, TV, movies, comic books, whatever. Why are we so obsessed with heroes? Why are we so fascinated with superheroes? Why do we have so many tales of a chosen one, born for the sole purpose of fulfilling some great destiny on behalf of mankind? You think about Beowulf, King Arthur, William Wallace, Aragorn, Luke Skywalker, Neo, Link, my favorite Goku.

As I was writing this, it was Tuesday and our kids were home from school because they had a snow day. My wife and I, we both worked from home, and so the great thing about working from home is when your kids don't have school, you still have work, and so you've got to try to figure that out. They get to watch a lot of movies. Disney+ is a great babysitter and relatively inexpensive.

I'm sitting there writing my sermon, they're sitting next to me and they're watching The Lion King. What is The Lion King? You think about it, a chosen son, born to be king, celebrated at birth, fighting for his rightful throne. He falls at the hands of evil, oppression. All seems lost. He's presumed to be dead. Then he comes back. He saves his people. He establishes a kingdom of justice and peace.

It's as if we cannot even help ourselves from telling these messianic tales. They're written on our hearts. We tell them to our kids. We're inspired by them ourselves. But the strange thing is we always want to keep them confined to that realm of myth, of legend, of fairy tale. Like something inside them screams out that there's something inherently true about them, yet we're on the other hand a little bit afraid to believe them. We all have these longings for a Messiah impressed into our being and yet feel it's maybe just empty, optimistic sentiment to believe in such a thing. That's for children, but not really for adults. I would submit that part of the reason is because we're right, that these stories really are in a sense too good to be true, that such a one could not actually exist.

The Old Testament is packed with prophetic announcements and descriptions of a Messiah who would come. And actually the earliest of these happens right in the very beginning of the opening pages of scripture in Genesis chapter three. Immediately after the fall, as God is pronouncing the curse upon the serpent who tempted Eve, Adam and Eve, God says this. He says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." This is known as the protoevangelium, meaning the first gospel, that a child would be born, an offspring of Eve who would be destined to crush the serpent's head and save humanity.

Now, we read that and we immediately want to jump to Jesus, but like hold on for a second. Think about what is said in the very next chapter, the very first verse. Genesis 4:1 says this. It says, "Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain saying, 'I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord.'"

What are they thinking? Maybe this is the one. This is the offspring that God promised. He's going to come. He's going to crush the serpent's head. He's going to bring us back to Eden. He's going to restore our relationship with God. And then you read the story, and not only does Cain fail to crush the serpent's head, he becomes enslaved by the serpent to crush his brother's head instead. He murders his brother Abel.

Then following that, you read through the rest of the Old Testament and it's just failed Messiah after failed Messiah after failed Messiah. Even the greatest of the prophets, priests, and kings, they all sinned. They all fell short, and none fulfilled that promise.

This is the paradox, that only an offspring of Eve can stand in the place of humanity to pay the price of our redemption. Only a human life could be a substitute for humanity's sin. But the only person worthy to do such a thing would have to be perfectly innocent and perfectly powerful. In order to pay for the sins of others, they would first need to be guiltless of sin themselves, and then in order to bear the weight of that redemption, they would need to do so without being crushed and destroyed by it themselves.

What we see is that the curse of Adam in the sinful nature that we all inherit, it on the one hand puts us each in dire need of redemption, and on the other hand it makes us completely unable of attaining it. We have to sit in that darkness and feel that despair, that hopelessness, or we're never going to experience the thrill of hope that we're meant to experience in verses six and seven.

That brings us to point number two. Looking again at Isaiah, he starts in verse two. It says, "The people who've walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shown." Jumping down to verse six, "For to us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it in uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore."

I mentioned earlier that it's hard for us to relate to what it would be like living in a world where light was not readily available, to face darkness. About the closest I've ever come to experiencing this was in college. Some of my friends from high school and I, we used to like to go caving. When I say go caving, I don't mean like a commercial cave where you pay money, and you have a guide, and you walk through a path, and the cave is all lit up and beautiful. I mean you go to a forest, you find a hole in the ground, and you'd go into it, and you'd just explore.

There were times ... First of all, to do this, you're wearing knee pads. You're wearing a helmet. You're going down, and sometimes you're your army crawling through tunnels. The reward at the end, you'll crawl for 30, 40 feet and all of a sudden it will open up into this massive cavernous room, and it's just amazing. It's a breathtaking experience. But you only need to go about 50 feet into a cave before there is absolutely zero light, zero natural light, complete pitch, black darkness. And at that point, you become completely orderly dependent on this tiny little lamp strapped to your helmet. We would walk for hours sometimes, no idea how much distance it was, but probably up to a mile underground in the darkness.

Now, imagine you're an hour into a cave and the lights go out. Maybe even just close your eyes for a moment. I hate it when pastors do this, but I'm preaching today, so try it. Just close your eyes. Imagine this. You're an hour in and the lights go out. You have no sense of direction. You can begin groping your way through the dark, but you really don't know if you're getting closer to escape or if you're getting further away. Minutes turn into hours. Hours turn into you lose track of time. You're hungry. You're cold. You're tired. You're lost.

Now, imagine the thrill of hope if far off in the distance you swear you see a glimmer of light. Isaiah says there is a light that is coming into the darkness. Hope is coming. Rescue is coming. You can open your eyes.

This hope is coming through a king with a massive army that's going to crush the Assyrians... No, he says it's coming through a baby. It's going to come through a child that will be born to us, a son that will be given to us. It's like why should that bring any hope at all? And the reason that this child is going to bring hope is because there's going to be something about this child that is utterly different from every child born before him and every child born after him, because Isaiah says that this child will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

I know it's Christmas, and we all kind of want to just show up and hear a nice sermon about little eight pound, six ounce, beautiful baby Jesus, but I want to do some like theology today. I want to teach some doctrine today. I want us to think about this for a minute, because this is really important. We're going to do some Christology.

Isaiah chapter nine is a Christological prophecy about something that theologians call the hypostatic union of Christ. What this means is that the Messiah would have a truly fully nature. A child would be born. And the Messiah would have a truly fully divine nature. His name would be Mighty God. These two natures would be perfectly united in one person. Not part God, part man, but God-man, fully human, fully divine.

A couple chapters earlier, Isaiah 7:14 says, "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, meaning God with us." Micah 5:2, another prophesy says, "But you, O Bethlehem Ephratah, who were too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days."

Paul says in Colossian 2:9 that, "For in him, Christ, the full, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Hebrews 1, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom he also created in the world." And John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Verse 14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only son from the Father full of grace and truth."

Why does this matter? Why bring in the hypostatic union of Christ? What's the point? I mentioned earlier that the curse of Adam and the sinful nature that we inherit, it puts us in need of redemption and also incapable of attaining it. That on the one hand, only a truly human person can stand in humanity's place to pay the price of their redemption, but it would take only a truly perfect divine person who would be able and worthy to do such a thing. And only Jesus is both. He had to be both.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism, but it's a very useful discipleship tool that the church has used for generations. They come to this doctrine and they frame it by asking and answering two questions. The first question they ask is, why must he, why must the Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer be a righteous man? The answer is that he must be a true man, because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man, because one who himself is a sinner, he cannot pay for others.

So then why must he be God? That's the second question. So that by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness in life.

A slightly modernized version of this comes from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. They put together what they've called the New City Catechism, and they frame it with these questions. First, they ask, why must the Redeemer be truly human? That in human nature, he might on our behalf perfectly obey the whole law and suffer the punishment for human sin, and also that he might sympathize with our weaknesses. Why must the Redeemer be truly God? That because of his divine nature, his obedience and suffering would be perfect and effective, and also that he would be able to bear the righteous anger of God against sin and yet overcome death.

Jesus had to be fully God and he had to be truly human, because there is no other possible scenario through which he could have fully redeemed us from sin and from death. It is only because of his full humanity that Jesus is able to suffer and to sympathize with us, and it is only because of his full divinity that he is able to satisfy God's wrath and secure our salvation. In his divinity, he is perfectly united to the Father so that by grace through faith we may be perfectly united to him and his humanity, and therefore united to the Father, to the Spirit as well. This is what we're talking about being adopted into the family of God, that we become children of God through Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis, he put it a lot more succinctly like this. The son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. That's the hypostatic union.

Doctrine is important. We shouldn't be afraid to study a doctrine and to apply our minds to scripture, but we can't just let that live up here in our minds. We need to take the delight of that truth and we need to work it down into the darkness of our hearts. And this brings us to point three. It's important for us to understand who Jesus is in order to satisfy the reason, the logic of our minds. It's also important for us to understand what Jesus did to satisfy the longings of our hearts.

In Isaiah, he gives us a glimpse of who the Messiah would be at the beginning of his book, but then he goes into vivid detail about what the Messiah would do at the end of his book. In Isaiah chapter 53 it says this, "That surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed." "We all like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

The world watched with bated breath to see if Cain would crush the head of the serpent, but he crushes the head of his brother instead. Jesus Christ is born, and he's willingly crushed for his brothers. And in doing so, he crushes the serpent as well. In doing so, he finds a way to slay the serpent and save the sinner, to save all those who would repent and believe in his name. And so we see that who Jesus is makes him worthy, but what Jesus did makes him lovely.

This is where it begins to go from our head to our hearts, and we need to fight for this every day. We need to take that truth, and armed with that truth go into that dark battlefield of our hearts and do battle to not only know it, and to understand it, and to agree with it, but to believe it and to love it.

Whatever you're going through right now, whatever pain, whatever suffering, whatever despair, whatever darkness it is you're facing, don't miss this. The God of heaven left his throne. He left paradise and stepped down into a cold, dark world. He took on flesh. He bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows. He was crushed and wounded for our healing and peace, and he did this compelled by his love for us.

Because often when you're in the dark and when the darkness seems overwhelming, we're all tempted to ask these two questions. Is it that God is not powerful enough to give me justice and peace, or does he not love me enough to care? When you look at the light, when you look at Jesus and what he has done for you, you might not get a clear answer as to why God allows the darkness in your life, and you might not see you exactly what that answer is, but you do see what that answer cannot be, and the answer cannot be that God is not powerful enough to give you justice. He has taken the single darkest moment in human history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and redeemed it to such an extent that he used it as the source of greatest light. He used it as the source of the greatest good, the resurrection of Christ and the redemption of God's people. Do you believe that? Do you believe that he can do that for you? His word promises that he will.

The answer cannot be that God's not powerful enough to give us justice, but it also is not, it can't possibly be that he doesn't care, he doesn't love us enough to care, because God loved the world to such an extent that he gave that which he valued most, his beloved son, his only begotten son. Jesus loved to such an extent that he gave his life.

The Christmas season should be a joyful time, but for many it's a very jarring time. It can be a painful and isolating time of year for a lot of people. Typically what you see is on the one hand, there's a lot of us who are running to the past. We're chasing after some sentimental nostalgic feelings, and we put all this pressure on Christmas to give us these feelings of peace, of joy, of hope, and we're so romanticizing our memories of Christmases past that we are not even able to enjoy the present. That we put these crazy expectations on other people around us that hurt them. Ultimately, we just feel this dissatisfaction, this emptiness as Christmas comes and goes.

Some people are running to the past. A lot of other people are running away from the past. Just get me through the holidays. Just keep me from thinking too much about how jacked up my family is, and how messed up my circumstances are, and from dealing with the pain of my woundedness and of my sin. Maybe your life is not turning out the way you want it to.

Now, we can easily use the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season as a distraction to avoid dealing with the woundedness, with the sin in our life. But if we do, we run the risk of missing the true power of the Christmas season, because the true power of Christmas is not that Christ is able to give us a seasonal distraction from the pain of real life. The true power of Christmas is that Christ has come down into the darkness to redeem that pain, to use it for our good, that the light is shining in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.

Deep down we're all still just children afraid of the dark, waiting, longing for someone to come and to tell us that everything's going to be okay. Christmas is a reminder that the Word became flesh to do just that. That 2,000 years ago, a child was born into a cold, dark night to offer hope, love, joy, and peace to all people who would repent and believe in his name; that Christ appears in the darkness of our lives today to offer hope, love, joy, and peace to our present; and that Christ will return in glory to bring hope, love, joy, and peace to perfection.

If you have not experienced that today, this is not something that you have to go out and earn. It's not something that comes through your good work, through your righteousness. It is truly a gift to be received. Scripture says that to all who would receive it, to those who would believe in Jesus' name, he gives the right to become children of God, and you can do that today. We pray that that you would. Now would you please join me in prayer before we continue in worship.

God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus, our Messiah. Lord, I pray that if there are any here today who have not received that gift, that they would do so now. For those who have received it and who have believed in your name, God, remind us again that by grace through faith we have become your children, your beloved, and that you as a good father are working all things together for our good. God, when we wander, when we doubt, I pray that you would lead us back to the cross and remind us again of your great love and the price that was paid so that we can be set free from Satan's tyranny to live lives of joyful obedience to you. For your name, for your glory, and for your kingdom, we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Summary: When's the last time you've seriously thought about your funeral? How do you want to be remembered by those you leave behind? If you were to write a eulogy for your own funeral, would what you say? What would you like to be included in your obituary? What would you choose for your epitaph?

These are seemingly morbid questions, especially in a culture desperately bent on sheltering itself from the realities of death. However, every sober-minded person needs to meditate on the inevitability of death. The inevitability of death should guide our life. We will die. We will be remembered. Everyone leaves a legacy. What kind of legacy are you working to leave? Does your desired legacy shape your current life?

Audio Transcript: You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Heavenly Father, oh God who is everlasting before time and now and forever more, we thank you for your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you that you, the living word of God, came and poured yourself out. You fought the good fight, you ran your race, and you kept the faith. And you did all of that, taking your life as a sacrifice to the cross, poured out your blood in order to pour out your love into our hearts. And I pray, Lord, that you today show us that a salvation isn't achieved, it's received. And after we receive it, we are then to go and to pour ourselves out for the faith of others into their lives for their eternal souls.

Lord, I pray that you make us a people who care about leaving an eternal legacy. A legacy that will transcend our lifetimes, that through us, your word will be proclaimed into this generation and beyond. And that many, Lord, a myriad of eternal souls will be converted, and will spend eternity with us in your presence in heaven. And I pray that you give us the power of the Holy Spirit. Even now we welcome your Holy Spirit. We love you and we love your presence, come and minister to us, plant within each one of us a vision for living lives that will impact eternity. We pray this in Christ's name, Amen.

Today we are finishing our sermon series that we've been going through this fall called Tough and Tender: Developing A Resilience for Life. And I hope the series has been a blessing to you. Today we're talking about leaving an eternal legacy. Living to leave an eternal legacy. And by legacy, we mean how do you want to be remembered after you're gone? What kind of legacy do you want to leave? And it's a strange question to ask in our present-minded culture. We rarely acknowledge the legacy that we have inherited. For example, what are your great grandparents' names? And we rarely acknowledge that we will leave a legacy as well. Also, we live in a youth obsessed culture.

We idolize youth and do everything we can to stay young. And there's nothing wrong with being healthy, but there is something wrong in staving off the reality of death, finality of death. We forget about the fragility of life. And if the Lord tarries, every single one of us will die. So do you want to be remembered for perhaps your intelligence or education? No one takes out their resume at a funeral, that's not part of your eulogy. We want to be remembered for the impact we made on our friends, on our family, on the impact that we made in the world.

Early on in my life, at very formative seasons in my life, I lost three really close friends. The first of which was my friend, Pete. We grew up together. We were both bi-cultural. He was from the country of Georgia, I was from Estonia. We actually went to the same public school in Cranston, Rhode Island, in middle school and high school. And we also went to the same church, and we were just best friends and understood each other in a way that few could because of our bi-cultural past. And he was just a great guy to be around.

And Pete was driving with his brother, Dmitri, to my house in January of 2004 for a Bible study. And his brother was driving, and they hit a patch of black ice, and they went off the road and Pete died on impact. His brother was in a coma for three months, came out from that. That shook me to the core, and by God's orchestration, two weeks after that, I had pre-planned a study abroad in Moscow, so God took me out of my environment in Rhode Island, out of college and I went to do the study abroad in Moscow. My first Sunday in Moscow, I went to this church, Moscow Bible Church, and it was a little church, a church plant in a basement, and I connected with a few people and I was invited to a prayer meeting that Wednesday.

I show up to the prayer meeting and there were three wonderful elderly women of God, and there was this guy named Constantine, my age, who was also there to do a study abroad from another part of Russia, and we became fast friends. Fast forward after I come back to the United States, graduate, I met my wife Tanya. We got married and we went to seminary, got called by God to go into ministry. Then we moved to Boston to plant a church. While in seminary, my best friend was a guy named Rowland. Rowland and I were prayer partners. Actually, I went into my Google, into my Gmail, and searched for his name, and I saw the prayer thread email, the thread that we had going. We just encouraged one another. He was a great guy, we took a lot of classes together, and then moved to Boston in July, 2009.

August, 2009 I get news that Rowland died tragically. We plant Mosaic in October of 2011. December of 2011, my friend Constantine from Moscow dies with his wife in a car accident. At very pivotal times in my life, the Lord reminded me that life is fragile, that every single one of us, we have a mission given to us by God, and when we're done, when that mission's fulfilled, we're taken. And every single one of us leave a legacy, either good or ill, it's a legacy that grows into the future. And here's a thought experiment that perhaps is on the front end, seemingly morbid, but it's actually very sobering.

What do you want, if you were to encapsulate what your life was all about, what do you want on your tombstone? The inscription, the epitaph, what do you want that to say? This is really ... Honestly, come up with an answer. If you were to write your own obituary, what would you want included in that? If you were to speak at your funeral, if you were to write out a message for what your life was all about, what do you want included in that? Then is your current life lived in light of the legacy that you want to leave? This is what we're talking about today.

To frame up our time, we're going to look at the last words of St. Paul. St. Paul is the second most influential person on world history, after Jesus Christ. Whenever anyone speaks a final word before they pass or write a final word, those words are really important. And today, we're going to read the final words that St. Paul ever wrote. It's in 2nd Timothy 4:1-8. And just to set the context, St. Paul is in prison. He's awaiting execution by beheading. He's in the Mamertine Prison in Rome. Our prisons today are like the Hilton compared to the prisons in Rome. His cell is actually a damp, cold dungeon, more of a hole than anything else.

The prisoner would be brought down on a rope from a hole up top. He would be brought down, the rope would be taken away, and this is a bucket for human excrement. He's there in the dark, and he is meditating on the final words that he wants to write to his disciple, Timothy. St. Paul is clearly at rest. He's confident in the life that he has lived. He has poured his life out for Christ, poured it into disciples, and he's made a difference eternally. He's poured his life into the next generation, passes this torch. And this is what he writes to Timothy in 2nd Timothy 4:1-8.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Five points to frame up our time. We'll focus most of our attention on points one and two and then close off with the last three in rapid fire fashion. First of all, love God's word, pour yourself out, fight the good fight, finish your race and keep the faith. This is St. Paul's recipe for living a life to leave an eternal legacy. First of all, love God's word. There are only two things that are eternal in this world other than God himself: His word, which is an extension of himself and eternal souls created in the image of God.

Therefore, St. Paul says, "Timothy focus on these two things. Give your life to these two things. Preach the word. Proclaim the word. And do the work of an evangelist. Meaning speak the word into people's live who are far from the Lord so they can be reconciled with God so that their souls are regenerated, so they spend eternity in the presence of God." He said, "Devote yourselves to these things, things that will outlast you." And what does he mean by this word? The very text right before our text today, if you take away the chapter divider in 2nd Timothy, 3:16 and 17, all scriptures breath out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work.

He's saying eternal souls were breathed out by God and the eternal word was also breathed out by God, therefore they last for eternity. Isaiah 40:6-8, All flesh is grass. All its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades. When the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord will stand forever. Preach the word. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. By evangelist, he gets the word from evangelion, which means the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ.

That Christ has done everything that is needed for salvation to be achieved. So we are not saved by anything that we do, we're saved by what Christ has done. Salvation isn't achieved, it's received. All we need to do is accept God's gift of grace. We all need grace. He says, "Doing the work of evangelism is sharing God's grace." Everybody needs it and everyone is offered the same grace. Just receive it. That's what it means to be an evangelist, is sharing the good news. That's what it means to preach God's word, is sharing God's word. That's what it means to fulfill your ministry.

So we as Christians are to love God's word, study, meditate upon it, ruminate on the word within the word, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. So much so that it's so in us, it's embodied in us, that it just flows out of us naturally. And we talk about whatever we love. And then practically, it's sharing with the people around us, in our circles of influence. It's devoting yourself to the local church where God's word is proclaimed and to church planning, where God's word will be proclaimed.

And we've received it for free, we are to share the gift of grace in the same way. An illustration just to help us grasp the eternal importance of sharing the gospel. Imagine if you contracted Ebola in a village in Africa, and there's a doctor who comes in there, offers medicine you know about, and the doctor says, "Go and tell anyone else who has the same virus that they can have healing if they come to this place." Obviously, you would go and tell absolutely everyone. It would be of first importance in our lives. Now, dear Christian, obviously we do other things in our lives other than share the gospel, but everything we do must be a means to the end of glorifying God, sharing the gospel so that other people may acquire, receive eternal life.

Martin Luther King Jr. was asked, "If you were to die tomorrow, what would you do today?" And he said, "I would plant a tree." Meaning, he wanted to do something that would outlive him, and that's how he lived his life. Holy scripture says that we are not just plant physical things, we are to plant ourselves, devote ourselves to eternal things. And St. Paul understood this. He didn't have children that we know of, Jesus Christ didn't have children, but they affected the world. They influenced the world in a way that will impact not just the world, but all of eternity through the gospel of Jesus Christ, loving God's word.

Proverbs 11:30 says, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise. And the idea here is, that we've received the gospel, God has freed us from captivity and the kingdom and the domain of darkness, and we're transferred to the kingdom of God's eternal light. And then we go and through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit, we are to then capture souls. Daniel 12:3 says, and those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

He's saying this is the impact that we can have for all of eternity to help people turn to righteousness. That star, he says will shine forever. St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 has this incredible train of thought that a lot of Christians miss. A lot of Christians think that, okay, I receive grace and then I just wait until I go to heaven. St. Paul says, "No, you've received grace. Now, God has made you into an ambassador of the kingdom of God, of the King. You are not your own, you're sent as a representative to a foreign land with a message that is not your own, with resources that are not your own," and then we are to fulfill the mission that he has for us.

This is 2 Corinthians 5:16, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us, we implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. And this is incredible. He says, "This is the message you've received. This is how you have become new creation in Christ." The message is the double imputation, the transfer of our sin to Christ, his righteousness to us. How does it happen? By grace through faith. Now, through us, the Holy Spirit reconciles many to himself.

What's our message? Our message is, Jesus in my place. Our message is, Jesus got what I deserved for my sin against a Holy God. There was hostility between me and God, Jesus Christ absorbed the penalty for that hostility on the cross, in his body, in his flesh, in his soul, and now I'm reconciled with God just by grace, through faith. And God now implores others through our lives, "Please be reconciled. Accept this peace treaty that God offers through the gospel of Jesus Christ." So dear Christian, know this message, love this message, proclaim this message, share this message, and in our growing secular age, be able to defend the message.

Take a course in apologetics. Read a few books to answer the questions that people have for why we believe what we believe. Tim Keller, The Reason for God or anything by Ravi Zacharias, William Lane Craig. 2 Peter 3:15 says, in your hearts, honor Christ, the Lord as Holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason, for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. And even so, we don't rely on our words, on our articulation, our eloquence, we don't rely on our apologetics. What do we rely on? The gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the power of God unto salvation for anyone who believes, and we rely on the Holy Spirit. I remember when Tanya and I, my wife, we were in seminary and we were talking about building partnerships with people to help us plant a church in Boston. I remember talking to this one gentleman, very affluent in North Carolina. And one of the things he said, we were over his house for dinner, and he said, "Nah, don't go to Boston. Anywhere but Boston." He's like, "Boston's lost." He's like "Way too many pagans up there. You can't preach the gospel there, too hard. Hardscrabble ground. Don't do it."

And I remember driving home from that meeting, and it was like, thanks for the encouragement, first of all. Second of all, if I were to rely on myself, on my own resources, I wouldn't be up here. I can't save anybody. You can't save anybody. I didn't save myself, you didn't save yourself. If you're a Christian, you're a Christian by the power of the Holy Spirit, and whoever becomes a Christian becomes a Christian because God saved them, and I believe that. And we've seen that over the course of these eight years here in Boston, God has been saving people.

God continues to save people, and I trust in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's what he says in 2 Corinthians 5:20, Therefore we are ambassadors for God. But ambassadors don't go by their own resources. God making his appeal through us. How? By the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one that convicts, the one that regenerates, the one that draws people to God. And finally, ambassadors. If you continue with this metaphor. Ambassadors do have to give an account. How do you represent the King of Kings? King David lived a phenomenal life, faithful to the Lord for a long time. And then he got to this place of complacency in his life, committed adultery, and then ultimately murder.

And then the prophet comes to David, and speaks the word of God. And the word of God was, "You have blasphemed the name of God. You misrepresented the glorious God that you were commissioned by, whose name you are carrying." Dear Christian, every single one of us, we will give an account to God for how we lived our lives. And one of the things that a lot of Christians miss in their theology is that there will be two judgments. The first judgment is the great white throne of judgment where we stand before God, and God says, "What did you do with my son, Jesus Christ?"

If you rejected Christ in your life, you rejected grace, the gospel, you go to the left. And scripture says, "Consigned to eternal punishment in a place called hell, a place of eternal darkness." Why? Because you are separated from the God of the universe who is the source of love, light, truth, goodness and beauty. If you accept Jesus Christ, and if you're not a Christian, we plead with you, accept Jesus Christ today. If you do you, you are now brought to a second judgment. And that's the judgment seat of Christ, where we stand before God, and Christ will say, "What did you do with all of the talents, treasures, time, opportunities that I gave you."

And St. Paul says, "This reality that I will be judged for everything God has given me, this reality, and it's not judgment of salvation, I'm saved by grace through faith, it's a judgment for rewards." He says, "This is one of my great motivators. This motivates me that I will spend eternity with God, and God will judge me for what I did with everything he's allotted to me." 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. And then verse 11, Therefore, knowing the fear of God, we persuade others for what we are is known to God, and that hope it is known also to your conscience.

And yes, this is difficult. Evangelism is difficult. Sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in greater Boston is difficult. And that's why he says, "Fulfill your mission, endure suffering." And our suffering isn't physical, not in our culture, our suffering is more emotional, psychological, social. Yes, people might look down on us. Yes, your reputation might suffer. Yes, people might mock, but we are to do this, and we are to share God's love. And one of the things I hear is, "Evangelism's is not my gift. It's not my thing. I have other gifts, this isn't my thing. Let the people who have the great gift of evangelism do that."

And yes, God does give exceptional, extraordinary gifts to people in terms of evangelism, in terms of prophecy, and in terms of service, even generosity and faith, but their great gifts should not eclipse the fact that we have been given a responsibility. Every Christian is called to believe, every Christian is called to serve, to be generous, and every Christian has been given the great commission. How do we do this? And this is point two. We do this primarily by pouring ourselves out. In 2 Timothy 4:6, this is the metaphor that St. Paul used to talk about his life ending. He says, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come."

It's a vivid image that he pulls from the Old Testament, an image that was used in the context of the ritual of the sacrifice of the lamb, where a chalice of wine was taken and poured out at the base of the altar. St. Paul takes this metaphor and he says, "This is what my life is. My life is fluid, and I need to channel my life. I need a pour my life out." And this is really incredible. What does he mean? He means his time, the greatest commodity that any one of us have is time, that any one of us has is time. And time, our life as in time, and time is in our attention.

And he says, "I pour my life, I pour my time, I pour my attention into others." It's a fascinating metaphor because it can be used either way, like our life drips by, our life is like this river that keeps passing. But St. Paul uses this metaphor to talk about life that is invested by pouring into something, and the opposite of this is a life that is wasted by pouring it into things that ultimately pass.

And he uses this metaphor to talk about pouring himself, his time, energy, emotions, everything he has into the faith of others. Philippians 2:17, even if I'm to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I'm glad and rejoice with you all because I sacrifice the most valuable thing I have for the faith of other people to impact eternity.

Why could St. Paul's so freely, generously pour himself into other people? Because he knew his life was not his own and he knew that this life was not all there is. He understood that for me to live is Christ and to die is gain because I get more of Christ. He understood that death wasn't the end, death is just a door into life with God. He understood that death is not cessation, death is separation. When we die and our body turns into a corpse, our soul is separated from the body. Death is separation, and our eternal soul lives for eternity either with God or apart from God.

This is why we can freely pour ourselves into other people, do everything we can so that they spend eternity in the presence of God. And he says, and by the way, everybody knows this. Everybody knows that the good life isn't about things. It's not about pouring yourself into things because we brought nothing into this world, we'll take nothing out of it. We are not to be like the Egyptians who would bury themselves with their wealth thing like they can transfer that into eternity. We can't take material things with us.

So St. Paul invested his life, poured his life out into eternal things, eternal souls. He says, "My departure has come," and this is another very vivid Greek word that he uses here. It's a word that can be used in the context of unyoking or loosening. Unyoking in the context of a farm animal. And he says, "I'm unyoked," meaning my labors and toils are done, I fulfilled my ministry. In the context of loosening, my departure has come, my loosening has come. It's used in the context of the bonds of a prisoner being unshackled.

He's saying, "I'm unshackled from this body of flesh, from this corruptible body, loosening of ropes of a soldier." 10 he's saying, "My job as a soldier of Christ's done. The battle is over. I'm headed home. The victory is won." And this word is used in the context of loosening the mowing ropes of a ship. And he said, "I'm now leaving the stormy shores of earth and I'm putting into the calm pool of heaven. He's pouring himself out because he knows that his life is a sacrifice, the sacrificial offering.

Romans 12:1, I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, because of the gospel, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, Holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. He says, we don't pour ourselves into the lives of other people because we earn salvation. We do it as a sacrificial offering, thanksgiving to God because we are saved. Different if you are a Christian and whom are you pouring yourself, in whom are you pouring your life?

Perhaps if you have children, it's your children and the next generation, you're pouring yourself out and that's what it means to parent children in the faith. Perhaps it's your spouse, perhaps it's your colleagues, your friends, your family, it's the people around us. We pour ourselves into them. Why? Because our life is in our own. Acts 20:24, I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I've received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 12:15, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. Dear Christian, can you say that? Can you say, "I spend myself, I'm being spent for the souls of the people around me?" One of the things that secular stories have a really hard time understanding, they grapple with this, "Why did Christianity grow as it did in the context in which it was started? We understand why Islam grew by the sword convert or else, Christianity grew despite the sword, reject Christ or else."

And one of the reasons why Christianity grew in the way it did was because Christians poured themselves out to the death to love others. They poured their love into people even at the cost of their own life. I'll give you two examples. In Rome, first century and second century, there were two plagues that swept the Roman empire. And first century is the Antonine Plague. The second century is the Plague of Cyprian. These plagues were so bad, thousands of people were dying per day in this Plague of Cyprian, there were a million people living in Rome, 5,000 were dying per day.

At the first signs of the symptoms of this plague, streets would be emptied. People would leave their loved ones in homes on beds and run from the sickness. And everybody ran except for Christians. Christians stayed and they loved and they bandaged and they watered the sick and they fed them and they loved them and they encouraged them. They shared the gospel. People were dumbfounded, "Why are you doing this at the risk of your own life?"

And many Christians died and they shared the gospel that this life is not all there is, that we have eternal life. And all you need to do is put your trust in Jesus Christ who has conquered death. Do you pour yourself out for the salvation of others? And this is by the way, the most effective way of sharing the gospel is by pouring your love into other people. Sacrifice your time, your talent, your treasure for other people. We understand that the most effective way of doing evangelism is personal relationships, where people know you and you have a relationship with them through hospitality, generosity, and sacrifice.

I believe this is one of the most effective ways of doing evangelism today and sharing the gospel. Why? Because as Ravi Zacharias says, "We live in day and age where people think with their feelings and they hear with their eyes." People think with their feelings and hear with their eyes. Therefore, just proclaiming is not enough for many people, they don't want to see just proclamation, they want to feel your love. They don't want just the truth, they want the truth and love, and God tells us to do both 2 Corinthians 3: 14-15, for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him, who for their sake died and was raised.

How do we do this practically? It's got to be absolutely natural in the environment of love. I'll give you a couple of cross sticks here to think about, to think through when you think about sharing the gospel. The first one was just ABC of sharing the gospel, ABC. The first, the A stands for, do you ask the Lord for opportunities to share the gospel? Even St. Paul did this in the Colossians, he says, "Pray for me that the Lord would give me a door to share the gospel." Opportunity. Do you ask God, "God, please send me someone to share the gospel. Give me an opportunity today to share the gospel with someone of the good news to share the grace of God."

If you're not asking for those opportunities in prayer, do you even really want them? So ask. The second one is belief. Believe that God can save anybody. Believe that God can save your roommate, believe that God can... Just think of the most lost person that you know, the most antagonistic person to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you believe that God can save them? Of course he can. There's nothing impossible for God. God's saved Saul, and converted him into Paul.

My goodness, God saved Kanye West. If God can save Kanye West, he can save anybody. I found out that Manny Ramirez, Manny being Manny, like 2004 Reds, Manny Ramirez has been converted. He's actually been trained. He's been in seminary for five years, he's been training to be a pastor. My goodness, what a miracle that is. God can save anybody, and if you're a Christian, the greatest miracle of salvation is your own. I still can't believe God saved me. I definitely I wouldn't. And this is the posture of heart. It's like, "I can't believe, God, thank you for saving."

And then C is connect with people. Just connect naturally. Connect, and if you have a hard time connecting, a lot of people are super introverts in Boston. Here's another acrostic, FIRE, Family, Interests, Religion and just Experiences. Family, Interest, Religion, Experiences, ask about those things. Get a person talking about their favorite subject in the world. What's everybody's favorite subject in the world? Themselves. Everyone loves talking about themselves. It's just like, why? Because we're all selfish.

It's like whenever you get tagged on Facebook in a group picture and you go and you look at it, who's the first person that you look at? Yourself? It's just like whenever you're FaceTiming with someone or Skyping, 95% of the time, you're looking at the small window, every single time, "I need to change the lighting." Every time. Get people talking about their favorite subject, and as they do, connect with them on universal human experiences, purpose, morality, hope, family.

Two on-ramps for sharing the gospel that I like to use is beauty and death. I think beauty is one of the greatest apologetics for the existence of God and that God is beautiful. Why is it that though we live in a secular materialistic culture where we're told that material is all there is, why is it that we're so moved on like a deep soul level by creation, by the sunset, by an incredible work of music or art or film? Why is it that we're moved by the smile of a loved one and we look at them and we say, "You are so beautiful"?

We're not saying, "I prefer your collection of Adams to any other collection of Adams. And it's not even my preference, it's the neurons firing in my brain, so it's not even me." No. Of course, nobody is a committed materialist. It's almost unthinkable to live like that. And the Christian explanation is that true beauty exists. A beauty that transcends the material. You look at a painting and all it is is canvas and wood and some paint. If you look at it and there's something that transcends it. Same thing with music, same thing with something that impacts your soul.

And the Christian explanation is that, all that's true, all that's good, all that's beautiful is a manifestation of God. Image's God. God created everything beautiful for us to delight in and enjoy. And we understand that beauty exists in a fallen marred world, therefore we hunger for a restoration of beauty and it's coming in its perfect state. C. S. Lewis and his wonderful work, Till We Have Faces, expresses this yearning through a character. He says, "It was when I was the happiest that I longed the most, when I was the happiest I longed the most and because it was beautiful, it set me longing, always longing, somewhere else there must be more of it." And there is.

The other on-ramp, and everyone can connect with this is the reality of death. This is a terror that haunts every single one of us. The anthropologist, Ernest Becker says, "We try our best to ignore mortality, but it's there, underlying everything." The current answer in our culture according to a materialist world views is that when we die, we just cease to exist. Yes, we say this, no one believes it. That's why at a funeral, you don't look at casket with your friend Joey. No one says, "And Joey, poof, cease to exist." No one says that.

You know what they say, "Well, Joey's in a better place." Why do we say that? Why do we say that? Atheist philosopher, Luc Ferry says, "The question of death far from being something that we can easily dismiss, lies at the heart of our distinctiveness as humans. This is what sets us apart from all the other animals." He says, "As distinct from animals, a human being is the only creature who is aware of his limits. He knows that he will die and that his near ones, those he loves will also die. Consequently, he cannot prevent himself from thinking about the state of affairs, which is disturbing and absurd, almost unimaginable."

Why is it that we even know that we're going to die? And why is it that we're so disturbed by it and we can't shrug off the existential way of this? Our greatest desire's to be loved, to be known, to be understood, and our greatest fear's being separated from our loved ones. In a word, our greatest fear is dying. And at this point, when I have conversations, you know what I say, "Wouldn't you want this to be true? Doesn't your soul want to live forever? Why do we long for this so much?" Perhaps it is true, and in the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is Jesus Christ lived and Jesus Christ died. He came back from the dead and in Christ death, we see the death of death itself. And when we believe in Jesus Christ, at that very moment, we're given eternal life. And I understand in my conversations with friends, when I share the gospel, I understand that I'm probably not going to close the deal right then and there, but you know what I try to do? I try to awaken them just a little bit from their spiritual slumber, and little by little, this is how the Lord wakes us up.

So we have to know the tough truths of the gospel and present them in with humble confidence and love. And then points three, four, and five here at the end, how do we do this? We fight the good fight, we run our race and we keep our faith. Why? This is what I've seen in sharing the gospel in high school, with my wrestling friends, and with my football friends, and in college, with my rugby friends, share the gospel and they're like, "Yeah, not for me." But we're still connected. We still see each other. We're still connected on social media and you know what they want to know? Do I really believe this?

And where do they get evidence to understand, do I really believe? Are you living it? See, our lives are our greatest sermons. That's why St. Paul at the very end says, "I fought, I didn't just preach the word, I didn't just do the work of evangelist, I didn't just fulfill the ministry. I fought the good fight." He said, in 2 Timothy 4:7, "I fought the good fight," the wrestling metaphor, and what he's saying is there's spiritual warfare. We're fighting on a daily basis and we're standing again. We're not wrestling with flesh and blood, but we're standing against the cosmic powers over this present darkness.

And our righteousness is not our own, it's the breastplate of righteousness that Christ has given us. We have the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit. We stand through prayer. 2 Corinthians 6:7, with weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left. See, the enemy wants to hate... He hates our legacy, he wants to taint our legacy and he does that by stealing, killing, and destroying our legacy. He wants to get us to stumble so that people look and they say, "Yeah, you don't really believe this."

So we are to fight the good fight. Four is, the St. Paul says, "I've finished the race." 2 Timothy 4:7, I've finished the race. Starting stuff is easy, starting a race as easy, finishing it is much harder. Starting a diet is easy, day one super easy and you're like, "I can do this." Day two, three, four, so much harder. Starting a relationship, easy, you're in love. Flirtation, wonderful. Continuing, sustaining, much harder. Having a baby, easy, the man. Raising a child in the faith is difficult. The Christian life begins...

Honestly, you come to faith, it's as if the Lord, God, the father's carrying you as a spiritual infant in his arms. It's incredible. And after a while you grow, and the enemy begins to attack, temptation comes from within, from with out, and you got to run your race. Galatians 5:7, you were running well, who hindered you from obeying the truth? If you were the enemy, if you are saying, "How would you try to dissuade yourself from finishing the race?" Perhaps through distractions of entertainment or money or power or comfort. Perhaps through discouragements, "It's too hard, I should quit."

Perhaps through divisions between you and God, between you and other Christians or deception that your life is for yourself, live any way you want. God wants the most pleasures possible for you. All lies. And the five is keep the faith. 2 Timothy 4:7 he says, "I've kept the faith. I've guarded my faith. I've cultivated my faith. I've grown my faith. I didn't bury my faith," and we are to hold onto our faith tenaciously. Why? Because your life is your greatest sermon. Your life is your greatest plausibility structure that when you speak, your words are plausible.

Are you living your life in such a way that people want to hear your words, that you words carry weight? And part of that is just don't underestimate the power of living a joyful life, a loving life, a kind life, a generous sacrificial life. And verse A in 2 Timothy, St. Paul says, "Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also to those who have loved his appearing." He's not talking about a crown or award of salvation, he's talking about the reward that we get by living faithfully in our life after we've been given salvation.

He's talking about reward for service. 1 Corinthians 3:10 and five talks about that. We can't do this on our own. Perhaps you look at your life and you're like, "If I died today, my legacy isn't what it should be." Perhaps there have been seasons in life where you've squandered your life, where you've wasted it, and this is where the gospel Jesus Christ is our only hope, that Jesus Christ left the greatest legacy that there was. His death on the cross, he poured himself out. He loved God's word, poured himself out, fought the good fight. He ran his race, he kept the faith in order to give us faith.

And the way that the gospel impacts our legacy is through course correction. If you look at your life, you say, "Mm, I went off course here." At that moment, we need the gospel through repentance. We receive God's grace through repentance. And do you know what repentance is? In the Greek, the word repentance means, just turning around. It means, I have been running the wrong way and Jesus turned me around. I'm turning to you, I want to follow you. At that moment, he corrects us and continues to sustain us on our path.

Galatians 2:20, St. Paul says, "I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me." It's his legacy. It's not mine. He's living in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith and the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Back to our question at the very beginning and we'll close with this before we go into communion. Do you have an answer for the question? What do you want your epitaph to be? That inscription on your tombstone, what do you want to say?

Some of the most famous epitaphs in the world history, Alexander the Great was, "A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough." Ludolph van Ceulen, the gentleman, the German Dutch mathematician who calculated pi to 35 numbers. Guess what his epitaph was? 3.1415926 etc, all the way to 35. Wanted everyone to know. Martin Luther King Jr, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty. I'm free at last." Frank Sinatra, "The best is yet to come." We don't know what St. Paul's was because we don't have his tombstone. We don't know where his grave is. But you know what I think an appropriate one would be, "Fought the good fight, finish the race, kept the faith."

As we transitioned to Holy communion, we remember the words of Jesus Christ, he gave us Holy communion to do on a regular basis and he says, "Do this," why? "In remembrance of me." We remember his life, his death, his burial, and his resurrection because this is what sustains our walk with the Lord. The way that we celebrate Holy communion at mosaic is, the usher are going to hand out the elements, the bread and the cup. We ask that you hold on to them until everyone's received them. Here's what we're doing in Holy communion.

The bread symbolizes the body of Christ broken for us and the cup symbolizes the blood of Christ poured out for us. And we eat and we drink, and what we're doing is we're internalizing these elements as a symbol for how we are saved, for how we're sanctify. We internalize by faith that Jesus Christ died for me. Who is welcome to take part? 1 Corinthians 11 says that, "Holy communion is for the converted and the repentant." For people who have repented, initially have become Christians and continue to repent. That's what it means to be a Christian. So if you today, repent of your sins. If you today turn to Christ, trust in him, you're welcome to partake.

If not, we ask that you just spend this time meditating on what you've heard. After the ushers handout the elements, please hold onto them and they will partake. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank you for your sacrifice on the cross. We thank you for offering up your body and your blood, and I pray as we receive your sacrifice and your offering, I pray that you forgive us for our sins. Forgive us for our pride, forgive us for our selfishness, forgive us for living as if our life is our own. It's not.

And I pray that you make this time a truly meaningful for each of us, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name's Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new, if you're visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here.

By the way, congratulations for making it out. Whenever it rains, I already know the Navy SEALS are going to show up. It's like that meme, I don't know if you saw this meme going around, where the lady is screaming and then there's the white cat. And the screaming lady goes, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!" And then the cat says, "Well, you can't even show up to church when it rains." And the cat is spot on. So, congratulations. The Lord sees your sacrifice.

We'd love to connect with you if you're new, we do that through the Connection Crowd, the worship guide, if you fill it out legibly, you can either toss it in the offering basket after or redeem it at the Welcome Center for a gift, or you can download the app, the Mosaic Boston app in the App Store or Google Play.

All the announcements are in the worship guide. There's a type in one of the announcements that the members meeting, it's not December 7th, which is a Sunday, it's actually December 6th. So, if you are a member or if you've been notified that you are becoming a member, please plan to come.

With that said, will you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word? Heavenly Father, we confess that you are a good Father, and that you have given us your Word for our good, for our flourishing, for our shalom, for our peace. And your Word, often, is in the affirmative, yes, you want us to live lives that are glorifying to you and then also beneficial to ourselves and the people around us. And in order to keep shalom, you often tell us no. And Lord, I pray that you, through the power of the Holy Spirit and by the Gospel, show us that our hearts are rebellious to your authority naturally. We viscerally reject your authority, and we repent of that, and we turn to you, and I pray that you give us tender hearts to your loving authority, tender hearts to even tough truth.

And as we submit to your truths, as we submit to your authority, I pray that you show us that your authority, kingdom authority, Godly authority is an upside down authority, that you give authority not for us to be served by those under us, but to serve them. You call us to be servant leaders, sacrificial leaders to mirror you, to image you. And I pray you give us strength to do that. Lord, if anyone is not yet a Christian, if anyone has not yet submitted their lives to you, if someone has not yielded control of their lives to you, I pray today show Jesus how much you've sacrificed, how much you've done in order to redeem them, and I pray, draw their hearts to you. And I pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

So, we're in a sermon series that we are calling Tough and Tender, Developing a Resilience for Life. This is week 10. Next week we're finishing it with a sermon on living in a way that we leave a Godly legacy. So, that's next week. And after that, we roll into advent. Today, we are talking about tough and tender authority, lion and lamb authority. The Holy Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ is the Lion of Judah who submits like a lamb to the will of God, and he shows us that truth and that authority are upside down, that God gives us authority, gives us truth, in order to transform us, in order to get us to serve others because one of the greatest blessings in the world is to give rather than to receive.

So, as we talk about authority and as we talk about truth, I understand how counter-cultural this topic is, how counter-cultural this idea is. We are a [people who don't like sermons on authority, we don't like authority in general. Fight the power, stick it to the man, it's the Land of the Free. The last time we had a king was King George III, didn't work out for him. And not only do we live in the United States, the Land of the Free, we're also in Boston, Massachusetts. You going to tax us? We're going to get rid of all your tea. We do not like ... Live Free or Die, that's the motto of New England.

So, with that to say, I know you want to hear a sermon on authority like you want to hear a sermon on a root canal. But it's important. Scripture talks about the authority of God, and talks about the authority of God's Word. One of the texts that's really important to understand both authority and truth was Jesus subjugated to the authority to Pilate, standing before Pilate. And Pilate says, "Why are you answering me? Don't you understand that I have authority either to execute you or to release you?" And Jesus says, "You would have no authority over me at all if it were not given to you from above." And then Pilate scoffs at this, and Jesus says, "Those who are of the truth hear my truth." And then Pilate scoffs at it and says, "What is truth?"

And that sentiment is the milieu of our culture. This is the ethos of our culture. What is truth? Presupposition, "Truth is not knowable." Or we can't known truth. And obviously, that is a truth statement that crumbles under its own weight. There is no such thing as absolute truth. Are you absolutely sure? That is a truth statement. We can't know about God. How do you know that? Or, when people like Peter Berger say things like, "Truth isn't objective, it's culturally conditioned. You believe what people around you believe. In particular, when it comes to faith."

Well, that itself is a culturally conditioned truth statement. Agnosticism, we can't know about God. How do you know that you can't know about God? No one should proselytize. At the very moment that you say no one should proselytize, no one should convert, no one should recruit people to their religion, you're actually doing proselytizing. You're converting people to your position of non-proselytization. So you can't get around truth statements. Everyone is making truth statements. What we need to understand is what is truth in order to understand authority.

The other problem that we have in our culture, when people talk about truth, they think it's proud or arrogant to say, "No, this is true." It seems proud and arrogant to say, "This is true." And it seems humble to say there is no truth. We can't know truth. But actually, that's reversed. To say there is no truth, you're putting yourself in a position of arrogance over all truth. On the flip side, Jesus comes in and said, "I am truth, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." It's a tough truth when we tenderly submit to it, that truth frees us to be the people that God has called us to be.

The other problem that we have with authority is that it has been abused so much. So, we talk about getting rid of authority. You can't get rid of authority. As soon as you start talking about getting rid of authority, be very ... Question anyone who says get rid of authority because those people then want to ... They get into authority. This was the historical lesson of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, the Communists, come to power and they said, "Let's get rid of the king." And everyone is like, "Yes! The workers of the world unite." And as soon as they get rid of the king, who comes into power? It's the communists. That vacuum was always going to be filled so you can't just get rid of authority. We need to redeem authority. And that's what Jesus Christ has come to do.

Today, we're going to look at Matthew 20:20-27, in which Jesus tells his disciples, "You have a worldly understanding of authority. You have a flipped understanding of authority." And Jesus Christ came not just to give us the upside kingdom, but the right side up kingdom, and he wants to turn our understanding of authority right side up.

So, this is Matthew 20:20, "Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, 'What do you want?' She said to him, 'Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.' And Jesus answered, 'You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?' And they said to him, 'We are able.' He said to them, 'You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.'"

"And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, and even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.'" This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Four points to frame up our time so you know where we're going. First, authority rejected, then authority corrupted, authority redeemed, and finally authority exercised. First of all, authority rejected. What is authority? It's rightful power. A power that is used rightly and only God has ultimate authority, only God uses authority rightly. He is the rightful owner of authority. He created everything so authority belongs ultimately to the Creator.

And the story of Holy Scripture begins in Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, that God, in authority, creates everything. And His authority is good. It's a blessed authority. It's for our benefit, for our flourishing, for our prosperity. And He gives it to us generously. He gives it to everything, for life, and for spiritual life. And submission to His authority is the place in which we are free to be the people we've been designed to be. We're free to prosper. God has intrinsic authority and He creates us and delegates authority to us. And He tells us, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, create civilization, create culture and have dominion over all things." He creates Adam, puts him in the Garden, to work it and to keep it. There's authority. Work it, there's authority over the world. And then keep it, protect it from the evil and authority over Satan.

God entrusts them with everything, including His Word. He gives His Word to Adam and He says, "Keep it. This is my authority over you, ensconced in my Word. It's within my Word." And then in Genesis 3, Satan comes. And Satan has a conversation with Eve, and the very first thing that he attacks in an attempt to attack God's authority, what does he do? He attacks God's Word. He attacks God's truth. And he says, "Did God really say?"

And Eve says, "God said we can eat of every tree except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." And he says, "No, no, no. You will not die. You will become like Gods, knowing good and evil." And Eve looks at the tree, looks at the forbidden fruit, and says that it was the light to her eyes, the desire to make her wise. She rejects God's authority. Adam rejects God's authority. Because Satan had planted a lie in their minds that God's authority was bad, that God was keeping us from something good. And they eat.

They trust in their feelings over God's Word. Adam doesn't exercise authority in protecting the Garden from evil, and he doesn't exercise authority to protect his wife from the lies, and he doesn't serve by leading and protecting.

Fast forward to today. What is our stance in culture at authority? We live in a culture averse to authority. There's no respect to authority because we have long ago gotten rid of even the idea of truth. Even to talk about objective truth about God is so counter-cultural that we even have a hard time even grasping the idea that when we talk about God, we're talking about facts. We're not talking about preference. We're talking about facts about God, truths about God as true as gravity, as true as life, as death, as the laws of thermodynamics. And we live in a culture where it's we who create truth. The things that we believe become truths instead of taking truths and believing in them.

Scripture begins with the unapologetic truth that God is sovereign, that God rules over the universe. Psalm 115:3 says, "Our God is in the Heavens. He does all that He pleases." Ultimate authority. He's like a potter, we are like the clay. All authority among humans is derived, and it's all from God. Romans 13:1, "For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God."

So, Adam and Even reject God's authority and, in place, they get a corrupted authority under the authority of the enemy. So, when we reject God's authority, we don't destroy authority, we corrupt it. And even the disciples of Jesus Christ, before the Gospel, have this corrupted understanding of authority. It's in their heart. On this point too, authority corrupted, we see in our text that John and James, part of Jesus' inner circle, Jesus had the 12 disciples, then he had the three disciples: John, James, and Peter, Jesus' closest friends.

Now, one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is that James and John, they're brothers, but they're actually Jesus' cousins. They're the sons of Zebedee's. Zebedee is married to Salome. Salome is the sister of Mary, Jesus' mom. So, these are his cousins. So, his cousins, what are they doing? In Matthew 19, Jesus promised that he would give them authority. They will sit on 12 thrones to rule over Israel. And so, they're jockeying for position. They send their mom to Jesus in order for her to ask that they get the thrones closest to Jesus. And they think that Jesus will listen to his aunt, so she comes, she kneels, she asks.

Why are they doing all this? Why are they jockeying? This is politics. Why are they politicking? The reason is because they think in their mind, the closer I am to Jesus on the throne, the higher rank I have, the more authority I have, to rule over people. And that's why Jesus, to correct their thinking, where does he go? This is verse 25, Matthew 20: "Jesus called them to him and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.'" What's he doing? He's canceling their wrong presupposition. Wrong presupposition, get as much power as you can, as much control, as much authority so that people serve you. You rule over, they serve you. Jesus says, "No, that's false." That's an ungodly mentality and that's rooted in selfish ambition. And this is our culture, get as much power as you can. Get the highest rank in your organization. Why? So that people serve you.

And that's why we have abuse of authority in our culture because authority has a corrupting over every single one of us. You've heard that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, we know this. And that's why in scripture, as people reject God, God then has to come in and control our abuse of power. And you see examples in scripture where employers abuse employees. So, you have texts like Leviticus 25:43, where God says, "You shall not rule over them ruthlessly, but shall fear your God." Or Deuteronomy 24:14, "You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor or needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your town."

Why does God have to give this Word? Because of our corrupt understanding of authority. There's fathers who abuse their authority over children. Ephesians 6:4 tells us, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." There's abuse of power of authority with husbands over wives, that's why Colossians 3:19 says, "Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them." There's abuse of pastors or elders over churches, that's why 1 Peter 5:2-3 says, "Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsions, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock."

You see over and over and over this upside down view of authority, whether it was mistreating foreigners or immigrants. Exodus 23:9, "You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." Those in power, in terms of finances, taking advantage of the helpless or poor. Zechariah 7:10, "Do not oppose the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart."

James 2:6, "But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court?" And then just abuse of power to oppress in general. Jeremiah 22:17, "But you have eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood and for practicing oppression and violence."

We have a corrupt understanding of authority. So, we can't just reject authority because it gets replaced with corrupt authority. So, what do we need to do? We need redeemed authority. And this is point three. Jesus Christ comes as the God of the universe. And he comes and he shows us a servant leadership. He shows us authority in order to serve instead of authority to get others to serve you. This is Matthew 20:26-27, he says, "It shall not be so among you." Among Christians. "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

So, from the beginning we said that God has intrinsic authority, He delegates authority to us. Those are the only two kinds of authority. Jesus has both. Jesus has intrinsic authority as co-equal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, and he also has intrinsic authority because he's the co-creator with the Father. But he submits to the Father. Though he has his own authority, he submits to the will of God, and then God delegates an authority to Christ. He has both.

So, Jesus comes and he holds the office of prophet, priest, and king, and wields that authority well. He serves those underneath his authority. He has the authority to forgive sins. He has the authority to exorcize demons. He has the authority to control nature, to raise the dead. He teaches with authority. He could have demanded submission, he could have commanded submission. Instead, he compels our submission through our hearts by pouring himself out for us.

So, how does Jesus lead? How does Jesus wield his authority? By submitting, by suffering, and by serving. By submitting, by suffering, and by serving. I'm going to give you three images right now that show us, that give us a picture of Jesus' authority. It's the yoke. It's the cup and the towel. So, if I lost you somewhere, come back. This is a good part of the sermon. I really enjoyed this part. This is my second time preaching, this is my favorite part. Yoke, cup, towel. Yoke, cup, towel. Submission, suffering, and service.

What's the yoke? Jesus submits to the yoke of God the Father, meaning he submits to His will. Co-equal. Father and the Son, they're co-equal. This is the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. They're equally God. Three persons in the Holy Trinity. Three persons, one essence, they're equally God. Jesus comes and he submits to the yoke of the Father. Where do I see this in particular? Look at Matthew 11:28-30. "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

A yoke was a harness to attack a plow to farm animals, to oxen or to horses, and Jesus Christ says, "I have submitted myself to the harness of God's will." And he says, "I've done it gently. I've done it tenderly. I tenderly submit to the tough will of God, the Father." And this is the area, the submission, this is the area where true freedom is found. So, Satan's lie in the very beginning was, "Reject God's authority so that you can live lives of freedom." And Jesus says, "No. We reject God's authority ..." You don't get rid of authority ... Or, submit to corrupted authority, the enemy's authority, and then finally enslaved by sin and selfishness.

He says, "No, true rest is found in submission to the Word of God, to the truth of God." He says, "Join me under this harness. I'm baring most of the weight. Come and take my yoke upon you. You will find rest for your souls." And by the way, this is what Jesus meant when he said, "You will know the truth and the truth will," what? Set you free. It's not freedom when we reject truth, it's freedom when we submit to God's truth. And it's tough to do, but when we do that, it tenderizes our hearts to God and we begin to understand that his authority is actually the best thing for us.

So, Jesus shows us that his authority begins with taking a yoke and then it continues with taking a cup. Yoke and cup. Where did I get the cup? From our text. Jesus answered, "You do not know what you're asking." They asked for influence. He says, "'You don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?' And they said to him, 'We are able.' He said to them, 'You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and not my left is not mine to grant but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father."

What is this cup? This is the cup of God's wrath. This is the cup of suffering. And Jesus Christ comes and he knows that he has to drink this cup down to the very last drop. Why is this a cup of suffering? Because in order for God to forgive us, he can't just say, "I forgive." Somebody needs to pay the penalty for our sin. There's always sacrifice. There's always suffering when forgiveness is given. If someone has treated you unjustly, committed egregious sin against you and you've been sinned against, for you to forgive that person, it always takes suffering. It's always painful. The greater the level of sin, the greater the level of suffering. Jesus is looking at this cup, he says, this is the only way that people can be redeemed, that we can be restored in a rightful relationship with us, and Jesus knows exactly how much this cup is going to cost, how painful it will be.

And Matthew 26:39, this is the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is on his face, sweating blood, the capillaries on his face are bursting, he's under such immense pressure. And he prays to the Father, and he says, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." True authority always includes suffering, it always includes a cup. And he tells James and John, do you think you can drink my cup? And they say, "Yeah." And they did. James was the first apostle to be martyred for the faith. We get that in the Book of Acts. John was exiled at the end of his life on Patmos. They suffered partially just because of martyrdom and exile, and then also, because as the closest people in their lives, they were separated in the very beginning of the ministry, they drank the cup. So, when we think about authority it's not getting others to serve and getting others to suffer for me, it's I'm serving people even when I need to suffer to do it.

So, there's the yoke, there's the cup, and then there's the towel. Where do I get this? Jesus, on the Last Supper, he gets up from the table, lays aside his outer garments, takes a towel, ties it to his waist, takes a basin, fills it with water and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. Says, "This is true greatness." God, on his knees, God kneeling to get the grime and the gunk off the feet of his own disciples. This is true leadership. This is servant leadership. This is godly authority. It's the towel.

And then John 13:12-16, Jesus explains to them, "Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him."

So, if we are to have a rightful understanding of authority, we'd first go to Christ and repent. And say, "Lord, forgive me for misusing authority. Forgive me for not submitting to your authority. I take that yoke under which I find rest for my soul. Lord, I accept the fact that you suffered for me, you drank that cup. And I accept the foot washing that you give me. I accept the yoke, I accept the cup, and I accept the towel. I accept that Lord. We thank you for grace." That's how we're saved, by grace through faith, and then that begins to redeem and redefine our understanding of authority so now we can begin to exercise authority as designed by God. And that's point four.

Exercise authority. Authority exercised with the yoke, the cup and the towel. So, this is Christ-like authority. It shows us that true greatness doesn't come in being served, but in serving, being blessed but in actually blessing. It's not in getting people ministered to, but actually ministering to others. So, it begins with submitting to the yoke of the Gospel. Repent and believe. What's repentant? It's yielding your will to God. Not my will, but yours be done. You accept grace. You accept God's sacrifice. You accept His love and you accept His Word.

You cannot accept God without accepting His Word, His truth. The thing that separated Jesus when he came, and people took note of this. They said, "You don't teach like the Rabbis do. You teach as someone who has authority." The Rabbis would say, "This is what the scripture say," or "Thus says the Lord." Jesus Christ doesn't appeal to a higher ... He says, "Truly, truly, I say unto you." He's not appealing to a delegated authority, he's appealing to his own intrinsic authority. So, Jesus has both kinds of authority.

You're going to have to use your brain for the next couple minutes. Okay? You with me? This is stake upon stake. Jesus has intrinsic authority and delegated authority. It's in him and it's given to him. Same with the Holy Scriptures. The Holy Scriptures have an intrinsic authority, in and of themselves, an ontological authority, and they're given a delegated authority, a bestowed authority. It's not a borrowed authority, it's a given authority, and it's within, and it's given from without.

How do we know? The theology is that God's Word is an extension of Himself, when God speaks, God is in that Word. And this is really important, because this is what separates us from other flavors of so-called Christianity. People ask me all the time, "What kind of church is Mosaic? What kind of Christianity are you?" And I've got a brand new answer, it came to me this week. I used to say, "Historical Orthodox Christianity," just because no one knows what that means and they're like, "Oh, okay." Now I say "What kind of Christianity?" I go, "The original. From the very beginning. That's who we are. The original."

We believe what the Church has believed about Christ, about God, about God's Word. And this is where we're different from other historic churches that have accepted a liberal theology of God's Word. This camp rejects the intrinsic power of God, the intrinsic authority of God's Word. And they said, "Yeah, when scripture agrees with me, then I'll accept it. But scripture is relegated to my authority, it's relegated to my reason."

And I push back to that and say, "Have you never made any mistakes in your life?" Just look at your high school picture. You are fallible. Every single one is us is fallible. So, you're taking your fallible mind, your fallible reason, and you're standing in judgment over scripture, over God's Word. And then people push back and they say, "Well, how do you know it's God's Word." And then my response is, "God's Word tells me that it's God's Word." And then people are like, "Ha! That's circular reasoning. Got you!" And I always respond and say, "We're all doing circular reasoning." When your reasoning with your mind, how do you know that your mind is being reasonable? That's circular reasoning, number one.

Number two, we are not primarily intellectual beings. How many of our decisions are made because of our desires not because of our minds? And our desires override our minds? So, we need a word from outside, we need a truth from outside, a transcendent truth. And where do we get that? We get that from Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came and he taught the way of God. He taught that the Old Testament was God's Word. He lived a perfect life. He's crucified, dies, is buried, and comes back from the dead. That, right there, the resurrection, validates everything else that he taught. Do we believe that Jesus physically came back from the dead? Yes, we've done sermons on that. You can find them online.

If you want more evidence for the historicity of the resurrection, a couple great resources: N.T. Wright is probably the best one. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. I think it's over 1,000 pages. If you're like, "I'm not reading 1,000 pages," go to the very end. You know what he says? "Jesus comes back from the dead." There. Spoiler alert. Geza Vermes wrote a book called The Resurrection, V-E-R-M-E-S. Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus, phenomenal work.

But ultimately, we believe in the authority of scripture because we believe in Jesus Christ. How can you accept Jesus Christ as savior if you think you're smarter than him, if you think you're wiser than him? John Stott has this great book called The Authority of the Bible, and he says, "Why should people believe that the Bible is God's Word written, inspired by His Spirit and authoritative over their lives? The overriding reason for accepting the divine inspiration and authority of scripture is plain loyalty to Jesus. Our understanding of everything is conditioned by what Jesus taught, and that includes his teaching about the Bible. We have no liberty to exclude anything from Jesus' teaching and say, 'I believe what he taught about this but not what he taught about that.' What possible right do we have to be selective?"

What did Jesus believe about the Bible? Matthew 5:17-18, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the Law until all is accomplished." He's talking about the Hebrew scriptures. He's says the smallest details of the Hebrew scriptures would all come to pass. John 10:35, "Scripture cannot be broken."

So, Jesus believed in the Old Testament, referred to it as God's Word, then Jesus taught and gives authority, delegated authority, to his apostles who are filled with the Holy Spirit and then the New Testament, the books in the New Testament canon were either written by an apostle or connected to an apostle, every single one of them. And then I get the pushback, "Well, didn't the church give us the New Testament? Didn't they compile the canon? Well, how can we trust them?" And my response is, the church gave us the books of the New Testament as much as Sir Isaac Newton gave us gravity. He did not give us gravity, he recognized gravity.

The spirit in them authenticated the spirit in the books, it was a recognition not a giving. It's like Tom Brady. I've been good. All football season, I have no mentioned the GOAT. Why is Tom Brady the GOAT? And this might connect with you, but it's okay. Why is Tom Brady the GOAT? Because a lot of people said that he's the GOAT? No, he's the GOAT and everyone recognizes that he's the GOAT. If you know, you know. You're welcome.

And then Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding." Why trust in the Lord with all your heart? Why this combination of trust and the heart? Do you trust the Lord whole-heartedly? Well, if you do, do you let the scriptures override your thoughts and feelings? A lot of people think that God wants you to agree with Him. And we agree with the scriptures when our feelings coincide, when our ideas coincide, and then when our ideas don't coincide with scripture, we just get rid of it.

God doesn't say, "Agree with me." God says, "Obey me." Meaning, there are times when God says no. And that, right there, it challenges the most cherished thoughts and feelings that we have. And do you submit to the good will of God, to His good authority? 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."

Now, scripture talks about different spheres of authority, so I'm going to talk about the different spheres of authority. Authority in the church, authority in marriage, authority with children, and authority with the civil government, and look at every single one of those spheres through the prism of yoke, cup, and towel, and that's how you understand Godly authority. So, authority in the church. Scripture teaches that Jesus is the head of the church and that Jesus rules over the church through his Word, and God sends the Holy Spirit. The Holy Scripture talks about under-shepherds that are given to the church, called by God to teach and care for the flock.

So, if you, and here, I'm speaking to myself, I'm speaking to the leaders in the church. If we are to wield this authority rightly, there is a yoke of submission to God's Word, there's a cup of suffering. If you want to lead in the church, if you want to do ministry, there's always suffering. If you want to minister to people on the soul level, there's always suffering. There's always opposition from Satan and the demonic. And then there's the towel, where you care for the practical needs of your brothers and sisters, that's how Godly authority is to be wielded.

Hebrews 13:17, "Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." As a pastor, Pastor Shane Pastor and Andy, we take this seriously. We will stand before God and given an account for how we do ministry. And it's frightening, and that's why we want to do ministry God's way. God's work, God's way.

There's authority in marriage and the family. Scripture talks about God's design for family, God's design for marriage, that husbands are an authority over wives, to love, to honor, to serve, to sacrifice. 1 Corinthians 11:3, God grounds this idea of headship and the Trinity. "But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ and the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God." And this is important because St. Paul doesn't ground this in culture, he grounds this in the Trinity, that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are equal in power. They're equal in divinity. And yet, Jesus submits to the headship of God the Father, and we see that pattern that Jesus is the head of the church, and that Jesus is the head of the man, and then the husband is supposed to be in this godly, sacrificial headship over the wife.

Ephesians 5:22-25, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." St. Paul grounds it in the Trinity, he grounds it in the church that Jesus is head over the church, and he grounds it in God's created order.

1 Corinthians 11:8-9, "For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man." And I say that the Trinity, the church, and creation are the foundation for the doctrine of headship because a lot of people reject this and they say, "It was cultural." It wasn't cultural. St. Paul wasn't wearing cultural goggles as he was writing this. He was pointing to things that are eternal. So, practically, how does this work itself out practically? Sacrifice. Who should be sacrificing most in a marriage? It's the husband. You lead with sacrifice. Just practically, how does this work out? When you're eating a delicious meal together, husbands and wives, who gets the last piece?

This week, my wife and I, we buy this delicious salami from Trader Joe's. It's wrapped in paper. It's so good. And my wife and I, we wait until our kids are asleep, and we're just downing this thing. It is so good. And out of nowhere, we're on the last piece. We just demolished this thing, just inhaled it. And the last piece, and my wife is eyeing it, and I'm eyeing it. And I was meditating on this text, and I was like ahh, I was like, "Baby, here you go." And she's like, "No, I don't want it." And I know she's lying. And then she takes it and I'm like ... And I thought she was going to take a bite and give the rest back to me. That's the pattern. No! Gone! Gone! Sacrifice, sacrifice.

Parents over children, there's authority to teach, to command, to discipline. Ephesians 6:1-4, "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, this is the first commandments with a promise, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children with anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." So, parents are to be authoritative, not authoritarian. So, not leading in a way that provokes the child, but leading the heart, shepherding the heart. And yes, we are to tell our children yes and no. The fact that he says, "Children obey," means that there is an act of guidance, act of discipleship over our children.

This week, my daughter, Ekaterina, she's four. She's number three in the order. Ekaterina, driving home from preschool with my wife. She says, "Mom, there's a boy at school today who stole chocolate and he put it in his pocket." And they're driving home from the store. And my wife is like, "Huh." Come home, and she's like, "Come here. Let me check your pocket." Chocolate bunny in her pocket. Stole it! What do we do? What do we do? You got to discipline, but it's got to be a loving discipline. So, my wife unwraps it, and being the wise, Godly sage she is, broke off the bunny's head and gave it to her. "Don't do this anymore." And then she ate the rest. So, it was just this incredible mix of ... You're welcome. It's got to be both.

And authority of the civil government. Scripture talks about the fact that we are to honor and pray for those in authority over us. Romans 13:1-2, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." Who's he ... He's writing in a culture where Caesar is the emperor. Unrighteous, ungodly leader, and St. Paul says that there needs to be a respect for authorities, and obviously, not when those authorities contradict the Word of God. So, Acts 5:29, Peter gives the example, "We must obey God rather than men." In 1 Timothy 2:1-2 says, "First of all then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, Godly and dignified in every way."

Some Christians sin in their utter disrespect for those in authority. Yet, there's got to be this balance where I don't agree with the person, I don't agree with the policies, but there is a respect for the office, for the authorities. We are told to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and give unto God what is God's. We will never give to Caesar what is God's, but we are called to honor, to respect, and to pray for.

I'll close with this. Philippians 2:5-11, this is the ancient hymn about Christ coming to serve, showing us true Godly authority: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Jesus Christ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Every single knee will bow. Either we bow in this life, humbly accepting the Grace of God, or we will bow the knee in the next life under judgment and condemnation. So, we call you, if you're not yet a Christian, bow your knee to Jesus Christ in repentance. Submit to his good authority, and on the day that we humble ourselves, he raises us up. Let's pray.

Lord, we do start with repenting of the fact that our pride gets in the way of submitting to your authority all too often. We all too often think that our way is the right way, that our truth is the ultimate truth. We repent of all that. And I pray Lord that you give us grace to submit ourselves, to yield ourselves, yield our wills to the will of God the Father. We thank you Jesus that you took the yoke, you took the cup, and you took the towel. And I pray that you give us grace to do the same. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: Satan hates God. However, he can't hurt God directly. So he does everything he can to hurt God indirectly, and he does so by attacking God's children. Holy Scripture promises us that "all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Timothy 3:12). Jesus promised his followers that they will be hated just for being Christians (John 15:18-20). Christian, if you follow Jesus faithfully, you will have enemies. These too are God's promises. Jesus calls us to withstand hate with love, but how do we withstand opposition like lions, while loving those who oppose us, like lambs?

Audio Transcript: You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston church. You'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com

And God, we thank you for the blessing and privilege it is to gather safely, in peace, to worship your Holy name, to meditate upon your Holy scriptures as your church, as your people. We recognize that this blessing isn't afforded to many in the world, that many do not have this freedom, this Liberty, this privilege to gather in peace that many are actively and violently opposed and persecuted and we pray for our brotherhood and we pray for our sisterhood. We pray for those who are suffering just because they name the name of Jesus Christ. We pray that you strengthen them. We pray that you also remind us today that when you call us to yourself, you call us to a path of sacrifice. That we worship a God who gave himself. Jesus, you were nailed to a cross and like a lion, you tenaciously and ferociously overcame Satan, sin, and death and still as you hung in that cross, you extended your generous, lavish embrace to your enemies.

I pray that you make us tough as nails and tender as lambs that when we are persecuted, when we are slandered, when we experience the opposition that you have promised us. We pray that we recognize that often that is your will in order to refine us in order to give us a perspective that is eternal. I pray Holy spirit come and strengthen us, give us a resolve that we will not just live for you, but we would be willing to even die for you if that's what you choose for us. We pray that you bless our time, the Holy scriptures. Now we pray all this in the name of the father, of the son, of the Holy spirit. Amen.

So we're in a sermon series that we are calling "Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life." And the topic of the message today is opposition. This sphere, this area will strengthen your toughness and will soften your tender heart like nothing else that we have covered. Today, we are talking about opposition that the way of following Christ is a path of opposition. Why? Because at the center of Christianity, at the crux of Christianity, is a crucified savior who has given himself for us and he calls us to take up our cross and follow him daily. Thus, we shouldn't be surprised that Christians have been persecuted and continue to be persecuted, have been opposed, and continue to be opposed. Christians are the most persecuted group on the planet. It's the least reported and the most overlooked truth. The secular society called International Society for Human Rights says the worst persecution of Christians in all of human history is actually happening in our lifetime. 70 million Christians have died for their faith from the beginning of the church.

The founding of the church by Christ. 70 million have died, 35 million in the past 100 years. Every 10 minutes at least two Christians die for their faith. John L. Allen Jr wrote "The Global War on Christians" in which he documents today's stories of people who are dying for their faith. The Christian Perspective Review of 2019 says that one third of the world's population suffers from religious persecution, 80% of which are Christians and spreading not just geographically, but it's growing in severity. In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is coming close to international definitions of genocide. Open Doors 2019 Worldwide Watch List Report says that in 2018, 215 million Christians have been persecuted. This year alone, it's been 245. This year alone, 2,625 Christians have been detained without trial, arrested, sentenced and in prison, 1,266 churches, church buildings have been attacked.

In the last five years, the number of countries classified as extreme and persecuting Christians has grown from one, North Korea, to 11 countries. That's increasing and the persecution is coming from aggressive nationalism or ultra nationalism in countries like China and India and from Islamist militia groups. How about in Boston, 2019. Well, it's different here. Might not be an active violent oppression, but it's definitely a silent repression. It's a polite persecution. There's ridicule when people can't respond with reason. Laughter.

"I can't believe you believe that, you bigot" laughter as substitute for logic. We might not be persecuted, but certainly we are pressured. You might not get that promotion just because you're a Christian. You might not get into that program, not get into that school. Just because you're a Christian. People might look down on you as antiquated or unintelligent because you are a Christian. Be silent, shut up, blend in, conform. Do not share your faith. Do not proselytize. I can't believe that you are on the wrong side of history. Well, for Christians it's more important not just to be on the right side of history, but to be on the right side and that side is the side of Jesus Christ. And he said, I am the way, the truth and the life and there's no other way to the father, but through me. If you claim that, if you believe that if you live that out, you will be opposed.

Jesus Christ said, count the cost before you come and follow me. There is a cost to following Jesus. What does it cost you to follow Christ? Would you die for the name of Christ? Statistically, some of you might. And if you're willing to die for Christ, are you willing to live for him? If being a Christian ever became illegal in the United States, would there be enough evidence against you for claiming Christian, confessing Christian, to convict you? These are some of the things that we are talking about today.

To set up our time, we're going to look at first Peter chapter four, seven through 19. First, Peter suffered for the faith to the point that he died. He was crucified upside down. He knew about suffering. He knew about beatings. When you talk about suffering, you just talk about verbal suffering. You talk, not just emotional suffering but physical suffering for the faith.

So he writes this letter to Christians who are suffering in Asia Minor and he reminds them over and over refers to them that you are sojourners, you are exiles. This is not your home. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are resident aliens. This is all temporary. We might suffer, but from the point of view of eternity, this is just a blip on the radar and is worth it. First Peter four seven through 19 would you please look at the text with me?

The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks Oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet, if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God, and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

And if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good. This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Seven practical points to frame up our time. Point one is welcome to the club. Point two is lead with repentance. Three, rejoice at the honor. Four shame with glory. Five, love your enemies. Six, trust God as you do good and seven, extend hope gently. First of all, welcome to the club. This is what he begins with. So what did you expect if you follow a crucified savior? And Jesus said, "Come and follow me." What did you expect? So don't be surprised. He says in verse 12, beloved do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. For them, they understood what it meant to follow Christ in that Roman culture.

Christ was crucified. Therefore, he calls us to a path of suffering. Don't be surprised, it's not unusual. You're probably doing something right. It is surprising to the church in the United States. To many, it's surprising because many present the gospel as a bait-and-switch. We do not do that at Mosaic. When we talk about coming to the Lord, repenting of sin and accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we talk about counting the cost. There is a cost.

Jesus said, before you build a tower, you got to sit down and first figure out how much it's going to cost or else you won't have the resource. There is a cost to following Jesus Christ. And as our culture becomes more antagonistic to the gospel and the implications of the gospel in particular when it comes to gender and sexuality, there's going to be more and more of a cost. Don't be surprised. It's not unusual. It's not new. It's not strange. He says it's normal. It's necessary. It's refining. Life is hard. God is good. Glory is coming.

The fiery trial here he's talking about is persecution, is to be expected. In Peter's mind, it wasn't just insults, it wasn't just maligning or slander or reviling, it was beatings and sufferings and crucifixion and being tossed to the lions. 2 Timothy 3:12, indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. God promises this. Acts 14:22 talking about the apostles, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. Through many tribulations.

Many of us have developed a theology of prosperity, not many of us have a theology of adversity. And we need a theology of adversity to recognize how to meet these trials head on. It's guaranteed trials will come, expect it. 1 Peter 5:6-9, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. There's a humility that needs to come with becoming a Christian. And Lord I repent of my sins. I'm a wretch, please save me. But then there's also a humility of following Christ and on a daily basis.

God is sovereign and often sovereignly ordains trials, opposition, persecution, and there's a humility that needs to come. Lord, I humble myself under this chosen path that you have for me, that at the proper time, he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

Now, Peter, how can you write this as God's timeless word and have it still relevant today as we're reading it? Because this fact has not changed. Satan hates Christians because Satan hates the church, Satan opposes the faithful. And I understand that our opposition is first world opposition. It's micro-suffering, but still it's suffering, it's persecution. And unlike on a daily basis, you need to count the cost of following Christ. My oldest daughter Sophia is 11 and she was telling me that she just wishes there were more Christians in her church. Sorry, that too.

Amen. In her school. I wish I had a Christian friend in my class. Maybe that's why we're here. We're not here because it's comfortable, we're here to get the gospel to those who do not have eternal hope in Christ. That's why we're here. It's difficult. Hebrews 13:3, remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated since you are in the body. That we are a body of bleeds, we're the body of Christ and parts of the body and other parts of the world are suffering for the faith.

We are to remember them, we are to pray for them. Many of us hearing a sermon on suffering and persecution for the faith is brand new. If you come from other parts of the world, you know about this. You know about this, not theologically, you know about this experientially. My family is in the United States because they were persecuted for their faith. That's how we got to the United States, in religious refugee asylum in the late 80s because in the Soviet Union was illegal to be a Christian.

It was illegal... typically the gospel. We have family members who spent decades in prison for their faith. This isn't new. This is part of following Christ. John 15:18-20 Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you are of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. Jesus was persecuted. Jesus was the most opposed figure in all of world history, so it makes sense that his followers will too, be opposed. Mark 10:29-30 Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold." Now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, we love that promise, with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

Don't be surprised. So welcome to the club. It's part of being a Christian too, is lead with repentance. This is important. 1 Peter, Peter, when he talks about persecution, he's very careful to qualify that you are being persecuted for the name of Christ, not because of your own sin. That you're not using persecution as a cover for sin. 1 Peter 3:17, it's better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will than for doing evil. And in our text, 1 Peter 4:15, but let none of you suffer as a murderer or thief or an evildoer or as a meddler.

What's he talking about? Saying some people are persecuted for being Christians, some people are being persecuted just for being obnoxious. That's what the word meddler means. So meaning, you've got to hold this imbalance. If you are always persecuted for everything. If any kind of criticism, any kind of negativity for anything from anybody is persecution. He said, "Be careful it's not for your own sin." If you are never persecuted for anything ever as a Christian, then you've got to ask, "Am I living faithfully following Christ?"

And by meddler here he's talking about being the type of obnoxious Christian that hold any conversation with absolutely anybody. You're always Jesus juking. You're always trying to talk about hell and condemnation and fire and brimstone. Don't be that person. Don't be the person, and I've got to qualify this a little, who at work instead of doing your job, you're evangelizing. It's important to evangelize to coworkers and it's important for them to know. And I say this because I went through a season where I call this the cage stage.

I think every Christian goes through this cage stage. I found out about reformed theology and I wanted everyone in the world to know about it. And instead of working on my Excel spreadsheets at work, I would read Bible studies. Don't be that person. Don't be, this is what he's saying, the meddler. So you might get fired for being a person like this. But you got to do a spiritual inventory. Hey, is there hypocrisy in my life? Is there sin in my life? Is there opposition in my life just because there's a carnal nature coming out or is it truly for the faith?

And it happens with personal judgment. That's why 1 Peter 4:17 he says, for it's time for judgment to begin at the household of God, meaning we judge ourselves. We're doing this spiritual inventory ourselves. It begins with us and what will become of those who do not obey the gospel of God and if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? So lead with repentance. If there is sin, we repent of that sin in the context of persecution as well. Three, is rejoice at the honor. And this is incredible that he uses the word rejoice in verse 13, rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and if God rests upon you, is it comfortable? No. But there's something greater than comfort. There's development of character, and God cares infinitely more about our character than our comfort. We choose to rejoice. It's a choice to rejoice even in suffering, and this is absolutely nonsensical to the unbelieving world. The unbelieving world finds this unbelievable. The world doesn't understand that there's a source of joy, a joy that's greater than happiness, that's greater than pleasure. He says, "Rejoice at this." Congratulations, it's a confirmation, it's a compliment from God that when we suffer, when we are insulted for the name of Christ, it is to bring us joy, because God's name is glorified.

Matthew 5:10-12, Jesus, this is in the Beatitudes talking about blessing, and the word for bless here is the highest level of happiness, the highest level of joy. "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Rejoice, great is the reward. And this only makes sense from the perspective of eternity, the eternity... that our life compared to eternity is just a little blip on the radar.

St. Peter, after he was beaten with the other apostles in the book of Acts as the very beginning of the inauguration of the church, Acts 5:41, "And they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name." They were dishonored, they were persecuted, and they rejoice. They rejoice not despite the persecution, but because of it, because of the persecution. The persecution gave them this perspective of eternity's perspective on what really matters, and they rejoice.

Scripture often talks about suffering as a path that God chooses for us to strengthen us and to increase our joy. Romans 5:3-4, "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." James 1:2-3, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." Nothing tests our faith as genuine like persecution. God often sends persecution in order to purify the church. Who's truly a Christian, who's a genuine believer? There's a testing. Romans 8:18, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

Hebrews 12 talks about Moses, who leaves the comforts of the palace, of Pharaoh's palace in Egypt, and it says he, Moses, "choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." Fleeting pleasures that you can't keep or an eternal reward that you can never lose. He does the cost-benefit analysis, he said, "Yes, the cost is worth it." God wants to prosper us. He wants to give us an enduring prosperity, a long-term prosperity that often comes at the cost of short-term adversity.

Opposition also strengthens our faith. This is another reason to rejoice, that we are getting stronger. Every athlete knows, if you work out, you know that strength is developed under pressure. It's time under tension, and you go through that suffering because you have an end goal, and you're willing to endure because of the strength that's coming.

1 Peter 1:6-7, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." He talks about this testing as a fire. What does a fire do? It burns off the impurities, the dross, and leaves the substance, leaves the goal. And what the fire and the testing does, it reveals our true allegiances, what we truly love. If the idol in your life is comfort, then you can't begin to understand suffering, you can't begin to understand pain. But if God is at the center of your life, if God is the most precious thing in your life and the greatest treasure that you have, then you will cling on to God despite suffering.

It's no secret that adversity makes us stronger. A couple secular studies I'll quote here, Alyssa Croft in 2013 surveyed 15,000 adults, and she's entitled the study From Tribulations to Appreciation: Experiencing Adversity in the Past Predicts Greater Savoring in the Present, and this is what... She found people who had experienced major trauma in the past, and she said that people who have overcome adversity in the past are better at savoring life's small pleasures, which in turn could promote greater life satisfaction.

This is how Scripture talks about it, that adversity, opposition, persecution, suffering, it's a blessing if it's from the Lord, and this blessing allows us to truly savor his other blessings. There's a negative blessing that leads to a depth of savoring the positive blessings. She noted that people who emotionally overcome a negative event, it leads to this greater appreciation later in life and makes them more resilient. And this is what fiery trials do. They make us stronger. They make us a courageous people. Scripture often talks about Christians as needing to be courageous. Would you describe yourself as being courageous? Are you a courageous Christian? And the way that we strengthen our courage is going through that suffering. Jesus is the great shepherd; we are the sheep. Sometimes he brings us to green pastures, sometimes he brings us to nice bucolic rivers. Other times, he takes us through the valley of the shadow of death, and I trust him, he got me this far, he'll get me through, and that strengthens us.

A study by Stanley J. Rachman, he researched Fear and Courage: A Psychological Perspective, and here's how... This is secular work. Here's how he talks about growing from courage to fearlessness. He says, "Situational demands and confidence are thought to be important contributors to fearless behavior. The successful practice of courageous behavior leads to a decrease in subjective fear and finally to a state of fearlessness." How? "Courage grows into fearlessness. People who are learning to parachute from an aircraft display courage when they persevere with their jumps despite subjective fear. Veteran parachutists, who have been successfully habituated to the situation, no longer experience fear when jumping; they have moved from courage to fearlessness." Subjective fear, you overcome it with courage. The more you do that, the more you string these wins together, the more fearless you become. Courage just becomes part of who you are.

This is why we are to rejoice when God allows us to be opposed for his fight, shame with glory. Jesus often talks about those who are ashamed of his name. Mark 8:38, "For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Have you ever felt shame for being a Christian? Have you ever felt shame for believing the words of Christ, words that our culture rejects? 1 Peter 4:16, "Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name." Don't be ashamed, but glorify. Why is he bringing these two together? What ashamed, what is shame? The human ego hates shame. The human ego hates to be embarrassed.

So Scripture says, what do we do with this shame? We are to follow the example of Christ, who despised the shame. Hebrews 12:2, "Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." He despised the shame. Jesus despised what kind of shame? At the center of Christianity is a shamed Christ, Christ who was mocked, he was rejected, he was spat on, he was stripped, he was scourged, and ultimately he was crucified. And the crucifixion was developed by the Romans not just to increase the level of pain as much as possible, it was to increase the level of humiliation, but Jesus went through it because he despised the shame. There's something greater motivating him than his own honor, and that was to bring glory to God the father. Don't be ashamed. What is shame? It's our name not being glorified. It's our name not being honored. Our reputation tarnished. We are not as approved or accepted by the people around us. That's shame.

My wife and I we have four daughters, and I get this question all the time, and I just got to remind everyone to stop asking this question, "Are you guys going to go for the fifth? Are you guys going to try to get a boy?" Stop asking that question. In particular, I get it from my Slavic brethren, from people from a Slavic/Russian background. "Don't you want a boy? And what about your name? Don't you want your name to continue past?" Like the name is so important. And my response every single time, "I don't care." Vezikov that's not a good last name. Like who cares? That's number one.

Number two, theologically it's wrong. Who cares about my name? Seriously, if I'm dead and rotten and forgotten, who cares? As long as the name of Jesus Christ magnified through my life. I believe that theologically. Experientially? And I struggle with this all the time describe for people, "What do you do?" "I'm a pastor." Just having that conversation, or like, "What kind of Christian are you?" Just having that conversation. "Oh, you guys really believe in The Bible? Isn't that antiquated?" And like, "Yeah, we do." There is a shame, but you know what? It's not about my name being glorified it's about the name Jesus Christ being glorified even at the expense of my name, of my disrepute because we worship a Christ who despised that shame.

Luke 6:26, "Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets." If you're never opposed for being a Christian, if you're never dishonored for being a Christian are you standing for the truth? Are you public with your faith? And why do people hate the truth, why do people oppose the truth? Because there is an element of the truth showing the darkness for what it is, exposing the evil. This is John 3:19, this is the judgment, "The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil." The way that we fight shame is by glorifying God. A God who deserves all glory.

Five is love your enemies. This is so counter intuitive, it's so counter cultural. The preached opposition here is that there will be enemies. We do have enemies. There are people who are defiantly opposed to the Christian truth. Luke 6:27 through 31, "But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies," then act of agape love. "Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, to the one who strikes you on the cheek offer the other one also, and from the one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from the one who takes away your goods do not demand them back, and as you wish that others would do to you do so to them." Refuse to retaliate that's what he's... Refuse to respond to hate with hate. Refuse to allow other people to control your emotions, to control your reaction. The way that we oppose our enemies is not with hate, but with love.

Romans 12:17 through 21, "Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine. I will repay,' says the Lord. To the contrary, if you're enemy is hungry feed him, if he is thirsty give him something to drink for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, and overcome evil with goods." It's so hard. It's not just hard this is impossible. It does take supernatural strength, it does take a filling of the Holy Spirit to respond to our enemies in the same way that Christ responded to us. Jesus Christ died for us not because we were lovely, but because he was loving, and he died for us when we were still his enemies.

First Peter 4:89, "Above all keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sin, show hospitality to one another without grumbling." It's a practical love. There are enemies in your life, those who oppose you practically seek to show them love. And this perfect love casts out fear. First Peter 3:9, "Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling with reviling, but on the contrary bless. For to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing." So, we bless our enemies in the name of Jesus Christ we bless them, and we do that by praying for them. And what are we praying for? We're praying for them to come to an eternal relationship, into an eternal life with Jesus Christ. And the only way you can do this practically is if you understand theologically the source of opposition. It's not us against them, it's not Christians against non-Christians. It's every single one of us against God, and God comes, gives himself, is crucified in order to redeem us. And the real source of the opposition is not the person who is opposing you. The real source of opposition is Satan. It's the demonic realm.

First Peter 5:89, "Be so reminded, be watchful your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world." Satan hates God. Satan wants to do everything he can to oppose God, but Satan can't hurt God. Jesus promised that he will build his church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. The book of Revelation promises us that Jesus wins. We know how the story ends. Satan does as well. He can't hurt God, so he tries to hurt God by means of hurting God's children. And this is what opposition is. This is what persecution is.

Ephesians 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers, over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." So, when we are opposed we need to know who's behind the opposition, it's Satan, and that's why we pray for the person who is in front of us. It seems like if the person is embodying the persecution, embodying the opposition, but we need to pray for this persons eternal soul. We need to pray for the Lord to release this person from the entanglement of the evil one.

Six is trust God as you do good, and the word for trust here is more than just intellectual assent it's entrusting yourself to the good will of God. This is First Peter 4:9, "Therefor let those who suffer, according to God's will, entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good." We entrust ourselves to the sovereignty of God. "God, if you have allowed suffering, and opposition, and persecution in my life this is your will, and I will humble myself underneath your will, under your good sovereign will. Let your will be done in my life." We entrust our souls to him.

It's the the same word that Jesus Christ uses when he's on the cross in Luke 23:46, "Jesus calling out with a loud voice says, 'Father into your hands I commit my spirit.' And having said this he breathed his last." It's the same word that's used in first Peter 2:21, 25, "For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you. Leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin, and live to righteousness by his wounds. You have been healed for you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls."

Sometimes suffering is God's will for your life. First Peter 2:15, "For this is the will of God that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people." First Peter 5:10 through 11, "After you have suffered a little while the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you to him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

And then point seven to extend hope gently. What do I mean? Suffering exposes what we truly hope in. Where is our hope? What is the anchor of our souls? When we're tough under oppression, and we tenderly share hope this is one of the greatest apologetics for the Christian faith. And this is why this suffering grew the Christian faith like nothing else. Historians are puzzled by how quickly Christianity grew despite opposition and persecution. Despite martyrdom, Christianity grew at a clip of 40% per decade.

Up to the point where in the 4th century, Constantine comes to power and realizes that the only way to consolidate all of the empire is by claiming to be a Christian. How? It was through oppression. It was through persecution. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, and this is why. In 1 Peter 3:14-15, the famous verse is, "Always be ready to give a defense for the hope that you have." That is given in the context of suffering. Verse 14, 1 Peter 3. "But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ. The Lord is Holy.

Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason, for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. The world understands. If you become a Christian to prosper and be healthy and wealthy, the world understands that. That's your ticket to prosperity. We have other tickets to prosperity. The world does not understand when Christ is your greatest treasure, despite suffering. That makes no sense. You still love Christ. You didn't get the prosperity. You got adversities. You still love him. Makes zero sense. People begin to wonder, what is this thing that you believe? Hold onto Christ in the midst of suffering. Be prepared to make a defense, to explain why Christ is your treasure. So when you suffer, don't panic. Pray. Don't worry, worship. Don't focus on the pain, on the opposition.

Focus on God. We extend the gospel with gentleness and respect. This is 1 Timothy 2:23-26, "Have nothing to do with foolish ignorant controversies." And he wrote this before online evangelists and comments section and Facebook evangelists. He wrote this way before any of that. Don't get into debate on Facebook about Jesus. It's never helpful. Ignorant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone. Able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. This is our goal. This is our hope. We have received this hope and Christ. It was not of our doing.

We're saved by grace through faith, and we're willing to go through the persecution and opposition in order to testify to this grace, to those who are far from the Lord. My short term comfort, I'm willing to sacrifice it for someone else's eternal comfort in the presence of Christ. Titus 3:2-7, I'll close with this. "Speak evil of no one to avoid quarrelling, to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, lead astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another." But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior appeared, he saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration, renewal of the Holy spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior.

So that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. If you're not a Christian today, cry out to God. God, save me. God, repent my sin. God, I entrust myself to you. But do so knowing the path that Jesus Christ might potentially have for you, a path of opposition, persecution, and suffering. But it's worth it. The seven points, just in case you missed any. Welcome to the club, lead with repentance, rejoice at the honor, fight shame with glory, love your enemies, trust God as you do good, extend hope gently.

And we'll close with the words of Christ on the cross, Luke 23:34. And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do." Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for grace we didn't deserve. But Jesus, through your suffering, we are saved. And we understand, Lord, that you might ordain suffering for us so that we may be strengthened, and for others to be saved through our witness. And I pray that you strengthen us in those moments. Make us a bold people, a courageous people, people who proclaim your truth. And we do it unapologetically, unflinchingly, and we do it with tenderness of heart. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Summary: Proverbs 13:20 says, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm." Wise friends set us on a trajectory of wise living. Foolish friends predict a foolish future. Who are your friends? Are they wise? Are you a good friend? Do you treasure friendship? This week we look to the greatest friend ever, Jesus Christ, to study what made Him such a great friend, and how, thanks to Jesus, we can all grow to become better friends.

Heavenly Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you, Holy God, that you are a perfect community. In the Holy Trinity, there's a perfect friendship and perhaps that sounds a little strange to us in particular because the word friend has been so hallowed in our culture, and I pray today, Lord, that you remind us that you have created us for friendship, friendship with you and friendship with one another, a friendship that once we're reconciled with Christ, the greatest friend whoever lived, since he gave his life for his friends, once we receive Christ's friendship, we are friends with one another and with you for all of eternity in a place called heaven.

Show us today that the foretaste of heaven is true friendship with those who love you. I pray, teach us how to be better friends. Each one of us we long to have more friends and some of us we do struggle with loneliness. I pray today, Holy Spirit, come, give us wisdom and also infuse us with your presence so we know that when we are in you, when we have Christ as our greatest friend, we can be truly satisfied, we can be truly completed, we can be truly content, therefore not look for those things from people. Instead, we can be givers. You gave yourself and we can be givers to other people, which, and now the secret to friendship, like the secret to all blessing is to give rather than receive. We pray Holy Spirit, that you prepare our hearts to hear from you and we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're in a sermon series that we are calling Tough and Tender, Developing Resilience for Life. And what we're doing is we're looking at the paradoxical nature of Christ, that he is the lion of Judah and the lamb of God at the same time, and the more that we revere Christ, the more that we worship Christ, walk with him in his presence, the more we begin to look like and resemble him, that we can have the confidence of a lion taking on the challenges of life, or we can have the tenderness of a lamb and continue to be intimate with the people around us and tender with them, and we're looking at the greatest spheres of life, the most consequential areas of life, through those lenses. Today we are looking at friendship.

When's the last time that you gave significant thought to the topic of friendship? Friendship is one of the most important aspects of life and the least thought about. We all long to be less lonely, we all long to be more intimate, more well known and loved by other people, and we live in a day and age where we are connected with many, the average person on Facebook has 338 friends, connected with many yet connecting with few.

The UK actually has appointed a minister of loneliness to address the problem of social isolation. There's companies started in Japan and now they're popping up all over the West, they're called to rent a friend, where you go and you pay money, rent a friend for a day or longer. In 2018, Cigna ran a study of 20,000 US adults and they found that nearly half feel alone, 46%, or left out, 47%. One in four Americans, 27%, rarely if ever, feel that people understand them.

Two in five Americans, 43%, sometimes or always feel that their relationships are meaningful, meaning the rest do not. One in five people rarely or never feel close to another person or have another person that feel that they can truly talk to. Generation Z, that's people of ages 18 through 22, are the loneliest. And the group of people 72 and older, were the least lonely. Another study came out that said, one in five millennials, it's 20%, have no friends.

The ancients, Christians who went before us, they understood the importance of friendship in a way that we rarely do. J. C. Ryle, a pastor and theologian, he said, "This world is full of sorrow because it is full of sin. It is a dark place. It is a lonely place. It is a disappointing place. The brightest sun beam is a friend. Friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joys." How many friends do you have? I'm talking about true friends through thick and thin. Friends drop everything to help you in a time of need. Friends, "When are you moving? I'm there. Give me the other end of the couch," friends. That's the true test in Boston.

Most of us think we know true friendship, a few of us do, and particularly young people because you go through school, you go through high school, your friends are always there, you didn't have to plan to be there, you're just there together all day, proximity. You go to college, you make new friends, and again, proximity. And then you graduate, you move to a city where you don't know anyone and you're like, "Where's my friends?" And particularly because we live in the West in a very hyper individualistic culture, and particularly because we live in Boston where everyone is crazy busy, "Let's hang out. How's your December or January?" And then also the transients. Like you're here, you make friends, and then move away.

C.S. Lewis says, "To the ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it." C.S. Lewis wrote to his lifelong friend, Arthur Greeves, and he said, "Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life." In The Weight of Glory he wrote that friendship causes perhaps half of the happiness in the world. This is a person who's very specific about his words, very particular.

Augustine said, "Two things that are essential in this world, life and friendship both must be prized highly and not undervalued. They are nature's gifts. We are creatured. We are created by God that we might live, but if we are not, then we are not to live solitarily, we must live, we must have friendship."

And then Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian of the United States, the one United States produced is, "Friendship is the highest happiness of all moral agents." By the way, not just Christians know this, everybody knows this. Atheist, A. C. Grayling, a modern atheist philosopher, he wrote a book called Friendship, he said, "The highest and finest of all human relationships is arguably friendship." He says that marriage is to be the best of friendships and then parent-child relationships are to develop into friendships.

Arthur Brooks wrote a book on happiness called Why Happiness Matters for America. He said, "You need four things for happiness, one, faith. Two, family. Three, meaningful work. Four, friends." Think about the happiest moments of your life, happiest moments ever, who's there? Definitely not alone. And if you are alone, most likely that wasn't in the top five. Why? Because joy is consummated. The pinnacle of joy happens when we can share it. Friendship consummates joy. When we experience something amazing, you can't but share it.

I was listening to this guy who for the first time ever experienced ESPN television sports all the time, and he experienced it by himself watching a game and he couldn't believe this comeback and he got up and he started yelling, "Did you see this?" And nobody saw it. And he says, "It's gray, but tinged with sadness." Because joy not shared, is joy unfulfilled. And a joy shared, is a joy multiplied.

Now, the big idea of this sermon is not how to help you find your best friends. Perhaps that's what you want. Give me a list where my friends at. The point of this sermon is to help you become a better friend, and I know in my own life and I know just watching other people's lives, better friends are also better at making and keeping friends. We're going to look at John 15:12-17 today, to frame up our time.

John 15:12-17, the words of Jesus Christ. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another."

This is the reading about holy, inerrant, infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points in Roman numeral format with seven practical points. It worked last week. Let's do it again. I, Jesus the lion lamb friend. II, friends following Jesus. And III, growing as a lion lamb friend, with seven practical sub-points, treasure friendship. Form concentric circles of friends. Choose friends intentionally. Be a giving friend, a wise friend, a loyal friend, and be a fun friend. Come on, that's free.

I, Jesus the lion lamb friend. Do you find it fascinating that Jesus, as he talks about the greatest expression of love, he points to friendship? And this is fascinating because I've always been taught that in Greek there's different levels of love. There's agape love, and there's phileo love, there's love of God, and there's love of friendship, and there's eros, et cetera, but one of the things that Jesus does is he conflates agape love and phileo love, love of a friend and the love of God. The true love is sacrificial love and the highest expression of friendship is a sacrificial love in that friendship.

Why? Why does Jesus do this? Because he understands that friendship is at the heart of the universe, because the friendship is at the heart of God, that God is a God of friendship. There's perfect friendship in the Trinity. That God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are in a perfect community of friendship, of love, and then God creates us in that friendship image.

Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, "Let us," plural, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."" The next verse. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them." That it takes two in order to understand God more fully. That out of the outflow of his goodness, God creates us out of the outflow of the love. In this friendship, he creates us to image that friendship. So we are created for friendship, friendship with God, friendship with one another, and we can't experience the fullness of God, we can't experience the fullness of a true life, a good life, a Shalom life, universal flourishing, without deep meaningful friendships that God wove it into the fabric of the world.

That's why before the fall, God looks to Adam and says, "It is not good for man to be alone." That's the first malediction. Benediction is, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good, everything's good, except it's not good for man to be alone. This comes prior to the fall. It takes place before sin enters. So the first problem in human history and the first problem in Holy scripture is not sin, it's solitude. Adam was alone, not because Adam was imperfect, Adam was alone because he was perfect, he couldn't fully enjoy paradise without friends, without community. And it's not until Adam and Eve are created together, until God brings them together, that God looks at everything and says, "It is very good."

We need another human being. It's an ancient and primal ache. That's why solitary confinement is a punishment. Social isolation leads to increased anxiety, depression, mental illness unravels our humanity. Friendship is the ultimate end of existence with God and with one another. This is what made the fall so tragic. Adam and Eve alienated themselves from God, they isolated themselves from the greatest friend that there is. Now there's hostility, there's enmity, between us and God, and we see glimpses of God beginning to reconcile humanity to himself.

He goes to Enoch and says, "Enoch walked with God." It's the Hebrew word, halak. That they walked in a way that friends walk with another. Abraham was explicitly called a friend of God. God calls Abraham explicitly, my friend. Moses says spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with a friend. God pursues Israel, cares for them, provides for them, as he does for a friend. Isaiah 41:8, "But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen the offspring of Abraham, my friend." And as the storyline of scripture progresses we see Israel spiraling downward and they fundamentally reject God, his presence, his friendship, and one another as true friends.

The Old Testament ends with a cry, a plea, for someone to come and restore humanity's relationship with God. Enter Jesus Christ. Fully God, fully man, lives the perfect life. He's fully God, does he need anyone? He's got Trinity, but he's fully man, and he needs friendship. And the same way the first Adam needed friendship, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, needed friendship as well. He comes and he spends time with people, Matthew 11:19, so much so that Jesus's enemies throws spurns and derogatory term at him.

It says, "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, "Look at him, a glutton and a drunkard," he was never a glutton or a drunkard, "A friend of tax collectors and sinners."" He's a friend, yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. Jesus is a friend. How does that sound to you? How does it sound that Jesus offers his friendship to you? There's two things that come immediately to mind, and this is when I was prepping the sermon. That one is Buddy Jesus, where it's Jesus with the thumbs up, and then there's like '80 song on YouTube, Jesus is a Friend of Mine, I can't get that out of my head, Jesus is my friend. It's so bad.

For some of us it's hard to understand that the God of the universe offers his friendship to us that we can call God friend. It seems even irreverent, and I would submit to you partially that's the case because of what we have done in the English language with the word friend. We have hallowed it out probably partially because it's so hard to make friends, so now everyone we meet is a friend. Anyone who's nice to us is a friend. Any acquaintance, any contact we ever made is a friend.

We've stretched the words so broadly semantically that it's ambiguous at best, what do we mean? So what does it mean that God is my friend? Is God my best friend? Is God an acquaintance? Is God just someone that I pay homage to once in a while? Well, Jesus comes in and says, "No. Friend is the person with whom your soul is bound. That's who a friend is. Your souls are intertwined." God is giving us this level of intimacy to the Holy Trinity. We can come to him because of the throne of grace. So God wants us to have friendship, friendship with him, friendship with other people. What gets in the way? It's our culture. It's our sin. Sin makes us naturally antisocial. Sin makes us bend in on ourselves, drives to isolation. And God is a God of friendship, so the more that we seek friendship, the more that we become like God. The more that we seek isolation, the less we become like God.

And Jesus was a man of friendship. He came, he didn't live alone. He comes to his disciples, the very first thing that he says is, "Follow me." And that imagery he borrows that from the Old Testament, it's the halak imagery. It's Adam walking together with God in the garden. It's Enoch walking with God. It's Noah walking with God. It's Moses, Abraham walking with God. Jesus comes and he tells his disciples, "Follow me." Now he spends three years with his disciples, his best friends, walking dusty roads together, fishing, talking, feasting. There's a meme going on recently where it said the most underrated of all Jesus's miracles was the fact that he had 12 friends in his 30s. Something to it. Why is that even a meme today? Because honestly, you get to your 30s and you're like, "There's nobody here."

Jesus had friends. He invested in friendships. He invested in different concentric circles of friends, we'll talk about that. He grieved over the death of Lazarus. The scripture said, "His friend." In his most distressing moment, Jesus in anguish in Garden Gethsemane wants his close friends there and he's disappointed when they're not. So I start here showing you what friendship is in terms of the gospel. Jesus says that the greatest love, the essence of love, is someone giving themselves for their friends. Meaning that the secret to friendship, the same secret as a secret to all blessing, it's more blessed to give than to receive, it's sacrifice. And I say that because we're so busy, "I don't have time for friends. I have schoolwork to do, and then I have a job to go to, and then I need promotion to pay off my loans, and then I have kids. I definitely don't have time for friends," it goes on and on and on. But we always make time for what we treasure, for what we value.

Jesus valued friendship, and he offers friendship to us, not just as equals, he doesn't throw off his crown and say, "I'm no longer king," no, this is the king of the universe welcoming you into his presence as our Lord, our King, our truest friend, who knows us fully and loves us completely. That's what makes Jesus such a good friend. That with Christ we are never alone and we are never unknown. Jesus Christ welcomes us into the heart of God through sacrifice.

John 15:15, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." By the way, this is what makes Christianity so utterly unique. There's no other faith that comes even close, and Jesus speaks these words on the eve of his death, meaning that the cross is not just the greatest demonstration of love, it's the greatest cosmic act of friendship.

John 5:13, "Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends." Friendship is about sacrifice because love is about sacrifice, because you love your friends who are willing to sacrifice. The more time you spend with Christ, the more you understand how much he loves you, the more you find contentment in him, satisfaction in him. He satisfies your soul, he completes you. Therefore, now you are recharged, you are encouraged, you are filled with the Holy Spirit, now you can go and be a blessing to your friends, be an encouragement to your friends, be what Christ is to you.

So the cross is a heroic act of friendship because on the cross Jesus gets what we deserve. He gets the opposite of what he deserves so that we don't get what we deserve. What do I mean? I mean that Jesus Christ on the cross bears the penalty for our sin, which is hell. Jesus bears the flames of hell upon himself on the cross. You're like, "I didn't see any flames, that's not in the text," he cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Meaning he bears abject loneliness, the darkness of abject loneliness on the cross when God the Father and the Holy Spirit turn from God the Son because God the Son took upon himself the sin of the world, the wrath of God upon the sin of the world.

When you realize how much Jesus sacrificed in order to welcome you in to friendship with God, that right there makes Jesus your greatest friend, which now begins to give you the resources to be a better friend. Puritan Walter Marshall said, "Justification," we talked about that last week, "Is God's way of taking you into friendship with himself." So seeing the way that Jesus treasured friendship, seeing the way that Jesus sacrificed for friendship, seeing the way that Jesus was perfectly humble and confident at the same time humble, why? Because he doesn't look down on his disciples and say, "You're beneath me, we're not going to be friends." He doesn't say, "Your IQ isn't high enough to be my friend. Your education isn't high enough to be my friend. You don't live in the same neighborhood that I live in, we can't be friends." He doesn't look at the disciples and say, "You can't give me anything. I can't benefit from you." He doesn't do that. He comes and utter humility and he says, "I can serve you," and that's the first step to the friendship and yet he's incredibly confident, humility and confident, he knows who he is.

He knows that he's the son of God and he gives us both humility, "You're sinners saved by grace," and he gives us the confidence, "I was willing to save you," and that right there, that formula of humble and confident lion and lamb and now gives us the recipe for being great friends. So vertical friendship with Christ transforms our horizontal friendships, and that brings us to point two, friendship following Jesus.

The disciples were such great friends. The early church was an outflow of that love between friends. The church was a community of friends on mission. The New Testament repeatedly portrays the church, not just the place to go to, but a community that you belong to. Acts 4:32, "The full number of those who believed were of one heart and one soul and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common." It's the two souls coming together, it's multiple souls coming together, in love and friendship. Practice as normal across ethnic socioeconomic divides.

Peter and John are flogged and imprisoned. Once they're let out, scripture doesn't say that they went back to the Christians, says that they went to their friends, Acts 4:23, B. The apostle John refers to the local church as the friends, in third, John 15. Why? What united these people? They had nothing in common prior to Christ. What united them was the love of Christ and the mission that God had given them. What do I mean? What I mean is that friends always have something to do together. If you think of your best friends, like there's always some activity, there's always something.

There's so many people in New England today bemoaning the day that Tom Brady is going to retire because then it's like, "What is left? There's nothing else to unite any of us just other than that we live in New England." It's sports, movies, literature, running, working out, friendship is always about something and the more important that something, the deeper those relationships, the more significant those relationships. Well, what is the most consequential thing ever? It's eternity. It's an eternal God and it's eternal souls, things that will never change, and it's Christians who've been united to eternal God, reconciled with him, will spend eternity with him, and now we're on mission for as long as we live to help others who are not yet reconciled with Jesus, who still are at enmity with God, hostility with God, to help them meet Jesus, have their sins forgiven, accept the friendship of God, and be welcomed into eternal life.

All of my best friends, I look back in my, all of my best friends, people with whom I've connected on a soul level, they've all loved Jesus, all have followed Jesus, and all care about the mission of God. All of my best friends. And all of the deepest relationships I've ever formed were with people with whom I was on mission together wherever I lived, because those things don't change. If you look at a relationship that's based around sports, based around education, based upon proximity, where you live, your roommates, all of those things change and after those things are removed, you're like, "What do we even have in common?"

If your relationship is built on something eternal, that thing will never be removed. I have friends that I've been on mission with in college and after college in D.C. and down North Carolina when I was in seminary, and years go by, and then we see one another it's as if nothing's changed because nothing truly important has changed. We still have Christ, we still have the Holy Spirit, we're still on mission with God.

By the way, dating, this is my test when I met my wife. I wanted to know, "Do you love Jesus? Are you a member of a church? Very important. Do you care about the mission of God?" Because I knew like I want to marry a true Christian, and true Christians really care about the mission of God. Because when you've been found by Jesus, you want to give your life to help those who are lost find Jesus. In Matthew 4:19, Jesus says, "Follow me," to the disciples, "And I will make you fishers of men."

I love that he uses that analogy because one of the greatest bonding activities is fishing. You're together, throwing the rod and whatever, I don't really fish very often. This is all hypothetical. I live in Boston. I want to get into fishing, but apparently it's one of the greatest thing to bond people, and Jesus uses that imagery to talk about the mission of God, "Follow me, I'll make you fishers of men." What is it? Catching them, releasing people from the entanglement of sin.

Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission, "Jesus said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples, go together make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold I am with you always to the end of the age."" This is the mission that God's... This is really important. At Mosaic, we care about community, not community for community's sake, not unity for unity's sake. The greatest unity, the greatest community, is always a byproduct of serving the Lord together, being on mission with the Lord.

Just a word here about being on mission in a place like Boston where it's so transient, where people come and people go. I've been here for a decade, hundreds of people, thousands of people, come and go. What really allows me to keep my heart open to people is the fact that eternity is real, and if I form a relationship with another believer with another Christian here on earth, that eternity is for ever. We're going to be friends for ever. And by the way, that love, that friendship, is one of the greatest apologetics to an unbelieving world.

John 13:34-35, "A new command I give you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." It's really shocking to people when they walk in and they experience love in the community, they experience love amongst friends who are together because of Jesus. Like what unites you guys? It's Jesus Christ, and that's apologetic.

And point three is, III, growing as a lion lamb friend, Jesus was incredibly loyal, tenaciously loyal. Gave everything for his friends as a lion, but incredibly intimate. You see him with the disciples in the Last Supper, they're embracing one another, both lion and lamb. We can grow in this paradoxical nature of friendship through the following seven points.

First is, treasure friendship. Why did Jesus treasure friendship? Is friendship a luxury or a necessity? And I would argue, it's a necessity, and Jesus knew that as a human he knew that he needed friends. Imagine life without friends. It's not just depressing, it's also dangerous. When we come unglued socially, we begin to unravel emotionally, psychologically, and physically. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, he says the most common illness that he came across in his medical practice wasn't cancer or heart disease, it was loneliness.

A Judith Shulevitz says loneliness poses a particular threat to the very old, quickening the rate at which their faculties decline, cutting their lives shorter. We need friends. Do you treasure friendship? Proverbs 18:24, "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." Companions meaning many acquaintances, many people with whom you're connected but don't really know you. There's no one really in the circle of intimacy. And some of us, I like this, we have a lot of companions. We keep them at arms length, "I'm too busy for friends. I don't have time to cultivate friendship between work, family, and just living in the city. I don't even have time for sleep, not even mentioning friendship." Extroverts make fast friends really quick, but usually they stay at the surface. And this vision of treasuring friendship, pushes us deeper, introverts, like we need to recharge, us, introverts, together. I too am one. Sunday is really difficult for me. It is. This just shows you how much I love you guys.

We need time to recharge, but some batteries if left plugged into the side like the wall too long, they lose their capacity to hold a charge. So we get recharged in order to re-engage. Do we treasure friendship? We always make time for what we value. John 15:12-13 Jesus said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends." According to Jesus, no one exceeds... No love exceeds friendship love, and we need to make time for that.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse and she serve in hospices and she wrote down people's epiphanies at the end of their life and what they talked about, what they asked for, in this book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, which is often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks, and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years and there were many deep regrets about not having friendships the time, not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

Saint Paul at the end of his life writes his last epistle, 2 Timothy, and he says in verse nine of chapter four, "Do your best to come to me soon," talking to Timothy, and he's not a writer that repeats himself. In verse 21 he says again, "Do your best to come to me before winter." If this were your final week, who are the three friends you would like to see? Specific names. Now, what are the concrete steps that you want to take to deepen those relations? Do they even know that? Do they even know that they're in that circle?

Two is, form concentric circles of friends. By concentric circles, I mean like small circle and then a widening circle and then a widening... You understand concentric circles? Yeah, you're all wicked smart. You know, I should've showed an image. Just imagine the line in the land, it's one circle, and then... Okay. Here's what I mean by concentric circles. The closer you are to the middle, the greater level of intimacy, but it's also smaller. The more it widens, less intimacy, wider, broader, more people included.

So at the very center for every believer, it's got to be you and Christ, you and God, nobody knows you like Christ knows you, nobody loves you like Christ knows... He knows all of your thoughts before you even think. He knows everything, so that's Christ. Then that's your closest friends. And for the believer, for the Christian, those people have to be Christians. If you are truly going to be intimate with someone, if you're going to be best friends, lifelong friends, covenant friends, it's got to be a person who understands your greatest relationship, your deepest relationship, which is with the God of the universe. They will never get you. They will never understand you in the same way that Christians will understand you.

And by the way, this is just practically in this Bible verse where practically this is why Christians shouldn't date unbelievers and Christians shouldn't seek to pursue marriage with unbelievers. Because either that person will draw you out of the most intimate circle or they'll be on the outside looking in and you'll never have the same intimacy with them. So for marriage, from a Christian perspective, you're best friends with someone else who knows your soul in the same way that Christ does or similarly like begins to understand you in the same way that Christ does.

A Song of Solomon 5:16, "His mouth is most sweet and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, this is my friend." Scripture talks about marriage as the union of two souls and they're best friends. My wife and I, we are best friends, and I said that in the first sermon and I have all these stories. I can actually start sharing now. We connect on a level. We don't even have to talk. This is one of my favorite things about my wife. I come home, I'm worded out, she looks at me, there's like no words, zero words. We just connect just like two friends, two best friends, and what really connects us is our love for the Lord and our mission together.

But we also need to make space in our lives and time for friends that enrich our lives, and then when we come together, there's a greater enrichment. So Jesus had these concentric circles. So Luke 6:12-16, there's a list of his disciples, I won't read it, but it's right there. He's got 12 disciples. These are his 12 best friends. And Luke 10:1, it says that there's 72 others that he sends out. So he's got another concentric circle that's a lot broader, a lot wider. Later on in the book of Acts, it says, "120 gathered together." So he had another concentric circle. 1 Corinthians 15, "A broader circle yet of those who saw the resurrected Christ."

However, he had a circle within the 12. This is in Matthew 17:1-2, "After six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light." So he had three closer friends to whom he revealed more of himself because of this intimacy. So he had the disciples friends. Then he had his best friends, Peter, James and John. How do we know that they were his best friends? Partially from this text, partially because he gave them nicknames. You don't just give random people nicknames, you've got to feel close enough to look at a guy and be like, "Your name is Simon? No, Simon. We'll start calling you the rock. Why are you going to start calling me the rock? Because you're dumb as a rock, Peter. I love you, but you're the rock. You're Peter."

And then he looks at James and John and he's like, "You guys have anger issues. I'm going to start calling you sons of thunder. Stop trying to call down fire from heaven. I can do that, but am I going to do that because I love those people too." But those are his best what brings these people in with whom he shares more of his life. Therefore, do not feel bad that you're not at the same level of intimacy with everybody, Jesus wasn't. So don't feel bad about having a limited number of deep relationships. You've got your best friends then you've got your close friends, your casual friends, your acquaintances, fewer people, as you move to the center.

One great example is King David. King David had lots of relationships. He had relationship with his brothers, he had relationships in the Saul's Court, but his greatest friends, best friend, was Jonathan, the son of Saul. In 1 Samuel 18:1 says, "The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David." So friendships, sometimes you don't even choose your friends, it's as if like your souls are just bonded, you weren't looking for one another. It's like C. S. Lewis says, "I thought I was the only one in the world." Oh, you too. Like you connect on the soul level that you didn't even know could exist. It says in 1 Samuel 19:1, that David delighted much in Jonathan and vice versa.

A crucial moment of testing, Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul. So when Saul forces David away, Jonathan, it says, they embraced, they cried, and they kissed on the cheek. When Jonathan dies in battle, David was so crushed in spirit. He says this in 2 Samuel 1:26, "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary surpassing the love of women." Seemingly strange. You read that and you're like, "What is going on?" But then you read the scripture talking about how intimate of friendship that Christians had with one another.

In Acts 20:37, Saint Paul, the great Saint Paul, the most cerebral person who have ever... He wrote the book of Romans. It says that there was weeping on the part of all, they embraced Paul and kissed him. Incredible affection. To respond to why this seems so strange to us, why it makes us feel so uncomfortable, C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves, he says, "On a broad historical view, it is of course not the demonstrative gestures of friendship among our ancestors, but the absence of such gestures in our own society, that calls for some special explanation." He's saying, don't ask why they're so expressive with their love, ask why we aren't and why it makes us feel so uncomfortable. And I'll tell why.

Because we live in a culture where we understand lust without love. It's very difficult for us to understand expressive affectionate love without lust, and that should not be. It should not make us squirm that two friends actually express their love for one another. Jesus did.

Point three is choose friends intentionally. First we make friends and then friends begin to make us. They shape our characters, they shape our personalities. They reveal the hidden parts of us. That's why when you have a friend who passes, it's as if you lose a part of yourself. Proverbs 13:20, talks about walking with the wise, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, the companion of fools suffers harm." Interesting. It's not just reading wisdom literature that makes us wise, is living to the walking together that sets the trajectory of our lives. Why? It's because of the power of affection informing us that we do what we love and we begin to emulate or copy those whom we love.

Proverbs 22:24-25, says, "Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and untangle yourself in a snare." It's the power of affection. So be careful whom you let into the inner circle of intimacy. We can have like lots of people in the circle of care, we have to care for one another and care for our neighbors, not as many in the circle of influence, be careful who we... But in the circle of intimacy, be careful who we let in there, and make sure it's a person that you want to resemble.

Here just a word about friendship with unbelievers. Can we have as Christians friendship with unbelievers? Yes, of course. Not in the inner circle of intimacy, but definitely in the circle of influence and care. Jesus was called a friend of sinners. He influenced them more with his love than they influenced him with was sin and sinful past. James 4:4-5, says, "Be careful you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?" Meaning friendship with the sinful worldview, the sinful systems of the world. "Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?"" So we can be friends with unbelievers without being friends with the world just like Jesus was.

Four is be a giving friend. We've mentioned this already, but great friends give. They give of themselves, they give of their affection, they give of their attention, they give of their worth, they give of their finances. Luke 15, talks about make friends with unrighteous. Means talking about finances, and the secrets of friendship is the secret to blessing, to give is more blessed than to receive. To share time together. 2 John 12, "Ihough I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face that our joy may be complete."

The people who are closest in your life, spend time together in one another's presence. Not just group chats, not just memes and gifs, all wonderful, spend time together. Block off time together, eat together. Great friendships are... Friends and food they just go together. There's something about it, something Biblical there. Be generous. The best friends that I ever had have always been generous friends. Strengthen long-time friendships. You make friendships, keep in touch with one another. Make friends where you live. Don't just move to a new place and say, "Oh, I miss all my friend," make friends where you live. Invest in new friendships.

When you move to that place, it hurt to leave your friends. Invest so deeply here that while you're here, you're invested, and when you do move, you feel the same way, but you might not have to move. You might want to stay here forever because you actually factor in how enriching your friends are, and I know like family pulls away and finances and jobs and things like that, but shouldn't friends at least be a factor in the decision of should I move? But parents do this all the time. "I'm not going to move my kids out of a school because why? They're going to miss their friends." If this is important, why isn't as important to us? What do we value more? What do we treasure more? And I say that just out of a place of my own personal bitterness, all my friends moved away, but we've got new friends, and you're here. Let's be friends. Okay, move on.

C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters, "If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, sacrifice almost everything to live where you can, be near your friends." I know I'm very fortunate in that respect. Practically in terms of giving, be a radiator, not a drain, and this is very important categories. There's some people that you hang out with and they're radiators. They just radiate heat and encouragement and affirmation, you love spending time with them and you feel so good after spending time with them. And some people, they just drain the life out of you and you're like, "I need a vacation after meeting with this person." Don't be that person.

And it works itself out in all kinds of ways like keep an eye, like be attentive to how much you say when you meet and how much the other person says. Be a good listener. Interact with what they say. Be attentive to their needs. Saint Paul talked about friends who refreshes soul. Proverbs 12:25, talks about anxiety in a man's heart weighs them down, but a good word makes him glad. Be generous with words of affirmation and encouragement. Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits." Saint Paul at the end of Romans, he greets 28 people by name and just encourages them. Encourages them for their service to the Lord. Romans 12:10, "Love one another, brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor."

Five, be a wise friend. Be a friend that speaks truth and love, tough and tender, with others. Proverbs 27:5-6, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy." Open rebuke is better than hidden love, what does he mean? When you see a friend on a path of holy folly doing something that's going to lead to their pain and you hide a rebuke, why are you doing that? Because you are treasuring something more than the best for that person. You're actually potentially being selfish. "Oh, it's just uncomfortable to... I shouldn't meddle." Or you're afraid of losing this person's affection or friendship, therefore you don't want to bring up a hard conversation. But true friends are willing to have that hard conversation, because you want to do what's best for your friend. It takes courage, it takes candor, and it takes love.

Proverbs 27:17, "Iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another," so learn to go deep where you are sharpening one another. Proverbs 27:9, "Oil and perfume make the heart glad and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel." When you need counsel, where do you go? Sometimes we do need therapy and sometimes we do need counseling, but in my experience, the best counsel I've ever received from anyone, it's a person that loves me, knows me, has been through the highs and lows of joy and sorrow of my life, is actually invested in this decision that I'm making because they will be with me and seeing this decision come to fruition. Rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping, this takes emotional intelligence. Friends ease our sorrows through presence and words.

Empathy. True friends feel our pain. They're there when we need them, attentive to our needs to our emotions. Provers 27:14, "Whoever blesses his neighbor," I'm talking about... This is just emotional intelligence, this is being a wise friend. "Whoever," one of my favorite verses I love, "Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing." "God bless you," at 5:00 AM. No, no. By the way, if you want to go into business with me, we're going to start coffee cups with this Bible verse on it. No talking before coffee. But what this verse gets at is just common sense when it comes to friendship. That's what I mean by a wise friend. Common sense. You know the right time, the right place to come to visit. You know about just timing. You know about closeness. You know how to engage a person in a way that you connect. You know how to have a conversation where you look a person in the eyes and you listen, you respond, you're not a close-talker, nobody likes that in the United States.

There's an aroma of the gospel around you, about you, scripture says, but there are also aroma of like, "You smell nice. We'd like to be around people that smell nice." This is important. It's really important. Hygiene is important. Like being a person that smells nice is crucial. Crucial, write that down. It's in the Bible. Careful of friendship fatigue, important. Friendship fatigue. Provers 25:17, "Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you." Friendship fatigue. Like no, don't overstay your welcome. Max, maximum, two hours. Maximum. That's like we love each other and we're hanging out, max two hours. Hour and a half, hour, an hour and a half, that's the sweet spot.

Don't go to someone's house, if they invite you, don't go with empty hands. Just don't do it. Just stop somewhere, grab something, a little something, makes everything better. Proverbs 12:18, "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." So don't provoke people, know what to say, when to say, how to say. Be a loyal friend.

Point six, openness, trust, transparency. Talking openly about how you feel, openly about things that matter, is more important than talking often, and true friends walk in the light together. So if you sin against a friend, go and ask for forgiveness. If your friend sins against you, tell them, "You hurt me. What you're doing like your reaction, actually cause me a lot of pain." And this is what it means to walk in the light. John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin," and trust of course. A friendship is built on trust. Distrust always erodes friendship. And what leads to distress, gossip. When what you share with a friend, you start hearing from other people.

Proverbs 16:28, "A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends." Proverbs 17:9, "Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends." And then constancy, like you're together through thick and thin. Proverbs 17:17, "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." Don't be a consumer friend, be a covenantal friend. Here's what I mean. There's people in our lives where you view them in terms of using instead of loving. It's a very consumeristic mentality. Provers 19:4, "Wealth brings many friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend." Many seek the favor of a generous man and everyone's a friend to a man who gives gifts. Obviously that's not true friendship, it's consumeristic, it's, "What can I get from this person?" Therefore, I'll invest in true friend. Like you're together through thick and thin, useful or not. I'm going to love you, serve you, and give.

And finally, this is really important, be a fun friend. Be someone people want to hang out with. People, "Should we invite that person?" "Yeah, definitely. That person's always fun." Jesus did not get invited to party after party after party because he was boring. No, the Pharisees were like, "You're always at a party," and they call him a glutton and a drunkard. Was he a glutton and a drunkard? No, of course not, but every time they saw him, he's with his posse rolling in with his entourage to a party, and he's got a lamb chop in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

Jesus was a lot of fun to be around. How do I know? Because Jesus was the wisest man who ever lived. Here's my basic theology of Jesus was a lot of fun. Wisest man that ever lived, Solomon, the second wisest person to have ever lived, said that there are appropriate emotions for appropriate times and he says, "There's a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to build, a time to tear down, a time to dance, a time to sing, and a time to laugh." Jesus was the wisest person ever, and he knew this is a time to dance. He goes to a wedding at Canaan in Galilee, you cannot have 180 gallons of wine with no dancing, you just can't do that. It's impossible. A time to dance, a time to sing, and a time to laugh.

I'll close with this. C. S. Lewis knew about friendship, about deep friendship, and in The Four Loves he describes just spending time with some of his best friends like this. "Those are the golden sessions, when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze of the fireplace, and our drinks are at our elbows. When the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk, the same time an affection has mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life, natural life, has no better gift to give."

Let's pray, and the last points are up just in case you missed them. Lord, we thank you that you are the greatest friend, and I pray, Lord, continue to make us better friends to one another. And as our friendship and our love deepens, I pray, Lord, that many who are not yet Christians see that and are just blown away by this gospel-centered love that you have given us and they too become Christians, and I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Summary:

Psalm 34:8 says: "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" There is a seeing and tasting that is infinitely deeper than physical. Tasting God, who is supremely beautiful to the heart and exquisitely sweet to the soul, precedes seeing God.

The only true way to master our harmful desires is to counter them with healthful desires. How can we learn to crave that which is best for us? Through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God can recalibrate your taste buds, physical and spiritual. Only when this happens, can we talk about "tasting God."

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to Audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit MosaicBoston.com.

Heavenly Father, we pray that you send us the Holy Spirit to show us what the Holy Spirit desires and, Holy Spirit, you desire to vivify in us and liven in us, resurrect in us affections for God. And why? Because only God can ultimately satisfy. God, you alone are truly beautiful, ultimately beautiful. You alone satisfy the depths of our souls. Lord, we come and we confess that we do not love you as you deserve. We don't love you as we ought because there's so many things competing for our affections, and often those desires are harmful. And I pray today, Holy Spirit, replace harmful desires with healthful desires, and show us that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can grow into the image Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, as we root ourselves in the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus how much you have sacrificed to love us, to pour your love into our hearts, to redeem us, that that alone is what can transform us, that alone is what radically can humanize us and transform us into the people you've created us to be.

So I pray, Lord, today that you show us where our harmful desires need to be supplanted with healthful desires and where the taste buds of our souls need to be recalibrated, and I pray that you do a deep work. I pray for those who are Christians and are caught in sin and shackled in sin. I pray today send liberation. You've saved us for freedom, you call us to stand firm in that freedom, and I pray for anyone who's not yet a believer. I pray today radically regenerate their hearts, draw them to yourself. Lord, there's nothing that we can do to convert anyone, proselytize anyone, Lord. We believe that regeneration is a miracle, supernatural. I pray today, Holy Spirit, save many, and I pray this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, amen.

So we're in a sermon series that we are calling Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for a Life, and what we're doing this series is we're looking at the paradoxical nature of Jesus Christ, that on the one hand he's the lion of Judah. He comes as a king. He comes as the Lord. But on the other hand, he's also the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That he dies as a lamb. He's slaughtered as a lamb, burying the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin upon himself. He's both. He's a lamb who gives himself and he's a lion who devours vehemently Satan's sin and death. And when we see that Jesus Christ is both lion and lamb, and the more that we worship him, the more we revere him, we begin to resemble him in our daily life. So we're looking through this prism of lion and lamb, tough and tender, and we're looking how this applies to every single area of our lives.

Today we're talking about desires.

Recent data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Valuation shows that the U.S. is among the world's highest rates of substance abuse, has one of the highest rates. Dr. Steven Sussman in a study from 2017 entitled Substance and Behavioral Addictions: Concepts, Causes, and Cures, he says, "Around half of the population of the United States at any one time is addicted to something." Marijuana 17% of 18 year olds are addicted to it, 2% of 50 year olds. Illicit drugs, non-marijuana 8% of 18 year olds, 5% of 50 year old. Tobacco is 15% of the U.S. adult population. Alcohol 10% for older teenagers and adults. Food addiction 10% of the U.S. population, 25% for those who struggle with obesity. Gambling 1-3% of the U.S. population. The internet at least 2%. Exercise 3-5%. But if you are in college, that number jumps to 26% addicted to exercise. Workaholism, addiction of work is 10% of the U.S. adult population. Significantly more probably anecdotally from just living in Boston, in a place like shopping addiction 6% of the U.S. adult population.

Dr. Sussman says in the study, he says, "What's fascinating is that income per capita in the U.S. has more than doubled since 1972, and yet our levels of happiness or just general subjective well being has not changed and actually has declined." And he concludes the study by saying, "The U.S. is suffering from three series epidemics, obesity, substance abuse, and depression." That's the study. There's no solution.

Well, we believe that solution is in Jesus Christ, that he alone is the one who ultimately satisfies our souls. Today we're going to use the word epithumia. This is a word that shows up in our text simulations five, over and over and over. Epithumia, and it's a neutral word that sometimes epithumia is used positively. Jesus says, "I long, I epithumia. I want to have the last supper with you," he tells his disciples. Same Paul says, "I long to be with Christ," in Philippians 1:23. In First Thessalonians he says, "I long to see you face to face." On the other hand, it's the same exact word that's used to describe our lust or ravenous appetites and inordinate craving. It's desire out of control that we need something to feel alive. It's as if our souls are naked and empty and looking for clothing.

Blaise Pascal talked about this gigantic vacuum in every single soul, and we long for it to be filled. And we try to fill it with creation, things around us, experiences or people, or money, or power, et cetera. And the more we get, the more we want. It's like trying a satiate thirst with salt water.

Today we're looking at Galatians 5:16-26 to frame up our time. Galatians 5:16-26. Please follow along either in your Bible or on the screen.

"But I say walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual morality, impurity, sexuality, idolatry, sorcery, amenity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, decensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherent the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things, there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and evil desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit. Let us not become conceded, provoking one another, envying one another."

This is the reading of God's holy inherent, infallible authoritative word. May he write these internal truths upon our hearts. Three main sections to the sermon today. In Roman Numeral format because there's seven practical points to take away. So I've tweaked the formula because a couple sermons ago the main points were numbered and then the sub points were numbered and everyone got confused. So Roman Numerals, practical points. You're welcome.

So number one is crucified as a lamb, resurrected as a lion, that's Jesus. Two is crucify your sinful desires like a lion, and there's five practical points there. We'll get into them. I won't read them now. You can take a picture if you want to follow along. And then three is resurrect your holy desires like a lamb.

Number one is crucified as a lamb, resurrected as a lion. Of course we're talking about Jesus Christ. Every other world religion in every misguided flavor of Christianity teaches the following, this is a distilled version of their path to salvation. It's be good and do good. In order to gain acceptance, in order to make your way to Heaven, be good and do good. At the heart of Christianity is the gospel, and the gospel, this is what Jesus preaches his very first sermon. Again preaching the gospel. And the gospel is not what we do for God. That's not the good news. There's nothing that we can do to make ourselves right with God. The good news is that Jesus has done everything. The good news is that Christ died for the ungodly. There's nothing that we can do to atone for our sin. There's nothing that we can do to earn penance before God. Christ has done. When did he die for us? When he saw that we would be good people or would fulfill his commandments. No. He died for us when he saw that we were still ungodly. Christ died for us when we were yet sinners.

Isaiah 53:3-7. Isaiah 53 is one of the great prophetic passages about the Messiah who's come. Written 700 years at least before the birth of Christ. It says, "He was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not." Meaning we did not desire Christ. We did not desire God. And that's the story of humanity. It's the story of holy scripture. "Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed strick and smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our inequities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the inequity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. Like a sheep that before it shears is silent. So we open not his mouth."

We went astray like sheep. He comes and he sacrifices himself like the sacrificial lamb as a blood offering, substitutionary atonement for our sins. This is what happened on the cross. Jesus Christ absorbs the wrath of God that we deserve for our sins, for our law, breaking for our rebellion. But he doesn't stay dead. He absorbs our wrath like a lamb, but he comes back in the third day like a ferocious lion. After he ravenously consumed, defeated Satan's sin and death. Why did Jesus do that? Jesus didn't destroy the power of death, the power of sin just to forgive us of the penalty of our sin. Jesus didn't die just to forgive us of the penalty, just to remove the penalty, but he also died in order to remove the power of sin over us. He died in order to free us from the bondage of our sin, from the bondage of our harmful desires.

So Galatians 5:1, this sets the context for our text. Galatians 5:1 says, "For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yolk of slavery." He set us free from what and free for what. Well, here we got to ask the question what is sin. Sin isn't just breaking God's laws by committing bad things, by doing. The essence of sin is not doing, the essence of sin is desiring. And we get that when we understand what the 10 Commandments are. The 10 Commandments aren't just don't do these things. The 10 Commandments are be careful that your heart's desires are not drawn to these things that pull you away from God. So have no gods before me. Thou shall not have any idols. Thou shall keep the sabbath day holy, devote a day to God. And then Jesus comes in, he looks at the 10 Commandments and the sermon on the mount, this is the greatest sermon that was ever preached. And he says, "You know the commandment around adultery, I shall say to you that whoever looks at another person that they're not married to with lustful intent has already committed adultery."

And then Saint Paul talks about the fact that he didn't even know how sinful he was until he read the 10th commandment, which says thou shall not covet. He said, "I didn't understand that the commandments weren't just about action, they're actually about desire." So Christ comes and he says, "Sin is love for things that harm us." Therefore Christ wants to free us from loves or desires for things that harm us, and replace those evil desires with righteous desires for things that actually give us life. From harmful desires to healthful desires.

This is the beauty of the gospel. That God does not just command that we love him. God actually compels us to love him. He does this through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As you see, what Jesus Christ is doing on the cross, when you realize that he did that for you, that if you were the only person to have ever lived, Jesus would still have died for you because he's so loves you. Your name is graven on his hands, written on his heart, we sing. That Christ came and he loves you infinitely more than anyone has ever loved you, and when you realize what he did in order to show that love, his love is poured into your heart. And your heart is freed from loving lesser things.

One of the things that Augustan said is that the problem with humanity, the problem with humans and the human condition is that our loves are disordered. When we take creature, when we take creation, when we take things and we take a good thing even and we place it in the position of preeminence and we make it an ultimate thing, then that thing begins to control us. And this is how addiction works. Instead the gospel comes in and says, "No, Christ deserves a position of preeminence in the throne of your heart. When you realize what you did in order to free you, you're freed now to love him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." This is the beauty of the gospel. It produces love for right things. It doesn't mean you manufacture it. It produces it organically.

Christ did not come just to give us a get out of Hell free card. A lot of people view Christianity like this. You come to God, you pray this prayer. Okay, you're out of Hell. No, you can live anyway you want. If you get into some really bad sin, come back to church, pray another prayer, you'll be fine. Christ didn't come to get us out of Hell and to get us into Heaven primarily. Christ came not just to get us out of Hell. He came to get Hell out of us. Harmful desires, insatiable sinful desires, hellacious desires. God wants to remove those and replace them with vibrant desires, desires that lead to life. And God doesn't primarily compel our obedience through fear. Though he could. He could've. Jesus could've come and said, "I'm Lord. Get on your knees and worship me." And force everyone to become Christians through fear. He doesn't do that because what fear does, it produces a surface level obedience, and actually it's at the heart of it, it's very selfish. It's not God honoring. It's only you honoring. You're doing this because it's the best thing for you, and you want nothing to do with God.

God doesn't motivate us to change by saying, "If you don't obey me, you'll go to Hell." He motivates us through love. Fear doesn't change us, love does. Every parent knows this. I've got four daughters and my wife, we got four daughters. And the thing with my daughter, they're beautiful and they're also little. In comparison, I'm a giant to them, and I tower over them. And I could cower them into submission, "Go clean your room," or, "Go wash the dishes," finally. I could do that. My wife and I could say to them, "If you don't obey us, we are leaving forever." It might be effective for a day. It would never change their hearts. How do we parent? We parent with love. We lead with love. This is how much we love you. This is how much we sacrifice for you. So when I tell you to do things, it's because I love you and I want the best for you. So our rules, our commandments in our house, they're not fences to keep you from fun. They're guardrails to keep you from going over the cliff.

And this is how God talks about transformation. It's not just about our behavior changing. It's not about behavior modifications. It's about heart transformation. Christianity's actually a spiritual heart transplant. God takes out our heart of stone that's numb to God, desensitized to God, seared to God. And he replaces it with a heart of flesh that is sensitive to God. That's what changes us. What changes us is showing us the extent of God's love. What was the extent of God's love? That Jesus Christ on the cross literally goes through Hell and back in order to save us. This is how much I love you, the gospel says. God says, "I'm wiling to go to Hell, take Hell for you." When you realize that he did that particularly for you and you believe that with every fiber of your being, it absolutely changes you to the core. And now the spirit enters your heart. You are regenerated, and you have the power of God within you. You have new affections, new desires, and you have the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is how Saint Paul compels the church in Ephesus to stand firm in the faith. He says, "For this reason," Ephesians 3:14. "I bow my knees before the father for whom every family in Heaven on earth is named. That according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power. Through his spirit, in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." So Christ is in you, power of God is in you that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breathe and length and height and depth, an to know the love of Christ that surpassed knowledge. To know Christ's love so deeply in your core, in the core of your being that it's not just intellectual ascent. You don't just understand it with your mind, you understand it with your heart, with all of your being. To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Stand firm, therefore, is a military term. It means that if you do not stand firm in the freedom for which Christ has set you free, you will be pulled back into the bondage of sin.

Scripture often talks about Christianity in militant terms, militaristic terms. Fight the good fight. Saint Paul uses the term agonism. Agonize in your faith. What's he talking... He's talking about this warfare between the flesh and the spirit, and then the flesh isn't just our body. It's the sinful nature, unredeemed nature of every single one of us, the darkness deep within. He's saying stand firm in the faith or else the flesh will take over. And then there's Satan in the world that exacerbate the desires of the flesh. So how do we stand firm? By standing firm in the gospel. How do we grow in the faith? By standing firm in the gospel. The gospel, the work of Jesus Christ.

Here I got to do a little theology. So if you left, come back for just a little bit. This is important to understanding the rest of the sermon. I've done this long enough that eyes glaze over in evening services. This is how salvation is described in the holy scripture. It begins with justification and then it starts the process of sanctification, and it ends and culminates in glorification. Justification, sanctification, glorification. Justification is I have been saved. Sanctification is I'm being saved. That's from the moment of conversion to the moment that you die. I'm being saved, and then glorification is I will be saved. At the moment that you believe in Jesus Christ, you are justified. That means you are acquitted of all of your sins. God looks at you as if you have never sinned. You're fully accepted, legally righteous. You're justified. Just as if I'd had never sinned.

Then it begins the process of sanctification. Sanctification comes from a Latin sānctus faciō, which means to make holy. We grow into holy. So grow in righteous, and we grow into the image of God. We are being saved from the power of sin, and then finally when we're glorified in Heaven, we got glorified bodies. Heaven is a physical, embodied existence. We'll have perfect bodies. Everyone's going to be 4% body fat with six packs. No acne. Everyone's going to be perfect. That's Heaven. Glorification, no calories. Don't have to work out. That's glorification. But in the process from justification when you met Jesus to glorification when you'll see Jesus face to face is the process of growing into the image of Jesus Christ. Justification is Christ puts his robes of righteousness on you. Sanctification is you're growing into his clothes. His righteousness begins to grow in you. We're incrementally transformed. And Jesus Christ is the benefactor who gives us justification. He's also the benefactor who gives us sanctification.

It's his justification, he's righteousness, and it's also his sanctification. This is important. First Corinthians 1:30, "And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." Jesus is our sanctification. He's our righteous sanctification and redemption. Meaning that when you grow in your faith, when you grow in righteousness, that's not you. You're part of that process, but that's not your power. So you don't get glory for God does. How does this work? When we believe in Jesus Christ, we are placed in Christ, and he's placed in us. Kind of trippy, I know. But that's theology. We're in him, he's in us. We're reunited with him.

So everything that he's done is counted to us. So his death is our death. His death for sin is our death for sin. His resurrection to a new life is our resurrection to a new life. So Jesus died for our sins, which now gives us power to put our sin to death. Jesus was resurrected so now the holy desires to live for God can be resurrected in our hearts. Christ took up a cross, died for sin once and for all, but he tells the disciples, what? In Luke 9:23, he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let me deny himself and take up the cross daily and follow me. Deny yourself and take up the cross..." This is the negative part of sanctification. "Deny yourself and take up your cross on a daily basis." You're putting your sin to death by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is called mortification. You mortify or you kill sin within, sinful desires. Then he said, "Follow me." This is the positive aspect of sanctification. "Follow me," this is your vivifying. You vivify. You give life to godly affections. So it's not just fighting sin. It's replacing evil desires with righteous desires. You're fighting fire with fire, desire with desire.

When we're joined to Christ by grace through faith, because of the historical act of his life, death, burial, resurrection, we're saved. But also that act, what he did on the cross, has an operative efficacious effect for us today when we use it, when we use the resource that he has given us. This is point to, that we first of all crucify our sinful desires. How do we do that? How do we put our sin to death? Well, primarily begins by humbling seeking, and this is the first practical point, humbling seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

So Galatians 5:16-18, several times he talks about the spirit. So first he says, "Walk by the spirit." That's active. Then he says in verse 18, "If you are led by the spirit," that's passive. Being led. You're still walking, but you're being led. Verse 25 says, "If you live by the spirit," that's active, "then let us keep in step with the spirit." It's like a mixture of active and passive. So this is really important because a lot of people ask, "What's my part? What am I going to do?" In the practical, give me a list of practical things I got to do, and I'm going to do that. And then I'll be done with sin. I'll be all set. That's not how relationships work. Do this together by his power.

The most helpful verse about this incredible paradoxical relationship or active and passive with us and spirit. Ephesians 5:18 where Saint Paul says, "Do not get drunk with wine." So do not give control to a substance over yourself. And then that is paralleled with, "Be filled with the Holy Spirit." So don't be filled with something that will pull you away from Christ because you lose control, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, which actually makes you more like Christ. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. And this is fascinating because be filled is both active and passive. Be, that's a commandment, it's imperative. Filled, that's passive. Be filled. It's imperative that's in the passive voice. Meaning you've got to do something and be filled. But you can't fill yourself. It's like your gas tank. Gas tank, thou shall be filled. How's it get filled? You drive into a gas station in New Jersey where it's full service, that's the illustration. That always catches me off guard. "Oh, okay, I can't do this myself. Get a dollar out."

Be filled with the Holy Spirit, meaning you place yourself in a position where the Holy Spirit fills you. This is what I mean. So how does this work? It works just by recognizing your desperation. Lord, I can't overcome these sinful desires myself. Lord, I need you. Lord, I'm nothing without... I'm morally bankrupt without you. I'm spiritually inept without you. Please, Lord. And it doesn't begin with cleaning you our lives, and then we're filled with the spirit. It's actually vice versa. It's be filled with the spirit, walk in the spirit, be led by the spirit, and then you won't gratify the desires of the flesh. It's not a matter of sheer will power. It's the matter of utter contrition before God, humbling coming forward. God, please help me. And God pours his spirit into your heart and he fills you up. But then we need to do something with that power, and that's when we exert all of our energy. We pray. We plead. We position ourselves. We exert our energy. It is our responsibility to obey.

One of the most effective programs to fight alcoholism and other addictions is the 12 Step Program for Alcoholics Anonymous. And the first step is powerful because they understood this principle of submitting to God, of admission of powerlessness. And it's the first step of the liberation. And it goes like this, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable." Admission of weakness, powerlessness is the first step to liberation. And their second point is, "We've come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." And this is what we believe when it comes to sinful desires that have hijacked our walk with the Lord, habitual sins where we come to God and we say, "God, we're helpless. We're entrapped. We're unshackled. Please help." And at that moment, God is always delighted to help those how seek his help humbly.

I've seen this issue often with Christians, we just get stuck in the faith where they become Christians by repenting of sin and believing the gospel. And something happens along the way where now they think this is how I stay in the kingdom, this is how I stay in a rightful relationship with God by my works. So I wasn't saved by my works. I'm saved by Christ's works. But I stay saved by my works. So I'm going to try to clean up my sin by myself. That never works because that right there, you're operating out of pride. And whenever we operate out of pride, that right there it actually pushes God away because God, he resists the proud. Often if you think that you are strong enough to do what God has called you to do, God often allows you to keep struggling with particular sin, to get you to a point of brokenness, of humility.

I got this idea from John Owen who wrote this incredible book called Mortification of Sin. You can pick it up. It's an old work, but there's a newer version, a revised version. It's abridged version. It's 80 pages, J.I. Packer did the introduction. And this is what John Owen writes. He says, "Says God," here's a Christian. "If he could be rid of this lust, I should never hear of him more. Let him wrestle with this, or he would be altogether lost. Wasn't it a correction to Peter's self confidence that God left him to deny his master?" That's so profound. Peter's the one that told Jesus, "Jesus everyone else is going to leave, betray, deny you. I will never do that." And Jesus said, "Oh yeah? Tonight before the rooster crows this morning's dawn, you are going to deny me three times." Justification, we have absolutely nothing to do with that. Sanctification, we're empowered by the Holy Spirit to watch, praise, strive, take actions as we cry out to God.

How does justification start? With a cry of desperation. God, save me. How does sanctification continue? With the same cry of desperate. God, keep saving me. God, help me. Galatians 3:3, Saint Paul says, "Are you so foolish having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" You began by the spirit, now you think you can do this on your own. You can't. We can't. God wants us from us a broken heart, and we start by grace. And we take every step by grace.

First, humbly be filled with the Holy Spirit. Second, call a sin a sin. And this is important. As I write the list, there was something you probably heard and you were like, "What? That's in the Bible? What? He read that out loud in church in Boston 2019? What?" What he's doing here is he's calling sins by their name. Why? What's he doing? He's countering the enemy's attack. This is what Satan did when he came to Eve in the Garden of Eden. He said, "Did God really say..." What's he doing? He's questioning God's word. Saint Paul comes in and says, "No, this is how God views these actions. This is what God calls these actions." And here we have 16, and I'm calling it 16 decaying fruits of the flesh. 16 decaying fruits of the flesh. They come in four categories.

The first category is a sexual sin because often this is one of the primary ways the flesh reveals itself. This is one of the primary ways that our flesh rebels against God. There's three words here, sexual morality, porne in the Greek... This is sex between unmarried people. Impurity, unnatural sexual relationships, sexuality, uncontrolled sexuality.

The second category is corrupted religion, idolatry, and sorcery. Idolatry is worshiping or craving, desiring created things more than the creator. And then sorcery, this is trying to manipulate God or the spiritual realm. By the way, a lot of people view Christianity like this in terms of sorcery. What do I need to do? Get God off my back. How much money do I need to give? How many times do I need to come to church in order to do penance or atone for my sins? And then I'm out. It's actually sorcery, we're manipulating God for our ends.

Third is relational conflict, and this shows us how important it is to God or our relationships with other people. Amity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, descensions, divisions, envy.

And the fourth category here is substance abuse. He talks about drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. Whatever you need to feel alive. Whatever you need to get that dopamine rush. It could be alcohol, drugs, pornography, prostitutes, drugs. I mentioned impulsive buying, media. Your soul feels dead. It feels empty. Philosophers talked about spiritual unweave that every single one of us feel, and sometimes we look to these substances to feel alive. And this is important that he calls a sin a sin. He calls sexual immorality, sexual immorality. He doesn't call it living together. He doesn't call fiscal responsibility, he calls it covetousness and greed. Amity, he doesn't call it... I just want they have it. He calls it envy. And what he's saying here is unmasked the self deceit. This is what sin does. It blinds us to its own existence. And then point three is see sin for what it really is in God's presence.

Galatians 5:21, "I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherent the kingdom of God." And do such things means this is the lifestyle, it's habitual practice. It's not falling into the sin, repenting quickly, getting up and following Christ. It's that you fall and you stay and you never get up.

So what he's saying is look to the cross. Look what it cost God to forgive us. Look what our sin deserves. The very son of God dying on a cross. Our sin doesn't just evoke God's displeasure. It evokes God's just wrath. When we feel the weight of our sin in light of its eternal punishment, that begins to reawaken us and our conscious.

Some people here push back and say, "But my sins forgiven, isn't it? Jesus died for my sins past, present, and future. So why do I need to keep fighting sin?" Well, again, it's not just about get out of Hell free card. It's about you being a child of God. You're adopted into the family of God. First John 3:9 says, "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning." You don't continue in this pattern of sin. "For God seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God." What marks a Christian isn't the absence of sin. What marks a Christian is the deep grief over sin. We grieve over it. Every time we sin, there's a brokenness because we understand we broken God's heart.

Four is be killing sin or it will be killing you, and I got this term from John Owen. This is Galatians 5:24, "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and evil desires." You belong to him. You're his. And you have crucified the flesh with this evil desire. Now it's not an utter destruction of sin. It's not a concealing of sin. But it's the suffocation of sin. You're crushing the life out of it. You're constantly draining the life out of it. It's a tug of war between the flesh and the spirit. You feed the spirit, the desires of spirit, and you emaciate those desires of the flesh. So how do you do it? You refuse it. You starve it. You reject it. It takes strength, power, and resolve. Jesus Christ actually said, "If you struggle with sin, if you eye causes your sin, pluck it out." This is Matthew five. "Cut off your arm." Matthew five. He's not talking about literally, hyperbolic language in order to communicate just how important it is to deal with sin with resolve. And the moment you become a Christian, God gives you this desire to fight sin. To be intolerant with it, unaccommodating. That we are spiritual assassins. This is scorched earth sanctification.

If all of my sins have been forgiven, why do I need to work for a righteous life? Scripture says if you are Christian, you don't ask this question. If you are a child of God, you want to honor God with all of your being, so you want to ask how can I fight my sin. Romans 6:1-2, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by know means? How can we who have died to sin still live in it?" True justification and sanctification always go together. So when we try to see have we been justified, am I a Christian. Well, are you continuing to walk with Christ.

So my oldest daughter was born when Tonya and I were in seminary. By the way, I was 26 years old. I look back and I'm like, "This is crazy. I had a kid at 26." 25. Whatever. 25, 26. I look back now, and I'm like no one asked me to take a test. There's no IQ test, there was no drug test. There was no test. I have to do more to get a drivers license than I do to get a kid. So we got to the hospital, and they're like, "Here's the kid." I'm like... So I go home. I did all this research about making sure your kid stays alive, and they're like kids actually are like... I was super afraid of this thing called sudden death syndrome where kids just die in their sleep. So every night I would come up to her bed, "Is she alive? Is she alive?" Now in order to prove that she's alive, what do I do? Do I go to her birth certificate and say, "Yeah, she was born. Okay, we're good." Do I look in the stuff that we bought for her, "Yeah, we're good." No. To prove that she's alive, what do I do? I listen to breathing. Is she breathing? I listen to her heartbeat. Is she alive? Yeah. Praise God.

Are you a Christian? Don't just tell me, "Yeah. I prayed a prayer. Yeah, I was baptized. Yeah, I grew up in a Christian family." Do you have a heartbeat for God today? And justification, sanctification, they go together. You can't have one without the other. Separating them is like separating the heat of the sun with the light of the sun. No. If you have the son, you have both. If you have Jesus Christ, the son of God, you have both justification and sanctification. So never use justification as a justification to continue sinning. If that's what you do, then most likely you're not a Christian.

The more we grow in our sanctification, the more we actually realize how sinful we are. The most mature Christians I have ever met are absolutely blunt about their sin. Saint Paul at probably the pinnacle of his sanctification following Christ, he says, "I'm the chief of sinners." John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace, "You've saved a wretch like me." At the end of his life, people asked him, "You must be a saint already." He says, "No, there's only two things I know that I'm a wicked sinner, and I have a great savior." The more I'm a Christian, the more I realize I've so much more to go.

I had a conversation today about the veracity of Christianity. Why don't we do more proof of why we believe in Christianity? We do that all the time. There's sermon series 2014 with a whole series on exploring Christianity. Last fall we had a sermon series on Jesus among other gods. There's so much objective evidence for the existence of God, for the life so Jesus Christ, for his death burial, and his resurrection. It's incredible. I'm a Christian not just because of that. I'm a Christian mostly because of these subjective experience of Christianity. I am a wicked sinner.

My wife actually recently, she's like, ты ужасный. That's what she told me. ты ужасный. You don't know Russian yet? "You're horrible. You're a terrible person." She said, "Where would you be if you weren't a Christian?" And I was like, "I know where I'd be. I'd probably be a Russian mobster drinking distilled vodka. That's all I'd be doing." It's a very similar skillset to being a pastor of a church. I know that a part of Jesus on a daily basis, I'm fallen. I'm gone. So I thank God for great...

By the way, this is also how I view parenting my kids. This is anthropology. This is from biblical perspective that they're born as very cute, very pudgy, very scrumptious, very delightful little wicked sinners. My youngest, her first two words were nope and mine. Rebellion and selfishness. That's my job to teach, to help her. She definitely needs some sanctification. So point two is take immediate and radical action when tempted.

First Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation is overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you maybe able to endure." So as soon as a sinful inclination rears its ugly head. At that very moment, we are to mortify. Why? Because it has a power over us that's suicidal. What sin does, as soon as we let it in the door, the very first thing it does, it goes to the wheel center of your being, and takes over. You let a sin in. You're on fire for the Lord, and then you let a sin in. And then you're like, "I don't even think I'm a Christian." Spiritual amnesia kicks in. There is a suicidal destructiveness over your mind, over your desires, over your will. The more you get it, the less you want to fight it. And then it takes control where you don't even enjoy anymore but you can't shake it. You're like an addict. When you're done with that sin, it's only begun with you.

This is John 8:34, Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin." This also includes eliminating any triggers. You got to know yourself, and you got to know your sinful temptation, where you're prone and proclivity. But eliminate those triggers. Eliminate the people that pull you back into sin. Place the situation. Romans 13:14, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires." So don't lead yourself into situations where you'll be tempted. And this category three, resurrect your holy desires.

Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control against such things there is not law." Fruit, singular, meaning that when you mature, you mature in all of these. And you are only as mature spiritually as your weakest fruit here. So this is practical point six desire with the holy spirit desires.

Galatians 5:7, "The flesh had desires, but the spirit also has desires. And they're opposed to each other." So what does the Holy Spirit desire? So desire what God desires. What does the Holy Spirit desire where he's called the Holy Spirit. He desires holiness. And the Holy Spirit is gentle. He's like a dove who's easily scared away. He's easily grieved. He's easily quenched with our sin. So we have to desire what Holy Spirit desires, he desires to glorify Christ, to glorify God the father. He desires for the gospel to go out. He desires all of this fruit. How do we grow in this fruit? We grow in this fruit by casting deep roots in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The heart can't but love. So what the Holy Spirit wants to do is replace sinful desires with righteous desires. I follow these motivational gym bros on Twitter who try to help millennial guys become men. Just for entertainment I follow these guys. This is what they do, this is their whole thing. They sell these eBooks and become millionaires. So they start like this. They're like, "If you struggle with laziness, you pathetic, lazy, little boy. Stop playing video games and move out of your mom's basement. Cut it out, start working out." And what's the motivation? So they replace the idol of sloth and they're like, "Because you're single and you can't get a girl." Now the motivation is get girls, get girls, get girls. And that's why you want to work out. That's why you want to stop being lazy.

So they're replacing one idol with another idol. And then they're like, "Well, you got girls. But you don't have any money. That's why they're not going to stay with you. So get money, get money, get money." They replace this idol with another idol. And then they're like, "You've got all this money. You are such a waste of life. Actually learn to enjoy your life." And then they kick you all the way back to the laziness part. Idol after idol after idol, back to the very first idol. And they sell their eBooks for $19.99. And they make a fortune. That's how a lot of people grow in life. That's how they progress. Christianity says, "No. You got to supplant sinful desires with righteous desires. The desires the Holy Spirit desires are the fruit of the spirit."

And then seven is pursue the means of grace habitually. You need to deny flesh, pursue Christ on a daily basis. So much so you string winds together. Follow Christ today, focus on today. Tomorrow comes, follow Christ. Follow Christ. When you string those together, now your character begins to change. Your habits begin to change. And now it takes less effort to follow the... You're still humble. You're still contrite. But now you're focused on other battles.

CS Lewis Screwtape Letters, incredible work. There's this demon called Uncle Screwtape. It's a head demon. He has an apprentice, a nephew demon. And one of the apprentice's patients becomes a Christian, and then Uncle Screwtape writes to him and says, "There's no need to despair. Hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn into the enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favor." Habits didn't change. So we need our habits to change, and we do this primarily through the means of grace that God has given us.

The reformers talk about means of grace. They're kind of like waterfalls where if you stand under these particular waterfalls, God sends extra grace in order to strengthen you and wash the sin. The first one is the word and prayer as a means of grace. Jesus talked about in John 17:17 that the truth of God's word is for sanctification. Sanctify them in the word. Your word is truth. When we study God's word and we do it prayerfully that gives us power to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Suffering is a means of grace. Sometimes we ask God, "Why are you sending suffering into my life?" Well, God sometimes ordains suffering as a tool for the purpose of sanctification.

Fellowship of the church is also a means of grace. Fellowship with believers and worship. The weak need the strong, build each other up. The spirit is given to individuals, and when we come together, we experience that spirit. Gifts are intended for the body and the church is this community of prayer. And also we get accountability where we help one another keep from relapsing into sin.

If you missed any points, they're right here. They're right here. There you are. You can take a picture. They're all there. All the points.

Now I'm going to transition into another means of grace, and we celebrate this once a month at Mosaic. It's the means of grace of communion. What is communion? Communion is the celebration of our participation of the death, the burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why is it called communion? It's called a common union that we are united with Christ. First Corinthians 10:16, "The cup of blessing that we bless is it not a participation, the blood of Christ. The bread that we break is it not participation, the body of Christ." Who's communion for? Who partakes in communion? Communion is for the repentant. So if you're not a Christian and you have not repented of your sin and trusted in Christ, it's not for you.

If you're a Christian and there's sin that you have not repented of, this is not for you also. We get that from First Corinthians 11:27-32, "Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, unrepentant manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let the person examine themself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For everyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." That is why many of you are weak and ill. Some have died. But if you judge yourself, we truly would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So we don't do this flippantly. We do it reverently, with repentant and contrite hearts. And when we come to God with repentance, God is delighted to extend forgiveness. So this isn't a glum time to navel gaze on our sin. It's a time to give our sins over to the Lord and feast on his grace.

The way that we celebrate communion here is the ushers are going to hand out the elements, the bread and the cup. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ, the cup symbolizes the blood of Christ. Please hold onto the elements until everyone's received them, and then we will we partake together. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you, God, that your word is powerful. That it does vivify our affections. Lord, we long to desire you more. We long for more of your presence, more of your power, more of your Holy Spirit. Lord, give it to us. We repent of all our sins, our wrong headed, harmful desires, and I pray that you replace them with helpful desires for your glory. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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Summary: How do we wrestle with the realities and complexities of our family situations today? How do we properly sort through the blessedness and the brokenness? Is it worth it to dig up all the dirt in order to move forward? How do we identify and interact with our biological families and the world given that Scripture tells us that when we're united to God through Christ we become a member of a new family?

Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit MosaicBoston.com.

Man, it's hard to get up here and preach after Caleb and Pastor Shane pray, basically do a full sermon. Good morning. My name is Andy. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new to Mosaic, we're thrilled to have you here. In our bulletins, we have a connection card. We want to get to know you. We went to live in community with you and let you know about what we have to offer in terms of community groups, service groups. You can hand those in at our welcome center if you want a special gift.

Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come to you today with various family backgrounds. Lord, some of us come from brokenness. Some of us know blessedness very well. Some of us it's a mixed bag. Lord, we try to make sense of it of ourselves, and sometimes we identify ourselves too much by the brokenness, too much by the blessedness. We stray from clinging to who we are in you. Lord, we pray, please help us to define ourselves by who we are in your family through our faith in Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to know how to face our families with our new identity, face the world with our new identity. Lord, we pray, help us to lean in to you, the true source of love today.

Holy Spirit, please be with us as we dealt into some difficult, potentially painful topics for some of us here today. Let your Spirit comfort us. Let your Spirit guide us. Let your spirit keep our gaze on Jesus Christ, on the cross. Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Today, we're continuing our series. It's called Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life. Despite our personal preferences to choose a side of Jesus that we like, Jesus was a man who came and told us to love our enemy. If he turns and speaks against us or hits us, he told us to give the other cheek, but he was a man who spoke hard and firm truth. He was not one or the other. He split both sides right in the middle. He walked that narrow path in life.

We've been talking on some difficult topics to breed resilience in ourselves as Christians. We're trying to give you all a vision for what it would be like if our society was filled with people just like Jesus, tough and tender. Today, we're making sense of our family origins and we're going to be asking how do we embrace the blessedness and face the brokenness. How do we face what's good in the right way, face what's bad in the right way as well?

Why bring this up in this series? Why bring this up at this specific moment in history in Boston? First of all, at Mosaic, family or origin issues are the most common issue that comes up. I was in my residency role the past year, and just time and time again so many people come to me and say, "Andy, you don't know just what it was like in my family."

We're a young congregation. A lot of us come from brokenness, and we're at the point where we're learning how to move forward from that with our new identities in Christ. Some of us are even scared that we have just those difficult family members, those influential family members, those shepherds of our past that were not good influences. We're afraid sometimes that we're appearing to be just like them.

Some of us come from strong families with a good Christian heritage. As we're getting older, we're realizing that our parents are not perfect. The people that once fulfilled your every need that seemed perfect and indestructible, you realize as you come of age that they're not perfect.

Even those of us who come from a strong background, a strong family heritage, a strong faith tradition or denomination, it can be even harder for us to see the brokenness in our situation. Today, we need to ... We all come from families. We all have brokenness that we need to deal with.

We don't just need to talk about this because we're a young church. God is the creator of the family. There's a lot of therapeutic approaches, a lot of theories going around about how to help people to reconcile both the good and the bad of their past. The Bible is all about a family. God creates Adam and Eve in the garden, and he lives in perfect communion with then before they sin. They sin in Genesis 3, and for the rest of the book, all 66 books, it's a story about God trying to unite his family. Man sins over and over again. God keeps pursuing them, pursuing them, pursuing them. We need to turn to God to enter into this conversation.

Just a lot of the therapeutic strategies out there, they harp on the past. They suggest delving into the past. If you take a look back at your life, you can learn more about yourself, and that can help you move forward. If you can find the deficiencies of your upbringing, you can figure out ways to address them and be stronger going forward. If you can shed the influence of your parents and the morality that they introduced to you, you'll finally be free to be great, the great and accomplished person that you were created to be.

These approaches in which looking back, they're particularly attractive to those of us with broken family backgrounds. Since the garden, Adam and Eve, when they sinned, what did they do? God came to them acting as if he didn't know what they did, and he asked Adam and Eve, "Where are you?" They both hid. They're trying to hide the shame of their sin. They both point the finger at each other. They're trying to deflect the blame. The problem with some of these approaches that say look back, look back, look back to move forward is that it appeals to that fallen nature within ourselves to cover up, to point the finger, to blame others.

Then on the other side, there's a way of looking back at the good things that's promoted using nostalgia. Andrew Abeyta, a researcher at Rutgers-Camden University published an article in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2015 about looking back to move forward. It suggest how one can use nostalgia as a psychological resource for promoting relationship goals and overcoming relationship challenges. It's an interesting article, and it seems that relying on nostalgia can be influential in helping us overcome challenges in relationships, and I think that captures a lot of those people who come from good backgrounds.

When things in life get difficult, when we face challenges, when relationships break down, especially for the first time, we cling to the past. We go on saying if things could only be the way they were with my family, I would have peace again. If only I had success in this area, I would just have peace and joy. We're like Bruce Springsteen singing Glory Days over and over again, and we just keep trying to relive them. We go on trying to satisfy our lack of satisfaction in our hearts just by just pursuing and feeding our co-dependence, going to relationship to relationship, church community to church community, job to job, finding friends with whom we can pursue squad goals, but we never get ultimate satisfaction. We never grow substantially, and we struggle to engage in relationships and live in the present.

Today, I don't want to argue about the dynamics of modern counseling approaches. I don't want to say don't go to counseling. If you are in a desperate situation, come talk to the pastors. Talk to people in your community group. Talk to pastors. We have our prayer team up here after the service as well. If you just during the week have nowhere to go, pursue that care. But I just want to point out these issues, these treatments, they're mainly forces of nursing. They're only treating minor internal issues. It's like putting a new kitchen in a house when the foundation is damaged.

In Christianity, it's neither nature or nurture, nursing nor nostalgia that determines a person's direction in life. It's the nativity that makes people new. As fallen sinners, only faith in Jesus can fix our foundation.

Today, I want to talk about in order to face the blessedness and brokenness of our earthly family like Jesus, we should embrace a new family identity, face family as a lamb, face family as a lion, face family with God. Obviously, I'm keeping, if you've been with us, with the lion and lamb imagery, but I promise that I won't have 10 sub points in this sermon. I really wanted to, but I want to sit on some of this other stuff today.

Where do I get these instructions from? Embrace a new family identity, face family as a lamb, face family as a lion, face family with God. I get this from James 1:1 to 5. Please listen along as I read God's Word. "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 disciples in the Dispersion: Greetings. scattered among the nations: Greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him."

Embrace a new family identity. If any of you know the book of James, as I'm sure many of you do, and just listening to this text, you learn that this is not a book specifically about family. It's not about how to deal with your family brokenness and blessedness. Some of you might be asking, why are we here?

What makes this text relevant is who James is talking to. Verse 1, "James, a servant of God," he's speaking to the 12 tribes of the Dispersion. That's he's speaking to the Dispersion. That's language in reference to just the Jews. They were spread throughout the region. He's calling them my brothers. He's writing ... James is the brother of Jesus. He's writing to Jewish brothers, Jewish Christians.

Just what's so important to emphasize here is this audience. Like we think we have it bad in Boston. Like we face some intellectual persecution. It's hard to find a Christian date or partner, because there's so few Christians here. Raising a kid here, we think it's difficult, like fighting the squirrels away in the Boston Common. We think like we have it tough, but first century Jewish Christians had it really tough.

This is something that a lot of us, it doesn't make sense. Christianity seemed to have taken off at Jerusalem, but you have to remember the Christians of this day, they were mainly in lands occupied by Roman pagan soldiers. These soldiers did not, and the rulers, governors didn't hesitate to rule with an iron fist if they didn't like someone, didn't like a group.

But just with that lingering potential persecution, the Jews had to deal with persecution from other Jews. We think of the apostle Paul when he was Saul, just pursuing them jealously. But not just in public, but they faced persecution within their own families. You have to think like for a Jew to leave their family, a cult steeped in tradition, we're talking about people who knew their family heritage. They should state it orally going back hundreds and hundreds years. Like this, becoming a Christian in that day was the ultimate betrayal.

We think of a Red Sox fan switching to the Yankees, Barcelona fans switching to Real Madrid, a modern Democrat switching to Republican. I'll stop. Juliet Capulet marrying Romeo Montague. Forgive my French. More seriously, like an orthodox Jew or devout Muslim becoming Christian today. These Jews were people that would've had to scrounge to survive. When they gathered for worship, they would have been on the lookout for zealots. They would have been on the lookout for the Roman authorities.

Just scriptural support from this comes from Galatians 2:7 to 10. "On the contrary." This is the apostle Paul talking about some of his early interactions after his conversion. "On the contrary, when they," the church in Jerusalem, "Saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, and when James, and Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do."

The poor that Paul's talking about in verse 10, these are Jewish Christians. When you read through the book of Acts and Paul's other writings, you find that you on his missionary journeys traveled across the region towards Europe to collect money, hundreds of miles of travel, and take it back to the Jews in Jerusalem, because in such a heavily populated Jewish area they were the poorest Christians. They were facing really difficult circumstances.

Therefore, the book of James, it's not specifically about our earthly family, our biological family, but it's a book written by a pastor with a congregation full of people who had extreme family issues. If they weren't steadfast in their faith, they were always wavering over whether to continue to face the potential persecution and abandonment for the sake of Christ, or they could return to their families where they had heritage, they had peace, they had comfort.

This is specific advice, and this begs the question, why would these Jewish Christians leave their families? Why would they risk this persecution and this abandonment? Some of them did choose to leave. Others were kicked out.

Obviously, I mean most people are logical. They don't just leave something just because. They typically choose something because it's better than the previous option. Scripture talks about believers in Christ, they have a place in the kingdom of heaven. "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and tells all that he has and buys the field." These early Jews believed that, Jewish Christians.

The early church heeded the words and took these words literally. "And everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for my name's sake will receive 100-fold and will inherit eternal life." They believed that, and following Jesus Christ they had a means of salvation of peace before God, but also an eternal inheritance.

They also believed they're joining a new family with access to a father. Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also give him ... how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" They have a new heavenly Father that will never fail them.

Finally, in Ephesians it talks about they're joining this line with all the faithful saints and prophets of old, united by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."

These people, these are benefits that the early Jewish Christians just saw and they wanted to ... They took them up. They left for the better option, but they also would have known the scriptures. Just when you read through scripture, again it's about a family.

I just want to take you through the brokenness presented in Genesis, and these Jewish Christians, they were the ones, not their families who stayed devout Jews, these were the ones who knew that Jesus was the Messiah. He was just the figure they looked for all along.

You think of Adam and Eve. They immediately disobey God in the garden. Their firstborn kills his younger brother. Abraham and Sarah, who received God's promise, because of infertility, Sarah gives Abraham and concubine and then gets mad and jealous when she gets pregnant. Lot, Abraham's nephew, gets drunk. His daughters get him drunk, they seduce him, commit incest.

Isaac and Rebekah, Isaac, Abraham's son, they play favorites with their twins, whose sibling rivalry becomes one of the worst in history. That's Jacob and Esau. Esau has no discernment, sells his birthright for a bowl of soul. He marries a Canaanite woman. Jacob, he manipulates Esau to give him his birthright. He shows extreme favoritism to one child, Joseph.

Uncle Laban, he deceives Jacob at one point. He makes Jacob work for years and years and years to offer him Rachel, the beautiful daughter, but he gives him Leah. Jacob's daughter Dinah is raped by a pagan, and then her brothers go and kill a whole village. Jacob's oldest son Reuben can't resist his incestuous desires. He sleeps with his father's concubine, the mother of some of his brothers. Ten of Jacob's sons, they plan to kill their brother, but instead they decide to sell him into slavery.

Judah, one of Jacob's sons, as a widower he frequents prostitutes. This is the one who's Jesus ... who started the line towards Jesus. This occurs frequently enough that his daughter-in-law Tamar, whom he had dishonored, knew that she'd disguise himself with one. He slept with his daughter-in-law and got her pregnant.

That's Genesis, but the list just begins. It's blunder in the Old Testament, blunder after blunder by the priests. Lots of false prophets. King David, a man after God's own heart, commits adultery. Solomon, after David unites the kingdom, he unwisely marries 1,000 women.

I'm going, I'm going, but you read the Bible and a lot of Christian traditions talk about the Old Testament figures as heroes, and in many senses they were heroes in the sense that they pointed to Jesus Christ, but it's a whole story of brokenness. For the Jews of Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians of the early days, they would have been starving. They had read the scriptures. They studied them. Jesus was the fulfillment. He was finally that perfect figure, the one who fulfilled the Law, the second Adam that did not sin, the Christ, the Savior to whom all the prophets ... about whom all the prophets spoke of.

These Jews, they were standing on a rock. They had a foundation. Were they to dwell on what they left behind? Are we to dwell on what we leave behind? Do we dwell on the good things, the bad things?

The apostle Paul just captures the spirit of the mindset that Christians are supposed to take as they go forward. Philippians 3, "But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained."

2 Corinthians 2, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." Colossians 3, "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."

I hope I'm getting redundant here. This is a little bit in counter to the movement, the tendency not just of our current day, but of our flesh to want to look back to find excuses for our state of trouble, our state of pain, our state of affliction. In Christianity, it's a forward looking mindset.

A lot of Christians, they never grow. They come to faith. They love the gospel. It brings joy to their soul and peace to their hearts, but a lot of them are like the lead character of The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes, the lead character. He's unjustly framed and thrown into jail, a medieval jail, and he's there for years. He sleeps on a dirt floor, just in isolation for years. After several years, he escapes and he righteously comes upon a great fortune, a buried treasure. He buys himself a great estate with a mansion and he tries to create a new identity as the Count of Monte Cristo. He has everything he ever dreamed of while living in his jail cell, but he can't completely shake his old identity. At one point, his servant discovers that despite his lavish mansion and bedroom, despite the comforts, the count still sleeps on the floor at night.

That's a lot like us. We come to faith in Christ. We're privy to God as Father. We're privy to forgiveness. We're privy to the means of sanctification and grace, but we're still sleeping on the floor. We aren't owning our new identity. We're defined by our family background, both good and bad.

What did those members of the early church dwell on and meditate on daily to walk forward? What news powered them each day to face the hardship that they faced? They had family wounds lingering. They had temptation to go back to the comforts and the traditions.

At the heart of Christianity is a Savior who is both born into both blessedness and brokenness. Jesus was conceived out of marriage in a day and culture when it was socially and religiously preposterous. When he was brought to the temple, his parents gave the payment that was paid by the poorest of the Jewish community. He could have let his circumstances and dishonorable nature and birth define him, but he didn't.

Jesus could have swung the other way. He was after all the Son of God. He could have proudly used his prodigious knowledge of the scriptures as a means to build us his title within the community. As the chosen one, the son whom the Father sent, the Son of David, Jesus could have used his powers and authority to garner earthly acclaim. Could have denied the cup and established an earthly kingdom, but he didn't.

Jesus had every problem to wallow, every reason to wallow in the brokenness or to cling and bask in the pride stemming from his gifts and calling, but instead was a man whose entire identity was built on who he was in relation to his heavenly Father. When Jesus said, "Into your hands I commit my spirit," he experienced ultimate abandonment, despair, excruciating pain at the hands of his Father. He relinquished ultimate power, pedigree, wealth, acclaim. He offered himself completely to God and his purpose. He knew that his Father had the love and power to redeem such a tragic moment. He's wiling to set aside all vendettas and potential momentary exaltation for our eternal exaltation.

We need to follow in the steps of Christ. We need to embrace our new family identity. We cling to our family, this new family identity. If you're not, this is waking up each day grounding yourself saying, "Lord, I am satisfied in you."

But how do we interact with our earthly family? Are we to leave them, to break all ties with them? Matthew 19:29, are we to literally leave houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father and mother? We don't take that part literal. In some cases, yes. If they resist us and prevent us from worshiping God, we might have to take those steps, but it's the principle. Trust in God first. Follow God first. Be willing to give all of your life, even the slowest relationships with the people closest to you to follow him.

If we are to continue to interact with them, how do we face them? This is point two, face family as sheep. This comes from James 1:1 again. Sorry. My favorite preacher can do like an hour with two words. "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." We get this just face family as sheep just by thinking about who James is.

James is a man who could have pulled rank. James is the brother, the earthly brother of Jesus. His parents, Jesus' parents were Mary and the Holy Spirit. James's parents were Mary and Joseph. Look what he calls himself here, "James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ." This word for servant, that's doulos, servant, slave. Like he's saying I'm a slave of God and Jesus Christ, my brother who I grew up with. James in that day, he could have pulled rank. He's the pastor of the church in Jerusalem.

Then in verse two, he calls his audience brothers. James has a lamb mentality. Even though Jesus was his earthly brother, James knew that Jesus was the Savior, and that just humbles him.

This is the part of the sermon where I really could just give you 10 practical points of how do we face our families as humble lambs, humble sheep, but I think ... and giving you those 10 sub points. But I just want to pause here. I don't want to be too firm, but I just want to ask some pointed questions. Some people come to church week after week for year after year. They're scribbling down the 10 sub points every week. They're at community group. They're giving faithfully, but there's heartache tied to family brokenness that they can ignore for decades.

Just thinking about James, a man, a pastor, Jesus' brother, well studied in the scriptures, lots of wisdom, he shows his humility. He doesn't pull rank. He united himself with his congregation. I ask, who in your family could you pull rank on? Who are the people you're pulling rank on? By that I mean with whom do you have the high moral ground? Have you forgiven them? Have you pursued reconciliation?

Who in your family has sinned against you? Who's that person that you're avoiding just because the history is too complex? Who are you tempted to blame for the many problems in your life? What are you doing to pursue that person's salvation? What are you doing to pursue that person's sanctification if they are a Christian?

Colossians 3 says, "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."

Luke 6:27 to 31. "But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them."

A lot of Christians love these verses, and like a lot of you who will hear this, shake your head. This sounds great, but there's often that one person or those few people in everyone's life for whom we make an exception to these verses. The wounds, the bitterness that we carry from not pursuing reconciliation, from not forgiving, man, they're obvious to everyone but you.

It doesn't have to be a family member. It doesn't have to be. It could be a friend, a schoolmate, a whole race of people. Who do you need to forgive? A lot of people when I counsel, I can sit with people and meet with them regularly for a year, and they try to act like I don't notice, but I can meet with them once a month for a year, I never hear about that estranged mother. I never hear about that estranged father.

A lot of those people, you might be thinking, "You don't know my situation. You don't know what I've been through." Like that's ... you're right. I honestly knew I was born into blessing, born into a Christian home, raised in the church. I was trained to thank God for that. Like my compassion, I'm so thankful that I didn't have to deal with some of the trauma, some of the pain, physical and emotional, that a lot of you had. But I don't know it, but the Lord does. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

Forgiveness, faces your family members as a lamb, it doesn't mean trusting the person. It doesn't mean becoming best friends with them. It doesn't mean letting them back in as if nothing ever happened. It doesn't mean that you don't put up boundaries upon reengaging. It certainly doesn't mean that you put up with physical abuse. At Mosaic, we do not support that. If anybody is experiencing that, if anybody is facing that, let us know. Let us know how we can help you do whatever you can to get out of your situation.

Forgiveness means committing in your soul to leave a situation in God's hands, to trust that he will ultimately bring justice, and therefore that you won't hold a sin against the person anymore. You commit not to bring the sin up, not to dwell on it in your heart, not to let it fester and stir up bitterness and self pity. Some people who are victims of just traumatic assault and tragedy, you don't take on the burden for the wounds afflicted against you. We all born in the image of Adam are sinners. We have to turn to Christ in faith to deal with our sin, but we don't ... you are not responsible for that sin.

Brandt Jean, a young African-American man, made an amazing courtroom statement a few weeks ago to a former white female police officer, Amber Guyger. Amber shot his brother. In the statement, Brandt told her that he forgave her. He wanted her to go to God with her guilt to ask for forgiveness. He told her that the best thing he thinks she could do was to give her life to Christ. He told her that he loved her as a person, told her that he didn't wish that she served time, and he wanted to hug her.

That was just an extreme, beautiful example of forgiveness, but we don't have to use his specific language. We don't have to want to hug them. We don't have to wish that people don't serve proper and just legal time or face proper civil punishment. But we're called to be good stewards, not just of our finances as we learned last week, but good stewards of God's love and grace.

1 John 3:16 to 18 says, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and truth." James is also famous for saying, "Faith without works is dead." If you know God's love, you're a steward. You share it. You give it to others.

What's at stake when we don't cling to our new identity? What's at stake when we don't face our families, family members like sheep? We go back to James and talk about facing family as a lion. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

James tells his brothers to count it joy. That's what's at stake when we're not clinging to our new identity, when we're not facing our family as lambs. We're losing out on joy. Additionally, we're losing out on steadfastness that leads to perfection that leads to completeness that feels like we're lacking nothing, a perfect soul satisfaction.

Throughout the book, again it's a book specifically about family, James lists many trying situations as tests, poverty, suffering, sickness. It also lists many good situations as tests of faith. Are you wealthy, healthy, in a new job, in a new city, in a position of authority? He's saying, "Surely you're going to face trials in this life," but we can apply that and say you are going to face trials in your family life.

James kind of has a madman's mentality. We don't just ... A lot of people go through that honeymoon phase and you're just shocked when that first trial comes upon us, upon you. But he says count it joy. That trial, especially those within our family, that's a stamp of God's love on your life. We think of this as awful. Like the last thing that I want to do when I see my family is dig up the dirt, bring out the areas where there isn't reconciliation, bring out the areas that have just not been addressed for years.

I heard a song on the radio somewhere in the low 90s, where you never know what you're going to get. It was a country song by Uncle Johnny and the Bullfrogs. No, it wasn't actually called that. I heard ... It was on like the scan mode. I heard one line, and it said, "You want the spark, but not the burn." That's a lot of us in relation to our families, and even in our Christian life. We want the good things.

When I see my family, like I'm tempted to visit. I just want to visit nice places, eat, drink, turn on the TV, avoid, do all that I can to avoid those difficult conversations, reminisce, and avoid that conversation of, "Mom, dad, are you going to church? Mom, dad, are you pursuing your relationship with God? Siblings, where are you on your faith?" We want the spark. We want the good things, but we don't want the burn. If you do family right, in the church and in your nuclear families, like there should be some burn.

That's the benefit of family. By your connection through blood, you have a naturally stronger connection. You can risk hard conversations. You can risk poking and nudging, and they are still tied to you, whether they like it or not. Of course, pursue them in gentleness, love, respect, but take advantage of the fact that your family, whether they disagree with you or not, like they have to stay connected to you. It's just that intimacy that you have just in being fully known yet fully loved that we experience in family that points to the love that's complete and perfect in God.

Just in scripture, this 1 Corinthians 7, Paul tells his audience stay where you are in many situations. We need to ... The first instinct is to book it from our families, but we have to take advantage of the roots and connections we have with people. Show them you've changed. How can you convince the people in your life that you've changed through your relationship with Jesus if you're never around them, if you don't even know them beyond a shallow level?

This is hard. When you're living far away, like many of us here, whether you're a single or a young couple living away from family, or whether you're parents here living away from your children or parents, it's really hard to do this from a distance, but you need to be creative. Be practical. How can you engage your family members? As a church plant, we really want you to stay, but we need you to invest. Why do we do this with our family? Why do we pursue them with zeal? It's out of response, out of love, out of gratitude for Jesus, for God who continued to pursue us and pursue us, pursue his people over and over again. I went through the Genesis sin trail just to illustrate man's brokenness. God pursues us as a good shepherd seeking that one lost sheep out of the 99.

Why do this in our family? James 5:19 says it's good for them. "My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from ..." This is the last words of the book. "If anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins."

That family member that hurt you, just that person I asked you to think about or those few people, do you really want them to have eternal separation, eternal condemnation from God? When God pours out his wrath on the world, do you want them to taste that as Jesus once did?

Also, why pursue our family with zeal? Why not just sit back and relax with them all the time? It breeds steadfastness, perfection, completeness. You learn it's more blessed to give than to receive. It's more blessed to be a blessing. Your tastes and desires change from things that you like to things that are good and godly. You go from drinking coffee with sugar to drinking black coffee, drinking soda to water. Do you really want full soul satisfaction? Pursue the salvation of those people around you, the people who you are most naturally connected to in this life to bring about salvation, to be used to bring about salvation as your earthly family.

It's painful. Count it all joy when you receive kinds of various trials. I hate trials. In my own marriage, I hate when Joyce and I have a disagreement. It's not just an argument. Any form of disagreement I want to avoid, but by God's grace I've learned the benefit. I've learned the joyful part of it. She's often just like spewing truth after truth after truth at me, and I don't want to hear it, but in the back of my mind ... Sometimes I'm spewing out bitterness, saying, "No, no, no." At the back of my mind though, I'm learning to say, "Yes, yes, yes. This is rooting out the impurities of my soul. This is good for me. This is good for our marriage. We are growing here, and I want more of it."

I'm calling you to face your family as lions. Facing family as a lamb, that's the heart that we have. Face your family as lions, pursue their salvation with the zeal of the lion going after its prey.

Now, face family with God. We're not alone in doing this work. Clinging to your identity in Christ just daily, that's difficult. Pursuing those family members with the heart of a sheep, those people that you don't want to pursue and just being constant in it like a lion, it's tiring, it's confusing, often don't know what you want to do. James 5 gives us some comfort. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him."

James wrote for this people about church problems, but we certainly need to ask God for wisdom in engaging our families. For many of us, we'll find satisfaction with the words that we can pursue God without reproach. He's a Father that's never going to tire of us coming into his presence to ask for wisdom, ask for discernment, ask how to navigate the situation.

Why is that the case? Like there's a connection when we do that, when we humble ourselves to the point that we say, "God, I need you. I needed Jesus to go to the cross to die for me, to save me from my sin. I need your help right now in this moment to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I need your wisdom to deal with this difficult family situation right here." That's a correction. That's a recalibration of who we are before God. That's the position we were originally created to be.

Adam, his first relationship was not with Eve. It was before God, having peace with God. Adam walked in the garden, tilled the garden. He named the animals with God. He always needed God to guide him and to be submissive to him. We are creatures. God is the creator. When we're in this position properly, when we see our need for God, we're able to see our family situations properly. Just notice, if any of your lacks nothing at the beginning of the verse, like this is saying God offers us everything. We see family properly.

Some of you are expecting too much from your families. Some of you place way too much pressure on your fathers and your mothers, whatever were those primary figures in your life, those shepherds. You want them to fill the ... those old shepherds to fill the role that only the one great and true shepherd could fulfill. Family is designed in this life to not fully satisfy. It's only when we're in relation to God, submitting to him, turning to him, being reliant upon him that we are in our proper place, that we can have full satisfaction, that we can have peace, that we can feel fully secure, that we can see, just understand, make sense of the blessedness that we've tasted, not make idols out of that, and make sense of the brokenness. God, how are you using this brokenness that I've experienced for your glory? It doesn't make sense, but I trust you.

To close, I just want to read Isaiah 58:9 to 11. This is the prophet Isaiah. "Then you will call, and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help, and he will say, 'Here am I.' If you do away with the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday. And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones. And you will be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail."

Do you want that? Just turn to him, position yourself properly before the Lord. You'll know how to make sense of your family situation. Please join me in prayer.

Lord, we praise you that we don't have to be people that look back. We don't have to be constantly searching for a new identity. Lord, we have a sure foundation in you. You're a good Father that loves his children, and pursues them, and pursues them, and pursues them even when they sin against him, and yet you still offer eternal riches. Lord, we just pray that we would cling to you, cling to who we are through you, and that would give us a heart to pursue our families, a heart to pursue them with the proper heart of humility, with love, with grace, with gentleness, and also a zeal to be constant in the pursuit.

Lord, we pray, help us to find rest, find peace, find completeness, perfection, full soul satisfaction when we pause to turn and gaze upon you and ask you for guidance as we just wait upon the day that you return. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we're so glad you're here, welcome. We'd love to connect with you if you'd like to connect with us. We do that through the connection card and the worship guide. If you'd like to fill it out legibly, you can either toss in the offering basket after or redeem it at the welcome center for a gift. We also have an app and you can download at the app store or Google Play, and there's a connection card in there as well. Quick announcement for members and people becoming members. If you'd been notified that you are becoming a member today, we have a members meeting from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word.

Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a loving God. Therefore, you are a giving God. Thank you Lord that you showed us that the heart of love is giving, is generosity. We thank you that you so loved us that you gave us life. And then although we rebelled against you, you gave us your son. We thank you Jesus that you poured yourself out generously, lavishly, extravagantly. You poured out your grace upon us, you offered us grace upon grace. I pray Lord, allow us to receive that grace. Transform us today from one degree of glory to another, from being takers to givers.

Give each one of us a vision for our lives to be as absolutely generous as we can with everything we have and with everything we are in order to reflect you, image you to the world that you are a gracious and giving God. We pray Holy Spirit that you come today and minister to us, speak to us. And even as perhaps we deal with an uncomfortable topic for some I pray, Lord, show us that your plans are so good and that the greatest blessing is to give greater than even the blessing to receive. I speak to anyone that's not a Christian today, I pray, Lord, give them grace to receive grace, to be transformed from being a rebel to a child of God. And I pray all this in Christ's Holy name, Amen.

So we are in a sermon series that we've been calling Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life. And we've been looking at the big topics of life through the lens of the lion, lamb paradox that Jesus Christ is both the lion of Judah and the lamb of God. He was the ultimate tough and tender person. And today, we're talking about lion and lambing our finances. And the big is it takes toughness in order to acquire finances and think about them strategically so that we can be as lamb like with our finances as possible, as generous as possible.

I saw an ad, I saw a commercial yesterday watching college football. Yeah, that's a thing. There's nothing else. So I was watching college football and Northwestern Mutual came out with a commercial. And the commercial, it was a lady who quit her job and then she goes and works for herself. And the message was spend your life living. The Christian message is the opposite of this. The Christian message is because of what God has done for you, God has given himself, the son of God sacrificed himself lavishly. Therefore, we are to invest our lives in giving, giving in a way that impacts eternity. Whenever I do premarital counseling one of the questions that I ask as we're in the financial section is, are you a spender or a saver? That's an important question.

Two savers get married, it's okay. It's all right. Go on vacation once in a while. If two spenders get married, big problems ahead. Big, huge, massive problems. Scripture comes in and says, no, there's another category. Not just spender, not just saver, but giver. Well, today we're talking about money, and I don't know how you feel about that. I know some people respond like this in like, "Oh, again, church talking about money wise, church talking about money. They just want my money." We want more than your money. We do want, but we want all of you. We want all of you because God wants all of you, God wants your whole heart. He wants us to worship him with every fiber of our being because that's what he deserves. And here's the other one, scripture talks about finances all the time because finance is money. It's one of the main idols that compete for our affections toward God.

Jesus gives us 38 parables, 17 of them have to do with finances. There's 2,172 verses in the Bible about finances. Compare that with believing, it's 272. Compare that with prayer, 371. Love, 714 times. This is why idolatry was such a big problem in the Old Testament, not because the people of God were attracted to these little statues, these statuettes. That's not where the power of the idols came from. For example, First Kings 17, Baal is the idol that King Ahab begins to worship because he married a Baal worshiper. And the farmers of Israel start worshiping Baal. They build a house to Baal. And the reason was because Baal was the idol of prosperity. He was called the rider of the clouds. He promises economic prosperity. And when you worship him, the rains, so to speak, came down as oil and rivers ran with honey.

And then God sends Elijah. And Elijah says this to the people, he says, "Stop limping between two opinions, between two faiths." It's not that they had rejected God, they just added the idle of prosperity to God as an insurance policy, just added it to the Pantheon. So the reason why we're talking about finances, the scripture talks about finances because greed is such a powerful force. When's the last time that you repented to God of greed? Greed is always subtle, it comes in and blinds us to its own reality. And it's deep down in every single one of our hearts. And Jesus said, "Beware of all covetousness." Colossians 3:5 says, "Put to death therefore, mortify sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and covetousness, greed," which is idolatry. So that's one of the reasons why we're talking about it's one of the great competitors to true faith in a true God.

The second reason is God wants you to be blessed. God wants to bless you, he longs to bless you. We as a church, we want to see this church prosper, we want you to be blessed. But blessing from a biblical perspective, it's an upside down idea. Many of us think of blessing as receiving me more and more. Scripture talks about blessings. Jesus said it's more blessed to give than to receive. So when you pray, "Lord blessed me", the Lord responds and says, "yeah, I want to bless you, but the greatest blessing is to give." I saw that Shaquille O'Neal bought a house for a family whose son, he was shot at a football game, bought him a house. Whenever I read a story like that, man, my heart just melts like Shaquille O'Neal, oh man. Wow, so generous. I just love the guy now.

Whenever you see stories of just lavish generosity, something in our hearts, it's like, "Oh wow." Someone's pays off a single mom's mortgage, things like a philanthropist comes in and pays off everyone's student debt, just wow. Why? Why? Because generosity is written on our hearts. We are created by God to give. We are to live to give. So I'm going to do something a little different today. Instead of expositing one text, I'm going to exposit lots of texts. And the reason being is because scripture gives us a very multi-layered, very multi-faceted theology when it comes to money. So I'll give you three points and then we'll jump in. First of all, from takers to givers. Second of all, lion your finances. Three, lamb your finances. So first from takers to givers.

Points two and points three, I can give you and it'll be a helpful sermon, but it'll be a self-help sermon. Really practical tips because true spirituality always impacts reality. But the reason why Christianity is so different than any other world religion is because of the Gospel. The Gospel transforms us from takers to givers. And theology begins like this, that God is the original giver, he's given us everything. He's given us the first gift of creation that we live our lives, every breath we take, every experience that we chase, every single dream we have, every single desire is within this reality of the ultimate gift, which is creation. The gift of the universe from the elusive subatomic particles to the cosmos that spans billions of trillions of miles.

It's so mind boggling, it's so vast that we got to use light years. How far does light travel in a year? Our universe is about 13.7 billion light years across. And within this universe, God has created us with the gift of self-consciousness that we can take a step back, we can reflect, analyze, meditate upon the universe that we are in. We can think of the universe as an object, and simultaneously think about the fact that we're thinking about the universe. Trippy. Thinking about the vastness of the universe, and then you realize that you are ... And this is what ... says, "I can't but believe in God because of the universe out there and the universe that's within."

So we don't just inhabit this world, we reflect upon it, we develop it. So in that sense, we share in a creaturely way God's transcendence. God also has given us beauty in creation, he's given us pleasure, he's given us relationship. He's given us the greatest gift, which is a relationship with him, the gift of love, relationship with one another. Creates Adam and Eve, our fore parents, puts them in the Garden of Eden, in paradise, everything is incredible. And God says, "Enjoy everything except this one thing. Take from every tree except this one because I want you to give me the gift of obedience because that's what love entails in a relationship with God."

Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And what do we do? God says, "Don't take, don't eat." Eve takes, she eats. Adam takes, Adam eats. And that's in a sense, we see that is the essence of sin, taking what isn't ours. And then they are transformed into takers. The root of sin, all sin is selfishness, take, I'm entitled, I need, I take, I eat. Then God sees our brokenness, both economic brokenness and all elk. Sends his son, Jesus Christ, the ultimate giver. Jesus Christ gives his life, pours himself out. And before he goes to be crucified and bearing the penalty for our sins, for our rebellion, for our selfishness, he selflessly gives himself on the cross, excruciating physical pain, infinitely more excruciating spiritual pain as he bears the wrath of God.

Then he dies, he's buried. Put before all of that in the last supper, he takes a loaf of bread and he says what? He says, "Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." Why? He's saying you took what wasn't yours that led to the fall. I came and I gave what isn't yours in order to save you from the fall. The way that we are saved from our selfishness is Christ lavish, selflessness. And when we come to Christ, we receive grace by just crying out, "God save me. God, I need you. God, forgive me." And he pours out grace upon grace into our needy hearts. And that right there, when you get the gospel, it transforms you from taker to giver. It begins initially and then you grow in that more and more, you mature in that. That's what the Gospel does.

Second Corinthians 8:9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich every day." Lord, I need you. Lord, I need grace. And it transforms me from taker to giver I receive and now I give. So that's point one that frames our theology of giving. I preached a sermon in our sermon series the beginning of the year in February, I think it was, called Rhythms. And there was a sermon on generosity, really helpful. And if you haven't heard it, I would definitely commend that to you. It's on the app, on the website. And I set up the theology from Second Corinthians 8:9 of generosity. Today, what I'm going to do in points two and three is give some very practical points how we can in our daily walk with the Lord, the lion and lamb, our finances.

Whenever I preach on money, I feel anxiety from some pockets of the room. And one of the reasons is because we have made financial folly. We've made mistakes financially, and perhaps we even sinned financially. So one of the ways that we grow in our financial wisdom in order to give, the way we go, it begins with saying, "Lord, I am a dumb sheep. Lord, speak to me, Lord, guide me." And the Lord is a good shepherd, and he leads. And then also in terms of community, the Lord leads us as we're Christians into a community where we can learn from one another. So we can ask each other, "Hey, I need some wisdom. Hey, help me with my finances." Proverbs 15:22, "Without counsel, plans fail. But with many advisors, they succeed."

One of the things with American culture. If you're from other parts of the world, in some ways it's unique to the Western world. We don't like talking about finances with anybody. We'd rather talk about religion and politics. Let's talk about politics, who'd you vote for? We'd rather talk about that than talk about the real nitty-gritty financial decisions, financial health. And the vision of Christian community from Acts two is that they opened their books with one another. And they say, "Hey, help me with my finances, help me grow in generosity." We practice community systematically through our community groups where you form relationships, study scripture together, pray for one another. And it's also a place where you can ask one another, "Hey, how are you growing in the Gospel of generosity?"

Okay, point two, lion your finances. I'm going to give you seven points here, and you're like, "Hey, what happened to the 10 point format?" I'm already used to it. Don't worry, three more points are coming in with point three. So this is point two with seven sub points, then point three with three sub points. But you get 10 really practical steps. Lion your finances. Number one, be content. Number two, work hard and smart. Number three, live below your means. Four, steward wisely. Five, save wisely. Six, invest wisely. Seven, stay out of debt. First is be content. God calls us to finding satisfaction in him, contentment in him. Now, some people take this a little too far to the point of asceticism. And the pendulum in swung this one this way because people have taken the Gospel and started preaching a prosperity gospel, which is a false gospel that if you give to God, God will give you. It's kind of like a bribe to get God to do your bidding. We don't preach that.

And a lot of people have swung the pendulum over to the austerity gospel where you just live according to what you need and then give everything away. Or to the point where it's like, "I just don't want to talk about money, it doesn't feel spiritual. Let's talk about spiritual things not material things." And it's kind of a skewed perspective. So it begins with spiritual satisfaction with the Lord. Hebrews 13:5-6, "Keep your life free from love of money." He's not saying keep your life free from money, love of money. Money is neural, money is just a tool. But he's saying, "Don't over love it and be content with what you have for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you." What's that contentment based and rooted and grounded in? It's in the fact that God is our father. So we can constantly say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me?"

My greatest asset in the universe is God. My relationship with God, my greatest treasure, and no one can touch that asset. Second Corinthians 6:0 Saint Paul says, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything." He's saying financially, I might not be rich, but I'm rich in every single way that matters. And that's how scripture talks about blessing. It's more blessed to give than to receive not because God will bless you in turn financially. Often, he does if you're faithful with the little he's giving you. But his blessing is spiritual, he sends joy, he sends satisfaction.

First Timothy 6:6-10, "But godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it, out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these, we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction, for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." He says, "Be careful what your heart is drawn to, be careful where your affections are going. Be careful of what you love." And the fight for faith is a fight for desires to trust God not money. Worship God, not money.

This is the secret to being content. It's worshiping God, it's being thankful to God. That's the secret to contentment. God, thank you for life. God, thank you for creation. And God, thank you for meeting my greatest need on the cross in Jesus Christ. And because you met my greatest need and I'm secure for all of eternity, I will be with God. And you've given me the Holy spirit. Now, obviously, you will provide for my lesser needs. Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" We have an eternal soul, and finite things cannot satisfy our soul.

So we go to God and God says, "I'm an eternal God, only I can satisfy your eternal soul." When you find your satisfaction in God, here's how I practically do it. I wake up every single morning with dissatisfaction, every single morning. It's deep inside. And I sit down and I pray, and I meditate over God's scripture. And I think about the Gospel, and I meditate with the fact that my name is written on his hands. Nothing can pull me away from God. And when you meditate on the scripture, spend time with God, all of a sudden he fills you with the Holy Spirit, and you're satisfied.

You have joy, a joy of salvation. And what this does practically, it curves your appetites. And a lot of us just waste money because our appetites are out of control. That's why I begin with contentment. What do I need? I have everything I need, and God spiritually provide for my physical needs. And this is how I grow in satisfaction. Philippians 4:11-13, "Not that I'm speaking of being in need for I've learned its secret is a skillset to develop. I've learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

Philippians 4:19, "And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus." God promises as a good father to his children, "I will provide for your needs not necessarily your greeds." So my daughter Sophia is 11. She asked me yesterday, "Dad, when can I get a phone?" I said, "When you're 47, 47?" She said, "No." I said, "All right, 46. You don't need a phone yet, not yet. And if we do ever get a phone, it's going to be a flip phone. It's going to be like a $5 burner phone. That's all you're getting." Her needs are met. I know what's best for her. That's how God operates. So finding contentment in the Lord. Number two, work hard and smart. Contentment plus hard work is a powerful combination. And obviously, you've got to qualify this, work in a way where your relationship with the Lord is neglected, where you do not neglect the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is commandment number four right up there with don't murder. Commandment number four is you shall work six days, work hard, but one day you give to the Lord. You rest in the salvation of Jesus Christ and you rest from your own labors. 10% of your time if you calculate it and you take sleep out, 10% of your time you're giving to the Lord, and it's an act of faith. And you're saying, "God, I believe, I trust that you can do more with 90% of my time than I can with 100% of the time." So don't work in a way that neglects to Sabbath the Lord or your health. We are to steward the bodies that God has given us. Proverbs 23:4, "Do not toil to acquire wealth, don't wear yourself out to acquire wealth, but be discerning enough to desist."

Don't work in such a way where you neglect your family. God has given you a family. If he has, then he's entrusted eternal souls for you to disciple and care for and people to care for. So we invest in our families. Don't neglect your church. Don't forget your greater calling as you think about work. Don't neglect the greater ministry that everything that we do is for the glory of God to expand the kingdom of Jesus Christ where we are. And don't forget that your identity isn't in your work. We're rooted and our identity is in God not in our job. Proverbs 14:23, "In all toil, there is profit, but mere talk tends to only poverty." So we are to work, we're to work hard. Ecclesiastes 9:10, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might."

Second Thessalonians 3:10, "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." We're called to work. I tell my kids that all the time, they haven't learned that yet. I'm getting ROI little by little. You want to eat, wash the dishes. Colossians 3:23-24, "Whatever you do, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ." He's talking about work as service. Through our work, whatever our work is, I'm serving Jesus, and I'm serving people. This is my ministry, and I do it with love. I'm providing a service or I provide a product, and I'm adding value to the world. And I do it with love. The other principle here in terms of working hard and smart is that we are to choose a path in terms of work that will lead to most generosity. Most glorify God, and we do that through generosity.

Here's where I get it, Ephesians 4:28, talking about a thief, let the thief steal no longer. Thief was a pagan, thief converts to Christianity, becomes a Christian, transformed from taker to giver. Now, how do you disciple the thief? You tell him, "Don't steal, that's a commandment." But you also say, "Work." Rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands, but you don't even stop there. Like, yeah, provide for your needs, provide for your household. Don't stop there so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. As we mature in the faith, we're to grow as givers. Work hard for a good profit. I'll just mention this, I've always heard all the money in the world is God's, and it doesn't really matter how people make the money. Don't ask where they got this money, it's all God's anyway.

No, there's bad profit, profit made at the expense of people. And there's good profit, profit made as a byproduct of serving the needs of others well. The common view is make as much as you can, to give as much as you can. And the end justifies the means. But Holy scripture says no. Deuteronomy 23:18, there's this principle embedded in Holy scripture, "You shall bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog,: which is a male prostitute, "into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow for both of these are in abomination to the Lord your God." This also has to inform the way that we invest. We are to invest in companies that create blessing and avoid companies that cause harm. Avoid investing in companies that engage in predatory behavior and profit at all costs.

Point number three is live below your means, kind of common sense, but it's in scripture so I'll mention it. Proverbs 13:11, "Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it." So the second part of the assumption there is that we are to gather little by little. How do we gather, how do we save? Well, we live under our means. So no faithful Christian, and this is what we're striving for, no faithful Christian lives as comfortably as they could. So I could have nicer clothing, I could have a nicer wardrobe and now go to T.J. Maxx. My kids could have nicer clothing. My philosophy about spending money on kids is, you know how much kids cost? As much as you spend on them, that's how much they cost.

We got four daughters, and my youngest, we haven't purchased one article of clothing for her, only diapers. That's the only thing. She has no idea, it's all brand new to her. I could spend more money on that, but she's not even going to remember. I could have a nicer car, I could have a nicer home, especially if I didn't live in Boston. I could go on more lavish vacations, but I understand that God has called me to be a giver. Therefore, when my needs are met, I set money aside to be generous. Before making a purchase, ask, do I need this? Do I need this? That's a great question. Why am I thinking of making this purchase? Am I thinking of the taker mentality or the giver mentality?

And then Proverbs 13:7 ... By the way, all of these principles are to be held in tension. It's like buoys that keep you financially afloat, so just think about it like that. Proverbs 13:7, "One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing. Another pretends to be poor yet has great wealth." I'd rather be the latter than the former. And not in the terms of I want to trick you, but in terms of this is the lifestyle that I'm content with. And I'm living under my means to be more generous. Four, steward wisely. The idea of stewardship is that obsolete everything belongs to God, everything, and he gives us good gifts. He entrusts things to us so that we work as wise trustees and that we manage everything he's given us well. If you brought in someone, a financial consultant, if you brought them in and say, "Hey, can you help me manage my finances?" What would they say?

Write that down, do that. They'd say something like, "Do you have a budget? Is that in the Bible? Scripture says, "Keep well, "Proverbs 27:23, "keep well the condition of your flocks, give attention to your herds." Obviously, we don't have flocks and herds, but he's talking about your wealth. Do you know how much you're bringing in and how much you're spending? Are you keeping track of your stuff? Are you taking care of everything God has given you? Luke 14 talks about don't build a tower without calculating assumption that we calculate. Proverbs 23:3-4 says, "By wisdom, a house is built and by understanding it is established. By knowledge, the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches." We are to think strategically about our finances, and that assumes, stewardship assumes priorities.

What are my financial priorities? If I look at my finances, do they reflect, does my spending, does my investing, does all of that reflect my values? If I say that I love God with all of my heart, soul, strength, and mind, if I love neighbor as myself, do my finances reflect that? And so the priority number one is obviously God, it's obviously people. But then practically, scripture talks about investing in prioritization. Proverbs 24:27, "Prepare your work outside, get everything ready for yourself in the field. And after that, build your house." It's a powerful principle. Like don't invest in a house before you invest in a career, the way that you make money. If you don't have money to pay the bills, then don't buy new stuff, pay your bills first. The prioritization, steward your prioritization.

What good is it to build a beautiful house and then you don't have money to carry that cost. And then there's no food on the table. And also we are to steward our financial reputation. Financial reputation is important. Credit score is important. But also in terms of financial reputation, I'll add what do your friends think about your financial decisions? They obviously think something, so ask them what they think. Sit down with your friends, people who know you best, Christians in your life and say, "Hey, what do you think about my finances? Where do you see folly in my decisions?" If you gave me that kind of openness, I've got all kinds of advice for you because this is what greed does. It blinds us to that reality. So that's important. Proverbs 22:1, "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold." What's your financial reputation? Steward it well.

Five, save wisely. Proverbs 21:20, precious treasure and oil are in a wise man's dwelling, but a foolish man devours it. Another translation says, the wise man saves for the future, the fool spends everything they get. you're trapped in this paycheck to paycheck, work, spend, work cycle. and we are to save. We are to have some kind of contingency fund, financial advisors say three to six months of expenses set aside. Proverbs 22:3, "The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it." We are to think, "Okay, this is what the future might bring, I don't know, God is sovereign. But he's given me an intellect, He's given me reason. I should set money aside just in case, I should set money aside for retirement." It's wise to save so that we continue to be in position of givers not takers.

Building wealth is wise according to scripture. Proverbs 14:24, "The crown of the wise is their wealth, but the folly of fools brings folly." And again why we're not hoarding up stores of treasures for ourselves is so that we can be even more generous than we are now continuing to grow in generosity. Examples of incredibly wealthy people in scripture, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, David, Solomon, Job. These people gave generously in their life as they built up wealth and then gave even more generously later on. If you calculate how much David gave to build the temple in Israel, we're talking about over $100 billion, massive amounts of money. Abraham was incredibly wealthy and even before the law came, he tithes to Melchizedek. Why? Because he had saved up, and then he gives to God's work. Jacob promises to God, "If you bless me, I'll give you a 10th." So we see that principle.

Saving also doesn't contradict Matthew 6:19-20. Matthew 6:19-21 says, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." Don't lay up treasures for yourself here, lay up treasures for yourself in heaven. But one of the ways we do that is by taking earthly treasures and generously giving, generously sacrificing. In Luke 16, it talks about be generous financially, make friends with finances in order like these people, if they get converted, when they see your generosity because that points to the generosity of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, they go to heaven. And in heaven, you have an internal relationship. And verse 21, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

It doesn't say where your heart is, that's where your treasure will be, although that's true too. It says where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be also. Meaning your treasures shape your heart, they shape your affections. Where your money goes, that's where your heart follows. If you invest in a company and you're checking your stock every day, and it's like. Or, "Yeah." It does something to your heart. So invest in eternal things, that's what he's saying. We are to invest in save ... Practically, we see this Joseph, God puts him in number two spot in the kingdom of Egypt. And they save for seven years, seven years of plenty in order to store up an emergency fund for seven years of hunger. And Proverbs talks about learning from the aunt that stores food in the summer for the winter.

One thing I will say, don't save out of fear, don't save out of greed. And don't save out of a desire to be financially independent from God. We will never get to a point where we are independent from God. Revelation 3:17, "For you say I am rich, I've prospered, I need nothing." That's a false statement, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. And six says invest wisely. We see the principle of investment in scripture in parable of talents, talks about investing. Matthew 25:27, "Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers. And at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest." In Proverbs 31, "The wise woman invests in real estate, invests in business." Ecclesiastes 11 talks about cast your bread upon the waters. And the idea is invest in seven to eight ventures because you don't know what kind of disaster will come, it talks about diversification. And God has weaved this principle of sowing and reaping into the universe spiritually and physically.

Second Corinthians 9:6, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. In Matthew 13, Jesus gives us two little parables. And he says, "The kingdom of God is like this." And the reason why it's such a powerful parable is because they're based on genuine financial principles. And it goes like this. Matthew 13:44, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." Back before there were banks, secure finances, people sometimes saved treasure in fields. And this guy is just digging all of a sudden, oh wow. And then he goes and he's like, "It's not my field." And he goes and sells everything, liquidates everything to invest in this one field because of the treasure inside.

And the spiritual principle is Jesus is our greatest treasure, therefore he's worth giving up everything to get him. But the financial principle is we are to invest in a potential that we see. In verse 45, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of the find pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it." And why do we invest again? It's to be as generous as we can be in the future as well. The good Samaritan sees a person in need and can respond immediately to that need which took finances because he had the finances at hand. Start as early as you can in terms of investment. Why? Because of the eighth wonder of the world.

This is what Einstein called, compound interest. Eighth wonder of the world where your interest off the money that you invested begins to make interest. You're making money off the money, it's a potent force. And then as what we have been entrusted by God, as it grows, we can be more generous. Proverbs 3:27, "Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it." Proverbs 13:22, "A good man leaves inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous." Actually, I called my dad yesterday and I was like, "Hey, pops, what are you thinking about a will?" I'm like, "I've been writing a sermon on finances." He's like, "Oh, that's a good idea." And this is the way he's been thinking. It's like, yeah, inheritance, not just for your kids, but for the ... Not just for the next generation, I'm thinking about the one after that.

And it's not just in terms of money, and we'll talk about this in the final sermon of the series, leaving a legacy. But incredible legacy, like I am investing into the next generation both spiritually and physically so that it continues to bring a return on investment. The other thing I'll mention here is that we are to reduce risk as we age. We get this from Ecclesiastes 5:13, "There is a grievous evil that I've seen under the sun, riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is a father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand." And point seven is stay out of debt. Scripture talks about debt as a trap, that it can be debilitating almost in a sense that we handcuff ourselves with golden handcuffs.

Scripture doesn't forbid, prohibit debt, but it characterizes debt as a form of bondage because that comes at a cost. You gotta pay interest on that debt in order to service that debt. And whatever that interest is, that's time of your life that you have given to another entity. I understand there's good debt and bad debt. First of all, be careful, stay out of bad debt. And if you get in debt, you're going to make a plan to get out as quickly as possible because the righteous persons, Psalm 37:21 says the wicked borrows but does not pay back. But the righteous is generous and gives. We are to pay whatever debts we take out. Proverbs 22:7, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is a slave to the lender. And then also scripture talks about to the best of your ability, stay away from co-signing because you're taking on the debt of another person.

Romans 13:7-8, pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Owe no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. And this also has to do with working honestly at your job. Don't steal time from your bosses. And also has to do with honest pay that bosses are to pay employees what they are worth. Leviticus 19:13 says, "You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning." James 5:4, "Behold the wages are the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts."

First Timothy 5:17-18, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching," preaching as a labor, "and teaching for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain and the laborer deserves his wages." So we have to pay people what they are worth. All of that to say lion your finances. Why? Again, the end goal is we live to give so that we can be as generous as we possibly can be toward God, toward family, and toward people. So first of all, give to the Lord. The Lord has given us everything, he's given us Christ. We are bought at a precious price, it cost him his life and his blood. So we are to give to God.

In the Old Testament, God does give us the principle of the tithe that we are to give 10% of everything God gives us, why? Deuteronomy 14:23, "That you may learn to fear the Lord your God always." That we learn by giving to God a portion proportionately of what he's given us, it deepens our reverence for God. We're saying, God, you've given me everything. This is a reminder that everything is yours, and I'm giving you a portion of it back. Proverbs 3:9, "Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce." It's all God's before it's uncle Sam's, first portion to the Lord. And Lord, why do you? He doesn't need our money. But first of all, what this does is it blesses us because spiritually we're reminded it's more blessed to give than to receive. We honor the Lord in obedience. And then also this is God's incredible plan of getting the Gospel out where he saves people, turns them through the Gospel from takers to givers.

And then they give in order for other takers to become givers. Why do we give? God doesn't need, but God chooses to use this system in order to get the truth out. My youngest daughter, and I talk about taker to giver, it's a process of maturity. That's why I want my kids to learn that they are not the center of the universe, but they're takers. I remember the first time I really realized how much my parents invested in me was when I moved out of college and I moved down to DC, and I was working at my first job. For the very first time in my life, I bought my own groceries and I remember how painful that was, "What, $56 on groceries?" And only then did I begin, "Oh, someone's been paying for my groceries for 22 years."

I try to teach my daughters this, my daughter Milana, she is two and five months. I gave her a lollipop this week. I gave her a lollipop, and she's loving that lolli. She takes it, and I said, "Can I have some lollipop? Can I have a lick?" And she says, "No, mine." And I was like, "Technically, no. I just bought that, it's actually mine." She don't understand that part. Then I said, "Oh, so you don't love me?" And then she's like, she comes up to me and she's like. Meaning I do love you but not enough to tithe the lollipop. So we sing worship songs to God, "God, I love you, I love you." Scripture says they honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.

And this is like, do I really love God when a portion of your finances you give to him? Scripture talks about in Second Corinthians 8:9, talks about giving joyfully because God has lavished his grace. We want to give to God joyfully not under compulsion. I'm not giving because I have to, I'm giving you because I get to. And we do it sacrificially or proportionately. And we do it as a response to the spiritual blessings he's given us. First Corinthians 9:11, "If you have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap spiritual things from you?" So we have to invest in particular in Gospel ministries that bless us and others. Here's how I think about, you're to give to things that you're invested, that you believe in, your spiritually invested in. Here's how I think about my giving.

I believe that the number one way to impact eternity is Gospel ministry where people meet Jesus and for eternity as they will spend with God. So I believe in that. And I believe that strategically, there's strategic ways of getting the Gospel out in an enduring way. And the most effective way of reaching people, enduring way is planting churches. Gospel is proclaimed through churches, the churches remain the root. And then they plant other churches so that ... This is why I give to church, this is why I give to this church. It's hard to make a case you have to give this amount to the local church. But we are as God's kids, we are called to give to build his kingdom here. Here's why I say this, professing Christians in the United States have an annual income of 2.5 trillion. You know how much we give of that as professing Christians in the United States on average? We give 2.5%. Giving among non-Christians to charitable giving in the United States, 2.5%.

And this is all to say that if our hearts have been transformed by God, if we have received the greatest gift that there is, then how are we not more generous than other people? And there's two false extremes when it comes to the tithe. One extreme is I'm going to give 10%, the rest of the money is mine, I can do whatever I want. Within scripture, it says, "No, we are to continue growing in generosity." The other extreme is I'm going to live on necessities, give everything away. And my question is, when does that stop? Do I give away my shower every day? No, definitely not. Am I giving away my coffee? I'm not. Early on in my ministry, I was like, "If you buy a cup of coffee everyday, this is how much money you waste."

It makes me more productive. And more productive makes everything better. God does want us to enjoy life. It brings God pleasure when we enjoy his gifts, and he gives us richly to be enjoyed. John 2, Jesus comes to a wedding and they run out of wine. And he's like, "No, we're not going to waste any more money on wine like that, we're going to give everything away to missions." He's like, "No, fill it up with water." Best wine ever. And if you're a Baptist, grape juice, best grape juice. Nehemiah 8 says, "When we celebrate, eat the fat, drink the wine." John 12, Judas objects, a woman comes in and pours out perfume on Jesus that cost $25,000, and it seems what a waste. And Jesus says, "She will be remembered for all of eternity."

First Timothy 6:17-19, it says, "God richly provides us with everything to enjoy," so we're going to keep that in balance. Number two, we are to provide for our households. First Timothy 5:8, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." So we are to provide for our family because if we don't then someone else has to. So this is the way I think about it, I provide for my kids but I want them to grow into givers. And I think about, okay, I provide for them now, I also got to provide for their education so that they can be givers and grow generosity in the future. Point three is give generously. And this is the final point, the final purpose of why God has given us money is to give.

Luke 6:38, "Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you." So we are to give to other people. And one of the ways that we give, and this is for the entrepreneurs and the business owners in the community, one of the ways that we give is building businesses in order to provide jobs for other people. And I get this from Deuteronomy 24:19, "When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it, it shall be for the sojourner, that's the immigrant, the fatherless, the orphan, the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you and all the work of your hands."

So he's saying to business owners who've invested, who've taken all the risk, don't maximize profits. You create opportunities to work for the immigrant, the widow, the orphan. So you're giving them not just money for their needs, but opportunity for work. So the gleaning laws as they are called, they required work from the marginalized and provided jobs for them. Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup says 60 years into our global data collection effort, we may have already found the single most searing, clarifying, helpful world altering fact. What the whole wants is a good job. This is one of the most important discoveries Gallup has ever made, found. Like one of the ways that we grow in generosity is by creating opportunities. So we need to ask if you are a business owner, have I squeezed all the profit out of my proverbial field? Am I treating the employees in my company as labor costs to be controlled or as human beings to be cared for?

And where do we get the wisdom and the power to live like this, live generously, lining our finances and lambing with generosity? We get it from Jesus Christ who gave himself completely. He didn't tithe this blood but gave everything. And that lavish grace empowers us to give. Here at the end, I'll just say this, no one can really tell you exactly what to do in your personal situation. That's why we're so thankful for the Holy Spirit. And when we ask God, God, what would you have, which area in my life do I need to work on so that I can grow in generosity? God gives us that. Brad Hewitt, CEO of Thrivent Financial said, "I describe money as love or service in storable or transferable form." That's what money is, money is a tool to demonstrate love and to serve other people.

Proverbs 11:25, "Whoever brings blessing will be enriched. And the one who waters will himself be watered." Why do we do everything we do motivated by love? First Corinthians 13:3, "If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing." The points real quick, if you missed any line in your finances, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and lamb your finances. Give to the Lord, provide for your household, and give generously. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the Gospel. We thank you that through the Gospel of Jesus Christ who gave himself for takers, takers can be transformed into givers. And I pray that you continue to grow us and generosity as you pour grace upon grace on each one of us. And I pray this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Summary:

The question we’re going to wrestle with this week is, “why is trust something that needs to be built at all?” Why is trust so hard to gain, and so easy to lose? More importantly, how can we master the art of not just creating the perception of trust, but actually being stable, reliable, trustworthy and likable people ourselves? How can we, as follower of Jesus, become the kind of people that others like to be with, and want to be like?

Audio Transcript:

Good morning and welcome again to Mosaic. It's good to see you and if you're new, welcome. So glad you're here. My name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic and we'd love to connect you. The way we do that officially is through that little Connection Card in your worship guide. We'd love it if you could fill that out for us and just drop those in the offering baskets later on, or if you turn them in at the Welcome Center out front, we have a little gift we'd love to give to you this morning, as well as some more information about the church.

Just a couple of announcements before we get started. Pastor Jan already mentioned it, but in case you came in late, for the members of Mosaic, there is a members meeting next week and it's a really important one: we're going to be voting on Andy Hoot, our pastoral resident, he's actually completed his residency, but we're going to be voting on him to become a pastor here at Mosaic, and so definitely come and show your support for that. But not only is this a members meeting, it's also a potluck. So make sure you bring something good to eat to share with some people as well.

And then, if you've been coming to Mosaic for a few weeks now and we understand the ebb and flow of the city. A lot of people move here and a lot of people move around, especially throughout the summer and during September, and if you've been coming to Mosaic for a little while and you're looking to get more meaningfully connected, we want to help you with that and the best way to do that is through our community groups. We have a lot of great groups that meet all over the city, throughout the week, in people's homes. We even have a couple groups that meet on Sunday afternoons here at the temple, in case your weekday schedule is just too packed. But it's just a smaller, more intimate environment where you can really begin to build some meaningful relationships with people in the church.

We actually have a bunch of new groups starting up, and so we have groups all over the city and we've got a few new ones starting up. Watertown, Newton, Brighton, here in Brookline, Mission Hill, we've got a group starting even in Medford and Wellesley, so if you're living a little bit farther out from our location here, but definitely check those out and I encourage you to get plugged in.

All right. I'm going to pray for us and then we'll jump into the sermon this morning. God, we need you. Apart from you, we are all treading water in an endless sea. And yet, with you, you give us the only foundation on which we can plant our feet. You are the rock that we stand on. You are the anchor for our soul. We thank you that you are trustworthy and true. You are faithful.

And you've promised to always be with us and for us, to never leave us or forsake us, and Lord, we ask that as your people that you would make us a people like you. That you would make us a people who are trustworthy, true, a people who are reliable and stable.

We pray right now that you come right now and just through your word, speak to us what we need to hear. If we need encouragement, I pray you would give us encouragement. If we need conviction, I pray that you would give us conviction, Lord, and that you would minister to us by the power of your Spirit and shape us, form us more into the image of your son, Jesus Christ.

It's in his name we pray, amen.

So this fall, we are going through a sermon series called Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life. And what we're doing is we're taking a look and we're applying this theme that we see throughout scripture to different practical areas of our life, and it's this theme that God is both/and. He is both just and merciful. He is both truth and love, that Jesus is the lion and the lamb; that is he confident and humble, that he is tough and tender. And when you look at the life of Jesus Christ, you see that he had this amazing stability and resilience that was extremely, profoundly attractive in his time and yet, if we're honest, it's majorly, majorly lacking in ours. That Jesus had a tough mind. He had thick skin and yet, he also had a tender heart.

So we see that he did hard things and he spoke hard truths and he faced hard opposition, and through it all, he also loved hard people. And as we're going through this series, this is what we want to do: is how can we become more like him? How can we become more like that? What would happen in our church, in our city, in our culture, if more people were tough and tender like Jesus Christ?

And so today, we're going to be looking at a certain quality that tough and tender people have, it's a quality that Jesus had and it's the quality of being reliable, of being trustworthy. Are you a trustworthy person?

We live in a culture where trust is hard to come by and it's actually on the decline. On a broad level, the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer reported sharp declines in trust toward major institutions. That right now, only about one third of Americans trust their government to do what is right. Only about 42% trust what they hear from the media. And now, on a more personal level, we don't need some massive report and statistics to tell us that people are hard to trust.

Trust is not our default, when we begin a relationship. Trust is not our baseline. It's something that needs to be earned; it needs to be kept. It's hard to get and it's easy to lose. And Scripture actually talks about this from the beginning. That in the beginning, trust was the baseline. You read the description of Adam and Eve in the Garden and what it tells us about them is that they were naked but not ashamed.

Now, naked, obviously it's talking about something deeper than just physically, that they were emotionally, factually ... spiritually, they were completely open and vulnerable with one another and yet not afraid. They had no reason to be afraid. Apart from sin, and in the presence of God, they were free. They were free to just fully trust and fully love without fear and then Genesis 3 happens and all of that is lost.

Genesis 3, sin enters the Garden and trust leaves the Garden. All of a sudden, there is reason to fear, and the first thing we see Adam and Eve do is what? They begin sewing leaves together to create garments to cover their nakedness. I'm afraid to let you see me for who I really am, because I don't like who I really am and if you find out who I really am, you're not going to like me, either. They covered themselves.

The next thing they do is they not only do that, but then they run and hide from God. They feel the guilt before this holy God and they're afraid and they know what their sin deserves, so they run and they had and then ultimately, they begin to turn against one another. They begin to blame one another, and in order to build themselves up, they start tearing one another down. They've lost the freedom that came with their innocence. And in its place is this guilt, is this shame that their trust was replaced with suspicious and with contention and they begin competing with one another for justification.

So this is where we are, this is the world that we live in. We're not able to trust without taking risks. Right? In order to trust someone, you're taking the risk that they might hurt you; that they might let you down. In order to trust someone, you're taking the risk that they might find out who you really are, find you out and reject you.

And we all want to be close to people. We want people in our lives who are stable, who are reliable, who are trustworthy, but who can we trust? That's one question to ask. But I think a more important question to ask is this: how can we become the kind of people who can be trusted? How can we become the kind of people that other people actually just like to be with and want to be like because they see that we're reliable, steadfast, trustworthy people? And just imagine what could happen. Imagine if a church full of trustworthy, reliable, likable people, just saturated the city like Boston. That's kind of what we're going to be talking about today.

So, as we do, we're going to be looking at Paul's second letter to his disciple Timothy. 2 Timothy 3, if you want to follow along in your Bibles. And as we do, we've got three points framing up our time. Point number one: afraid to trust. Two: a friend to trust. And then three: a formative trust.

And we're going to start by looking at 2 Timothy 3:1-5, and then also verses 10 and 11. So Paul writing to Timothy, he says this. He says: "But understand this: that in the last days, there will comes times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people."

And going on to verse 10, he says: "But you, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness. My persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, which persecutions I endured, yet from them all, the Lord rescued me."

This is God's holy word for us this morning. Point number one: afraid to trust. When you look at the first four verses of this chapter, you see this long list of just unstable, unlikable, untrustworthy people. That these are the kind of people that you don't like to be with and you don't want to be like. And in the context of 1 and 2 Timothy, what's going on is Paul is giving this young man Timothy instructions for how to be a good pastor.

And as a pastor of his church, Timothy's job is not to do all the work of the ministry on behalf of the church. He's not a hired gun, which is a common misconception in a lot of churches today, but Timothy's job was instead to equip the church for the work of the ministry, to equip the saints. In other words, Timothy, as the pastor, he needed to recruit and assess and train and develop people in the church in order to entrust them with the responsibility for the ministry. So his job was to equip and to entrust the church but he was also called to shepherd the church.

And what this means is that Timothy also had the responsibility to guard and to protect the church. And specifically, he needed to guard and protect from false teachers and from false teachings and so as Paul is telling Timothy, "Listen, you need to raise people up and entrust them with ministry, but you need to do so carefully. You need to do so cautiously. You need to use wisdom and discernment, because not everyone is going to be deserving of that trust."

Now, he even says that some are going to have the appearance of godliness but deny its power. There's going to be imposters. There's going to be hypocrites who pose a danger to the church and so even if things look good on the outside, that's not always a good indication of what's going on inside. It's not always a good indication of what is going on behind closed doors, so you need to be cautious. You need to be careful.

He begins by using this phrase 'in the last days.' When we think about that, it might be tempting to be like, "Okay, well, he's talking about something later on in the future and so this doesn't really apply to us right now." But that's now how Scripture uses that phrase. Actually, when Scripture uses this phrase, it's describing the entire period of time between Jesus's resurrection and his return.

And so, in some ways, it does refer to future events, but it does so in a way that also refers to present reality. And it does it with the implications of the way things are right now, things are going to ebb and flow throughout human history, but right before Jesus returns, there's going to be this intensification. Things are going to become a little more extreme, and so yeah, Paul's talking about something in the future, but he's also talking about something that was practically relevant to Timothy at the time.

And if we're honest with ourselves, right? If we read this description carefully, thoughtfully, he's talking about us, as well. Every single one of us finds ourself on this list somewhere. No, we're not going those qualities up on our LinkedIn, but let's be honest, like ... Okay, let's see how far we get.

Number one, lovers of self. I failed already. Why'd you have to start there, Paul? Couldn't you start with murderer or something, like? Lovers of money. This is not looking good. Proud. Arrogant. Abusive. It goes on and on.

And I said earlier, this is a list of people that we don't like to be with and that we don't want to be like. It's too late; we are like this. We're with people like this every day. And so here's the point.

It's not enough to say that other people are hard to trust. I can't even trust myself. I don't even fully know or understand myself. I question my motives. I'm suspicious of my own desires; I can't trust my own heart because I know that it's broken and sick with sin.

Jeremiah 17:9 says that, "The heart is deceitful is above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?" Next time someone says just follow your heart, you just quote that verse back to them. Not a good idea.

Paul wrestles with this himself in Romans 7:18 when he says this, he says, "I know that nothing good dwells in me. That is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing, wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And he says in verse 25, "But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord."

If we can't trust others and we can't even trust ourselves, well then who's left to trust? Who can we trust? Who can deliver us from this body of death, there is only one. There's only one person to have ever lived who did not make this list of vices that Paul gives us at the beginning of Chapter 3.

And actually, if you look at his life, his life was the antithesis of this list. You take this list, you flip it upside down, you read it through the opposite lens and what you begin to see is Jesus Christ. Jesus was not a lover of self, a lover of money. He perfectly loved others. He was generous. He was humble. He was meek. He was compassionate. He honored his earthly parents and his heavenly Father. He was always grateful, holy, tenderhearted, content with what he had. He spoke the truth and he spoke it with love. He practiced self-control. He was gentle. He loved what is good. He was trustworthy, responsible, eager to serve others, he loved God more than worldly comforts or pleasures and had a deep, abiding godliness that he attributed to the power of the Holy Spirit.

And this brings us to point two, that Jesus Christ is the friend that we can trust and he's the friend that we need. Paul begins his list in verse two saying that people will be lovers of self, but then he ends in verse four by saying, "And they will not be lovers of God," and this is the root of the problem. Our biggest problem is not a behavior problem; our biggest problem is a heart problem.

It is a problem of disordered loves and idolatry. That everything listed between the start of verse two and the end of verse four is merely symptomatic of this problem that we don't love others because we don't love God and we don't love God because we're scared.

We're running from fear because we know that we stand guilty before a holy God. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, "This is the judgment." Verse 19: "That the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed."

This part's not nearly as famous as John 3:16, that Jesus said a little bit earlier, but it's true. Adam and Eve ran and hid from God in the Garden and we're still running and hiding from him today.

And this is the question that we need to ask is, well then how and why should we trust and love a God whose justice and law has rightly judged us guilty and deserving of death?

Now, this is where it is helpful to back up to John 3:16, because just a few verses earlier, Jesus also said this. He said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him."

The reason that we should love God is because he first loved us. The reason that we should trust God is Jesus Christ. And so, how can we trust a God whose justice rightly demands that we die? It is only by understanding that his love desires that we live, that his love desires that he somehow show us mercy and that even while we were dead in our sins and enemies of God and running and hiding from him, his love compelled him to send his Son, to seek and to save the lost, to mercifully lay down everything in order to give us life.

So the secret to loving God is to acknowledge that you can't love God, that you don't love God and you won't love God until you accept that he first loved you. This is what John tells us in 1 John, Chapter Four, he says, "And this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. By this is love perfected in us, so that we may have confidence, no longer fear, but confidence for the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us."

Jesus Christ, through his atonement on the cross became the propitiation for our sins, and what that means is that he appeased God's righteous anger toward our sin so that we no longer need to run from him in fear but can run to him for mercy. That Jesus Christ took our sentence, he took our penalty, our punishment, upon himself. He paid the debt and he settled our account. He takes our guilt, he exchanges it for his righteousness.

And this is amazing. What this means is that God in his infinite, eternal wisdom has made a way to show guilty people mercy, without compromising his own holiness or justice. That he remains just and yet, becomes the justifier of all who repent and put their faith in Christ. And this is what Paul tells us in Romans, Chapter 3.

Verse 21: "That now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believed. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, who God put forward as propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins, he was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

This changes everything. When you understand that you are so bad that the only possible solution to your badness is that Jesus Christ, the perfect son of God would come and die for you? That leaves you incredibly contrite, repentant, and humble. It kills your pride and it makes you tender. But when you also understand that you are so loved by God and that he, in his divine character is so merciful that he willingly did that for you? That gives you an unshakeable boldness and confidence and courage as a child of God. That his perfect loves drives out fear and it leaves with you with this lion-like toughness, this confidence.

This is what makes Jesus the friend that we can trust. It's not just that he loves us. It's that he fully knows us and he still chooses to love us. We didn't earn it; we can't lose it, and therefore, we should never doubt it. We should never doubt his faithfulness or love. Jesus is the sure, solid, unshakeable foundation. And when we build our lives on him, his stability begins to add stability to every other aspect of our lives.

Romans 8, one of the most beautiful passages in Scripture. Like, this is one of those passages every Christian should just memorize. But in it, Paul writes this. He says that: "We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Those whom he predestined, he also called and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then, shall we say to these things? For if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died. More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love Christ?"

"Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it's written, for your sake, we're being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our lord."

Proverbs 18:24 says that, "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." In our world of many companions, Jesus is the true friend. He is the true big brother that our hearts long for and need. He knows us completely. Yet, he loves us sacrificially and the good work that he began in us at the moment of our justification, he is guaranteed to continue on to completion until the moment of our glorification.

And this brings us to point three, that when we put our faith and trust, that when we build our life on him, that trust is a formative trust. It begins to add stability to the rest of our lives as well.

Psalm 25:9 says, "He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humbles his ways. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose."

The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant, that the faithfulness and the friendship of Jesus Christ, this should have a formative effect in our lives that makes us faithful, steadfast, trustworthy people as well.

So Paul begins 2 Timothy 3, and he's got this list of like, really vicious people to avoid, but then in verse 10 and 11, he shows us another way. He shows us how we as followers of Jesus can live instead.

And so, 2 Timothy 3:1, he starts out, he says, "Understand this. In the last days, there will come times of difficulty for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive," he goes on and on, but then he gets down to verse 10. And he says, "But you, Timothy, you however, you followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness. My persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch and Iconium and Lystra, which persecutions I endured yet from them all, the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from who you learned it and how from childhood, you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able make to wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."

How do you live in a world full of faithless people? How do you live in a world where there's just people you can't trust? Well, Paul's advice to Timothy is not so much about them, it's about him. It's about you, Timothy. You, Timothy, embody the change that you want to see in others and then continue in that no matter what it may cost.

And so, you Timothy, and to us, as disciples of Jesus, what this means is that we need to become the kind of people that are worthy of others' trust. We need to become the kind of people that other people just like to be with and they want to be like because we're reliable, we're stable, we're steadfast. Become the humble, confident, lion/lamb, tough/tender people that we've been called to be in Christ.

And here in this last section, I just want to break down verses 10 through 13 and as I do, I borrowed some wisdom from Pastor Jan. I'm gong to give you 10 marks of a trustworthy person. I don't know if this is going to be a common theme throughout this season, but point three has 10 sub points, some of those points have dove points and so, we're going to rapid, rapid fire. Really quick through this.

But 10 marks of a trustworthy person, as we go through these, this is what we need to ask ourselves. Number one, do I have these qualities in myself and if so, do I have a lion-like toughness to stand firm in them and not waver, no matter what circumstances I might go through in life?

And then, number two: am I also growing in these qualities? Do I have a lamb-like tenderness and teachability in order to continue developing in these areas, because we're never going to be perfect in any of them, at least not in this lifetime.

So those are the questions to ask we go. 10 marks of a trustworthy person. The first one is so intuitive, so you know, obvious that it might seem cliché, but a trustworthy person has integrity. And Paul begins verse 10, he says to his disciple Timothy that, "You have followed my example," in what? "In teaching and in conduct." That Paul talked the talk but he also walked the walk and the things that he taught were integrated, with his lifestyle. He was a man of integrity. And trustworthy people, they need to strive to be people of integrity.

Number two is intention. He says, "You followed me in my aim in life," that Paul was upfront about his motives. His aim was clear. He didn't have a hidden agenda, right? He had a clear mission, a clear purpose and he wore it on his sleeve. People knew what he was about and they knew what he was doing and why he was doing it. And trustworthy people, they make their intentions, their motives clear and they stick to them.

And number three is faith. Paul says, "You followed my example in faith," and Paul's faith was exemplary, actually in a few different ways. First of all, Paul's faith meant that he was a man who was securely anchored. Right? Paul was not a loose cannon. He was not a ship being tossed about in the waves of doubt. He wasn't double-minded. He wasn't one person one day and another person the next. He had this strong faith that kept him anchored. He was unwavering in his convictions and he wasn't swayed by the opinions of others. He wasn't swayed by his own emotions or even by his circumstance.

And so, he was securely anchored. Secondly though, he was also boldly optimistic. Paul was not a cynical or pessimistic person, although we might look at his life and say that he had reason to be. But he boldly trusted God's goodness and sovereignty, even through the suffering and persecution that he faced. He still had hope; he had peace and he had joy because he trusted that God was working it all together for his good. He was boldly optimistic.

And thirdly, he was also courageously ambitious. He set great goals and he attempted great things for God, even when it came at great cost to himself. And Pastor Jan preached an entire sermon last week you can go back and listen to about setting godly goals, but Paul was a man who had a godly ambition.

He wasn't fearful. He wasn't timid. He didn't procrastinate. He had confidence. He set those goals and he worked hard toward them.

Number four is patience. Paul said, "You followed my example in patience." Trustworthy people don't freak out and fly off the handle as soon as things don't go according to plan. Right? Instead, they give stability to everyone else who's freaking out as things don't go according to plan. Patient people are slow to be anxious.

Patient people are not quick to take offense; they don't take things personally. They're not quick to judge; they give people the benefit of the doubt. They don't lose their temper. They're quick to forgive. Things can roll off their back. They keep their emotions in check. They set reasonable expectations for others. They don't honk as soon as the light turns green, they wait a few seconds and then, you tap it. Politely. That's how you do it. Life skills, Boston.

But they live by the Golden Rule. They treat people the way they would want to be treated. Patiently.

Number five is love. You followed my example in love, and trustworthy people don't love, they love and there's a difference and Paul's using a specific word for love here that I think our culture really needs. It's the word 'agape,' it's not a love that's marked by feelings and sentiment. It's a mark, it's a love that's marked by commitment and sacrifice.

Our world loves love but the love that they love, it's a phony love. It's a shallow love. Our love expects us to muster up these sentimental feelings about things and then act on them before those feelings run out but agape love says, "I'm going to take action. I'm going to do the right thing, regardless of how I feel."

Agape love says that I'm not going to do things just because they feel good but because they actually do good. And this is where you begin to see that agape love doesn't always feel like love on the surface. We talked a few weeks ago on the importance of speaking the truth in love. That if you really care about things, sometimes you have to speak truths, things that are hard for people to hear, but you do so motivated by love. And this is the mark of a trustworthy person, because nobody trusts a yes man. Nobody trusts the person who always is ready to tell you what you want to hear.

Now at the same time, nobody likes a critic, but when you have someone who can come to you and offer you constructive, heartfelt criticism, not gossiping behind your back, but actually one-on-one to your face because they genuinely care about you? That's a true friend; that's a person that you can trust. Trustworthy people love.

Number six is steadfastness. You followed my example in being steadfast. Trustworthy people, they're people that you can rely on. If they say they're going to do something; they do it. If they make a promise, they keep it. Their word is their bond. Right? If they make an appointment, they show up ready and on time. This is a life hack, but in Boston, what that means, is that you always leave five minutes earlier than you think you have. Because the T's always going to be late; traffic's always going to be bad. There's always going to be a million excuses, but when that happens, it communicates something to that other person. If you're the person who's always late, who's never prepared.

It's non-verbally telling other people, "My time is more valuable than yours." But when you're consistent, when you show up when you say you're going to show up and you show up ready to go, it communicates like, "I care about you and I value your time." And that creates trust in people.

Steadfast people, they're not afraid of commitment and they're also not fools with commitment, and so what that means is that they count the cost before starting something and then, once they do start something, they carry it on to completion, that they're faithful. They follow through.

And in order to do this, we need to be a people who use our yes and our and meaningfully and thoughtfully and intentionally. Jesus told his disciples that you should let your yes be yes and your no be no and that anything beyond this comes from the evil one, but steadfast people, when they say yes to something, they mean it. And they also have the courage and the wisdom and the humility to know when they need to say no.

And listen, every time you say yes to something, you are automatically saying no to something else. So, are you doing that intentionally? Are you doing that with wisdom? If you're going to say yes to great things in life, you're going to be required to say no to a whole lot of, a 100 million little good things that want to take you and pull you away from that.

But if we're going to be the people that make commitments and follow through on them, that's what we need to do. And so this is a discipline that steadfast people learn.

Number seven is persecution. This one might seem strange to be on the list, but when you think about it, it makes sense. Paul says, "You followed my example in persecution."

If a person actually has integrity and convictions, a clear purpose, if they hold fast to what they believe, in general, that's going to make them more trustworthy and likable. But it's also going to mean there's always going to be a certain group of people that hate them for it.

This is Jesus. Jesus is the most trustworthy, likable person to have ever lived, but much of what made him so also got him crucified because people who are trustworthy, they're often marked by persecution because these are the people who are willing to do the right thing even when it's no longer the popular thing.

These are the ones who stand up to the bullies on the playground. These are the ones who refuse to compromise their integrity under the pressure of their peers. And people aren't always going to like that. Paul actually tells Timothy, "All who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted."

And number eight is similar, but a little bit different. He says, "You followed my example in suffering," as well. It's hard to trust a person who's lived a really cushy life. It's hard to trust a person who's never suffered, because you really don't know the true content of a person's character until you see it tested by the fires of hardship and pain.

Now on the flip side, there are a few things more admirable than watching a person walk through difficulty, walk through suffering, but do so with hope, do so with joy, do so with grace, and this is what Paul did. Paul, you read his life. He lived a life of tremendous suffering for the Gospel. And yet, he was never grumbling, he was never complaining, he wasn't lashing out at people.

What was he doing? He was always rejoicing. He was always trusting that God was in control, that he was sovereignly working all things together for his good, and so he walked faithfully through suffering.

Number nine is endurance. Trustworthy people don't just have bursts of stability in life, they have enduring stability over the long haul, over time and over space. Right? There's a proven track record that they're not just faithful in certain areas of life for certain periods of time. They're faithful across multiple areas of life for long periods of time.

And then number 10, most importantly, is humility. Trustworthy people are humble. And it might not seem so at the surface, when Paul is like, "You have followed my example," and that you should follow my example. It might not sound like an incredibly humble thing to do, that you should imitate me.

But Paul does so and then in the end, he gives all the glory to Jesus Christ. That Jesus is the one who rescued me, that Jesus is the one who's saved me, and 1 Corinthians 11:1 he says, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ." It's all about Jesus. And he makes this even more clear a few chapters later in Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians. He says, "It's only by the grace of God that I am what I am. And his grace for me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me."

It's the humility to say yeah, I have grown in my walk with Jesus Christ. There are things about me that are worth imitating and yet, at the end of the day, it's all Jesus. It's him working in me.

I look at this list of characteristics and in the flesh, I am overwhelmed. In the flesh, being a person marked by these qualities, I'm already exhausted. I'm already tired. Like, just thinking about it. In the spirit, though, this is exhilarating.

Because like, imagine what could happen if just one person started living this way perfectly. Well, it did happen. That was Jesus Christ. We've already begun to see and to experience what could happen; it changes the whole world. Now, just imagine if we all started to live this world. Imagine if we had a community of reliable, tough, tender, humble, confident, likable, trustworthy people saturating our city.

Imagine if the streets of Boston were filled with people of integrity, purpose, faith, patience, humility and an enduring love that was steadfast, even in the face of suffering, even in the face of persecution. Now, this is who Christ is and this is who he's called us to be and this is who, by the power of his Spirit, we are to become and when that happens, when that becomes evident in your life, people are going to ask question. People are going to want to know, like, they're going to see the patience. They're going to see the peace. They're going to see the joy and wonder, "Where does that come from?"

Like sooner or later, they're going to come and then they'll say, why don't you join us in the break room when we're all gossiping behind other people's backs? Why aren't you always trash-talking the boss with the rest of us when he's not in the room? Why does there seem to be so little drama in your personal relationships? Why don't you freak out with the rest of us when the rest of us are freaking out? Where do you get this stability in your life to stay so level-headed? And this is something we need to be prepared to give an answer for.

And this is exactly what Peter, he tells us this in 1 Peter, Chapter 3. In verse eight he says, "All of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness's sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them or be troubled, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you, for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet, do it with gentleness and respect, having good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame."

God has gathered us here in this place at this time in this city to be faithful, trustworthy witnesses to his Gospel and the thing that we need to be asking ourselves is when the storms of life hits, when things get crazy, when people's stability is shattered, are they going to come to us? And if they do, are we going to have enough lion-like stability in our lives to help them?

Are we going to have enough lamb-like humility to show them that any stability that they might see in us, it all comes from Jesus Christ, that he is the rock, he is the anchor for our souls? If you're lacking that stability, just look to the cross. Look to the one who knows you completely and yet loves you sacrificially. He chooses to love you with an unfailing love.

If you're not a Christian, like we would love for you to change that today. We would love for you to become a follower of Jesus today and you do that simply by repenting and putting your faith in him. Repenting is turning from away from sin. Stop trying to build life on your own foundations and instead, trust in Jesus. Build your life on the foundation of who he is.

And if you are a Christian, for those of us who are Christians, we need to ask ourselves a couple of questions. First of all, how is your stability? Like, are you a stable, trustworthy person? Are you feeling like a leaf blowing around in the wind?

This is important, because the second question is has God put people in your life who perhaps could benefit from that stability, if you have it? People that you can love, people that you can serve and people that you can point to the source of your stability so that they can find it themselves.

I'm going to close by reading from Hebrews 13:7-8 and then we'll pray together before we continue in worship. "Remember your leaders. Those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Praise God."

Let's pray. Jesus, you have sent us on a mission to proclaim your good news to the ends of the earth and you've also promised to be with us and for us until the end of the age. And we thank you that there is no shadow of turning in you but that you are trustworthy, reliable, steadfast. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God, give us faith to never doubt your power, your goodness, your love, your grace. But grow us to be a people with a magnetic stability, a trustworthy people, a people of intriguing likability, not because of us but because people see you in us. They see the confidence and humility of Christ reflected through our conduct and faith.

Jesus, we praise you. We thank you for being the propitiation for our sins, being the reason that we can have confidence to draw near the throne of God, no longer running in fear of the punishment we deserve but receiving the unfathomable mercy that you have attained for us by your blood shed on the cross.

Father, we thank you for sending your son so that you could be just and the justifier of those who have faith in him, who trust in his name, and to you be all glory and power and honor forever and ever, we pray.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Audio Transcript:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that are a god who loves us so much that you gave your son, Jesus Christ, for us.

Jesus, we thank you that you were the most goal oriented person who has ever lived. You came with the goal to save us, to transform us, to redeem us from our sins. We thank you for your substitutionary atonement on the cross in our place, bearing the wrath of god for the wickedness and the sin that each one of us commits, sins of omission, sins of commission. We thank you for that, Jesus. We thank you for the gospel, that by grace through faith, your righteousness is transferred to us. We thank you for that.

We thank you Holy Spirit, that you have come and you empower us when we ask for strength, when we ask for a filling, you come and you lead, you guide, you infuse us with wisdom and love. We pray that you continue to do that.

Continue to build your church, Jesus. This is your church, not ours. Continue to use us as well to build your kingdom. Today, remind us that you have a purpose for us, that you have goals for us. The primary goal is to live for the glory of God, and show us how that can practically work itself out in our lives today as we turn our attention to the holy scriptures. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

We're in a sermon series that we're calling Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience For Life. Why this sermon series? First of all, because we are weak. In and of ourselves, we are weak. In particular when it comes to spiritual life. Holy scripture talks about spiritual life as a fight, fight that good fight of faith. We can't do that in and of ourselves, by our own strength or resources. We need strength from the Lord. That's number one.

The second reason why we chose to do this series is because we live in a culture that has, it's grown weak. It's a weak sauce culture. Back in the day, when life was hard, like, before indoor plumbing and electricity, the philosophy of the day was stoicism. The philosophy of the day today is what I affectionately call snowicism.

We melt under the so-called pressures of life. I can't even. Just even coming in a space like this, where it's like, "What's the WiFi password?" We're not telling you. No WiFi. The only invisible force that we connect with us God. That's why we're here.

That's why we're doing the sermon series, to develop this resilience for life that we need because we live in a broken world as broken people. We need the strength of God.

Week one, we talked about the lion-lamb paradox, that Jesus Christ is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God. When we worship him, we become more like him, both tough and tender simultaneously.

The second week we talked about taking responsibility for ourselves, our lives, our calling. Because we will give an account to God for absolutely everything.

Last week, we talked about speaking and receiving truth in love.

Today we're talking about goals. In a very important way, our lives are the sum of the decisions we make. Are you living by design, or are you living by default? Holy scripture says be careful. Pay attention to what you have received, what you have heard, lest we drift away, lest we coast through life.

The question before us today is should Christians set goals? The answer is yes, but. We are to set goals with a lion-like confidence, set them and pursue them, and simultaneously with a lamb-like humility, because we are not ultimately in control. We are responsible to do everything we possibly can to attain the goals that God has for us, and simultaneously we trust God to do the impossible.

To focus our attention, today we'll look at Proverbs 16:1-9. Would you look at the text with me?

"The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished. By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil. When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps."

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame our time together. First we'll look at the lion-lamb paradox of goals. Then we'll look at pursuing goals like a lion. Then pursuing goals like a lamb. And finally, pursuing lion-lamb goals.

Number one, the lion-lamb paradox of goals. Life is paradoxical. It's not dualistic, but it is paradoxical. There are tensions in life and tensions in faith, not to be ironed out, but be embraced. Was Jesus Christ fully man or fully God? Yes. Are the holy scriptures written by people, or was it written by the Holy Spirit? Yes. Is the Church of God comprised of people, or is it the body of Christ? Yes. There are tensions. Is God in control, or are we responsible? Is God sovereign, or do we have jobs to do? Yes.

For example, you see this tension in scripture. When it comes to making plans for our lives, Luke 14:28. The words of Jesus, "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down, count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?" There, Jesus is saying, if you are going to build something, you should sit down and think about not just the end product, but how you're going to get the resources you'll need. So you've got to plan.

Then Matthew 6:34 also says, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself, sufficient for the day as its own trouble." Are we to plan for tomorrow, or are we not to be anxious about tomorrow? Yes. Plan, but plan in a way that's not anxiety riddled. Plan in a way that you were completely relying on God. It's a paradoxical tension. We make plans and we know that the outcome is ultimately up to the Lord.

You see this in Proverbs 16:1. The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. We're absolutely free to plan in our hearts, but everything is determined at the same time.

Proverbs 16:3. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established by whom? By the Lord. Which is clarified in verse nine, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps."

Your plans are yours. We are to make plans. No one's forcing you. But the actual result of those plans, what will be accomplished, is totally controlled, totally set, totally planned, fixed, both at the same time. It's not deterministic, it's not fatalistic. It's not just destiny, whatever happens to me, God's already sovereign, I don't have to do anything. We are responsible. It's completely up to the Lord.

This is absolutely incredible, that God is absolutely sovereign, and he gives us freedom to make decisions that actually have real life implications, real eternal implications. On the one hand, praise God for his control.

Some of the most important decisions in your life you make as a teenager. Some of the most important decisions of your life you make in high school, you make in your early 20s. Decisions that impact the rest of your life. If I look back to my early 20s, I had plans for my life. Of those plans, I was probably wrong about 90% of them. In terms of career, in terms of relationships, in term of finances, 90%.

But God guides. I look back, I see the Lord guide there, guide there, guide there, guide there. And I'm so thankful to God, because even today, as we make decisions, if I was wrong about 90% back then, well, what's the percentage today? 50? I don't know. I have no idea.

We make plans, and we give them to the Lord. God relates your choices partially to your destiny, but he is the one who sets everything. God is sovereign, we are responsible. You are responsible, and yet, you can relax. I live my life like an Arminian and I sleep like a Calvinist. I do everything I possibly can. But I give it up to the Lord. God's in control.

How can I make sure that the Lord establishes my plans in a way that is beneficial to me? In a way where I am blessed? We want the Lord to bless us. We want God's best for our lives.

Well, the first step, the first step is you need to be reconciled with Christ. That's the ultimate goal. That we all have fallen short of the glory of God. We have all made plans and made decisions that didn't even have God in the equation. We need to be redeemed from that.

I'll just show you here from Proverbs 16:4-7, about in the context of making plans and fulfilling. Verse four says, "The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble." How does that sit with you? Whenever I read a passage, I'm like, I don't want to be in that category. God gives us verses like this to awaken us from the spiritual stupor, to make us ask ourselves, are we in that category of wicked?

Scripture says if you are not in Christ, you're in that category. How do you get in Christ? You accept his atonement for your sin, for your pride, for yourself, for your goal making, life planning apart from him.

This is verse five. "Everyone who is arrogant in heart," that's the pride, I'm in control of my life. "Everyone is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished."

I love that the next verse is connected to this idea, "By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for." This right here, this is a prophecy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Who's the only one who was completely faithful? The only one who was completely steadfast in love? The only one who could atone for our iniquities? Jesus Christ. By faith in Christ, through repentance, our sin is transferred to Christ on the cross. His righteousness is transferred to us. This is how salvation happens. This is how transformation happens. Iniquity is atoned for.

The first step in thinking about any life goals from a biblical perspective is, goal number one, where do I stand before God? Am I righteous before God, through the righteousness of Christ, or am I wicked? I don't want to be the wicked. Christ paid for my sin on the cross. I want to be in him. I want to be covered in his righteousness. Once you're in, God has plans for you, to bless you, to keep you and protect you, plans for you to glorify him with every ounce of your being.

Psalm 37:23, "The steps of the man are established by the Lord when he delights in his way." I want to be a person, when the Lord looks at my life, he delights in my way, because I am in Christ, abiding in Christ by grace through faith. That's point number one.

If you're not a Christian, the way that you get right with God is just in prayer, asking God, "God, forgive me. Forgive me for living in such a way where I haven't even thought about incorporating you in my plans. Living in such a way where basically God doesn't exist, I've ignored God, been absolutely indifferent to him. Grace through faith. That's point one.

Point two is pursue goals like a lion. Once you're in the Lord, once you're walking with God, God does give us goals to achieve for his glory, for our joy. This has to do with spiritual goals, but also really practical goals. We are to be a productive people for the glory of God. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it with amazing consistency. It's just common sense. If you want your life to be productive, you've got to set goals.

The common sense part, I think some Christians lose the common sense part, because we begin to over-spiritualize everything. Like, you get up in the morning, you're like, "Holy Spirit, should I brush your teeth," yes, it's common sense. "Should I go to my job?" Yeah, go to your job. You got bills to pay. The Holy Spirit does guide, but God also gives us an intellect and free will to make decisions. The Holy Spirit leads, but not only spontaneously.

I think by over-spiritualizing, we often, we use that as an excuse to cover our laziness. Laziness is a sin. Slothfulness is a sin. In the Parable of the Talents, Matthew says to the lazy, the lazy servant, the one who didn't do anything within the talent, he said, "You wicked and slothful servant." It's a sin.

Proverbs 6:6-11, talking about setting goals and productivity. "Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer, gathers her food in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to eat, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man."

Talking of the person who doesn't have goals, in particular during windows of opportunity. In the summer, the ant prepares for the winter, it's a window of opportunity. We need to plan ahead. A failure to plan ahead leads to poverty in all senses of that word. For some of you, you've got to ask yourself the question, is laziness, slothfulness keeping me from setting goals that God would have for me?

Proverbs 26:13-16, "The sluggard says, There is a lion in the road! There's a lion in the streets!" Excuse. I want to stay in bed, I want to keep sleeping. There's too much risk out there. If I set goals, I might not attain them. There might be some kind of risk.

Verse 14, "AS a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard in his bed." Lion out there, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to keep sleeping.

"The sluggard buries his hand in the disk, and wears himself out to bring it back to his mouth." You see this progression, where it's like, excuses out there. I'm going to sleep. Oh, I'm hungry. He takes a dish and literally too lazy to feed himself. It's literally the Uber Eats of Proverbs. It's a business opportunity. I'm too lazy to walk down the street to get food.

"The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly." We have to recognize that there is this simple proclivity in Christians, the flesh that doesn't want to work. Sometimes that's the reason why we don't set goals. Perhaps though it's a lack of vision that keeps you from setting new goals.

Perhaps you've achieved everything you've set your mind to, and now you're like, "What's next?" I don't know. I've been in seasons like this. Okay, you get the degree. Now, what's next? Okay, I've got to set new goals. Sometimes it's a season of suffering. This pain came out of nowhere, and I'm trying to get through life. I can't imagine doing anything more than just getting through.

One example of this is Job 6:11. "What is my strength, that I should wait? What is my end, that I should be patient?" What is my end? He's saying, I have nothing to live for. I don't have a good goal to carry me through.

If we go to the Lord in that season, one of the things the Lord might say to us is, your goal in this season of suffering is to not waste the suffering, to continue glorifying God through the pain despite the pain.

That right there communicates volumes to an unbelieving world. The unbelieving world, it makes sense to them that you worship God because he gives you good things. It doesn't make sense to the world that, hey, even in your suffering, your greatest thing is God.

That right there might be the fresh goal that we need, the new vision that we need. I'm going to glorify God despite the suffering. If you're discouraged, maybe you need to take that to the Lord and say, "Lord, what would you have for me in this season?"

Proverbs 21:5, "The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes into poverty."

Proverbs 11:27, "Whoever diligently seeks good," whoever sets good goals is another translation, says, "will be honored, but evil comes to him who searches for it." Perhaps you're not setting goals, just goals in general, because there's a lack of faith. "This isn't possible for me, I can't attain that."

The scripture says all things are possible for the one who believes. Because what are goals? Goals are statements of faith. Lord, if you don't show up, if you don't give me power, I can't attain this.

Some of you perhaps, you live so comfortably you don't even need faith. If that's the case, you need new goals. Because without faith, it's impossible to please God. We need to set goals.

Is fear keeping you from setting goals? I'll give you one example. Psalm 3, King David has just lost his kingdom to his son Absalom, and he's sitting down and he's crying out to the Lord, "What do I do? I've lost everything I've worked for."

Psalm 3:1, "O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, There is no salvation for him in God." He's gotten to this place where he's like, people around him are saying, "Why are you a Christian? Why are you a follower of God. He's not providing for you." People are attacking his identity. There is no salvation for him.

As they're attacking his identity, he's reminded of his true identity. That's verse three. "But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head."

What's he doing right here? Commentaries say the reason why he's reminding himself, that's what he's doing, he's reminding himself that his glory is not in his kingdom. That his salvation is not in his kingdom. This identity isn't in his kingdom. His protection, security isn't in his kingdom. It's in God.

"You, O Lord, are a shield about me." His identity is secure in God. Meaning, that's his greatest asset. His greatest asset is that he is saved, he has salvation from the Lord. He has God. He is protected by the shield of God. God is his glory.

So, the point is, he's reminding himself, I've lost everything, but I have everything. There's no real risk to his most real assets. The greatest asset that he has is his relationship with the Lord. Things can come, things can go. There's nothing to fear. That informs our understanding of risk, of volatility. No matter what happens, the Lord is with me.

He continues in verse four, "I cried aloud to the Lord, he answered me from the holy hill. I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people."

Perhaps sin is keeping you from pursuing godly goals, goals that God would have for you. This is Proverbs 28:1, "The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as lions." What sin does, is it causes fear.

You see this correlation between wickedness and fear here in general. The correlation of wickedness and fear, and righteousness and boldness. He's talking about boldness in terms of justice.

If you are in Christ, you are covered by the righteousness of Christ, you're ensconced, enveloped of the presence of God. If there is sin in your life, habitual sin, unrepented sin, take it to the Lord. Repent of that sin. Perhaps it's that sin that's pulling you away.

Nothing so ennobles, nothing so fortifies a person as being in the Lord, abiding in Christ, for the person committed to Christ. Lord, no matter what, I know I'm weak, I know I'm a sinner, but I'm believing in Christ, I'm repenting of sin. You're in Christ, and you're clothed in the assurance that God is with you.

Pursue goals like a lion. But pursue goals also like a lamb. Meaning, the goals that we set, lion-like goals, are to be set humbly under the guidance of the Good Shepherd. What are the goals that the Good Shepherd has for me? It's goals set in accordance with God's will, under his leadership, in submission to him.

We get an example of this in Philippians 3:12-14. Saint Paul is saying, I've got one goal. My goal is to be faithful to Christ, I'm going to be faithful to the end. I'm going to pursue this on a daily basis, because I want everything in my life, every single ounce of my energy yielded to Christ.

He says, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." He said, my ultimate goal is to be faithful to Christ. I don't have any righteousness of my own. Christ is my righteousness. But because Christ is my righteousness, I want to be righteous, so I'm going to do everything I can to do that.

He says, "Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." I've got a goal. I've got one goal. This one thing I do, I'm straining forward. I'm agonizing for it.

He had many goals, multiple goals. He said, but all of my goals are in submission to the one goal of, I want to be faithful to God, I want to glorify God with everything that I have. That goal gives you energy when you're sad. It gives you hope when you're lacking. It gives you inspiration. It gives you the power to endure. They build your character. So whatever the goal is, Lord, help me. I want to glorify you through this means.

As we're working on those goals, God's working on you, because for God, faithfulness is more important than fruitfulness. Saint Paul didn't say, "I have this one goal. I'm going to plant churches all over the Roman Empire." He said, "No, I have this one goal. I want to be faithful to the Lord. As we're faithful to the Lord, he makes us fruitful." That's number one.

Then number two, for the overly rigid goal setters, some of you are overly rigid. You've got your whole life reverse engineered. You have like a detailed business plan for your life. This is where humility comes in. I am just a little lamb following the Good Shepherd.

James 4:13-17, "Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit." This is to us. I'm going to go to Boston for a year, maybe two years. I'm going to get the degree. I'm going to get the experience. Then I'm out.

"Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." You see the balance? You've still got to plan, if the Lord wills. Is this God's will? I'm recognizing, if God gives me more time. If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

"As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." So yeah. Goals, lion goals, but lamb-like, because it's under Christ and humility, if the Lord wills. James isn't saying, do it, but you do it in submission to the Lord.

Sometimes we have great godly goals for ministry. God sometimes stops and says, "No, that's not my will." One example of this is Acts 16:6-7. "And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia." That's fascinating. Doesn't God want the word of God spoken everywhere? It wasn't the time. It's forbidden by the Holy Spirit.

"And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them." Again, no. Good goals, I've got a better goal for you. Humbly surrender your agendas, your ambitions, your plans to God, and God, this open hand, if this is yours, but in whatever I do, I'm going to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, asking for God's wisdom. And as we do, God gives it to us generously.Proverbs 16:9, "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps."

Finally, point four, pursuing lion-lamb goals. I'm going to give you 10 really practical specific ways that we can use to think through our goal making, goal attaining. Number one, start with prayer. By the way, point four has 10 points. I don't want to scare you. 10 really practical and rapid fire...

Number one, start with prayer. Go to the Lord. Say, "Lord, I'm humbly coming to you. I have this desire in my heart, I have this goal, but I'm bringing it to you." What prayer does is, it sifts through our goals. What prayer does, it doesn't just move the hand of God, it does that, but it also shapes our heart. It moves our heart.

Will this goal honor God? Will this goal increase my faith? Will this goal make me love God more, enlarge my heart, allow me to love people more? It keeps you from planning unrealistically, irresponsibly, and it keeps you focused on the most important goals, which is to honor God, glorify God.

Hebrews 13:20-21, "Now may the God of peace who brought from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of his eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen." This is a great prayer to pray in terms of discerning goals.

Psalm 25:4-5, "Make me know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long."

Psalm 32:8, this is the response of the Lord when we pray like that. "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you."

Psalm 37:3-6, "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday." Number one, pray.

Number two, check your heart. Check your motivations. What's motivating me in setting these goals? Are these goals motivated by love? God doesn't bless goals that are motivated by greed, by envy, by fear, by worry, by anxiety, et cetera.

He does bless goals motivated by love. 1 Corinthians 16:14, "Let all that you do be done in love." 1 Corinthians 14:1, "Pursue love." Another translation says, "Love should be your greatest goal."

Number three, categorize goals. This is really practical. You have the one goal as a Christian, to be faithful to God, glorify God. Now how does that work itself out practically? Here's the categories that you might have. This is how I think through things in terms of priorities.

Of all my goals, there's got to be spiritual underpinnings obviously. So I have spiritual goals. I need to set a plan for how much time I'm going to spend with God, quantity time, and when I set quantity time, quality time happens. I'm very regimented when it comes to how much scripture intake and times I block off to be with the Lord.

Why? Because all of my other goals have spiritual underpinnings. I have goals when it comes to worshiping God by myself, but worshiping God corporately, I have goals to attend worship services. I have a goal every single Sunday, I'm going to be at a worship services at Mosaic. Not just because I have to.

This is really important. I meet a lot of Christians who take vacations from God, from church. There's a commandment, remember the Lord, your God, and remember the Sabbath day. You take a day. I'm going to be with the Lord.

I see this in particular to the 11:15 service. No offense if you were here last week at the 9:30 service. We had one service last week, and attendance dropped by 150. You know what that communicated to me? That communicated to me there's a lot of people who just go when it's convenient.

This is the coach pep talk, Pastor Jan Bill Belichick talk. I have a commitment to the Lord. I'm going to worship God every Sunday. I have a commitment to communion groups. I'm going to be in the communion because I need Christians in my life to hold me accountable, and I need to serve other Christians as well.

Spiritual underpinnings, then the other categories I have. God is number one, serving the Lord. Number two, family. Family, church, friends, work, financial, health. Family, that's a category in my life. I have a goal for my family. I want to have a healthy family life. I want to honor God with my family.

Tanya and I have been married 13 and change, 13 years and change, praise God. I have a goal to be married until death do us part. That's our goal. That's her goal too I hope. I plan, we plan how we are going to invest in our relationship to make it.

We have four daughters. I have goals for my daughters. I want them to be ferocious women of God, godly women, to make an impact in the world for the Kingdom of God.

There's a guy in the Book of Acts, Philip, he had four daughters, and they were prophets. They would prophesy. That's my goal for my daughters. I want them to know the word of God, just walking around prophesying left and right. My youngest is the best one right now because she's so loud. I've got goals.

Church I already talked about. I've got church goals. Yes, I'm going to plan my faithfulness. I'm going to plan being faithful to God in the future. You do that through commitment.

Friends, always need godly friends. You've got to invest in some godly people who know the Lord and they know you.

Work, financial, health. Work, I have goals to work. I work a lot. I work as hard as I possibly can. If you're new to Mosaic, you think I just get up here and I ramble, that's part of the time. There's a lot of work that goes into preaching. There's a lot of work that goes into pastoring. But there's goals. I want to be the best pastor I possibly can be. I'm always thinking about leveling up. What's the next book I've got to read? What's the next conference? So have goals.

Financial, I have goals to be generous. We are to be generous people. To be generous, I need to make enough to be generous, and we're going to have a sermon on the finances in two weeks.

Health. I want to be as energetic as possible for as many days as the Lord gives me. If the Lord gives me another 40 years, I want to be as energetic as I possibly can as a 66 year old, 76 year old. Second service, 36. 76 year old. Yeah. I want to be the most energetic 76 year old I possibly can be. I'm going to keep deadlifting until I'm dead. That's my goals.

All spiritual underpinnings. This has to do with health, it has to do with taking care of yourself. Why? Because glorify God.

Number four, ASAP. As specific as possible. There it is. As specific as possible. God honors specificity. God honors specific prayers, specific goals. Saint Paul says, "This one thing I do," focuses his time, focuses his energy.

Light is powerful, but if it's diffused, it doesn't have as much power. Magnifying glass focuses light, and you can actually start a fire. You focus the light even more, you get a laser. Same thing with our time, same thing with our energy.

We live in a world of distractions. We are to be a people that don't spend our time or waste our time. We are to be a people that invest our time, invest our lives, so be specific.

Saint Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things," meaning, says no to many things. "They do it to receive a perishable wrath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly," goallessly, I have a goal, he says, I'm pursuing that goal. "I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified."

Number five, write it down. There's something powerful that happens when you verbalize a goal. When you get it in writing. When you get it in front of you. God speaks, but God is also a God that writes things down. God gave us commandments that he wrote with the tip of his finger, scripture tells us, so we have to verbalize our goals, and the verbalization is an act of faith.

Number six, find accountability. Goals are relational glue, and it's just easier when you have people holding you accountable.

Proverbs 12:15, "The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice."

Ecclesiastes 4:12, "And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken." A great example of this is the Great Commission. The Lord gives his disciples the Great Commission, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to do everything I tell you. That unites them, and they go, they bring other people in, and it keeps them accountable.

One quick example, a study I came across, Gail Matthews, Professor Gail Matthews from Dominican University, she did this study where she wanted to gauge what impacts goal attainment or achievement more than not. She had five categories of people.

Number one were people that just thought about their goals. Here's my thoughts. Number two, people who wrote the goals down. Number three, people who wrote down action steps, so specific. Then the fourth group were action steps, and then these people found supportive friends. The fifth group did all of that, but they sent out weekly progress reports to their friends.

Obviously, the fifth group was the most effective in achieving their goals. It's common sense. Whatever your goals are, get people, get brothers and sisters, get Christians to hold you accountable.

Get in group chats. There's something about group chats, especially if you're good at memes. There's something about it, it just fires you up. Even if your friend has an Android phone, even with the green bubbles, you still love them, you still get them in there.

Number seven, celebrate on the way. We got balloons today. Celebrating Mosaic's birthday, we got balloons. You know why? There's something about balloons. We're celebrating. Back in the day, we used to do cake, but sugar is bad for you, so we cut that out. We have birthday bagels.

There's something about celebrating, and biblically speaking, there's this one example in 1 Samuel 7:12, and the passages in that context, Israel lost to the Philistines, they just got wiped out. Then Samuel pleads with God and repent. Then God gives him a victory. Then Samuel, he takes up a stone. "Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer."

You know that song we sing, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and there's, here I raise my Ebenezer, and all of us sing, we're like, "What's an Ebenezer? Like, Ebenezer Scrooge?" No one has any idea, you just keep singing. It's from the Hebrew, it means, until now, the Lord has helped us. Why? Why are we doing it? God has been faithful, and that reminds me that God will be faithful today, and he will be faithful in the future.

So celebrate. How? I don't know. Think about it, pray about it. If you attain a goal, I don't know, go out to dinner. Get that really expensive steak that you've been eyeing at Whole Foods, you know, grass-fed. Birthday steak, not birthday cake.

Number eight, play the long game. This is so important. Play the long game. Set goals, not just for this year, obviously humbly. We overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, especially when you're younger, you overestimate what you can accomplish in one year, and we underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years. Where do you want to be in 10 years? Write it out.

Ephesians 3:20-21, "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

God is able to do more than our wildest imaginations for his glory and for our joy. So whatever the size of our goal is, there needs to be this X factor, that unless God shows up, unless God's power is coursing through me, unless God gives me, I can't do it. We need to start dreaming about God-sized goals.

I moved to Boston with my wife and Sophia when I was 26 years old. I had goals for 10 years. I heard this line about overestimate, and God's fulfilled it. But also, I didn't just have a 10 year plan. I also have goals like for four years. For the next 30 years.

Why? Because I was 26 at that time, so 66, I'm not going to retire, because I don't believe in that. There's no biblical word for retirement. We don't retire. We serve God until the rest of our days.

But when you start dreaming like that, what can God, God's done amazing things through Mosaic, but imagine what more he can do. Imagine the impact globally that God has in store potentially for us.

William Carey says, "Expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God." God is sovereign, we're still responsible. You've got to believe. There's this interplay where God wants us to believe, and the great faith goal is honor God.

Matthew 9:27-31, this example, "As Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, Have mercy on us, Son of David. When he entered the house, the blind men came to him and said to him, Do you believe that I am able to do this?"

Why are you even asking? Why not just heal them? Well, he wants us to participate. We participate through our faith.

They say, "Yes, Lord. Then he touched their eyes saying, According to your faith be it done to you. And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, See that no one knows about it. But they went away and spread his fame through all that district."

According to your faith, according to your faith be it done to you. We believe that God saves people. The same way that Jesus gave physical sight, we believe that God gives spiritual sight, so we believe. We follow Jesus, the ultimate goal setter. No one set goals as great as Jesus set. Jesus literally set out to change the world. I'm going to save the whole world.

It took a sacrifice, scripture says that he set his face like flint. Luke 13:32, talking about King Herod, says, "Go tell that fox, Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day, I'm going to finish my course." His goal is to accomplish the will of the Father in joint mission with the Holy Spirit.

That brings us to point nine, depend on God's spirit. By the way, I hope you noticed, they're not in order of importance, these points. The most important ones are towards the end. We started with prayer.

Holy Spirit, here's what's interesting. In the Old Testament, they had this thing, to discern God's will, they had these two stones, the Urim and Thummim.

There was also this thing of casting lots. Like, we need to figure out what God wants us to do. We're going to cast lots. Whatever it tells us, that's what we're going to... and the last time lots were cast in the Bible is Acts 1, where Judas hangs himself, and the apostles, they decide to replace Judas' place with either Joseph or Matthias. They cast lots.

What happens in Acts 2? The Holy Spirit comes. After the Holy Spirit comes, no more lots. The way that we discern what God's goals are for us, God's plan is for us, God's will for us, we rely on the Holy Spirit.

A. W. Tozer said, "God is looking for those with whom he can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things that we can do by ourselves." Zechariah 4:6, "This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by my might, nor by my power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts." We won't succeed, we won't have success by our own strengths or power, but by the Spirit of God.

Then point 10, be guided by God's word. Joshua 1:8, "This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." Another translation says, "Then you will successfully attain your goals."

Goals keep us going, in particular when it gets hard. In particular when we need to sacrifice. In particular when it hurts. We look to Jesus Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Hebrews 12:1-2, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him," that's the joy. The joy that he gets when he saves us, "for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." He endured. That goal kept him going, even when his feelings said no.

Did that ever happen? Yes. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sees, as he's praying, he sees what he's about to endure in absorbing the wrath of God for our sins. He says this, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will."

Jesus didn't say, I don't have peace about this. He didn't say, I don't feel like doing this. He had the goal of saving us, and he was motivated by love for us, and that compelled him to sacrifice himself, and that's what love in essence is. It's sacrifice.

We as Christians, we're deeply aware of what Christ has done for us, and that motivates us to set godly goals, to glorify him, and to fulfill the mission that he has for us.

We're deeply aware that we are not to squander the time that he has given us, and we are to do everything we possibly can. To glorify him by seeing brothers and sisters grow in the faith, and new people become brothers and sisters. Scripture says, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

At this time, we're going to transition to holy communion. We celebrate holy communion the first Sunday of every month. The way that we celebrate holy communion is through the cup and the bread. The cup symbolizes the blood of Christ that was shed for us to cleanse us from sin. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ, that was broken for us, to heal us from the inside out.

The way that we celebrate at Mosaic is the usher is going to hand out the cup and the bread. Hold on to the elements until everyone has received them. Then we'll partake together. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time in the holy scriptures. We thank you for the gospel. We thank you, Lord, that though we are wicked, you choose to save us through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, we thank you that you fulfilled your mission, you fulfilled your goal. You attained it. I pray that you make us a people who live in a manner worthy of this gospel of Christ. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: Why are words as powerful as they are? What is it about a turn of a phrase that can make us laugh or cry? Why can some words start families and other words spark wars? Words have the power to create life and inflict death.

Words are immaterial, yet contain the power to create and shape material reality. Perhaps this begins to scratch the surface of why Jesus is the Word.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I’m one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and if you're new or if you're visiting, welcome, we're so glad you're here, we'd love to connect with you. If you'd like to connect with us, we do that officially through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly, you can toss it in the offering basket afterwards, or redeem it at the Welcome Center for a gift that we've lovingly, lovingly prepared for you.

I'm really excited about today, first of all because we have one service, we can gather together as a body, and second of all, there's no time limit on this service, so I can preach for as long as I want. I don't usually get that, so we'll see how the Spirit leads. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the fact that you, a holy God, did not reject us when we turned from you, when we rebelled from you, when we sought our own ways, when we sought to be our own gods. But Lord, you created a way for us to be redeemed from the evil that is deep within. We thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, who didn't just come to proclaim the way and the truth, but he is the way, the way to meaning and purpose and satisfaction in life. And Jesus, you are truth. We can't make sense of ourselves, we can't make sense of this world apart from you, apart from your person, apart from your work.

So, Lord, I pray today, give us the Word, speak to us, speak in a way that we are transformed, that we can't but be transformed because we have met with the living God. Holy Spirit, we welcome you into this place. Minister to us. Reveal in our hearts where there's sin and pride and selfishness and evil, and show us that apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ, apart from Christ on the cross crucified for our sins, there is no salvation, that we need to be saved from ourselves, from our sin, from the wrath of God. We pray today, show us that you call us to be a people with tough minds and tender hearts, just like Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

One of the things that we do here at Mosaic is every single Sunday, we do something extremely countercultural. Someone gets up here and proclaims that there is truth, with a capital T, Truth. Not my truth, not our truth, but the Truth. And in our post-truth culture, talking of something as being true is passé. We live in a culture that doesn't want to accept that there are ultimate truths about ultimate things, and one of the things that we have done as a culture is we have relegated truth, and truth has been relegated to preference. Preference has been promoted over truth. So if you tell someone, "I'm a Christian," "Oh, that's great. That's a great hobby that you have, that you follow God. What a great hobby that you have. I do yoga," or "I jog," or "I watch the NFL," or "I'm in a..." What have you. "I do karaoke." I found out there are 13 karaoke bars just in Boston itself. It's a hobby. Christianity is a hobby.

But we can't get away from the fact that there are ultimate truths. That we exist, that's a truth. That we will die, that's a truth. That we all seek satisfaction in life, that's a truth. That deep inside, there is something missing, that's a truth. And truth has been thrown out the window, it's been jettisoned, and we've replaced the idea of truth with a non-truth, and we redefine the truth. But without truth, we don't know who we are.

And along with a lack of truth, we haven't just lost facts about the world, we've lost something else, we've lost true love. Without truth, without honesty, without trust, there can't be love. And it feels like the animosity in our culture is at a fever pitch, that if you disagree with my truth, we're not just in disagreement, but we hate each other, we're enemies of one another. And by the way, this is the pattern of the Evil One from the very beginning. Satan comes to our foreparents, Adam and Eve, and the first thing he says is, "Did God really say?" Sows doubt, undermines truth, and what happens after? Adam and Eve lose their relationship with God. They lose that love, they lose the relationship with one another. Satan attacks with lies, which always leads to a loss of love.

And lies soften the brain. We don't have a foundation in our mind for a worldview. Our brains are softened by lies and our hearts are hardened. Fragile minds, fragile hearts, that's our culture. Too many people are soft-minded and hard-hearted, and that's why you look around, and people are nasty with those people with whom they disagree. But the way of Jesus is different. Jesus Christ comes, and he has a tough mind and a tender heart. He resists evil with truth, but he does it in a way that's merciful. He gives truth, and he also extends grace and mercy for those who say, "Yes, that is truth. Yes, I am a sinner. Yes, I need salvation. Lord, save me. Lord, help me." And when we do that, we receive grace, and we receive mercy, we receive the love of God.

So today, we're going to talk about how we as a people can receive God's truth, receive God's grace, and then speak truth in love to ourselves and to our neighbors in a way that really transforms the world. We're going to look at Ephesians 4:11 through 16, Ephesians 4:11 through 16. The text will be on the screen. You can follow along either there or in your Bible or on your app.

"And he," Christ, "gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time. First, we look at God's Word of truth and grace. What are we to do with it? We're to receive the words of truth and grace, and three, we are to counsel one another with words of truth and grace. So, first of all, God's Word of truth and grace. One of the questions that we ask ourselves often is, "Am I the person that I am supposed to be? How can I become the person that I'm supposed to be? How can I become the person I was created to be?" In self-help circles, it's "How do I become the best version of myself? How do I level up?" And people making millions of dollars on becoming gurus and motivational speakers and life coaches.

Well, Scripture comes in and says there is actually a standard of perfection, there is of truth, there is one perfect person who lived, and his name is Jesus Christ. And we grow into the best versions of ourselves by resembling Christ in character and in spirit, and in the way that he lived. This is what's going on in Ephesians 4:11 through 16, that Jesus calls a particular people to minister to one another. That we, as God's followers, are given the prophets, the priests, the pastors, the shepherds, and they are to equip us for the work of the ministry. And what is that work? That work is to be united in faith, to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and we do that by speaking to each other, speaking truth and love, which is courageous and compassionate. And so we grow together in the knowledge of the Son of God.

Why speaking? Why are words so powerful? Why, in Christianity, in faithful churches, why is the sermon at the center of what we do? Why is the Bible at the center of our faith? A book with words, 66 individual books brought together, over 40-plus authors, written over 1,500 years in three-plus languages, in three continents, and we say this is God's Word. Why? Why, God, would you choose to reveal yourself like this, in the Word? Because words are powerful. Why are words as powerful as they are?

I love words, I've always loved words. I grew up speaking Russian at home, and people ask me all the time, "Hey, where'd you learn Russian?" Because I grew up here since I was age six, people ask, "How did you not forget Russian?" I didn't not forget, I had to learn it here, and people are like, "Who taught you?" And honestly, I fell in love with the language. I fell in love with the going back and forth between English and Russian. I fell in love with Russian literature, Russian poetry. I fell in love with Russian rap, and one of my favorite things to do is to pump myself up with Russian rap. My wife says, "You got to stop doing that." I say, "It gets me going, baby. It gets me ready to preach God's Word." I love that there's power in words. I love comedy, the turn of the phrase actually makes people laugh, and sometimes makes people laugh so hard that they cry. That's really the...

Why are words so powerful? The philosopher Heidegger said that words are houses of concepts, that these words bring together concepts, they're full of a concept, and the concept is what shapes reality. So how is it that something immaterial, words, shapes reality, shapes a material reality? People speak, and things happen. Families are created through words: "I do." Wars are started with words. Why are they so powerful? How is something immaterial able to shape that which is material?

And we really begin to understand this by understanding how everything was created, that the immaterial God created the material word. How did he do it? By speaking. God speaks, and things happen, things are created through the immaterial. In Genesis chapter 1, the phrase "God spoke," and things were created, 10 times in chapter 1, "God said," and it happened. Psalm 33:6, it says, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host." So God reveals himself in creation by creating through his Word, and then God's Word is also associated with deliverance, salvation, redemption. The world is fallen, so God needs to send his Word to redeem, to re-create, to transform. Psalm 107:20, "He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction." The Word goes, the Word heals.

That's why, when we see that Jesus Christ is revealed in the Gospel of John... And by the way, if you are not a Christian or you're just looking into Christianity, exploring Christianity, there is no better book to start off with than the Gospel of John. Read the Gospel of John, meditate on the Gospel of John with an open mind and an open heart, and see, see if these words are living. In John 1, how is Jesus revealed? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This is Jesus Christ. He is the Word. So when God was creating, when God was speaking, Scripture says that Jesus was there with him, and that all things were created through him, that Jesus is the very Word of God, the extension of God himself. Jesus didn't just come speak words, he embodies words of truth.

Why is that the way that God reshapes the word? Because Satan lies, and the lies destroy love, and Jesus comes, and he embodies both truth and love. So his coming, his working, his teaching, his dying, this is the final decisive message of God that God articulates himself through Christ, through what he said, through what he did, through what he was. That's why in John 8:31, Jesus says, "If you abide in my word," in the very words of the Word, the written Word of God, the living Word of God as attested to in the written Word of God, he says, "you are truly my disciples." And then he says in John 15:7, parallel, "Abide in me." Abide in the Word, abide in me.

Hebrews 1:1 through 2 says, "Long ago, at many times, in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world." So Jesus isn't just deed; deeds can be ambiguous. Jesus isn't just a thought; thoughts can be discombobulated. Jesus isn't just a feeling, because feelings are misleading. Jesus is Word, Jesus is Truth.

In John 1:14 through 18, that same chapter of John 1, it says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The immaterial becomes material. "And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him, and cried out, 'This was he of whom I said, "He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me."' For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known."

Jesus came, the Word embodied, and he's full of what? He's full of grace and truth. And he comes, and he proclaims this message of the gospel, so we are to listen to him. If we are to develop tough minds and tender hearts, we are to listen to him. Jesus would often say, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." We change by listening, not talking. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes from the Word of God.

Grace and truth. God speaks tough truths with a tender heart. When God speaks, sometimes he speaks blessings, and he often speaks of curses. Those who reject him are under a curse. He speaks words that give life, and he speaks words that actually destroy. He speaks the law at Sinai, and he speaks the gospel from Golgotha. He speaks truth, and he speaks grace. Tough and tender speech flows out of God's tough and tender character. Romans 11:22, "Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off."

So what are we to do with this truth, this tough truth and this tender love that God offers us, truth and grace? We're to receive the words of truth and grace. How do we do that? We set up the theology; now, how do we do that practically? What are we to do with this teaching? I'm going to set up point two, point two is "Receive the words of truth and grace," with a quote from Richard Sibbes, who was a phenomenal preacher and theologian, and about 400 years ago, he wrote The Soul's Conflict and Victory Over Itself by Faith. And he says this: "If it were an easy thing to be a Christian, if religion stood only in a few outward works and duties, but to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God, this is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself. Because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself, lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have."

What's he saying? He's saying we don't want to look deep inside of our souls. We don't want to acknowledge what's within. That we all have a tendency of self-hiding, self-blinding. We don't want to come face-to-face with our own sin, with our own evil. Do you recognize this resistance within? And only when you recognize that there is this resistance, that we don't want to look into our sin, acknowledge our sin, until we see that, there is no hope for us.

Until we become spiritually aware that we are deeply broken inside, and that we are responsible for that brokenness. Until we awake to the fact that our nature is evil, that there is a darkness inside that we are deathly afraid to look at. Until we realize that your trouble is that you yourself are wrong, there's something wrong with us. Until we realize this, that we need a Savior from the evil within, that Jesus is not just a counselor, he's not just an advisor, he's not just a comforter, he's not just a consultant to make your life better, that Jesus Christ is a Savior, and that we need salvation. Until you realize that, you won't understand yourself, you won't understand the world.

Modern secular thought from the 19th century or the early 20th century and even today, what they've been doing is probing our resistance to knowing ourselves accurately. Nietzsche, Marx, the psychodynamic psychologists Freud, Jung, Adler, the existentialists, they all agreed that we resist looking in the mirror, we resist knowing our true selves. And they could never agree on what we are avoiding or what the alternative is. What do we avoid when we avoid looking deep within? Is it perverse sexual impulses? Is it murderous hostilities, a cosmic dark side to our souls, craving for power and superiority? A fear of death, perhaps?

And each of them is partly correct, and all these things fester within our souls, but Scripture calls a spade a spade and says there is a truth about us that we need to come face to face with if we are to be saved. Ecclesiastes 9:3 gives us a great explanation of what's going on. Solomon, the great philosopher, Ecclesiastes says, "This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead." There's an evil deep within our hearts. We fiercely resist seeing ourselves as God sees us, because then, we begin to understand that we're helpless.

We can't do anything about that evil, and we fiercely resist seeing God as he is, that God is holy, that God is totally other, that there's nothing evil with him. That he, by his nature, resists evil because he loves so much. He loves you so much that he resists anything that would destroy you. If you've ever had a loved one who's battling with an addiction, you understand just how angry that is to see this person whom you love killing themselves. In the same way, God's wrath resists the evil within ourselves and the evil that's done to us.

People often ask, "If God is good and if God is great, why doesn't he just destroy the evil in the world?" Well, let me ask you a question: If God is to destroy the evil in the world by pressing a magic button, would any of us be here a second after? No. We've all sinned. That's why we have this anti-God bias, because we understand that we are guilty before a holy God.

Matthew 12:33 through 37, the words of Jesus Christ: "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

All these philosophers that we mentioned, every theory about what's wrong with us, why we resist looking inside, every theory tries to propose a way to make right. Either gain insight into personal history with psychodynamics, undergo a reeducation experience, parenting, owning your dark side, make authentic choices. Problem is, every single one of them gives the same exact solution: You got to save yourself. That you can save yourself, that you can do something to make yourself acceptable before God. And this is where Christianity comes in and says, "No, the truth is that we are all evil, but there's a greater truth than that. The God of the universe is offering grace to every single one of us." We got ourselves into this mess, and we can't get ourselves out. That's why we need Jesus Christ.

One last thing, when we talk about the philosophers, we talk about the psychologists, I was listening to Elon Musk this week, and Elon Musk was asked, "What would you tell millennials, millennials who want to transform the world, which field should they go in?" And he said this, he said, "We need to figure out a way to connect our brains to the cloud." To transmit our thoughts to the cloud, our dreams, everything that's going on inside. He said, "We got to figure out a way of recording it." And he said, "That way, we will never forget anything." I'm like, that's trippy, on the one hand. On the other hand, that's ludicrous. Like, that's already happening with the Internet, where people are just like, "These are my thoughts," in 140 characters, in 280... I'm like, "Ah, that's terrifying." I don't want to read that. I don't want to see these images. Imagine if everything is out there. Imagine if everything is recorded.

But it is. It's already connected, not to the cloud, but to God. God sees everything, every thought, every intention, every inclination, every dream, everything. I shudder at the idea of anyone even getting a glimpse, a glimpse of what goes on in here, and I'm a professional Christian. I read the Bible all the time. That's my job. You look and say, "Ooh, no, let's not talk about that."

And this is why I love Christianity. Christianity calls a spade a spade. This is who we are. We're evil. But there's salvation, there's grace that is offered because of Jesus Christ, because of the work of Christ on the cross, that God becomes flesh, that God lives the life that we were supposed to live in Jesus Christ: Perfect love toward God, perfect love toward neighbor, never a sinful thought, never a sinful inclination, never a sinful word. And he does that as a substitute for us, fully God, fully man. He goes to the cross, he's crucified, excruciating pain.

And that's the crux of Christianity, that God's mercy and God's justice come together, that Christ absorbs the penalty that we deserve to pay for our sin. He absorbs the wrath of God, God's resistance to evil in the world. He takes it all upon himself. He who knew no sin became sin, became our evil on the cross, so that we might become the righteousness of God. And we, my friends, we can look into the evil within our hearts, and we can be honest before God about the evil in our hearts, about the sin in our lives, because there is grace. Because God is saying, "I already know. Now receive the grace. Receive the mercy, receive the forgiveness. Become a child of God."

There are tough truths in Scripture, that apart from God, apart from the sacrifice of Christ, apart from grace, that we will bear the penalty for our evil for all of eternity. That's truth. A tough truth in Scripture is that not one person is a child of God in their nature. We're creation of God, but we are not children of God until we are adopted into the family of God by grace and faith. All it takes is receiving the gospel. All it takes is believing, "Yes, God, I am a sinner. Yes, God, I repent of my sin, I turn from my sin, I turn to Christ. Jesus, save me, and Jesus, I give my life completely to you." Once you do, you become a Christian. That's all it takes. All you need is to recognize your need. That's all it takes.

And then there are these incredible promises that work themselves out, that God is for us. This is Romans 8:31 through 34. "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us."

So stop running. Stop running from Christ, stop running from God, and accept the grace that he gives you to face life fearlessly. See yourself in the mirror, and then see God's gaze and God's grace. You don't have to keep denying, you don't have to keep resisting or wallowing. God is with us. And God is also in us, that God gives us this incredible power. Some of you don't want to become a Christian because you're like, "I don't have the power to not sin." In whatever sphere, probably one of the biggest ones that keeps people away from God is, honestly, sexual sin. People are like, "I can't become a Christian because I don't want to give that up." And God says, "Not only do I forgive you, but I give you power to live the life that I've called you to live, a life of freedom, a life of satisfaction, a life of joy."

God gives us the Holy Spirit, Romans 5:5, "and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Why do I believe that Christianity is true? Why do I believe that this... Yes, the objective truth of holy Scripture, the objective truth of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you can study it, there's incredible... There's so much proof. But also, I talked to God this morning. I experienced God today. I experienced the Holy Spirit. I feel God's power coursing through me. He speaks to me. I commune with him, I experience his presence. God is real, he is in us.

That's why in Ephesians, up to this text, over and over, the text tells that there's "surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe in accordance with the strength of his might, strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might."

There's wisdom for the asking to the one that says, "God, I am a fool." There's healing to the asking of the one that says, "God, I need you to intervene." God gives good gifts to those who ask. He says if you ask, if you receive, you will receive good gifts from the Lord. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you.

And also, the grace of God promises that he will come to us. He will finally make all the wrongs in this world right. 1 John 3:2, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." The Good News isn't just past and present, it's also future, that once you accept Christ, God promises you eternal life that begins now, and you will live forever. This is what Jesus will do, and what he will do reshapes what we are to do. 1 Peter bases the transformational power of God's presence in our lives based on what will happen in the future. 1 Peter 1:13, "Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance."

God's grace also applies to our lives when we recognize that we still are broken people, still living in a broken world, and we need God to come and to give us mercy. Jesus dies for the wicked, but he also defends the innocent. He feeds the hungry, he gives refuge to the broken, he heals the sick. And when we do experience anxiety, when we are in the depths of depression, what we are to do is to cry out to him, and as we do, he hears.

You know how you know that you have experienced the truth and grace of Jesus Christ? This is the ultimate test that you have experienced regeneration, that you are a Christian, that you have a relationship with God. This is the primary test, I'll tell you: It's that you talk to God. You have honest conversations with God directly. You no longer just talk about God, you don't talk to people who know God about God as if God is a friend of a friend, so when you're hanging out with Christians who know God, you can talk about God. When it's you and God, one on one, in silence, you got nothing to say. That means you don't have a true relationship yet. Do you talk to God?

The greatest example of this, and I challenge you to study this chapter this week, Psalm 119. You know Psalm 119? It's the longest chapter in the Bible. It's like when you're reading through Scripture, this is the chapter that you always skip. Like, "Yeah, it's not for me. Too long." It's longer than some books of the Bible. But it's one of the greatest articulations of someone's conversation with God. And by the way, if you study the structure of it, it's a tightly structured acrostic. It has got 22 sections; each section begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and every one of the sections has eight lines, and every single one of those lines begins with that letter. And Psalm 119, it begins with three verses about people in general, about God in general. The fourth verse begins to personalize things, that we stand accountable to God.

And then, for 172 verses, it's just a person having an honest conversation with God. "I, God, your servant, I'm talking to you. Lord, the God who speaks and acts, God whom I need, God whom I love." It's not a person talking about God, it's a person talking to God, because they have experienced the Word of God being planted in their life, and then it's an outpouring of what happens when that Word is planted. It's real talk about how real life meets the real God. Have you had that honest conversation with God? If not, today, today's the day of salvation. Have a conversation with God. "God, I don't know what it is, but I haven't talked to you. I don't know what's keeping me from having a conversation with you." Have that conversation. Truly face yourself, your circumstances, your sin, God, your Savior, and cry out, plead for God's help in life's fundamental troubles, and assert who you are in him, affirm the identity that he has given you.

And point three is that we are then to counsel with words of truth and grace. Because Jesus is full of truth and grace, it's possible to form a community of people who are growing ever more in truth and grace. Ephesians 4:11 and 12, "He," Christ, "gives the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers." Who are these? These are people, equippers of the truth. Apostles are foundational to wake a person up, to build a foundation for the truth. The prophets come in and call people to repentance with hard truth. Evangelists come in, they share the Good News, the tender love of Christ. Pastors and teachers take the truth and feed and protect the flock.

But the job of these truth-tellers and love-bringers isn't to do the ministry, it's to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. This is verse 12, "to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ." Who are the saints? That's every single person who accepted the grace of God. It's a sinner who becomes a saint; you've been set apart for God's work.

This is why church is so important. We don't just gather as a group of strangers to accept a word, and then go live our lives individually; that we are a people to accept the Word and do something with it, and what we do with it is, in verse 15, we speak the truth in love to one another. "Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." So, if you are a Christian, and you are not connected to a body of believers, I'll submit to you, that's exactly why you are not growing in your faith. This is God's plan for growth. "We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."

We speak the truth in love to one another. That takes work. It's actually... It's super countercultural, because when we see people, even Christians in our lives, who are making foolish decisions, who are not submitting to the truth of God, the natural reaction is, "Who am I to meddle? I don't want to get into that." But Christ says that we are to love one another so much, and this is the word love, "speak the truth in love," it's agape, it's a self-sacrificial love, it's hard. And we are to practically speak the truth in love, and have hard conversations with one another when we see that a person is walking away from the Lord. Something like, "I love you and respect you as a person, and I want what's best for you, but you are destroying yourself with what you believe and how you are living."

"I love you, and I have to speak truth to you." It's both. And you do it in a way that's true and loving and personal and appropriate, because that's what God does for us. Here at Mosaic, we talk about creating a culture of congregational care, and most people's... And if you're new to Mosaic and you come from another church background, for a lot of people, this is really alien, because they haven't experienced the idea of congregational care. Most people's church experience rarely aligns with this description from Ephesians 4. This very idea that we are to mutually counsel one another, it's just alien, because a lot of people think that counseling is something you leave to the professionals, so to say that the church has a primary counseling responsibility is to say something like, "The church has a primary brain surgeon responsibility." "No, you do that to... Those are the professionals. We're not going to speak to... We're not going to speak truth, we're not going to counsel one another."

But this is how Jesus teaches that we are to be so closely intertwined with one another that we do speak truth, and we are counselors, because we are a kingdom of priests who minister to one another. Now, the question is, are we wise priests or foolish priests? And the example is Jesus Christ himself, that he didn't just preach the gospel, but through interpersonal relationships, he had conversations in which he pointed out sin, and extended grace, and just did that over and over. Hebrews 4:15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

So these are the conversations that Jesus had with people. "What do you live for? What are you living for?" Told a parable of the foolish rich man who just keeps living for money, keeps living for money, had a huge harvest, and just stores himself treasures for himself, just living for himself. What are you living for? Is that making you happy? Where do you try to find your identity? Who are you? How do you explain to someone, who are you? Your essence, the foundation for your life. How do you treat other people? Honestly, how do you treat other people? Not how would you like to treat; how do you treat them?

What do you do with Jesus himself, the most influential person who has ever lived? And if you're not a Christian, it would just be irresponsible not to study the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, who's impacted the world like nobody else. And he conquered the world, he's got a kingdom, not a kingdom of force, but a kingdom of love. What do you do with your anger, your anxiety, your indifference, your passion, your depression? Where do you turn when life is hard? What do you want? What do you want more than anything in the world? Why do you want that? What do you fear? What do you trust? What do you love?

And then Jesus would counsel with Scripture, he would counsel with the Word of God. The most frequent topic in the book of Proverbs, which is the book of... It's a guide of wisdom, and the most frequent topic is how we talk. It talks about money and sex and work and food and drink, but more than any other topic, it's how we talk, and that wise people grow in wisdom by spending time with wise people. As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another, and it's difficult. Like, when iron strikes iron, what happens? Sparks fly, but you get sharper. Something changes.

So, how do we... How does this practically look in our church? The vision is that we have conversations with one another about God. Like, it's cool to talk about how great the Patriots are this year, that's great, we can start there. It's cool to talk about the weather, it's cool to talk about how wonderful autumn is in Boston, it's cool to talk about the... You know, all this stuff. But as Christians, do we talk about Christian things? Do we have, just even in casual conversation, do we talk about Christ? And yeah, in the church, but also in your families. Husbands, do you talk about God with your wife? Do you talk about the gospel, do you talk about pursuing the mission of God? Do you talk about the things of God? Because you always talk about what your heart is filled with, and God says, "I want your heart filled with the presence of God, the truth of God, and speak truth with one another, and connect it to the lives of one another."

2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof." Sometimes speaking about God has to include reproof, which just means rebuke. "For correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." So, dear Christian, when you hear another Christian, perhaps in community group or in a conversation, spout heresy, just false, our job is to say, "I hear what you're saying, and you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. I love you, but you're wrong. That's not true."

We're commissioned by God to do that, to correct one another. And because there is love, and because there is humility, that allows us to say, "You know what? Yeah, you're right, I am wrong. I am in sin." I accept that reproof, I accept that rebuke. This is what it means to be tough-minded and tender-hearted. "I know you love me, you want the best thing for me, you want me to know God as he is, you want me to live the life that God has called me to live, so thank you for correcting me." Welcome correction of wise Christians into your life. "Please speak into me. What do you see that I'm not seeing? Where are my blind spots?"

And then, when they do, do it with love. Ephesians 4:29 through 32 says, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

Colossians 4:6, "Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person." Seasoned with salt, what does that mean? I'm not talking about, like, New England salty, like, "Ooh, this person's really..." What it's talking about is like, it's flavorful. It's flavorful. If you're new to Mosaic, I am... I love steak, I just do. I couldn't preach this sermon, historic sermon, without mentioning steak. But you know what makes... Steak in and of itself is phenomenal. You know what makes steak even better? Salt. Just a little salt, just a little pepper. It's flavorful.

Christians who know God are salt. You are salt and light, meaning you're flavorful. It's interesting to be with you, because you speak truth. Nobody does that. In our culture, people speak truth about each other behind their back, to other people. That's our culture. And Christians are saying, "No, no, no, I'm not going to... No, I'm not going to do that behind your back. I'm going to do that to your face, because I love you." It really is, it's absolutely radical, and if you have those people in your life, man, hold on to those people and become like those people. 1 Corinthians 13:6 says, "Love rejoices with the truth."

Now, I'm going to close with this. If you're not a Christian, if you're not a Christian, we, we want you to become a Christian. Like, we are proselytizing you. You know what that means? We're trying to convert you, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get you to join. That's basically why we exist. And not because we just need more people on the team, it's because this is true. This is the best thing for you. Why would you want to live this life apart from God? Why would you want to live this life apart from the power of God? Why wouldn't you want your sins forgiven? Why wouldn't you love to... Why wouldn't you want to accept the love of God?

1 Peter 3:15, "But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that's in you; yet do this with gentleness and respect." We have this hope, and this hope is Jesus Christ. What's the reason for the hope that's in me? Thanks to Jesus, the Word of God, who's full of grace and truth, I am fully known, and yet I'm fully loved, and you are too. If you today receive that truth that, "God, yes, I am a sinner, there is evil festering deep within, and I accept the grace," and then that makes the people that extend truth and grace. Amen. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this time you've given us in the Holy Word. We thank you, Lord, that you speak tough truths to us, which soften our hearts, tenderize our hearts. Make us a people who speak truth in love to ourselves and to our neighbors. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: Though we shirk our responsibility to live God-honoring lives, Jesus takes responsibility for us. Our sin wasn't His fault, but He took responsibility. Once we receive His free gift of grace, Jesus entrusts us with the responsibility to use our time, talent, and treasure to love God and people.

Transcript: You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Heavenly Father, we thank you, that you, the great God of the universe, created us. We thank you for the gift of life. And we thank you, Lord, that you did not leave us in our sinful state we shirked our responsibility of obeying you, of living in a manner worthy of the God who gave us life. Often we live as if we gave ourselves life, as if we sustain our life and we do not. You sustain us every single second of every single day. And we thank you, Lord, that you did not leave us in our rebellion against you, but you gave your son Jesus Christ who took responsibility for our sins. Jesus, you came and you lived the most loving life of anyone who's ever lived, and you embodied that love by sacrificing yourself on the cross to bear the penalty for our law breaking, for our rebellion.

We thank you, Lord, that you provide a means for us to be reconciled with you. And Lord, remind us that once we're reconciled with you, we have a duty, we have an obligation, we have the responsibility, and show us how that plays out in life. Send us the Holy Spirit now and speak to us Lord. We don't just want to talk about you, we want to experience you, the true God of the universe. And we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.

So we're in a sermon series that we're calling, Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life. Last week, we talked about Jesus Christ who is lion and lamb. We talked about the lion lamb paradox, that he is both tough and tender. He embodies both of these seemingly diametrically opposed qualities and sets of qualities. Today we're going to start talking about how to develop toughness with ourselves to fulfill the responsibility that God has for us, the purpose that he has for us. Today we are talking about how to fight hypengyophobia. Hypengyophobia as you well know of course.

Let's do linguistic analysis. Phobia, you're scared of something. Hypen, you're really scared of something. What's the word in the middle? Guy. Hypengyophobia. What are guys most scared of? I tried this out twice this morning and both people said, "Women." Close. Responsibility. Hypengyophobia is the fear of responsibility. We live in an age of passivity. We live in an age of victimhood. People want to pass off all the wrong things in life to someone else. "It's not my fault that I had the parents I had. It's not my fault I grew up the neighborhood I grew up in. It's not my fault I went to the schools that I went to. No one taught me." So that's on the one side is passing off this passivity. On the flip side, it's just the idea that we live in a free country, "I'm free to do whatever I want."

There's a problem with the idea that we can have unbridled freedom. And if we live like that, it does lead to irresponsible behavior. Victor E. Franco, who was a Holocaust survivor, he is the Viennese psychiatrist, existential philosopher. He came to the United States, loved the US, but he warned that this freedom, this idea of freedom, unless it's balanced out with responsibility, it threatens to degenerate into license and arbitrariness. This is his quote. "Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented with a statue of responsibility on the West Coast." Love the sentiment, Dr. Franco. I don't think you've ever been to the West Coast. I don't think they're gonna welcome that statue.

But you get the idea. We need both. For freedom to be true freedom, it has to be curbed with responsibility. It's a very biblical idea that freedom isn't a lack of boundaries, throwing off all of the laws. True freedom is knowing the laws that you were designed to live on, to live by, to be curbed by so that you can flourish the most. There has to be a responsibility.

So today we're looking at Genesis 3:1-13. The story of the fall when Adam and Eve shirked the responsibility that God had given, advocated that responsibility. And we'll talk about that. Please look at the text with me either in your Bible or on your phone or on the screen, Genesis 3:1. "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?' And the woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"

"But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden."

"But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?' And he said, 'I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I naked and I hid myself.' He said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?' And the man said, 'The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.' Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'" This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time together. First, we reject responsibility. Second, Jesus takes responsibility. And three, Jesus gives responsibility.

First, we reject responsibility. When God created humankind, he entrusted us individually and collectively with responsibility, the responsibility of life therefore, we are answerable to God. He gave us a job, Genesis 1:28, "God blessed them ..." And this is a blessing. "God blessed them and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" It's a blessing to live fruitful, productive lives for the glory of God.

Genesis 2, 5 and 7, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to keep it." He gives us jobs to do and we are to keep the garden, the garden that we've been given dominion over. "And the Lord God commanded the man saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.'" He entrusts existence to them, he entrusts a purpose to them, and he also entrusts his word to them. He reveals his will for them. And we'll give account for our life, we'll give account for our work, and we'll give account for the revelation. And the revelation was, God says, "I have created you to exercise dominion, to have authority over the world." And the greater this privilege, the greater the responsibility. That's not just Spider Man, that's actually Jesus Christ, Spider Man stole that from Jesus.

Luke 12:48, "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required. And from him to whom they entrusted much they will demand the more." And theology responsibility is you are not your own. I'm not my own. God has given us life and we are to live our life according to the purpose that he has for us. And Adam and Eve ceded this authority, the authority over their lives, the authority over their work, they ceded the authority over to Satan. They said, "We're going to reject God's word, we're going to reject God's will." And as they did, they didn't just reject God's authority over them and get just freedom, they replaced God's authority with satanic authority. That's what passivity led to.

And verse 12, what's their reaction? God comes to Adam and says, "Adam, where are you?" God's not asking the question to get information. God's omniscient. He's asking the question to give Adam an opportunity to repent. To confess, to repent, to turn from sin. Instead, Adam does not take responsibility for his sin. He says, "The woman whom you gave to be with me ..." Blames the woman and God in one fell swoop. "She gave me fruit of the tree and I ate." And then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me and I ate." Adam shirks responsibility, Eve abdicates responsibility, and we see this pattern over and over throughout all of scripture.

Cain kills his brother, Abel. God comes to him, he says, "Where's your brother?" Cain says, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The answer is yes you are. You have responsibility over ... Sarah becomes upset because she told Abraham, "Hey, have a child with Hagar." And he does, follows her advice, and then she becomes upset, blames him. Esau complains that Jacob deceived him in taking the birthright though Esau gave it him. Aaron makes the Israelites a golden calf to worship and then blames them for it. Pilate washes his hands of Jesus's death. You see this over and over and over. All throughout Scripture, nobody wants to take responsibility. In our culture, nobody wants to take responsibility. We want to accuse others, it's their fault. And we want to excuse our own issues, it's not my fault. There's a rights mentality, I demand my rights. There's a victimhood mentality, it's not my fault. And an entitlement mentality, I deserve better. The world owes me responsibility.

We have a problem with responsibility. We've had a problem with responsibility from the very beginning. For Christians as well. This is probably one of the biggest sins that we just allow to fester in our lives. Complaining that the lot in life that God has given us isn't the one we deserve. We complain, "God, why is this person living a better life than I am? This person got better talents than I got?" And what we're basically saying is, "God, you gave me a raw deal. I can't do anything with the circumstances that you've given me, with the life that you have given me. I would do a better job at being God than you."

This is actually the issue with the Israelites when God leads them out of captivity. For 40 years, they walk around in circles in the desert. For what? Because of their grumbling, seven times, and the scripture says they murmured. They murmured. Every single one of us, we have this inclination, this proclivity to reject the responsibility that God has for us. That's basically what sin is. Sin is rebel ... "God, I don't want to submit to you. God, I don't want responsibility over the burden of existence that I didn't ask for." And we shirk the responsibility.

The first time I wrote this sermon, I basically ... It was point one, and then it was point three. That was my initial sermon. And point three, I looked at it as a fire. It was like 10 things you got to do, you got to take responsibility for yourself, you got to take responsibility for your soul, for your mind, for your heart, for your ... Like you got to take responsible for your job. And then I was like, it's kind of missing something. It seems like a self-help sermon. Basically just motivational. It was missing the gospel. Now, whoa, whoa, hold on. Jesus has to be in here somehow.

Apart from the gospel ... We'll get to the practical parts of our ... Apart from the gospel, it just doesn't make any sense. Apart from the gospel, this is every single one of us we're trying to make up for the fact that we've shirked responsibility, and we're trying to fix ourselves. We're trying to fix our lives, and we don't have the power to do it. Where do we get the power? It's not just from Jesus' example, it's from Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. So this is point two, that Jesus takes responsibility. This is what makes Christianity different than any other world religion. Any other world religion and any other worldview is that, you need to fix yourself, you need to fix your life, you've made mistakes, stop doing that, stop complaining and make everything better. You need to work for your salvation. That's every other religion. You do to be accepted by God. And scripture says you can't do anything to be accepted by God. You are an enemy of God. You are under God's wrath. That's where scripture starts.

But God has provided a way for you to enter into the acceptance of God. God has given his son Jesus Christ. Jesus has come, and he said, "It's not my fault. Your sins are not my fault." He lives an absolutely sinless holy life, righteous in every respect. And then goes to the cross to bear the penalty that we deserve for our rebellion. And then he comes back from the dead, and this is the heart of Christianity. Is when you place your faith in Jesus Christ, when you accept the work that he's done for you, God forgives all of your sins. Jesus says, "I take responsibility for all of your sins." It's the double imputation of when we trust in Christ, all of our sins go to him, all of his righteousness goes to us. He takes complete responsibility for our sins.

Adam gave up dominion of the earth to Lucifer. There's nothing that we could have done to fix that. So we needed someone to come into our domain who's also outside of the domain, and that's Jesus. Fully God, fully human, did everything by God's authority, fulfilled God's will 100%. And this is why at the start of Jesus' ministry, Satan understood that Jesus came as a threat to his system, as a threat to his hold on the world. What did he promise Jesus in the first temptation? What did he tempt Christ with?

This is in Matthew 4:8. "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, 'All these, I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.' Then Jesus said to him, 'Be gone Satan, for it's written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'" Satan comes, and he tempts Jesus Christ with the same thing that he tempted Adam and Eve with.

You don't need to obey God. You can be your own God. That's the temptation, "You don't need to be responsible to God. You can be your own God. And Jesus says, no. Because that right there, that's idea of worship. So Jesus submits to God the Father and worships God the Father completely. If Jesus had taken up Satan on the offer, Satan would still hold dominion over us, over the world. But Jesus didn't. He submitted to God, fulfilled the responsibility given to him by the Father. He is the true Adam. This is why Jesus Christ is different from Adam. Adam abdicated his responsibility. Jesus fulfilled it completely for us, took our sin upon himself. He dies, he's risen on the third day, and after he's risen, he sits down, meets with the disciples, and he gives them the Great Commission. He says, "All authority on earth and heaven is given unto me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations." Jesus Christ is the true king who submits, who serves in order to save us. Every single one of us. That's the heart of Christianity.

Jesus took responsibility for your sins, accept that responsibility. Jesus served you, allow him to take the sins. And once you understand that, that Jesus paid it all, he gave you every ... Once you understand that's the heart of the gospel, that's the heart of Christianity, that right there is the reason why we are to take responsibility for our lives. God created you, we rebelled, Jesus took responsibility for you. Now we as Christians, we are doubly God's. Not only are you God's because you are his creation, you're God's because he bought you with the price, the price of his blood. Jesus Christ. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.

Have you seen The Lion King, the new Lion King? Since we're talking about my lion and lamb, I'll bring this in. This has nothing to do with the sermon but I'll just share it. The first movie I've ever watched was The Lion King with my dad. In the theaters. The first movie we went to see as a family because I come from an immigrant background. I was like 12 when it came out. No movies ever, and my dad said finally, "I'll take you guys to the movie theater but no snacks." So we like smuggled in tangerines. I don't even remember the movie, all I remember is the tangerine. Like, "This tastes so good, forbidden fruit."

But in the new Lion King, Mufasa has this conversation with Simba. Simba is his son and Simba avoids the responsibility of restoring Pride Rock. This is a quote of Mufasa, and it just rings true. "Everything you see," he says, "exists together in delicate balance. While others search for what they can take, a true king searches for what he can give."

There's a reason why that connects so deeply. It connects at the soul level. Yes, that's what a true king does. A true king gives. Why is that in my soul, though I have never seen it in world history? I have never seen a king like that. I've never seen a ruler of a people like that. Has authority, and uses the authority to serve. Why? Because that's Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate king that comes, and he serves us, takes responsibility for us, for our sins. And because he's such a great king, he gives responsibility to us under his authority. So that's point three, that Jesus gives us responsibility. Are we on point three already? Yes. But this is the long one. So brace yourselves.

Point three, explain the theology why are we taking responsibility not to save ourselves? Because Jesus has saved us, now he gives us responsibility, including responsibility for yourself. We are to take responsibility for ourselves, and the theology behind this is that Jesus calls us sheep. He says, "I am the good shepherd, my sheep follow my voice." And if you grew up in church, and you're like, "Oh, yeah, Jesus is the shepherd, I'm sheep." You just you become so accustomed to it and you don't really feel the offense of what Jesus is doing. Jesus is explaining to us that you're not just cute and cuddly and fluffy. He's saying like, sheep are dumb, and we're dumb. Sheep are helpless, and you're helpless. Like if you knock a sheep over it can't even get up. There's no such thing as wild sheep. Sheep just die. There's no feral sheep. They're dumb. There's an idea of sheeple, where it's like dumb people who just follow a dumb ... And Jesus is saying, yes that's us in and of ourselves. We are not rational beings. We get this idea from the enlightenment, that we are ... No.

Look at all of the mistakes in your life. Look at all the bad decisions in your life. You know who was present for every single one of the bad decisions in your life? You were. I was. Not in your own, in my life. The only constant of all the bad decisions in our life is you. It's us. So when Jesus say, you're a sheep, he's saying, you need a shepard. You need someone to say no little sheep, that's not the way to go. No little sheep, there's danger there. Now what's the idea of responsibility? So a lot of Christians miss this and a lot of people miss this. Yes, Jesus is my shepherd, and I am the sheep, but I do have a responsibility to tell my sheep self to follow Jesus. Jesus is shepherd, I'm a sheep. But I have a responsibility to tell me sheep self, little sheep ... This is the lion's side. You have to have a ... Christian, you need to toughen up, have a lion side where you tell your sheep side, follow Jesus Christ. You see this all in the psalms. They talk to themselves. Like David as he writes psalms he talk ... Why are you so downcast oh my soul? What's he doing? He's talking to his soul. Soul, look to the lord. Soul, follow the shepherd.

I've got four daughters. By God's grace I'm growing in being a good dad. But I like to think ... My daughter Sophia on my birthday, she wrote me a card and said, "Daddy, I really did win the daddy lottery." I was like yeah. The brainwashing worked. But I realized, the way that I care for them, for my little ones, especially my two year old, the way I care for her, there's a sense where I need to care for myself like that. I need to lead myself like that. Like, I need to parent myself. It's time to go to bed Jan. That's enough screen time little Jan. Eat this, don't eat this. It's time for a workout. You need to read your bible little Jan. Do you have a ... You're taking responsibility for yourself. And the fact that God is sovereign does not contradict that. God is sovereign over everything, but he still tells us what to do. He's sovereign over telling us what to do so we are accountable, we are responsible. Moments in your life where you have the most meaning are the moments in your life that have been the most pivotal, where you look back and say, that changed my life. I guarantee you those moments are the moments that you took responsibility for something.

I'm taking responsibility to apply for this job. I'm taking responsibility to start this business. I'm taking responsibility to start this relation. I'm taking responsibility. So we are to lead ourselves. You are the most influential person in your life. You don't listen to any other person more than you listen to yourself. So if we are to grow in our spiritual lives, if we are to grow in our relationship with Christ, if we are to grow in any aspect of life, practical aspects of life, we need to understand that you won't change if you're always blaming someone. So the first step to growth is taking responsibility. Spiritually and physically, financially. Got to take responsibility.

The book of proverbs is so helpful here, talking about financial wisdom. How to make smart financial decisions. By the way, our culture desperately need this. A Forbes article came out in 2018, Four stats that reveal how badly America is failing at financial literacy. 44% of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency. 43% of student loan borrowers are not making payments. 38% of US households have credit card debt. The average of which is $16,048 and at a 16.47 APR. If it takes you 10 years to pay off the average credit card debt, you're going to pay more in interest than actual debt. 33% of American adults have zero saved for retirement and 56% have less than $10,000. Responsibility.

Here's how we use theology. Here's how a lot of people use theology to shirk responsibility for their lives. I'll give you a few examples. The phrase, everything happens for a reason. Oh, everything happens for a reason. Usually people use that in situations where you got yourself in the situation and you want to excuse yourself so you're implying that the reason for the situation is outside of you. So my wife came up to me. She comes up to me after the first sermon and she always has a list for me. She had a list today and she said, "But you got to tell people there's things that they can't control." Yes, that's another sermon. Today the sermon is, you got to take responsibility for what you can control. So for example, credit card debt. Incurring credit card debt. I understand there's situations where you can't get around it. But everything happens for a reason. Yeah, the reason was you using this credit card over and over and over. The reason why is you went on Amazon and it was way too late. You should have said to yourself, little Jan, get back ... You know what I'm saying. Don't use theology to excuse your poor decisions.

I don't know what God's will is for my life. I just don't know. I need to figure out God's will. Holy scripture has 66 books of God revealing his will to your life. His will for your life is for you to obey him. To glorify him. Live for him. Read the new testament. So don't disguise ... I don't know God's will for not doing anything. It's hyper-Calvinism in the most deterministic sense where we explained all the situations in my life just by blaming it on God. There's real world negative consequences for not taking responsibility for yourself. Failed health, poor marriages, children not being parented, careers lost or not advanced. Real life consequences for poor theology, for not taking responsibility. And the whole idea of letting go and letting God or waiting on the Lord as an excuse to not do anything, that's passivity.

And let me just give you one text which reveals how God feels about passivity. This is Mathew 25:24-30, where Jesus tells the parable of the talents. One guy, the talent was a million dollars. And it's a master of a house, so this is a guy who entrusts a million dollars to one guy, $5 million to another guy, $10 million to another guy. And then he says, "I want you to make investments." The guys with $10 million, he made another $10 million. 100% return. The guy with $5 million got another $5 million. 100% return. The guy with $1 million did nothing with it. And then the master returns and this is verse 24. "He also who have received the one talent came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed.'" What's he doing? He's saying, I don't want you to rule over me. "'So I was afraid and then I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master answered him, 'You wicked and slothful servant.'" Laziness and wickedness together. You wicked and slothful servant.

"'You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers at my coming. I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has 10 talents for to everyone who has will more be given and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'" That's how God feels about our passivity when it comes to using what he has given us for him. That's the issue. The wicked and slothful guy, he hid the money, he did nothing with it. But I guarantee you he went and lived his life for himself, not for the master. And this is where the gospel changed everything. Because Jesus has taken responsibility for you, we are to take responsibility for what he has told us to do. I'll show you a balance between God's sovereignty and our responsibility. The interplay between these.

In Philippians 2:12-13, Saint Paul writes and says, "Therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Now upon first reading, it seems as if he's saying, you got to save yourself. You need to fix yourself. But that's not what he's saying because, in verse six of chapter one in the same book he says, "I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you, will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." So God begins the work of salvation. So if you're a Christian, you didn't make yourself a Christian. God made you a Christian. He makes you a Christian and he will bring that to fruition, to completion. He will bring you to the end. He will bring you to the completion at the day of Jesus Christ. But in the meantime, we have a responsibility, back to verse 12, of working out our salvation with fear and trembling. He's not saying work for your salvation, he's saying, workout your salvation.

So like when you workout your body, you're not working for a body, you're working out your body, in the same way. He says, "I've saved you, I've given you a brand new heart. Now workout your salvation." That's your job. But recognize it's God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Both to will, he gives you the desire, and to work, he gives you the energy to do it. This is why Christianity's in a different realm than any other world religion, any other self help, anything. Because Christianity says, God is calling you to do something impossible. Love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself, that's impossible. And then God says, "Good, you understand that it's impossible. You need Jesus Christ. He's the only one that did it. Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior." And then once you do, you get the holy spirit. You get God's energy in you. You get God changing your heart to do what God created you to do. It changes everything. It's not just the world view, it's the presence of the living God within you. So we do have a responsibility to respond to God's ability working in us.

So, there's a healthy understand ... That's the interplay between God's sovereignty and our responsibility. It's God who works in you for his good pleasure. Both the desire and the energy. He's saying, "I will empower you, I will energize you, I will give you the power to do what I've called you to do." One of my favorite verses in all of scripture that has this balance is 1st Corinthians 15:10. 1st Corinthians 15:10. I said this morning in my sermon that I want this on my tombstone. And then my wife came up to me, she's like, "That's too dark, don't say that." Fine, but I still want it on my tombstone. 1st Corinthians 15:10. "By the grace of God I am what I am." It doesn't stop there. A lot of people say, yeah, yeah, I am what I am. It is what it is. "I am what I am by the grace of God and his grace toward me was not in vain." It wasn't empty. It wasn't useless. God gave me grace and I did something with it. On the contrary he said, "I worked harder than any of them." Who's he talking about? He's talking about the other apostles. He says, "The other apostles, they work okay."

Peter was crucified upside down, and Saint Paul was like, "Yeah, I worked more than that guy." But it wasn't me, but the grace of God that's in me. Grace not in vain, I worked harder than anyone, back to grace. Saint Paul, what drove you? Why did you fulfill all these responsibilities? Were you trying to earn your salvation? No. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. With every ounce of his being he wanted to glorify God as a life of gratitude for what Christ had done for him and through him. So practically taking responsibility. We've got to take responsibility for our thoughts, for our desires, for our actions. Head, heart, hands. Thoughts, desires, actions lead your mind to know Christ, know the truth. Jesus Christ is word. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Look at the pattern of how Satan tempts Adam and Eve. He comes in, and the first thing he does is he questions God's word. He comes to Eve and says in verse one of chapter three, "Did God actually say ..." What's he doing? He's sowing distrust as an air of cynicism. Yeah, did God really say that? Yeah, is that really true? This is air of cynicism.

And if you're not a Christian perhaps you have this air of cynicism about Christianity. Which is fine. Every single one of us, we need to know why we believe what we believe. But what I'm saying is that air of cynicism has no substance to it. So if you are going to question Christianity like that, question the reason why you're even questioning it. And if you're like well, because I don't have ... Then why do you believe what you believe? Be cynical about your cynicism. Question your questions. You need to know exactly why you believe what you believe. Most people just ... They absorb the worldview of the day. This is what everyone around me believes, that's what I'm going to believe. This is what my parents believe, that's what I'm ... This is what my friends believe, that's what I'm going to believe. Satan comes in, he says, "Did God really say", questions God's word. We as Christians need to understand that this is where our spiritual warfare begins in the mind. It's a war of truth where we're told to take every thought captive to Jesus Christ. Jesus didn't just teach truth, he embodied truth. He never spoke a lie, never thought a lie. Not even to himself.

The easiest person for you to deceive is yourself. We often lie to ourselves so it has to start with truth in the mind. And one of the truths that we need to teach ourselves as Christians is 2nd Corinthians 15:10. That we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body whether good or evil. That's just the truth. We as Christians will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And there are two judgments. The first judgment is, every single human being after death is going to stand before God and God is going to say, "What have you done with my son Jesus Christ? Did you accept him? Did you accept his sacrifice or did you reject it?" If you accepted Jesus Christ as lord and savior now, you are given passage to eternal life. You spend eternity with God. If you rejected Christ, you rejected God. But then Christian, you are going to stand before God and he's going to say, "What did you do with what I gave you? What did you do with the time, the talent and the treasure?" And that's the truth we just need to keep reminding ourselves of. When we die, God is going to hold us responsible. And then lead your heart to love Jesus. Love God's word with your mind and then love Christ with your heart.

Why? Because we always do what we want to do. A lot of people think that we are rational beings, everything that we do is logical. False. That's false. If you're starting marketing, you know they market to the subconscious. Like the most effective marketing is always to the subconscious. It's always to your desires. It's always to your feelings. So you need to just discern. Hey little sheep, me, why do you want what you want? Why are you being pulled in this direction? And this is ... Satan attacks truth with the mind and then with Eve and Adam, he attacks the heart as well. Pulls the heart away from God. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, the tree was to be desired to make one wise. It was desire. Why do you want what you want? Why do we desire immediate over the ultimate? Proverbs 4:23, "Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life." Guard your heart. And then lead your body to follow Jesus Christ.

We are not called just to think about our souls, we live in embodied spirituality. We have physical bodies. And with those physical bodies we either live for the lord or we sin. And so Genesis 3:6, mind, heart, and then there's the action. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Any other worldview is all about behavior modification. If there's something in your life you need to change, just change it. Christianity comes in and says no, it's change of mind that leads to a change of heart that then leads to action, but the action is in the body. Saint Paul talks about imitating Christ. Be imitators of me as I am of Christ, 1st Corinthians 11:1. He's talking about imitating Christ and knowing him, loving him, but also living as Christ lived. And to do that, he disciplined his body. He had a theology of the body, not just of the soul, not just of the mind but of the body. And he talked about disciplining his body to keep it in submission to God.

1st Corinthians 9:24 and 27, and look at the analogies that he uses, included athletes. "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable, so I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified." I discipline my body, the Greek word soma. Not sarx, not flesh, he's not talking about the sinful part of our being. He's talking about his physical body. He's like there's physical things I do to keep myself disciplined. Self discipline meaning, I do things that my body does not naturally want to do. Saint Paul, what are you talking about? He's talking about, like physical things. And to get an idea of what he's talking about, you look at his life, but you also study what biblical wisdom is. In biblical wisdom, you read the book of proverbs, it has to do with things that we do in the body.

So by body I mean body. Like what we eat, how we eat, how we sleep. For example, sleep. What does the scripture say about sleep? Sleep is a gift that God gives to those whom he loves. That's a bible verse. In the book of proverbs, it also says, be careful to not sleep too much. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and you're poor. That's from the bible. So getting up, getting stuff done. Limiting your sugar intake. It's a real thing. Do I have a bible verse for that? Yeah. It says, honey is sweet, enjoy it, don't eat too much or you might puke. Like physical things. Limiting entertainment. Limiting consumption. Limiting screen time. Fasting. It's a physical ... Prayer and fasting. It's a physical thing that we do when you say no, I'm going to abstain in order to spend more time with God. That's part of disciplining the body. Taking care of yourself. Taking care of your health. In the first sermon I just said, lift weights, do cardio. And my wife's like, you got explain, it's health. Because the body is a temple of the holy spirit. We are to care for our self. We have a responsibility to God.

I'm sure you've heard of the famous marshmallow experiment. The experiment was, people had gotten these little kids together and they told the little kids, you can have one marshmallow now or you can have two in 15 minutes. And then they followed up with the kids after, like years after. Like how did they do in life? And this is the conclusion, the follow up studied that the children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents and generally better scores in a range of life measures. Success they say, usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction. That's exactly what delayed gratification's all about. It's true in life because it's a godly principle. He's wired into the universe. So we take responsibility for ourselves and then in order to be able to more successfully, more effectively, take responsibility for other people as well.

All throughout the scripture, this is the great commandments. Love God and then also love your neighbor as yourself. Meaning we take responsibility for the people in our lives who need help. In particular, 1st Corinthians 10:24, "Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor." Practically, who's my neighbor? Practically I live with five females. My five female roommates. My wife and my four daughters. Those are my closest neighbors. I have a responsibility before God for my family. If you have a family, you have a responsibility before God for your family. Adam sinned after Eve sinned. Eve sinned first with taking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Then Adam does. But God doesn't come looking for Eve. He comes looking for Adam because Adam actually didn't fulfill his responsibility of protecting the garden from the evil one and he was there with his wife as the wife was being tempted by Satan. So we have a responsibility, husbands, for our wives, fathers, for your children. We have a responsibility in our families. Biblically speaking, where do you get this? Honor thy father and mother. That's a biblical commandment that there is a responsibility for our family. And then also Jesus Christ on the cross, he's dying and he's still thinking about his mother.

He's on the cross being crucified and this is Mathew 9:26. "When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby. He said to his mother, 'Woman behold your son.' And then he said to the disciple, 'Behold your mother.' And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home." He was caring for his mom even as he's dying on the cross under the weight of our sin. First Timothy 5:8, "But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." If you're not physically providing for your family that whom you are responsible, we are unfaithful. And then responsibility for your church. We as Christians take responsibility for the church that God leads us to and we do that by attending regularly, praying consistently, living communally, submitting humbly, preserving unity, giving generously, serving faithfully, and pursuing holiness because Jesus Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it. And then, we are responsible for people in our lives who are in need. People who God leads into our lives who are in need.

And the great parable that Jesus tells is the parable of the good Samaritan. This man gets mugged. He's lying there on the path. A Levite, a religious person walks by, sees him, says, "Not my responsibility." Keeps going. Going to church. And he says a priest walks by, looks at the guy, not my responsibility, goes to church. Then a Samaritan comes by. They were hated by the Jews. Says, "That's my responsibility." We take responsibility. Jesus took responsibility for us, so that we take responsibility for ourselves so that we are in a better position to take responsibility for others. I'll close with this. Victor Franco. In the beginning he said, "We need a statue of responsibility." Good idea, but we already have one. The greatest statue of responsibility is the cross of Jesus Christ. Where he takes responsibility for us, saves us, then commissions us to be agents of change in the world.

Amen, let's pray. Lord we thank you for this time that you've given us. I pray if anyone here is not yet a Christian, has not been reconciled with you, has not accepted the free gift of grace, I pray today Lord, convert them. Regenerate them. Fill them with the holy spirit and show them just how incredible it was that you the God of the universe took responsibility for our sins. And continue to empower us to live the lives that you've called us to live. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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Summary:

In Matthew 10:16, Jesus said, "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." Jesus often mixed metaphors to describe the nuanced profundity of the Truth. Jesus calls Christians to live like sheep who follow the Good Shepherd, which in turn, makes us a special sort of sheep. Sheep are proverbially stupid, yet Jesus calls us to be wise as serpents. Christians are to develop a dove-like innocence, and snake-like intelligence. What kind of sheep is this? We are to be sheep like Jesus, the Lamb of God, who is also the Lion of Judah.

Jesus is a Lion-like Lamb, and by worshipping Him, we begin to resemble Him, because as G.K. Beale writes, "What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration."

Worshipping Jesus is the key to becoming like Jesus, the Lion-like Lamb.

Transcript:

Lord, we thank you that you have created us in your image, and show us today that that image, because of sin and our rebellion, because of our pride, it has been splintered. It has been fractured. Show us that Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God, the perfect human being who had the perfect mixture of lion and lamblike qualities, that he is the perfect image. When we realize what Christ did on the cross for us, that he died for our sins, that that's what it took to save us, that humbles us, and he was willing to take it. That gives us incredible confidence that we can be clothed in the love of Christ. I pray that you'd make us a people who'd now worship Christ. As we worship him, that we are conformed to this image of perfect humility and confidence, both lion and lamblike qualities. Holy Spirit, come to this place. Prepare us to hear from you, hear your words, apply it to our lives. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

We're really excited. We're starting a brand new sermon series today that we are calling Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life. Why resilience? Life is hard. I don't need to make the case of why life is hard. As you grow older, it just gets harder. I was always under the impression that if I just graduated, if I get this degree, if I get into this next stage of life, it just gets easier and gets easier. It does not, especially if you have kids and especially if you keep having kids. Life is hard. Life in this area is hard. Being a Christian is hard. Now can you take one of two paths. You can have one of two responses. It's either you grow harder, tougher, just toughen up. You just grit your teeth, white-knuckle it, and you get through. You power through or you soften up. You're just overwhelmed with everything. There's a victimhood mentality. Then, you turn to coping mechanisms, maybe substance abuse.

Sometimes you're tough all day in public, and then you come home, and you're in a fetal position. That's the softness. It's one of two ways. There's got to be another way. There's got to be a way that's not just too hard, not just too soft. If you're too soft, you can't make it in life. If you're too hard, you can't enjoy life. You truncate your emotion. You don't feel anything. You just keep going. That's not how we're created to live. We need a third way, and that third way is the path of resilience. What does resilience mean? It means you're looking at life eyes wide open. You realize that life is hard, but you realize there is suffering, but you adapt. You bounce back. You roll with the punches. You're knocked down. You come back stronger. Nothing can crush your spirit. You're resilient. No accident. No misstep. No trauma. You don't succumb to stress. You surmount it. There's resilience.

How do we develop resilience? I'll give you this phrase, and this is a powerful phrase. It's called humble confidence. Actually, there's a lot of literature out there, secular literature, that's realized that there is power in this. This is one of the keys to success in life, developing humble confidence. The problem is, in the secular world, they can't figure out how to give you both. They'll teach you how to be humble or at least pretend to be, and they'll teach you how to be confident or at least pretend to be, pose, posture, but often they can't do both at the same time. What do we need? We need someone who's done it, someone who's the epitome of humble confidence, someone who is both a lion, fierce and toughness, and a lamb, soft and tenderness. That's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is both lion and lamb. He's both strong and compassionate. He's meek, which is not weakness. Meekness is strength under control. He's both.

Humble confidence, it's not a paradox to be resolved. It's a tension to be embraced. It's the opposite to prideful insecurity, where you present this confidence, but deep inside you're deeply insecure. It's confidence that's balanced with humility, so it doesn't turn into arrogance, and it's humility that's balanced with confidence, so it doesn't turn into self-deprecation. This is what CS Lewis talked about in Mere Christianity. His famous quote is that true humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's actually thinking of yourself less. It's a powerful, powerful idea, where humility isn't, "Oh, I'm so terrible. I'm so terrible. I'm so terrible," and you stay there, and it just turns into this self-deprecation. It actually gives you incredible confidence when you truly understand what it is.

His quote is, "Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble person that he will be what most people call humble nowadays. He will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person who is always telling you that, of course, he's a nobody. Probably all you'll think about when you meet him is that he seemed cheerful and intelligent. He took a real interest in what you said. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a little envious of someone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at all." True humility is knowing who you are. It's knowing who God created you to be because you know whose you are. It's both humility and confidence. It's a powerful, powerful combination.

To frame up our time in this study, today I'm going to do a lot of theology to present who Christ is as both lion and lamb. The reason why I'm going to do that, someone came up to me after the service, and they're like, "I wish there was some more practical application." It's coming for the next 10 weeks. Today I just want to frame up the theology of who Christ is, perfect mixture of lion and lamb, and how do we develop practically? That's a mixture by worshiping him. Then, for the next 10 or so weeks, up until Advent, we're going to talk about how this applies in every single most important area of our lives. Today, we're in Revelation five. I love the book of Revelation. Today the chapter's a glimpse into heaven. It's a glimpse into the supernatural realm. We get a picture of heaven, and heaven is real because Jesus is real. The historical Jesus is proof that this is real.

Today we're in Revelation chapter five. Would you please look at the text with me? Revelation five, "Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?' And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, 'Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.'

And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they began a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.'

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.' And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.' And the four living creatures said, 'Amen,' and the elders fell down and worshiped." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. What a text.

I preached this once, and after, I'm like, "I just didn't do this thing justice. We need like a full-blown sermon series just on Revelation." One day. One day we'll get there. Three points to frame up our time together. We'll look at our longing for the lion, our need for the lamb, and then our need to worship the lion-like lamb. First of all, our longing for the lion. Revelation five, we get a glimpse of the revelation that God has given to John, the apostle John, as he's exiled on the island of Patmos. This is what John sees. He said, "I saw on the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals." What's the scroll? The scroll is a record of God's plan for the world. It's a plan that includes salvation and restoration but also judgment of the wicked. Everyone who receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will be saved by grace through faith. Those who reject that grace will be judged. Judgment, salvation, restoration, we see that as the scroll is opened up, history is coming to consummation.

It's sealed with seven seals. Why seven? Seven is the number of completeness. The contents are completely hidden. No one has access to it. Breaking of the seals, which happens in chapter six and chapter eight and so on, brings to pass the events, meaning they don't just reveal what God's will is. It's not just a disclosure. It actually sets God's will in motion to accomplish his purposes. The scroll is written on both front and back. This is important, meaning that no one can add anything to it. God's plan is completely written. The same takes place in Ezekiel two when God gives a scroll to Ezekiel with his word, with his plan. It's written on both sides. Verse two, "And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?'" Who in all of the created order has the sovereign authority to open up God's plan of judgment and redemption?

Verse three, "And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it." Why isn't anyone found to do it? Who has the sovereign authority to open up the scroll? Well, there's only one. It's God himself. Well, why doesn't God himself open the scroll? Why is he asking someone else to do it? Because as we see the scroll opened up later on, we see that God's plan for the redeemed, for the elect, for the saints, God's plan is full of such incredible blessing and privilege and bliss and happiness and rewards that it would make God unrighteous to give that level of blessing and bliss to sinners. This is what heaven is asking. God, how can you give that to them, to sinners?

The end of history is so incredible, so astounding that it would be unrighteous for God to bring it to pass by himself. It's as if he doesn't care that we have trampled his glory. It's as if he doesn't care that we have swept our sin under the rug of the universe. Someone has to open it. Something has to demonstrate the righteousness of God and his justice and his mercy simultaneously. If God were to open it without a mediator, without a go-between and deal directly with sinful men, it would make him unjust, and we would be consumed by his holiness. No one can open it. That's why John is weeping. He's longing for a lion. He's longing for someone to stand between us and the justice of God, the judgment that we deserve, condemnation.

Verse five, "And one of the elders said to me, 'Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.'" The Lion of Judah, this is the Messiah, messianic title from Genesis 49. He's also the Root of David, another messianic title from Isaiah 11 and Jeremiah 23. This is the Messiah King will arise from the seed of David, and he has triumphed. He has conquered. Conquered what? Satan, sin, and death, our greatest enemies. He stood in the gap. He is the mediator between us and God's wrath. We're looking for that great, mighty King. The elder says, "John, weep no more. The lion is here. Look to the lion." Throughout scripture, lions are portrayed as ferociously terrifying, 600 pounds of muscle and ferocity, utterly fearless and merciless. They never retreat. They're always advancing. They dominate everything that surrounds them. They tear victims limb from limb. Their roar can be heard five miles away.

Isaiah talks about a lion approaching a group of shepherds and prowling. It's just waiting for the right moment to attack. The shepherds are trying to make noise, and they can't save themselves from this lion. Jesus Christ is presented as this lion, attacking our greatest enemies, sin and death. John, stop weeping. Look to the throne. The lion is right there, the Lion of Judah, so John looks. Verse six, "And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth." He said, "Look to the lion. Weep no more." He looks, and the lion is actually a lamb.

Eugene Boring commentated on this text. He says, "This is the most mind-wrenching rebirth of images in all of literature. The reader is set up to see an image of power and might, a lion. Instead, the reader discovers a lamb that was slain." It brings us to point two, our need for the lamb. If you study a holy scripture, the cannon of scripture, the lamb is the most beloved and the most pervasive symbol of atonement, of sacrifice, mentioned about 750 times all throughout the Bible in a variety of terms. You remember Abraham and Isaac. God promises a son to Abraham. It's the son of the promise. Finally, he's given a son, and God comes to him and says, "Take your son, your only son, your beloved son, and sacrifice him." Abraham goes three days journey. He's about to do it, and the angel stops him. What does the angel say? "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering."

The whole Passover holiday, you take a lamb, a lamb without blemish, and sacrifice. You paint your doorway with its blood so that the angel of death passes over. Isaiah 53, the servant of the Lord, he was a lamb led to the slaughter. John 1:29, John the Baptist said, "This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." It's important to note that the word used here for lamb, and I don't do this often. I don't throw in Greek in sermons because I remember John Piper, the patron saint of the Protestant church, John Piper said, he's like, "Don't pull rank." That's what he said, but this is really important about the Greek. The word used here is the word arnion. It's a special word for lamb. It's only used one time outside the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation, it's used 29 times. One time outside, and it's used in John 21:15 where Jesus comes to Peter and said, "Feed my lambs," arnion. The resurrected Christ used that.

In the book of Revelation 28 times this word is used to describe Jesus Christ. This is important. The only other time that it's not used to describe Christ, it's used to describe Satan who comes as if he's an arnion lamb, but he's actually a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is Revelation 13:11, "Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon." Arnion. 29 times the book of Revelation. 28 times it's used to describe Jesus Christ. Peculiar choice for lamb since it's not used outside of Revelation except for once. John could have used more appropriate words like paschal. 1 Corinthians 5:7, the Saint Paul uses the word paschal, which from the Old Testament, "Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb," paschal, "has been sacrificed."

John 1:29 uses amnos, which is a different word, "Behold, the Lamb of God," amnos of God, "who takes away the sin of the world." Amnos is also used in Acts 8:32, where Philip quotes Isaiah 53, "Like a sheep," probaton, "he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb," amnos, "before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth." That seems like a more appropriate fit. Amnos, you're talking about a lamb that was slain. That's the context in Isaiah. 1 Peter 1:18 and 19 uses the same word, "Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb," amnos, "without blemish or spot." Luke 10:3 uses a different word, aren, "Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs," aren, "in the midst of wolves." Any of these choices, paschal, amnos, or aren, could have been used. Obvious choices, but they're not used. Why? Because Jesus here isn't just presented as a typical lamb.

This is crucial. He's presented as a lion who is the lamb. It's such a revolutionary idea they had to coin a new word. They had to bring a completely different word to explain what's going on. This is a lamb, not as a victim. He's standing. There's something different about him too. He says in Revelation 5:6, we look at this lamb standing as though it had been slain. It had been slain, but it's not crumpled over. It's standing because it had been resurrected, he, Christ, and seven horns. Seven is perfection. Horns is omnipotence, strength. It's perfect strength. He's omnipotent, and he's seven eyes. Perfect, sees everything, he's omniscience, and there's seven spirits of God sent out into the earth, the Holy Spirit here. It's John's way of speaking about the fullness of the Holy Spirit that works at the behest of this lamblike lion, lion-like lamb.

1 Corinthians 1:24, "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." He's a lamb. There's humility. He's humiliated because he was slain, but the marks of death, though visible, are not debilitating. He's come back from the dead. John hears a lion, sees a lamb, hears strength, sees weakness, hears a conqueror, sees the quintessential victim, but he's not just a victim. He's the lamb who has conquered, the lamb that destined for sacrifice but actually triumphs. This is also important, that the lion isn't temporarily a lamb. All throughout the book of Revelation now, Christ is just referred to as the lamb. When the new heavens and the new earth descend in Revelation 19, the lamb is the light of the city. When he's talking about the marriage supper, it's the marriage supper not of the lion but of the lamb. He's never again called the lion in the book of Revelation.

Even when he goes to war against God's enemies, he goes to war as this omnipotent, omniscience lamb. This is Revelation 6:15, "Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves, among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us. Hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?'" It's a lamb who brings the wrath of God for all those who reject his sacrifice. It's a lamb who leads in Revelation seven. It's a lamb who's actually a general in Revelation 12 and 17. Revelation 17:14, "They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful."

To the enemies, he comes as a lamb with wrath. He comes like a lion, a lamb that acts like a lion, but to the elect, to the children of God, to those who accept his sacrifice by grace through faith, he's tenderhearted. He's merciful. He's lowly. He's meek in everything he does. CS Lewis, in The Lamb... Sorry. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I ruined my punchline. The punchline is it's the only thing that I think CS Lewis ever got wrong. I was about to call him out, but you get the point. Aslan, who's actually Jesus, like he's the lion, and he's the tenderhearted, he acts like a lamb. In Revelation, it's vice versa. He comes as a lamb who's got the horns, and he conquers. It should be called The Lamb, the Witch, and the... Keep going. He's both. It's the lion and the lamb. Jesus is both.

This is why I say this, because Jesus is the quintessential human being. Jesus is the perfect image of God. He's the perfect representation of God. When God says, "I want you to be perfect," he's saying, "I want you to be the perfect human being that I've created you to be." Do we have an example? Yes. It's Christ. In his personality, it's both. He's lion and lamb. There's glory, and there's humility. There's transcendence, and there's condescension. There's justice, and there's mercy. There's majesty, and there's meekness. Equality with God and yet deep reverence for God. He's all-sufficient and completely relying. He's good and yet patient when he endures evil, sovereign and yet submits, calmed the storm but would refuse to get off that cross. Infinite holiness, and he takes our sin, becomes our sin. He's the mighty captain, the tender lover. He's the rock and the pearl. He's both tough and tender.

He is the conqueror because the Lion of Judah was willing to be killed as a lamb. He entered Jerusalem as a king on Palm Sunday, and then on Good Friday he was slaughtered as a lamb. He drove out the robbers from the temple like a lion, and then he gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins. Augustine said, "Who is this, both lamb and lion? He endured death as a lamb. He devoured it as a lion. Who is this, both lamb and lion, gentle and strong, lovable and terrifying, innocent and mighty, silent when he was being judged, roaring when he comes to judge?" Here's why this is important, to understand that Jesus is the fusion of both perfect harmony of this paradox, of this tension. The reason is because sometimes we lean naturally one way or the other. I naturally lean lion. I naturally, like I lean hardness. I lean truncate my emotion, keep going. I come from a Russian background, and I grew up in New England. That's why. It's a miracle I can smile ever.

Some of us naturally are more tender. We're naturally more lamblike. What happens is when we read holy scripture, we sometimes read our own personalities into Christ. Someone once said, "God created us in his own image, and ever since, we've been trying to return the favor," meaning that's what we do with Christ. For me, I'm naturally drawn to lion Jesus, when Jesus walks into the temple and just starts tossing stuff. I love that Jesus. I call that a thug life Jesus. There's hug life Jesus and thug life Jesus. He actually, you read the text, he's sitting there, and he's making the whip, just cold, calculating, just making it as robust as possible with his carpenter hands. Then, he just goes in and just goes ham. I like that Jesus. I'm naturally drawn to Jesus debating, throwing it down with the Pharisees, making them look like idiots. I love that.

I love Jesus coming back in Revelation at the very end where Jesus comes back in white clothing. He's about to go to war with white clothing. If you go to war, and you're dressed in white, you already know what the result's going to be. You're pretty sure of yourself. I like that Jesus, got a flaming sword. I can worship a God that can kill me. I'll worship that guy. I'll sing songs. Then, there's the tender Jesus, where he's tender with children. I think this the reason why God's given me all daughters. I've got four daughters. He's like, "You got to work on the tenderness part, more lamb." He's tender. When sinners come to him, he's gracious. He's tender. The woman caught in adultery was brought to him. He's tender with her. It's the lamblike Jesus. He meets people's practical needs. He's both. When he calls us to come to him, he calls us to become like him.

Now, practically, how does that happen? It happens through worship, and this is really important. This is point three. Worship the lion-like lamb. What does the world do? What does everyone in the scene do as soon as they see the lamb who is a lion, the lion who is lamb? Revelation 5:8, "When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." After witnessing this transfer of power, that this scroll is given to the Son of God, all heaven breaks out in song. They've got musical instruments, the harpist traditionally used to praise God, and they're worshiping with song. They're worshiping with prayer. The incense is assembled for prayer. The heavenly choir breaks out in joyful song. They start worshiping him. The angels, everything in existence starts worshiping.

If you're new to Christianity, some of you might be uncomfortable with the singing part of our service. The band is great, and the music is loud, and it's on purpose. Part of why, because it's very good, and we want everyone to sing, but also for those of you who can't sing that well, we just drown you out. I'm putting myself in. There's a reason why we sing. People sing when they celebrate. Even people who are not Christians, song is such an important part of being a human being. Karaoke is a thing. People go to places where they're given a mic, and they can't sing, but everyone cheers them on anyway. The Red Sox stink this year, and everyone's still singing during the seventh inning stretch. People sing. When your song comes on, your jam comes on, you sing. You go to concerts to sing. That's why we sing at church.

We sing at church to celebrate God. We sing to worship God. He's worthy of our worship. We sing because God himself sings. God is a singing God. Zephaniah 3:17 says that God sings over his beloved. We're created in the image of a singing God. Therefore, we sing. You see all of heaven singing. What are they doing? They're worshiping. What does it mean to worship? Verse nine, they sing this new song, and they're saying, "Worthy are you." It's not just emotion. It's truth. It's not just a feeling. This is truth. This is what we know, not just what we feel. You're worthy. "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God." It's a done deal.

You have ransomed so that people that do repent, that do follow Jesus, that do become Christians, they do so because the effective work of his ransom, of his salvific act of substitutionary atonement, ransomed people for God. What kind of people? From every tribe, every language, every people, every nation, a true mosaic, and they become a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. They're worshiping. What is worship? It's to ascribe worth. It's the first word, and they say that multiple times. Worthy is the lamb. The lamb has worth, and I'm just agree... Yes, you have worth. You are precious. You are a treasure. That's what it means to worship. The word worship comes from the word worth, to ascribe worth to something. Even if you're not a Christianity, you're still worshiping. We can't but worship. We're created by God to worship.

"The opposite of Christianity is not atheism," Peter Kreeft said, "The opposite of Christianity isn't atheism. It's idolatry." What he means is that every single person alive is driven by something that they find precious. Whatever you find most precious, whatever you find most valuable, whatever you ascribe most worth to, that's what you're driven by. That's what dominates your thoughts. This is what your dreams are filled with. It can be all kinds of things, from sex, money, power, jobs, career, things, houses, parking spots, whatever it is, worship. I'll just give you a parable that Jesus tells in Matthew 13. He tells this parable, and he's like, "This is what the kingdom of God is like." He says a guy who sees a field, and it looks like an ordinary field to everyone, but this guy gets a treasure map. He understands that someone hid their treasure in this field. Whoever owns the field owns the treasure.

No one sees the treasure, but this guy sees the treasure. He goes. He sells everything he has to buy this field. Everyone thinks he's crazy, "You're crazy. You're going to pay $90,000 for a parking spot. You're crazy," but he knows that underneath that parking spot is a suitcase with $1 million cash. Now he's not so crazy. Jesus says that's what it means to become a Christian. No one sees the treasure, but you see the treasure because the Holy Spirit has revealed it to your heart. You see that Christ is worthy, worthy of your life, worthy of your time, worthy of your treasure and talent, everything, because of what he has done. Why is he worthy? Because of his sacrifice, and the saints are made into a kingdom of priests. We'll get into what that means at the end here.

Here's why it's important to focus on worshiping Jesus. Remember what we started with? Jesus is the lamb, and he's the lion. Together, humble confidence. How do we develop both humble confidence? Here's how. It's worship. Why? Because whatever we worship we begin to reflect, resemble. I get this from GK Beale who wrote this phenomenal work, by the way, called We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. Phenomenal work. This is his thesis. He says, "What people revere they resemble either for ruin or for restoration." Whatever you worship, you become like that. Small example like celebrities. You don't use the word, but celebrities that you admire, and you're following them, and you're like, "I wonder what they eat. I wonder what their workout regimen is like. I wonder where do they get their clothes." Whoever you follow you begin to resemble.

It starts like an early age. How many kids today in New England are named Brady? Like every other kid I meet, Brady, Brady, Brady. Why not Tom? I don't know. Brady. Back in the day, it was Michael Jordan. There's a family on my street. They had two sons, Michael and Jordan. How does that work itself out in our lives? Whatever you're driven by, you begin to look like that. Now, back to humble confidence. We want to develop humble confidence. We do that by worshiping the one who is ultimately, quintessentially humble and confident at the same time, Jesus Christ. The theology behind all this, I'll just summarize GK Beale's argument real quick. He says we're created in the image of God. Sin has splintered the image of God because we worship creature instead of creator. When we worship that, we become conformed to the image of whatever we worship. That's Romans 1:21. It's the word for image is eikṓn or icon. We get the word icon from it. "Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

You start to resemble, he's saying, you start to resemble whatever it is that you worship. How do we counter that? We start worshiping Christ, the ultimate object of our worship, and that's how we grow into being the person that we're created to be. Romans 8:28, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed," or transformed, "conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among brothers." God's going to work all things together for the good of those who what? Love him, are called to be his, love him. As we love him, what happens? We're conformed into his image. Loving Christ is how we conform to his image. 2 Corinthians 3:18, "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."

How do we become transformed? We behold his glory. How do we do that? By looking at the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ, that's what shapes us to become more like Christ. It's all about the gospel. Humility and confidence. Humility, I look at the cross of Jesus Christ, and I realize the only way for God to forgive my sins, the only way for God to save me, I am so wicked that the only way for me to be redeemed is for the Son of God to die on the cross. That can't but humble you, but I'm also so loved at the same time that the Son of God was willing to take it. He's willing to go to the cross. If that doesn't give you confidence, nothing will. You are clothed in the love and acceptance and approval of God. It's both. That's what leads us to worship. How do you know that you're worshiping? I'll give you two just really practical things.

Number one, you give up control. You're willing to give up control to God, who is lion. Jesus, you are my lion. I'm going to follow you. You know how you see people on the street sometimes, and they just have this massive dog, just walking around? Those people, they walk around like bosses. You got a mini horse next to you just walking. Imagine if you had a lion. You're just walking down the street, down Beacon Street, here's my lion, my pet lion. You want to start something? No, you can't not... Why wouldn't you give up control to God who is omnipotent? He is good, and he is great. Now, relinquish control. Sometimes we're like, "Yeah, God. I agree with your plans. I'm not happy with it." Relinquish control. This is what we see in Revelation 4:19.

This is what they do when they see Christ, "Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 'Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.'" We give him control. You're kings. This is incredible. He says, "You're my kings. I give you authority. I confer authority to you." What do the kings do? They humble themselves before Christ. They do the same thing that Christ did, the kingdom of the universe who humbles himself. Once in all of the scripture Jesus points to one guy, and he says, "That's the greatest guy who ever lived. That's the GOAT, the greatest of all time. That's him." He said that about John the Baptist.

This is in Luke 7:28, "I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John," not one. What made John so great? His whole ministry revolved around deferring glory to Christ. John 3:30, "He must increase, but I must decrease." This is incredible. He must increase. I must decrease. As we do that, what does Jesus say? That's the greatest guy ever. That's the greatest one who ever lived. In Christ's eyes, Christ esteems him as great because of his humility. This is the way that God works. Old Testament, Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, they're barren, and God uses them powerfully. David was the youngest. Moses was fearful. Jonah was hesitant. Ruth and Naomi, sorrowful. Gideon was cowardly, and God uses them powerfully because of their humility. They were humble enough to say, "God, you are in control, and I surrender myself, and I humbly surrender myself to you."

Then, how does this work this work itself practically? You relinquish control, but you also begin to live as a priest and a king. This is incredible. You become a priest and a king. Priests, humble. Kings, confident. Revelation five, you get this in verse nine and 10. What does he do after he redeems them? "You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God." So much there I can't unpack it all. That's why you got to come back next week and the week after that, but you're a priest. That means you are bringing, you're ministering with the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people around you. What do priests do? They pray for people. They serve people. They care for people. They think of other people. You're priests. Incredible job, but also you're a king. What does it mean to be a king? That means you are helping submit things in the universe that have not been submitted yet to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is Lord over everything, but there's still chaos in the universe. We do this through our jobs. We do this through our professions. What are we doing? We're submitting every square inch of the universe to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. We're priests and kings. You can't but be confident knowing that this is the purpose of God for you. You're so humbled that God would choose you to do this. Submitting to Jesus, the lion, makes you a lamb. Accepting Jesus the lamb makes you a lion. It's both humility and confidence, and your heart is full of joy because the gospel transforms prideful insecurity into humble confidence. If you're not yet a Christian today, we welcome you. We welcome you to come to the throne of Jesus Christ. You could do that with confidence. Hebrews 4:16, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Come with confidence, accepting the mercy, accepting the grace with humility, and the Lord gives it to you. If you are a Christian, ask the Lord, even today and through these next couple months as we study what it means to apply humble confidence in every single area of our life, ask the Holy Spirit, "Lord, where do I need to grow? Where in my life do I need to grow in being more of a lion and being more of a lamb? Where in my life do I need to grow and be more Christlike?" The Lord will give you grace to do that. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for this time that you've given us in the holy scriptures. Lord, we love the holy scriptures. They reveal who you are, they reveal your plan, they reveal the future, and they reveal our great need for you. We thank you for nourishing our souls with the word. We pray, Holy Spirit, help us to grow into the image of Christ. Give us more grace to do that. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: The God of the Universe, literally kneels to wash the filthy crud off his disciples' feet. This is one of the most shocking and scandalous texts in all of Scripture.

Then Jesus says, "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." At the end of that scene, Jesus says in John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We are called to love one another humbly, selflessly, practically, in such a way, that our tangible love serves as one of the most powerful apologetics for a watching world that desperately longs for the same love.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting, we're so glad you're here. And we'd love to connect with you if you'd like to connect with us, and we do that officially through the connection card, and the worship guide if you filled out legibly. You can either toss it into the offering basket when it comes around after, or redeem it at the Welcome Center for a little gift that we prepared for you.

We also have an app that you can download in the App Store or Google Play, where you can keep up to date with what's going on Mosaic. The sermons are in their community, community group discussions, and then also there's a connection card in there as well. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift that is to gather as your people. And LORD, we pray that you continue to work in our hearts, a powerful work of humility. LORD, let us not just understand the gospel theoretically or just with our minds, let us understand the gospel with our hearts. Well, what does it mean that the God of the universe stooped so low as to become one of us, stoop so low as to meet our greatest need on the cross by dying for us instead of us, in our place, and coming back to life through the resurrection.

We thank you, LORD, that you didn't just give us an example of how to love you, embodied love. You didn't just teach us words of love, you showed us the greatest act of love, the greatest sacrifice. You came to serve our greatest need, and then with that you meet all of our other needs, and show us that you want us after we accept the Gospel to now also meet the needs of our brothers and sisters, fellow Christians, and also our neighbors. And you showed us that we never graduate beyond meeting tangible needs. And you showed us this graphically by washing the feet of your disciples, and you told us, “Go and do likewise.”

So remind us today of the basics, and let us master the basics, never graduate beyond the basics; never think that we no longer need grace, no longer need to extend grace. And Holy Spirit, come to the space, work deep, work in our hearts, and make us a people who are radically, sacrificially loving as we serve one another and as we serve our neighbor. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

If you're new at Mosaic, last Sunday we held our annual vision sermon, our value sermon; Love. Jesus. Simple. This is what Mosaic is all about. And today, we're going to talk about how that practically manifest itself through service. That's what we're going to do today.

Next week, we're starting a brand new sermon series that we're calling Tough and Tender: Developing Resilience for Life. We're excited about the sermon of Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, and the Lamb of God, both tough and tender. We live in a city that does toughen us up at the expense of our tenderness, so we need both. And also, we live in a culture where many of us are too tender when it comes to the tough subjects of life.

So we're going to talk about the balance, that Jesus wants us to be both confident, knowing who we are in Christ, that our identity is rooted in him; and also humbled by the fact that the God of the universe stooped down to serve us and make us his.

Today, we're talking about, Love. Jesus. Simple, how it manifests itself practically that we are called to sacrifice and serve, just like Jesus did. We want to love. What does love mean? Love means to sacrifice, specifically tangibly.

Rod Dreher is a senior editor of The American Conservative. Two years ago, he wrote this book called The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. And in it, this is what he says. He says, “The culture has so de-censored Christianity socially, and politically and in all different ways. It's so hard to be a Christian in our current American culture, we need a different strategy.

“The idea is a serious Christian conservative can no longer live business-as-usual lives in America, that we have to develop creative communal solutions to help us hold on to our faith and our values, in a world growing even more hostile to them. We'd have to choose to make a decisive leap into a truly counter-cultural way of living Christianity, or we would doom our children and our children's children to assimilation.”

I understand what he's saying, and I feel the heart behind his argument. The heart is, “Hey, the culture is overwhelming the church.” And unless we go back and figure out exactly what we believe, unless we're rooted in the Gospel, in our traditions, in our Christian faith, orthodox historic Christianity; unless we do that, we won't have a counterculture with which to curb the stave off the water.

And he's saying, a lot of us, we see the floodwaters of culture change coming, and instead of piling up sand bags to keep the flood at bay of the culture change, he said we need to build an arc and we need to retreat, and we need to build strong communities, just like St. Benedict did. St. Benedict of Nursia, the early medieval monk. He retreated to the forest after Rome's fall. And I understand what he's saying, because he wants us to remain Christian.

And I also understand how difficult it is to remain a Christian when everyone around you isn't. I understand that difficulty. I understand the temptation to go where there are more Christians, where it's easier to remain a Christian. However, Jesus Christ did not call us to be monks, he called us to be missionaries. He said, “I want you to be a city set on a hill, in order to shine the light of the Gospel.”

So instead of heading to the hills, as he says metaphorically or literally, we need to remain, and perhaps even as missionaries called to advance the Gospel, go in the darkest places of the world, and be rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we need the cleansing effect of the Gospel to continue sanctify us even when the world around us wants to sully us with sin of the culture.

My other big problem with what he's saying is this, that it can create an isolation mentality. And it's so tempting in our individualistic American culture. We already as Christians have this idea of having a personal relationship with Christ, which translates into having a private relationship with Christ. Therefore, we bifurcate between our private life, pietistic, spirituality and our public life. I don't think that's what the Lord is calling us to.

Therefore, how does this work itself out? Many of you church as just the place you go to. Many of you church as just like going to the movies. And this was actually a bigger problem for us when, for three years, we met at the Regal movie theater in Fenway. I had to tell people all the time, like, “Church is different than just going to the movies.”

How often do you go to the movies? When something really good is playing. When you walk into the theater, you find a spot as far away from anyone as possible. As you walk in, you give people a head nod, I acknowledge that you exist. And then you go to your seat, you take your popcorn, and you just enjoy the show. As soon as it's done, you're out and you don't want to talk to anybody.

Unfortunately, a lot of people view church like that. So maybe we don't withdraw to the mountains, but we withdraw to our personal lives. This is where my Christianity is. Jesus does not call us to do that. Jesus calls us to be on mission. He calls us to live out our faith. How does it practically? He calls us to serve. As Jesus Christ served you, serve one another. By this, the world will know that you are my disciples because of the love that you have for one another.

Many of you church as a last option. And if that's why you're here because life is just falling apart, we're glad you're here, we want to minister to you. But I would submit to you, that it's much more effective to invest in church, invest in community, invest in relationships before you try to draw dividends, and we do that just through serving one another.

The text for our time in the Word, today, is John 13:1-17. This is the night before Jesus Christ was crucified. And before he's crucified, instead of thinking about his own needs that he's about to experience unimaginable suffering, at the Last Supper he serves as disciples, and he serves them by washing their feet. Would you look at the text with me? John 13:1-17.

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper.

He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”

Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

And when he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I've done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. And if I then, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is the messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these, blessed are you if you do them.

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together. We're going to look at the God who washes his feet, then we'll talk about receiving that washing, and then in return to extend that washing to one another.

First of all, the God who washes feet. How is Christianity different? What makes Christianity different from any of the other world religions and it does stand in a league all its own? This is what makes Christianity different. We worship a god who kneels. We worship a god who gets on his knees to wash the filth off the feet of his disciples. That's what makes Christianity different. God comes to us. He makes us clean. He provides a means for us to be purified, healed.

All the other religions say, “You need to purify yourself, cleanse yourself, and then you will be accepted.” Christianity says, “No, because of Christ's work of purification on the cross, all you need to do is accept it. And that's what makes you acceptable, just receiving the gift.”

Romans 4:5. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

We're not saved through our works; not even our works of cleansing ourselves, we're saved through the cleansing, salvific gospel of Jesus Christ. This foot-washing took place when? During the Passover. This is crucial. Why? This is the Last Supper that's taking place during the Passover. During the Passover, what was celebrated? The celebration was that the angel of death is coming, and the only thing that can save you from the angel of death is the blood of the lamb painted over your doorway.

And Jesus Christ comes, and he is the ultimate Passover lamb, who takes away the sin of the world; slain to spare us from God's judgment. And we need to accept that sacrifice by grace through faith, so to speak, paint the doorway of our heart with the blood of Jesus Christ, so that we do not experience the judgment that we deserve for our sins. And we see that everything Jesus does here is motivated by love.

John 13:1. Before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

So he loved them to the very moment of his death. And he also loved them completely; completely and up to the end, even though he's facing the most horrible suffering imaginable, he's not thinking of his own needs, he's thinking of his disciples needs. Who are these disciples? Were they faithful to the end as he was to them? No. Did they love him to the end like he loved them to the end? No. And here, we see that he's actually washing the fee of Judas, the one who betrayed him and sold him.

In John 13:26. Jesus answered, “It is he whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.

Before the Lord's Supper, before saying, “This is the one who's betraying me,” he washed Judas' feet. And Jesus already knew that his disciples were going to deny him, that Peter was going to betray him. Still, he washed their feet. They didn't deserve it, that's the point, just like we didn't deserve the work of Christ on the cross as he poured out his blood to cleanse us.

John 13:3. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper, laid aside his outer garments, taking a towel, tied it around his waist, then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

I love how verse three reminds us of who this is who's about to do what he's about to do. This is the Son of God, who gave up the glory of being in heaven to come down to live with us in the incarnation. And he didn't just come live with us, he didn't just experience all of the human experience, what he does, that he goes in and he actually serves his disciples by washing their dirty feet.

Here's why this is important. As you progress in Christianity and as you progress in your career, there's two temptations. The temptation is, I have grown beyond meeting people's practical needs. Here's how the practical works. You get an education, and then you work for a few years in your career, you're like, “I know how much my hour is worth. My hourly charge is $600 an hour.” Not mine. I'm saying some of you.

And you're like, “Any work that I do outside of my job, if it's under that, I'm going to outsource it.” And there's this temptation to outsource all of the basic stuff in our lives, and there's an app for absolutely everything you can imagine, just to outsource everything. And that mindset, it creeps into like the practical relational stuff as well.

I've got four daughters. The youngest is two. The oldest is 11. 11 years I've been a father. I've got a PhD-and-a-half in fatherhood in everything that that entails, including changing diapers. And as I was changing a diaper this week, I'm like, “Man, I wish I had an app for this.” Like I wish someone would just come and do. I just want to... “Get that done.”

And in the church we see this as well, where it's like, I've been a Christian long enough, I don't need to be doing X, Y, and Z. I'm so glad that God did not do that. I'm so glad that God wasn't tempted to outsource meeting our greatest need. By the way, he couldn't; he was the only one who could meet that.

So we see this incredible humility, that the same God who upholds the universe, who holds everything together as Colossians 1 says, that the one who tells the angelic host what to do, this same God humbly gets on his knees and washes the dirty, filthy feet of 12 undeserving disciples.

And I don't need to get into the graphic details of how their feet were a lot dirtier and nastier than our feet. I'll just say two words; no indoor plumbing and animals on the streets, and everybody walked everywhere. They walked on those streets, they walk into that house, and they expect someone to wash their feet. They're looking around and no one's doing it, there's no servant here; it's just Jesus and the disciples. And Jesus gets down and washes their... By the way, he's on his knees. I think this is important.

It doesn't say that he's on his knees, but you can't do what he did without getting on your knees. You can't just wash someone else's feet by stooping over. You got to get down and you got to get your hands dirty. This is important, that the God of the universe gets on his knees. He humbles himself to the point where he kneels before us to meet our need.

The shepherds when they heard that Jesus was coming, they were on their knees. The Magi when they brought treasures to Christ to honor him were on their knees. Peter when he realizes that he is in the presence of the Son of God gets on his knees. The woman who snuck into Simon the Pharisee's house in order to wash Jesus' feet from the alabaster jar, she gets on her feet.

In just a few hours, Pilate's soldiers who placed the crown of thorns on Jesus' head gave him a shepherd staff as his “scepter”, and they beat him to a bloody pulp. Then they got on his knees in mocking worship, crying out, “This is the King of the Jews. Hours before that, Jesus gets on his knees, holds out his hands, and with his hands; the same hands with which he fashioned the same feet that he's about to wash, he cleanses the filth and the dirt.

By the way, the progression of this text is the same progression as Philippians 2:5-11. And there's a parallel between these two texts.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In the same way that Jesus rose from the throne next to God the Father and came down, he rose from his chair and he laid aside his garments of glory, and he laid aside his garments in the same way that he took on this towel; he took on, clothed himself in humility, girded himself with a towel that did a servant's lowly job. And by the way, that's whose job this was. This is a job for the lowliest of the servants. Friends didn't wash friends' feet. There is no example in all of ancient literature of a superior washing the feet of an inferior.

And Jesus pours water into a basin in the same way that a few hours later has his blood will be poured out in order to cleanse us from the grime of our hearts, the guilt, and the defilement. And after he washed his disciples' feet, he wipes them. And what does he do? He takes his garments back up, and he sits at the table in the same way that Jesus Christ after his resurrection ascends to the right hand of God, the Father, and resumes his place in glory.

In verse 31 of John 13, toward the end of the chapter, it says that what Jesus did here, it uses a very interesting word to describe his service. It uses the word glory. Verse 31. When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.

Jesus, how are you glorifying the Father? Jesus, how are you glorifying yourself? In John 12:32, the verse prior to our verse, we see a hint. Jesus answered them. He said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

When Jesus talks about glorifying his name, glorifying the name of the Father, glorify and the Holy Spirit, he's talking about the service. He's talking about the sacrifice that's at the heart of the cross. Jesus was glorified through the cross. Jesus glorified the name of the Father through the cross. And this is absolutely counterintuitive, because the cross is the opposite of glory. The cross is the epitome of humiliation. The cross is the epitome of shame. There's no worse way to die than to be stripped, to be flogged, to be scorched, to be given a splintered cross to carry, to be nailed to that splintered cross, and then hung up as a public spectacle to everyone, a spectacle of humiliation.

And Jesus says, “This is the way that I'm going to glorify God the Father. Why? Because what does it mean to glorify God? It means to magnify his attributes. It means to show people what God is like. Then at the cross, we see what God is like. God is love. We see Christ on the cross, the Son of God saying, “This is how much I love you.” And we also see his justice, the justice of God, that that's what it took for our sins to be forgiven. Justice had to be paid; justice and love merging together at the cross. Love and grace shine forth.

Hebrews 1:3. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. And after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High.

So what he did with his disciples' feet is a picture, it's a metaphor, an analogy of what he's ultimately going to do on the cross. In the same way that he washed his disciples' feet, he's saying, “I'm going to the cross in order to provide purification for the greatest filth,” the filter of our hearts, the filth of our sin.

Now, what do we need to do with that? And God does command that we do something with that. This isn't just theory. This isn't just theology to stimulate us intellectually. Christ says, if this is true and it is, he proved it through his resurrection, then we are to respond. If he provided a means for our hearts to be cleansed, we are to receive that cleansing. And we see that in this point to receiving the washing, we see that the story stops abruptly when Jesus comes to wash Peter's feet.

In John 13:6. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” And the pronouns here are emphatic, showing Peter's utter shock. Look at Jesus' response, and it's fascinating.

Verse seven. Jesus answered him, “What I'm doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.” And Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”

By the way, this is the way that Jesus communicates. I remember I had a preaching professor in seminary who said, “If you're not clear, then that wasn't a good sermon.” And my response to him was, “Have you ever read Jesus' sermons?” Like texts like this where it's like multilayered communication, like multidimensional.

What's going on here is that Jesus, as he's having a conversation with Peter, and it's a physical, tangible act of service, but it's also a metaphor for what he's doing on the cross. As he's doing the washing, he talks about two different meanings of the washing. “I'm washing your feet, which is a sign of washing your heart, but there's two ways that I wash the heart. The first is justification where I wash you. I wash you from the guilt of your sin and you're washed forever. The second is the washing of sanctification.”

So in our salvation process, there's three categories that every single Christian needs to know. Justification is the moment that you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you've repented of your sins. You are washed completely of the shame, and guilt and the condemnation. Justification; you're justified, “I have been saved.”

Now begins the process of sanctification, where the Lord, day by day cleanses us from any remnant or vestige of sin. And when we die, we get a glorified body, no sin, and we will live in an embodied future in the new heavens and the new earth. We'll be glorifying God and rejoicing forever.

This is what he's talking about here. So first, he says, “Peter, if you don't receive my washing, if you don't receive my purification, you have no part of me.” Unless Jesus is your Passover lamb, unless you have applied his blood by grace through faith to your sins, you are under the curse of death. You were separated from God. “So accept it,” he says. And that's why he says in verse 8, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”

But then there's a second understanding of the washing. The first is washing of water regeneration. That's Titus 3:5. The second is the blood of Jesus cleanses us, continues to cleanse us from sin. That's 1 John 1:7. The first is all washing of regeneration. The second is that the Lord cleanses us as we walk in this world, and as our souls get sullied with the dirt of the culture around us.

Jesus doesn't tell us to retreat into the mountains, metaphorically or literally, he tells us to follow the way, follow the path, be missionaries in this world; missionaries, not monks. And as we walk in this dirty world, our feet get dirty, our souls get dirty on a daily basis. And you know what I'm talking about; things you see, things you think, and it's coming at us at just a breakneck speed, so we need the once for all cleansing, but then we also need the ongoing application of that cleansing, and that's what Jesus is talking about.

John 13:10. Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but now every one of you.

And that's where he's talking about Judas. Here, he's talking about the fact that the gospel isn't the way that we just become a Christian. The gospel is also the way we continue in the faith. You enter the Kingdom of God; you start a relationship with God by trusting him through the gospel. Then you take every step by continually being washed by his grace.

2 Timothy 2:1. You then my child be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. At first glance, Peter's refusal when he says, “Jesus, you're not washing my feet,” at first glance, it sounds a very humble. And actually if I were there, I'd probably do the same thing. Like, “No, no, no. I'm good, Jesus. My feet are nasty.”

I actually, whenever I come to someone's house and they're like, “You got to take your shoes off,” this is a house where you got to take your shoes off, I'm like, “No, you don't want me to do that.” I carry an extra pair of socks with me, just in case. I want to be a good neighbor. You know what I'm saying? It was like, “No.” It sounds almost like, “Jesus, I don't want you to get into my filth. I don't want you to get into my mess. What if you see something else there?”

It looks like it's humble, but it actually stems from pride. Here's what I mean. Peter wasn't comfortable with just accepting something from Jesus without reciprocating, you know what I'm saying? Like when someone gives you a birthday present and you're like, “I didn't know we were on that level relationally. Now I got to figure out how much this cost, and I got to figure out when your birthday is, and I got to I got to reciprocate.”

That's what's going on here. Where if, Jesus, if I receive this, then you can call me to do whatever you want to call me to do. And that's part of how the Gospel works. Like Jesus paid it all, he can ask you to do whatever, like all to him I owe. Like, “We'd rather pay for the salvation,” or like, “Jesus, I'll accept as a loan, and then I'll pay it back with interest.” And part of it is because we want to take credit for our own cleansing process, our own salvation process, or our own healing process. And Jesus says, “No, you can't pay back salvation. You can't earn salvation.”

All of our righteousness is as filthy rags. Holy Scripture says, the only thing we can actually offer God is our dirty feet, which is a symbol of our dirty hearts, and pride often masks itself under humility.

In verse eight, Peter say, “You shall never wash my feet.” “Jesus, you can wash them to the other disciples' feet. They definitely need some cleansing. Their feet really stink. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like them or like you, not like me.” It's sounds humble but it's very prideful. The reason why Jesus did this, I don't even think it's about the feet. It's the whole of like, to receive grace, you need humility. Like sit there, rest, and know that I am God and I will cleanse you. That takes so much humility.

And Peter is actually embarrassed by Jesus doing this. It seems beneath his dignity to have the God of the universe come so close, get so tender and wash filth that that's so close. Pride sometimes drives us to serve Christ. And any service we render Christ should always stem from gratitude, not from pride. Not, Jesus, look, I've received this free gift, but now I'm going to repay. That's a prideful mindset.

Romans 6:23. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So have you been humbled by receiving this washing? If not, what's in the way? And I'll tell you what's in the way. You know, it's in the way, it's pride. I find this text so important. Before we get into serving others, this is where we got to start, because you can serve others out of pride and you can serve others out of wrong motivation, but we got to get started here. Is your heart humbled by the cross? Does God's love cause you to hate sin? Does God's love motivate you with love so much so that you are willing to serve others?

This is crucial in our city in particular. I've lived in the city for 10 years, and in my whole time, I have never met a humble person. Never. I've met a lot of self-righteous people. I've met a lot of pretentious people. I've met a lot of arrogant. I'm right there with you. There's not one humble human being. Some people are growing in humility. That's the only difference. We need to grow in humility. And we do that by receiving washing every day. Lord, cleanse me. Lord, wash me. I need your gospel. And then as we do that, we have the grace to then extend washing to others.

Jesus says in verse 14, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I've given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you.” What does he mean, literally? No, of course not. Some churches do take this to mean literally. They actually have foot washing ceremonies and kicked that around at Mosaic, grow the church one way or another. No, that would never work here.

And by the way, when churches do that, you're not really washing dirty feet. Because if I knew that a foot-washing ceremony is coming up at church, I'm going to get my first pedicure ever. Ever. I'm going to make things easier.

Now, what he's talking about is meeting practical needs of people in several different categories. And I'll just give you a few examples. And this is the way we truly love one another by meeting practical needs. And this is why we can't retreat. This is why we have remain where we are and reach the people around us, love the people around us, so that the watching world sees us love one another.

Jesus didn't say, “Go and make monastic communities where you're loving one another, washing each other's feet where no one sees that.” He says, “I want you loving each other here now, so that the unbelieving world sees it.” That's John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you,” in the context, washed your feet, “You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

This is one of our greatest apologetics to the unbelieving world, that this is a community of people that loves one another practically. What do I mean by washing each other's feet? I mean, practical service. We'll get there. It starts with realizing that we live in close proximity with one another. There's always relational gunk. There's always relational dirt, filth, whatever, stuff that accumulates. And how do we deal with that? We need to forgive.

The blood of Jesus cleanses us by procuring forgiveness. Jesus said, “I cleanse you,” therefore, “And I forgive you.” So the way that we wash one another's feet, spiritually speaking, is we forgive one another when people sin against us. Assumption, they will sin against us because we're living in such close proximity with one another in community, where we need to extend forgiveness. And the great parable of this where Jesus tells a parable of a guy who owes the king 10,000 talent debt, and this is 150,000 years of wages for a working person.

They guy can't pay it back. The king forgives him. That guy then who's forgiven goes and finds a guy who owes him 100 days of wages; 150,000, 100 days of wages, and starts choking him out and says, “If you don't pay me back, I'm going to send you to prison.” The king hears about that and he's not happy. And the point is that God has forgiven us an incalculable debt. How can we not... how can but forgive others?

Another way that we wash each other's feet, metaphorically, is correction. We live in close proximity. We see other people's sins. We see their mistakes. We see their folly. And God commands us to call one another out, to speak truth to one another lovingly. This is so counter-cultural. We are so non-confrontational, personally; online, different story. But personally, we don't want to... like live and let live. Like, “I don't want to know.” Scripture says, if you love one another, you speak truth in love. It's washing of the crud of this world through the word. We speak the word to one another.

Ephesians 5:26, talking about Jesus, “...that he might sanctify her,” the church, “having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” We received Jesus' graceful correction, and that gives us power to then extend graceful correction and receive graceful correction. Those are all aspects of foot washing. Galatians 6:1. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you be tempted.

So forgiveness, correction, and practically just serving one another. When you see someone's practical needs as brothers and sisters, we are to meet those practical needs, however that looks. And when you've received the Lord's serving you, you can serve others from the right motives and with the right expectations.

Right motive is, I'm not trying to get something from you. And with the right expectations, even if I don't get a thank you, I'm still going to do this because Jesus Christ commands me to. And it requires less focused on our own rights and needs, and more on others.

Generosity is another example. When we recognize that God has given us everything, it frees you to give generously. 1 Corinthians 4:7. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Matthew 10:8b. You received without paying, give without pay. 2 Corinthians 9:8. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

And then the final practical way before we close out with explaining why those little cards are in front of you and why the greeters were extra emphatic in making sure you got a bulletin today. We'll get there. Refreshment. When you come home after an exhausting day, and there's nothing more refreshing than washing up. There's a spiritual sense in like we get exhausted in the Christian life. Living the Christian life, in particular in a place like Boston, it's hard.

And we need to encourage one another, and we do that by refreshing one another with God's Word. And that's done with time. That's done with margin in your life, where you have time for other people, where you can sit with them, and listen and speak a positive word of encouragement to their life.

Even St Paul, the great Apostle needed this. 1 Corinthians 16:17. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.

What does it mean to refresh another spirit? I don't know. But after you're done spending time, they're like, “Duh. That was great. I feel so much better. I feel so I feel refreshed. I feel encouraged. There's something there.” Philemon 7. For I've derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

Why do we serve at Mosaic? We serve at Mosaic, and we talk about service at Mosaic because it's more blessed to give than to receive. It's more blessed to bless than to be blessed. It's more blessed to serve than to be served. It actually is really good for you.

Health professionals have been telling this for a while. The BMC Public Health cohort studies, it took 40 papers that selected five randomized controlled trials and 17 cohort studies. And one of the things that they said was that when you serve other people, when you volunteer, when you give up your time, up your energy, what happens is, it actually has favorable effects on your health. It lowers depression, increases life satisfaction, and actually lowers the risk of mortality, but... big caveat, you actually have to love the people that you're serving. That's the big caveat.

And this is Dr. Michael Poulin, professor of psychology, University of Buffalo. He says, “Helping appears to only be good for you if you really care about those you're helping.” In two separate studies, he says, “I found that volunteering on behalf of strangers also weakens the link between stress and health, but only for volunteers who have generally positive views of other people. In other words, helping may be good for you specifically to the extent you're likely to experience compassion for those you help.”

So here's the practical side of everything we just talked about. Obviously, wash one other feet. You do as Jesus did. Here's how we do it practically at Mosaic as a church body. We are a church plant, meaning we don't own our building, we're brand new church. So everything that you see that happens here is setup and teared down. This church is run by an army of incredible volunteers, and has been from the beginning. One of the reasons why we service practically, we just need people to serve. The second reason is it reminds us of what the Lord calls us to.

In the hustle and bustle of the crazy speed and pace of the city, sometimes we forget. So what I talk about when you serve at Mosaic, I talk about it as a recalibration, where it's like, “Oh yeah, the Lord called me to serve. Oh yeah, the Lord called me wash feet. Oh yeah, the Lord called me to do as he did.” So that's one of the reasons why we call people to serve at Mosaic.

The second just really practical reason is Jesus told us to. And the third is that this church just can't run apart from volunteers. The average church in America engages 43% of their attenders in some volunteer role. Average church in the US, 43% of attenders serve. The top 10% of churches engage 72% of their attenders. Pretty good. Where's Mosaic at? If you don't count kids, which I'm not that comfortable with because I think our kids need to be serving, we're at 60%, which is pretty good. That's pretty good. We're still not magna cum laude. We're still not up there in the top 10%, so there's room for growth.

But here's why that statistic isn't really accurate. Because a lot of our volunteers, volunteer in multiple roles. So if you count unique volunteers, it's only 46% of attenders; barely above the average of 43%. And Mosaic Boston, we don't like being average. I mean, you know what average is? Average is like a 2.5 GPA. Average is like C. That's not us.

I believe in you. I think we can get into that top 10% this year. And we have multiple needs. I'm going to read off the needs. If the Lord leads you to serve at this church, the way that we'd love to follow up with you is fill out the card that's in front of you. It's either in the pew or in the worship guide, and you can toss it in the offering basket when it comes around.

Here's where we have some needs. In terms of our music ministry, our band by the way is incredible, is so gifted. Before I say the needs, let me just say, you hear the level of music here that we have been gifted with. So if you are at that level. This is important to say because there is like a try-out process. And if you try it out and you don't make it, don't get mad at me. I'm not even there. And we still love you. And there's other ways to serve. We need to female singers. We need three guitarists, two basses, two drummers, and two keyboard players.

For the morning greeting team, we need 12 new volunteers. The greeting team is the really happy, energetic looking people. So if you are an extrovert or can fake it, we'd love for you to sign up. And I know in this city, those people... like you guys are unicorns. So we need 12 unicorns for the greeting team.

Morning setup, we need six new volunteers. By the way, set up is incredible time to just get your cardio in on a Sunday morning. You just get here, you got to carry stuff, so you're welcome. Morning tear down, we need eight new volunteers. Evening Service, our 5:00 PM, we need greeters and tear down, accommodation of 10 new volunteers. Morning security, we need 12 new volunteers.

For the Mosaic teens ministry, we have a thriving teens ministry. We need three volunteers in the morning, and four in the evening, so seven total. Mini Mosaic, we need four front-table greeters, and then for flexible floaters. I think that's people who can do absolutely everything; so the Julian Edelman of service.

And then the video slide team, we need some volunteers. And then also community groups and community group hosts, we need hosts and leaders, co-leaders. So if you're interested in that, if you're blessed with the spiritual gift of a living room, that would be helpful.

So with that all said, you can respond on that little card, be like, “Yeah, I want to practically serve and help out the church. Even if I'm here for like a year, even if I'm here for six months, I want to invest while I'm here in order to see the kingdom of God expand.” With that said, would you please pray with me over the conclusion of the preaching of God's Word?

Lord, we thank you for this church. I thank you Jesus that you promise to build your church and that the gates of hell will not overcome it. I thank you for every single person who has sacrificially invested in this church by giving time, and treasure, and talent. And I pray that you draw many more to serve and continue to fill our hearts with this incredible love, and spirit of generosity and sacrifice, so much so that we're willing to wash one another's feet, however that may look. I pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary Several years ago the executive leadership team of Chick-fil-a had worked for quite some time on how to keep up with the competitive challenge created in their industry by Boston Chicken (later known as Boston Market). After a period of intense research and market studies, a group of young visionary leaders with big ideas and bright strategies found themselves in a committee room of frenzied debate over how to get bigger faster!

At the height of the dialogue, Truett Cathy the founder of Chick-fil-a began to pound on the table, which was very uncharacteristic of this admirable leader. When every eye in the room turned to him, he exclaimed that he was sick and tired of all this talk about getting bigger. Then he said:

“Gentlemen, I am sick and tired of hearing you talk about us getting bigger! What we need to be talking about is getting BETTER! If we get better our customers will demand we get bigger!”

Join us tomorrow for our annual vision sermon. We don't serve chicken sandwiches, so what do we need to get better at, as a church family? Love. Jesus. Simple.

Transcript: You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit Mosaicboston.com

Heavenly father, holy God, we thank you that you know our greatest need through your son Jesus Christ through the holy gospel. And I pray Holy Spirit that you come into this place, apply that gospel to us and plant in our hearts a holy ambition to proclaim the gospel. To speak the gospel. To speak the gospel in word and to embody the gospel in deed.

I pray, Lord, for everyone here who has been at Mosaic for a while, maybe even from the beginning. I pray that you renew our holy ambition. Why are we here? Why are we doing this? Remind us Lord. Give us a fresh zeal, fresh fervency. And Lord, for those who are visiting or looking for a church, I pray Lord today also give them this holy ambition. What is the greatest goal? What is the greatest ambition for our lives? And show us that it's not just career.

It's not a GPA. It's not getting those degrees. It's not money. It's not status. It's not reputation. There's a greater ambition that you have for us, an eternal ambition with eternal implications for eternal souls. Lord, show us also today that you called us to an embodied spirituality. That you don't want us to compartmentalize our Christianity and our private lives and then live a public life that has nothing to do with our faith.

But show us that you want integration, private, public, every sphere of life, and you want the gospel at the center permeating everything. I pray today renew our vision as a church as well. We pray this in Christ's Holy name, Amen. Popeye's chicken or Chick-fil-A? This is a church after all. I'm sure you've heard of the frenzy debate the past couple of weeks.

Popeye's chicken came out with a brand new chicken sandwich that suspiciously resembled the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. The famous one, the first one, the best one. Chick-fil-A actually sparked the chicken war debate with a tweet. The tweet was just the image of the recipe and it was the same exact recipe as Popeye's. And Popeye's Twitter handle responded by saying, “Y'all good?”

And that's what spatted the war on all fronts including memetic communication, memes. My favorite meme was the Lord's supper with Jesus and the disciples. Everyone had Chick-fil-A except for one guy. So be careful. It was actually so big the guy in Tennessee named Craig Barr actually sued Popeye's for running out of chicken. He sued them for $5,000 because he spent like weeks looking for the sandwich, driving around everywhere.

And because he was so distracted he broke one of his rims on his car and it cost $1,500. I've got all kinds of questions there. Your priority is just not... And so he's suing them for the rim and then his friends laughed at him to the point that he's now humiliated and that he can't be happy without the Popeye's chicken sandwich. Why do I even bring that up? I bring that up about what made Chick-fil-A, Chick-fil-A?

Why is that even a thing? It dominates the cultural conversation in the United States. Well, Chick-fil-A actually for four years in a row it's been rated America's favorite restaurant. How did that happen? Well, in the early 2000s Chick-fil-A was actually competing with a restaurant called Boston Chicken which later was renamed to Boston Market.

And Boston Market was growing rapidly and the managers at Chick-fil-A, the executives got together and they said, "How can we counter that growth? How can we compete with Boston Market?” They brought in these young visionaries and with bright ideas, bright strategies, etc. And they're all talking about growing faster, growing faster, growing bigger.

And then Truett Cathy, who was the founder of Chick-fil-A, started pounding the table with his fist which is out of character because he was a really humble guy. And every eye turned and looked at him and he said, “Gentlemen, I'm sick and tired of all the talk about us getting bigger. We need to be talking about getting better. If we get better our customers will demand that we get bigger.”

Why is that important to us today? This today is the annual Mosaic Boston vision sermon. Vision sermon of 2019, what do we as a church need to get better at? Love Jesus. Simple. We need to understand those values and understand that our vision in a very granular way and as it applies to everything that we do. Lots of Christians have an anti-vision for their life. This is what Christians do not do. Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.

A lot of churches have an anti-vision for themselves as well. We are against this cause. We're against that cause. We at Mosaic need to have an active and positive vision. What are we all about? And why do we do this beginning of September every year? We do this to remind ourselves a fresh, who are we? We're a church plant.

We started from scratch in the YMCA 316 Huntington Avenue in 2011. Every fall is so exciting. Fall in Boston is amazing and everyone's excited. There's an influx of energy in the city. Every fall I want to remind our church that we are still a church plant and every year we are replanting. Our core group is just a little bigger. We may have more resources at disposal.

Same vision, same values. We're the same church. love Jesus, simple. To focus our attention today on these three points, we're going to look at Romans 15:18-24. Saint Paul writes this epistle to the church in Rome which is the most influential city in the Roman empire. This epistle transformed Rome which then led to transformation to all of the Roman empire.

Romans 15:18, “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed. By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named lest I build on someone else's foundation.”

“But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see and those who have never heard will understand. This is the reason why I've so often been hindered from coming to you, but now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I've longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey there by you once I've enjoyed your company for a while.”

This is the reading of God's holy narrative, infallible authoritative word. May you write these truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. It's just our values at Mosaic but in reverse order, simple Jesus and love. Why do I start with simple? Look at Saint Paul, this is his driving force. This is the thing that's driving everything that he does. It's his life manifesto. Romans 15:20, “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel.” I love this word ambition. It means to aspire. Have a cherished desire or a lofty goal. It's a holy ambition that keeps you focused on the most important thing and the primary thing. Keeps you focused on the greatest thing so that you don't spend your life just doing good things. I love the fact that he's ambitious.

We're a church full of many ambitious people in a city of many ambitious people. Ambitious for what? Many for themselves. What are your greatest desires? What are your greatest goals? What drew you to the city? Getting an education, your GPA. Is that what's driving you? Getting a job after college and your career, progressing up the career. What are your ambitions?

I love that Saint Paul is so fired up about the gospel. Too many Christians are passive. Yeah, I'm a Christian. I go to church once in a while. Yeah, I'm just here to find some friends. Saint Paul says no. This is my ambition. There's nothing that's driving him more than preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ for the glory of God and the joy of people. Saint Paul wanted to go to Rome.

He writes to them and he says, “I've been stuck. I wanted to see you for a few years but I'm focused on preaching the gospel here. Once I'm done with that I'll go elsewhere.” It keeps him focused. And as an organization, as a church, we need to also be focused to create unity around the mission, around the vision, which is to preach the gospel. Saint Paul, how did you change the Roman empire? Jesus Christ, how did you change the world?

Disciples, how did you spark the greatest movement in all of human history? That's what Christianity is. How did that happen? One itinerant preaching rabbi, carpenter turned rabbi, gets some disciples and then those disciples proclaimed this gospel that he lived a perfect life, died a death that we deserve to die on the cross. Came back from the dead and then those disciples go and they proclaim this gospel to the point of death.

Every single one of them except for the apostle John, who was isolated on the Island of Patmos, exiled there, transformed the world. Christianity grew by 40% per decade, so much so that in the fourth century where 50% of the Roman empire were Christians. And Constantine says, “How do we consolidate power? We need to become Christian.” What did you do to make that happen?

They preached the gospel. That's what Saint Paul is saying. How did the reformation happen? Martin Luther was asked at the end of his life, this is the guy who nailed the Ninety-five Theses October 31st, 1517 to the church doors in Wittenberg. And he was asked at the end of his life, “How do you transform the spiritual world of Europe so much so that it transformed all of Europe.”

This is what he said at the end of his life. “I opposed intelligences and all the papers but never with force. I simply taught, preached, wrote God's word. Otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenburg beer with my friends Philip Amsdorf, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing. The word did everything.”

Why is this point one? Because it sounds so simple. What else did you guys do? They did a lot of other things but they focused on this one thing that actually empowered them to do all of the other things. Why is this a Holy ambition? This is our ambition as a church. Mosaic Boston's holy ambition is to see people who are far from the Lord become Christians. Why is it holy? Because it comes from a holy God.

It's written in a Holy word empowered by the Holy Spirit. What did the early church focus on? Whatever they did, it worked. They permeated a secular society, a secular empire. What did they do? Acts 2:42-47, “The early Christians devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.”

“And all who believed were together and had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

What did they focus on? They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. That's the holy scriptures. The gospel. They had fellowship. They met in the temple to study the scriptures, to worship God. This is why you're here. We're just doing what the early church did. We're gathering in a temple, Ohabei Shalom, in order to worship God. That's the first step. Mosaic, what do we do? We worship God together corporately.

And then what else did they do? They had fellowship together in homes breaking bread. They would meet in homes around different nights of the week, different neighborhoods in apartments, and they would meet to study the Holy scriptures together, pray, have some fellowship. Break bread together, get to know one another, get to know each other's needs. And as you get to know other people and you know their needs, you say, you know what? Maybe I have some resources to meet these people's needs.

So they start sharing. What are they doing? Worship, community and service. That transformed the Roman empire. What are we at Mosaic? What do we focus on? This is the simplicity of our model. This is our distinctive. If your church shopping, what makes Mosaic Boston different? It's this. It's simplicity. That's why I started with this. This is point one. Point one, we do three things.

We're like Chipotle. Chipotle does three things, burritos, quesadillas and bowls. We do three things. We do worship services, community groups and service teams. Why? Because that allows you to have enough margin in your life to actually live the Christian life amongst those who are not yet Christians. It gives you bandwidth. It gives you margin. You gather together and worship service is on Sundays.

You become a disciple worshiping God. That's how we discipled. Then community groups, the disciples gathering community to disciple one another. And then service teams. Disciples are not just consumers, they're producers. First week of September or last week of August I preached the vision sermon and other years I have said this. I said we do only three things because of the challenges of the city.

It's very transient. 30% of the population moves in and out every year. It's very expensive. Our resources are limited and people are really busy, etc. That's why we only do three things. I don't say that anymore. Even if we had $1 billion. Even God sends us the gospel patron who's like, "Here's a check, $4 billion. Who do I make it out to? Mosaic Boston." We will still do three things.

We would still primarily do three things because this is what the early church did. That was the recipe of simplicity. And I say that because a lot of churches in the United States have lost the vision from the very beginning. They keep adding ministry after ministry, adding this service or that service. And why do they do that? Because it's an attractional model. Comes to us. Here's our goods and services.

Here's the services that we provide. Come to us we're going to meet your needs, etc. And what's happened is Christianity in the United States has turned people from being disciples of Jesus Christ. We're sacrificing to consumers that are just consuming. Consumers do not change the world, disciples do. We do three things so that we have actually as a church the bandwidth to plant more churches.

Why? Because that's what the early church did. They did these three things as they planted churches in particular in urban contexts. Why do we want to plant a church and we planted this church? We planted Mosaic to make a plant. We're helping other church plants start around the city. We love church plants. I get pictures all the time when people are like, "Hey, this church is advertising on a T and their advertisements look suspiciously like ours."

Good. Get the name of Jesus out there. Do it. Jesus is the greatest brand name in the history of the universe. Great. I want to see Jesus everywhere. Statistically, why do we do this? New churches reach three to six times more non-Christians than older churches. They reach new generations of young adults who disproportionately are drawn to start up churches. And new churches are more entrepreneurial as they innovate, bringing new ideas, training new leaders that spark renewal in other churches all in expanding the kingdom of God.

Saint Paul says, what's my ambition? I make it my ambition. I continually do this. I make it my ambition to preach the gospel at Mosaic Boston. We make it our ambition to preach the gospel. Why? Because Jesus changes everything, and that's point two. Jesus Christ. Jesus is at the center of everything that we do at Mosaic. Why? Because Jesus is the living word of God. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

Jesus the living word as attested to in the written word. This is why the Holy scriptures are fundamental to everything that we do. Where did Saint Paul get his passion for proclaiming the gospel? Where did he get his marching orders for the mission? He got it from Jesus Christ. He was on the road to Damascus. He was going to persecute Christians. Jesus meets him. The living Christ resurrected, meets him and says, "Saul, why are you persecuting me?" And Saint Paul shares his testimony in Acts 22 and then Acts 26.

And Acts 26:15, this is his account, "And I said, 'Who are you Lord?' And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to point you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me."

What's fascinating, Romans 15, is that Saint Paul does not say, though he could have, I make it my ambition to proclaim the gospel because that's what Jesus told me. He could have said that. Every other world religion starts like that. I got a word from God. Follow me. It's not what he does. He could have done that. He says, I have this ambition because, this is Romans 15:20. Look at that text with me. "And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as is written."

And then he quotes Isaiah 52:15, "Those who have never been told of him , Christ, will see in those who have never heard will understand." He doesn't just point to his experience on the Damascus road, something we don't have. He refers to God's written word, something that we do have. Why? He says what I'm doing now, this gospel that I'm proclaiming, it was prophesied centuries before Christ even appeared in Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 53 is one of the clearest prophecies of Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, his sacrifice as the lamb of God for our sins. He grounds his mission not just in the subjective experience of what God told him, though he could have. Though that was legitimate, he grounds it in the word of God. This is why we love the Holy scripture at Mosaic. It's why the center of our time together is someone getting up here and proclaiming the word of God for 40 to 45 to 50, depends on the level of inspiration that week, proclaiming God's word.

Why? This is what sanctifies our hearts and also what nourishes our souls and our hearts. Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. What we do at Mosaic, we want to do God's work God's way as it is attested to in God's word. Jesus is at the center. The focus is on Christ because that's how the Trinity has set things up. Obviously we believe in the Trinity, but Romans 15:15-18 he has the Trinity in the text.

But on some points I've written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God. That's God the father, they us. To be a minister of Christ Jesus, God the son, to the Gentiles and priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable sanctified by the Holy spirit. He's got the Trinity right here but he's proclaiming Christ. Why is he doing that? Because Christ makes God defined. Christ defines God.

This is who God is. This God is like. This is what God wants from us. Christ embodied spirituality. This is why we put Jesus in all of our marketing and Jesus at the center of everything that we do because a lot of churches in the city they're fine with talking about God in general or spirituality in general. As soon as you say the name of Jesus Christ, that makes everything clear. This is what we're all about. We're about Jesus Christ.

Romans 15:19-21 Saint Paul emphasizes the gospel over and over. He says, "By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God so that from Jerusalem and all the way around Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel not where Christ has already been named, less I build on someone else's foundation. But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see and those who have never heard of him will understand."

Saint Paul, why the gospel? Why do you got to talk about the gospel? Because this is the way that God saves people. Romans 10:17, "Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ." Let's proclaim the gospel because this is the means that God has chosen in order to save you. When they hear the truth of the gospel and it permeates their heart, transforms them from the inside out, not ashamed of the gospel which is the power of God onto salvation.

Why is it the power of God on salvation? Because it saves us. You hear it, you believe it, and it saves you. Why is it so important for us to emphasize the gospel of Jesus Christ? Because we need to know what it took to save us. We need to know that this is what it took. Our sin is so grave. Our depravity is so utter. It's so dark. Our darkness is so dark that this is what it took. It took God becoming one of us, living the perfect life that he demands from each one of us.

The life that we should have lived but couldn't or wouldn't. And then Jesus Christ the son of God goes to the cross dying an excruciating death, absorbing the wrath of God on the cross as our substitutionary atonement for us instead of us, in our place. And dies and he's raised on the third day and by grace through faith in that work we are saved. When people hear this, those who are far from God, the spirit applies it to them and then they are saved. They are transformed.

This is why at Mosaic we do talk specifically about sin. Because in order to proclaim the gospel, the good news, you got to talk about the bad news. We just spent three months in the 1st Corinthians which made explicitly clear what sin is. It didn't just talk about sin, it talked about sins. When you talk about sins, when you talk about our need for salvation in specific areas of our lives. We do talk about the bad news and then we bring in the good news and the good news seems so good.

Why is that distinctive for us? If you're from another part of the country, you're like, "Why is the gospel? Why are you defining that Jesus at the center of this church?" Because we're in Boston, Massachusetts. There are a lot of church buildings here and Christianity used to be thriving. The great awakenings transformed this city years ago. This is what happened over time and we've seen this cycle over and over.

People proclaim the gospel, proclaim the gospel, proclaim the gospel. After a while culture begins to change and you're like, ooh, it's getting really hard to talk about sin. And whoever the preacher is stops talking about sin because he's trying to make the message more palatable because he's trying to grow the church and the people and the pews are like, "I don't want to talk about sin. Let's fire this guy. Let's bring another guy in."

And what happens in an attempt to make the message of God palatable. Let's talk about God. Let's talk about his love. Let's talk about grace in general. Let's not talk about sin specifically. You lose the power that transforms people. If you just keep patting people on the head as they're walking in waywordly into sin, what happens is they just walk away and then churches are empty.

They've emptied themselves of the power of the gospel and then they end up empty. Saint Paul says Romans 15:20, "I make it my ambition to preach the gospel." At Mosaic, what do we do? We make it our ambition to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ because Jesus changes everything. And by doing so, we are motivated by love and we spread God's love. Holy ambitions are never about self exaltation.

They're always a form of love because what love does is it tries to meet people's greatest needs. And that brings us to point 3, love. A Christ instrument in Paul's mission wasn't just proclaiming the gospel. That was front and center. That was the most important thing. But when the gospel is proclaimed it all always brings with it love. What's at the center of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Love.

What is the gospel? It's God giving himself, sacrificing himself. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. What is love? Love is sacrifice. If you proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and you accept the gospel of Jesus Christ, you accept God's sacrificial love. What does that do to you? You start sacrificially loving the people around you.

That's why Saint Paul connects word and deed. Look at verse 18, "For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience." How? By word and deed. The truth of love you speak it and you also act. Love entails words and sacrificial acts. We do those two things and then the Holy Spirit takes it and empowers it. In verse 19, "By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the spirit of God."

As we do these things we understand that it does take the miraculous work of the spirit of God to empower us. As I stand up here and I proclaim the most counter-cultural message that you will hear anywhere in modern America and I'm doing in Boston, Massachusetts, September 1st, 2019. I know that unless the spirit of God shows up and unless the spirit of God moves in your heart, all I'm doing is I'm gathering kindling.

But as we gather kindling, as we gather logs and we pray for the Holy Spirit to send fire from heaven. That's the story of Mosaic Boston. Mosaic Boston's literally a miracle. Every Christian is a walking miracle. That means you are regenerated. Your brought from death to life, transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. You're a walking miracle. And then God brings these walking miracles together and brings some more walking miracles and it forms a church.

Mosaic Boston is a miracle. I was at a pastors meeting this weekend. One of the pastors asked me, "Hey, how are you?" My only response is I'm still here. Praise God. Still love the Lord, still married. My kids love the Lord most days and I still get to be pastor. Praise God. Mosaic is a miracle. The fact that we exist here with the resources that we have with understanding who I am, how fallen of a man I am, how much I need Jesus every single day. Walking miracle.

That Mosaic exists as a miracle so it does attest to the power of God. Why has God chosen to pour his grace out on a Mosaic? Well, he's given us pattern in the Holy scriptures. He says when churches devote themselves to the following things: to doing God's word God's way and in particular ways, God pours out his blessing. That's my only explanation. What are those three things? It's love in three forms.

It's the great commandment, the great compassion and the great commission. A great church is formed when there's a great commitment to the great commandment, the great compassion and the great commission. I'll just go through each one. The great commandment is Matthew 21:36. A gentleman comes to Jesus and said, "Teacher, what is the great commandment in the law?"

And he said to them, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." The great commandment, love God, love people with everything that you got and then he defines it with the great compassion.

What does it mean to love my neighbor as myself? That's Matthew 25:34-40. Then the King will say to those on his right, this is at the second judgment, "Come you who are blessed by my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me."

Then the righteous will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?" The King will answer them, "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers did it to me."

Great compassion has come to every single Christian. Jesus says when there's someone in need and you see that someone is in need, God's brought this person into your life or you here of someone in need. Jesus is saying when you serve that person, when you meet that need, you're actually serving me. The great commandment always leads to a desire to be part of the great compassion and then the great commission.

Matthew 28:18-20, "And Jesus came and said, 'All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, of the son of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age." When we as believers are committed together to the great commandment, great compassion, great commission that makes for a great church and movement of God.

Here's the temptation. Here's why I started with point one about the simplicity of the model of Mosaic because here's what happens often. You hear texts like this, in particular about the great compassion or even the great commission. And you start saying, man, that is so awesome. That's great. I've got a passion for this. Let's start a Mosaic Boston soup kitchen for example, or a Mosaic Boston X ministry. Fill in the X. I love the heartbeat item.

But here's what was happening and let me just analyze this. You're mixing categories. Here's what I mean. These commandments are given directly to Christians and the commandments are so weighty that often it's tempting to shirk personal responsibility and put the onus of that responsibility on the pastoral staff. Let's start this thing and what I mean is you guys start it and I'll come once in a while.

But then I move away and then this thing is still going. And who's managing this thing? I have my personal responsibilities as a Christian to the great commandment and the great compassion and the great commission. That's my personal responsibility as a Christian. Those are things I got to do even outside of being a pastor. But I also have pastoral responsibilities. My pastoral responsibilities, mine and pastor Jan's.

Our responsibilities, our job is not to do the ministry for you. It's not to fulfill the great commandment, great compassion and great commission for you. Our job as pastors is Ephesians 4:11-12 and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers. Jesus gave them to the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ.

God gives pastoral staff in order to equip the church, the Christians, in order to fulfill the mission that God has for each one individually. How do we equip? How did Saint Paul equip? How did the apostles equip? Through the gospel. We teach the gospel. You think through absolutely every single area of your life how the gospel impacts those areas. Therefore, you do not need our permission to be a Christian.

If you are called to help in a significant way to alleviate hunger or to help the homeless population. Whatever you call it, go do it. Join other people in the city that are already doing it. You're just doing it out of a heart of gratitude for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me connect the two using just a little exegesis built on one word. A theology built on one word from scripture. It's the word palingenesia.

Palingenesia is the word for regeneration. It's used twice in Holy scripture. Wants to talk about personal regeneration and wants to talk about the regeneration of the physical world. Titus 3:5 he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration, palingenesia, and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is we had hearts of stone toward God, hardened and desensitized.

The Holy Spirit through the proclamation of the gospel gives a new heart that is sensitive toward God, regeneration. Matthew 19:28 the second time in scripture that this word is used. Jesus said to them truly I say to you in the new world, same word palingenesia. In the new world or in the regeneration. When the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on 12 Thrones joining the 12 tribes of Israel.

He's talking about the new heavens and the new world, a physical reality. It's the same word for regeneration and the theology behind it is God created a physical world and it was perfect. Sin corrupts everything, taints everything. God regenerates individual Christians who then empowered by the Holy Spirit work together to bring restoration and renewal to the world now to make it as it will be in the new heavens and the new earth which was also the same way it was intended from the beginning.

In your theology of Christianity if you only have the idea of spiritual palingenesia, me, personally, individualistic, by myself. If it's all about just personal regeneration, then your Christianity becomes individualistic. It becomes focused on self exclusively. My sins have been forgiven. I'm going to spend eternity with God and now I'm going to do whatever I want until that day when I go to heaven.

If you only have the second idea of palingenesia to change the world, you're focusing on the recreation of the heaven earth apart from a personal understanding of rebirth. You so emphasized cultural engagement that you have no salt and light to offer the world. Without a unified understanding of palingenesia this warped dualism emerges. I think this is one of the biggest problems with the church in the United States today.

This is dualism of this is my Christian life, my privatized spiritual, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with my public life. Or we need to do good work. We need to fight for social justice, for racial reconciliation, for economic redemption, etc. We need to do all this stuff and you're trying to do apart from the spiritual resource, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit.

Christ redeems us and then he gives us wisdom and power to work for renewal in our physical lives. Here's what I mean. What is culture? Culture in a city, culture in a country is the result of a societies core beliefs, core values. The things that the world finds sacred. It's what you believe about the meaning of life. It's what you believe about right and wrong. It's what you believe about what it means to be human and that's fleshed out in what we do and the things that we produce.

When people say, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual." Everybody's religious. Every single person is religious. Why? Because every single person finds something sacred. You have sacred values for which you're willing to sacrifice whatever those are. Whatever the most sacred thing in your life is, that's your religion. That's why for many people today their religion really is politics. It's politics or it might be money or career, etc.

Let's just take politics in general. Why is politics in the United States so antagonistic? Like people hate each other. Because when you're on one side and you meet someone on the other side, that person isn't just wrong, that person's a heretic. That person's blaspheming. What do you do with heretics? You kill heretics. The thing that you are willing to give your life for easily morphs into the thing you are willing to kill for. That's religion.

Then the gospel comes in and say you know what the gospel is? We deserve death, but Jesus Christ comes and he takes the debt that we deserve to give us life. He infuses our hearts with love and grace. Now we take those values and they absolutely transform everything that we do. Everything we do, we do with kindness. We have a different definition of tolerance and forgiveness and grace and generosity.

The gospel changes our worldview, our inner motives, and gives us power to live that out in the culture. When Christians now do their work, the bulk of our life, 80% of our life we spend working. Many churches and a lot of Christians they have this false understanding of what it means to be spiritual. There's this idea of a vocational pyramid. At the very top of the vocational pyramid is Mother Teresa.

And then you got missionaries in different countries and then you got pastors, church planners. And then you got people in the helping professions, doctors and nurses. And then you got people who do academic work. And then you've got people who arts and music. At the very bottom you've got people who do business. Do you do business but the way that connects to your faith is you better make enough money to then tithe significantly, become a gospel patron and help the church.

Or medicine's important but what's more important is a person's soul and spiritual work. And you know what's forgotten completely? Is blue collar work. Blue collar work it's a separate pyramid. What did Jesus do for 17 years before he started even his gospel ministry from age 13 to age 30? He was a carpenter. This is all to say that when we do the work that we do and it's infused with the values that God has given to us through the gospel, we're recreating the world. It's palingenesia from the inside that's leading to renewal in the physical world.

We do it to the glory of God and to the joy of all people. The better that we do that we create plausibility structures. What do I mean by plausibility structure? Your life creates something that makes what you say plausible. If you do good work and you do it so well that now people can't but pay attention to what you're saying, that's a plausibility structure. For example, Mother Teresa, she got invited to the Clinton White House.

And what does she do when she got invited to the Clinton White House? She berated the Clinton administration for supporting abortion and they couldn't but listen to her because of her work in Calcutta. Another example is Alexander Solzhenitsyn who lived through the Soviet gulags. Before he went to the Gulags he was an author. After he came out from the gulags he continued to write and because his writing was so phenomenal he won a Nobel Prize in literature.

A lot of other people lived through the gulags but didn't have even close to the same platform as Alexander Solzhenitsyn because of the symbolic capital that Nobel Prize brought with it. It's all to say do good work. As Christians do good work for the renewal of the culture. When you see something in the world, this should not be the way it is. This is not God's will in the economy. In health this isn't God's will.

Now go as the Lord leads, go bring the gospel into that. And the increase in philanthropy, mercy, justice, racial reconciliation, integrity. This right here makes the world a better place. This is one of the reasons why Boston is so strategically important. This is why it's important to plant a church here and continue planting churches here because this is the place where minds and hearts are shaped.

People from all over the world come here. They're coming here to get educated, they're coming here to get jobs. And as they do their minds and hearts are shaped with human secularism and then they take that worldview and they export it to the world. What do we do? We're here to say, you know that worldview, it doesn't satisfy. That worldview it doesn't fill your heart with joy. It doesn't answer the most important questions.

That worldview is vapid and it's actually empty because it's not true. There's something better. There's the way of Jesus Christ. There's the gospel. That's why we make it our ambition to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why we've been here for the past, in October will be eight years. When I was in seminary I thought I was going to go and do international mission work.

My wife and I this is why we had our first baby Sophia our first year in seminary, which is crazy. But that's because I was like, I don't know where we're going to go in the world and I don't know what those hospitals are like so let's have a baby now. That was my daughter Sophia and that's why she's given a word as a name because that's what seminarians do. Sophia means wisdom. And then my second year in seminary I learned about church planting.

I was like church planting sounds amazing. I found out that church planting is statistically the most effective way of getting the gospel out. You plant the gospel in an area, you plant a church and it just statistically do more evangelism because what I said about new churches. And what did Saint Paul do? He planted churches in urban context like places of influence, places where people go and then they'd leave.

And at that time Boston was the least church city in the United States. That was 2009. If you Google least church city and there's all kinds of studies, Boston was number one. By God's grace God's been moving in the city. Through Mosaic it's a miracle, through other gospel proclaiming churches. The Barna study came out in June 5th, 2019. The most post-Christian cities in America 2019, Springfield Massachusetts, Portland Auburn Maine, Providence Rhode Island, still got this. Number four, Burlington, Vermont. Boston's number five. Praise God. It used to be number one.

This stuff pumps me up. I love numbers. I love stats. I've also seen this in real life like real life change. Now, why are we still number five? Is my question. Here's what I just want to say with this. 25 years ago Boston Massachusetts, under 1% of Bostonians were in gospel centered churches. 10 years ago it was around 2%. Now it's 3.6% almost 4% of people that have some kind of connection to a gospel centered church.

By 2026, if we remain on this trajectory Lord willing, we're on trajectory to hit 15%. Why is that important? Because sociologists have noticed that when a certain minority population in a community increases to anywhere between 10% and 20%, then the culture of the entire community begins to change. We keep going Mosaic. By 2026 we can reach a tipping point where now we can transform a city.

Where Bostonians are not plugged into gospel centered churches, but they express gospel values of mercy and friendship and grace and kindness and generosity and justice and hope and they express it in their lives which transforms the city, transforms the region, and you know the influence of Boston we can transform the world. What am I trying to say with all that? I'm trying to say, if you've been here at Mosaic from the beginning I'm praying for the Lord to rekindle in your heart a holy ambition.

I pray that for myself. I've got to do this every Sunday. Once in a while you got to pray. But every time pump yourself up. How? This is how, when I see people passionate for God it's so counter-cultural love. But then also like if you're new to the city and you're church shopping and you're here today, this is a sign from God that you should join Mosaic or another gospel center church but you're already here.

We're not just calling you like I want to go to Mosaic once in a while. No. What does Paul say? I make it my ambition to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Join us in our ambition here at Mosaic in that holy ambition. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the gospel and we thank you for this church. I thank you Holy Spirit for everything that you're doing, continue doing, continue glorify the name of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we are sinners and we are wicked and we are depraved but you are such a glorious and generous God and gracious to us. We thank you Jesus for your sacrifice on the cross. As we take the bread and cup right now I pray that we repent of all sin and give you all glory and meditate upon what it took to save us and that you are God that was willing to take it. We thank you for that. We pray this in Christs' name, Amen.

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Summary: The new clarity with which I was able to see the world when I got my glasses was very similar to how my life was changed when I became a Christian. I was overwhelmed with the things that I saw, some really ugly and some really beautiful, amazed by the change it brought to my life and was given an exciting vision for a mission for the glory of God’s kingdom. Join me tomorrow as we celebrate my ordination as a Pastor and address the question “How do you see?”

Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Andy. I thought Pastor Jan was going to be up here a second ago. Sorry for the delay. We had my ordination service, actually, last service. I wasn't sure if we were going to walk through it again, but you can call me pastor now. I've been pastoral resident at Mosaic since last September. I'm not technically a pastor here of Mosaic. I'm not a pastor of Mosaic. The pastors have put it before the church last service that in October when we have a members meeting the church will be deciding my direction and my path, and whether or not the members want to keep me here as a pastor. Pastor Jan is finally here.

Welcome to Mosaic. If you're new to Mosaic I've served as pastoral resident, and we're happy to have you. Those who have been here all year I just want to ... I have a thank you prepared before getting off the plan here. Just thank you all for welcoming me, my wife, and my son, Drew, this past year. It's just been a thrill to be here, to learn through all the work under Pastor Jan, and Pastor Shane. My wife and I we both moved away from our families, but we don't regret it at all. We have a family here at Mosaic, and we just love it. So thank you for the many ways that you've served us.

Today we're going to be reading a text from Mark, chapter eight, verses 11 through 38. The primary focus will be verses 22 to 38, but we'll bounce around. It's a lot of text. If you just follow along with me as I read God's word. And they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man, and begged him to touch him. And he, Jesus, took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on the eyes, and laid his hands on him, he asked him, "Do you see anything?" And he looked up and said, "I see people, but they look like trees, walking." Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home saying, "Do not even enter the village."

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they told him, "John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others, one of the prophets." And he asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, but turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels." This is the word of our Lord.

Please bow your heads in prayer with me. Heavenly father, Lord forgive us for we are sheep. We're prone to wander, prone to stray, prone to just leave you, leave your direction, and put your word aside. Lord, in doing so our hearts are hardened. Our vision goes. We cannot discern your lead. We cannot discern your word. We cannot discern your spirit, and Lord we pray that you may give us a spirit of wisdom today, a revelation of the knowledge of you. Lord, we pray that you would enlighten the eyes of our heart. Let us know what it is the hope that we've been called to. Lord, let us know the glorious greatness, the immeasurable greatness of your power towards us who believe. Lord, we just pray as we follow you let us have faith. Let us take up our cross with boldness following in the path of our savior, Jesus Christ.

What is the primary issue that man faces today? I'm not talking about something that if you just chose to address that it would just be like a Band-Aid, but I'm talking about something that would cause a cascade effect. You address this issue, and all of the other ones, big ones are still addressed. They get caught down the line. They get addressed down the line. I was walking through social media this week, and I saw a graphic that had a big tidal wave. It had several houses that the tidal wave was about to crash into. The tidal wave was labeled climate change. On the other houses that were about to get crushed there was health care, immigration, guns, free school, justice, and legal weed. This was certainly a graphic showing that if climate change was not addressed then all of these other issues, though, they are large issues to many people would not be relevant.

Is climate change our biggest issue? Do you think any of the others mentioned are man's greatest problem? If you asked me before August 2011, when I first came to Mosaic I would have been all over this graphic fresh out of liberal arts college, and I would have just been weighing each option. I worked in a social justice education organization, probably would have argued for them. If you're in my family I probably would have emailed you just telling you of my passion to tackle these issues to save the world, and those were the worst emails. Which one do you think of these issues Jesus would pick? I vouch the answer is none of them. Jesus would have said blindness, not physical blindness, but spiritual blindness. Today our passage is all about spiritual vision. I'll address the question how do you see? And to come up with an answer we'll discuss blindness, corrected vision, mission vision, and blurry vision, so blindness. Where do I get the answer that man's biggest problem is blindness?

This comes from the context of our passage. This is Matthew 8. This passage beginning with the healing of a blind man. Sorry, did I say Matthew? Mark 8. Mark one through eight reads like a comic book. It's Jesus calling his disciples with two words, follow me. It's Jesus on the boat in the storm and he says, "Peace, be still." And the storm stops. It's Jesus feeding the 5,000 with a few loaves and a few fish. It's Jesus feeding the 4,000 with a few loaves, and a few fish. It's Jesus raising a girl to life from death. At this point if I were one of the disciples I would just be thinking, "Man, life is good. I've got this dude on my side. I have everything I need. Let's stay here forever."

The passage after this it's the transfiguration. Peter, James, and John see Peter in all their glory, and Peter just wants to stay there. I understand that, but this is a crucial point in the gospel. This is along with Luke this is one of the gospels geared towards the gentiles. The gentiles of the day they were pagans. They believed in spirits. They were happy to hear of this God man, Jesus, who exhibited the almighty power of a God, so the first half of the book exhibits his power. The second half exhibits his passion, his path to the cross. It's at this point Jesus is talking to his disciples. Right before the verses that we read in Mark 14 to 21 Jesus is on a boat with the disciples shortly after feeding the 4,000. They run out of bread and Jesus says, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees." And they say, "Jesus, we don't have any bread." And he says, "Do you guys not yet understand?"

At this point Jesus is making it clear to the disciples if you want to follow me you have to see me entirely for who I am. You have to see me not just as superman, not just as this almighty, all powerful deity, but you have to love me, and want to glorify my name for the suffering I'm going to endure for you. In going that way he addresses their blindness. We're saved by placing our faith in Jesus Christ going to the cross. To get rid of our spiritual blindness we need to place our faith in Christ. We need to see our need for him in that regard. This issue of blindness this goes all the way back to Genesis. When tempted by Satan, Eve ... Tempting Eve, Satan says in Genesis 3:4 "You shall not surely die when you eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evil."

This is a partial truth. This is how Satan he's rarely going to insert himself with a blatant lie. He's going to tweak the truth. Adam and Eve we all know the story they ate the fruit, and they did see themselves. They saw that they were naked. Their whole just form of rationality, their whole system was tweaked, but they didn't see like God. In fact, they became blind by their sin. They became blind, and they could no longer properly see God for who he is as their sustainer, their creator, their provider, and their source of peace, and joy, and hope. That's the darkness. That's the blindness that we all still walk in today. Apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ how do we get out of this blindness?

In the text it shows us Jesus extends a hand to the blind man. The blind man's friends bring him up. Jesus offers his hand. Jesus initiates the relationship to us. However, we have to be willing. There's a part of Mark where Jesus is in his hometown and they're skeptical. They're like, "Who is this guy?" This is Jesus. This is Joseph's son, and because of the unbelief he stops healing there. So this is a situation we need to see Jesus. We need to see our blindness, see our need for him, and ask for him to come to us. We have to be willing to receive him into our hearts. That's the gospel, but blindness is an issue that we're still wrestling with. The thing about blindness is that upon salvation we have to fight for the vision that we do get. We don't just wake up each day, and keep that sight. We have to remind ourselves of the gospel over and over again.

Who exhibited just a quick study of what that blindness looks like in regular life? The perfect example, of course, was the Pharisees. In Mark 8, 11 to 13 we get a sense of how the blind function. The Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." And he left them, got into a boat again, and went to the other side.

I've read this over and over again throughout my life. When the Pharisees asked for a sign that seems reasonable, but you have to remember the context. The Pharisees, this is Bethsaida. This is very close to the region where Jesus fed the 5,000, and it was really probably 20,000 to 25,000 when you consider women and children. The number that the text gives is men. So they would have known. They would have heard about this man. They might have been there, and been fed by him. Just this text, this seeking for a sign, this is all of us apart from Christ. We just want to use him for what we can get from him. So the Pharisees they were never really interested in getting God. They're interested in what he could get for them.

They just wanted to test him. They wanted to find holes in his arguments. They wanted to find weakness in his power because they just wanted to go back to their regular life. They wanted to maintain their traditions, maintain their culture, maintain the status quo. The worst part about the Pharisees, the most mind-boggling part of the Pharisees is that they tried to cover up themselves. We're born as image bearers of God. We know there's something wrong with us. We try to atone for it. If it's not Jesus it's something else, and the Pharisees it was religion. It was adding rule and rule and rule on top of the Jewish law. They put on frames a lot like the people it's common now people walk around with glasses frames without lenses. They think that it's doing something for them. They think that it helps them to fit in with a crowd better, but really they kind of look foolish. What do you want to do with those people? You just want to poke them through the lenses to wake them up. That's us. I mean, it's easy to laugh at the Pharisees, but that's all of us when we're living, we're walking in our blindness, we're covering ourselves up with religion with means to attain self-righteousness.

For me, I'm going to share a little bit about my testimony throughout this service to fit the occasion, but this was my life. I grew up in the church. I went to the church probably 95% of my childhood Sundays. I was baptized, confirmed. Went to church service, worship service, Sunday school, youth group, all in one day for most of my childhood. If you asked me if I was blind as I got older into my early 20s I would have said, no way. I'm a Christian. I go to church. I need Jesus, and he loves me because my sin is not as bad as everyone else's around me. My story is I had that attitude, but I was blind like the Pharisees. There came a point really the first challenge of my faith came in the week after I graduated high school. I went to a missions trip, and the message of the week was leave the American dream to follow God's plan.

It sounds so simplistic, but I remember it today. I remember just hardening my heart against this idea. I saw my parents just climb up the middle class scale a little bit, and I wanted to continue that. I said, "No." I approached college without considering my faith. I went through college without pursuing Christian community. I went to church on Sunday mainly to feel better about what I did Saturday night. I just went there and felt guiltier. When I came to Mosaic, though, I came a year after college, August 2011, and just my eyes were opened. It's just shocking. This is shocking when you think of me I'm just a guy. Maybe I didn't hear the best preaching. We see in the text the disciples they walked with Jesus for about three years at this point. They saw him heal people. He even gave them the power to heal people. And they did not believe who he truly was that he was the God man, the Christ, and were working to that point with Peter. It's possible to be here. It's possible to go to church. It's possible to go through the motions, and still be blind.

How do you tell if you're blind? Do you understand the song Amazing Grace? I heard that song thousands of times. I normally associated it with civil rights movies growing up, but it's one of the most popular songs of history. I went through church for 23 years not knowing what Amazing Grace was. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I never thought of myself as a wretch. If you have never thought of yourself as a wretch in need of God's grace you might be blind. Really ask yourself if you find yourself just going through the motions, if you are new to come to church you might be walking in this blindness. If you think you've been saved, but you've been stagnant for a while really just be honest with yourself, and really if you don't have the eyes to see we pray the Lord Jesus give us the eyes to see. Give us ears to hear, to know your word, know your love, know your voice amongst all the competing voices out there. I just encourage you to do that.

One of the great things about just moving from blindness to life is that we get corrected vision. Again, this is focused on the blind man in verse 24. And he looked up after Jesus touched him the first time, and he said, "I see people, but they look like trees, walking." Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. So I want to focus on it's trippy seeing people that look like trees. It reminds me of the ents in Lord of the Rings, and seeing things clearly.

This is what happens with our life story when we come to faith. When your eyes are opened by the Holy Spirit, your heart is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, the scariest part of conversion is just realizing that you didn't know you were blind until Jesus gave you sight. So it's scary to think about the depth of the sin you went into. The things that you justified, the things that you felt were okay. It's scary to think about the depths of sin that you could have continued to pursue if Jesus did not call you out of it and open your eyes. It's embarrassing to think about those previous wanderings, but when you get to that point this is why grace is so amazing. You see how God has preserved you. You see how he didn't let you wander as far as you could have. You see that he taught you different lessons along the way. Lessons that you often didn't know you need. Lessons you often didn't desire, but they were only to bring you to see him properly as Lord and savior.

My story picks up after that missions trip it was five years of frustration. I went to college, and when I graduated high school I was on a peak. I was valedictorian of my class. I was captain of my school's best soccer team ever. I was lead off hitter for the school's best baseball team in history. I was homecoming king, dating the homecoming queen. Voted most likely to succeed. It's just silly stuff to think about now, but just in the flesh this is just the kind of stuff that boosts your sense of self-worth. College was rough. I played soccer, and four years of getting injury after injury after injury. In a two, three month season you get injured once it's so hard to make that up to get back in the season. That part of my identity was crushed.

I went to a top three liberal arts school in the country, and just faced every overachiever's nightmare realizing that I was just average when the playing field got more difficult. Then that relationship, the storybook relationship with the homecoming queen it didn't work out. As many times as we watched The Notebook together it just didn't last. I was heartbroken for several reasons. I went through this process. It was just depressing. The way that I responded it was not just sit and be depressed all the time. It was like I'm going to muster up. This is who I am. I'm going to work harder. I'm going to study harder. I'm going to train harder. I got another relationship, and I wanted to fill myself. I had this void in my heart that I just needed to fill.

I graduated, finally. I got a job right away, but I never got satisfied, and the hole in my heart grew even larger. I was just constantly asking why God why? One of the hardest parts about that process is I grew up in a good family, awesome parents who were rocks, and just going to them with this frustration, this brokenness, this sadness, and they couldn't help me. I just looked at my life in that period just why God? Why? Why me? Just self-loathing, self-pity, but the thing about the gospel is that when our eyes are opened it all makes sense. He corrects our vision.

I view that process. I'm not just here to give you a sob story about my fall from small town glory to larger city larger realm sadness. I truly see God used that process to strip me, take out all the idols in my life that kept me from worshiping him as Lord. Also, in the process as I clung to idols and fell into deeper sin he revealed just the depths of the darkness within me. Some of you could be listening to this and saying this is a guy a big fish in a small pond, but just when your eyes are corrected you really begin to see how the Lord works like this. He loves his children. He disciplines them. He's going to extend irresistible grace until they submit to him.

This is in Hebrews 10, five to 13. The first three verses come from Proverbs 3. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you're left without discipline in which all have participated then you are illegitimate children, and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best for them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. When we have corrected vision if we're not waking up each day, and just reminding ourselves of our need for the Lord, need for him as savior and Lord, we don't strive for holiness out of thanksgiving for what he has done for us. We won't see the Lord.

We won't see him properly, and our story, that corrected vision will slowly go away, and the self-pity, the self-loathing will continue. It's my experience, it's God's word that says he disciplines his children because he loves them. Those who have eyes to see know this. You get to this point when you realized every life experience, every triumph, every failure, every test, every sorrow is one that he's used to prepare us to see him properly. When the Holy Spirit gives us those eyes we don't just get clear vision. We just don't get corrected vision. We get mission vision.

This is in Mark 34 to 38. What does this mission look like? And calling the crowd to him with his disciples he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels."

Now over the years I've watched a lot of war movies. Some of my favorite characters are Richard Winters in Band of Brothers, Legolas and Gimli, Aragorn, even Merry and Pippin, and even just reading the Bible. Young King David seeing Goliath and just challenging him there at the battlefront when men are all sitting on the side. The thing about these guys for years I just didn't understand what is driving them to be at the front? What is causing them to want to be there in the center of the action? The thing is when you see that the Lord uses you, he prepares you, he uses every good and bad moment in your life you can trust that he's going to use every future moment to prune you, to shape you, to mold you, to get you to continue to see Christ. You have this vision. You want to be like these guys.

We don't become bloodthirsty ogres, but we don't become people that sit around and think about all the time what they gave up for the Lord. The house they could have outside of Boston. The comfort they would have if they lived at home closer to their parents, but the Christians should be like these guys. Who doesn't like Aragorn? Who doesn't like Gimli and Legolas? These guys who just sacrifice their comfort for a greater cause. They could have sat aside, but they didn't. So we're people like the disciples when they suffer for the word shortly after Pentecost they're praising God. They cannot but continue to speak of what they've seen and heard regarding Jesus.

I have to admit this is the ideal. This is the strong call. I pray that some of you just feel emboldened to just hear this, to think about it, to use your vision to guide you, and motivate you to step forward into the battle field for the Lord. I still struggle with this. When I first came to Mosaic I think it's just little subtle ways we back off. When I first came to Mosaic I was working downtown and the lunchtime conversation is, hey, how was your weekend? I always had a response for Saturday, and I'd always tell people about Saturday, but never about Sunday when I went to work, when I spent time in fellowship, when I really felt alive, felt like my life was transforming. It's just little subtle ways that we back off. These are the ways we need to stand firm. We need to tell people of our joy, our love of Christ, our love of the church.

This is where we derive much joy, and I think just good reminders that we're to be a priesthood of believers, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you are not of people, but now you're of God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. We're motivated by God's mercy and God's grace. Imagine a church that fulfills this vision. The Israelites fell, and now here in the church it's our opportunity to carry on this vision. It's not just the pastors who are the Aragorns, the Gimlis, the Legolases, it's all believers. Just today I want to clarify one thing I don't want to say is that the end goal for everybody is vocational ministry. I don't want to imply that.

That scripture we just went through, 1 Corinthians 12, in our sermon series talking about the body. Everybody is given different body parts, different spiritual gifts for the benefit of the church, and the upbuilding of each other, but if it's not vocational ministry a lot of people struggle with, well, what is it? The answer is what has the Holy Spirit given you eyes to see to improve the church? How has the Holy Spirit impressed it upon your heart to represent Christians outside of the church throughout the week? Those are simple things, but when you really think about them they can bring profound change. I was talking to a guy he's been at Mosaic for a couple of months. He's a naturally introverted guy. For his work he's bouncing around across the country. I sense a true love for the Lord.

He was telling me one thing that I see in church is I've been in community groups at several different places. The community group leaders, the small group leaders, the hosts, those two in every group they're always great. They always reach out to everybody, but very few people, very rarely do the rest of the people come and approach me. In that moment I want to console him, but that vision that he has that he sees that happening that's a gift from the Lord. How do you pick up your cross? You see a need and you fill a need. I think the best part about Mosaic is that a lot of people get this. I think we have 80 plus people involved in setup, tear down, and greeting, and security. Just amazing, not including minimal. We have it's not just the 10% doing 90% of the work at this church.

We have people that have come to life. They've been given eyes to see. Their vision has been corrected, and they're just praising God, and they're motivated to tell people of the work that God has done in their life. They're on mission, and you just don't get this feel at a lot of churches. That's why my wife and I we moved up here to be here to be where the spirit is clearly moving, but I do think some of you might not be with me. You might not be Christian you're just questioning, but some of you probably have your born again card, but you're just stagnant. There's this confusing part of the text where the man Jesus seemingly, partially heals the guy that has blurry vision. I want to talk about blurry vision.

Verse 23, again. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes, and laid his hands on him, he asked him, "Do you see anything?" And he looked up and said, "I see people, but they look like trees, walking." Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. What's going on here? Why not a full healing? Jesus fed 4,000 at the beginning of chapter eight. He did all those other miracles that I mention throughout the first eight chapters of Mark. Was there something wrong with the fish that he ate when he served the 4,000? What's going on here? Can we trust him as an almighty, all powerful God?

Yes, this is a story where we should gaze in awe and wonder about Jesus that he does after the second step actually heal the guy of blindness, but this is really a lesson to his disciples. Remember before this verse 14 to 21 they're still thinking, "Jesus, we need bread from you." And he says, verse one, "Do you not yet understand?" So there's a reason this blindness story, two step healing story is right next to Peter's admission of Jesus as the Christ paired with his rebuke. Jesus is teaching the disciples that their view of him is not sufficient. It's inadequate. They're just like the blind man with only partial vision. I just want to explain this. Verse 29 and he asked them Jesus asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Christ."

This seems like a great moment. Peter is saying you are the Christ. You are the fulfillment of all of the scriptures. You're the messiah, the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, the one we've waited for. This seems like a great moment, but verse 31 things take a turn. And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, but turning and seeing his disciples, he rebukes Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

So this seems like this great moment, and then Peter is rebuked, and called Satan. So what's going on here? Jesus knows that at the back of Peter's mind not that Peter was following Jesus because he saw him as Lord, the savior. Peter just like the Pharisees the Pharisees wanted Jesus to help them anything it was to overthrow the Romans. Get rid of Roman occupation that plagued the Jews for decades and decades. So Peter like the Pharisees, like the disciples, the rest of the disciples when they only want bread he doesn't want Jesus. He wants what Jesus can bring to him. He wants what he can get from God. Peter's view of Jesus is inadequate. It wasn't complete, and that's why Jesus says, "Get behind me Satan." This partial view of Christ's identity was bad, it was evil. It was just as useful as that blind man with partial vision. And in that day you think there's no medicine, no glasses, like that blind man really couldn't do much if people looked like trees.

So a partial view of Christ is condemned in Matthew 7, 21 to 23. Not everyone who says to me "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?" And then will I declare to them, "I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." So Peter likes the idea of a Lord this all powerful guy. He doesn't see his need for a savior. There's something inherent since the fall our flesh pushes against this need, this dependency on another being that being God. Peter just does want God himself, and believing that Jesus was the atonement for his sins. He gets God. He's not satisfied with that. He just wants freedom from the Romans.

So this was me. This is my testimony. At Mosaic the light switched. Again, I had that church background. I didn't know I was a wretch, and just that conviction that I finally got at Mosaic that the Lord had prepared. He had primed my heart to finally get into that position after 23 years of being in the church. I saw him as Lord all those years. I finally saw him as savior. The ultimate prize that we get in this life is God himself, peace with him, hope in him, love from him. So I've talked about Peter saw him as Lord, and didn't see him as savior. I had the same experience, but there are a lot of ways that we can have blurry vision.

Just the different inadequacies can lead to different problems in our life. So if you see Jesus as Lord, but not savior that is just like the Pharisees. You don't see your name for him you're not going to have the affection, you're not going to have the love to follow him with a pure heart, with love, with thankfulness. It's going to eventually turn into cold, dry religion with those lensless glasses on, but you can also see him as a savior, but not Lord, and these are the people they just love the idea. It really appeals to their emotions to have somebody love them to the point that they would go to the cross for them, but when push comes to shove when it's hard to follow Jesus, when it's not culturally common, when it's not popular you just shove Jesus into the corner. This was me at college at times as well. I was guilty of this. He's your homeboy on Sunday, maybe when you go to CG, but the rest of the week you're just not representing him at all.

How else can we be blurry? You can be distracted. This comes from Jesus saying, verse 14, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod." This is saying remember a little leaven ... He's talking about bread. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. There are plenty of woke social media influencers, plenty of news personalities, life coaches, professional coaches, even doctors, and therapists who are completely blind. They don't know Jesus yet we let our guard down, and let them have a voice in our lives. That day it was the Pharisees. It was Herod, the local governor who reported to the Romans. Jesus warns against letting them in.

Another way your vision can be blurry is you can be farsighted. In Boston, we don't have a lot of people like this. If you identify as Christian you're normally legit because there's no cultural benefit, and nobody's going to like you in the office because these are people that's it. They acknowledge Jesus as one. I've been reborn. He's risen from the dead ascended to the right hand of God. It's just a matter of time before he comes back. It doesn't matter what I do between now and then. I don't have to evangelize. I don't have to share the gospel. I'm saved and I'm good. That's sinful, that's evil, that's an inadequate view. Just the son of man Jesus calls himself the son of man in this text that was an indirect way of reminding the disciples that he would come back. The son of man is a term from Daniel 7 where Jesus talks about a figure that's going to come back at the end of time, make all things new, bring true justice.

Some people can forget that son of man, and the next way to be blurry is you can be nearsighted. So like the disciples you've seen Jesus work miraculously in your life, but all you care about is getting bread on the table. You forget how powerful he is. You forget he's your savior. You forget that he's going to come back. He's going to make all things new, so you just get scared. You get paralyzed. You don't do anything with this nearsightedness, but if Jesus is who he says he is, if he is our Lord, he is our savior, he is going to come back one day to make all things new what do we have to lose? That's why I'm here. That's why I've taken the steps along the ministry. I've embarrassed myself over and over again trying out different activities in the church. Put myself out there within friendships for the sake of God's kingdom, and it doesn't always work out well, but when we place ourselves as a lamb, a sheep for the slaughter the Holy Spirit uses our humble efforts.

So how is your vision? Do you see? Are you blind? Is your vision blurry? Are you nearsighted? Farsighted? Distracted? Is your view of Christ inadequate? You only see him as Lord or a savior? You need that full vision. To get that full vision you ask the Lord, Lord give me eyes to see. Give me ears to ear. Like I said you want that concentrated that missional vision. You have to wake up each day and put your gospel glasses on.

Imagine somebody with glasses a big prescription for really weak eyes waking up and saying, "I don't need these today. I'm just going to go to work without them." That would be ridiculous, but what about in pursuing our heavenly mission? If you're not waking up each day reminding yourself of your need for Jesus as savior and Lord. Not finding peace in the fact that he will come back you're going to be blind. You can drift. You'll lose the vision. The more people who wake up each day, and put on their gospel glasses, the more people who constantly remind themselves of their need for the Lord, need for a savior, the more will bring about a cascade effect of change. Whether that happens in our day all praise and glory, and honor to be God, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.

Please pray with me now. Heavenly father, we praise you for just your patience, for your long suffering love. Lord, we know your love. We know your grace. We know your mercy, yet we still sin against you. We still don't trust you. We don't long for your return, and we tend to check out when things get difficult. Lord, give us eyes, open our eyes to see our need for you. Give us a mission for our lives in and through the church, and outside of it. And, Lord, God, just keep us concentrated. Help us to see you developing our story for the sake of your name. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Summary: What if the solution to death was not to escape it, but to face and defeat it? The claim of Christianity is that someone has done just that, and done so for us. Many of us grew up imagining we would spend eternity as disembodied souls, but the true hope of Scriptures is something far deeper and more satisfying. This weekend we will conclude our series “Prodigal Church” by looking at 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul lays out a vision of Christian hope for the future, that fills us with courage and strength for today.

Right now, before we begin with the sermon, would you please join me in prayer? Jesus, we thank you for being our Lord and our Savior. That you are both merciful and powerful. You have the desire to save, and you have the ability to save, and to save completely. And if there are any here today who are lacking purpose or meaning in their life, if there are any lacking hope, if there are any finding it hard to persevere, tempted to give up, I pray that you would show us today, that your gospel changes everything. It gives us a sure and certain and unshakeable hope for tomorrow, that manifests into strength for today, so that we know that nothing we walk through in this life will be in vain. So long as it is done by your spirit, motivated by your love, it will be eternal. So we pray that you'd speak to us now through the preaching of your word. Amen.

The author of Ecclesiastes famously wrote that, "God has placed eternity in the hearts of men." And if you've read the book of Ecclesiastes, you know that he's wrote far more often, "Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity. Life is absurd and meaningless." There's this tension where on the one hand he sees this reality, we're all gonna die, and all of our accomplishments, everything we lived for, it seems as if in one moment, death is going to swallow it all up. We're born, we live, we die. Time marches on, and we're slowly forgotten. Now, on the other hand, as we live these seemingly meaningless lives, we do so with this aching in our souls. It's as if we are homesick for some place that we've never been, and deep down we know that there has to be more to life than what we see with our eyes.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go back to the Midwest and spend some time with my family. And I've been... It's been interesting, the last few times I've been home, I have two younger sisters. And you know, you get together with family and you start to reminisce about the past. And what's been interesting to me though is that, at times they'll say something like, "Hey, remember that time?" And they'll go on to share a story. I'm like, "Yeah, I remember that. "And yet other times, and this has been happening, it's happened several times. So like, "Hey, remember that time?" And they'll go on to describe something in vivid detail that I have absolutely no memory of. Like they could just be totally making it up. I don't know. But if you think about your own memory, it's interesting, we have these very vivid memories at different points throughout our lives, and then we have these others that are kind of dim. And then we talk to other people and realize that it seems as if there's even some, we've just totally forgotten, as if they've just been deleted.

And one of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood was, it happened in third grade. Like I can see myself, I can see the room, I can see the people around me vividly. And it was at my grandfather's funeral. I remember sitting there and just feeling that, it just didn't seem real. Like we just saw grandpa not too long ago, and he's there, but that's not him. Like this doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem right. And I remember sitting there with this growing frustration that kind of turned into almost an anger. And then I very vividly remember when my grandmother walked into the ceremony, she was just weeping. And as soon as I saw her, I started weeping. And this is one of the only memories I have from my childhood where I, as a child, I just wept.

And if death is totally natural, and if life is totally meaningless, then why does it bother us the way that it does? Why do we rage against death? It's not enough to say that we desire immortality. It's deeper than that. There's a sense of injustice in its absence, as if we had it, but it's been taken or lost. And so the author, he looks and he sees death's gonna win. All of our accomplishments will be lost. Our names will be forgotten. Time is going to make fools of us all, so what have I to do but just drink, eat, and for tomorrow, we die. The life is just a vapor, vanishing in the wind.

We're looking at 1 Corinthians 15 today, and you know, before we all get too utterly depressed, this is actually not the focus or the point of the text. Paul's not going to focus on the bleak absurdity of death, but that is going to be the background. Death is going to be the black canvas upon which Paul paints this bright and glorious vision of Christian hope. But as we begin this, we need to understand, that if this is not true, then none of it really matters. But if it is, then that changes everything.

What we're about to read today is really at the crux of our faith. If this is true, as Christians, we have a blessed assurance and hope that begins right now, and reaches into eternity. And if it's not, if this is false, then our lives are really just absurdly meaningless, and we might as well stop right now. Like class dismissed. Everybody go home. Let's stop wasting our time.

And that's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 16, he says, "Listen, if the dead are not raised, if death is the end of it, not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is feudal and you're still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ, we have hope in this life only, we are of all people, most to be pitied." See, Paul understood. I didn't come to Jesus because I thought he was gonna make my life easier or more comfortable. In fact, following Jesus has made things a lot more difficult for me, and that's going to be true of us as well. Following Jesus means you will face greater temptation. Nobody knows the strength of a temptation until they have tried to stand against it.

That's why Jesus knew temptation better than anyone else, because he never gave into it. He experienced its full strength. Following Jesus means that you're going to have to deny yourself earthly pleasures, and it's the idea of delayed gratification for eternal rewards. And following Jesus may even mean facing persecution for your faith. It meant that for Paul, and it meant that for many of the people that he was writing to. He kind of alludes to this in verse 32, where he says, "What do I gain, if death is all there is? What do I gain humanly speaking, if I fought with beasts at Ephesus. If the dead are not raised." And then he quotes the Ecclesiastes, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Then he says this, "Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor as is right, and do not go on sinning."

Paul's saying the life of following Jesus Christ is absolutely, utterly absurd. Unless it's true. If it's true, then the whole world is stumbling around in a drunken stupor and needs to be woke up. If this is true, and Paul says that it is.

That's why he begins in the very beginning of the chapter. He says, "Listen, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance, what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, then to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. You can go talk to them, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."

Paul saying this is impossible, but it happened, and we saw it with our own eyes, and this changes everything. This is what caused CS Lewis to write that, "If Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true of infinite importance. The only thing that it cannot be is moderately important."

Now the goal of today's sermon is not to argue for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as important as that is, but I actually preached that sermon a year ago, the first sermon in our Jesus among other gods series. We looked at the first half of 1 Corinthians 15. And what we did there was, we looked at the evidence, historical evidence, scriptural evidence. We looked at it all in order to show that it really is reasonable to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. In fact, that's the most probable explanation for what happened in the first three centuries after the birth of Christ.

But the goal today is not to convince you that Jesus rose from the dead. The goal today is to ask, why does it even matter? And that's what Paul focuses on in the second half of the chapter. That's what we're going to be looking at this morning.

So three big ideas, three points that we're going to be looking at today is, first of all in Christ, we as Christians, we have hope and a life after life after death. And Paul is going to show us that this life after life after death, is immaculately immortal. And thirdly, it is also presently significant. So if you have your Bibles open up to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I'd love to have you follow along. There's a lot of text today. And we're going to be looking at verse 35 through 58. If you don't have a Bible, the words will be up here on the screen.

1 Corinthians 15, starting at verse 35. But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish person. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There's one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there's a natural body, there's also a spiritual body. Thus it is written. The first man, Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, when the mortal puts on immortality, then she'll come to pass, the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain.

And this is the reading of God's Holy word for us this morning. Point number one: Life after life after death. What if I told you that not all Christians go to heaven? What if I told you that you and I will not be spending eternity in heaven? Obviously I'm trying to be provocative here. It is true that Christians go to heaven when they die, but it's not true to say that that's where scripture leaves it. It has more to say.

Paul told the Philippians, "For me to live as Christ, then to die is gain." Because if I die, I go to be with Jesus in heaven. But the full hope of scripture is not merely in life after death. The full hope of scripture is not that we would escape from these physical bodies and that our souls would fly away to some ethereal existence for the rest of eternity. The full hope of scripture is in full redemption, which means bodily resurrection, and new creation. There's a life after life after death that we look forward to. And so Paul says, "When Christ returns, the dead will be raised." And those Christians who are still alive, they will be transformed, and the broader scope of scripture shows us, to inherit the new earth, the new creation.

This is important because this is a very common misconception that people have about Christianity. Myself included, most of us, what we grew up.... When we think about eternity, when we think about heaven, most of our ideas come more from like Renaissance paintings or even episodes of the Simpsons than they do from scripture. Like we picture ourselves floating around on clouds, playing harps with like angels wings, and that's not what we see.

This is important. If the gospel is an evacuation plan, where our bodies die and our souls escape this mortal coil to spend eternity in some ethereal existence, that presents a few problems.

First of all, if that's the truth, why does anything I do right now in my body, in this life, matter. It results in this dualism that was present in Paul's day, and that's why he's writing this. But this dualism that, well, the spiritual is good, and that's what matters, and the physical is bad, and it's inconsequential. But that's not Christianity. God's creation is good.

Second, if this is true, then wouldn't that mean that death kind of won, and that God kind of lost. The gospel's not an evacuation plan. It's about redemption. It's about victory. Jesus came, he took on flesh, he lived and he died, not so that he could cut his losses and go home. He didn't come just to deflect death. He came to face it head on, experience, and defeat death, to turn it back upon itself and destroy it. Total victory. That's what Paul is writing about. He's trying to correct this dualism that was influencing that culture.

Because at the time, the idea of a bodily resurrection from the dead was just utter nonsense in the pagan world. But for Paul, it was absolutely essential to the gospel. And so what would happen is, people would scoff at Christians, they would ridicule, they would mock Christians for their belief in a resurrection of the dead because they would say things like, "Well, hold on, hold on, first of all, dead people don't come back to life. I've never met a dead person who's come back to life." Of course, the Christians could say, "Well, yeah, but I kind of know a guy. You should meet him." But more so, what they would say is like, "We know, we know what happens. It doesn't take very long before a body begins to decompose. It rots away and given enough time, it turns to dust. How are you gonna raise that up?"

And then if they were, you know, more cruel, they'd say, "What of your Christians that we've burned at the stake, whose bodies have become ash and floated away in the wind? What of those that we fed to our beasts? There is no body left to raise. So how is your God going to do that?"

And Paul says, "Don't be so foolish." Jesus isn't going to come back just to resuscitate our corpses into some kind of zombie apocalypse. That's not what we're talking about. He's coming back to recreate, new creation. He's not just going to resuscitate us, he's going to resurrect us and those are very different things.

And so to help us wrap our minds around this, Paul gives us an illustration, and this is what he says in verse 35, he says, "Some are going to ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of bodies do they come?" And his answer, "You foolish person, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain."

A few years ago, I was visiting San Francisco, and while I was there, I got the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the Muir Woods, one of the famous redwood forests in the area. And if you've ever been there, it's just, it's a very surreal experience. Like as soon as you get out of your car, the first thing you notice is the air just has... just the smell of it smells like life, and it's just hard to explain there's this sweetness in the air.

But then as you begin to walk into the woods, you're just awestruck by how massively impressive these trees are. And you go there, and I remember, I took so many pictures that day, and just none of them could do justice to what I saw with my eyes. And while I was there, I learned that the largest redwoods today, are as tall as a 37 story building, and that in the past they've been known to get as tall as 400 feet. But just to put that into perspective, if you look at the pinnacle of the dome, we're talking about something four times higher than that. And not only that, these trees are extremely old. Like some of these trees are up to 2500 years old, meaning that they started their life and they started growing before Jesus was even born. And they're still alive growing to this day. It's just, a very surreal experience.

And as I was walking through these woods, if you've been there, you probably saw this, but you come to this place called the Cathedral Grove. And there's a sign that says, "Everyone who enters, remain silent as you walk through this section of the forest." And there's kind of this semi-circle of trees that reach up, and they kind of resemble like a Gothic cathedral. And I said, "Well, if God planted a cathedral here, this is as good a place as any to just kind of like camp out for a while and spend some time." I spent some time praying. And so that's what I did.

And after a while, I'm looking down, and I realized just everywhere I look, the ground is just absolutely covered with thousands and thousands of these. I don't often use visual aids, but when I do, they're too small for you to even see what they are, so. But what this is, it's a pine cone. It's like barely larger than a penny, and it had fallen from one of these trees. Inside this tiny little pine cone, are 50 to 60 redwood seeds. Like theoretically I'm holding a redwood forest right here in the tips of my fingers. And you put a seed in the ground and then it comes back up. But it doesn't come back up as it was. And yet it's still itself. It's still the seed, but it's undergone this glorious transformation, and it's still what it was. It's still itself, but it's now so much more of itself.

And Paul's trying to help us. I think in some sense, this is what we're talking about with the resurrection. When Jesus returns, he's not merely going to bring our dead bodies back to life. He's not merely going to put an end to trials and temptations, to the sufferings and the weaknesses that we experience in this life. He's not even merely going to fix things up and make them the way they were before the fall. What scripture shows us is actually far bigger and better than that. The hope of scripture is that he's actually going to redeem and recreate creation in such a way, that what is found, is now more valuable for having once been lost. That what is restored, is now more precious and beautiful for having once been broken, better than it was before.

You think about the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. The book of Genesis opens with the creation account, and we see two people in paradise with God. But when you get to the end of the book of revelation, it's not just a return to Eden. It's not just two people in paradise with God. Now Eden is surrounded by this radiant, glorious city, filled with a multitude of people greater than anyone can count from every tribe, tongue, and nation, from all the corners of the earth, brought together, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, worshiping God. It says that heaven and earth have become one, and we're told that God is going to dwell with his people forever.

As Christians, we have a hope in life after death, but we need to understand that even more significantly, we have a hope in a resurrected life after life after death. And as Paul goes on, he goes into more detail to give us a glimpse of just how immaculately immortal these resurrected bodies will be. Immaculate in the sense that they're pure, they're clean, they're holy. They are completely without sin. And immortal in the sense that they're eternal, imperishable, powerful, glorious. This is what he says in verse 42, "So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It's raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. And if there is a natural body, there's also a spiritual body."

Thus it is written. The first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam, referring to Jesus Christ became a life giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus' resurrection, there's like all this weird like trippy stuff that happens to him, right, in his resurrected body. Like sometimes people see him, and they recognize him right away. Other times he'll spend a few hours with someone, and it's as if his identity is being concealed. There's times where it seems like he's teleporting from place to place. He walks through locked doors, through walls, and then as soon as everyone starts freaking out and saying, "Oh, it's a ghost." He says, "Hold on, I'm not a ghost. Come here." Said, "Put your finger in my hand. Put your hand in my wounded side. I'm real. I'm here. I have a body. But it's one full of surprises."

And this section, it can be a little bit confusing, because if Paul is trying to argue for a bodily physical resurrection, then why all of a sudden is he talking about us being raised in spiritual bodies? It almost seems like he's contradicting himself. Well, he's not. What he's doing is he's expanding on this idea that he hinted that with the seed and the plant, and he's trying to reveal some of the specific ways in which these bodies are going to be transformed, in which they're going to be different.

And so the first thing we need to understand is what he means by natural and spiritual. He's not saying that right now we have a body, but then we're going to be spending eternity as disembodied spirits. There's still a body. The focus is on what kind of body, and the distinction is between the natural and the spiritual. And so right now we have what he calls natural bodies. We have bodies that are born with a sinful nature, inherited from the fall. And because of this, our bodies are perishable, they are weak, they are corrupted, and Paul says, "They bear the image of Adam, the man of dust."

Now, when Christ returns, it's not that we're not going to have a body, or use for a body any longer. It's that we're going to have what he calls a spiritual body, and the emphasis is on this. It's that it's going to be a body that is so perfectly filled, and energized with the Holy Spirit of God, that we will be bearing the image of Jesus, the man of heaven. Just try to imagine what this means. Like for those in Christ, in eternity, you will be so filled with the Holy Spirit, so filled with the love and the presence and the joy and the power of God, that not only will you never sin again, but your immediate constant internal inclination in every circumstance will be to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And the same is going to be true for everyone else there. Shame replaced with glory, weakness, replaced with power, sickness and death, replaced with eternal vitality in life, sin and temptation replaced with holiness and with a deep unshakable abiding satisfaction in Jesus Christ.

This is amazing. I'd encourage you, just seriously, just carve some time out this week, and just think about that. Try to wrap your mind around that. As you do though, realize that that's not where Paul ends. He doesn't stop there. In fact, the big idea is not just that this is how things are going to be some time in the future, and so we might as well just kill some time now until we get there. The goal, the big idea, is that when Jesus saves us right now, that same Holy Spirit begins to dwell in us right now, and we are empowered and gifted in that spirit right now, so that we can begin living in alignment with that glorious future right now.

Now, do we do that perfectly? No, obviously, of course not. We still have that sinful nature alive in us, and it is at war against the spirit within us. But what this means is we get up every day and we fight. We repent. We rely on God's grace, and we strive. We strive to put sin to death in our body. We strive to walk in the Holy Spirit. We strive to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, fixed on this hope, knowing that everything we do right now is presently and eternally significant. And that brings us to point three.

At the beginning of chapter 15, near the beginning, Paul says this, in verse 10, says, "By the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." And then at end of the chapter, after laying out this rich theology of the resurrection, he concludes with this in verse 58, "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor, your labor is not in vain."

Life in Christ is an inverted Ecclesiastes, where nothing is vanity, everything is meaningful. And compare this to what pastor Jan preached on a few weeks ago, when we looked at 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, because in chapter 13 Paul said this, said, "Listen, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I give away all I have, and I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Apart from Christ, everything is nothing."

In Christ, nothing is meaningless, nothing is vanity, everything will be accounted for. And there's this... And he's trying to help us see. Everything that we do in the flesh. Everything done without faith. Everything that is not done in the spirit, motivated by God's love is vanity, and yet everything we do in faith, hope, love, by the spirit of God, is eternal. None of our work, none of our labor, none of our suffering will be in vain. Why? Because Christ's work toward us was not in vain, and he is actually the one working in us right now, empowering us. Every good thing in us is him alive, his life in us.

So your pursuit of holiness, every time you wake up and open your Bible, every time you call out to God in prayer, every time you say yes to the Holy Spirit and no to temptation, every time you lay down your life, pick up your cross, and follow Jesus, it will not go unnoticed. It will never be in vain. Your brotherly love for one another, every time you sacrificially give, every time you selflessly serve to build others up in the church, it will not go unnoticed. It will never be in vain. You're faithful perseverance, as you joyfully and patiently endure the trials and sufferings of this life, as you are insulted and slandered and mocked for your faith, and as you choose to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, it will not go unnoticed, it will never be in vain. Your bold, faithful, witness, every time you testify to what Jesus Christ has done in your life before others, every time you share the gospel, even if it seems as if it's falling on deaf ears, it will not go unnoticed. It will never be in vain.

Paul says, "Even if you lay down your life, give up your body to be burned." Listen, countless Christians in the first century, including Paul, and all the apostles, except for the apostle John, died as martyrs for their faith, because they refused to deny that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and their deaths were not in vain. They did not go unnoticed. They did not die meaningless deaths. Jesus said, "If you lose yourself, if you die to yourself, and if you pick up your cross, and follow me, that's when I actually, for the first time in your life, you're going to see what it means to truly live, and I promise you that in the next life you will be eternally rewarded, because I have come to give life. I've come to give abundant life, eternal life, and it's a life that begins right now.

In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians, chapter 5:17, Paul said this, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he will become a new creation." No, that's not what he said. He said, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold the new has come. It starts right now."

Ah, this is the last sermon in our Prodigal Church series. We've been going through the book of 1 Corinthians all summer long. And we called this series Prodigal Church, because like the infamous prodigal son, this was a church that had a lot of problems, and we've seen that every week. There's a new issue that the church is needing to deal with. That this church was young, it was arrogant, it was immature, they were short sighted and foolish. They were presuming on God's kindness and his patience and his grace. And this was a church full of sexual immorality, it was a church full of division and pride.

And Paul says, "All of that is just because at the base of it there's this overall lack of love for God and for one another." And like the prodigal son, it seems as if this church was squandering it's inheritance in Christ, and yet also like the prodigal son, this is a church that was loved by the Father and unlike the prodigal son, this was a church with an older brother who hadn't given up on them yet, who had begun a good work in them, and was going to carry it out to completion.

And so Paul comes to them and it says, if he's coming to the prodigal son in the far off country, when he's there hitting rock bottom, he says, "Listen, wake up from you're drunken stupor." Like it's time to get up. It's time to walk back home to the father. It's time to stop following Jesus half-heartedly and get all in. Every single moment of this life is significant, and every single moment will be accounted for when Jesus Christ returns. So wake up. Remember who you are. You were not saved for sin, you were saved from sin. You are saints. You are the church, the bride of Jesus Christ. You have been purchased, redeemed by his blood. You are the children of the living God. You're treasured, loved, filled, and powered by the Holy spirit and you are destined for unfathomable glory.

So you need to live a life worthy of that good news right now. Some of us, some of you, your lives are like leaves, spinning, flying, being tossed about in the wind, ungrounded, unstable, unpredictable, because you're not sure of who you are, haven't placed your identity firmly in Jesus Christ. And for some of you, this is because you've been running away from God your whole life. For some of you it's because you've been living in the world, and just trying to kind of dabble and Christianity. You're afraid to go all in because you know what it's gonna cost you to do so. And some of you have been trying to live the Christian life while continuing to dabble in the world, and you've been quenching the spirit, trying to follow Jesus in the flesh, and it's time to wake up. Jesus died for you so that through faith you could have a life in him and be filled with his spirit.

2000 years ago, God became a man that really happened. Paul saying, "Gun to my head, go ahead, I'm not going to deny it. I've seen him with my own eyes." Jesus lived a perfect life. He died for our sins. He rose in victory over Satan, sin, and death, and now he invites us to repent, to stop trying to live life in our flesh, and to trust that we can share in this victory of his, not because of something we've done to achieve it, but because of what he has done for us completely by grace, through faith in him, and his work.

If you are here this morning and you have not experienced that life, you've not given your life to Christ, you've not been filled with his Holy Spirit, I pray that you would do that today. Repent and put your faith in Jesus. And I pray right now that you just join me in prayer as we conclude this message.

Jesus, to you be all glory and power and dominion and authority and praise. In your death, you have given us life and in your resurrection you have given us eternal hope. God, I pray that you would give grace to your children, that we would be able to love you and trust you. That we would be steadfast, immovable, abounding in your work, walking in holiness. Patiently waiting, and eagerly hastening the day of Christ's return. What for those here who have not yet been reconciled to you, I pray that you would reveal yourself to them now, that you'd show them their need for a savior, that your kindness and patience would lead them to repentance, and that they would put their faith in Jesus Christ. They would experience your love today, and even now, be filled with your Holy Spirit. I ask this in the name of your son, our Lord, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Summary: "Let’s suppose that a kite could come to life and develop its own personality. On the one hand, it would feel the exhilaration that comes from the surges of wind that direct it through the sky. On the other hand, it would almost immediately take notice of something annoying. The tugging of the string at its center; a feeling of constraint; resistance. And soon the kite begins to think to itself, “If only I could detach, then I could really fly.” - (Beautiful Eulogy, "The String That Ties Us")

As we know with kites, if there is no string, it cannot fly for very long. In the same way, driving without a seat belt is inherently dangerous.

God has given us instructions around the way to practically use the spiritual gifts He has blessed us with. At times, these instructions can seem to hinder us, or might even seem trivial, but they are given to us to allow His Church to flourish.

Good morning church. Welcome. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm the team director here at Mosaic Boston Brookline. And if this is your first time here, welcome. Pastor Jan is away and Pastor Shane was away and he got back last night. So I'm filling in.

But today we will be continuing our sermon series that we've titled Prodigal Church where we will be going through the book of 1st Corinthians and today we will be in 1st Corinthians chapter 14 verses one through 33. If you're wondering, "Why are we skipping the last few verses of the chapter?" It's because Pastor Shane actually already preached on them. And if you're like, "What? I didn't know that." You should download the app or go to our website and listen to Pastor Shane's sermon on chapter 11. And while you're there, just listen to the whole series again because it's that good. But now, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father. Lord, we come to you today and we humbly ask that you reveal your truths to us. You use your words, you use your scripture to reveal the secrets of our heart, to convict us, Lord, and to encourage us, Lord, in the gifts that you have blessed us with and the work that Jesus Christ has done on the cross, so that we can cultivate love in this church, proclaim the gospel to those who don't know, and build up your church here in Boston. We thank you and we praise you. In Jesus' name, your son, we pray. Amen.

What comes to mind when you think about seatbelts? For many of us, the first thing we think of is how restricting it is, how uncomfortable it is. Sometimes we think, "Oh, I'm only driving down the block. I don't really need to put on a seatbelt if I'm just going like five minutes. It's okay." Or sometimes you might even think, "How do I click it so that I don't get the ticket and so that my car isn't blaring an alarm at me for 10 hours, and I could put it like behind me so that I'm technically following the law, but it's not actually doing anything?"

But if any of you here have ever been in an accident or know anyone who's been in an accident where the seatbelt has saved you from injury or sometimes even death, the idea of a seatbelt takes on a whole new meaning.

Here at Mosaic, we like to say that we are charismatic with the seatbelt. And the reason for that is what I just explained about seatbelts, in that there are certain instructions, there are certain guidelines that God has given us in terms of how to use the gifts he has blessed us with so that they can be life giving and saving.

Sometimes we might think that they're restricting our ability to use the gifts, or we might say, "This is trivial. It's not that big of a deal." But to God, he knows that it's life giving and saving. And so when we read these instructions, we want to praise him and thank him for them because he knows he has our best interest in mind and the interests of others.

Today we will be spending our time in three parts. The first part is what are tongues and prophecy? Throughout this whole chapter, Paul is talking about tongues and prophecy. So we're going to have to define them because there's a lot of confusion around what they mean. And then the second part we're going to be talking about is building up the church in Corinth. And then lastly we'll be talking about how to build up Mosaic here.

Because it is a long text, we're going to be reading the first half now and then the second half with the second point. So if you have your bibles, will you turn with me to 1st Corinthians chapter 14. We'll be reading verses one through 12. And if you don't, you can follow along on the screen behind me.

"Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?

So with yourselves, if with your tongue, you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and a speaker or a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church."

So first, because we talk about tongues and prophecy so much in this text, we're going to define them. And I'm going to start with tongues because I think that this one is the more controversial of the two. And so we can define, I'm using Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology. So if you have questions, you could look at that and read from there. But we are defining tongues today as speaking in tongues is prayer or praise spoken in syllables not understood by the speaker.

This deals with human languages. So if I'm up here talking in syllables, syllables together make words, we could say words, that I have never heard before, I've never learned. And the great community of Russian speakers we have here are like, "Wow, Tyler's speaking in Russian." That's an example of the gift of tongues. I don't have that gift so that's probably not going to happen.

But also, as Paul is talking about here, he says, "For when someone speaks in a tongue, he speaks not to men but to God." So there is this aspect of speaking in tongues that is between a person and God and speaking in syllables that they don't understand. And this is where it starts to get a little controversial and a little bit prodding.

So in order to really understand what the gift of tongues is, what its purpose is, and why we are given it, we actually have to look back into the book of Genesis in chapter 11 at the story of the Tower of Babel. I mean, you might be thinking this is out there. Follow along. Trust me. It makes sense.

In the book of Genesis at the story of the Tower of Babel, the people decide, "We're going to build this tower up into the heavens." And they say in chapter 11 verse four, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its tops in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."

And God sees this, and he responds by saying, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do now will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech."

So what God sees as the real issue with them building the tower, they say that they're building a name for themselves, but God says, "And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." You see, the people in the story, mankind was using the gift of unity in language that God had blessed them with to build a name for themselves, to say, "Yes God, thanks for this gift so that we could all talk to each other. Now we're going to build our name for ourselves so that we don't need you. We could do anything we set our minds to. We don't need God's help. We don't need to seek his guidance. We can do whatever we want."

And in doing that, there were two major consequences. The first is the one that we always think of, is that God confused the language of mankind and that people no longer had this unity in language. And the second is that we actually hurt our community ... our communication and our relationship with God in this moment because we said, "God, you've given us this gift of communication. I'd rather use it to build up myself and our people rather than be built up in you." So when we look at the gift of tongues, we have to be looking at it as redeeming both aspects in the story of the Tower of Babel.

When we look at the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two, we see God redeeming the effects of the Tower of Babel and that the confusion of human language. In chapter two verse 11 he says, "We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." So the people were listening to the apostles, and what they heard was them speaking in their own tongues. In this moment, God unified their languages. But also it was for the purpose of declaring the mighty works of God. Back in our definition, it's prayer or praise to God. The focus of it is on God. The focus isn't on the human relationships. The focus is still on God.

And then for the aspect of redeeming this consequence of hurting our communication with God, we look here at this text in chapter 14, and this is what Paul is talking about. That's why he says, "The one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God."

Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology puts it this way. He says, "The fact that speaking in tongues occurred in known human languages once in scripture does not require that it always happened with known languages, especially when another description of speaking in tongues indicates exactly the opposite." He's talking about 1st Corinthians 14 here.

Paul does not say that the foreign visitor to Corinth will understand the speaker, which is what we would expect from Pentecost, but he says that when someone speaks in tongues, no one will understand and the outsider will not know what the person is saying. In fact, Paul explicitly says that quite the opposite of the phenomenon at Pentecostal will happen in the ordinary conduct of the church. He's talking specifically about verse 23 in our text, which we haven't gotten to yet, but I'll read it for you.

Paul says, "If therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and outsiders or unbelievers enters, will they not say that you are out of your minds?" In the day of Pentecost, outsiders, unbelievers came in, and they heard, yes, some said that you're out of your minds, but others heard and believed. Here, Paul says, no one will understand.

So we have to understand that the description in the book of Acts chapter two and the description we see here and in other places in the book of Acts. They're not in contradiction. They're not in conflict in any way. They are God giving us this gift to work harmoniously to redeem the effects at the Tower of Babel. As Pastor Jan talked about last week in chapter 13, he said that the gifts, specifically tongues and prophecy are a glimpse. They're like looking into a dim mirror as to what will happen when Jesus Christ comes and he redeems us completely, when there's the new heaven, the new earth, or when we're in heaven.

You see, the gift of speaking in tongues is a glimpse into the unity we will have in communicating with each other, even people of different languages, different nationalities that we will have in heaven, and also it's a glimpse into the unity we will have in communication with God, uninhibited by the effects of sin and uninhibited by the fall.

This is something that can be challenging or prodding. Maybe you've never heard this before and you're like, "Whoa, this is a little strange." What I want to encourage you with is this is not the gospel. This is not what saves us. Jesus Christ is the only one that saves us. But this is the truth in scripture. And so if you aren't sure about this, if you're not sure, that's okay. What I would ask is that you'd spend time in prayer asking God to reveal his truth, so you're asking him to work on your heart and reveal what he has said in scripture.

In addition, in verse four when Paul says, "The one who speaks in tongues builds up himself," this isn't a knock against the gift of tongues. This is actually Paul understanding that, what he's talking about it, the gift of tongues is primarily used for an individual to build up and strengthen their relationship with God because they're speaking to God. Whereas the gift of prophecy is able to welcome in others and to build up the whole church.

So with that, keep that in mind. This is what we're talking about when we're talking about tongues. Now we're going to move onto the definition of prophecy. Prophecy we can define as telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind, primarily, as it says in verse three, for the purpose of upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

But how do we know it's the spontaneous brought to mind thing? What does that mean? This is from verse 24 and 25 where Paul says, "But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he's convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you."

If an outsider comes in, how can you know the secrets of their heart? Who is the one that knows the secrets of their heart? That's God. And so it takes this divine revelation, this divine inspiration in the moment for you to know what God is using you to say to this person, to speak into their heart, to challenge them, to convict them, and to show them the love that God has for them.

Here's a quick example for you. I think a lot of times when we think about prophecy, we have this high lofty idea, which is this amazing gift. But I think we think of like movies where it's like, "Oh, you must fulfill the prophecy." It's like, "No, that's not what we're talking about." And so I'm going to give you a mundane everyday example of prophecy that you might be able to relate to a little bit more.

One Sunday I was talking with a friend of mine. And this friend would openly say he believed in God but would never say he believed in Jesus. And the reason for that was there was past hurt in his life by people that came to him, not wanting to know him, not wanting anything to do with him, but just demanding that he believed certain things about Jesus. And because of this he became embittered, and he didn't want to talk about Jesus. He didn't want to know about Jesus.

As we were talking, the spirit placed on my mind the story of the Good Samaritan. So in that moment I was able to realize that this man was hurting because he felt that no one in Boston cared for him, no one really cared for him. And the people that claim to be Christians, they didn't care for him. They just were walking by proclaiming Jesus to him and not caring for him.

So in that moment, the spirit prompted me to talk to him and to reveal to him how, yes, there were people in his past that walked by him, even claiming to be Christian that weren't caring for him. But there were brothers and sisters here at Mosaic, there are people here that were caring for his physical needs, helping him in his times of need, and also praying for him every week, caring for him, answering his questions.

And when he recognized this, his whole demeanor changed. He went from a position of arguing with me and yelling at me all of the horrible things Christians have done throughout history and has instead started asking me about who Jesus is, his characteristics.

And so I'm just answering his questions. His words were just like firing them off. I'm going down the line and out of nowhere he says, "Oh, so that's what you mean by the Trinity?" I was shocked because I had never mentioned the word Trinity. I did not use that at all. We were just talking about Jesus. And he had that connection. So I was like, "Yeah." And he was just like, "Oh, that makes sense."

I was like, "Wait a second. This is crazy. Like what's just happened? So you're telling me you believe that Jesus is equal to God. He's the son of God, fully God?" He's like, "Yeah, it has to be." And I was like, "Whoa, so you're telling me you believe because Jesus is God, he was the only one who was able to die on the cross, to pay the penalty for anything you've ever done wrong and give you this perfect relationship with God?" And again, he said, and I quote, "It has to be."

You see, this is exactly what Paul is telling us prophesy will lead to. In verse 25 as I read, it says, "So falling on his face, you will worship God and declare that God is really among you." In that moment he said, "Yeah, Jesus is God. The God that we are worshiping here at Mosaic is the true God." I say this because this had literally nothing to do with me. This was something the spirit brought to mind, and as we were talking the spirit changed something in his heart that I didn't even talk about. And this is what prophecy does.

Prophecy isn't always exactly quoting scripture in the way that the story illustrates. Sometimes it is something more particular or practical to the individual you are talking to. If you want to know more about, that after service, come talk to me about the time the Holy spirit made me talk about baseball. It's a weird one. But anyway. But what is true and what is certain is that the gift of prophecy will never contradict scripture. The gift of prophecy is not over the authority of scripture. It is working in unity with scripture for the sake of revealing God's truth about the gospel to someone in a practical way that they can understand and convicts them.

As Paul says in verse three, in verse five, in verse 12, three times in the first half of this chapter, he says, "Build up the church." You don't use the gift of prophecy. You don't use the gift of tongues for yourself. In church, we are to use it for building up his church, strengthening God's church, bringing people and welcoming them in.

Now we're going to be looking at specifically what Paul was challenging the church in Corinth to wrestle with and how that applies to us. So now we are going to be reading verses 13 through 33.

Paul says, "Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of outsiders say 'Amen' to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.

Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the law it is written, 'By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.'

Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church come together and all speak in tongues, and an outsider unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he's convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

What then brothers? when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there's no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.

If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and be encouraged, and the spirits of the prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion but of peace."

All right, so a lot of text again. The problem that the church in Corinth was having was that they were lifting the gift of tongues above every other gift. They were saying that, "If you have the gift of tongues, you are held to this position of honor. And if you don't, well, you're not as important." And this led to a lot of issues. The first issue was that there was division in the church. You weren't all equal. Those few who had tongues were higher and the people that didn't were lower.

But the second was that as someone was speaking, another person over here would stand up, start speaking in tongues with no one to interpret. So half would be like, "What in the world's going on?" And then another person over here would come and start speaking and speaking in tongues and everyone would be like, "What in the world is going on? They're saying different things. What's happening?" And this led to confusion in the church. And when outsiders or unbelievers came in, they said, "You all are crazy. You're insane, and you're out of your minds. We want nothing to do with this."

So the instructions Paul was giving here are for the sake of creating an environment where outsiders or unbelievers can come to church and hear the gospel proclaimed uninhibited, undistracted.

I know this whole chapter and this whole book is about the local church. And the reason for that is that the way in which God has designed us to use the spiritual gifts he has blessed us with is in the local church. This is why Paul says that the gift of prophecy is greater than the gift of tongues. He's not saying, "Oh, you have the priorities wrong. Flip them." What he's saying is that the prophecy, the gift of prophecy has the ability to build up the church, whereas the gift of tongues does not on its own unless someone interprets. So use the spiritual gifts that God has given you, whatever gift it is, for the sake of building up the church in your local church at Mosaic. If you're not using your gifts here at Mosaic, I challenge you and I encourage you. Use them here.

God has a place for you to use your gifts here. We need to be blessed by them, but also you need to be blessed by the people that God has given other gifts to, to challenge you, to encourage you, and to strengthen you in your faith. So hold onto that and remember that for the last point.

But back to this, this section. In verse 13 Paul starts the section by saying, "Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret." This further supports our definition that he has to pray to interpret because he doesn't know what he's speaking. So speaking in syllables, he doesn't know.

But the important thing to know here is that interpretation of tongues it's not like interpreting modern art, so not like you could put a picture up on the wall and one person comes and says, "Oh, when I look at that, I see two people looking into the sunset and walking together, holding hands." And then another person comes, "Oh, when I look at that what I see is, I just feel warmth and happiness." And another person comes up and says, "Literally, that is circles and triangles with red and blue plaint spattered on it. I don't know what you're talking about."

That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about the interpretation of tongues. Interpretation of tongues is like interpreting the language. Here's a little thought experiment for you. What comes to mind when I say this sentence: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. It's one sentence. It's biblical. It's a good, good thing to say.

But when I read that, some of you might be focusing on, "Oh, God so loved the world, the love he has for us and his creation is vast and great." Another person hearing that might be saying, "Oh, Jesus Christ is the only Messiah. He is the only way to have and no one else." Another person might be thinking, "Oh, I need to put aside my doubts and believe, commit to Jesus."

All of those are accurate interpretations of the verse, but they were different emphasis for the individual. And this is where interpretation of tongues needs to be careful because there is one meaning, there's one language, it is one thing that's being said, but there might be different emphasis to the individual. So this is why they encourage only one or two or three to speak in tongues and for there to always be interpreters around so that they could use each other to interpret what was said and keep each other in account. Just with prophecy. Same with tongues will never contradict scripture, it is not over scripture. It is under the authority of God's word.

He follows this up by then saying, "Worship with your spirit, pray with your spirit, but also do it with your mind." And he's saying this because he understands you might be using your gift of tongues or just naturally be praising with only your spirit and not your mind. What he means by this is he says that when we pray and when we sing together in church, we are to do it so that the people next to us can say amen to what is being said. The word amen means this is true, this is verified, I wholeheartedly agree. And so if you're speaking in a tongue that no one else can understand, people next to you are going to think you're crazy. But also to them, it doesn't matter if you're actually worshiping God or not. To them, they don't know what you're saying, but yes, it's good, you should be worshiping God when you do. But to them, they, as far as they know, you could be worshiping Satan in church. They have no idea.

So this is why Paul says, "Worship with your spirit and with your mind so that the people around you can say amen. What you are saying, what you are worshiping, what are you are praying is true, it is right." The easiest example I can give of this is worshiping through song. If you have the gift of tongues in your singing, the song in tongues, great, worship with your spirit, but also sing the actual lyrics to the song so that the people next to you can hear what you are saying. See that you are worshiping with your spirit and validate that what you're saying is true, is glorifying to God and say "Amen" and be encouraged and built up by your worship.

Using the gift of tongues in the church can be difficult. This is why Paul explicitly says, "If there's no one to interpret, don't do it." This is also why he then says in verse 19, "Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than 10,000 words in a tongue."

Every single spiritual gift can be used to build up the church if we are willing to put on the seatbelt, put on the way God has instructed us to use it. This helps. Think about it. Like the spiritual gift is a car that God has blessed you with. He's given it to you. So you can use it for his ministry. But if you're not willing to put on the seatbelt, if you're not willing to follow the instructions God has given you, Paul is saying it's better for you to walk than even step foot in the car. He's saying it's for me to speak five words with my mind, with the natural gifts God has given me, than to be using the spiritual gift incorrectly, not building up the church.

So I challenge you again. Use your gifts for building up the church. Paul wants you to use your gifts, but for the sake of building up the church, not for building up yourself and not to be a distraction to others. Build up the church.

Now we get into what some scholars argue is the most confusing text in all of scripture, and I did not understand it until I was talking to Pastor Jan and Pastor Shane and Andy about this, and they were able to help me together. We all worked together. This is verses 20 through 25. In verses 22 Paul says that the gift of tongues is for unbelievers, whereas the gift of prophecy is for believers. Tongues, unbelievers, prophecy, believers. Then in verse 23 through 25 Paul says that when an unbeliever hears tongues, they'll think we're crazy. But when an unbeliever hears prophecy, they fall down and worship God.

Paul, this seems like you're saying the exact opposite of what you said before, tongues for unbelievers. But unbelievers will think we're crazy. Prophesy for believers. But unbelievers are the ones that worship God when they hear it. What are you talking about?

So in order to understand what Paul is saying, we have to understand that his idea of election and his idea of believer are so intertwined that when we're talking about them, we can't fully separate them. He doesn't use them to mean the same thing, but they are intertwined and connected. So the one that I think makes the most sense is the easiest to understand is prophecy for believers.

So when Paul says that an unbeliever hears prophecy, they're convicted, called to account, and the secrets of their heart are disclosed, what does this make you think of? This is the moment when someone recognizes that they are a sinner and need a savior. This is when they are convicted of the sin that is inside them. They are called to give an account for the secrets of their hearts and the sin they have committed, and they say, "Lord, I'm not worthy. I am not able to come to you." And prophecy is able to speak into their hearts in a way that changes it so that they're able to say, "God, you are the true God. You are the one who saves me. You have forgiven me for my sins."

So the gift of prophecy is a way in which God chooses to use us to draw his elect from the state of unbelief into the state of belief to build up his church. So now the gift of tongues is for unbelievers. And in order to understand this, we have to read the prophecy from the book of Isaiah in verse 21 where he says, "By people of strange tongues, and by the lips of foreigners, will I speak to the people? And even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord."

Gift of tongues is a sign for unbelievers, but it's not a positive one. The word that's used for the tongues, the sign is a sign for unbelievers can also mean against. And it has this idea that when an unbeliever comes and here someone's speaking in tongues, they're going to say you're crazy, they're going to say you're out of your mind. And it's proof. It's validation of their unbelief.

This is why Paul is so urgently charging the church in Corinth to focus on prophecy over tongues because they're speaking in tongues, and all they're doing is revealing people's state of unbelief. Whereas the gift of prophecy has the ability to be used by God, to draw people from unbelief into belief. This is how the church is built up. We are to be used by God to draw his elect from unbelief into belief. And this is how we are called to use the gifts even today.

So thinking about Mosaic and how we can build up his church here. If you've been to Mosaic before, you probably know that we don't struggle with lifting the gift of tongues above every other gift. That's not our struggle. We don't have people speaking in tongues all over and going crazy. Like that just doesn't happen here.

So what is the gift? Do we have a particular gift that we struggle with lifting above every other gift? And I think we do, and I think it's because the culture has so taught us to value the gift of utterances of knowledge above everything else. We only care about what is being said if it stimulates our mind, if it's an argument that is argued in such a way that it's the most persuasive thing we have ever heard and the neurons in our brain are firing and going crazy as it's being said, that we neglect anything that involves a heart change, anything that even has any emotion in it. We say, "No, I don't want that. Emotions aren't logical." And we neglect to allow the spirit to change us from within and reveal truth to us because we have formed in our mind what we have determined to be knowledge.

Have we quenched the spirit working inside of us to challenge us, to strengthen us because we said, "Nope. There's not enough physical evidence for that. That's not what I understand or how I think He work. That's not what I know." Quick example of this. I am guilty of doing this and I can say that honestly. I'm in seminary currently at Gordon-Conwell. In my first year I was taking a class called Introduction to the New Testament. And for one of my exams I had to memorize the order of events in the book of Acts. Crazy.

So I was reading the book of Acts over and over and over and over again. And as I'm reading, the Spirit's prompting something inside me. You see, before this moment, I had only believed in the gift of tongues as the definition of Acts chapter two. I would say, "This text is crazy. I don't know what to do with that."

And God's Spirit was speaking to me saying, "Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about this verse? What do you think about what I'm saying here?" And I said to God, "God, you know I have an exam tomorrow. You know I need to study this so that I can do well on my exam. And by the way, God, you know that I'm studying and taking these classes so that I can serve you God. Like I need to do well on this exam so I can serve you here at Mosaic." And in that moment I quenched the spirit because I had determined that what I believed to be knowledge, memorizing the events of scripture was more important than what the Spirit was trying to change in my heart. That was sinful. That was wrong.

Praise God. I am thankful that he has then worked on my heart after then, and he had grace for me. I had to come back and fall at his feet and say, "Lord, I am so sorry." And he was able to convict me again. But have we so valued knowledge that we have diminished the works of the Spirit in other ways? I want to be clear. The gift of knowledge is good. It is important. It is hugely important in the church and is vital in building up God's church. However, it is not more important than the other gifts.

Furthermore, we talked a little bit about the problems with worshiping with just our spirit, but I think the problem that most of us here struggle with is worshiping with just our mind and not our spirit. Thinking about when the songs are playing, we are saying the words, we're affirming the theology and the lyrics, but we're not worshiping with our spirit. We sing songs like praise God from whom. Like, no, we're not joyful. We're not praising God when we're singing. As Paul says, the issue with worshiping with just your spirit and just your mind is that the people around you will not say amen and will not be praising God because of that.

To prove this point, I have had multiple teens in Mosaic teens that when I ask them, "Oh, do you believe in Jesus?" They're like, "Yeah, I think so." I'm like, "What do you mean? What's holding you back?" And they say, "When I go upstairs, I see so many people worshiping ingenuinely."

Now that's not good theology for them. I correct them by saying, "Yes, we're all sinners. We are all working towards worshiping God rightly. That shouldn't be a reason to not believe in God. It's not a good reason," but it proves the point that Paul was making here, that when people see us worshiping with just our mind or just our spirit, they're going to say, "Ah, I don't know if I could say amen to that. I don't know if I could say this is true."

And this one I think is the best thing to be working on because when you are worshiping with both your spirit and your mind, you are so much greater deepening your relationship with the Lord. You are worshiping him wholeheartedly. You are able to understand the love he has for you and praise him in the best way possible. Like this is good for you too. But then also, the people around you can see and say, "Wow, God is here. The spirit of God is moving in this place. I could say, amen. God is really here."

I say this being fully guilty of not doing this perfect. As I was sitting over there this morning, I had to remind myself that I'm preaching on this because I was trying to go through the sermon that I was about to say in my head and I was like, "Yeah, I was saying, ha, ha, but I'm really thinking about the sermon." I was like, "No, no. I am preaching on how exactly wrong that is. I need to not worry about that and praise God in this moment."

Lastly, I want to say this. I think our view of church is far too narrow. We view church as the hour and a half we meet here on Sunday and that's it. We show up just in time to miss the meet-and-greet so we don't have to say hi to anybody, or we show up just in time for the sermon to start. So we miss all of the worship through song. And then the second I say amen and I walk off the stage, half the people are out the door and then the rest wait until the last song is done and then are immediately out the door.

And then you hear me saying, "Use your gifts. God has a place for your gifts here at Mosaic. Use them here. We want you." And you say, "Ah, there's not really a place for me to use them here. Like the band is up there doing their thing. Pastor Jan, Pastor Shane, me, Andy, like you're up here talking. Like there's not really anything else for people to do."

First of all, there are so many different ways to serve here at Mosaic, and each one of the spiritual gifts that God has blessed us with needs to be used in them. I wrote down the list from chapter 12 so I didn't have to turn there, but utterances of wisdom, utterances of knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between tongue ... distinguishing between spirits speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues. We need all of them. We want to be one whole unified body and you can use in there.

But even before that, even before you commit to a service team, which you should, but what about the time before service starts and after service ends? Are you in a relational community with people here that you can use your gifts then? Do you have the gift of prophecy? Are you speaking with people before and after service saying, "Hey, I know you're struggling with this. God has encouraged ... wants me to encourage you, to console you, to build you up with this."

If you have the gift of tongues, go find someone with interpretation. Pray together, praise God together, and get to know the knowledge, the revelation, or whatever is being ... God is using you in that time. If you have the gift of wisdom, of knowledge, are you helping people in between? If you have the gift of distinguishing between spirits, someone's struggling with something. I don't know if this is God leading me or Satan trying to deceive me. Are you helping people?

There are so many opportunities for everyone here to be using your gifts. There's really no excuse. And remembering that God has designed us to use our gifts in the local church. Yes, we should be using them elsewhere. But if we really want to build God's church, his kingdom here on earth, we are to be using his gifts in the local church here at Mosaic. Are you willing to let him use you here? Are you willing to let him use you now?

Let's pray. Heavenly father. Lord, we come to you humbled, recognizing that we are not worthy and we praise you that you have blessed us with gifts anyway. Lord, we thank you that you have saved us and blessed us with opportunities to be used by you. Give us that wisdom. Give us that understanding to use your gifts here in your local church. Help us to use them rightly in the way you have guided us for the sake of building up your church. We want to see people come to know you and to love you more. Use us. Give us a heart to be used by you. In Jesus' name, your son, we pray. Amen.

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Summary: Why does it seem so easy to love "humanity in general" and so hard to love "people in particular" (especially roommates)? How does loving particular people convince us that God truly loves us?

Hello, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new or if you're visiting, welcome to Mosaic, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you either in person afterwards, or through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly, you can either toss it into the offering basket afterwards, or redeem it at the Welcome Center for a gift that we have lovingly prepared for you.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are God of love. You didn't just give us words of love, you gave us the greatest act of love in the history of the universe. You gave your son, Jesus. You came, and you walked the way of love. You didn't just show us the way of love, you walked it. You embodied it. You epitomized it. You made the way of the cross the way of life. We come to you Lord, and we confess now. On communion Sunday we confess that we have not loved as we ought, that all too often we are not patient, and we are not kind. All too often we do envy, and we do boast. All too often we are arrogant and rude. We insist on our own way because that is the way of the city. This is how you get ahead.

All too often we are irritable and resentful. We rejoice when our competitors stumble, instead of rejoicing with the truth. All too often we do not bear all things as we ought. We do not believe all things as we ought. We do not hope all things as we ought, and we do not endure all things as we ought. Lord, we repent. We confess, but we also repent. We ask for grace. I pray that your grace today melts our hearts, that it removes the layers of hardness and callousness around our hearts. Holy spirit come, move in this place, move in our hearts. Show us where we are not walking in the way of love as we ought, and teach us not to zigzag on the way, but go straight on the straight and narrow following Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior in whose name we pray. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is Pixilated Love. By pixilated love, I do not mean virtual love. I don't mean theoretical, hypothetical love. What we mean is loving real people with real love, granular love. Now today, we are looking at 1 Corinthians 13, meditating on this text. For at least two reasons you may have already checked out. You may already say, "This is not for me. This is not what I need to hear," primarily because 1 Corinthians 13 is the wedding passage, and this isn't a wedding. There's no bridesmaids, there's no flowers, why are we reading 1 Corinthians 13?

Well, because 1 Corinthians 13 was written to a church. Yes, it does apply to a married couple, but it also applies to every single one of us. We are to love like this. That's number one. Number two, love is not the way that you get by in this city. We live in a city that celebrates the intellect, celebrates IQ, celebrates academic accomplishments. We live in a cerebral culture dominated by thoughts of big people, important thoughts from important people on important subjects.

Rene Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum," I think, therefore I am, meaning the essence of humanity, what it means to be human is to think. That's part of what it means to be human, but we are more than just brains. Most of our decisions that we make are actually driven by desire of the heart. He did not say, "I love, therefore I am. I am love, therefore I am." This is a text that if you understand this, if you don't just understand it with your mind, but if you understand it with your heart, it will transform every single aspect of your life. This text, right here, is the most profound, the most eloquent treatise on love in both scripture and all of human literature.

Agape love. Before I get into the preaching part of it, I will say this. I'm not coming to you as some kind of specialist in love. Actually, I think it's very ironic, ironical, which is the ironic way of saying ironic. It's ironical that I am the guy talking about love. It does not come to me naturally, but by God's grace I'm growing in it. It's easy to preach. I can give you a theology of love. I love theology. I can give you the acts of Jesus and we can do all kinds of hermeneutics. I can tell you what it says in the Greek.

Now, when you put me in the car with my whole family, I've got four daughters, so that's six people in the car, with my brother this week driving to Rhode Island to my dad's 60th birthday. A trip that's supposed to take an hour and 20 minutes, instead it took three hours and 20 minutes, because my youngest daughter puked three times. My brother is sitting next to her and he said, "I just saw full berries come out." Try being patient and kind in that situation. Jesus take the wheel.

We all struggle with this. This is how scripture ... Scripture says, "This is the standard. This is what God has for us. Be perfect as I am perfect. Be loving as I am loving." Oh you can't. This is us. Someone can help. Someone can bridge that chasm. Someone can show us the way of love. Loving God is easy. God is beautiful. God is perfect. God is consistent. God is generous. God is loving even to those who are unlovely. His love makes us loving. It makes us lovely. Loving God is easy. Loving people, not so much.

In the newsletter I sent out this text that really articulated this perfectly. It's the fact that we love the idea of being loving. We love the idea of loving humanity. This is from Dostoevsky's, The Brothers Karamazov in Chapter four. There's an elder, and he's counseling this lady that comes to him. She's like, "I'm struggling with my faith." He says, "Try loving people completely indefatigably. She's like, "Oh, I love everybody. I'm even willing to leave my daughter to go become a nurse." Meaning, I want to love other people, not her.

He gives her a story. He quotes a doctor that he had a conversation with. This is what the doctor said. The doctor said, "I love humanity, but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams," he said, "I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience."

Can you relate? "As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In 24 hours I begin to hate the best of men. One, because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. It has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."

Working with this definition of love, Biblical love, or Christian love is self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of the beloved. There's sacrifice, there's a caring commitment. It's decisive, it's an act of the will, and you seek the best. You seek the good of the one whom you're called to love. It's drastically different than love in our culture.

Love in our culture is tolerance. I'm willing to tolerate you. I'm willing to live and let live. Or, it's being in love, sensory overload. That's not what love is. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 to see a Biblical definition of love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not loved, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

"As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

We'll frame up our time with three points. We'll look at love empowered, love expounded, and love epitomized. Love empowered, just to wreak out the context. The context in 1 Corinthians 12, St. Paul has been saying that we as Christians are one. That's a spiritual reality. We've been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. That's a spiritual reality that needs to manifest itself physically. Therefore, we, as a local body of believers, as members one of another, are interdependent, therefore, no one can say explicitly or implicitly I don't need you, or I'm not needed here.

We're designed by God for interdependence. If he brings us to a local body of believers, we are to connect. We have spiritual gifts that God has given to us at our conversion, or regeneration, gifts that grow as we use them. They're tools to build up the body. St. Paul talks about the spiritual gifts, prophetic gifts, and tongues, and knowledge, and words of incite, et cetera, and then he pauses. What he knows is the Corinthians are saying, "We're ready. Give us the details. Give us the details of how to use the gifts." He pauses and says, "No, you're not ready." He gives us the details in chapter 14. He stops in chapter 13, he gives us something more important than a treatise on gifts. He gives us a treatise on love. It's the crescendo of the whole argument here.

What he's saying is, "No matter how powerful you are naturally, no matter how powerful you are supernaturally, if you are not empowered by love, it ultimately means nothing. Your accomplishments ultimately mean nothing." He used that phrase nothing twice. Verse two, "If my faith starts to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Verse three, if I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." He says, "You can give all of your money away. You can actually give your whole life away. You can be martyred for the faith, but if you are not motivated by love ..." Yes, you can be martyred for the faith and not motivated by love. He says, "It means ultimately nothing."

The question here is what's driving you? We are so driven. What's driving us? What's the force? What's the motivation? Sometimes it's a feeling of obligation, I need to do this. I have to use my gifts. I have to be generous. I have to sacrifice. Maybe it's expectations of other people. What are they going to think? Maybe it's fear of embarrassment. St. Paul says, "You can end disease. You can cure cancer. You can solve world hunger. But if you do it without love, it ultimately means nothing." Those words are as strong as they sound. That all gifts ultimately are useless without love.

What motivates everything that we do Christian? What motivates our work? What motivates our social media habits? What motivates our spending? What motivates how we care for ourselves? Is it love? It would be as if Superman, the most powerful being that there is other than Jesus Christ. Jesus number one, Superman, fictional, whatever. Imagine if I'm in a burning building, and I cry out for Superman. He comes in, swoops me up, because Superman is strong enough to carry me. He's carrying me in his arms and I'm like, "Thank you Superman, that was so kind of you." He says, "Stop moving, you're ruining the photo op."

Superman did a great thing. He saved me. Superman turned out to be somewhat of a not a nice guy. I'm glad he saved me. I'm going to tell everyone he's not a nice guy. It's like if you get in a fight with your wife as she's cooking you dinner. Not that that's ever happened to any married couples here. Your wife is grilling up a steak and the perfect grill marks are on the steak. Halfway through you forgot it was your anniversary, I don't know, just hypothetical. She gives you the steak. She's like, "Here, eat it. Here's your side of contempt. I'm going to douse it in disdain." I'm still going to eat it. It just doesn't taste the same. You know what I'm saying?

1 John 4:7 says, "Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." What's he saying? He's saying that unless you are a Christian regenerated by the Holy Spirit, filled with God's love, you can't love as you are commanded to love. There's a natural love, that's not what he's talking about. He's using the Greek word agape, which is a supernatural love. It's not just a physical love. It's not just a human love. It's a Godly love.

He says, "This love is from God, and whoever loves like this has been born of God." Meaning, being born comes before, it proceeds loving like this. You ever wonder why scripture commands that we love? Jesus said, "This is all of the law distilled into two sentences. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." Why does God command love? God commands things that do not come natural to us, because natural is fallen. Do not sin does not come natural to us. Be humble does not come natural to us. Love like this does not come natural to us. We need help.

I'm going to table that for just a second. We'll get back to it in point number three. Here, in point two, we're going to look at an exposition of love. Love expounded, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, "Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast." That's really important what you just did there. Love is, love is, love is not. It's chiastic structure. Love is patient. Love is kind. That's what it is. Then he gives us descending steps of what love isn't. "It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not arrogant, it is not rude, it does not insist on it's own way, it is not irritable, it is not resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing," Then he starts bringing it back.

"It rejoices with truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Why is he doing that? He's giving us a positive definition, and a negative definition. He's like, "This is what love is and this is what you're doing." This is what love isn't. He's defining love. We live in a world that loves to talk about love in general, a very amorphous and ambiguous idea of love. You define love however you choose. That's not how scripture talks about love.

Scripture it defines love. It defines true love. I don't know if you know this, it defines love not as a feeling, it defines love as action. It actually defines love as a path. It defines love as a way. Why does it define love as a way, because Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." What's Christianity called in the book of Acts, before the term, before they were coined Christian, or little Christs? What was it called? It was called the way. It was called the people of the way. St. Paul, Saul, before he became Paul, he was persecuting people of the way.

Why were they called people of the way? Because they were living this way. They were living, they were walking on the path of love, following Christ who didn't just show us the way, He is the way, meaning we can't love like this apart from Christ. Love is patient. I'll just go through every single one of these quickly. Love is patient, it's long tempered, it's long suffering in the King James, it's slow to anger. It endures personal wrongs without retaliating. Your graciously bearing with other's imperfections, faults, defects. Assumption, loving is hard.

Presupposition, we're called to love sinners, and they will sin. As they sin, we are called to be patient with them, giving them room to change, giving them love to change. Love is also kind. Kindness is patience in action. It comes form the Greek word which means helpful. You look for ways and opportunities to help people with their needs. The word actually comes from ... The semantic range is very broad for the word kindness, chrestos, in the Greek. One of the definitions it's used to describe mellow wine. Meaning kindness is the ability to be gentle, to sooth hurt feelings, to calm an upset person, to help quietly in practical ways.

There is a tenderness to this love, even when people don't deserve it. Especially when they don't deserve it. That's when you're most like God. Luke 6:35, "Love your enemies and do good, and lend expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful, and the evil." God was kind to us even when we were ungrateful and evil. That kindness is meant to bring us to repentance.

Romans 2:4, "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to be lead you to repentance?" Love does not envy. Envy here means an eager desire, and that can be manifested in either a positive or a negative way. Positive envy, or jealousy, is used to describe God. God is jealous for our best, therefore, he wants to protect us from sin, from idols, because he knows what's best. The negative form of envy is greed or selfishness. You become possessive. You are mine and mine alone. You're here for me.

Also, love does not boast, and it is not arrogant. Bragging reveals a proud heart. Pride is the number one obstacle to love. In any relationship, if you start viewing this person, whoever the person is in your life, if you start viewing this person as something that you deserve, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, you are here to serve me. You are here for me, instead of I am here for you.

Scripture talks about people as gifts in our lives. When you start looking at a gift as something that you earned, as something you're entitled to, that's the first step to love cooling off. In a relation ... I go through this in my pre-marital counseling, and I actually have to keep reminding myself in my own marriage. My wife is a gift from the Lord, precious gift. I do not deserve her. I need to treat her as a gift. That's humility. Pride says, "I earned this." No. Love is humble, and everything is a gift including this person.

1 Corinthians 4:7, "For who sees anything different in you?" Another translation says, "For who made you to differ? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?" Everything we have is a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ. He needs to humble us, and when we're humbled, love flows freely. Love is not rude. It doesn't act unbecomingly. Love has good manners. It tries to put others at ease.

Love is courteous, it's polite, it's sensitive to the feelings of others. It's tactful, it's empathetic. Love does not insist on it's own way. It doesn't demand it's own rights. There's no selfishness in love. Selfishness is actually antithetical to self-sacrificing love. Love is not irritable. Selfless loves is not provoked. It's not touchy. It doesn't have a short fuse, or hair trigger temper. Love is not resentful. It doesn't keep track of wrongs. It's an accounting term for numerical calculation that we are not to tally wrongs. We're not to keep score.

God, when we come to him, he takes our record of wrongs and he nails it to the cross, imputes our sins to Christ, and imputes Christ's righteousness to us. It isn't resentful, meaning that you don't remember other people's sins against you once they've repented. God doesn't. The omniscient God of the universe, he says, "As soon as we come to him, as soon as we repent, he casts our sins from himself as far as the east is from the west." God says, "I shall not remember your sins any longer." How does the omniscient God of the universe forget anything? He chooses to. It's not resentful.

Love does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth. Love is never glad when others go wrong. When they stumble, there's no gloating, there's no, you owe me. Obviously there's a fine balance. When you love someone, you love them truly and you want the best for them, so you don't compromise the truth. You don't take a soft view of sin. When there's sin in their lives, you come with sensitivity, and love, and tenderness, you try to help them repent of that sin and follow Christ, because sin destroys.

3 John 4, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." Then in verse seven, he gives us four repetitions of all things. It's that hyperbole to make a point. "Love bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things." He's not saying that love accepts sin. What it says, when a person does repent, that you gently restore the person. You protect the person by covering and not broadcasting the weakness.

Love bears all things, it believes all things. Love always trusts. It doesn't imply gullibility. You're not suspicious of character, of motives without good reason. You give the person benefit of the doubt. You don't immediately blame or accuse. Love does not play devil's advocate. I hate that phrase. "I'm just want to play devil's advocate." Don't be devil's advocate. We give other people the benefit of the doubt. That's what love does. There's mutual trust.

Obviously if trust has been broken, then it needs to be earned again, step by step. Love believes the best. It also hopes all things. It hopes for the best for the person. You're not pessimistic about the people that you love. You're optimistic because you understand that by God's grace this person can grow. We all are works in progress. The person isn't how they ought to be, but they're definitely now how they were. We're still growing.

By the way, when you believe in someone like this, because you love them, I know that you're growing, I see your growth, then they rise to the standards, to the expectation. Finally, love endures all things. It's a military word meaning that we do sustain the assault of the enemy, but we hold up under trial, persevering in spite of difficulties. We don't bail out of tough situations. We don't bail as loving people out of tough relationships, because God didn't bail on us.

Point number three is love epitomized. We hear this. We hear this. How many of us have ... Raise your hand if that described you. You're loving. No, no. I'm not. I'm not patient. I'm not kind. I do envy. I do boast. We struggle with this. Every single one of us, we struggle with this. This is where the gospel comes. Christianity doesn't say, "Be perfect," and then leaves us to our own resources. Christianity says, "Be perfect as your God is perfect, be loving as God is loving," empowered by God's love, energized by God's love.

By the way, we need the epitome of God's love, which is Christ. 1 John 4:7-10, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. This agape is from God, for whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, is the love of God. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through Him." So that we might live through him.

Not only is he showing us the way, he's walking the way of love, and we are in him by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we might walk through him, live through him, love through him. This is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So dense, I love that text. I love how the Apostle John, who is the apostle of love. "Beloved children, love one another," those are his final words in his final sermon.

John didn't start with a rosy picture of humanity. John 5:42, Apostle John quotes Jesus Christ, "But I know that you do not have the love of God within you." He's talking to people who were religious. Jesus says, "You don't have this love. It's not natural to you." Human love, the kind that John is calling us to, is supernatural love. That's what he's talking about, it's not the norm. He's not talking about requests for natural affections. Be nice to each other, win friends and influence people. That's not what he's talking about.

He's talking about something supernatural. To love your neighbor as yourself. To think about your neighbors finances as you think about your own. To think about your neighbors health as you think about your own. To think about your neighbors dreams as you think about your own. That's what separates Christians from non-Christians, God's love. St. Teresa, Mother Teresa, she said this about Satan, "Satan could not be Satan any longer if he could once love his neighbor as himself." Satan couldn't do this, because Satan existed for Satan. Satan was curved in upon himself as Augustine says.

John takes this phrase that God is love. Love is from God because God is love. This is a very important phrase. It's a phrase that our culture has misunderstood. God is love. He's not saying God is only love, because God has other attributes other than love. He's not saying love is God, that love is ultimate. No, God is ultimate. What he's saying is that God continually gives of himself for the benefit of others. He continually pours himself out.

This talk about God is love, perhaps you've heard this? You must have heard ... If you live in American culture, you've heard that Jesus loves you. You've heard that God is love. This is one of the reasons why our eyes kind of glaze over, and like, yeah, yeah, God is love, yeah, yeah, God loves me. How do you know that God loves you? Outside of the pages of holy scripture, how do you know that God loves you? How do you know that God is loving?

There is not one religion, other than Christianity that teaches this. No other world view teaches this, that God is so loving that he gives his most precious son for us on a cross. Why are you a Christian? If you're a Christian, why are you a Christian? In your mind, I'd like you to give an answer. Why am I a Christian? Because I was baptized as a child, because I was confirmed, because I became a member of a church, because I go to church, because I serve, because I give, I've read the Bible, I'm a Christian.

That's not what John says. John says, "You are a Christian, you are of God, you have been born of God if you love God." Not if you have a theology of God's love, but if you love God. If you can't say that honestly, from the recesses of your soul, if you can't say, "I am a Christian because I love God, because he first loved me," then perhaps you have not yet been converted. If your heart is cold toward God, if your heart isn't moving to God in worship, if it isn't moving to adore him, then perhaps you haven't been converted.

Dear friend, you need to be converted. The way that you are converted is you cry out to God and say, "God, I need you God. I repent of my sin and my selfishness. God, let me see what Christ has done for me on the cross." What has Christ done for us on the cross? Here we need to feel the shock value of love. This is how the scripture talks about love. It's not just some sentimental sappiness. There's a shock value in God's love. In our natural state we hate God. You say, "Whoa, strong language. I don't hate God. I don't care about God. I'm apathetic to God. I'm indifferent to God."

Indifference toward God is actually the worst form of hate. If you hate someone, you're actually thinking about them. There's some kind of visceral reaction against this person, against God for example. If you're indifferent, there's just a hardness. Indifference is actually the worst form of hate. We, in our natural state, utterly are utterly indifferent to God. We kicked against him. We despise him. Luke 19:14, Jesus gives a parable about a king whose citizens hated him, sent a delegation after him saying, "We do not want this man to reign over us. When we heard of him coming, ruling, being our Lord, we sneered at him. We were his enemies."

Jesus, knowing that he would come, that he would love fully, completely, ultimately, he knew he was going to be crucified, yet he came. Psalm 22:14, "I'm poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint." He came, he walked the way of love, and the way of love was the way of the cross. En de via dolorosa. He agonized over us. He sweat blood for us. He was ridiculed for us. Then he carried a cross on his mangled shoulders for us, staggering through the streets of Jerusalem. He laid down on that cross willingly. He didn't fight it. He was raised on that cross. He spread his arms in the greatest gesture of love in all of human history, because he loves us.

He was despised and rejected by us. he was despised and rejected by them. When you see that Christ didn't just die for someone, Christ didn't just die for Christians, he died for you. He absorbed God's wrath for your sin, for your indifference, for my indifference. That's what changes us. There's no greater reason to love than love. When you realize that God made that first step, that he love you first, that love woos us, that love compels us. God doesn't just command love, he compels our love with his love first.

Why am I a Christian? Because God loved me first. Why do I love God? Because God loved me first. Why do we start there? Why do we start with talking about the vertical love, your relationship with God? Why not just talk about loving human beings? We started with that in the beginning. We're good at loving humanity in general. We love the idea of loving humanity. Then when we've got to love particular people, we realize it's so hard. We need a supernatural love infused into our hearts in order to love people horizontally.

The gospel can't be reduced to some kind of benign humanism, just horizontal without the vertical. By the way, this is the largest miscalculation of millions of nominal Christians, and nominal Christians nominations that say, "Let's just be good people. Let's just be nice people. Let's not talk about sin. Let's not talk about the cross. Let's not talk about God's wrath."

God showed us true love. Love is patient and it is kind in verse four. Paul here speaks about love in a way ... He doesn't speak about love as a syllogism or feelings. He speaks about love almost as if he's talking about a person. Did you notice this? He is. Love does something. Love does not do other things. One commentator says, "In a pagan society there was confusion about the title of Jesus, that Jesus was Christ. Jesus was the Christ. Christos, C-H-R=I-S-T-0=S, Christos, Jesus was the Christ.

The word for kindness here is Chrestos, C-H-R-E-S-T-0-S, love is Chrestos. There is confusion here in Roman A.D. 49, the emperor Claudius expelled the Jewish Christians, because Suetonius, the historian says, "There was disturbance over Chrestos." There wasn't riding over kindness. There was riding over Christ. For them in Rome, this was so new, that these people as they are being martyred, as they're being arrested, as they're being persecuted, they're still kind.

They have returned kindness for hostility. They were like this is the way of Chrestos, Christos, I don't know it's all one in the same. This is what St. Paul is doing. He is playing on those words. Yes, this is about Christ. Jesus is patient. Jesus is Chrestos. He's Christos and he is patient. He is kind. He does not envy. He does not boast. He is not arrogant. He is not rude. He does not insist on his own way. He is not irritable or resentful. He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. God's love always takes the initiative, and our love is always a response to God's love.

I say that to say this, this changes everything. If you catch a glimpse of the power of love. If you get that fire in your heart, it changes everything. It changes everything that you do. It changes everything that you do Monday through Friday. It changes the trajectory of your life. If someone can say about you, like instead of putting Jesus' name in there, if someone could say that about you with your name. I tried doing this with my own name. It's so hard, just reading out loud. Jan is patient. Jan is... I'm working on it. Honestly, this is the reality talk part of the sermon.

This changes absolutely everything. Imagine world history without Christianity. Imagine world history without the way of Jesus Christ, without the love of Jesus Christ. Just imagine it. It would look incredibly different. Christians were motivated by this love to meet real needs. This is what led to human progress at the most basic level. Let me just give you a few examples. Christian love has changed the world in medicine. The first hospice was invented by whom? In 325, at the Council of Knights, the bishops were told to establish hospices near cathedrals. The first hospital was built by St. Basil of Cesarea in 369.

Care for the mentally ill, that was a movement started by Christians. It was a Christian initiative, so was nursing. Florence Nightingale who formed the Red Cross said, "Jesus told us to love our enemies, meaning even during war we need to cross lines and help the wounded. Education, who started the first libraries? Christians at monasteries. Monks started monasteries. The monks started libraries, and then those libraries were the foundation to the first universities and educational institutions where they taught both genders. Universities, and then ultimately the printing press. Who started the printing press? Christians.

They were like, "Let's get Bibles out." Then they're like, "Oh wow, we just invented something that actually revolutionized the world." Almost all of the first 123 colleges and universities in the U.S. were founded by Christians. Just look at Boston, Harvard University started by Puritans, BU started by Methodists, BC started by Catholics, Christians.

Work and economic life. Christianity redeemed the perspective of manual labor. Jesus Christ comes and he works as a carpenter, dignifies manual labor. Laziness, sloth, idleness, it's a sin. Do not steal, that concept led to the concept of private property, property rights. Human rights, by the way, that's a Christian concept that we are created in the image of God with dignity, value and worth.

Science, modern science is directly linked to the Biblical understanding of the world. God created everything. There' rules, there's laws we should study what God created and maybe we'll know God better. Art, literature, music, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach, Hondo, Brahms, Dante, Milton, Bunion, countless other, Sistine chapel, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus, there's Simeon in the Temple.

Western music, Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Requiem, the soaring compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach. Gothic cathedrals, Western literature, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. So extensive is the Christian contribution to our laws, our economics, our politics, our arts, our calendar. Our calendar, 2019, from what? Our holidays, our moral and cultural priorities that the historian Jane Roberts write this, "We could none of us today be what we are if a handful of Jews nearly 2000 years ago, had not believed that they had known a great teacher, seen him crucified, dead, and buried, and then risen again."

My dream, my dream is for you not to just be like, "Oh wow, Christians have done so much. Now I'm going to go to my job on Monday and think about building my LinkedIn, and building my CV, building my resume." This is my dream. My dream is that if the Lord should tarry and not come, my dream is that in 2000 years, I dream that historians look back and they say, "If it were not for Christians in Boston in 2019, giving everything that they had, all of their natural talents, and supernatural talents, if they didn't do that, we would not have cured cancer. We would not have solved global hunger. We would not be living on Mars, maybe, I don't know."

If you take everything that you have, and who's the next Michelangelo? Who's the next Bach? Who's going to revolutionize medicine? Who's going to revolutionize the economy? If you are motivated by love, and powered by love, we can absolutely not just change the world, but change eternity by God's grace.

1 Corinthians 13:8-12, "Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away." What are prophecies for? They're to show us a glimpse of what's behind the scenes in the spiritual realm. They will pass away. "As for tongues, they will cease." We will no longer have to communicate with God through the spiritual gift of tongues. "As for knowledge, it will pass away." Why? "For we know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes to laos. When the new heavens and the new earth come, when Christ returns, everything is absolutely perfect, the partial will pass away."

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." Mirrors back then were made out of metal. You could see something and it's real what you see, but it's not perfect. It's not exact. It's a distorted reflection.

What we know about God through is revelation, through mysteries, through knowledge, through prophecy, it's real, it's true, but it's incomplete, it's imperfect. One day we won't need all those gifts, because we will have God face to face. We'll see God. This is why love never ends, because we have God's perfect love, face to face with our glorious savior. What we have now is rich, and it's sweet, it's a kind gift of God, but it's temporary and it's partial, but then we'll get the full thing.

What I do, we won't need this in heaven. What I'm trying to do is give you a glimpse of the glory of God, give you a glimpse of how incredible God's love is. There's no preaching in heaven. There's no pastors in heaven. Why? We have the real thing. I have no idea what I'm going to do in heaven. I have no clue. I discovered LinkedIn recently. LinkedIn, you've got to say, "This is what I do." Then there's a section where you put in your skills set. Imagine doing that if you were me. I just put in random stuff. I was like, "I'm not even on this for real. I'm not looking for a job."

One of the skill sets was stand up comedy. I put in stand up comedy. I think that's what I'm going to do in heaven. It's that and rap. I think I'm going to write rap lyrics. I don't know. We're going to have God and we're going to have the perfect, perfect expression of God's love, perfect experience of God's love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 before we transition communion, "So now faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. Why? Because faith and hope are just a means to an end. When the Lord returns at the resurrection, and we stand before his throne, faith will lead to perfect sight. Hope will become a reality, and love will be all that remains. Love is supreme because love never ends.

At this time, we're going to transition to celebrating holy communion. We do this in remembrance of Christ's greatest act of love. Christ gave himself, body broken for us, blood shed, to cleanse us. If you are a Christian you are welcome to participate in this part of the service. It's a reminder for us of the spiritual reality that's happened in the inside. If you are not a Christian, we ask that you just spend this time to meditate on what you've heard. Also, if there is any sin in your heart against any particular people whom you have not loved as you are called to love, spend this time doing some deep repentance.

The ushers are going to hand out the elements. Please hold onto them, and then we'll partake together. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you. Though we were unlovely, you still loved us, and pursued us, and wooed us, and you compel us to fulfill the commandment to love you and others. You compel us through your love. We pray that you bless our time in meditating and repenting, and preparing to participate in holy communion. Let us now do this lightly, but let us do it reverently, and discreetly, and soberly in the fear and reverence of God. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: We're created in the image of the Trinity, One God, Three Persons, bound by love in perfect harmony. Thus, we're created to bond, to God and to people. The cross of Christ binds us vertically with God, Who fills our hearts with love for real people, creating the meaningful horizontal binds we all need.

Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you would like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church, my name in Jan. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic. I've got the pleasure to serve, and if you're new, welcome. We're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you if you would like to connect. We do that initially personally. We'd love to meet you personally, and officially we do it through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly, then you can either redeem it at the welcome center for a gift, and it's a great gift. Or you can toss in the offering baskets when they around after, or option three, you can download the app from the app store, just Mosaic Boston, and there's a connection card in there as well. With that said would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Father we thank you that you are a god of love. You're not just a god who loves, but you are love. Holy Trinity, there's a perfect community in the God head. We thank you for that. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We thank you God that you proved your love to us through your son Jesus Christ. That Jesus you were the gift of the Father. The Father gave the Son, so that whoever believes might have eternal life. We thank you Christ that you came, lived the life of perfect love toward God, and toward neighbor, toward the people around you. You served. You sacrificed. You made yourself accessible. You are the embodiment of God, and you are also the embodiment of what it means to be truly human, so Lord Jesus we thank you for the gospel that on the cross you poured out your life. You poured out your blood, in order to save us from self, from egos, from selfishness, from all the things that keep us from bonding to you, bonding to the people in our lives.

We thank you that Jesus you rose from the dead and we thank you that you send us the Holy Spirit through whom we can experience God, and we can be empowered by God, and our hearts can be filled with love. I pray you make us a force of love here in the city, so that we love in a way that draws attention to the ultimate act of love in the universe, which is the gospel. Bless our time in the holy word, and we pray all this Christ's holy name. Amen.

So in the 1970s the American psychologist, Dr. Bruce Alexander, he ran a study called Rat Park. And studies had already been run where it was proven that if you put a rat in a cage by itself and you offer it two water bottles, one with just water, and one laced with a cocktail of a drug, heroin or cocaine, that as soon as the rat gets a taste of the cocaine, gets a high, that rat now chases that same high over and over, and keeps drinking from that water bottle until it dies of overdose.

Well Dr. Alexander wondered, as he said, "Was it just the drug that caused the addiction, or might the isolation have something to do with it as well?" So to test that hypothesis, he built a rat park. He built rat paradise. There was all kinds of things for the rats to do. All kinds of ways for the rats to play, and frolic, there was little community center. Public space if you will. Many food trucks for the rats. No, no, not really, but that would have been epic. He created a Boston for rats. He created a true community. And also, he provided the same two types of bottles, and surprisingly, they preferred the plain water. And even when they did imbibe from a drug filed bottle, they did so without abuse, without obsession, and not one rat overdosed. And the conclusion was there's power in community.

And the power of community is stronger than the power of drugs. But the power of community satisfies what the person was looking for. The person wasn't just looking for the drug or the high, there's a deeper problem, a problem of alienation that comes with isolation. Now that's important, and that's profound, because we live in a world where we are more connected than ever virtually. And more disconnected than ever physically, relationally. And that's one of the reasons it so... There is an opiod crisis.

Now I knew about the rat race, and I know the theology behind why that works, because we're created by a Trinitarian god, a god of community. We're created in his image, therefore, we are created to bond with God and with people, and if we don't bond with God and people we will bond with things, sex, money, drug, etc. I was reminded of the rat study this week on Friday when I got in an Uber from Brighton down to Dewey Square, and in the Uber, so the Uber driver he extended his hand. I've never had an Uber drive do this, and he said, nice to meet you. And he said forewarning, "I am chatty, because I used to work as a psychiatrist." Oh wow. Okay. And I said, "Well I am chatty too, because I am a professional talker." And he said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I am a pastor." He says, "What?" And I said, "What?"

Now you've got a psychiatrist and a pastor driving in Uber. It's like the beginning of a joke. Psychiatrist and a pastor walk into a bar. So just riveting conversation. I wish I had this on video. It's like I'm in a movie. What is the... And we got to talking about psychiatry and his job, and he said, "One of the reasons that I don't do that anymore is I"... it was important work. He said, "But I realized that people's greatest problem wasn't me writing a script and giving them a prescription. The greatest problem actually was they don't have friends. They don't have community. They don't have a support structure. And what I wanted to was I wanted to love them. I wanted to befriend them. I wanted to give them that, but because of the system of the job I couldn't do that. And he said what he was doing was important. What you are doing is so much more important. You're trying to create a true community, where people truly love one another, like one another. Where people are friends and family.

Then he asked, "Can I come to your church?" And I said, "Yeah." I said, "It's not my church first of all." But his first joke when I got into the Uber and he found out I was a pastor, he's like, "Where's your jet plane parked?" No bro. I got a Toyota Highlander. I've only ever owned a Toyota, except for my first car an Audi 80, big mistake. So back to the sermon. Back to the sermon. So he gave me his number. We're going to connect, and now we're friends, and the first thing I texted him was let's be friends. But I want more than that. And you know what Jesus, he brings disciples and he says, "Follow me." And what he told his disciples at one point, "I no longer call you servants, now I call you," what? Friends. That's in the Bible. You can Google that.

But he doesn't just call us friends either. He calls us family. That he's our older brother. We're brothers and sisters. He combines, like you have relationships in your life. Your family you have to love them. So I can't not love you, but we separate. We bifurcate between love and like. So we have people we like. We have people we love. Jesus says I want that to be one and the same. I love you and I like you. That changes everything. So that's what we're going to talk about. That's God's heart for the church. That's God's heart for the city, that the church exists in the city for the common good of the city.

The problem is the ideal, usually it doesn't happen in reality. This is why Saint Paul writes this letter to the church in Corinth, and we have the same problem so he's writing to the church in Boston as well. The church in Corinth there were divisions in leadership, division in economics with lawsuits and secondary issue, and gifting, and this is what we're talking about today. We started last week, where God when he creates us he infuses us with talents, and then when he recreates us, when we're children of God he infuses us with gifts. What the gifts do is sometimes he repurposes our talents for his glory, but often the gifts just enhance the talents. Then God brings people together. Each person in the body, in the church has different gifts, and they're brought to the church as gifts. To use their gifts for other people to be other gifts that use their gifts. So that's what we're talking about today.

We're in First Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 12 through 31. First Corinthians 12, 12 through 31. You can follow along in your Bible, on the screen, or on your screen. For just as a body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell, but as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he choose.

If all were a single member where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those part of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God ha appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you still a more excellent way. This is the reading of God's holy inherent and infallible authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The I will show you a more excellent way wasn't on the screen, but it is in the text. And that's what we're talking about today. That love is the force behind the building of the church. The relationship in the church. That this is how we are bound. We are bound by love.

Three points to the sermon. We are one. Two, are we one? And three, let's be one. First of all, we are one. Saint Paul begins with a we. Who's the we? He's talking about the church. He's talking about people who have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his light. People who are Christians they now are part of the Body of Christ, the church, and also the church locally. So who's the us? It's the church. It's the Body of Christ. He starts with that as he talks about being members he talks about it in the context of a body, like a physical body, therefore when we talk about church membership, we're not talking about being a member of a club, or of an activist organization, or political organization. Membership isn't a card, it's a belonging. That you are connected. Vitally connected to other people who are believers.

So this is verse 12. Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with... What does he say? So it is with... What's the last word? Christ. Unexpected. Unexpected. What are we expecting. He's talking about being members of a church. Being members of one body, the church body. Instead, he uses a different word. He brings in the word Christ. Why do that? Why would he use these words interchangeably, church and Christ? He does so because for him they are so united. They are inextricably intertwined. This is important for us because if we live in a world where people say, "I love Jesus. I want your Jesus, but not your church, not your Christians." For Saint Paul and the early church it was one and the same. This is Christ. The other Christians in my life are Jesus to me. I am Jesus to other Christians in my life.

Where does Saint Paul get this idea? This idea was seared into his heart at his conversion. This is Acts 9: 3-5. Saul, that was his former name, birth name. He was a persecutor for Christians. And Jesus Christ meets him on the road to Damascus and converts him. That's why Saint Paul became a Christian. Verse 3 of Acts 9. Now as he went on his way he approached Damascus suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Not Christians, not the church, "why are you persecuting me," Jesus said. And Saul said, "Who are you Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."

When a person becomes a Christian they become a Christian by the power of the Holy Spirit. God the spirit saves the person. Transforms, regenerates the heart, and it doesn't stop there. God just doesn't just forgive us our sins, and says, "Now you can live you life anyway you want, just until you go to heaven." If that were the case God would just teleport us into heaven. But no, there's a purpose for us here on earth. God has a mission for every single one of us. God has a purpose. God has gifts for us to fulfill that purpose. And we do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. So when we become a Christian we're united with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We become part of Christ. That's a spiritual reality. When you become a Christian you become a part of Christ. A part of God. This is how strong God's love is. It's like he swallows you whole. He internalizes you. We become part of him.

It's kind of hard to communicate unless you've had a baby. I remember when my oldest daughter, she is almost 11. I remember when she was born and I brought us home I learned the swaddling technique. I became a master of the swaddling technique. I was like, "This is going to be my thing." The baby burrito thing, that's my thing. In like three seconds, done. And then I was like, "What's this called burrito?" I love burritos. I'm a big fan of burritos and I'm a big fan of babies, and now it's two in one. That's awesome. And there something when you hold the baby, especially a baby burrito. And you put your nose, like as you're kissing you smell the neck. Like this right here with the saliva and all this. The little lint. Something there about that smell. And honestly, the only way I can communicate it is I love you and I want to eat you. I won't eat you, but I want to. I don't know how to... And you see this with kids.

My youngest Milana she's almost... She is two. She's what, she's two. And she loves my wife so much she tackles her climbs on top and she starts licking her. Not kissing, licking like... Like that. Like a puppy. With me it's a little different. We've got a different relationship. She starts biting me. That's what she... There something about God internalizes us. We become part of God. That's the fundamental spiritual reality. We are part of Christ, and what Saint Paul is saying is, let's make that a physical reality. But there's so much unity in the church. There's as much unity in the physical body of Christ as there is in the spiritual body of Christ, therefore disharmony is a contradiction.

Verse 13. For in one's spirit we are all baptized into one body. So by the spirit we are baptized. Baptism is a visible sign of a spiritual reality. We were baptized into one body. Jews and Greeks, counter opposites. Diametrically opposed. Slaves or free. And all were made to drink of one spirit. Hear it. He's talking about the reality. We drink God in. He drinks us in. He inhales us. He ingests us. We do the same ting with him spiritually speaking. God become part of me. That's how close our union is. And the reminder for this, the outward reality, is that bread and the cup. The Lord's Supper. The sacrament. Every time we take part and we're doing that next week, bread is the Body of Christ. We internalize it. The cup is we internalizing Christ sacrificed his blood, so we are one.

When God looks at Christians he see one. There's distinction. There's difference. There's diversity. But no division. Different but one. Not a melting pot. Not a melting... I know the U.S. is supposed to be a melting pot. That idea that got me into college. That was my essay for college. I'm an immigrant. I'm from the Soviet Union. Please let me into your school. I want to embody the American dream. Church is more than that. Church is more than the melting pot. Church is like a stew. A good church is like a good stew. You've got the steak tips of course. With the little potatoes. You've got some carrots. You've got a little onion, a little celery. And spices we need all the spices. We need all the flavors. That's what a good church is, it's like a good stew.

Now the question is, are we one? From God's perspective we are one. From our perspective, are we one? Verse 14. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. It the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less part of the body. If the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body." And so you get it. What's he's saying is it's ridiculous for people who are part of the spiritual Body of Christ to show up and see the physical body of Christ, and say, "I do not belong here." We have a personal relationship with Jesus, person to person, but it's not an individualistic relationship. And Paul here, he's first ministering to those who had suffered at the hands of the ultra gifted who have weaponized their gifts, the people with public gifts, of prophecy, of teaching, of healing, of tongues. They've created a hierarchy of gifts. And Saint Paul says, "no." What he's doing is he's leveling the ground that we all need grace. That we are all brothers and sisters as Christians. That we all have gifts that others need.

There's two forms of exclusion, I don't belong. The first one is where the person excludes themselves. The second is when the person is excluded. Saint Paul starts with the person who feels excluded. The person who shows up to church and feels like, I don't belong here. I am not needed here. And sometimes it's because of a sense of inferiority. I'm not a hand, I'm just a foot. I'm not needed here. Well the hand's not getting anywhere without the foot. All right I'm not a mouth. I'm just an internal organ. I don't belong here. And Saint Paul starts here and says, "No, false theology. False ecclesiology. You do belong." God, if God has called you to a particular church, Mosaic or not, if God has called you, he's called you there for a reason. Perhaps you don't see that reason yet, but don't use the excuse of gift cop out to not use your gift. If God gave you gifts, he wants you to use those gifts as you love one another.

Sometimes you walk into a church and you just feel like everyone here is just better than me. They know the Bible more than I do. They're smarter than I am, or what have you. They're more godly than I am. Look we've all got to start somewhere. Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future. Every single one. We're all a mess. We're all a mess. And God works through our mess by bringing other people into our lives that loving say, "Hey, that's a mess. Can I help? I want to help. Can I serve?" We're all a mess. So if you're a foot, and you're a dirty foot, I know someone who's really good at washing feet. If you're an ear and you're here and you're like, "I don't like the sound here. This isn't my type of music." We still need you. We still need you. We need to hear what you hear. If you're an eye we need to see what you see. If you're a heart we need to sense. We need to love the way that you love. This is what he's saying. That we all need each other. We need you here.

If you walk in and you're like, "Oh, this is a bigger church self-sustainable. It's all good you're self-sufficient. I'm not needed here." How many people in the city don't know Jesus? I can connect with a particular type of person. I can connect with people who are like me, and there's a lot of people in the city like me. There's also a lot of people in the city like you. So when you join and then they walk in they're like, "Yeah. I belong here." Well you didn't feel like you belonged, but you belong, because if Jesus called you and now that allows other people to feel like they belong. Some of you walk in, you're like, "Everyone's so friendly. Way too many people smiling. Way too many people saying hi to me." Leave me... A meet and great, that's not for me. That's not my kind of church. Look I understand. I understand. I'm an introvert. I'm an introvert that fakes the extro... By the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm growing in the whole extrovert thing.

80% of the people at this church are introverts. Did you know that? 80%, and we do the meet and great, uncomfortably and awkwardly, and you do it uncomfortably and awkwardly, and then we get to know each other. And the next time it's not as uncomfortable, and it's not as awkward, because now you're friends, and hopefully become family. If you feel like you don't belong that's usually a good sign that you definitely belong. That you definitely belong. That we definitely need you.

For example, I will give you an example of Fred and Nancy Gayle. Are they here? Fred and Nancy. They're so sweet. Back in the movie theater they showed up and this was when we used to meet in the Regal Movie Theater right down the street. Theater seven because that was a biblical number. And the average age of the church was like 23. And pastor Shane and I were the elders. We were the oldest people in the church. And Fred and Nancy came in. Fred and Nancy are retired, and they moved to the city, because they were like, "We love the city. We want to retire in the city." And they walked in and there was no one in their... No one they could connect with because they were their age. And in... I do think thing sometimes where I just point people out in the sermon, and I can because I have the excuse of, I'm up here. And I said, "We need you." And ended up on them. And they stayed. You know why they stayed? I said, "We need your wisdom, because we're all a bunch of 20 somethings trying to disciple 20 somethings." And we need someone who's lived a life of faithfulness to the Lord. We need you to teach us. We need you.

So if you walk in, and you're like, "I don't see anyone that I can naturally connect to." It may be because you need to be the first one. And then when people walk in they're like, "This is the church for me." That's what it means to be a body of... This is what it means to be a Mosaic. This is the whole thing where we're broken pieces and we're brought together. We're different colors, different shapes, different brokens, different everything, but what unites us is the cross. And with the glue between the pieces is the love that we get from the cross. So we need you. If you feel like you don't belong, we definitely need you.

Let me challenge. I don't do this often, but I want to challenge you with something. Who are the people you naturally connect with? People who are like you. You like people who are like you, because you like yourself. Hopefully. I challenge you to find, not your doppelganger, I challenge you to find at this church your anti-doppelganger. The person who is different than you in absolutely every category. Find that person. And I guarantee you that person is going to bless you and teach you more than anyone like you. You need more than you. That's what Saint Paul is saying.

Verse 17. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the smell. So he's saying we don't want to just be a church of eyes, because eyes see eye to eye usually only with eyes. He's saying if you're an eye, you've got to pay attention to people who are other than an eye. We don't want to be a church of just ears. We truly want to be a church that reflects the city. And the city reflects the world. So we want to be a church that actually reflects the world. And usually, this is rare by the way. If you just look around. This whole thing that's... It's already happening. And this is rare. It's rare. Because usually this is how churches are planted. One ultra gifted person who's gifted in one category for example a person who has the gift of evangelism. So we now become the evangelistic church. All we want to do is evangelize. All we want to do is see people come to faith. That's awesome, and we need people with those gifts. But then people become Christians and then what?

And the you have to disciple them, and then you've got to teach them. Then you've got to organize. Now church, it's an organism, but it needs to become an organized organism the best organisms are. So you need someone with the gift of administration. Then the church grows and you need someone with the gift of leading children's ministry, and youth ministry. And usually what happens is a person with a great gift in one area, projects that gift on everyone else, and doesn't build a team around themselves. Doesn't accept the people that God sends. And then those people go, and they start their own church. So now, there's the strictly evangelistic church, or the justice church, or the cultural center church, or the intense discipleship church. And the same thing happens to parrot church organizations.

A person said, "Okay, I did the evangelistic church, no other churches aren't doing the evangelistic, I'm going to start my own parrot church organization. All we're going to do is evangelize people." Now what happens when you have a group of people who are baby Christians? We need churches that's what he says. You can't have a church only with one gift. And the only way this works is when you realize that we are nothing without each other. And we need each other. We are nothing without each other, and we need each other. Do you really believe that. In your heart do you really believe? Can you say to the people closest to you in your life? Husbands can you say to your wife, "I'm nothing without you." I dare you. I dare you to say that today. Wives, I need you. That's what repentance is. This is how the Christian walk starts. God I need you. God help me. God I'm nothing without you. And then that humbles you and you bond with God, and now you can bond with other people. Diffidence makes all the difference.

The gospel gets rid of my pride on a dial basis. It keeps rearing it's ugly head. The gospel continually... God save me. God save me. God I need you. And now with humility. Humility allows the love to flow freely. It doesn't mean that you have to count everyone as so much more important than you, but it does mean that we're required to thing of people at least as equally in importance as us. And then Philippians 2 says, "Count others more significant than yourself." So the point is we do need you. If you walked into this church today, and you're like, "I'm just looking for a church." We need you. We need you. We need to lock arms together. We need to become members one of another.

And we are gifts to one another. That's what we talked about last week. How do I know my gifts? Do I take a personality test? Do I take a talent and a gift test online? All of those things are cool. I'm not knocking any of that. Scripture doesn't offer any of those, but you know what scripture says? Love people. Serve people. Pay attention to people. The meat, a really close knit group of people join, and minister to those people, and they'll help you discern your gifts. Like hey, you're really good at this. You're really good at that. It's kind of hard to do that on a Sunday. It begins here, but we intentionally do that during community groups during the week. Different homes, different nights of the week. And I know if you're new to the city, that's so intimidating. You're going to someone's house. No. Meet someone here. Meet your anti-doppelganger at church, and say, "Which community group do you go to? Can I come?" Like, "Yeah, of course." And now you've become friends, and the friends become family, and that's the vision of the church.

Then you see where your gifts are. You want to use your gifts more. The other thing I'll say here is when thinking of gifts don't just think about titles or offices. We're all called to teach. We're all called to serve. We're all called to love. We're all called to be generous. You don't need a title to do that. You don't need permission to be a Christian. So be a Christian. Love people. 1 Corinthians 12:18. But as it is God arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose. If you are at Mosaic, you need to be sure God led you here, and if you're not sure pray Lord. Perhaps you're needed somewhere else, but if you're here, and you're like, "Mosaic is my church." God's brought you here, and if he's brought you here, he's brought you here for a reason. He's trying to arrange the parts. This is what he's talking about. And when you know that God is the one that gifts, and that God is the one that arranges. And when you understand that the gift you have is actually a gift. And the Greek, the word gift is charismata. Grace in the Greek is charis, charismata, meaning the gifts that we have, it's all grace.

God chooses which gifts he gives to whom, therefore we don't have to play the comparison game with don't have to be envious of someone else's game because envy kills the free flow of love. So if you're ahead, don't be jealous of the hearts or the hands, but learn from them. If you're a heart don't be... You see? You see. 1 Corinthians 12:19. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is there are many parts, yet one body. And they're all interdependent. So don't become co-dependent on one person. And this is just real talk. A lot of people have become co-dependent on whoever the mouth is. My job here is to equip you. My job isn't just to feed you. My job is also to teach you how to cook. So this is why I go verse by verse, and I try to show you what I do. Look this word is... I don't give you lessons in hermeneutics.

You come here for a month you'll understand hermeneutics. You'll understand exegesis. You'll understand how to interpret scripture. Therefore, you go home and you start reading scripture. And what you're doing is now you're cooking. And then you're like, "I've cooked more than I can eat." Then invite someone over to your house, and feed them. Let me feed you, I've cooked this bomb meal. Please come over, and the person who was invited, please don't be squeamish, "Oh I don't like eating other people's food." No eat their food. That takes love to. That take humility. Are we talking about food, or are we talking about the gospel? Yes, both. It's both. Other people cooking. This is in community group. Let other Christian teach you, "Hey what is God revealing to you through the scriptures through his Holy Spirit? Teach me." That's what I do. We're called to equip the saints for the work of the ministry as pastors.

I know we live in a city where no one trusts each other. That's part of the reason no one even wants to say hello. Hello. Are you trying to sell something to me, or steal something from me? It's one or the other. And there's just this especially in a city, there's risk and it takes trust to bond with people. It takes trust to bond, and it takes risk to trust. What does through the gospel is he takes the risk that's impeding the trust, and he replaces it with love, because perfect love casts out fear, so now we can trust. We can love.

So some Christians exclude themselves from the body. And sometimes Christian do the excluding. I don't belong here. I don't need you. That's verse 21. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." Some of the most heart wrenching words that you can hear. When someone that you want to be in a relationship with says, "I don't need you." And we might not say that out loud explicitly, we might act in ways that communicates this implicitly. I don't need you. My calendar, too busy. I don't need you in my phone. I have enough friends. I don't need you in my home, you're too different. I don't like how you look. I don't like how you dress. I don't like what you do for life. I don't like your education. I don't like how you smell. No. Don't communicate this verbally. Don't communicate it implicitly.

And if you felt neglected, we're sorry. And we ask that you tell us that, and we'll try to work on fixing that. Mosaic is not self-sufficient. We're not self-sustainable. God gives gifts for mutual up building. We build each one up. When God gives you a gift it's not just for you. It's for you to share. And here's the other thing I'll say. The reasons why those Christians say to other Christians is because they think they're ultra gifted. And this is what happens with gifts. Who's the most gifted person who ever lived? Obviously Jesus. Who is number two? Who is second after Jesus when it came to all the gifts? It was Satan.

And what happened with Satan was he twisted the gifts. The gifts instead of using the gifts to bless, he twisted the gifts to serve himself. And this is what Satan does. He tries to twist the gifts that God has given us. What takes someone down? What makes someone weaponize the gifts? It's just a little twisting when sin gloms onto the gifts that God has given us. Instead of using the gifts to serve, we start using the gifts to serve ourself. So be careful. And the greater your gift the greater the responsibility to use that gift. And the greater the temptation there will be to use it for self.

1 Corinthians 12:22. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. What he's talking about here is there's presentable parts. That's the visible gifts. Then there's the unpresentable parts, the ones that you aren't presenting because they are invisible. They're behind the scene. There's visible gifts, and there's behind the curtains. Behind the scenes gifts. So for example, visible gifts, presentable parts. The face, the mouth, the ears, the eyes. But then there's something inside. The heart. The organs, which are actually indispensable. They're actually more important than everything else. And he's saying the visible parts they already get the honor. Instead when you get the honor, I want you to bestow honor. Transfer honor to the ones who are behind the scenes. Bestow honor where honor is due. Out do one another in showing honor. And what this honor does is it... This bestowing of honor is very Christ like. It's very Godly.

In the Trinity, the Father bestows honor to the Son the Son to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit to both. So we in the world. We're to show honor. We're to show attention the children. To those the world dishonors. I saw a guy walking the street today. He had a t-shirt that said I hate kids. I was kind of in a rush to Kids Summer Nights, or else I would have stopped and had a conversation with him. The world dishonors as a whole, children. Single moms, the elderly, the sick, the immigrant, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the mentally ill, and we as the church are called to honor them. Are called to pay attention to them. Are called to serve them just like Jesus did. When the stronger pay attention to the weaker, they get stronger, so does the weaker get stronger. And they get stronger, because they realize, "Oh wow, you're weak in the thing I'm strong in, but you're also strong in the thing that I am weak in. We need each other." And the serving the weaker make everyone stronger, and what the stronger needs to know is that this person who seems weak is actually clothed in humility, and you need to be clothed in humility. And when we're clothed in humility. When we decrease together, Christ increases and that's how the church grows.

Speaking of church growth. Three years ago we made... God sent this unique person into the church, Kara Bettis. This is the Kara Bettis part of the sermon. Kara Bettis came on staff three years ago, and when she came on staff as the Mini-Mo director/administrator/communications director/everything that needs to get done, she said, "I'm going to be here for a year. I'm going to give you guys a year." And it's been three years. Since she go there the church has doubled. And all the numbers, just everything has gotten a lot better. She's made all our lives better. She's very much behind the scenes. We don't really see her. So with a heavy heart I'm making the announcement that Kara Bettis is leaving the Mosaic Boston staff, but she's remaining in the church. She loves it this much. She was offered a job to do her dream job in journalism for Christianity Today. And she was offered a job as an editor. So she will be working from Boston, because she loves this church too much. She loves you guys so much. And we love her.

So we want to honor you Kara Bettis. Big round of applause for Kara as she makes her way down. And we have a little gift for you. And we want to pray for you. So Kara though leaving staff she's remaining as a faithful member of the church, however I do ask you no longer email her with church questions. Because that's why she's leaving. No just kidding. Just kidding it's not true. The Lord is calling her to go elsewhere. We're going to pray over here. We're going to pray a prayer of thanksgiving, and also a prayer for the Lord to continue and empower her ministry. Would you pray with me.

Lord we thank you for our dear sister Kara. Lord we thank you for her tireless work here for your kingdom. She's been a blessing to so many. She's a blessing to us and to me. And we just see in her... We see Christ in her. We've seen her sacrifice. And we've seen how the Holy Spirit has used her so powerfully. And Lord I pray that you do bless her in her new ministry. And the calling that you've placed on her, use her powerfully. Give her words. Write through her to touch many people. Bless many people with your gospel. And we also pray for you to send many more Kara Bettises to this church who behind the scenes do so much, and serve so selflessly. And I pray all this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Thank you Kara. Thank you. Thank you. Prayer emoji. We don't do that usually in sermons. What were we doing? Just honoring a person who was behind the scenes. So we are called to do that.

Now verse 24. But God has so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. This is how we use the gifts. This is how we grow in the gifts. Just care for people. If one member suffers, all suffer. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. If you stub your toe your whole body is aching in pain. If you get a great haircut, and someone compliments you on that haircut, your hair rejoices, so does the whole body. Thank you. It takes empathy. It takes noticing. It takes stepping into a person's life. Romans 12:15. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. And love is what unlocks the capacity to empathize this deeply.

So we are one. Are we one? Let's be one. let's be who we are. It takes work. It takes commitment. It takes effort. It takes margin in life. It takes sacrifice. And where do we get the power to sacrifice like this? Where do we get the power to truly be so connected with other Christians in our life that we are individually members of one another? The whole world knows this is good. The whole world has studied that we need friends, and we need family, and we need deep relationships. Everyone talks about peace. Everyone talks about unity. But they're missing something. It's almost as if it's impossible to live like that, because people hurt us, and then hurt people who hurt people. So we want love, then we act in ways that where relationship are broken. Where do we get the power to love like this? Where do we get the power to forgive when people hurt us? Where do we get the power to be gracious? You know where we get that power, it's at the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus came, God incarnate, made himself accessible. Made himself vulnerable. Made himself pierce-able.

He came into the world, he said, "Let's be friends, let's be family." And we killed him and that's our sin. And he took our sin upon himself. Poured out his blood to cleanse us of our sin, our shame, our ego, our pride, everything that actually is what makes the world, the world. Christ now through his love knits us together. He makes us friends. He makes us family.

So this is... We have a membership class today from 1:00 to 3:00. And I'm not selling anything, I'm just giving you. I'm offering you. I'm offering you something. And I'm offering... We have room in our hearts for you at this church. We have space for you here. And we have space for you here. So get connected to this church and once you're connected, once you have friends, once this church is family, then we talk about membership. You can become a member. So if you believe this is your home church, you're welcome to come to the membership class. Or you can just come. It's free lunch. It's 1:00 to 3:00 pm today downstairs. But we don't just do membership, like fake membership, like pretend membership, like if you belong, we just confirm that belonging through the process. So we welcome you to belong, because we need each other.

In Boston, I have met some of the strongest people I have ever met. Strong in mind. Strong in will. Strong in body. But strong. Strong Christians. And if I were Satan this is how I would temp you, and I know, because this is how he temps me. He say's you are so strong. You are so strong, you don't need anybody. And now we become the rat in the cage. And now addictions. And we need the humility to say, "I might be strong in one thing, but there's people who are strong in the things where I'm weak, and I need them in my life." And when you go to someone else, and you say, "I need you." What's their response? "Oh awesome, I need you too." I need you. We need each other. We need each other. That's the point.

And we see this all throughout scripture. This is how the Lord taught us to pray. I won't do the whole thing, but here's the Lord's Prayer. My Father in heaven? No, our father. And when we pray, every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, we're thinking about, oh my brothers and sisters. My community. Our father in heaven. And then when we ask for bread. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. That's the love with forgiveness. Lead us not into temptation. Meaning sometimes I'm led into temptation, sometimes because I don't think I need anyone, God does allow me to be led into temptation to show me, no you're not strong, you're weak. So I need brothers and sisters that I go to and say, "Please hold me accountable when I'm led into temptation. Here's my temptations. I need you to call me out and bring me back from the zigzag path to the straight and the narrow." So my point in conclusion. Let's be friends. Let's be family. Jesus allows that to be reality.

I'm going to close with this illustration to give us just a glimpse. A glimpse of what this looks like. And we're going to go to the pyrosome. Have you ever seen this? Do you know what a pyrosome is? Oh. Oh. You're welcome for this next part of the sermon. And you should go on YouTube and watch pyrosomes. Read up on this. This thing is awesome. Tyler Burns sent this to me. Our youth ministry director. Thanks Tyler. Qz.com November 16, 2018, pyrosomes and they're called the unicorns of the sea. What is this thing. It's one body, but it's made up of hundreds, and actually thousands of individual organisms called zooids. And they're physically linked. They're shared tissue, but they're distinct. And yet they are one. And they have a purpose. They join together and they have a purpose to travel together. They need one another. By themselves they're unimpressive. They're negligible. Together, intimidating force. I actually read that they swallow up penguins, which that's not the church. We don't do that. But still that's pretty intimidating. And this is the crazy part. They are clones one of another. They clone, they reproduce. So we don't want to do the clone thing, but we do the reproduction thing in that we become Christians and others become Christians, and they're all clones of the first founding zooid, named... I don't know the zooids name, but you know where I'm going.

And here's the other thing. This is what they eat. They join together, and they way that they travel is they suck water in and they suck it out, and what they're doing is they suck the bacteria in, and they let clean water out. They're actually cleansing the area around them. And the word pyro, pyrosome comes from the Greek words pyro, fire, some, body. They're a body on fire. I affectionately named this pyrosome Mosaic Boston. That's us. A body on fire. What's that fire? God's love for others. And that's what binds us. We're bound by love.

Let's pray. Lord thank you for this time. Thank you for your scriptures, and thank you for the gospel, and thank you for your love. Jesus let us love in the same way that you have loved us. We pray this in your name. Amen.

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Summary: The greatest gifts in life are people you love and people who love you. You can have a big, beautiful house, but if you live there alone, there's an ache in your soul. The best trips are with friends. The best pictures from those trips aren't selfies. As we study 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, we see that God not only saves us, but gives us gifts to enrich the people in our life: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, words. The greatest people use their gifts to point us to the greatest Person.

Transcript: This media has been available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check you more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and her neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church, my name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new, or you're visiting, we're so glad you're here and we'd love to connect.

First of all, congratulations on being here, congratulations. And by the power vested in me, as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I give you permission to sweat as profusely as led. I will lead by example, here's my sweat rag, it shall make it's way into the sermon multiple times.

We are glad that you're here. If you're visiting, I know it takes a lot to come to a brand new church, so we're thankful. And we'd love to connect with you, we do that either personally after the service, or we'd love to connect through the connection card via the worship guide, or in the app that you can download at the app store. You can fill out the physical connection card, you can toss it into the offering basket, or redeem it at the welcome center for a gift. That said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have revealed yourself to us through your son Jesus Christ. In Christ, we see who God is. We thank you Christ, that you are fully God, and you also show us what it means to be fully human. You lived a life of complete love, complete selflessness, and complete sacrifice. And you died on a cross, for our sins. You rose on the third day and you send us the holy spirit to apply the gospel to our lives, to save us from ourselves, from our selfishness, from our pride. From all the things that get in the way of living life as it's truly meant to be lived, of experiencing true humanity.

I pray today Lord, show us that you build the church and you bring people together, and you equip is with gifts. And that you want to make us gifts that keep on giving, gifts that serve others like Jesus Christ, the ultimate gift that keeps on giving. Holy Spirit, we welcome you into this space. We pray that you minister, as we talk about you. I pray, do powerful work in each one of our hearts and speak to us the words that you have. And I pray all this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So my wife Tanya and I just got back from Ukraine. She's originally from Ukraine, and ... Originally it was supposed to be a vacation and I stopped using that word, because it was a trip. It was really ... It was active, we met so many ... Hundreds of people we met, and it was incredible. One of the things that the Lord taught me was, there's no vacation from being a Christian, or Christians every day, when empowered by the Holy Spirit.

If you're not familiar, my wife, she is the godliest person I know, she is a saint. And, I wanted to go back to her home town to see where saints are made. So we flew into Kiev, spent a couple nights there, and then drove down in a bus, in a marshrutka, down to her home town. I grumbled ... The first hour was fine, and then I just grumbled for the next three hours, about how terrible the roads were. Then I had to repent of that ... a change of perspective.

But, one of the things that we saw ... One of the things that the Spirit taught us is, though the Ukraine is not as prosperous as the United States they are so rich in every single way that matters. Some of the most joyful people I've met, some of the most open people I've ever met. We meet people and they welcome us into their homes, they're hospitable.

I met this guy on Tanya's street, who recognized Tanya, invited me over into his house, his little courtyard. He's showing me his chickens and these ducks. He's like, "Ducks are good. You want some duck?" Grilled up a duck for me, just incredible people.

And they enriched us, I came back enriched. One of the lessons that the lord taught me is, the greatest thing that we have in this life is relationships, relationships with God primarily. And then, he releases us to have true relationships with other people. You can have the biggest most beautiful house at the end of a cul-de-sac, and if you live there alone there's an ache in your soul.

You can have the fastest, shiniest, brand new, most beautiful car, and if you have no one to ride with, and you have nowhere to go, your passenger is sadness. You can go to the finest restaurant, eat the finest meal, in the finest location. And if you have no one to eat it with ...

The greatest pictures from our trip, as we're looking through the pictures, and we took so many. The greatest pictures aren't the selfies, and they're not just of buildings. The greatest picture ... these are people that we met. The greatest gifts in life are people. We know this, so what's keeping us from pursuing this? What's keeping us from truly experiencing the gifts that people are? It's our own sin. It's pride, it's selfishness, it's ego. We're so focused on ourselves.

So when Jesus Christ comes, he didn't come just to make us Christians, he said, "I've come that you may have a life and have it to the full." Jesus is saying, "I want you to experience true humanity," because sin de-humanizes us. We de-humanize other people by sinning against them. Jesus came to truly make us who we were created to be. And through the work of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God the Father reshapes us. He begins to transform us into the image of Christ.

Jesus was God's greatest gift. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son. And that gift just keeps on giving. And God, when he recreates us, saves us, gives us the Holy Spirit, so that we are now gifted to be gifts.

This is one of the reasons why I really do push back when people say, "I have Jesus, I don't need the church." Well the church is Jesus' body, and Jesus' body is comprised of different members with different gifts. Only one person has all of God's gifts, that was Jesus Christ. Every single other person needs other Christians in their life. And yeah, you don't have to be part of a church. You don't have to go to church. Why wouldn't you? Why would you limit yourself? Why would you miss out on some of the greatest gifts that God has for you?

You know how God speaks to me? Through his word, by his spirit, and often when people take God's word and they speak into my life. "Jan, I see something that you're not seeing." They speak a word, perhaps a prophetic word, a word of knowledge, and it builds me up and encourages me. It fills me with faith.

So if you're a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit. This is what Saint Paul is going to talk about 1 Corinthians 12 ... And by the power of the Holy Spirit you can be useful, you can be productive, and you can be helpful.

Every single Christian is a pastor, is a minister, is a chaplain. You are manifesting God to the world around you. You are gifted with natural abilities. And pound for pound, pound for pound, Boston is the most influential city in the world, because of sheer natural talent. Then the Holy Spirit takes some of us with natural talent, and he fills us with the Holy Spirit and re-purposes those talents, and gives us brand new gifts. And lights a flame behind those talents, and now he uses that for his glory.

Mosaic is conglomeration of people, different people, different nations, different backgrounds, and we all need each other. Not just a conglomeration creating synergy, we're a constellation. Jesus said, "You are salt and you are light, and light shines." Just imagine in the sky, there's stars, constellations, light years away and we see ... We're still experience that. That's what Mosaic is, we're a constellation in the sky.

Another question is ... How far is that light going to go? So as we talk about spiritual gifts today ... What are your spiritual gifts if you're a Christian? How are you using them? Are you blessing others? Are you enriching them? And, are you a gift that keeps on giving? The greatest gifts in my life, in terms of people, are people that constantly point to Christ. Look to Christ. And that's what builds me up.

Do you hear thank you from other Christians, "Thank you so much. That was so helpful. You don't even know how meaningful those words were. How did you see that?"

That's what we're going to talk about today. Gifts that edify build-up, we're gifts that keep on giving. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 12, verses 1-11, either on this screen or on your screen, or a bible. 1 Corinthians 12, 1-11.

"Now concerning spiritual gifts brothers," brother and sister of adelphoi. "I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were lead. Therefore I want you to understand that no one is speaking in the spirit of God ever says, "Jesus is accursed!" And no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord. And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."

"For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge, according to the same Spirit. To another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit. To another the working of miracles, to another prophecy. To another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues. To another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills."

This is the reading of God's Holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Now if you're used to the Jan Vezicov formula for a sermon ... It goes introduction, read the text, three points. Quote C.S. Lewis, a story about babies. And we land the plane abruptly, that's the formula, that's the secret sauce.

Today it's going to be a little different, I'm going to set the context because it's really important. And then, I'm going to give you rapid fire five ways that the Holy Spirit empower us, as Christians, in order to be more like Jesus. To love like Jesus, to serve like Jesus.

So the big idea here is, that there is a sense of spirituality, that's part of the Christian faith. This is really important, in verse 1 he uses the Greek word pneumatika, or pneutikos, it's just a word spiritual. So in verse 1, in the English translation, they throw in the word gift. Why do they throw in the word gift? It's not in the verse, they take it from the context of verse 4, which has the word gift, charismata, which comes from grace charis. If you know someone named Charisa, that's where that comes from.

The context is gifts, but he starts with spirituality ... And this is important, because this church was in Corinth. Corinth was a very spiritual city, there were temples with thousands of people working in the temples. So, it was a city that was filled with pagan cults and all kinds of idolatry. People talked about spirituality all the time. The super natural, they know is real. It's kind of like our culture, people talk about spirituality all the time. People want to be one with the universe. People want to be connected with one another.

We understand that there is something wrong. We understand that we're not just physical matter. And Saint Paul was writing this letter to a church that he planted. He goes to Corinth, shares the gospel, plants the gospel, and in a sense ... Now these Corinthians are no longer just Corinthians. In a sense, he takes them out of Corinth. They're still there, but they're different.

And then he writes to them another letter, because though he's taken them out of Corinth, there's still too much Corinth in them. He's got to take Corinth out of them. Corinth has influenced them more than the gospel has. They've been interpreting the gospel scripture through the lens of Corinth instead of vice versa, interpreting Corinth through the lens of scripture. In the same way Boston, we're in Boston. Is Boston influencing you more than you're influencing Boston?

So this is why he needs to make clear, a lot of people come, a lot of people talk about spirituality. A lot of people talk about God. A lot of people talk about all kinds of ecstasies and all kinds of transcendent experiences. But, are they leading people in greater submission to Jesus Christ? That's what he wants to talk about.

Verse 2, "You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led." They were pagans before they became Christians, like many of us were pagans before we became Christians. And when they worshiped in these pagan services, one of the ways that people gained influences in these cults is, by saying, "I heard a word. I received a message." And then they would make all kinds of ecstatic utterances to prove their spirituality, their godliness. All kinds of strange phenomena, displays of power.

And Saint Paul says, "Don't thing that makes you a better Christian." And he's going to expound on this in Chapter 14, when he talks about speaking in tongues. So he starts there and then he says, "Now connect your spirituality to Jesus Christ." Because that's the ultimate test of how spiritual we are. "Therefore I want you to understand," verse 3, "That no one is speaking in the spirit of God ever says, "Jesus is accursed!" And no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except in the Holy Spirit."

Obviously he's not saying, "No one can say Jesus is accursed," I just said that and he also just wrote that. He's not saying mouthing the words, he's saying in your heart is this what you believe? That when you find out just how far reaching the lordship of Jesus Christ is, that Jesus has lordship over every single part of our lives, over every single square inch of our bodies, everything. Jesus is Lord over our dreams, our visions, our inspirations, our desires. He's Lord over everything.

And when people begin to learn what that means, he's Lord over my sexuality, he's Lord over my time, he's Lord over my money, he's Lord over my relationships. All the most important things in my life, he is Lord. Do I push back, bristle, and say, "That's anathema, and that's what it means to be accursed." And, that's what the world does. That's why a lot of the world, including a lot of churches, get rid of the name of Jesus.

Let's talk about God in general. Let's talk about the Spirit in general. Anyone can fill in the blanks as they feel comfortable. Let's not talk about Jesus Christ. So Saint Paul says, "The true spirituality begins with Jesus and joyful submission to Jesus." And if you joyfully submit in your heart to Jesus, that is proof that you're a Christian regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Because for you to say, with your heart, Jesus is Lord, is a work of the Holy Spirit.

Why am I a Christian? The Holy Spirit made made me a Christian. Why can I say Jesus is my Lord? And I say it with all of my heart, with complete affection. Because that's a work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, you are my Lord. I want to be with Christ, I want to commune with him, I want to be one with him. I want to abide in him, and the more I'm with him, the deeper the connection with him, the more I become like him.

And what did Jesus do? He loved, he just loved a lot of people. And when you're led by the Spirit, you want to be like Jesus, and you want to be Jesus through people. You want to be Christ-like to people. You know, Tanya and I have been married for 13 years. When people have been married for a long time, they live together, they begin to resemble one another, they begin to act like one another. They finish each other's sentences. She knows all of my dad jokes. And when we were in Ukraine, she was cracking my dad jokes. I was like, "That's mine. You stole that material from me."

There's something that happens when you're with the one you love, you begin to resemble the one that you love. And the more we love Christ, the more we become Christ-like, the more we conform to him. And that's all done by the Holy Spirit, and we need supernatural empowerment to be like Christ, so God gives us gifts.

This is verse 4, now there are a variety of gifts, that's in the Greek charismata. But the same spirit, and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord. So God has given you gifts if you're a Christian, you have gifts. One of the reasons that you are not wielding the gifts, you are not gifting people those gifts, is because you're not happy about the gifts that you got. Perhaps you want another gift, but that's the reason it's called a gift, it's not a paycheck. We didn't deserve it, God gives it to us.

By the way, I never wanted to be a pastor. I knew nine years old ... I was nine years old when the Lord said, "You're going to be a pastor." And I just kept confirming. I had, prior to me saying, "Lord, yes," at 22, "Yes, Lord." I had a job, I had a career path, "Lord, yes." Prior to that, I was ... I had a physical condition where I couldn't speak publicly. I've actually never even shared this, it's not even in my notes. I would get up and I would turn beet red, uncomfortably, like Harvard Crimson, beet red. It was the first two years of me getting up and doing public speaking. I just knew, I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew.

You say yes to the Lord, "Yes, Lord, yes." "Okay, now you're ready for some more. Now you're ready for some more." Okay, let's keep going. Church is a spiritual phenomenon, that's what he's saying. And what happened in Corinth was, they started divvying up, they created a hierarchy, depending on who gets which gifts. They put people on top who could speak in tongues. Then below that was healing and miracles. At the very bottom, which is the practical stuff, you know stuff, and wisdom. And Saint Paul flips the whole dynamic right here. He starts with wisdom and he ends with tongues.

What he's saying is, there is no hierarchy in church. There is no varsity and JV and freshman team. Everybody needs everybody, we all need each other. That's at the very beginning he was talking about gentiles need Jews. And men need women, and women need men. We need each other, we need to learn from each other. Internationals need US citizens, and vice versa. The rich need the poor, and the poor need the rich. We need to learn from each other.

If you watch Netflix, or if you watch Hulu, we need each other. If you're a Pats fan or a Giants fan, we can still get along. If you're Apple or Android, you can still get along, we can still get along. We can still be in that group chat, it makes things a little more complicated but it's okay. I see that you loved something, I'm not sure what you loved, because we're five memes deep, but you know what I'm saying. We need each other. This is what he's getting at.

In the body ... That's next week's sermon. The foot feels like, "Everybody is just walking all over me my whole life. I'm out of here, I'm out of this church."

God's like, "That's your job."

And the foot ... Okay, you get it. So we need each other, and exercise of particular gifts doesn't measure how important we are. It doesn't prove higher spirituality. The most important thing is sincere embrace of Jesus Christ as Lord. And when we do that, the more that we do that, the more that we submit to Jesus Christ as Lord, the more the Spirit uses us.

Verse 6, "And there are a variety of activities, and it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for," and I want you to look at those words. "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit," for what? For your good? No. And this is where true Christian spirituality is so counter-cultural to the spirituality that is promulgated and peddled in the world. The spirituality that is peddled is you-focused. You can get connected to the universe. You can have the secret cheat codes of the universe. You, you, you, you, you. It's very individualistic, it's very narcissistic.

And then we don't get what we're really looking for, what I started with, people are gifts. It's for the common good, it's not just for your good, it's for the good of the people who are closest to you. It's good for the people in your church. God gave you the gifts to be gifts to the people in your church, and it doesn't stop there. I think our vision as Christians is too limited. The vision of the church, the mission of the church, isn't just to make other people Christians, it's not just to proselytize.

We want everyone to become a Christian, we do. And then what happens after people become Christians, they get the Holy Spirit and then what? And then they're living in the world as a manifestation of God. Now you're going to your job, you're going into your office, and you're bringing the Holy Spirit into your office. You're bringing the Holy Spirit into your job. Now, you begin to change the culture of your company, you begin to change the culture of your office, of your team. Because you're bringing the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self control. It changes everything, it's not just for the common good of you of our family, of your church. It's for the common good of your neighbor. It's for the common good of Boston. It's for the common good of the world.

So how do we do that? He gives us five categories. He gives us multiple gifts, but many of them are in the same category to balance each other out. So first he says, "Be wise like Jesus. Believe like Jesus. Help like Jesus. Discern like Jesus. Connect like Jesus," to God and to people.

First of all, "Be wise like Jesus." The first two gifts that he gives us wisdom and knowledge. So 12:8, "For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom." The utterance of wisdom, he starts with wisdom and then he brings in knowledge. They need each other. Knowledge as you know God's truth, you study God's truth, you absorb God's truth. And a lot of people who are phenomenal at the knowledge aspect, are not that great in thinking through the practical applications. And the people who are really good at the practical applications are like, "Oh, this is how it applies on a daily basis, in 2019, in Boston, Massachusetts." What he says is, you need each other.

The wisdom, the wisdom is you have insight that isn't obvious. It's not obvious to the person that you're speaking to. You take principles that you learn from scripture and because you have applied it to your life, you speak practically. It's utterance of wisdom, and you understand God's will for your life. You understand God's will for the other person you skillfully apply.

How does this begin? The wisest person begins by realizing just how foolish they are. Every single person has within them the potential to be a fool or a wise man, a wise woman, a sage, a fool or a sage. And the most sage people, they recognize the folly in their own heart and they say, "Lord, I need help. Lord, teach me." And that humility right there, that humility is what makes us teachable. And now we begin to see wisdom everywhere. We begin to see lessons everywhere, and now we can apply it to the people around us.

It begins with asking from God. James 1:5, "If any of you lacks wisdom let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him."

"Lord, help me. Lord, give this to me, please." And the Lord teach it. Jesus said, "Be like children." The first service didn't get this, you got some extra good stuff. Jesus said, "Be like children." You ever notice how children absorb everything. My kids are bilingual, I've never sat down and had a lesson in Russian or a lesson in English with them. We do reading, but they just absorb. Why? Because they know they're nothing, you're not even two feet tall. They're naturally humble, but that humility is what unlocks the potential to learn. It's the wisdom.

It pleases God to give wisdom to those that come to him like little children. Say, "Lord, give me wisdom." And wise people, it's never obvious that this is the wisest person in the room, it's never obvious.

We went to visit the Ukraine and I got to meet Tanya's great aunt, Titka Alla, Alla is her name. And as soon as I sat down in the car with her, I already knew there was something different about Titka Alla. Titka Alla, her husband died two years ago, because he worked in a Uranium mine, which is underneath the city. He died from cancer. And Titka Alla had to learn how to drive a car. She's driving this car, stick shift, on Ukrainian roads, two challenges. Titka Alla never needed to drive a car, because her husband was her Uber. She got a license, and the first year of driving you have to get this sticker on your car. It says y, y is for ученик, ученичка, just imagine it's an S for student.

And I said, "Titka Alla, when do you take that off?"

She said, "I'm never taking it off. I like the way that people treat me if they think I don't know how to drive."

I'm writing this down, she keeps talking, wisdom, wisdom, wisdom, wisdom. I realized she was the wisest person in that whole church. In a church of a few hundred people, she's the wisest person. And the wisest people go to her. The people who think they're wise, do not. This is the gift of wisdom.

If you have this gift, often you speak into someone's life and you hear the phrase, "That makes sense." That makes sense, you revealed something to me that makes sense. Who's the wisest person to have ever lived? Obviously Jesus Christ, because he was the most spirit-filled. 1 Corinthians 1:24, "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God." Christ is the wisdom of God, the closer we are to Christ by the power of the Spirit, the more wisdom we have.

Corinthians 1:30, "And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption." Do you have this gift? If you have this gift, we need you as a church. We're coming up on eight years, we're a baby church. We have an S sticker on our church, we're never taking it off. We need you here, this church needs you.

There's college students that come from all over the world and they need you in their life, to speak wisdom and change the trajectory of their life. Why, as people see folly in their life, they flee it? They see folly in other people's lives and they help them flee it.

Then he bring in, 1 Corinthians 12:8, knowledge. "And to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit." This is a person who is all about learning the facts, but needs the wise person to help apply the facts. We need each other. So, this is a person who loves the root of systematic theology, has it almost memorized, but what we need is someone who practically lives it out. We need each other, that's what he is doing.

Second is believe like Jesus. 2 Corinthians 12:9, "To another faith by the same Spirit." Faith is a gift from God, but then there's also another level of faith. That God gives to some people ... It's distinct from saving faith, it's distinct from persevering faith, it's a strong trust in God's spiritual ... It's a special endowment, you see that this is already a thing in the future. You trust so much, it's almost as if it's fact.

It's like when Saint Paul says about Christians, "You have been justified, you have been sanctified, you have been glorified." That's coming in the future, but I'm so sure of it. And the gift of faith is the ability to envision. And you believe with every fiber of your being and the people around you get inspired by your faith. You begin to charge them, you're like a power bank charging the batter of their faith. Sometimes it's at 20%, change the color, and now it's yellow, then 5% of faith. And, I need people around me who have more faith than me, in order to keep going.

Now if you have this gift, you need people to help you take the first step, second step, third step. If you see step 50, you need people who can help you in the beginning. You need people around you who have the gift of administration. I see this with my daughter, my daughter Elizabeth has the gift of faith. She's eight years old, and when she prays for something she keeps praying for that thing until it happens. So every night we get together and we have a little bible study, it's our community group. I say, "This is our Mosaic Community Group," every single night. And we sit in their bedroom and we do a little bible lesson. Then we pray, every single one of us.

When we get to Elizabeth, I already know her list. She's like a bullet, a machine gun going, "Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop." And then ... But I've seen over the course of five or six years. And I see things that she prays for, check, check, check, check. She has that gift. The gift that she doesn't have is administration. She can't clean her room. She owns a closet, she says, "This is my closet," and it is a mess.

Sophia on the other hand, has the gift of administration but she's too lazy, and so I'm working on the laziness. I see how they need each other, in the same way we need each other.

Help like Jesus, this is point three. 1 Corinthians 12:9, "To another gifts of healing by the one Spirit." He goes, "Gifts of healings," both are plural, and then he brings in, 1 Corinthians 12: 10, "To another the working of miracles." This seems like this is kind of crazy, kind of trippy. Have there been miracles in the bible? Yes, of course. And they come in clusters when the Holy Spirit is authenticating the work of the Spirit in a particular location, where the gospel has not been planted yet.

So we see this in the Old Testament, at particular points there's clusters of miracles, clusters of healings. We see this when Jesus Christ comes, he begins his ministry and he does so by healing. The ultimate goal is not just restoring people physically, but to restore them wholly, WH. Wholly, the whole person.

So, there is an explosion during ministries to authenticate. However, God heals. Sometimes he heals today, some people really do have this gift of healing, this gift of miracles. It's a supernatural gift. I know this is getting weird and you're like, "This is Mosaic, we don't do this." This is true, I've met people like this.

So if you have these gifts, we need you. I know some people I'd love to introduce you to. But more often than not, God uses our talents that he re-purposes to heal people. Some of you alleviate people's pain on a daily basis. Some of you help restore people to health, all kinds of physical and emotional and psychological, and you do that through your jobs. You do that through years of training and hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans. You're in the medical profession, what are you doing? That's healing.

When it comes to miracles, sometimes yeah, people have the gift of ... That was miraculous. But once you see that God gives these gifts to the church, you begin to see miracles everywhere. You begin to see that God sometimes works miracles through you. If something happens you're like, "I have no explanation for that." God, God.

I'll give you an example. We go to Ukraine $1 is 25 Hryvnia. So an espresso in the nicest café, not a Starbucks, they don't let Starbucks in. It's like 15 Hryvnia, it's like 70¢. Seventy cents for an Americano? Tastes better than Starbucks, I'm rich. I felt so rich. I'm walking around, I was like "I've got Hryvnia." I said, "Baby, where do you want to go out to eat?"

She's like, "I don't know."

I'm like, "We're going to the swankiest spot we can find in Kiev." Eight dollars, with tip, eight dollars. That was awesome. And then we get to her home town, prices are even cheaper. And I'm like, "Oh, wow. We can help a lot of people. We have money in our pockets now to help a lot of people." So we left Ukraine with $20. It felt so good. I've been praying for this for three months. How did you know I've been praying for this? Your Spirit just leads me. Where are you going to lead me?

This church is a miracle. The fact that this church exists, this is a miracle. Given where we are, this is a miracle. You guys are miracles, you guys are miracle workers, the potential for those gifts is in everyone.

1 Corinthians 12:10, "To another the working of miracles." By the way, it's not one gift per person, that's not how that works. Some people have multiple, multiple. And you've just got to use them, and you've got to exercise them. And God says, "You've been faithful a little, I'm going to give you a little more, I'm going to give you a little more."

Does God always heal? No. Saint Paul had a thorn in the flesh, we don't even know what that was. Ask God three times God said, "I'm going to leave that there for your humility." Jesus Christ could have healed himself while he was crucified, he did not, because there was a purpose in that suffering. James tells us, "Rejoice in trials of various kinds." There's a choice to rejoice. Why? Because suffering is an opportunity for growth.

And also, miracles don't save people. Judas saw all of God's miracles, all of Christ's miracles, didn't help. Four, discern like Jesus. 1 Corinthians 12:10, "To another prophecy to another the ability to distinguish between spirits."

So, prophecy is speech based on something that God suddenly brings to mind. God suddenly prompts you to speak a word into someone's heart. It's speech that reports something that God spontaneously reveals. A little trippy. But, what these people need, the prophets, what they need is people who can discern, "Is this from God?" Because all kinds of spirits, Holy Spirits, speak but so do demons. And that's why 1 John talks about discerning the spirits.

1 Corinthians 14:3, "On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation." One of the ways that you see this is a prophecy from the Lord ... Did it upbuild? Did it encourage? Did it console? Did it comfort? And also, God uses the gift of prophecy when people evangelize.

1 Corinthians 14:24&25, "But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you."

I've had this experience. I'm having a conversation and I just ... This seems like something appropriate to say and then, "How'd you know that?" A revelation from the heart. But again, we need people in our lives to say, "Yes, that's from the Lord."

1 Thessalonians 5:20&21, "Do not despise prophecies but test everything, hold fast to what is good."

1 John 4: 1-3, "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already."

Does this, whatever this prophecy is, whatever this utterance is, does this draw me closer to Christ? Does this focus my attention on Jesus Christ?

And finally, connect like Jesus. Here he talks about tongues, languages? What's a tongue? It's a way to communicate. What's a language? It's a way to connect with another person.

1 Corinthians 12:10, "See to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues." Now there's two categories when it comes to the spiritual gift of languages. The very first time that we see this, as a whole, on the church, the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church and they begin to speak real languages. For the purpose of communicating the gospel to the people from other regions, who didn't speak their language.

But then also Saint Paul, and this 1 Corinthians 14, he begins the idea in 1 Corinthians 13. There's another category that when this gift comes it comes in an expression of prayer to God, in which the human's spirit is praying and the person doesn't understand the meaning, but the person is edified, and the person is blessed, and the person is comforted.

I have a lot of friends who speak it, I don't have this gift. I've asked for this gift, I have the gift of speaking in languages, a couple. My first language is Russian, my second is American, I'm working on English. But it's an opportunity to communicate to people, it's a gift. And God allows me to connect with Christ, with God, through prayer and the Holy Spirit, and I communicate through prayer. But, I haven't experienced ... I have friends and a pastor friend in the city who are always trying to give me this gift. And they're like, "Let's lay hands on you."

So I don't have it, some people do. We'll get into this about ... In public services we don't practice the speaking in tongues, because it's a very transient city, a lot of people coming and going and you need the interpreter. That's what he talks about, some people have the gift and another to interpret the gift. Again, this balance of we need one another.

He lists tongues last, and this is really important. He lists them last because the abuse of these gifts was already present in the church in Corinth. Just like the abuse of healings and miracles has been abused in the modern day church. He ends with this one, 1 Corinthians 13:1, he starts with this one to say, if you are doing any of this, if you are exercising any of the gifts that God gives you, and you are not motivated by love, you are not using it as it should be used.

My abrupt conclusion, 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit," it's the Holy Spirit. "And there are varieties of service, but the same Lord," Kyrios, talking about Jesus Christ. Kyrios is the Greek translation of Yahweh, from the Old Testament. "And there are varieties of activities, but is the same God," Thaos, Elohim in the Old Testament. "God the Father who empowers them all in everyone."

Here he brings in the Trinity. Before he goes in to talk about the diversity of gifts in the unified body, he talks about the diversity in the godhead while God is one. It's so artless, so unconscious, but this is how they thought about God, the Holy Trinity. We only begin to understand the diversity of gifts if we understand the Holy Trinity. That because of the mutual in-dwelling in the Trinity, the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Spirit, and the Son is in the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit is in the Father and the Son. And when we put on Christ, we are in the Father and in the Spirit.

Why do I say that? Perhaps you've been sitting here almost as if you are on the outside looking in. You like, "Okay, I hear what you're saying, I've never experienced any of that. I know I'm a Christian, I have confessed to Jesus Christ as Lord with my mouth and my heart. Why am I not getting more of this?"

I would submit to you, perhaps there's something in the way of the Spirit flowing through you. And there's two things that holy scripture brings up. In Ephesians 4:30 it says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption."

You were sealed by the Holy Spirit, meaning you are a Christian, and you could potentially be grieving the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in particular ... He is especially grieved, especially sensitive to sin in our life, because of his close relationship with ... He's in us, and then when we take him to sin, we take him with us. The Holy Spirit experiences grief, he can't stand the presence of sin and he hates it when we entertain transgression. So perhaps your gifts are locked up by sin, and shacked by sin.

Say the Lord wants to release those gifts, release you from that sin. How, how, how, how? I'm driven by the flesh, and I see the fruit of the flesh. It's always pride, it's always envy, it's always self-focus. Until I repent, that's still there. This is what repentance is, repentance is that key that releases me from the shackles of my sin and now I can be Spirit filled. I can be Spirit led.

Also there's another thing the scripture says in terms of the Spirit, we can grieve the Spirit and we can also quench the Spirit. This is 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Do not quench the Spirit."

This is a little different from grieving the Spirit. Quenching the Spirit ... You know what the Spirit is calling you to, you know what the Spirit is leading you to do, but something is pushing you down. Something is extinguishing that fire. Sometimes it's fear. "Lord, I'm afraid of entering this new season in life. Lord, I'm afraid that I have to give up too much, there's too many sacrifices to make. I'm afraid."

And we quench. And you know what the Lord does? The Lord is offering to replace that fear with his love, perfect love casts out fear. God has granted the Christians the ability to restrict or release what the Spirit does in our lives, in the lives of the local church. The Spirit comes to us as a fire, either to inflame us, or to be doused out and extinguished by our fear, our control perhaps flawed theology. So, don't grieve the Spirit, don't suppress the Spirit. Allow the Spirit to use you as he wills, and that's the greatest thrill in life.

Honestly, it's like your life becomes like a movie. Your standing in the aisle and you're like, "What is happening?" And you feel more alive than you've ever felt. 1 Corinthians 12:11, "All these are empowered by one in the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he will."

So, ask the Holy Spirit to give you insight. "Lord, why have I not been unleashed as you want me to?" Or, "Holy Spirit, what's my part in this body? Where are my gifts? Where should I start? What are my passions? What are my desires, dreams? Why did you bring me here? Not just for my program, not just for my job, not just for my degree, why am I here? What am I supposed to do?" And he will tell you.

Boston, Massachusetts is the human capital of the world. We go to Ukraine, and people are wearing the Tshirts. In church, half the people were in Tshirts. What language are the Tshirts in? Anywhere we go I listen to music, what music do we listen to? I see graffiti of bands 21 Pilots is apparently really popular in Ukraine, and so is gangster wrap.

The United States is the most influential cultural exporter in the world. It's everywhere, Ukraine is just a little sub-set, anyone from any other country will tell you. Who exports culture to the United States? Boston, Massachusetts. Pound for pound, the most influential city in the world. Mosaic Boston, I'm telling you, the amount of talent here if it would just be unleashed. You know Boston, you ever see a map of Logan? All the flights going out of Logan, just all around the world. That's what Mosaic Boston is, we are Logan, and we are exporting. We are exporting culture for the common good of the world. We're exporting love Jesus, simple. Now let's do it.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3, I'll close with this. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love. I am a noisy gon or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all ministries and all knowledge, and I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you are God of love and I pray Lord, release your love into our hearts to love you, as you deserve to be loved. To love the neighbor as they deserve to be loved. And I pray Lord, make us see, give us eyes to see that the greatest gift that keeps on giving is Jesus Christ. And that Lord, through the power of the Spirit, you long to make us gifts that keep on giving to transform the city, our neighborhoods, the city, this country and beyond. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: The Apostle Paul connects some practices in the early church to the timeless principle of Headship. Headship in the home and in the church is a call to reflect God the Father's headship over God the Son, and ultimately Jesus Christ's loving sacrificial headship over His bride the Church. In a fallen and sin filled world men too often grasp at authority to serve themselves at the expense of others. In the Kingdom of God, however, Jesus shows us that authority is to be used to serve others, even at the expense of one's self.

Good morning, and welcome again to Mosaic. It's great to see you this morning. If you're new, my name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here and we'd love to connect you. The way we do that officially is with that little connection guide in your worship guide, the little connection card in there. You can fill that out for us and either drop those in the offering baskets a little bit later on or, if you turn them in at the welcome center out there, we've got a little gift bag we'd love to give to you as well, some more information about the church.

We have been going through a sermon series this summer on the book of First Corinthians, called Prodigal Church. First Corinthians was actually a letter written by the apostle Paul to a church that he had planted in the Roman city of Corinth. It's a young church and it's a church with lots of problems. Paul was writing to help them navigate a lot of these problems that they're facing. What we're going to see over the next couple of weeks is that he kind of shifts his focus and he begins to specifically address some of the problems that they've been facing in their worship gatherings.

I'm just going to warn you right up front this morning that this text that we have today is a lot of fun, and by fun I mean it's like a tinder box of controversy. There's a lot of stuff going on here that is potentially going to be offensive to some people. If so, my email is caleb@mosaicboston.com, but we're going to talk about marriage. We're going to talk about gender. We're going to talk about authority and submission in the church and in the home. It's controversial, but it's not just controversial because of the topics, it's also controversial because some of the stuff in here that Paul writes is hard to understand. It's hard to follow from our modern perspective.

It's interesting, if you've ever read the Second Peter, there's this passage in Second Peter, chapter three, where Peter is writing about Paul's letters and this is what he says. In verse 15, he says, "Count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him as he does in al his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you not be carried with air of lawless." People, I have no proof of this, but I'm pretty sure Peter wrote that right after reading the passage that we're going to be looking at today.

So before we get started, just a couple things. Yeah, there are things in this text that are going to be hard to understand, but they're not impossible to understand, and so we should think hard, we should do our best to understand them. Secondly, Peter warns us, in his words, that "Some ignorant and unstable people" back then would twist Paul's words, just like what? Just like they do the other Scriptures. Now, what we have here, the apostle Paul is writing these letters under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So we're not going to be reading Paul's opinion here. What we're reading here is God's word. At Mosaic, we full-heartedly believe in the goodness, in the authority, in the beauty and the truth and the inherency of Scripture.

Second Timothy 3 says that "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and reproof and correction and for training in righteousness." Now, Psalm 19:7 says that "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the lord are right, rejoining the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold," that God's word is good. It is true. It is perfect. So if we come to a passage that offends us, we need to take a step back. We need to take a deep breath, and we need to understand that either we're offended because we are failing to understand the text correctly or we're offended because the text is correcting us in our understanding where we're failing, and we need that correction, even if it's uncomfortable.

So, we're going to be in First Corinthians, chapter 11 today, looking at verse 2 through 16. If you have your Bibles, I encourage you to open up and follow along. If not, the words are going to be up here on the screen. Three points today. We're going to talk about a beautiful principle. Two, a confusing practice, and then three, a redemptive purpose. Before we read the text today, would you please join me in prayer?

Now, Father God, I ask that you would give us the humility to hear what Your word has to say. Give us the grace to understand what it says and to believe that it is good. Give us the faith to obey it together for Your glory and for our testimony to Your Gospel. Amen.

First Corinthians chapter 11, starting at verse two. "Now, I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short, but since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman, for as woman was made from man, so now man is now born of woman and all things are from God."

"Judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory for her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God."

Point number one, a beautiful principle. Don't worry if you're concerned, we're going to be offering free haircuts and head coverings at the welcome center after the church. Stop by. We're going to talk about that and what on earth Paul is talking about there, but before we do, we need to understand that the haircuts, the head coverings, that is not actually the main point that Paul's trying to make. It's not actually the reason that he's writing this passage. In fact, he is commending them because they have been observing this tradition, but unfortunately, it seems like they haven't really fully understood why they're doing it or what these traditions were symbolizing. He wants them to understand that behind these practices is a timeless principle. We see that in verse three. He starts and he says, "I commend you because you remembered me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ." This is why you're doing it. "The head of every wife is her husband and the head of Christ is God." Behind these practices concerning the head coverings and the hair length is this doctrine of headship.

These things that they were doing, they were an outward sign that in their hearts these men and women were, one, they were honoring the gender that God had given them and they were honoring the God ordained order of authority that begins with the Godhead. It begins with Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father. In that relationship, we see this paradox of two people who are perfectly unified, eternally equal, fully divine. There's no inequality in that relationship, and yet the Father has authority over the Son and the Son joyfully submits to that authority. So he says, it's pointing to that. It's also pointing to the relationship between Christ and His church, that the head of every man is Christ. He said, then it's being reflected into marriage that the head of a wife is her husband.

So what Paul is saying here is not unique to Scripture. We see this principle all over the Bible. It begins with the relationship of the Father and the Son, but then it's reflected in the creation of Adam and Eve. It's reflected in the kings and the priests of the Old Testament. It was reflected in Jesus choosing 12 men to be his apostles and in the requirement for elders in the New Testament church to be men. It's most tangible in the relationship between Christ and the church and the metaphor that Scripture uses to most clearly communicate this is that of marriage, that Christ is a groom and the bride is the church. We see this in Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians 5, verse 22, writing on the same subject, Paul says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wive even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit in everything to their husbands." Then he begins to describe, what does that headship look like? "Husbands," verse 25, "Love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church because we're members of His body."

Then he quotes from the creation account in Genesis, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wive and the to shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. If we properly understand this, it should be a beautiful thing, but let's be honest. We have a tendency to cringe at passages like this in the Bible. We bristle at this idea of headship. I think the reason we do so is because it's very easy to hear headship and begin thinking about worldly forms of leadership and they're two very different things. In our culture, in every culture, there are many wicked men in leadership wielding demonic authority and not Christlike headship. Even in the home, there are too many men, too many husbands have done a pathetic, horrible, even horrific job at leading their families and loving their wives.

So when we read about headship in Scripture, we can't think about that. Jesus hits the reset button on what authority looks like. He redefines it. More accurately, He properly defines it. He shows what true authority is supposed to look like. If I were to put it succinctly, I would put it like this, that evil men grasp authority to serve themselves at the expense of others. That's what we see all over our world today. Christlike men are given authority. It's not their authority. They are stewards of it and they are accountable to Jesus for it, but Christlike men are given authority to serve others even at the expense of others. Husbands, lay down your lives.

Male headship in the home and in the church, when it is done right, it is a deathblow to chauvinism. To imagine a world where this was perfectly practiced would be to imagine a world with no divorce, no domestic abuse, no verbal abuse, no sexual assault, no pornography, no prostitution, no sex trafficking, no single mothers, no fatherless children. The brutal reality is that that ideal is severely lacking in our fallen, in our sin-filled world, but that doesn't mean that we, as the church, shouldn't aim for it. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be Christ's representatives in what this looks like. The whole Christian life is a call to live our lives in a way that points people to God's perfect future kingdom in a way that shows them that it's breaking into the present right now through the church and through the people of God. So wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, lay down your lives, love, cherish your wives. Why? Because it shows the world the way that Jesus the groom sacrificed everything and laid down his life to redeem His bride, the church.

So what does that actually look like in real life? That's the question. How do you see this play out practically? I think probably the best example, and this applies to the way pastors serve the church, but we're talking about husbands and wives right here. It plays out like this. In marriage, there are decisions that need to be made every day, important decisions. Kelly and I, my wife, we have been married for 14 years. We've had a lot of time to practice this, but it takes a lot of practice and we have a long ways to go. We're far from perfect, but as the head, as the husband, when decisions need to be made, it is not my right, it is not my privilege to make those decisions to serve myself. It's not my right to make those decisions alone, but it is my duty to take responsibility for those decisions. So if I am a head with any brains, I'm not going to make any decisions before talking to my wife, from seeking the input of the body and so taking counsel with her and trying to make a decision that's going to benefit the whole, not just myself. I'm accountable to Jesus for that.

So what this has meant in our marriage is 99 times out of 100 when a big decision needs to be made, Kelly and I, we talk about it and then we walk forward in unity, in agreement, about what needs to be done. That's the norm. What about the exception? What about that one out of 100 times scenario when we've talked about it, we've weighed the pros and cons and we still don't agree on the solution? We still don't agree on the direction that we need to go? This is where the idea of headship and the beauty of headship really starts to shine through, because imagine the alternative. Imagine we weren't practicing this. Imagine we weren't Christians. Imagine we weren't listening to what Scripture says to us and so probably by nature our marriage would just be a democracy. She gets one vote and I get one vote and we get along just fine so long as we always, always, always agree about everything, but what happens when we don't?

What happens when we hit that impasse? We've both cast our votes and it's a tie. What do we do then? Well, most likely the only thing left to do at that point is to fight it out, right? It's to basically, whoever's willing to be the most aggressive or passive-aggressive, the most manipulative or the most domineering is always going to be the one who wins and the relationship is always going to lose. One person is going to recede and become passive. The other person is going to take control and domineer. It's not a healthy relationship.

Headship is teaching us a much better way. So, in that one in 100 scenario, I think it looks like this. Jesus goes to Kelly. He goes to my wife. He says, "Hey, I want you to trust me. I want you to trust this order of authority that I have instilled within creation and I want you to submit to your husband. I want you to know I'm going to hold him accountable." Then Jesus comes to me and He says, "Hey, you're the head. I'm giving you the tie-breaking vote, but with it I'm holding you accountable for this decision. If you screw this up, it's your job to fix it. If you act selfishly, you're going to answer to me." This ought to scare the pants off some of the husbands in the room. It's not a right to go and to do whatever we please. It's a responsibility to do what is best for the family and it's one we're going to answer to Jesus for.

Now, I can only think of one or two times in our 14 years of marriage where it has come to this. In those situations, this is important, it's not my job as the husband to make my wife submit. Jesus didn't give that commandment to me. He gave that commandment to her. It's my job ... The commandment to me is I need to love her. I need to cherish her. I need to nourish her. I need to try do what's best for her, but Jesus goes to her and it's in that moment where Kelly has to decide, "Okay, am I going to submit to my husband and continue working with him? Or am I going to turn against him now and start working against him?" By God's grace, Kelly has, in those moments, supported me most of the time. By God's grace, I haven't screwed things up too terribly yet, but if and when I do, it's my job to clean up the mess, not hers. If I'm acting selfishly or foolishly, I will give an account to Jesus for that.

True Christlike headship in the church and in the home, it never domineers. It gives, it serves, it sacrifices, and it reflects the Gospel and the Godhead relationship onto the practical surfaces of our lives. It shows the world that at the crux of human history is a humble, servant-hearted man, who laid down His life, who gave everything in love to His bride, the church. It shows the world that, in the kingdom of God, authority is so selfless, so humble, so generous that submission becomes a joy and a delight. So that is the beautiful principle. It's not one against the other. It's both working together in perfect harmony. I might be in the driver's seat and it might be my responsibility to get us to where we need to go, but she's in the navigator seat and I'm not getting anywhere without her. Right? Without her, I'd be lost, spinning in circles somewhere with no clue what I was doing, but that's what it looks like in the home.

So now let's talk about point two, which is, "Okay, well, what about all this weird, crazy, confusing stuff Paul has to say in this passage?" Which part of this is confusing? Every single part of this is a little bit confusing. Part of it, there's three big categories here that Paul is talking about. He's weaving them all kind of together as one, but we'll kind of pull them apart and try to unpack what's going on. The three big things that he's talking about, so he talks about head coverings. He talks about hair lengths and about haircuts, and then he talks about this idea of praying and prophesying at church.

We're going to get into those, but before we do, I want to tackle the really big one in the middle. Verse 10. This is probably one of the most puzzling verses in all of Scripture. Paul says that a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. What on earth is he talking about there? I read so many commentaries. I'm going to give it my best shot. First century Jews believed that angels were present and watching during their worship services and they couldn't bear to see anything disorderly, unholy, or sinful taking place when people were worshiping God. So it could be that Paul's ... He's warning everyone to respect the order of authority that God has designed us for and to ... Everyone to play your position and play it well.

So I kind of picture it like this. It'd be like if we turned on the Patriots game. We're the angels, right? We're watching. We turn on the Patriots game and you look and Tom Brady is insisting on playing linebacker and Belichick is playing quarterback and Edelman's selling hot dogs or something out in the stands. As the fans, we're like, "What are you doing? This is offensive to us." The Patriots aren't a good team just because they have good players. They're a good team because the players are playing the right positions. I think something like that is going on here. Paul wants us to know, the angels have seen what happens when someone rebels against God's order of authority. That is how Satan became Satan and took a third of the angels down with him. That's where the demons came from. So maybe they are particularly sensitive to this issue. Whatever the case, he wants us to understand that there's a lot at stake when it comes to the way that men and women conduct themselves, both in the home, but also in the worship service.

So first of all, let's talk about the head coverings. What's going on with the head coverings? Paul goes to the men. He says, "Men, when you come to church, don't cover your heads. Why? Because it would dishonor Jesus." How? How would that dishonor Jesus? Well, in Corinth it was common for pagan priests and for elite men in society to flaunt their spiritual authority by wearing these head coverings when they would pray and when they would offer sacrifices to their gods. It seems most likely that Paul is condemning this self-reliant, self-righteous, prideful, boastful spirituality. That's what the pagans do, but that's not what we do. We're Christians. We humble ourself under the headship of Christ. So men, uncover your heads and do it to show. Show that you, as the head of your house, that you are also humble and under the authority of the headship of Jesus and to show that your spiritual authority is not based in yourself, that it's completely based in Jesus and what He has done for you, and that you have no authority apart from Christ and apart from the word of God.

So, "Wives," he says, "Wives, don't uncover your heads." Why? Because he says it's going to dishonor your husbands. Well, how would that dishonor their husbands? Again, in that culture, the head covering as a symbol that a woman was married and that she wanted to honor her husband. So Paul says, "If you're not going to honor your husband in church, you might as well shave your head." Basically what he's saying is, if you're going to shame your husband by not wearing the cultural symbol of being married, why not shave your whole head? Which was the cultural symbol of a woman who had committed adultery against her husband and betrayed him. So the key there, though, is that the cultural symbol is an expression of the principle. The principle doesn't change, but the cultural expression of it does from time to time. So this is going to likely be different for some of you who come from different cultures, but as a man who grew up in a Western, Christian culture, my wife has never worn a head covering to church. I've never felt dishonored by that, but I probably would feel dishonored if she started refusing to wear her wedding ring or if she had refused to take my last name after we got married, because in my culture those are expressions of this principle.

The same way, at the end of this book, Paul tells the church to "Greet one another with a holy kiss." If a brother walked into church this morning and tried to greet my wife with a holy kiss, I would greet him with a holy fist, metaphorically, but the principle is, greet one another with honor, with respect, with brotherly love. The expression at that time was a holy kiss, but that doesn't communicate today, right? If you come in here and try to kiss me, I ain't feeling that. It just is not going to communicate honor to me. It's not going to communicate respect. Our culture has its own ways of doing that.

So, even if this specific practice doesn't ... This expression of the practice doesn't directly apply to us today, we can't just throw away the whole principle. We need to ask ourselves, and men, how does the way you dress, your body language, your conduct among others, how does that communicate that you are a man under the authority of Christ? That women are your sisters and that, if you are married, that you love your wife, you cherish her, and you're willing to lay your life down for her? And then women, how does the way you dress, your body language, your conduct among others also communicate those things as well, if you're married, that you honor your husband? That's what's going on with the head coverings.

So, what about the haircuts? Again, he seamlessly segues into this next idea and just follow this train of thought for a moment because the idea is this. The big idea behind the hair lengths is that this doctrine of headship is so important, and because it is directly tied to gender as a reflection of God's fatherly headship over the son, as Jesus' husbandly headship over the church. Because of that, we must value and honor our biological gender that God has given us and we must present ourselves in culturally appropriate ways that communicate that gender to the people around us. Clothing is communication. So just as a head covering in that society or a wedding ring in our society communicates something about a person's marital status, the way that we present ourselves, the way we dress, it is nonverbally communicating things to everybody around us. Paul is saying, "You need to do that in an appropriate way." In that culture, long hair was a symbol of womanhood. If a man had long hair, that would have been interpreted as him abdicating his masculinity and acting effeminately. Paul's saying, "If God made you male, you need to act ... You need to dress like a man. If God made you a female, you need to dress like a woman and you need to do so according to the cultural symbols of manhood and womanhood that your current culture understands."

This is where it gets tricky because those cultural symbols can be different from culture to culture. Just do this little thought experiment with me. Try to imagine a person with long, beautiful, braided hair, makeup on their face. They're wearing a short plaid skirt. Now who are you picturing in your mind? Obviously you're picturing Mel Gibson from the movie from Braveheart, like the manliest man to have ever manned in manhood, right? No, you're not picturing him because our culture doesn't immediately think of those things as masculine. We think of them as feminine. However, their culture did. So the cultural symbols might change, but the principle doesn't. So what Paul does is he says this. He says that nature teaches that a man ought to have short hair. Well, how does nature teach that? Because left to nature, men in general are far hairier than women, so in a way it almost ... nature teaches us the opposite.

Well, that's not what Paul means by nature. He's not using nature in the modern sense that we're used to. He's speaking rhetorically. He's using a train of thought that the Greeks would have understand. He's appealing to common sense. He's saying, in that culture, common sense would just tell you that a guy with long hair was trying to say something and it wasn't something masculine, that if I were to wear a kilt in 12th century Scotland, nobody would question my masculinity because culturally, common sense, people would just naturally see, "Oh, that's a totally normal expression of masculinity," but if I wore that same thing here today, it would be shameful for me. I would feel ... Naturally, I would feel ashamed to be up here preaching right now in a kilt. That's kind of what Paul is trying to help us understand.

So back to the question, can a man have long hair? Depends. If you're able to do so in a way that's clearly masculine, then more power to you. The only thing Scripture says is no man buns, but other than that ... That was a joke. That was a joke. Sorry. There's some manly man buns out there. Footnote. There's a lot of footnotes in this sermon. I understand that there are people who legitimately experience gender dysphoria and we want to be sensitive to that. If you are experiencing that and you want to walk with Jesus, you want to follow Jesus, you need to get into community and surround yourself with some people who are going to help you walk through that and be obedient to Jesus in that.

Now, on the other hand, there's also a lot of people who just like to be contentious, who like to be edgy, who like to push the limits and have this persona of rebelliousness to them. In either case, Scripture makes it very clear that our human hearts are broken. We are sinful by nature. What that means is that every single one of us, we have drives and desires and feelings that we cannot trust and that we should not obey. I do too. If I had acted on every drive, every feeling, every desire that I had, I would have completely shipwrecked my life a long time ago and so would have all of you. There is this demonic idea at work in parts of the church today that says that more than anything, Jesus just wants us to enjoy life and be happy.

Jesus never promised us bliss. He never promised us material comforts. When you read His word, Jesus promised us trials. He promised us tribulations. He promised us persecutions. He promised us we'd need to suffer in His name, and that if we wanted to follow Him, we would need to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Him. When we follow Jesus, we are not following Him onto a playground. We are following Him onto a battlefield, but we're following Him in the promise that He is there, He is going to be with us, that He is going before us and that He will never leave us or forsake us and in the end there will be victory. We can't trust our hearts, but we can trust His word. So every single one of us, we need to die to ourselves. No one is born with a perfect sexuality and no one is going to attain one in this life. We're all sinful. No one is born with a perfect masculinity or femininity, but if those things came natural, Scripture wouldn't need to talk about them and Scripture talks about them all the time because God knows our hearts, God knows our temptations and He knows the things we're going to struggle with. This is why we need the instruction of His word. This is why we need the power of His Spirit and this is why we need the accountability of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Third, I want to talk about the praying and the prophesying. When we hear the word prophesy, we think like some weird stuff of like mediums, psychics, people predicting the future, but that's not what the New Testament really means by prophesy. It'd be more accurate to picture somebody who's leading a Bible study, teaching a Sunday school class, giving a testimonial. It's someone who is presenting and teaching and explaining and delivering God's word. Here's what I want us to take note of. It's easy to get offensive by what the Bible has to say regarding men and women. "Oh, Paul's so sexist. He's making these women cover their heads and worship ... " First of all, that's chronological snobbery. We're judging their culture. Second, it's this indignant attitude. It's based on false assumptions. If we actually take the time to understand headship, it's a beautiful, desirable thing, but third, it misses the remarkable reality that already in the first century there were women publicly praying and prophesying in church. They played a huge, key, important part in the life of the church at that time. Paul doesn't say, "Hey, the women shouldn't be doing that." He actually commends them for praying and prophesying. All he says is, "Hey, remember when you do that to wear your head covering as a sign that you're humble, that you're under the authority of Christ. You're under the authority of your pastors and your husband."

So in that context, church looked a lot different. Church always looks different from culture to culture and church services. In that culture, they were a persecuted people. They didn't have buildings to meet in, and so what they would do is oftentimes one of the wealthier members of the community would host the church in their home. During the worship service, various members of the church would get up and lead. Some people might lead a song or a hymn. Some people might lead a prayer. Some people might give a teaching or a testimony. Then at the end of that, everybody would be silent and the pastors of the church would then take responsibility for everything that was said and either correct anything that was said that was false or they'd say, "Amen, yes, that is true. Praise Jesus," and they would be done. So everyone was involved, but the pastors were responsible for making sure everything that was said was true.

I bring that up because if you've been reading ahead, there's this really ... another super controversial verse coming up in chapter 14 where Paul says that women in the church must stay silent. I don't ... obviously I don't think he's talking about women in the church need to always stay silent, because if he is, then he's contradicting what he just said here in chapter 11 when he commends the women for praying and prophesying in the church. So what is he talking about? He's not saying that women need to always stay silent in church. I think he's talking about this one part of the service, though, when it was time for the pastors to speak. So he's most likely talking about the women. And listen, all the non-pastor men, all the unordained men in the church, this applies to them as well, but you need to stay silent during that part of the service when it's time for the pastors to speak authoritatively and evaluate what was said during the service that day. There are two really big, important truths here and a lot of churches like to throw out one or throw out the other.

The first is that the role of pastor is a headship role and, like the role of husband, it is a role that God calls His sons to fulfill and we should honor that. We shouldn't just throw that away because it's counter-cultural. Now, on the other hand, some churches throw the second part away, which is that God loves it when women use their gifting to serve and to lead and to teach and to minister in the church, so long as they're doing it, just like all the other men who aren't pastors, doing it with respect to the authority of their pastors. I understand a lot of people don't like this, especially as it applies to the role of pastor. They don't like that Scripture requires pastors to be men. Listen, if pastor was a job that was just given out to the most skilled person, I think I would probably agree. I could sit down right now and write a list of women from Mosaic who could do my job better than I could, no problem, but that's not what it's about. Competency is important, right? Hopefully your pastors aren't incompetent, but competency's not the main point. The main point, ultimately, is that God is calling His sons to step into this role because in doing so they are representing Christ. They are representing His husbandly headship over the bride, His bride, the church, just like husbands do in marriage.

So I praise God for the grace that God has given to Pastor Jan and myself and the privilege it is to be your pastors, but I also praise God for every godly, talented, hardworking woman who has really made Mosaic what it is. We wouldn't be here without them today. A couple of weeks ago I was curious. What is the actual ratio of men and women leading in the church at Mosaic? So I went through our members list, just our members list, and I just went through name by name and wrote them down. I counted 22 men who were leading in some significant capacity, either formally or informally, here at Mosaic. 22. If you count Pastor Jan, myself, and Andy, it was 25. Then I went through and I counted all the women. It was exactly 25.

I was so encouraged by that. There are too many churches where, sometimes because of misapplying this doctrine, they ask the women to take a back seat and they don't allow them the opportunity to use the giftings that God has given them. Now, on the other hand, there are way too many churches where the women have taken over and the men have had to draw back and they've receded and they've become passive and they're not using the giftings that God has given them. It's not a competition. It's not who can do the most. It's a calling to work together in harmony to faithfully play the parts that we've been given to play. I praise God that there are some awesome, godly men, and awesome, godly women who are doing some amazing things here at Mosaic.

Point three, just kind of go with some rapid fire application here at the end and talk about a redemptive purpose in all this. There's no end in sight to the battle of the sexes in our culture, but in our church that battle has already been won. The men didn't win it and the women didn't win it. The Gospel won it, right? So in the church, we have the opportunity to show the world a better way, that in Christ, masculinity and femininity are both complementary, beautiful, good gifts from God, and even authority and submission, when practiced properly, are good and beautiful gifts as well. So real quick, just want to talk about how this applies a little bit more to gender, a little bit more to singleness, to marriage, and then finally to pastors.

So first of all, talking about gender, men, you are going to be tempted and you are going to be prone to abdicate you masculinity in one of two ways, either through passivity or through aggression and you have to fight against both. When you are faced with responsibility and difficulties, the tendency is going to be to either withdraw and become passive and not take responsibility or to lose your cool and become aggressive and try to dominate, use your physical stature to intimidate and to coerce. The Gospel doesn't allow you to do either of those things. You need to humble yourself. You need to lay down your agenda and you need to take responsibility in a Christlike manner to serve others.

Women, I had some of the sisters on staff help me with this one. You're going to be tempted. You're going to be prone to compare yourself to others and to take control or even domineer in situations where you see that the ideal standards aren't being met and where the ideal is lacking. This is where you need to trust the grace and the sovereignty of God. You need to find your identity completely in Christ and not in the opinions of others and you need to work hard. You also need to be patient, especially with your brothers sometimes and encourage them, build them up, challenge them to step up if you see them being passive, but do it in a way that's loving and respectful.

Two, I want to talk to the singles. We read in Ephesians that wives are called to submit to their husbands and husbands are called to lay down their lives for their wives. Women, you are not called to submit to men in general. That was a commandment for a wife to her husband. Men, you're not called to lay down your lives for every woman that you meet, but men, you need to love women like sisters. You need to treat them with the respect that you would give to a daughter of a king. Imagine if one of former president Obama's daughters started going to your school or working in your office or coming to Mosaic. Imagine the immense respect you would try to show any time you were in their presence. As far as I know, his daughters don't go to Mosaic, but God's daughters do, so treat them accordingly. Women, love men like brothers. Treat them with the respect you would give a prince, right? We don't have any Prince Henry ... I was going to say Prince Harvey. I have a nephew named Harvey and Henry. Prince Henry's in our church, but you are seated besides the sons of your heavenly Father, so encourage them, build them up, challenge them in godly ways. Romans 12:10 says, "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor."

Third, I want to talk a little bit more about marriage. We already talked about marriage as an ideal, but what about when that ideal is lacking? Here's another footnote, first of all, before we get into it. If there is abuse in the home and if you are experiencing abuse in the home, you need to get out. You need to get help and you need to ... Please let us know if there's a way that we can help. It is unacceptable. If you are here and you are the abuser, understand you are under the fiery wrath of God and He hates abuse. He hates verbal abuse. He hates sexual abuse. He hates physical abuse and you are going to stand before Him and give an account. I would repent sooner than later. That's end of footnote, but it needs to be said in our culture.

What about lesser situations where the husband's just being passive? Or maybe the wife is being domineering. How do you conduct yourself when you're trying to fulfill your role but your spouse doesn't seem to be trying to fulfill theirs. Well, no marriage is going to start out at 100%, right? It takes practice. We do our best and where the ideal is lacking, we rely on God's grace. So we pray for our spouse. We don't force them to do their role. We encourage them. We pray for them. We do ours to the best of our ability and we don't give up. Kelly and I were not good at this when we first got married. It took lots of practice and we're still a far way from reaching the goal, but by God's grace, what started out as this really tender and delicate shoot has grown and it has strengthened into this tree that is ... We're not there yet, but it's growing and it's beautiful. It takes work.

To the single parents, and specifically to the single mothers, lean on the household of God. Lean on Christ, but also lean on His church. If there are ways that we can help you, we want to help you. Get into community and allow that community to help you with your mission of raising those children.

Finally, I want to talk to all the pastors in the room. This isn't something that usually happens, and right now I'm just preaching to myself. I understand that, but pastors need to understand. Don't you ever let anyone ask you about your church because the church isn't yours. She is Christ's. Care for her well. Don't be passive. Don't domineer. Lay down your life and love. Being a pastor is hard. It is pain. It is suffering. It is only by God's grace that Pastor Jan and I can do this. Apart from the call of Jesus Christ, I don't know if I would be up here right now. I don't want to be up here right now talking about these things in Boston, right? I would much rather be passive. I'd much rather not open my email tomorrow morning. I would much rather step away from all the sin and all the conflict and all the spiritual warfare that comes with answering this call, but this is the place that Christ has called me to play in His body, so I'm going to do my best, but I need you to pray. Pray for me. Pray for Pastor Jan. Pray for the pastors in your lives. We're really people just like you.

Ministry in Boston is wicked hard, but when I think about the members of Mosaic, it's so worth it. I don't think that being a pastor should come with many privileges, but I do know that it is a privilege to be your pastor. I get a front row seat to, yeah, a lot of pain and a lot of sin and a lot of conflict, but I also get a front row seat to seeing the Holy Spirit work in that conflict and transform lives with the Gospel. I get a front row seat to seeing your kindness and your service and your sacrificial generosity and I am very grateful for that. Hebrews 13:17 says, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account." Pastor Jan and I, we take that very seriously. We do so with fear and with trembling. It says, "Let them do so with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." I thank God that all of you, with a few exceptions, have made this job a joy and it is a privilege to serve as your pastor.

We are all called to do hard things. We're all called to do things that, in our flesh, we don't want to do, but Jesus was as well. He didn't want to leave His throne in heaven to be born in a barn. He didn't want to take on the fragile flesh of a human being. He didn't want to be betrayed by His friends. He didn't want to be arrested. He didn't want to be spat on and beaten. He didn't want to be flogged. He didn't want to carry a wooden cross on His wounded, bleeding back. He didn't want those nails to pierce His hands and His feet. He didn't want to frantically search the sky when the Father turned His face away, but He did want to save us. And so for the joy that was set before Him, he endured the cross. All authority in heaven and on earth was given to Him and He fully submitted Himself to the will of the Father and laid down His life for His bride.

The rest of chapter 11, we're not going to have time to get into it, but Paul goes on and he teaches about communion. In verse 23, he says, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, He also took the cup after supper, and saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.'" This is what Christlike headship and Christlike submission look like. When we live this out together, we proclaim to the world, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that you loved us to such an extent that you gave the one thing that you treasure the most, your one and only son. Jesus, we thank you for laying down your life, for making the ultimate sacrifice of love for us, for your bride, for the church. Teach us to embrace who you've created us to be and to do what you have called us to do and to show the world that it is a comfort and a joy and a delight to submit to a good and gracious King. Show us, the world, that authority is from you, that all authority is for you, and that we must use it to love and to serve others in your name. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

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Summary: If there’s one thing that Christians can take away from Lindsey Jacobellis, it is to not be overconfident. We have one shot at living the Christian life and we can’t ruin it by being reckless with our freedom. Lindsey at least took home the silver medal. Second place for us is eternal condemnation.

Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and her neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Well, good morning Mosaic. My name is Andy Hoot. I am the pastoral resident here at Mosaic. Pastor Jan is on a much-deserved vacation and Pastor Shane is here, but they're giving me a swing today at preaching. If you didn't hear that there's a little sports reference there. Last week, we had a heavy emphasis on sports in the sermon. I got to just ask for forgiveness, I was just pumped up from Pastor Jan’s sermon and just had heard that in my mind all week. Get ready for a few more sports references. If you're new to Mosaic, welcome. We know there's a lot of health professionals coming in, lot of medical residents, grad students, people from all over the country and world coming in. We are glad that you're here at mosaic. I'd forgot to bring up the connection card. If you want to learn more about us, fill out that connection card in the bulletin. If you fill it out and bring it to our Welcome Center in the middle of the lobby, we have a gift for you. Go there and ask any questions that you'd like about the church.

Today, we're continuing in our series called Prodigal Church. We're walking through the book of 1 Corinthians this summer. We're going to cover verses 1 Corinthians 10:1-14. Take your Bibles or your phone apps out if you want to join me. We're going to read 1 Corinthians 10:1-14. Please hear the Word of God, “For I do not want you to be unaware brothers that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all they the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.” Do not be idolaters as some of them were as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did and 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, these things happened to them as an example, but they're written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to men. God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

Join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, many of us here are people that know Your love, Your mercy, Your grace. Lord, we've been baptized. We partake in the Lord's Supper. Yet, so quickly we forget, we forget the extent that You went to engage in relationship with us. We forget the extent that You went to love us. We forget that You are constantly patient with us. Lord, when we're struggling, we tend to think that You are not there, we question Your goodness, Your justice, Your holiness. Lord, forgive us for that sin. Lord, we ask that Your Spirit would be among us now as we delve into Your word, may it sharpen our hearts, sharpen our affections for You and convert the hearts of those who don't know You. I pray this in Jesus name, amen.

Winter 2006, the Winter Olympics were debuting a new sport, snowboard cross. It's a sport, where four heats of four snowboarders race down a steep hill. They have to navigate sharp curves. They have to navigate the other competitors, cutting them off. They have to go over massive jumps and it's not about style. You get there, you scrap to get there the best you can and you just want to get there in first place. To launch the sport, NBC introduced us to Lindsey Jacobellis. Going into the Olympics, she was the favorite by a longshot. She was a 20-year-old blonde, curly hair with beautiful locks flowing out and just that rad snowboarder spirit. Lindsey cruised through the qualification round. She cruised through the semifinals and in the final round, she was dominating. Nine-tenths of the way through, she had at least a 40 meter lead in front of her closest competitor. She had two jumps left. On the second-to-last jump, it looked like she had the win, the gold in the bag. She decided in a moment of overconfidence and over-excitement, she did a trick in midair. The trick looked great, but she didn't land it and she lost her speed. She trickled down the slope just in time to get the silver medal.

I remember watching it live with a group of friends, just thinking, “How could you do that?” I wanted to feel bad for her, but I couldn't. She had that coming and that's kind of the tone that the Apostle Paul is bringing to the Corinthians this week. Last week, we went through 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Again, it was a pump up speech that was Pastor Jan and the Apostle Paul reminding us to approach our faith, to approach the walk, the Christian walk with discipline, with intentionality, with purpose. That was the team huddle, where everybody's standing around before the game. You have your hands in the circle. You have the craziest guy on your team just hyping everybody that's what that felt last week. Now, in 1 Corinthians 10:1-14, it's a couple weeks into the season. The season isn't going as planned. You didn't start off undefeated as you hoped and the Apostle Pauls, they're having a chalk talk session. They're in the classroom. He is saying … Being a little more realistic and he's talking about specific challenges that his group of Christians have faced already and that they're going to face. Really, he's talking about that overconfidence that they're functioning with and how they're placing their confidence in the wrong things.

This topic really hits home to me. I came to Mosaic in 2011, fresh out of college. I grew up in the church, but it was at that moment in my life, where I saw my need for a savior. I was convicted of sin, saw my need for a Savior, placed Jesus as Lord of my life. I experienced bliss for two years. I just had freedom from a lot of sin, a lot of things that held me down. The Holy Spirit helped me to break the chains and I've read about seasons and trials and time in the wilderness, but I just didn't buy it. When it came to interacting with the world, I was a little overconfident, probably still inserted myself in communities that were not good for me, probably wanted to show my friends that I didn't change that much. When the trials and challenges appointed by God inevitably came, I was shocked and really just kind of had a little disillusionment.

This is a situation of the church in Corinth, they're a group of young believers living in a large Roman metropolis. They're surrounded by non-Christians, pagan temples. They're excited about Christ, but they're not being careful enough in their relationships, their social lives. They're grumbling amongst each other and they're still choosing to watch like all the wrong series on Netflix, like they're still consuming and spending like the rest of the world. Primarily they don't want their friends to think that their non-Christian friends to think that Christians don't have fun. They don't want them to think that they're closed-minded.

It's much like the feeling that some of us can have in Boston and this text is kind of funny, the Apostle Paul in the Chapter 10, he's taking a brief detour back to Chapter 8. In that chapter, he was talking to the strong. These were Christians in the Corinthian church that thought that it was okay to attend meals in temples that were dedicated to idols. They thought it was okay to eat meat dedicated to these idols. In that chapter, Paul was very delicate and gentle. He said, “It's probably not a good idea because it could make your weaker brother stumble, your younger Christians, your less mature Christians, the Christians with a background in paganism.”

Here, he goes around the topic in Chapter 9 and he's direct. He comes back in a way that only Paul can. He's basically trying to scare the pants off of his crowd. He's just saying, “Don't do it, don't toy with idolatry and it could literally be the death of you.” The passage today has a bit of a grim message to it, but we like to preach the whole word here at Mosaic. Our society doesn't necessarily like teaching in negatives, do not, do not, do not that's how the Apostle Paul delivers them to us. We're going to follow him.

Today, we're going to break down the passage and Paul's warning against overconfidence around idolatry into three points, know who you are, know the opposition and know your coach. Know who you are, first one, “For I do not want you to be unaware brothers that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from spiritual Rock that followed them and the Rock was Christ.” What Paul is doing here, we don't normally talk about baptism and the Lord's Supper as directly with regards to the Old Testament. He's talking about a form of baptism that the Old Testament believers experienced. This spiritual food, the spiritual drink, it's referring to the Lord's Supper. He's talking about that indirectly reminding the Corinthians of their baptism. They're partaking in the Lord's Supper. They're followers of Jesus. He's beginning to remind them who are you? They're followers of Jesus, baptized into His death, risen to new life in His resurrection. They partake in communion to re-announce that to renew their fellowship with the Lord and they're standing and they're sustained by the Rock of Christ. This is an intentional strategy. I think we all have experienced this in some area of life.

My college soccer coach at the beginning of every season, after he made cuts, the first thing he did every year was he gathered us around in the classroom. He gave us our jerseys, gave us our training gear, gave us a shirt with the team crest on it. He emphasized that whole session, what an honor it was to wear that crest. He talked about the history of the program. He reminded us that we're now part of something bigger than ourselves. He told us that we represented not just ourselves in all that we did, we represented the team on campus, when we traveled with the team, in the classroom when we're socializing on campus. It was a lot like a soldier receiving his uniform, a medical professional at the white coat ceremony, receiving the white coat. It's just a piece of cloth physically, but it represents so much more in reality. A coach or an organization, they want you to have dignity in wearing the crest and wearing your gear. They want this to become a part of your identity. If they successfully hype you, like you want to parade this the fact that you're on the team everywhere.

I remember I coached high school soccer and it wasn't a great team. We had JV Varsity. We had 20 freshmen come in every year and I remember this kid was 5 foot 2, probably 150 pounds. He’s kind of like a circle. He was struggling all preseason, like a three week preseason and just running a mile, he's just literally crying. He at least kept going, just literally crying, complaining the whole preseason, but at the end of that preseason, we gave them the uniforms and the team warm-ups. That drastically changed that kid. He came in, he started showing up just in his full gear, wore it to school multiple days a week, every day that we had a game. He started gelling his hair. He was a freshman, but the kid started yelling at all of the seniors. The next year, it just drastically changed him. The next year, he came in 30 pounds lighter. He came in as one of the best players, like that transformation was incredible.

What Paul's saying, “When you reflect on who you are as a Christian, when you reflect on the uniform that you wear that's the transformation that you should have in your life.” How do we put on a uniform in the Christian life? Some people think it's a WWJD Bracelet. Some people think it's that gold chain with the cross. Others like the tattoo on their arm or on their back, but we put on the uniform of Christ when we get baptized. That is our white coat ceremony. That is that moment of receiving our uniform officially. It's an outward sign of something that has inwardly taken place. We are renewed, we're brought to life in Christ. When we take communion, we're going to take it later today, we're reminding ourselves of that initial baptism and we're renewing the commitment to wear that shirt with pride every day. We're not just fellowshipping here with Christ on Sunday morning, the rest of the week, we're wearing that jersey. Paul wants us to know that knowing who we are in Christ, it helps us in many ways, a lot like in the similar ways that my coach wanted. Knowing who we are in Christ should change the way we carry ourselves in day to day life.

When we take time to think that we are sinners, Jesus had no reason to go to the cross for us. He's been gracious for us. He is merciful. God could strike us with His wrath at any moment, but He didn't and He still doesn't. That should lead us to live lives of thankfulness and to do good works with excitement. Romans 6:1-4 says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound, by no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?” Do you not know that all of us, who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We're buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Our conversion, our baptism, the partaking of the Lord's Supper, these things should remind us too that our whole lives should be transformed through our relationship with Christ. Knowing who you are in Christ, it takes the pressure off of ourselves to build an identity. Instead of exhausting ourselves, just trying to build something with our own strength, we are given one. God did everything for our salvation as He did for the Israelites. He led the people out of Egypt. He parted the waters. He gave them the food in the desert. All they had to do was follow, drink and eat.

Part of this is in addressing overconfidence, this is humbling. We are not who we are by anything that we did. When we walk, there's a humility. We're not reckless. We're not presuming upon the grace that has been extended to us. Knowing who we are in Christ is empowering. It gives us an identity because it was bought by God that the world cannot take away from us. If we embarrass ourselves for the sake of the Kingdom of God, like what does the opinion of man matter? Knowing that we're sustained by Christ, sustained by the Holy Spirit, we're emboldened to strive for the glory of His Kingdom with a greater zeal. Just the imagery of what this looks like, an empowered Christian, who knows his identity in Christ, I like to go to Pastor Jan illustrated this a lot for us last week.

I like to go to Nehemiah 4. 4 Nehemiah as a man, he receives a call from God to go rebuild the wall in Jerusalem, the city’s exposed, could be attacked at any point by enemies. He leads this charge to rebuild the wall. All of the local enemies start trying to slow the work. It says, “The people were building the wall with a shovel in one hand and a shield in the other.” That's the way that we're to approach our Christian lives. If you're not bringing that zeal, challenge yourself a lot. Just another way that knowing who we are in Christ is that it helps us take the attention of ourselves away from ourselves and our focus changes from ourselves to loving God and loving others. We don't get caught up in foolish pursuits and quarrels. We don't mind eating, drinking, socializing differently if it helps prevent a brother from falling or if it helps attract someone to the faith.

At Mosaic, just one way in particular that this applies is that community group. Those of you who are more mature, who are, “Strong,” you can pause to discuss the basics of the gospel to that guest to that new person to that seeker, instead of having deep theological discussion that you crave. When we know who we are in Christ, the focus is not for our betterment, it's for God, for our brothers and sisters around us. Lastly, when you know who you are in Christ, you have an identity that you can hold onto in the wilderness. You're going through difficulties, you have to have something to hold onto. Maybe you haven't seen a large body of water split, you haven't had a giant cloud guide you in the desert like the Israelites, you haven't seen manna raining from the sky, but the fact that you are a Christian is miraculous.

The fact that you and your sin would publicly declare that you're Christian in Boston in 2019 is miraculous. When you think of the miracles, everybody, every Christian knows the slavery that they were living in, the darkness that they were living in, the blindness that they're living in and you know that you didn't come out, you were drowning and you didn't even know that you needed to try to pull yourself up out of the water. When you reflect on that God pulled you out of that like this gives you hope in the future, in the wilderness when the storms and trials come, God will deliver you and get you through your despair again.

Just in this section of verses 1 through 4, he reminds the Israelites who they are, but he also tells them, “If you don't remember who you are, you can fall.” Just going through the motions of baptism, going through the motions when we partake in the Lord's Supper that doesn't save you. There are millions of Christians around the world, there's a large church, centered in Europe that a lot of people think this, it doesn't give you a free pass. Your baptism, your communion, it doesn't give you a free pass to the trials to the effects of idolatry. He's saying to the Israelites, “If you don't know who you are in Christ, you could fall like them.” Verse 5 says, “Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”

Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. God worked these mighty miracles to save them and they questioned Him and they turned away from Him really quickly. I just read these verses. You read your Bible app and it takes you through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, January through April and May and like, you're reading about just the stupidity of these people. They're brought out of Egypt with mighty miracles and we tend to think that if we were there, if we saw what they saw, if we ate what they ate, we never would have fallen like them. Paul's telling us in this passage, “Be careful, we're just as likely to turn aside from God as them.” To prevent us from falling like the Israelites, the next step, he wants us to know our opposition.

In VERSES 7 to 11, he highlights four sins that led to the demise of thousands of Israelites. In fact, more than thousands of the original people, who left Egypt at the Exodus, only Joshua and Caleb were the only ones that made it to the Promised Land. I want to take you through very quickly these four sins and these four Old Testament stories to highlight the sins and also, the potential demise that could come to us if we're not careful.

In verse 7, Paul writes, “Do not be idolaters as some of them were as it is written. The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” This is referring to a story in Exodus 32, a meeting between Moses and God on Mount Sinai. It took longer than expected. The text doesn't say why. The people got bored and restless and they thought that Moses wasn't going to come back. They told Aaron, Moses's right-hand man to fashion a God for them and they worshipped him how they wanted. That resulted in the worship throughout into eating and drinking and playing. The original word for that is playing sexually. When Moses came back down to the mountain, what happened? This is Exodus 32:26, Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me. All the sons of Levi gathered around him and he said to them, “Thus says the Lord of God, put your sword on side each of you and go to and fro from the gate to gate throughout the camp and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.” The sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses and that day about 3,000 men of the people fell.

Verse 8, he says, “We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did and 23,000 fell and a single day.” This comes from Numbers 25. While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. Israel yoked himself to bow of Baal of Peor and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the Sun before the Lord that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you killed those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.” Shortly after that God sent a plague that killed another 20-some thousand people.

Verse 9, “We must not put Christ of a test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents.” This comes from numbers 21:4, “From Mount Hor, they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. The people became impatient on the way. All the people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness for there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food.’” Then, the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many of Israel died. In verse 10, “Nor do not grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.” There are a lot of places, where the Israelites grumbled against God, but this is likely referring to the story of Numbers 14, God leads the people to the Promised Land. They're right there. He sends spies in to explore the land. They come back and they say, “Yes, the land is awesome, but the people are huge and the cities are fortified.”

Numbers 14 continues, “Then all the congregation raised a loud cry and the people wept that night. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron and the whole Assembly said to them, ‘If only we had died in Egypt, we're in the wilderness. Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder, wouldn't it be better for us to go back to Egypt?’” They said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, verse 26, saying, “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against Me? I've heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against Me. Say to them, “As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing, I will do to you. Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness and all of your number, listed in the census from 20 years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Not one shall come into the land, where I swore that I would make you dwell except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh and Joshua, the son of Nun.”

Verse 36, “And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against Him by bringing up a bad report about the land, the men who brought up a bad report of the land died by plague before the Lord.” “Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua, the son of Nun and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh remained alive.”

These stories are pretty terrifying. If you’ve drifted, come back. After this gruesome story time, Grandpa Paul says to the Corinthians, “Now, these things happened to them as an example, but they're written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall.” Verse 14, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” He's saying the same thing to us as he did to Corinthians, idolatry, sexual immorality, putting Christ to the test that's testing the limits, you know God's law. You know he's in charge, but you're just going to keep pushing and pushing until He strikes you. Idolatry, sexual immorality, putting Christ to the test and grumbling, they're serious sins and we must still in 2019 guard against them diligently. If you think these are just gruesome stories about the past, you're wrong. If we look at the common theme in these stories, the people stopped trusting and worshipping God. They began to trust and worship in something else. They're grumbling with what God gave them. They're believing something else is going to deliver us, something else is going to give us lasting peace and satisfaction. They're putting Christ to the test. They're thinking whatever they're choosing in that moment that's going to deliver them.

The Israelites saw all the miracles of God. He brought them out of Egypt, but Moses didn't come down the mountain in what they felt a reasonable amount of time. Therefore, they rebelled. Are you in the wilderness, are you waiting? Is God taking too long to answer prayer? Are you seeking a quicker fix, choosing temporary satisfaction, be careful. In Boston, some of you, some of us just live our lives so fast that we have no patience at all. You move fast, you work fast, you run 5Ks fast and the pace that you live that's probably what brought you to Boston that's probably what makes you successful at your job, but stop pressuring God, stop pressuring your spouse, who's a little different, stop pressuring your children to function at your pace. We think of Old Testament examples, Abraham and Sarah, they got the promise. They had to wait several decades until they were in their 90s until God gave them their promised child. Joseph at the end of Genesis, his brothers sell him into slavery. When he's in slavery, he's accused of sexually assaulting a woman. He goes through couple decades of trials before God uses him, used those tests, used those lessons to bring him to a point, where he could save his family from famine, serving as a right-hand man of Pharaoh.

The Israelites knew that God was one true God. Remember before they left Egypt, he dominated all the other gods, but the religious and sexual practices or religious/sexual practices of their neighbors just looked so enticing that they couldn't resist. We're talking sexual prostitution, temple prostitution. Do you look around at your non-Christian friends and think, “I wish I could do what they do.” Do you want to eat like them, dress like them, spend like them go to Sunday brunch like them, attend all the same parties? Are you compromising your beliefs just to fit in with a certain crowd, to start a relationship, if so, who or what is your God? God was feeding the Israelites with manna, this bread like grainy substance that literally fell from heaven six days a week and on the sixth day, twice as much came down, so they didn't have to gather it on the Sabbath. He fed them water from a rock twice. It wasn't good enough for them. Are you overlooking all of God's gifts to you? Do you want something that you think is better?

Do you value travel, food, wine, a romantic relationship more than you value your relationship with God? This is hard, like there is a barrage from the media and social media, trying to convince us that we're not content with our day-to-day lives, like you think the travel shows, the international cooking shows, home makeover shows, home makeover shows in the Caribbean, home makeover shows in beautiful rural mountainous regions, they're giving us this message that if you just escape from where you are that's going to satisfy you.

I keep getting an advertisement on my Facebook and it's a guy canoeing in a beautiful, bright blue pond on top of a glacier that's on top of a mountain. It's playing a song about escape. I question you how are you fighting this message that if you escape, you're going to be satisfied? That escape will be more satisfying than going forward in the day to day life that God's called you to? You know what I do on Facebook, top right corner, there's three dots and you can click hide post. You can choose not relevant or sometimes, you can choose to write a message, “Say other,” and say, “Thank you, I'm satisfied in Jesus.” Like what are you doing to fight this? It's prevalent. I mean for me, it can be as simple as on a busy day, I think a cup of coffee is going to deliver me, just if I don't give that 15 minutes, where I'm sitting and drinking coffee and doing nothing, like I turn into a monster. Like what is it for you, it's not just big trips, but in our day to day lives?

God led the people to the Promised Land, but they got scared and wanted to turn away. Is God asking you to face a giant that seems too big, are you saying to God, “I can't do it. I'd rather go back to Egypt.” Have you been asking God to use you, but when He does, He puts someone in your life, who's so hard to love, so hard to care for that you just slowly shy away from the relationship, so that you don't have to deal with it. Are you all about Jesus, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty, you just complain about the church, about the people in your community group, about your family? The Israelites grumbled. They grumbled about the manna, again that fell from heaven. They grumbled about their leadership. They grumbled about the Promised Land when they got there.

A lot of us know Jesus, we've never lacked for any resources. We've never had sleepless nights in the wilderness. We've never had any major health issues. A lot of us here get to go on multiple vacations a year and we still find ways to grumble all the time. I'm guilty. My whole life, everybody told me how good I was. I was in a small town, where if you follow the rules, did your homework, trained a little bit extra for sports that put you at the top performance-wise. When I got married, I learned how much of a pain I was, how much I complained non-stop. A verse that changed my life, Matthew 12:36, this is just clear, I tell you on the Day of Judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak. I tell you on the Day of Judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they speak. That's every as in there.

Are you struggling with grumbling about your spouse? I take on a lot of the counseling for the church in my role. That's the area that I really love to serve in. Every time a couple, married, not married comes to me, it begins with one verse, Matthew 7:3, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Like are you really when you're grumbling about your family, your partner, the church like are you actually looking at the log in your own eye? Remember this is the gospel, it humbles us. When we know we're saved by grace, like we know and we know that darkness that we were in before Jesus pulled us up out of it, like we're constantly checking ourselves to see am I sinning, is the flesh guiding me? This is real talk, these are hard topics and questions. Paul is saying, “All of these things have serious consequences.” He's saying, “Don't toy around, don't mess with idolatry, sexual immorality, putting God to the test and grumbling, just don't do it.”

I've been a little hard, this does hit close to me. I'm really soft sometimes. I feel like things are often too hard. I constantly … When I sit down with people, I encourage them to push themselves, ask themselves, “What is God calling them to do?” Stay faithful to it, I struggle to it. Just the other day, on the 4th of July, I grew up in a household that had a 4th of July party every year. In my apartment, there's a pool, there's a deck. Everybody's celebrating around me while I'm studying, preparing for this sermon and I'm just asking myself, “How did I get here, how am I in Boston, several hundred miles away from this party?” Of course, everyone in my family is posting pictures on social media and this stuff, this thinking can come up just at any moment, but I know some of you are dealing with just much more difficult things, illness, divorce, breakup, abuse, infertility, recent death of a loved one, financial difficulties, loneliness, demanding jobs, unique callings and supporting people, dealing with any of those things, sometimes just caring, walking beside someone through those times can really wear on us.

At this point, you might be experiencing doubt and it's easy to question God. It's easy in these moments to turn to idols, turn to sex, turn to grumbling, turn to testing God. I often think of the Shire. My home town, it's like a small town. Everybody's happy, not many people leave and it's just this jolly place. When I have to face a challenge, I just want to go back to the Shire. I'm like Samwise in Lord of the Rings. What is it for you, what do you turn to in these moments? Is it God? Is it turning to Him and trusting, You've put me here for a purpose, You want my growth, you want my sanctification, You want to use me in this period to further Your Kingdom or is it an idol? Really ask yourselves that.

Really, I think a lot of you, I hope at this point, I've done a good job that I'm making you feel the weight of it all, like the Christian walk really does sound too difficult and it sounds terrifying. You're asking like, “Is God really good?” To me that brings up my final point, know your coach. In sports, there's nothing more disappointing for an athlete than when a coach puts a player in the wrong position. In college soccer, I played left bench and really butted heads with my coach. When a coach forces you to play in the wrong position, like you just lose your trust for him, you don't want to listen to his commands, you don't want to run those laps for him. You just want to quit playing altogether. In Christianity, we do not have a coach like that. Verse 13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.”

Paul assures us that God is faithful, He will hold up His end of the bargain. He will not desert us. He will not tempt us beyond our ability. He's not setting us up to fail. He will always provide the means of escape that we can endure. I mean in a lot of counseling, a lot of discipleship is telling people, “Do you believe this,” and then just walking people through that when it's tough. Isaiah 43 says, “But now thus says the lord he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel, fear not for I have redeemed you. I've called you by My name, you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with You and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you for I'm the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, Your savior.” Just really quickly, these verses can be abused. There's that idea of let go and let God, like I'm just going to keep living in sin, I'm not going to repent, I'm not going to turn in faith to the Lord and I'm just going to let God miraculously rescue me that is putting the Lord to the test.

My favorite artist Josh Garrels, he has a song on this theme called the Resistance. He says, “How do good men become a part of the regime? They don't believe in resistance,” like we have to put up a resistance, holding on is an active process. Seeking God's help as an active process. We need to fight. We just can't think we're immune to the dangers of these sins and idolatry.

Really quickly, I want to touch on is God good? Scripture tells us all over, He's good. Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change the shifting shadows. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever. The problem is on this topic of is God good, our modern idea of goodness, it's twisted. I think C.S. Lewis captures us really well, “By the goodness of God, we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness. By love in this context, most of us mean kindness, the desire to see others than the self happy, not happy in this way or in that but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, what does it matter so long as they are contented? We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven, a senile, benevolent, who as they say like to see young people enjoying themselves and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly sad at the end of each day, a good time was had by all.”

Now, I grew up about 200 yards from my grandmother. My mum had cable TV and a huge stock of fudgesicles. It was my routine for a couple of years in elementary school to go to her house after school, watch some TV, have a minimum of four fudgesicles and this is how my mum loved me. It was love, but it was somewhat of an indifferent love. It was focused on my temporary happiness in the moment. Now, my mom on the other hand, who got angry when I went home from my mum's and didn't eat dinner, she cared about my teeth, she cared about my health, she cared about what I was watching on TV.

She loved me with a fierce love. It was a more true love. If an acquaintance is struggling with a heroin addiction, we might in the moment be rattled. We might say a prayer for them. We might support their family with a message of encouragement, but we would go to sleep that night. If our parents or a spouse or a sibling or a child were in the same situation, we would lose sleep, we would fight. We'd fight hard to break the addiction, to get them into detox, to keep them clean. God's wrath against sin and idolatry, His desire for us to flee from sin, it's born out of His love for us. He knows it's bad for us. He doesn't want it to harm us. He knows that it can break our communion, break our bond with Him. He does what he can to remove it from the lives of His people.

A.W. Pink says, “Now, the wrath of God is as much a divine perfection as is His faithfulness, power or mercy.” It must be so for there is no blemish, not even a defect from the character of God. Yet, there would be if wrath were absent from Him. Indifference to sin is a moral blemish and he who hates it not is a moral leper. How could He who is the Sum of all excellency look with equal satisfaction upon virtue and vice, wisdom and folly? How could He who delights only in that which is pure and lovely, loathe and hate not that which is impure and vile?” Just like my mom, God's love for us, it's fierce and it's true. It's not apathetic. It's not distant. It's not set on our temporary needs, though oftentimes He does give us good and perfect gifts. It's so close. It's so real that He sent His son Jesus to come and die for us. That is the ultimate proof that He is good. He didn't let our sin go un-forgiven. Instead, He released the wrath upon His own son, like how could that be a cruel God?

In the moments when we want to give up, in the moments when we're tempted to partake in something that we know is sinful and idolatrous, we have to remind ourselves of who we are, we're children of God, slaves freed by Him. We have to remind ourselves that He has done the work. Jesus is a treasure greater than any family, greater than any friends, adrenaline-filled experience, reputation, comfort. Trials and temptations are going to come in this life, but we don't face them needlessly and we do not face them alone. With the help of o good and faithful coach, God, we can stand firm. Please join me in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we ask for forgiveness for turning from You. We ask for forgiveness for thinking that momentary pleasures, momentary joys, momentary feelings can replace You. Forgive us for not appreciating the fierce love with which You pursue us and with which you sustain us. Lord, help us to appreciate the burn of sanctification, help us to walk forward with the shovel in one hand and the shield in the other. Lord, help us bring glory to Your name alone, amen.

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Summary: In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Holy Scripture compares the Christian life to a runner running, an athlete training, and a fighter fighting. It's easy to read the text with a performance-based-mindset and say, great, if this is how I need to succeed in my Christian life, I'll do whatever it takes to earn my salvation. But Jesus offers us rest and a race. There's a way to run restfully and joyfully. Since Jesus ran his race to the cross with joy, now we can run our race with joy as well.

Good morning, welcome to Mosaic church my name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Shane Sikkema. And if you're new or if you're visiting welcome. We're so glad you're here. And if you'd like to connect with us we'd like to connect with you, no pressure. We do that officially through the connection card and the worship guide if you filled it out legibly. You can either toss it into the offering basket afterwards or my recommendation you redeem it at the welcome center for a little gift that we have lovingly prepared for you. With that said would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word.

Heavenly Father we thank you that you are a God who wants to see us succeed. You are a God who says that you have come to give us life and life to the full. And I pray Lord Jesus that you today show us that you are Christus Victor, you are the God of all victory. You triumphed over Satan, sin and death. Therefore, we can now live lives of victory, victorious lives running with you on mission, on the mission that you have for us, running in our lane not driven by pride or fear, but led, fueled by love and joy given to us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We pray Holy Spirit come into this space now, convict us of sin where there is sin, perhaps sin of complacency, perhaps sin of coasting in our faith, trying to get by on cruise control and that's when the enemy takes us out. I pray today show us Lord that you have a mission for us that you need us full throttle, full tilt living lives of meaning, living lives of purpose, living lives of impact and intentionality. We pray Holy Spirit come, speak, lead, convict, cleanse, and most importantly we just want you here. We long for your presence. And I pray all this in Christ's holy name. We long for your presence. And I pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

So, my wife goes to the first service and after the first service she always comes to me with feedback. And her feedback today was, "Jan you were too happy. No one in Boston likes that, they get freaked out." And the reason why, it's a happy sermon because today I'm talking about my two favorite things, which is Jesus and sports. It's two things in one.

Saint Paul today in first Corinthians 9, 24:27, what he does is he compares the Christian life to a runner in a race, to an athlete training and to a fighter fighting. The title of the sermon, I don't always have titles to the sermon, I have one today. And this is a phrase I'd like the stick with you. It's joyful running and joy fueled running. Joyful, you enjoy it. And that same joy is what keeps you going.

So Saint Paul started this church in Corinth, it's an urban center very similar to Boston. Young, hip, a lot of people coming from all over the Roman Empire to make a name for themselves in this place. And when Saint Paul started this church, and he was there in 51 A.D. when the Isthmian Games were happening. The Isthmian Games were only second to the Olympic Games. But everyone in Corinth thought the Isthmian Games were better just like everyone in Boston knows that the best marathon in the whole world is the Boston Marathon. I don't care what anyone else says. So that's kind of ... So as he's talking about these metaphors, he's using these illustrations, he is tapping into something deep, something that resonates. In a culture where bread and circuses, what people wanted, food and entertainment similar to us today. And for them in the Corinthian culture the epitome of humanity was a person with a noble mind and beautiful body. And that's what everyone was striving for, similar to Boston.

So the big idea of the sermon today is that everybody is running. Everybody is running a race. And we're all training for something. And that training is the habits of our lives. And we're either progressing or we're regressing. So if you're an athlete you understand, and even if you're not an athlete, you probably, you watch sports. You understand sports. And even if you don't in order to contextualize in Boston you should. This is title town, right? We go, how long has it been, like when the Bruins were in the finals we should have won. We should have won. We should have won that. But everyone was saying like we've got a drought of championships. The last championship was like four months before that was when the Pats won the Super Bowl and then the Sox.

So all these metaphors they really connect in our context. We understand that goals aren't deserved. We're not entitled to goals. We're not entitled ... And this is really important to know in our culture of participation trophies. Goals are earned. Wins are earned. That's what Saint Paul is talking about. And growth in the Christian life, training in the Christian life is very similar to training athletically. There is pain, but you learn to embrace the pain. You learn to get through the pain. Your threshold for pain increases. This is why we workout. If there's no sweat puddle, that nasty little sweat puddle at the end of your workout did you even do anything? That's what Saint Paul is saying. Where your nasty sweat puddle spiritually? Are you pushing yourself? That's what he's talking ... Okay.

When first Corinthians 9, 24:27, would you look at the text with me either in your Bible or on your app or on the screen. "Do you not know tat ina race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." This is the reading of God's holy and errant and infallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame up our time, three questions. Why do we win? How do we win? And what do we win? So first of all, why do we win? Saint Paul's presupposition here, and this is really important, he's saying we're not called to strive to earn salvation. This is really important. He's saying don't run in order to earn salvation. Don't run in order to get acceptance from God, the earn His love, to earn a place in Heaven. That's already been secured through the work of Jesus Christ, the Great Victor, Christus Victor. So because Christ has won we can now be champions, victors. We can be more than conquerors, is the phrase that Saint Paul used. The idea is that Christ already won the war. Now we are to go and win the battle. It's like in the Old Testament, God tells the chosen people, He tells Israel, "I'm giving you the promised land. It's yours. Now go and get. Now go and take it." Same thing, victory is yours now go and take that victory.

And there will be times when there are setbacks, when it seems like hope is utterly lost, like there's no chance. This is a whole history of humanity. Adam and Eve had it and it was perfect. And then hopelessness, hopelessness, hopelessness. God sends prophet after prophet after prophet. Glimmers of hope, glimmers of hope. And then again hopelessness, hopelessness, hopelessness until, until the Chosen One was sent. Until the one who should have made a lot more money. His contract is worth probably, I don't know, $150 million dollars at least. But he says you know what? I'm going to take the pay cut because I want to be on your team. He joins our team. The Chosen One. The Great One. You know I'm talking about Jesus Christ, right?

And in our lives there's always setbacks. And the setback is always the setup for the comeback. The sermon is going to be chock full of cliches. Just warning you right now and it's the last time I'm going the say that. And we're going to play a drinking game of coffee. Every time there's a cliché take a swig of coffee.

So every setback is a setup for the comeback because there was the ultimate setback. The Son of God comes. The Son of God, Son of Man, ultimate setback. He lives the perfect life we should have lived. He dies the death that we deserve to die. And He go into a tomb. And right here, and this is every single race, sports, game, sports, movie, there's always the comeback, right? We got to the point of no return. And out of nowhere, out of the oblivion He bounces back. What an incredible turnaround. This is the Cinderella story with the storybook ending. He hits it out of the park. It's a hole in one tomb. And then Jesus Christ comes back from the dead, the ultimate setback is the setup for the ultimate comeback. That's Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead.

Now, what does that mean to us? That means there's a wing of momentum. And in every game there's that swing of momentum like when the Pats were down to Atlanta a few years back. Remember that? There's a swing of momentum. You feel it. We're down 28 to 3. But there's a swing of momentum because we've got the greatest quarterback on our team who doesn't buckle under the pressure. Jesus Christ I'm talking about. And because there's a swing of momentum we can play with confidence because we know the end. I've read the Book of Revelations. You know what happens at the end? We know the end. Jesus wins. That's what happens at the end. Jesus wins. That's what happens at the end. Therefore, in all humility we can live lives of confidence and play like we got nothing to lose. Play like we're on a mission. His suffering, His death, His resurrection fuels our win. His suffering gives meaning to our suffering. His death gives us life. He plays in a way that electrifies all of us.

And I say all this to say this. When you read this passage in first Corinthians 9, 24:27, being the Type A person that you ar, being the performance driven, performance identify driven person that you are it's easy to read it and say okay, this is how I grow in the faith. I'm going to grow myself. I'm going to get my own victory. I'm going to secure my own salvation. I'm going to build my own identify. And that's what I'm saying Paul is saying, that's a very works based mindset. Saint Paul is saying at Jesus Christ has run the perfect race. And now His performance is counted to us and that grace fuels our race. Hebrews 12, 1:2, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." We're running. "Race that before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross," that's him running his own race. He ran his own race. "Despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

What propelled, what fueled Jesus? It was joy. The joy of seeing God the Father's delight in his sacrifice. The joy of seeing us come the faith. Every single one of our names is graven on his hands that giving fuel to his joy. Now because of His sacrifice we can also be fueled with joy to run the race that we have for us.

Every single sports movie when the champ wins the championship and this is every great championship, by the way. This is the NBA championship recently. This is every time Tom Brady, oh I'll just throw that name out there. He's a good guy. Tom, still praying for him to become a member of Mosaic and then we can buy Temple of Bai Shalom. Tom Brady, the last Super Bowl that he won there's always this moment at the end where he's like yah, yah! And he puts his other hand on his head, I can't believe it, but I can because I've been working for this my whole life and that's why I eat avocado ice cream. And he does this thing and then he always points to someone. He's like, he points to Gronk, he points to Edelman and they do the same and they point right back. And then this is what happens in the great championships. And the champ takes his jersey off. He brings it to the person that he pointed to. He signs it. There's an autograph. He gives it to the person. You know what the person does? They put the jersey on. And you know what it says on the back of the jersey that Jesus Christ gave us? It says his last name. Not that it's His last name, but you know what I'm saying. It says Christ.

This is what it means to be a Christian. Jesus won that championship, put on his jersey, you're on his team. This is what he, so that's why can we win? Because Jesus Christ has won.

Matthew 11:23, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden," that's people who are burdened with sin and burdened with self righteousness. Sin, I can't live the way I'm supposed to live. Self righteousness, I think I'm a good person. Here's my good works. And that's not enough. That burdens us. We bring that to Jesus and He says I will give you rest. But he doesn't stop there. He doesn't say I give you rest. Now I put you in a waiting room on nice comfortable couches until I come back to take you to Heaven. That's not what He does. He says, "Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me for I'm gentle and lonely in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." You know what He's saying? He's saying I saved you. I'm giving rest. You don't have to carry your own yoke of righteousness. Come to me. Partner with me. You know what a yoke is? Two animals with a yoke together and the stronger animal would carry more of the burden. And Jesus I saying this is why my yoke is light. I've done the work, but I want you close to me. I want you running with me.

And that's when you find ultimate rest for your souls. When you are yoked with Jesus, when you're right there ... Some of you have not felt the presence of God in a long time. Some of you as believers have not felt the presence of God in a long time and you're saying God where are you? I feel like I'm in a dry spot. I feel like in the valley of the shadow of death. God where are you? And Jesus is saying I'm right here where you, why aren't you yoked to me? Why aren't you on mission? Why aren't you running next to me? And that's when we get ultimate rest for our souls. So if there's a dissatisfaction in your soul, if there's any unease, if there's a lack of restlessness perhaps you're not close to Him.

And so Jesus invites us to run together. And we're not driven by our performance. We're led by his performance. And I run the race, I can run the race that I'm called to. I don't have to look to the sides to see who's running faster or who's running slower. I don't have to look at a person who's running better than I am and be envious of that person. I don't have to look at someone who's not running as hard as I am and being proud an condescending, I'm a lot better. I can run my race. God, what's the race that you have for me? And now self discipline isn't fueled by shame and it's not fueled by guilt. We're not running from failure, restlessness, lack of satisfaction. We're running from victory for victory. I'm not driven by pride. I'm not driven by fear. I'm led by the Holy Spirit, fueled by love and joy. And now my self worth, how I feel about myself, it's not based on my performance. It's based on His performance. This is how Jesus offers us both a race and rest. And we can run restfully in the race that he has for us. Joyful running, joy fueled running. So why do win? Because Jesus won.

Number two, how do we win? By the way, this point actually has 10 sub points. So if you've zoned out - 10, yeah - if you've zoned out we're going the go quick maybe. If you've zoned out come back because this part of the lecture will be on the exam. You know how you listen in class, you're smart enough. I don't have to explain this.

Sub point number one, let's go! And this is Tom Brady, let's go! That's what I'm talking about. With seven Os. Why seven? One for every single one of his Super Bowl wins. Plus his favorite one, the next one. So that's why seven. A lot of Christians who grew up in the church, they know the Christianese. They know the lingo. You know how to go to Communion group, you know what to say, you know how to pray. And you pray for traveling mercies and you know what I'm saying. And it's easy to cover up the fact that you're not doing anything. You're not in the game. You know the plays, but you're not on the field. You're on the bench. So Jesus calls us to step up to the plate. He says the ball's in your court. Don't just show up on any given Sunday. We don't want just the Sunday quarterback or a Monday morning quarterback. No one likes that guy. We want an every single day quarterback. That's what Jesus calls us to.

You know how a lot of people run the Christian faith? They run like people run road races in Boston where your friends come to you like, "What are you doing this weekend?" "Nothing." "You want to go run a 5K?" "Sure. I haven't run in six months, but sure, it'll be fun." And you pay your whatever, $150 fee and you've got, you get a medal so why not. And you do it for the instapick and you do it for the medal at the end. "So what are you doing?" "Oh, nothing." You roll out of bed, your friends call you. "What are you doing today?" "Nothing." "It's Sunday. You want to go run a race?" "Sure. How long is it?" "It's about an hour 20, hour 30 depending on how long the guy talks. But they give bagels an coffee and the band's really good and the space is okay. Let's go run the race." And that's, for many of you, and offense non taken, that's your Christian walk. Your race. And you're done with that and you go about the rest of your week. And what Jesus here is saying is there's no vacations from following Christ. You can't go on a hiatus from being a Christian just like you can't go on a hiatus from breathing.

Being a Christian is compared to life. Regeneration is like being born, being born again. You can't take break from food. You can't take, you can but, you can't stop eating forever. You can't stop drinking ... You get what I'm saying.

You know what Sunday is? Sunday isn't the race. This isn't the race. This is halftime. This is us in the locker room and this is the emotional inspirational speech. This is me trying the get you pumped. I'm trying to be Belichick, trying to get you pumped and saying we got to dig deep. We got to make our halftime adjustments. There are things we need to change in order to win. And do you want to win? Are we here to play or if not let's just get on the bus right now and forfeit.

There's a few professional athletes at Mosaic and I emailed them this week and I said, "Help me write the sermon because you've got a very particular vantage point." And two of them wrote back. And one is a sports psychologist. I've got a few quotes here. Shout out to them if they're listening. I'll just say their names. You know who I'm talking about. Abby D'Agostino, who's in the Olympics, married to Jacob Cooper who's a sports psychologist. And Liz Costello who's just a baller all around. So I emailed them, great stuff.

And this is one of the lines. If you train as an athlete to win it absolutely, absolutely changes how you look at everything. This is the lens through which you look at every single decision in your life. Talking about diet and nutrition, the supplements you take, what you eat, what you don't eat. Talk about time on your feet. Talking about social plans, travel plans, sleep. Everything is filtered through the question will this hurt my training or will this help my training? This is the spiritual life. This is what it means to be a Christian. You look at everything through the lens of the Gospel. Is this helping me grow in the faith? Christianity is an ultra marathon. It is, for the rest of our lives. But it's done one play at a time. One sequence at a time. One game at a time. And if you lose one play, if you lose one sequence or if you lose one game you win or you learn. You keep, you get back up and there's always grace that keeps you going.

Point two, sub point two, pain is weakness leaving the body or the soul. Time under pressure builds strength. It does. Same thing spiritually. Diamonds are made under pressure. So are muscles. So strength, perseverance, endurance, it comes with pressure. We're refined by fire.

And this is what Saint Paul is saying is that there are sacrifices to make. Just like you already make sacrifices for what you think is important in life. Where are your sacrifices for your run after Christ? Where are you sacrificing? And yeah, the sacrifice is painful in the beginning. Just like if you haven't worked out and you're like, "I need to workout." That first workout, man you dread that thing. Anything but that. That first run, that first time, oh no! And as you're going through you're like this is the worst, this is the worst. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Why am I ... But then you're done you feel so good. The endorphins start kicking in like you, they, a little soreness. You're like okay, all right. And you string a few of those together and then you start craving it. You start craving that pain, that sacrifice. You begin to find pleasure in being under the pressure. There's something there. Our world, we've been spoonfed this lie that comfort is where it's at, pleasure is where it's at. Stay as far away from sacrifice and pain as possible. And then we're just a hollow shell of our potential self. You find your true self when you're under the pressure.

I'm sure you've heard this poem, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times." By men we mean humans of course. I didn't write this one. "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times." So true. Apply it to the church in Boston. Christianity in Boston. 100 years ago, a ton of churches around here, that's why the, the Freedom Trail right now is dead people and dead churches. That's the Freedom Trail. There, I saved you three hours. But all those churches, all those church buildings used to be full of people proclaiming the Gospel, people worshiping God, people on mission. What happened? They got comfortable. They go endowments. They got housing allowances and all that. And what did that, that led to weakness. And then the weak men created the hard times. And that's where we are. We're in hard times. We're at the end of that poem about to start the beginning of that poem. So that's what, you know, that's why you're here. That's why you're at Mosaic.

There's a lot of churches where you can be a lot more comfortable on a Sunday morning, a lot more comfortable. There's a reason why I do what I do because I'm trying to make Navy Seals out of every single one of you, to be on mission together for the Lord Jesus Christ to conquer this city with God's love one soul at a time. You know what I'm saying.

Strong souls, strong spirituality, strong heart. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Question. I thought weakness is good in Christianity? There's a good weakness and a bad weakness. The good weakness is, this is what Saint Paul talks about. When I am weak then I am strong. When I'm desperate in the Lord. Good weakness is humble. It's a presence of faith and humility. That's Second Corinthians, chapter 11 and 12. Bad weakness, it's the presence of fear and pride. And sometimes God sends pain into our lives to expose fear, expose pride that things that are pulling us away from the Lord.

Point number three is discipline freeze. This is true in absolutely everything. It's true in your studies. It's true in music, sports, job relationships, focuses, your focus finances, driving, language. Like when you discipline yourself to study something, when you discipline yourself to study and practice you get free to do it. And here's another quote from one of our athletes. She said, "When you're intentional about training, intentionality bleeds into each lap, gym session, mile." And even when we resent that discipline, when we resent that pain, when time goes by and you leave that season of training you always look back to that season of training with longing. You miss it.

So if you played a high school sport or a college sport then you graduate and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to go workout at the gym." And it's never the same. You know what I'm saying. And by the way, living in the city is a sacrifice. And if you're called to living in the city because you're on mission for the Lord, it's a sacrifice. I know and I complain about it all the time. Oh, not enough space. I've got neighbors on all three sides and I've got four kids. But deep down inside I love it. I love the sacrifice. If I didn't have the ... I'm telling ... And I know people who moved away and they write like, "Man, we still pray for you guys and we miss it. We miss that sacrifice." There's something there.

We thrive under discipline. Every single one of us. We thrive when you got schedules. We thrive when we're in a routine. We thrive when there are rhythms in our life. Just like children thrive with set times. This is the time we wake up. This is when we eat. This is when the diaper change happens. Every parent knows this. And I figured out, I've cracked the code to the routine of every single one of my daughters, I've got four. I'll just share with one. My third daughter is a Katerina. She's four. I figure out her daytime nap schedule. I cracked the code. This is how we go.

A half an hour before she's supposed to take a nap I say, "Katia, you're taking nap in a half an hour." She says, "Okay." She got a half an hour grace. She feels good about that. And then I say, "Okay, now you got to go to the bathroom." She goes to the bathroom. And then she puts on her little pajama and then five minute, little story time that's read to her on YouTube. I discovered this little old lady that reads stories. It's the same thing as me reading and it saves me time. We do that and then five minutes done and next, "Dad, don't forget the vitamin." I give her a little multivitamin, feels like a candy. And then I lie down with her. Five minute massage. We start with the upper back, middle back. We do the waves. We go up and down. And then arm, arm, arm, face, face, out. Routines, really important. So what's that to say? That's to say you need to discipline, you need to figure out what works best for you, for you to thrive. Water can be channeled powerfully. And there's a thing called jet sauce streams where it's focused water and it can cut through metal. That's what discipline does with us.

First Corinthians 9:26. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not as one beating the air. So he's got the metaphor of a runner. Now he's got the metaphor of a boxer. And he's talking about shadow boxing. Now if you box, shadow boxing, there's nothing wrong. It's actually a good thing to do. The first thing when you go box and the coach, he teaches you the one, two. The hook's three. Upper cut, four, five. And then six. It's good. And he says go stand at the mirror and just do that one, two, three, four, five, six.

And Saint Paul is not saying don't do that. He's say don't shadow box when you're in the ring and it goes ding, ding, ding, and you got to fight. You've got an opponent. You've got Mike Tyson in front of you. And you turn around and you're like, "I'm not fighting that guy." I don't blame you. Mike Tyson, even now, if you see videos of him now, I still wouldn't fight him. And you turn around and you start shadow boxing in the corner. That's what he's saying. He's saying a lot of Christians are doing that. You know who that guy is? That's the person who all they want to do is study theology. All they want to do is Bible studies and listen to podcasts and all they want to do is go to conferences and they don't want to fight. You got all the training in the world and Saint Paul says you've got to train and you've got to fight. You learn things you start implementing. Learn and do. Learn and, that's what he's saying. No runner runs aimlessly. No boxer shadow boxes in the ring.

True athletes, one of the things that separates true, an elite athlete from anyone else is just energy management. You just get so efficient at what you do there's no wasted energy. There's no meandering. And this is what Saint Paul says. We got to get efficient in our Christian walk. We got to know exactly where the path is. Jesus Christ said, "I am the way and the truth." I am the way. It's the narrow gate. It's the narrow path. Now keep running efficiently. Don't, no serpentine running back and forth.

Our culture, we live in a culture that applauds people running aimlessly just as long you run you'll get your participation medal. And Saint Paul says, it's actually offensive to ask anyone like, hey, where you going in terms of spiritual faith. Just be really sincere in your run. Saint Paul says no, that's not all that matters. You've got to be sincere. You also got to know exactly where you're going.

Matthew 7, 13:14, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. Frequency the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few." First Corinthians, 9:27, "I discipline my body and keep it under control." The word for I discipline my own body is hupopiazo in the Greek. And it literally means, and this is your footnote, I pummel my body. But it literally means I punch myself in the eye. He's saying I knuckle box myself. And here he's talking about the flesh. He's talking about keeping himself, I control myself. I tell myself what to do. I tell my desires what to do. I control my thoughts. I don't let my thoughts control me. I control my desires. I don't let my desires control me.

It's the same word that's used in Luke, 18:5 that says the only other time it's used, hupopiazo, "Yet because this widow keeps bothering me I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming." There's a flesh, there's a sinful part of our nature. This is the shadow self. And God is calling us to keep that under control by the Grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. And he used the word pummel to like, if you watch UFC it's the ground and pound game. This is where you keep your opponent on the ground. This is what he said you got to do that with your flesh. He's saying I make me obey me. By the way, it's not asceticism. This is really important. Asceticism is through external rules we control ourselves. That's not how Christianity works. Christianity isn't behavior modification. It's heart transformation. It's from the ... So if you hire a personal trainer, if you're like I need to get in shape. I'm going to hire a personal trainer. The personal trainer can make you work for an hour and you might hate every second of it. He's forcing you to do it externally. The best personal trainers, the best coaches, they put that fire in your heart. They give a dream of vision and now it's coming from the inside. That's what Christianity does. God changes our hearts.

So this idea of asceticism verse Gospel transformation, Colossians, 2:23, "These have indeed, talking about external restraints, "these have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." So how do we stop the indulgence of the flesh? Colossians 3:1-5, "If then you have been raised with Christ," if you're a Christian, "seek the things that are above where Christ is." She says discipline yourself to focus on Christ. "Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above not on things that are on earth." Watch your thoughts. "For you have died an your life is hidden in Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death," now that leads to action. So you vivify your affections for Christ. You get your heart on fire for the Lord by focusing on Christ and what Christ did on the cross for you. And then that gives you power. That gives you fuel to mortify sins. "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire and covetousness, which is idolatry."

Four, sub point four, defense wins championship. And here, we know this from sports and this is true in Christianity. You got to play defense in terms that Satan is trying to plant lies in your mind. Ephesians 6:10-11. "Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength in His might. Put on the whole amour of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the Devil." And the best defense is offense. A high throttle offense. So how do we do this? How do we fight the lies of the evil one? You know the truth. You study the truth. You love the truth.

Number five, you need the team. Running is usually an individual sport. You run. But do you know how runners train? In a team. Do you know how boxers train? Yeah, when you box it's one on one, but then the boxer wins and he gets the belt. And if he's good he's got multiple belts. They're all over. And then he's got his crew behind him. He's got all his trainers. He's got all his sparing partners. It takes all of that. This is what Saint Paul, he's saying Christianity's a team sport. Why is church membership a thing? Why do we do church membership? Because we want you on the team. You need the team. There's no "I" in team. Whenever I hear that I always say, "Yeah, but there's a me. But there's no you." So you need the team and the team needs you. That's, I could say more, but you get the point.

Six, study the game and know the playbook. This is, we do that through Scripture. You got to know ... You know how, like the great athletes, the ones who want to leave a legacy? What they say about them is he's really a student of the game. Are you a student of the game? Do you know your Bible? If you went down to Mini Mosaic Dear Christian, would the kids in Mini Mosaic know more Bible verses than you do? I'll just leave that there. Let's meditate on that. And they know a lot of verses. That's what I'm saying. So do you know your Scripture. And by the way, when we say the strategy, when Mosaic talks about strategy and this is how we do things. We do three things. We do services. We do community groups. And we do service teams. Why do we do that? It's not arbitrary. We study the playbook and this is the, that's the strategy from the very beginning. This is what they did in Acts, chapter 2.

Okay, number seven, nutrition. When people start working out the first things they want to do is, okay, give me all the supplements. What kind of whey protein, I need some casein protein, I need some creatine BC AAs, a little glutamine. What do I need? What do I need? And that's important. You need to add stuff. It's also probably more important to take stuff away. If you're diet is terrible it doesn't matter how much stuff you add you're not going to get anywhere. And a lot of Christians, this is how they, like their sin, obvious sin in your life. And you're like, okay, what the stuff I got to read? What are the conference I got to go to? Let's deal with this first. The junk food in your life that comes in through eyes and ears and a lot of time it's neutral.

Let me just give you and example. Hebrews 12:1. "Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every way and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance. There's sin that clings closely. And there are also weights, seemingly neutral, they're going to way you down. And perhaps this is, you know what it is for you. So you got to get rid of that. There's helpful consumption and there's harmful consumption. Athletes talk about pre-hab and rehab. But the most underrated thing that separates elite athletes from anyone else? It's nutritions doing all the little things to get the W.

Number eight is listen to the coach. Are you coachable? Are you teachable? When you read things from Scripture, when the Lord Jesus Christ obviously convicts you through the Holy Spirit, do you just close off your ears or do you listen? And the best coaches were always players just like Jesus Christ. He knows exactly what you've gone through, therefore, when He tells us how to live He tell us from a position as God and experience as a human. And by the way, this is how discipleship works. You learn something and now you're a coach. In every good team a great coach says, okay, sophomores, you learned something freshman year. Now go teach the freshmen. This is how discipleship works. Freshmen need to learn from the sophomores. Sophomores, you need to coach. It's virtually the same thing with the Christian walk. You find someone who hasn't been Christian as long as you, hey, let me encourage you. How can I help you in your walk? Freshmen, are you teachable or do you show up with a big ego and say, "I've listen to John Piper's sermon. I know more that you."

Number nine, don't cheat. No shortcuts. This is First Corinthians 9:27, "But I discipline my body and keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." And the word for disqualified here, it's counterfeit. He's saying I keep running. I keep running to make sure, to prove the authenticity of my faith. That's sounds kind of intuitive. I thought Christianity is once saved always saved. I don't like that term because that like saying I started running at some point and then I sat down on the bench and I'm still in the race. No, that's not how that works. It's once saved, always persevering. That's what Saint Paul is saying. I started the race and I'm going to continue running that race every single day to get to the end because once saved, always persevering because I don't want to be disqualified. That's the tension. No one is beyond the reach of grace, but also no one is beyond the need for grace. We need it on a daily basis to keep, to keep going.

Number 10, obviously, don't forget to thank your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is after every championship and the athletes, the Christian athlete's given the microphone. "Hey, Tim Tebow, what do you think?" And he's like, "First of all I just want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." I love that. I love that so much. I don't care if it's a Jesus juke, I don't care. Do that in your life. Are you grateful to the Lord? It keeps you humble and hungry and holy.

Point three, what do we win? This is important. First Corinthians 9:24, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?" That's in the Isthmian Games. In the Christian walk there's more than one prize. But there's no participation trophy. There kind of is where it's like First Corinthians 3, you're barely saved from the flames of fire. You don't want to be that. Since prizes are available for every, what are those prizes? And what he's saying is everyone is running, believers and unbelievers are running, like unbelievers are running in the rat race for the cheese and believers are running in the right race for Jesus. So what's that for Christians? What is that to run to get the prize? What is that?

You know when King David, when he's about to fight Goliath, he's like yeah, I'm going to take him out. But first what do I get? You know that? Because there was an incentive. That's good. The Christian should ask what are we, what's the win? What's the "W"? And I'll show you. First Corinthians 9:24, "So run that you may obtain it." He uses the Greek word kridino. It's used in several other places and it's really important, kridino. You can gain something, obtain something, win something, kridino. So just roll with me for a bit. If you can gain money, this is James 4:13, "Come now you who say "today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit." Cost benefit analysis.

What's the cost? I got to move to another town and spend a year there. What's the benefit? I'm going to make a lot of money. Kridino. You gather profit. Jesus uses the same phrase when he's talking Matthew 16:26, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" Now he's saying do a cost benefit analysis. What's the benefit? You get the whole world. You get all the money in the world. What's the cost? You lose your soul. Now is that worth it? No. He says the same thing in Luke 9:25, "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" You lose yourself, you soul, you suffer. You suffer for the whole world and then poof! The whole world is gone and so is your soul. Instead what do we run toward? We run to get Christ. He's the ultimate treasure. He is more valuable than all the riches in the world and all of life itself.

Philippians 3:8 and 23-14, "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake," what's he doing? He's doing a cost benefit analysis. Is it worth being a Christian? There's a cost obviously. You've got to sacrifice. Is the worth it? Of course it is. "For the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ," kridino. Everything else I ever had it's all rubbish. All my riches, it's all rubbish. "Not that I've already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Grace fueled running. "Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind straining forward for what lies ahead I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

For Saint Paul Christ was so valuable that death, he said, is gain. Same kridino. Philippians 1:21, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." So we run to get Christ and the we run to use our talents for Christ to gain for Christ. And this is the parable of time and talents, Matthew 25:16, "He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them and he made five talents more." Investments always feel like sacrifices. They do. When you invest money, when you buy stock it feels like it just disappeared. You money just disappeared, got drafted from your account into your E-Trade. It feels like it's gone. It's a sacrifice. But you do the cost benefit analysis because, and you do it because the benefit out weighs the cost. And he says Christ, that benefit, is worth any cost even dying on, in this life.

And then how, what do we gain? We pursue Christ to get Him. We use our talents to get for Him. What are we getting for Him? We're getting people. And I get this from Matthew 18:15, "If your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother." Kridino. We use our talents to help brothers and sisters who are going to the serpentine path, who've gone wayward. We bring them back. We suffer for that. We discipline ourselves to bring them. So it's worth it. And we suffer and we run the race in order to get new brothers and sisters.

This is First Corinthians 19:19-23, the very paragraph before our text, which shows you this is exactly what Saint Paul is talking about. Look at verse 19, "For though I am free from all I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them." Class, what word is that in Greek to win more? Kridino. And he uses it over and over. "To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win," kridino, "To those under the law I became sone under the law thought not being myself under the law that I might win those under the law. To those outside of the law I became as one outside the law not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become algorithm things to all people that by all means I might save some." So for him it's parallel, synonymous with kridino, to win someone is to save someone. Our win is to help people be saved. Saved from what? Satan sin and death, which is what Jesus Christ conquered on the cross.

That's why, what he's talking about, and this is my conclusion, in conclusion. My wife tells me my conclusions come out of nowhere. So this is on brand. And I do listen to my wife. I don't know if you noticed that. Happy wife, happy life.

What is the prize? In the Olympic Games the prize, at that time, that prize was a laurel wreath. It's nice. Wilts away, gone. Turns to dust. In the games, what's the word? Isthmian Games in Corinth. You know what the wreath is? This is ridiculous. It's made out of celery. No one likes celery. Here's some celery. You know celery, you burn more calories in chewing and digesting it than ... You know that.

And Paul, he's saying these people suffered to get celery. Guys! How much more so should we discipline ourselves, be willing to suffer? Make whatever sacrifice we need to sacrifice for an imperishable wreath? What's the imperishable wreath? Number one, it's the Glory of God. We get more of God. It's the joy of God. God says well done good and faithful servant. Well done. Now enter into my what? Joy. And as we enter into his joy we see people. We see people in Heaven that God allowed us, that God allowed us the grace of being used to draw them to Him and now they're in Heaven. Don't run the rat race to get the cheese that God is gone. Run the race that God has given you, the race with Jesus for the imperishable wreath. And his is what he's talking about. The joy filled running. This is joyful running. This is joy fueled running. Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father thank you so much for this time that you've given us. You are a great God and we long for more people to know how great you are. You're both good and great and we thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ who ran the race, who suffered the cross in order to get that joy that was set before our Lord and I pray motivates us by the same joy. Fill our hearts with joy and draw many more to yourself, perhaps even through Mosaic Boston and through us. We pray this through Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary:

To say we have a problem with entitlement in our culture is the understatement of the century. You're special, I'm special, everyone's special. This entitlement ethos has crept into American churches. We're taught that everything is a good gift from God. Once we have it good, however, we expect to maintain the goodness status quo. Now the gift morphs from grace to entitlement. We expect the same level of grace on a daily basis. God teaches us: don't fight for your right to be served; fight for your right to serve.

Transcript:

You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com

Heavenly Father, we confess that every single one of us struggles with pride. We are proud people, and we ask for grace to grow in humility. Lord we struggle with entitlement. We struggle with expecting people to serve us. We struggle with expecting you to serve us, to give to us. To exist for us.

And Lord, we thank you that you are a good Father and you served us. You gave us your son Jesus Christ, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God. A thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. When you came, you came not to be served, but to serve.

And ultimately you gave your life as a ransom for many, a sacrifice on the cross. You showed us what true love is. That love is sacrifice. Love is giving, love is serving. We thank you that you rose on the third day, and we thank you Heavenly Father, you accepted that gift, that sacrifice in order to serve us. In order to save us, not just from insecurity or low self-esteem, but from a judgment that we deserve for our sins.

I pray, Heavenly father, that you show us today that we deserve nothing. Actually, we deserve something less. We deserve separation from you eternally, but you instead give us grace. And we thank you for that. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. We welcome you Holy Spirit into the place.

Give us ears to hear and give us receptive hearts, and make us a people who long to serve. Who seek to serve and create a culture at this church, at Mosaic Boston. A culture of service. I pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

To say we have a problem with entitlement in this country, and not just this country, just people in general. To say we have a problem with entitlement is the understatement of the century. I grew up here. I grew up in Rhode Island, and I grew up in public schools. And even in public schools, I was, taught you're special. I'm special. Everyone's special.

Here, I don't want to knock, by the way, on millennials because that's everyone's favorite thing to do. That millennials at all narcissistic and they have a problem with entitlement. Talk to someone who works in the service industry and ask them what it's like to serve people who are baby boomers.

Just ask. I'm going to throw that there. Every single one of us, we struggle with entitlement. We expect things because we've been taught, we get these messages that you deserve love, you deserve happiness, you deserve comfort. You deserve the realization, actualization of your deep seated desires, and your deepest dreams.

And we buy into that narrative. We begin to expect things. I expect to be loved. I expect to be comfortable. I expect to be happy, and then when we don't get it quickly, like an Amazon Prime package in two days. Why am I not happy in two days? Like Uber Eats? Where's Uber happiness? I want that. That's the next branch of Uber. Where's that?

What happens when we have these unmet expectations is, it leads to chronic, disappointment. Chronic depression, chronic disillusionment unhappiness. Life doesn't give us what we think we deserve. Health doesn't give us what we think we deserve. Aging, what a trip that is, doesn't give us what we think we deserve. We get angry, we grow bitter, we start blame shifting.

By the way, this entitlement ethos, it's crept into the American church. We are taught that every good gift comes from the Father of lights. God longs to bless us and He does. But when He blesses us, we get used. We get used to the blessing. It's like a baseline blessing and now we work to maintain that status quo of blessing, and anything below that baseline of blessing now feels like a curse.

It's like if you got all As in high school, and you get to college and you got all As in college, you're that person. And you meet that one professor, and there's always the one professor who is fighting, single handedly fighting great inflation at the university. He believes that C, is average work. That's what a C is. A, B, is above average. Nobody gets an A.

When you get that B, the very first B of your life, it comes like a swift kick in the gut. It's like Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps, back in his prime. We just all expect we is gold all the time. When he gets a silver, he's bombed out, were bombed out, everybody is bombed out. Behavioral psychologists call this idea, anchoring. And it has actually basis.

This phenomenon of anchoring has expression in the Holy Scriptures. We see that in particular in the life of Job. Job's baseline of blessing was super high and much higher than most of us. Then he loses everything. And he's heartbroken, but he still loves God.

How? How do you keep loving God? And he gives us his theology. He gives us his secret to loving God despite losing everything. He says this in his heart, his reference point, his anchor was not God's blessing, it was God.

Even when he lost everything, he still had God. And he said this, "Naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return. I don't deserve anything." Everything in the middle is grace. Grace kills entitlement and replaces it with gratitude. That's what actually can allow us to be happy. Experience true happiness.

Job didn't first say, the Lord took. First thing he said was, "The Lord gave." Everything I have is grace. And even if the Lord takes that, I still have the anchor of my soul, which is Jesus Christ. When we know we deserve nothing, we can be grateful for everything and grace changes everything.

The big idea of the sermon today is don't fight for your right to be served. Fight for your right to serve. Don't fight for your right to be served. That's entitlement. Fight for your right to serve other people. That's what gracious people do. Grace filled and gracious.

I just set the context. Last week we covered 1 Corinthians 8. In which St. Paul, calls Christians to give up their rights for the good of others. Mature Christians are to give up their rights to eat meat, those sacrificed in temples, in order to serve those who had weaker consciences.

In Chapter nine, he illustrates how he himself gives up things that he could have claimed entitlement to, could have demanded. He gives it up. In particular, he's talking about financial support. St. Paul planted this church in Corinth. He was a church planter. It was a startup church.

Often, I have a hard time actually telling people what I do for work. They're like, "What do you do?" I used to say, pastor, and no one knows what that means, because they think priest. And they're like, "Why are you married?" Then they start thinking things. Then I used to say minister, and they're like, "Minister of Foreign Affairs? I'm like, that's not helpful.

I used to say life coach. I'm helping people live their best life now. I used to say, a motivational speaker. That's what I am, trying to inspire. My latest iteration is, I came here to do a startup church. People are like, "What?" "I'm a spiritual entrepreneur. This is what I do."

That's what St. Paul is doing. He's a spiritual entrepreneur. He goes into Corinth. He went into urban centers and he plants a church, but he didn't have finances to do it, so he bootstrapped. He funded the whole operation by being a tent maker. He worked in a leather shop with Aquila and Priscilla, and he would make tents at night in order to get this church off the ground.

What he's saying here in 1 Corinthians 9, is, "I could have demanded a salary, but I didn't because I want to communicate that the gospel is free to you because someone else paid for it. Jesus Christ." And this is what he saying, "I could've demanded, but I didn't for your good."

In the same way, whatever our rights are, whatever we think we're entitled to, we can give that up. It's not our money, it's our time. It's not our talent. We can give that up in order to serve those that God has brought into our life.

This idea, right? The service... today we're going to talk about in the church. But this idea of serving other people has to do with every single relationship. That has to do with husbands and wives. The key to a successful marriage is out serving one another. It's self denial. Baby, how can I serve you?

That's my wife's favorite phrase, "Baby, how can I serve you?" Okay, I've got a list. Then she's a godly woman. You know what she's like, "How can I serve you? Like, "Baby I got a list too." This is parenting. How can I serve my kids? I've got four daughters. How can I serve them? I can be generous with time, talent, and treasure. As husbands, wives, children, siblings. Neighbors, bosses, employees. Out serving one another. This changes the world.

Today we're in 1 Corinthians 9:1-23. What I usually do is, I read the whole thing, but it's a long text today. It's a long text and also you faithful Mosaic members are responsible and you read the newsletter that I craft every single week. And you click on the link at the very bottom that says, "Here's our text." And it's 1 Corinthians.

You've read the text. I don't need to regurgitate that. We'll just pretend I read it and after I read it, I say, this is the inerrant infallible, authoritative word of God. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Okay? I'll leave the Bible open, because we actually preach the Bible here. Amen.

You're allowed to Amen. I love Amen-ers. When I hear someone Amen, I feel like I'm playing tennis instead of golf. It's back and forth instead of... I have no idea where that went.

1 Corinthians 9:1-23. Three points. We've got every right. That's verses one through 14. To give up our rights. Verses 15 through 18, for the greatest cause. That's 19 through 23. First of all, we've got every right. We've got every right, and he begins to this talk in 1 Corinthians 9:1-2.

He says, "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord? Are not you, my workmanship in the Lord, or my seal? If to others, I am not an apostle, at least I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord."

This is what he begins with. He's saying, "I didn't choose this job. I didn't choose to be a spiritual entrepreneur. I didn't choose to be an apostle. I didn't choose to be a pastor." And by the way, St. Paul, was one of those gifted people who's ever lived. He studied under Gamileo, which is the highest PhD that you can get in all of the Roman Empire.

Brilliant, brilliant guy. Zealous for God in terms of Old Testament law. Then Jesus Christ appears to him. Jesus saves him. "Saul, Saul, why have you been persecuting me?" Now Saul, becomes, Paul. He becomes a Christian.

Paul is saying, "I didn't have an option. Jesus called me to this job." And then he says to them, "You're my workmanship. You're the seal of my apostleship." What's he saying? It's not seal like on a letter if you've seen in the Roman Empire when Caesar would write a letter, folds it up or close the envelope and then puts a seal of wax or clay. Or just a soft metal. It's a guarantee of the quality and authenticity of the letter, or of the product, like a wine bottle. He's saying, "Do you want proof of my apostleship?"

You guys. Your regeneration, the fact that you're a Christian, this is what he's saying. It's like one of my daughters. My daughters get sassy. My eldest is 10, almost 11. We're getting to that age where, okay, I see glimpses of what's coming. And once in a while she's like, "Why should I listen to you?" I'm like, "Because I'm your father." And she's like, "Well, how do I know?

I say, "Look in the mirror. You're a spitting image of me. You are me with long hair." All of them, in particular my fourth. She is mini me with long hair. That's what St. Paul is saying. Like, "You guys became children of God, and by God's grace I was allowed to be used to help in that process."

Verse three. "This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" He's responding to people who say, "St. Paul, you should continue bankrolling the church. Let's not talk about money in church. It makes us feel awkward. Money has nothing to do with our walk with the Lord."

And he's like, "I just want to eat." Can I just... we're talking about like a burrito. Can I get the surf and turf at Los Amigos? Can we talk about that? And then he says, "Can I bring along the wife? Meaning that they were saying, the aesthetics in the church were saying, "A pastor should never get married."

By the way, this is where the Roman Catholic Church, they got this idea that priests shouldn't be married. They're like, Paul wasn't married, therefore priests should be married. This text is actually very inconvenient for that theology, because he named Cephas here. As do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord, Cephas have a right to take along a wife.

Cephas is Peter. Peter was married. Peter would take his wife along with them on missionary journey. This is all to say that the very first Pope... this is what the Roman Catholic Church teach us, that the very first pope was Peter. Well, the very first pope then was married. That's very inconvenient to this idea that priests should be celibate.

Then he throws in the brothers of the Lord, take wives along with them. Meaning Jesus Christ had siblings. How did Jesus Christ have siblings? Because, Mary, Jesus' mother and Joseph, his stepdad, they had children after Jesus. This is very inconvenient to the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity.

One verse, shatters all of that, and how do they explain? It's hard to explain, but their theory is that the Lord's brothers, the children of Joseph. Joseph had a first wife and then those kids he had with that first wife, and then he married Mary.

These are things that you have to do when you come up with a doctrine and then you go to scripture in order to justify the doctrine. That's not how the Lord teaches us to form doctrine from the scriptures. That's how we do it.

1 Corinthians 9:6. He continues. "Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?" Barnabas was a Jewish Christian. He's from the island of Cyprus. He joined St. Paul on his first missionary journeys and this is a start up. Pastors to start the church. This is what they would do. They would fund the whole operation. And people just expected that.

Verse seven. "Who serves as a soldier at his own expense?" Rhetorical question. The question is its own answer. Nobody. "Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit?" No one. "And who tends a flock without getting some of the milk." He saying, just imagine a soldier who enlists and is expected to fund his own ammunition. My wife said I'm extra passionate today. I don't know.

No, no soldier does. And then how would that impact morale with the soldiers? If you got to pay for all this stuff. Then how many new soldiers would enlist knowing that they have to bank roll the whole operation, the whole war effort. If farmers aren't allowed to eat of the harvest that they produce, how hard are they going to work the next year? By the way, this is the problem of communism.

This is why communism didn't work and the Soviet Union fell apart. My parents immigrated there from 1989. My dad was a manager of a company, and he got paid less than the employees. Well... Edgar knows. He's from Romania. How hard do you think my dad worked? He tried and then after a while he's like, "Forget this." That's why the Soviet Union fell apart. Because they didn't read, 1 Corinthians 9.

If you're a shepherd and you're not allowed to have milk from the flock. How are you going to care for the flock? You care for the flock by clocking in, caring for them 9:00 to 5:00 and clocking out. This is why it's so important that he chose these three professions. These three professions that there's no work life balance.

If you're a soldier, you're a soldier. You give up a lot. You gain duty, you gain honor. You gain responsibility. Farmers. Talk to anyone who's who owns a farm. You're always thinking about the farm. This is your life. To talk to anyone who has cattle or someone who's been a shepherd, you're always thinking about the sheep, about the cows.

This is a common sense principle. He says, if you work hard, you should benefit from the labor. In verse eight, "Do I say these things in human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God is concerned?

This is really powerful if you meditate on this for a little while. He points to the Old Testament, and he points to not the moral law, but the ceremonial and the code law. This is case law in the Old Testament. Finds a verse, he does, about oxen. That God put a verse in the Holy Scriptures about oxen, about caring for oxen. Don't muzzle the ox when it's working because it gets hungry, and it wants to eat.

Don't muzzle because God cares about animals. That's what he's saying. Not just Peter. Peter will get mad if you're muzzling ox, but God cares because God loves animals. If you have a pet steward that pet. God cares for your pet. If you have a puppy, you're a cat person. That's fine too. God cares. My brother has fish. You know what I learned? Really nice people have fish. He's got two big fish tanks. He's the sweetest guy ever. That's why I need to learn from him. I need to get some fish.

God cares about fish. And this is what he's saying, "If God's so cares about animals, how much more so does he care about people created in his image?" That's what he's saying. And by the way, these three examples that he has, he's talking in particular about pastors and ministers. Evangelists, missionaries, but these principles apply for all of life.

What he's saying is, he saying that a pastor needs to be strong in the mind. Needs to be strong in the heart, strong in the hands and strong in the back. This is what he saying. A soldier doesn't just go to war. He strategizes. That's the mind.

A shepherd. What makes a shepherd effective is that he's nurturing. He's a caring heart. What makes a farmer effective? He works with his hands and gets things done. What makes an oxen effective? Your consistency. You're just plotting. Strong back, strong mind, strong heart, strong hand, strong back. What's he saying? He's saying that God cares about an integrated spirituality for all of us. It's an embodied spirituality. That God cares not just what we do with a spiritual life, but that needs to impact every single aspect of our lives.

Verse 10 he continues, "Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for us sake because of the plowman and the plowman should plow in hope. And the thresher, thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more."

It says that the principle is, if you start a farm, you can get to eat off the harvest. If you start a business, you get to eat off the equity. If you start a church and people are blessed spiritually, that there's some kind of physical remuneration. And he says this is common in all of life. People get paid for work and services provided for value add.

Now, this is really uncomfortable. I just got to mention this. You think I want to be preaching this? We're just going in order. It's uncomfortable to talk about money in the church. And one of the reasons why is because of prosperity theology. Because a lot of pastors have abused the office and the influence that God has entrusted to them, in order to make a lot of money for themselves.

St. Paul isn't teaching here prosperity theology, but he's also not preaching poverty theology. Prosperity theology is when a pastor abuses the church for his own benefit. There's also poverty theology, where the church abuses the pastors and the pastoral staff in order for their own benefit.

I'll give you an example. I grew up in a Russian Baptist fundamentalist church, an immigrant church. These ideas formed in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, it was against the law to pay your pastors. People got used to this idea that pastors never get paid. No one in the church gets paid.

People are still called to preach. They're still called to minister in the church, but they also have to provide for their families. There's that added burden. There's only a limited amount of margin and energy to go. These pastors would invest in their jobs and work hard and then they will work at the church. Then they've got their family and one always suffered.

You either do great at your job and you do great in your ministry, your family suffers. Or you do great church and you do great in the family, you lose your job. And the sermons are always bad. I grew up listening to terrible preaching. Terrible, no offense taken. There's a running joke in the churches that I would always go to. The running joke was, "Hey pastor, how do you prepare your sermon?"

And he would say, "I prepare my sermon on my knees." I was like, that's so spiritual. What he meant was, when the choir is singing because it's not spiritual church with that choir. He's sitting there, and he's writing the sermon on his knees because he's about to go preach.

Here's the thing. Everybody suffered. I grew up going to church and services where two hours, there were three preachers and they were always bad. They were so bad. I didn't like church, I didn't like the Bible. It's a miracle I'm even a Christian. That's what he's saying, don't abuse.

The other thing, he compares the ministry to hard... these are hard jobs. A soldier, a farmer, a shepherd, oxen. What's ministry like? Ministry is hard. I get this question too often. Pastor Jan, what do you do the rest of the week?

I was like, "What do you mean?" "Well, I see what you do on Sunday. You work one day a week. What else do you do?" I was like, "I pray, and this week I'm praying for you, specifically to not ask that question.

Ministry is hard. Ministry is people. Ministry is helping people, and that's hard. One of the things... I went to seminary, and seminary does prepare you kind of for ministry, but some of the most important lessons about ministry, I learned not in seminar. I actually learned working with my dad. My Dad has a painting company, Vlad's Painting. If your house looks bad, don't get sad. Call Vlad.

One of my favorite things in the world is painting. Finish coat, painting my favorite. It's therapeutic. It's so therapeutic. You painting something, it's getting done. At the end of the day, you take a step back and you're like, "I actually accomplished something."

But there are steps prior to getting the finish coat that covers everything. You've got to power wash the house. You've got to scrape the house. You've got to sand. You've got to caulk. You've got to do oil based primer. All of these steps to finally get to do what you want to do.

One of my favorite things is preaching. Now for this to happen. You know how much this scraping, the sanding, this priming, this caulking. That... ministry is hard. God views every vocation done to his glory as important. Your job done to the glory of God. Unless you're doing something illegal, if you are, stop that. You can't be a drug dealer to the glory of God, unless you're a pharmacist.

God uses vocations. That you add benefit, you benefit the people around you. Who've used them equal, yes? Satan doesn't. Satan does not view pastoral ministry as just one of vocation. He doesn't. My wife has a front row seat to the fiery arrows of the evil one. Pastor Shane and Kelly, same thing. When people come on staff on Mosaic, we sit down and we're like, "All right, we got to talk." You think ministry is just this? No. There's going to be things that happen in your personal life that you're like, what?

That's all to say that we as a church, we want to invest in our staff and we've seen incredible ROI, Return On Investment, spiritually speaking from the physical investment. We have an all star staff at this church, and we didn't recruit anybody. Everyone on staff. The Lord sent.

For example, in 2012 Pastor Shane and Kara, they were visiting Boston from Iowa. They were visiting and we were still in the movie theater, the real movie theater. Theater number seven. And they came and the Holy Spirit told them during that service that, "You need to move and help this church."

They got here, and by the way, they are some of those powerful. They're quiet. Some of powerful people I've ever met. Pastor Shane could go anywhere else in the country and be a mega church pastor. He's that talented. But he's called, he's not motivated by money. He's called to be here. He still fundraising a portion of his salary. He does that because he's all in. Kara Bettis is our communications director. Incredibly, a powerhouse of a woman. Powerful.

Can go do anything she wants to make a lot more money. She's committed here. Raquel Ross. Oh my. Mini Mosaic director, Raquel. Huge personality. Lot of passion, walks in the room and just sunshine. Everybody's happy. She took over Mini Mosaic as a director when we had about 20 kids. Now there's 60 to 80 absolutely crushing it.

Caleb Savari, our Worship Director. 99% musically talented Berkeley grad. He's here. We're not paying... I can't say that loud. He's going to answer. Incredibly talented. You think you know how gifted he is? You need to listen to him. Not in tableau base alone when we have acoustic issues, but Shane Maloney, he really helps us out with that. Yes, you know Shame.

Listen to him in sound canceling headphones will absolutely change your life. Incredible. Tyler Burns. Where's Tyler. He's here somewhere. There he is. Tyler Burns feels called to youth ministry. Who in the world feels called the youth ministry? I'm called to administer to the hardest human beings alive. The most difficult life stage ever. Still developing. They're like Velociraptors. They don't know what's going on hormonally and Tyler, itself. Thank you Tyler. Respect.

Andy who? Andy in 2011, Andy by the way is Valedictorian. His high school went to Swatow. Incredible guy. Comes to Mosaic in 2011 gets converted. God saves him. Start setting up chairs next Sunday. Grows in his faith starts leading a community group, meets his wife, Joyce.

Then Joyce was finishing her medical school and they go to a Pennsylvania to do a residency. He goes to seminary with the goal to come back here. She takes half the salary that she could anywhere else in the country so that they can minister.

Andy is one of those gifted people I've ever met. Have you met Andy? He's got kind eyes. That's like Mark Ruffalo. I look Andy in the eye. He looks me in the eyes. I'm like, "Yes, I'm about to tell you all of my deepest secrets right now." That's Andy.

That's all to say... by the way , our staff meetings are so much fun. They're like too much fun. We get stuff done and we have a good time. That's all to say we invest in people here. We take these principles that St. Paul gives us and we invest in people.

St. Paul continues in verse 12. "Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right for support, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their fruit food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel."

Where does he get that? He gets that from Luke 10:7, The laborer deserves his wages. St. Paul just made a case that pastoral staff and people on staff at a church should be compensated for the good of the church. But he says, "I gave up that right." And he's doing this as an example to us. This is point two, to give up our rights.

1 Corinthians 9:15. "But I've made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprived me of my ground for boasting." He saying, "I prefer death to having anyone think that I am ministering for finding financial motive. That's not why I'm doing this," he's saying. "I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting."

This isn't in the sense of pride. It's in the sense of, I'm expressing the joy of what it feels like to be used by God. Boasting is subversive. Was he boasting in? In calloused stained hands from working with with leather. That's what he's talking about.

Verse 16. "For if I preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting, for necessities laid upon me, woe to me. If I do not preach the gospel." He says, "I can't not preach the gospel. That's how compelled I feel by the Holy Spirit. It's not my ability, it's not my gospel. It's not my calling."

Verse 17. "For if I do this of my own will I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I'm still entrusted with stewardship." Either way, God's going to use me and I need be a steward of what God has given me.

Verse 18. "What then is my reward that in my preaching, I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel." He's saying, "I'm not preaching for finance and I'm not preaching for fame. I'm not preaching for any of them. I'm preaching because I can't not preach."

St. Paul wasn't a mercenary. He's a missionary. There's a difference. You know what a mercenary is? You go to war because you're paid to go to war. He's saying that's not what I'm doing. I actually, I heard a talk by Jeff Bezos recently and he's talking about, how to start a business successfully.

And this is what he said. He said the difference between a successful entrepreneur and the not a successful entrepreneur... he said the difference is, like the difference between a mercenary and a missionary, and he used that word. He said, "You can't think that you're hired to do this job and you only work for us as much as you're paid." He used the word, missionary. That you're all in, that the purpose is what's driving.

This is what Bezos said. He said, "And missionaries always get paid more." That's a very worldly way of looking at it, but we, we're not just talking about financial remuneration, we're talking about rewards and heaven as well. You get? We're talking about more of the presence and the power of God. Don't think mercenary, think missionary.

Paul was willing to do anything to remove the hindrance in the way of the gospel. Sometimes that hindrance is supporting the minister. He couldn't say, "I'm starting a church, please pay me and I'll continue to starting the church." No, that doesn't work. But sometimes the hindrance is not supporting the minister. Sometimes the hindrance is not supporting the minister, because then the minister has to think about side hustles. This is what we think about in terms of our staff.

We know how expensive is to live here. I know what it costs to house myself and my wife. Were oxen. I'm an ox, she's an ox, and then we have four little oxen. Just to put in perspective, you go a restaurant. Table for how many? Table for six oxen. I know the pressures and our staff knows the pressures. To keep focused, to devote all of our energy, emotional, physical, spiritual, everything. That's what saying Paul. Why don't you be like Paul to say... we get pushed back one. Why don't you be like Paul, and Mosaic staff get jobs to support the ministry?

We could. Here's the thing. To be hired as staff at Mosaic, any one of these people on staff, hyper talented. I'm not afraid that they can't get jobs because these skills transfer by the way. If you learn how to work with people, if you learn how to work with kids. If you can teach kids, you can teach anybody. You know what I'm saying? I'm afraid if our staff goes and gets jobs, you're going is so good, it can take all your time. That's what we're worried about.

God's drawing the talent that he has. And we need to think about keeping it. St. Paul didn't take a paycheck. He gave up that right wise to communicate the gospel that this is what God does, is the gospel isn't you do something for God and he'll do something for you. That's not the gospel. That's every other religion. What the gospel is, God does everything for you and you just need to accept it as as a gift.

Point three for the greatest cause you give up your right. You have rights, but you give them up for the greatest cause. And that's Verse 19. "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that, I might win more of them."

He said, "I am free. The Lord Jesus Christ freed me." You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. We're free, but now we're free to serve the Lord. That's why St. Paul calls himself doulas or serfs, a slave of Jesus Christ. He uses his freedom to serve God. We're free to serve, and this changes, absolutely everything about absolutely every relationship.

There's two kinds of workers. There's free workers and there's slave workers or servants, doulas. The free workers, they're entitled to their wages. The servants are not, and this was St. Paul is saying. He's saying, "I'm a servant. I'm not entitled to getting paid." Just like Christians are servants to all of us, and we're not entitled to be ministered for free. We're not entitled to be pastors. That's what he's saying. He's shifting this mindset in everybody.

That's the mindset. That we're not entitled to anything. We're free to be generous with our time, talent, and treasure. Now we begin to look for opportunities to serve. This is our culture. This is our ethos. How can I serve you? This is why I'm praying that the Lord starts this crisis culture at mosaic. How can I serve you? How can I help you? How can I pray for you?

Paul generously sacrifices. As an example for us, to generously sacrifice both members and ministers. Paul inconvenienced himself deeply to do what he did. God is calling every single one of us to inconvenience ourselves. To sacrifice things in order to be used by God.

Some of you, God is calling to vocational ministry. Some of you, God is calling to be a missionary. Well, what do you have to do? You're going to prepare yourself, and then you start thinking about opportunity costs. I've been there. Like, if I go to seminary. Seminary is a three year degree. It's like a law degree. It's way too long.

For three years, I don't get paid. What's the opportunity cost plus what's the cost of seminary? Now you've got to the, plus what's the potential salary when I... it's not a Law salary. This is when you start thinking like this.

And Paula saying, no. You've got to stop thinking like that. If God calls you. God calls you. And God will provide. You can't, but answer that call. God's going to do what God's going to do.

I get the pushback from people that, why should we share to share the gospel? Why should we sacrifice for people? This is hyper Calvinism, that if God wants to draw the elect, He'll draw the elect. If God wants to save someone in the Middle East through a dream. Let Him save someone through in the Middle East through a dream.

Why do I need to do... God's going to do what God's going to do. And God's going to use you in the way that God wants to use you. But you got to decide are you going willingly and joyfully, or are you going to go begrudgingly?

One quick illustration. My daughter Melania is two. This week we went to my second daughter's concert there at a sing thing, and take me out to the ballgame. That's where they were singing. I got videos of that is great. As soon as walked in, and we walked into the door of the auditorium, she realizes we're not here for her.

She realized we are here for Elizabeth, my second grader, and immediately tantrum. Was my will for her to have a tantrum? No. Was my will for her to be there and joyfully celebrate her sister. Yes, that was my will for her.

Instead she went out in the hallway and I'm trying to calm her down, and she's wailing in the top of her lungs. She stayed there because that was my will. We're not going anywhere. We're going to celebrate Elizabeth. Does she enjoy it? No. Afterwards we walked downstairs and there's a little playground. She had a great time there.

Now it's my will to go home because it's getting hot, and I got work to do. Because I really work, and this is a job. And she wouldn't go. Her will was not in line with my will. You know what I did? I grabbed her, and I carried her home. She was screaming the whole time. I still got her where I wanted to get her. Does she enjoy it? No.

This is what God says. You get to be used by God. You get to be wielded by the Holy Spirit like a sword. 1 Corinthians 9:20. He starts talking about how he gives up his cultural rights in order to be a more effective evangelists to the Jews. "I became a Jew in order to win Jews."

"To those under the law. I became as one under law though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law." What he's is that among Jews, he observes the ritual life. Though he doesn't have to because the ceremonial law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Within limits of God's word and Christian conscience, Paul takes on the cultural and the social expectations of Judaism, when it was necessary to witness to the Jews.

No bacon, I'm going to eat kosher. I'm going to dress like they dress. He says I'm going to talk like they talk. I'm going to practice, celebrate the festivals that they celebrate in order to be a good... I'm going to go into their world. I'm not going to adapt the message. The message stays the same, and the messages is offensive enough, but I'm not going to offend them with my behavior. I'm not going to offend them with with ceremonial and cultural issues.

Verse 21. "To those outside of the law, I became as one outside the law." He's talking about Greeks and gentiles. "That I might win those under the law." He didn't force them to live like Jews. He would eat meat with them. Meat that was even offered to idols.

Verse 22. "To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak and I have become all things to all people. That by all means, I might save some." Verse 23. "I do it all for the sake of the gospel. That I share with them in its blessings."

He says, "I became a student of peoples and of cultures. Did I have to do that?" Did he prefer to eat kosher? Probably not. Did he prefer to spend time with pagans, and talk about culture? No, of course not. But he entered into their lives in order to speak truth in a way that they would understand. It's easy to error on both sides.

For example, some Christians like the Amish withdraw from the world, and they become so culturally distinctive that they virtually have no impact on the world. And others are so much like the world that they lose their holiness and they lose their difference in the saltiness and the light, and they compromise the gospel. There in the world, but they're also of the world.

Jesus calls us to be in but not of this. John 17:15. "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world." Jesus was a friend of sinners, but Jesus was all so holy.

We're on the spectrum of being in the world, but not of it, do you follow? Are you distinct? Do people know that you're a Christian? Do you have non-Christian friends? Or are all your friends Christians and all you want to do is spend time with Christians? You've got to be in but not of. We contextualize. It's contextualization, not syncretism. We don't add personal offense in neutral. That's what he's saying. You get the point.

1 Corinthians 10:33. And I got to say this. I get a lot of push back from Christians who say, but I'm not an evangelist. I'm not gifted that way. The super elite navy seal Christians, they're gifted as evangelists.

When God calls you to Himself, he calls you to the mission. Every single one of us. St. Paul here, that's how he thinks about. Look at 1 Corinthians 10:33. He uses the same language as at the end of verse nine.

1 Corinthians 10:33. "Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved, be imitators of me as I am of Christ." Christ could have said, "I don't think you have to be an evangelist." Oh, he came and he served. He didn't seek to be served. Why was Christ willing to do that? Because he came to save us. Save us from what? This right here, this is part of what compelled Christ. Is part of what compelled Paul.

It's part of what compels us. This is why Mosaic Boston exists. This is why we do what we do. Christ didn't come to save us from insecurity, and low self esteem and our failures. Christ came to save us from eternal damnation, that we deserve for dishonoring a glorious God. Our problem is sin, which is rebellion against the Holy God.

This is Romans 3:23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 6:23. For the wages of sin is death. And death in the Holy Scripture is not cessation. It's separation. You don't seize to exist when you die. You have an eternal soul. You don't see its separation from home, from God. And separation from God is hell. This is why hell is; you're separated from God for all of eternity.

And hell is an awful place. Scripture talks about hell as being a place of unquenchable fire, weeping, gnashing of teeth. It's not a giant party for the wicked. The rich man in the parable of Lazarus pleads with Abraham, "Please, send someone to warn my brothers so they don't end up here.

Romans 6:23. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. God's provision for our sin is Jesus Christ. God in the human flesh. Christ comes and he teaches us God's way and then He offers Himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sin, that God's righteousness demands.

Since Jesus is God, His death has infinite value. Since Jesus is human, His death atones for human sin. He stands in the chasm between us and God, to reconcile with Him. Then Christ after His crucifixion, He's resurrected is proof that His sacrifice was accepted. 1 Peter 2:24. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.

2 Corinthians 5:21. For our sake, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. Well, the work of Christ. how does the counted to us? How does it get imputed to us? All we do is trust, trust in His work.

That means we turn from our sin and we turn to Him and we trust that His work was enough, that our works do not redeem us. We're not trusting in our good behavior or our morality. Whoever believes has eternal life. Trusting in Jesus is like trusting your doctor. When he says, "Take this, it'll make things better." It's like trusting your airline pilot who says, "Get on. I'm going to take you where you want to go."

Trust in the simple good news that you've sinned against a good God, but Jesus Christ bore your penalty on the cross. And if you turn from your sin and trust in Him, all of your sins are forgiven. All of your entitlement is forgiven. All of your everything, everything, and you get God now and you get God for all of eternity.

Dear Christians, the more you feel the full impact of God's love on a daily basis, the more you appreciate the enormity of Christ's sacrifice. The more we will embrace and actually look for opportunities to sacrifice. To give things up, especially things that we are entitled to.

Love craves opportunities for its demonstration. God loves greatly. Now, we can love greatly. To love God and love people. Don't fight for your right to be served. Fight for your right to serve just like Jesus. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the time. The Holy Scriptures, Lord your scriptures are so deep. Sometimes I feel like we are just scratching the surface of the depth and we thank you Lord for the gospel. We thank you for reconciling us with you.

I pray, Lord, if there's anyone here who's not yet a Christian. I pray today, regenerate their hearts, allow them to trust in you. Give them grace to believe, and draw them to yourself. And continue to use us as a force for good, as a love, as an army, conquering this city with your love. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary:

The most important piece of real estate in the totality of your life is the 18 inches between your mind and your heart. God knows us in such a way that we can't BUT love Him. His knowledge of us generates love in our hearts for Him. In turn, God calls us to know people in such a way, they can't but love us.

Audio Transcript:

God, you are a great God, and you are a good father, and we thank you for that. For all the dads in the house, Lord, I pray that you strengthen their relationship with you today. By the power of the Holy Spirit, set their eyes on Jesus Christ, your son whom you gave sacrificially in order to redeem us and show us what it means to be a father. Draw their hearts closer to you, so that they understand, we understand, so the fathers understand who you are and what your heart is and so that forms us to be the fathers we ought to be and get to be to our kids. To love them, to delight in them in the same way that you delight in us, to remind them that they are beloved in the same way that you look at Jesus Christ, your son, and say, "This is my beloved son in whom I delight."

I pray that we delight in our kids, so that they never feel like they're a burden to us, that we never feel like we have to parent them, that we have to teach them, we have to... Flip that switch in our hearts, flip it upside down, so that we understand we get to, what a blessing it is to be parents and what a blessing it is to be a child of God, a son or a daughter. I pray Holy Spirit, come to this space and prepare our hearts not just to hear words for our minds, but to receive truth for our hearts, to transform our lives, to transform our where our will, teach us what it means to know God and Love God, to know people and to love people. And we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

What is your favorite food? The one thing. The one thing that comes to mind right now. Don't say it out loud. Unless you want to the person next to you. Just go there for a second. My wife loves Tiramisu. She loves Tiramisu. The good kind, not the kind from Trader Joe's in the frozen section. But if you had never experienced Tiramisu, I could describe it, I could try to describe Tiramisu for you, but that would do a disservice.

What's your favorite song? I could try to describe to you my favorite song by Louis Armstrong, It's a Wonderful World, I love that song. I could try to describe the lyrics, I could try to quote them, I could try to describe his raspy voice. I actually listened to it this morning on YouTube, so good. But the words, the words do a disservice to... What's your favorite painting? You could try to describe your favorite painting to me, that would do a disservice.

My wife and I just celebrated our anniversary on Monday, and I took her to the one of the most glorious places in the world, Fenway Park. She had never been there. And I had described Fenway Park to her. She doesn't like baseball, she doesn't... She's from Ukraine, that's not a thing. I tried to describe, and I was like, "Baby, but you need to be there on a Sunday evening in June. You need to be there. You need to walk and you need to have the smells of the sausage and peppers wafting over you. You need to walk in and just be amazed by the ambience, by the energy in the stadium." And she was. She walked out, and I said, "How do you feel?" She's like, "This was not what I expected." And we sat through four innings. That was enough for her. And then we went out to dinner.

For us to truly understand the greatest things in life, yeah, we need the words, we need the descriptions, but we need to experience it. We live in a city where real estate's super expensive. And a lot of our thoughts are dominated by real estate. Just thoughts of real estate, getting an apartment, how much they cost. I have conversations with people about this all the time. I'm there too. Many of us, we think that the most important real estate in our life as the place where we live. And I would submit to you that it's not. I would submit to you there're two really crucial parts like your real estate in life. Number one is the bed that you sleep in. For me, that's the most important.

But there's something even more important than the bed. It's the 18 inches between heart and mind. And for many of us, we're very cerebral. We turn to Christianity before the intellectual stimulation, and many of us are fine with doctrine and truths and exegesis and hermeneutics. The problem is unless that truth seeps down to 18 inches, give or take order of magnitude, into our heart and begins to transform our heart. And unless that true then turns into love that comes up into our mind, unless that happens, we don't experience God.

It's one thing to read on a page, God is with you. It's one thing to read that I am with you forever until the end of the age. It's something completely... Altogether different when you know that God is here. It's one thing to read Jesus loves you. It's something all together different to know that God loves you. He's proven his love to you. It's not just abstract, it's, he's given his son, Jesus Christ, to prove his love for you. And Jesus was willing to die on the cross for our sins because that's what it took for us to be reconciled with God, the father, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to indwell us. God calls us to a robust Christian knowledge, he also calls us to a robust Christian Love. To know God, love God, and then in turn, to know people and love people together.

Now, today we continue our sermon series called Prodigal Church through First Corinthians. And the Christians in Corinth, the brand new Christians, the church is only a couple of decades old, and Saint Paul who planted the church, he's now gone, but he hears about problems emerging in the church. One of the problems was that they're living in a counter Christian culture of a pagan culture. And one of the things they were wrestling is how do we interact with the culture? How do we interact with the neutral things in life where scripture doesn't say, this is wrong, and can we partake?

And so Saint Paul writes to them, and he doesn't say, recede from the world. He doesn't say, I'm asking you to leave the world. He's saying, "I want you to be in the world, not of the world." We're called to be salt and light. There's two temptations for Christians when it comes to figuring out how to deal with culture. One is legalistic fundamentalism. We recede, we've got our own little tribe, our own little subculture, or relativistic liberalism where, yeah, we kind of believe, but we're going to pick and choose al a carte, what fits our life from scripture. It's either sectarianism or syncretism.

In both fundamentalists and liberals, what happens is they begin to edit the Bible. Fundamentalists, they begin to add rules to the Bible. With the Bible, it says this is a neutral thing, and you need your conscience, and you need the power of the Holy Spirit to inform the decision. And they said, "No," that, "we're going to add these rules in a very pharisaical way." And then liberals want to add to the... they want to remove from the Bible things that just don't fit their current lifestyle.

What happens is that both are intolerant of one another. There's no love between the two. Both say, "I love you, and I'll have the relationship with you when you agree with me, when you begin to think like me." And the Gospel isn't just a third way down the middle. It's not just merging the two. The Gospel is all together different dimension, and that's what we're going to talk about today. We are looking at First Corinthians Chapter eight verses one through 13, and then we'll also cover the second part of First Corinthians 10. Would you look at the text with me? First Corinthians chapter eight.

Now, concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no god but one. For although there may be so called gods in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

However, not all possess this knowledge. But some through former association with idols eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed. The brother for whom Christ died, thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother's stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

First Corinthians chapter 10 verse 23, "All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor> Eat whatever's sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, for the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if anyone says to you, 'This has been offered in sacrifice,' then do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you. And for the sake of conscience. I do not mean your conscience, but his, for why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced? Because of that for which I give thanks. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the Church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved."

This is the reading of God's holy word, holy inerrant, infallible and authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together, knowledge without love, then love without knowledge, and then knowledge with love fused into one hole. Here in point one, Paul is moving onto the next subject. He's is going subject by subject and answering questions that these Christians have raised. He comes in, and he starts talking about food offered to idols, not really, on the surface, relevant to us.

I don't think you go into Whole Foods, and before you get that Nice grass fed... You don't say, "I wonder if this is demon possessed meat, demonic meat." You might wonder why the prices seemed so demonic before he go to stop and shop, but it's not an issue for most of us, but the principles are the same. God's word is timeless, therefore timely. What is the principle that he's dealing with? It's how do we make decisions concerning the gray areas of life? Like some moral issues are clear. This is right, this is wrong. This isn't morality issues that he's talking about. It's wisdom issues. Not right and wrong, but right and left.

So things where in scripture, it's not clearly forbidden. For example, alcohol, is it wrong for a Christian to have a glass of wine with dinner? Well, scripture says on the one hand, God sends wine to gladden the hearts of man. On the other hand, he says, "Drunkenness is a sin." That's absolutely clear. How about football? Is it okay for a Christian to watch football? How about mixed martial arts? How about hockey instead of an entertainment in general? What's okay to watch on Netflix and what isn't? Diets, what kind of diets should I pursue? Yoga, music, romantic comedies; all gray areas.

So these people, for them, the gray areas, can we buy meat that was sacrificed at the temple? Here, just to set the context, there were two places to buy meat. You can go to the Agora, which the main marketplace. The problem with Agora is it's more expensive. That's the Whole Foods. So they're wondering, "Okay, can we not go to Whole Foods? Can we go to Stop & Shop of the meat?" The stop and shop was the temple. At the temple people, would go and they would bring meat to be sacrificed, an animal to be sacrificed, and it would be prayed over. Why? Because the Greeks and the Romans, they were polytheistic, meaning they believed in lots of gods, and there were also polydemonistic, meaning they believed in lots of evil spirits.

And what the Pagan priests started to teach is that the evil spirits could invade humans by attaching themselves to food. So, if you want make sure that this food is clean, that there's no demon in it, you've got to bring it to the temple, it'll be prayed over, demon exorcized, sacrificed, and then you can take the meat home after the priests actually save a little for themselves. The little, I don't know how much it was. It was a nice piece of...

By the way, if you were making up a religion, this is brilliant. If you're a pagan seminarian, and you're like, "I am hungry, and I don't have a job." We need to tweak our little polytheistic worldview, and we need to say, "Those are demonic steaks right there. Bring them to us, and for a little cut for ourselves…" Whenever you analyze worldviews or religion, you got to say, "Is this something people would have made up?"

And I submit to you, Christianity, no one would've made up. That God himself humbles himself. What kind of God is that? That God himself sacrifices himself. What kind of God is that? So that's another sermon for a different day. Moving on. So the temple has now become banquet halls, and they become butcher shops. Now, for Christians who became Christians and now they're mature in the faith, they say... The mature Christians say, "Obviously, there's no demons in the meat, so why would I go to the Agora and pay more money? I'm just going to go to the temple and buy the cheaper... There's no such thing as demons possessing this meat. Once it's dead, that's it. We pray over it, it's clean," et cetera. Those are the mature Christians.

And it all starts with knowledge. First Corinthians 8:1, now, concerning the food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. Saint Paul is talking about, we know this truth, that strong mature believers possess knowledge, and that's verses four through six. He says, "Therefore as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence. And there is no God but one, for although there may be so called gods in heaven on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords. Yet for us, there is one God, the father from whom are all things and for whom we exist and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist."

So these mature Christians know that there's only one God, and they'd been marvelously converted from Pagan polytheism, and they know that foolish worship of idols is foolish. It's superstitious. They just see the meat. It's just meat. In First Corinthians 8:1-2, Saint Paul qualifies this idea of knowledge. He says this knowledge, when it's just knowledge, it puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.

He's saying if your knowledge is making you condescending, if your knowledge is puffing up, if it's feeding your ego, if it's feeding your pride, then you do not know truth as you ought to know it. If it doesn't make you more humble, if it doesn't make you more sacrificial, a greater servant of other people, then you don't really get the truth, because knowledge not infused with love is just... It's poison. It's undercooked meat. Now, this group, knowledge without love, that's many of us, naturally. This is introverts. And I is one. I'm one. And people who don't know me, they think I'm really extroverted because I'm up here, and I'm doing this. But my wife calls this, like this is what's going on, this pastor [Yang 00:18:21], she calls it... She has a way of describing... She says there's a Pastor Jan button. She's like, "You press that button, and there's a turbo boost."

My element is books, sitting in a room, by myself, sound canceling headphones. I'd rather be right here, in point one knowledge without love. This is introverts. You love to study, love to read, you love to learn. And a lot of us, we turn to Christianity for the intellectual stimulation, and there is much of that. However, the idea of, "I can't be around people because they drain me. Don't talk to me. I exhausted by people. I don't want to know you. I don't have time to love you." There's a problem with that. And if we only stay in the mind, if Christianity is only up here, it puffs us up, and what it leads to is just ugly behavior, we're cantankerous, judgmental, censorious, cold and hurt, knowledge now becomes a stick with which we whack others. No sensitivity to the feelings of other people. Facts don't care about your feelings. That's where we are. It's facts, the facts are right, but the heart is wrong, and we only have fellowship with people who are just like us. I have the truth, and you don't, therefore I'm better than you. It's still a power play.

First Corinthians 13:2 says, "If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing." I'm sure you've heard the adage, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. That's true. But also in Boston, you can't just have love. And that brings me to point two, love without knowledge. Because in a place like Boston, people don't care how much you love until they know how much you know. That's still part of it.

So you can't just say, "Let's just love, let's just be friends." And point two, this is naturally, this is where a lot of extroverts are. Let's just be friends. Let's just talk about tolerance. Let's just talk about unity for unity's sake. Let's not talk about doctrine. Doctrine divides. Let's not talk about truth and knowledge. Nobody has the truth. And if you say you have the truth, then I'm better than you. And by the way, that's also a power play. And by the way, that doesn't work because as soon as you say there is no truth, that's a truth statement, and also you're saying, "I have the truth. No one else has the truth," which just doesn't work.

These are people who turn to Christianity, not for primarily intellectual stimulation, but for emotional satisfaction. These are people who respond to the first crowd by saying, "Feelings don't care about your facts." So First Corinthians 8:7, "However, not all possess this knowledge," Saint Paul says, "but some through former association with idols eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled." He's talking about the newer Christians that after conversion, they're really sensitive to eating meat from the temple because it reminded them of their previous lives, of their pagan demonic worship. The associations are too real. They're too vivid, and there's a breach of conscience. They really still believe that these idols were real.

And here we need to talk about conscience for a little bit. Every single human being is born with a conscience. Now, if we can... through a life of saying no to conscience, ignoring conscience, spurning the conscience, that voice gets weaker and weaker. And when we are saved... When we come to Jesus Christ, we're saved by grace through faith, what God begins to do is rebuild our conscience, strengthen that voice, the volume begins to go up, and he rebuilds it through the Holy Spirit who's in us, through the holy scriptures and through fellowship with other Christians. So now the conscience becomes spirit sensitive, scripture saturated and well informed. It's one of the critical things that we as Christians need to always be asking is when it comes to these questions of gray areas, what does my conscience say? How does my conscience make me feel when I have a glass of wine? How does my conscience make me feel when I listen to a song, when I watch a particular movie? How does my conscience feel when I watch a romantic comedy?

I know all my conscience makes me feel. "Turn it off," that's what it screams. But I'm not going to bind you with my conscience. But is my conscience clear before God and before people? And what happens is in this church, the two groups start looking at each other with suspicion, with resentment, with bitterness. The new Christians look to the old Christians, the mature Christian, and they say, "You're compromising with the world. How are you eating that meat?" And in response to the old Christians say to the new Christians, "Well, you're being pharisaical, legalistic, judgmental, imposing excessive restrictions."

And then the worst part is the old Christians... Saint Paul talks about this. They start taking the new Christian that, "I'm going to help you grow." And they force them to go to the temple to eat this meat. And I'm trying to force you to grow in your faith, but because growth can't be forced, instead the newer believers, their conscience was stinging and there were being wounded. So Paul isn't just saying, all you need is love. You don't need knowledge. He's not pitting one against the other, because God wants us.

So to the old Christians, Saint Paul is saying, "You got to be loving. You got be sensitive." To the new Christians, he says, "Hey, you need to grow. You need to grow in the truth because God wants us to know him deeply." God revealed himself in a book, therefore he wants us to learn. He wants to study, he wants us to store it up in our mind. Understand the different doctrines and how they fit together in a coherent system that magnifies God. But when you understand this truth, if you are not deeply humbled by the god of the universe, for knew you before you were even born, and that to save you, he sent his son Jesus Christ to die an excruciating death, pours out his love, generously. Didn't come to be served, but to serve. When you understand all of that, the power of the Holy Spirit is what converts us, your heart is melted. It can't be melted. Your heart is filled with the love of God.

So that brings us to point three, knowledge with love. We need both. Are we really on point three already? Yes, but this is the longest point. So, just FYI. Knowledge is essential, but it's not sufficient. Love is essential, but it's not sufficient. Just like in any relationship, if you want a deep relationship with another human being, you can't just know facts about them like stats. You need to love them. And love isn't... it's essential, but not sufficient. You can't just say to the person, "I love you, now don't talk. I don't want you to ruin this thing that we got right here." It doesn't work. That's not a true relationship. Knowledge without love isn't knowledge and love without knowledge isn't love.

To truly know is to love, and to truly love is to know. This this how God talks about... Adam and Eve, when God walks his daughter, Eve, down the aisle and gives her to Adam and they're married, and the text says that Adam knew his wife. What's that communicating? That's communicating that knowledge and love are just flip sides of the same coin. To know is to love, and to love is to know. So that's why Saint Paul says... And this is verses seven through 13. I've already read it, but I'm just going to point some stuff out.

Like, "If you, as a mature Christian, are wounding the conscience of your fellow Christian by deciding to partake in one of the gray areas when it's against their conscience," he says in verse 11, "and so by your knowledge, this weak person destroyed. The brother from whom Christ died, thus sinning against your brother and wounding their conscience when it is weak you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brothers stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother's stumble." I struggle with lots of verses from the Bible. But maybe none more than that. How much, Saint Paul, do you love these people that you're willing to give up steak? How much? Silly example, but are there things in your life, like neutral areas, I have freedom to do this, that you wouldn't be willing to give up for the love of a brother or a sister? If so, God is revealing an idol right now who has an iron grip on your heart. And what he's saying is don't choose freedom over fellowship, over friends.

Let me just give you a couple of examples from my own life. I grew up in a Russian Baptist church, a fundamentalist Baptist church. Now, if you're not familiar with fundamentalist Baptist churches, I'll just explain it like this, these people who don't believe in fun, just a little too much damn, and not enough mental or too much mental, sorry. And as I grew up in this... I love these people, I love this church, but there's a certain subculture... And a lot of them came from the former Soviet Union.

And if you don't know anything about Russian culture, you know at least two things. That in Russia... Vladimir Putin, you know that part, and everyone's drunk. You know that part. Vodka is the thing. So when people became Christians in Soviet Union, they said, "No, no alcohol. We're absolute teetotalers." Because in their culture, you can't just have a drink. I actually went out, I did a study abroad. There was a slogan that they put on beer glasses. It says, "Beer is a waste of money unless it's a chaser for vodka." That's a real thing.

So in the church, it's a sin. It's a sin to have alcohol. And also, they don't... So they don't believe in drinking alcohol publicly, and they also don't believe in dancing. Dancing is bad. You know the primary reason why a lot of Baptists don't believe in premarital sex? Because it leads to dancing. Just kidding. The primary reason why we don't believe in premarital sex because God said so, that's the primary.

So when Tanya and I met... She comes from a Ukrainian Baptist church. I come from a Slavic Baptist church. And then we need to get... We're getting married, we get to get married now... We're getting married, and we get to play in our wedding. And half the people are from that part of my life, and half the people are from her work life, and then my school life. And t's like, how are we going? And really the question is, are we going to have booze, and is there dancing? That's really the question.

I know that this is neutral, and I know all of this, but I also know the conscience issue. This would have been a huge stumbling block. So we decided we're not going to do alcohol, we're just going to do a lot more food. We did like seven course meal. And people who commit this under gluttony, that's on their conscience. Just a lot of... And no one even noticed that there was... And we didn't do dancing. We just did a lot of testimonies. We did good music, there's a great band. And then at the very end, we had the band perform Louis Armstrong's It's a Wonderful World. And I side hugged my wife because we're Russian Baptist, and we swayed together. But in my heart I was dancing. I was absolutely dancing.

So that's just one example. Another example is just the way we worship. The way we worship when we get together. A lot of people come from different cultures, and they have different styles of worship, and we try to create a space where you can worship as the spirit leads you. But one of the things... If you've noticed, our band is so good, they're so good. But you look around, and people are into it, but it's not like, into it. You know what I'm saying?

So you can, but one of the reasons is because in this culture, where we live in Boston, for people who just come to faith or just show up to church, this right here, is so different. I had one guy show up and be like, "I like the music, but I didn't understand the Christian Karaoke part. Is that what's going on?" And it takes time to... It's worship. It's to get your heart ready. So as we worship, worship as you're led and be sensitive of the people around you.

Clothing; what am I free to wear? There's freedom. This is a neutral area. However, we need to be sensitive to how it impacts the people around us. Does it build up their faith? Politics. Lots of different people, lots of different political views. Be sensitive to the people around you in how you talk about politics. Romans 14:1-4. Those are just some examples. "Ask for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes that he may anything while the weak person eats only vegetables, let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld for the Lord is able to make him stand."

This right here is counter cultural. Let me explain. Saint Paul is saying, welcome. welcome the immature, the one who is weak. Welcome. Though this person's theologically wrong and though this person's spiritually immature, welcome this person. This is counter cultural and absolutely radical because our culture says, to accept a person, to love a person means to accept all of their values. Everything. That negative evaluation just feels unloving, therefore it is unloving. So if you say you love me, you need to accept all of my views. This is false.

ike if you're really friends with someone, if you really know someone, if you really love someone, you feel free to call them out when they're absolutely wrong. And they don't question, they don't doubt your love for them, so you get into a nice healthy debate, you have a conversation. We can love people without fully agreeing with them, and we can disagree with people without hating them. I love you, but you're wrong, and let me show you where and how.

So the word welcome here is [foreign language 00:33:47] in the Greek, and it means to pull toward, to bring alongside of you, to start a relationship, to bear with the weaknesses of the weak. This is the Romans 14:20-23, "Do not for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves, but whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not perceive from faith is sin."

How does St Paul try to reconcile the two parties? Does he just say, "Hey, cut it out"? That's not what he does. He does something a lot more powerful. He takes a different approach. It's a different paradigm. Here in verse three of chapter eight, he says, "If anyone loves God, he is known by God." That's something that we just read and we just keep reading because what we... when we read that, what we expect is for this to mean if anyone loves God, he knows God. That's not what the text says. This is absolutely unexpected.

Paul isn't saying if you love God, you know him. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is a lot more radical. He's saying, if you love God, you only love God because you have been known by God. The knowing God, knowing you perceives your loving him. And we see this pattern all over scripture. First John 5:1, "Those who believe have been born again, regeneration precedes faith, which is a gift." Both are a gift. If you love God, it's because you have been known by God.

He's saying God knows you so deeply, so powerfully, with such a transformational knowledge that you can't but love him. God knows us with the knowledge that is so loving, so intimate, such deep communion, so profoundly that it changes. God doesn't just know stats about you. He doesn't just know your resume, se doesn't just read your LinkedIn and say, "Oh, you've done a lot of good." He knows you with the father's love before the foundation of the world, but the same father's love.

On Father's Day, I always remember the birth of my babies. I was there. I was there. The holding your baby for the very first time and be like, "Oh, wow. Oh Wow." My wife has said no pictures until day two, because they still look like little aliens. But there's so much love. There is so much love. And then you get to know. You get to know in such a way that it fills the child's heart with love. And God knows us like that. He knows us in our sin, he knows us in our failure. Between past, present, and future, he knows all of our struggles. And even when we grieve him, he presses and perseveres, continues to love us, continues to know us, fully known and fully loved.

This is our greatest desire. And being known like that, it changes your heart. It ignites your heart. You can't but love God. And this is how you grow in your relationship with God, connecting knowledge and love. You Know God, you love God. Those connect, that right there, that grows you. First John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us." Now, this connection between knowing and loving, not only grows us in our relationship with God, it also grows us in our relationship with Christians, builds community, and it grows us in our relationship with non Christians. This is what it means to be missional, it means to spread God's love.

God knows you and he loves you. You know what that does to you? It humbles you. God loves me. What did I do to get God to love me? Nothing. He loves me even when I was a sinner, when I was unloving. He loves me because he is loving, and that changes me. That makes me lovely. It humbles me. But then there's a confidence aspect. The confidence aspect is, God adopted me as a son. God adopted you as a daughter, son and daughter. And when God adopts, he adopts for all of eternity, so now you have confidence.

You're humble, and you're confident. That right there is one of the most powerful combinations in the universe. If you get this principle, it will change every single aspect of your life. If you're both humble and confident, you become 99th percentile of the human population. Here's what I mean. A lot of people who are humble, it's kind of a fake humble. It's like, "Oh, I'm so terrible. I'm bad at everything," but still self focused. And no one wants to be around that person, because you're like, "Oh, you just drain me. You bum me out. Okay, I'm going to go talk to someone else." And then no one likes the proud person. The person who is walking around building walking Connor McGregor, no one likes that guy.

And here God says, no, no, no. Confidence, that's not grounded in you. It's grounded in the righteousness of Christ. Humility, we're saved not because of anything we've done, but because of Christ. You're humble and you're confident, and that, by the way, is the recipe, the formula for likability. Google it. And I found this... This is from scripture, but I also found out there's a YouTube video of how to be funny, how to be a comedian. And the formula is point number one... not that I studied this. But point number one is, be likable. And they say, how to be likable? You're humble and you're confident. That leads to likability, and people want to hear what you're saying.

You know who was the most likable person who ever lived? Jesus Christ. And he was also the funniest. I guarantee you. Because he's the lion and the lamb. Confident and humble, it absolutely changes you. Now, this changed the way that you relate with people. You begin to know people because you're humble and you are confident, because you're not insecure, you're not self conscious, you go out, you become outgoing. You want to know people, and you want to know them in order to love them, and you know them in such a way that they can't love you.

And I'll share this. This is something I'm still growing in. This is not natural to me. I'm a fallen guy, sinful flesh, I wrestled with pride and insecurity. Just like all of you, I need grace on a daily basis, I need the Holy Spirit. Here's how I've excused not being loving, truly loving. I lived down south for a couple of years of seminary, I know how to pretend to be loving. Jim from the office smiled like. Like that's the Pastor Jan button. Here's the problem with that. The Pastor Jan button begins to malfunction. Because [sound effect], like, I love you, I can do that in the flesh for a little while, and then my energy just runs out, and then I become of not a very pleasant person to be around or to drive around or to live with.

So one of the things that the Lord has been teaching me is that when God calls us to be loving, he doesn't just call extroverts to be loving. He calls everybody to be loving, and to really know people, and to go out into serve people, help people, encourage people any way we possibly can. So for the introverts, we, we have access to the holy spirit, and now, we have access to inexhaustible resources of love. So as an introvert, I need the Holy Spirit to love in the way that God has called the love. As an extrovert, you need the Holy Spirit to know God and to spend time in your room studying scripture and studying the truth. You need both.

So by the power of the spirit, you can know God and you can love God. By the power of the spirit, you can know people, and you can love people because your humble changes absolutely everything. Let me just give you a few examples. It changes the way you relate to everybody. It changes the way you relate to baristas at Starbucks. Few weeks ago, I went to... I do the mobile order, because they always mess up my name, and I don't want to talk to them. Deep inside, I'm like... And I do a mobile order for my Trenta iced coffee, just black. And I go there 4:15 because I need to be here for sound check around 4:40, 4:45.

I get there at 4:15 it's not ready. I wait 4:24 4:30, it's not ready. Finally, the guy gives it to me, and I demonstratively say, "No, I don't want it. I waited too long." And I walked out. And I went and preached a sermon on God's in love and loving people. And the whole time this Holy Spirit shellacking me, convicting me from the... After the service, I went like, "Dude, I'm so sorry." He's like, "Thanks man." There you go. Cool. So now we're friends. He's a cool... So this changes the way you interact with customer service representatives from Comcast. You know. That's a human being made in the image of God, and you may be one of the only Christians that he has a conversation with that day. So use the word wonderful.

I love the word wonderful. "Have a wonderful day." No one says that. Have a wonderful day. Blessed, no one knows what that means. Have a wonderful day. It changes the way that you deal with Uber drivers. It changes you as an Uber driver. It changes the way that you act in an Airbnb. And if you're an Airbnb host, it changes how you relate to these people. That these are people created in the image of God, and I have an opportunity to love them. Waiters, you're not entitled, "Oh, wait on me." This is a person that God is bringing into your life, and you have an opportunity to serve them with words and with money and with a tip.

This is the way that you relate to clients and employees. If you are a boss, it changes the way that you deal with your employees. If you're an employee, the way that you talk about your boss behind their back. Coworkers, you're not just there to compete in a dog eat dog culture. You're there to build them up as well. Roommates, students with professors, professors with students and neighbors, it's a mind shift. That God has called me not to be a consumer from everyone. What can I get from people? How can I use people for my own benefit? How can I love people instead to serve them, to build them up, to add worth, to enrich them.

Love kills this entitlement that we feel, it kills the prize. And then we don't just know what our mind or with our heart, we begin to see needs. And this is Titus 3:1, "Be ready for every good work." Meaning when you know people and when you love people, and you hear that they have a need, you're there. By God's grace, Sharia and Marion are in my community. They just moved to Pennsylvania and they got baptized at MOSAIC. They're from Iran, from a Muslim background, and they got baptized at MOSAIC. Sweet family. And I knew that he was moving.

And a few weeks out, I was like, "Sharia, if you need help moving, it's one of my spiritual gifts, to pick things up and put them down. I'm pretty effective at that. I can do it efficiently. And I love doing it, and I don't have to go to the gym that day." And he's like, "Oh, it's okay. Oh, it's okay. Oh, it's okay." And I was like, "Who's coming to help you move?" Nobody. I'm there 8:30. I'm there. Give me the address. You know one of the things that we were talking about? He was like, "I have a lot of friends who said, 'Let me know if you need help.'" And he said, "And I knew that they didn't really want to help."

I have this personality, I'm kind of intimidating. I'm working on that part too. But it's like it takes humility to help. It also takes humility to receive help. It does. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to ask that to be served. And then when we begin to serve, you know what happens? We realize that our greatest need isn't to have our needs met. Our greatest need isn't to be focusing on ourselves. Our greatest need is to help someone else and get our attention off of our needs because it's more blessed to give than to receive. It's more blessed to serve than to be served.

And you can study this. There's this thing called the altruistic, where when you help people through generosity, through philanthropy, you actually feel better about yourself. It changes your heart. And then what happens to the person that you served? It changed their heart. Now what are they doing? They're saying, "Man, I want to serve someone as well." And you know how people say it? "We should love the world. We should love all people." We should, let's start with one person. Start with one, and do for one what you would do for everybody. And this changes the way that people relate to you. And by the way, this is how you make friends.

This is really important. If you're zoned out, come back. This part's really important. They're all important, but... I meet a lot of people who moved to the city, and they're lonely. And they come to church and they say, "Where's my friends? Where's my friends?" I try to do this in my own relationships, and I try to do this at setting a culture, creating a culture of care and service where people are intentional, people are friendly. But one of the things I try to help people understand is when you come and you say, "Meet my needs," when you come and say, "Be my friend," that's not healthy. And no one really responds to that and says, "Yeah, okay. I want to meet all you need."

It actually eats the codependency and it leads to emotional crunches. But if you go and you be friendly and you say, "How can I encourage you? How can I speak truth into your life? How can I be generous? How can I enrich your life?" Now people are like, "I want to spend more time with this person." You'll become a radiator of energy instead of a drain of energy. People just are magnetically drawn to you. Everyone loves that. Now how do we get the strength to do that? How do we get the strength to love like that? We need the Holy Spirit.

And this is Galatians 5:16-22. But I say, "Walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law, and now the works of the flesh are evident." These are signs that you're living in the flesh, even as a Christian. Here's the signs. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity.

I'll just focus on enmity. That's where you're not getting along. Strife, conflict, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. This person is driven by selfishness. No one likes this person. No one likes the person who's just like me, me, me, me, me. It leads to ugly behavior, and no one wants to hang out with this person. And at this person's funeral, if you keep going down this path, there's not going to be that many people. Maybe this person's mom. That's about it.

Now, if you're driven by the spirit, where instead of using people to meet your needs, you're using your gifts to meet other people's needs, this is what happens, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control against such things. This is selfless. This is you giving of yourself. The more love you give, the more love you have, the more money you give, the more money you have, the more time you give, it seems like you'll have more time. Everyone wants to be around the loving person, the joyful person, the peaceful person, the self controlled person. This is a beautiful life. This is a life where when you die, that funeral is packed. Everyone's rejoicing.

I was at a funeral like this last Saturday, 91 year old lady, Babushkimania, happiest, joy filled funeral I've ever been to. I want a funeral like that, and not because people are happy that I'm dead, but people are just rejoicing. And the only difference between that funeral and mine is I want lots of brisket. And this is when you walk in the spirit. This is the unchanging principle of holy scripture, you find yourself by losing yourself. Christianity isn't about self help. It's about self denial. And when you deny yourself, you actually find your true yourself.

When you act selflessly, it's actually the best thing for you is it changes absolutely everything. You're transformed from a mindset of, "Oh, I have to do this." And by the way, I'm going to talk to Dad's real quick for just a second. When you have the spirit of God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you go from, "I have to" to "I get to." "Oh, I have to spend time with my kids, oh, I have to listen to them, oh, I have to provide, oh, I have to..." I get to. ids hate feeling like they're a burden. They love feeling like they're bringing delight to their parents. It changes marriages. "Oh, I have to take care of my... Oh, I have to take care..." How can I serve you? How can I build you up? How can I encourage you? It changes every... I get to do that. It changes absolutely everything. Where did Saint Paul learn this? First Corinthians 11:1, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ." He is getting this from the example of Christ. At the cross, we learn to imitate Christ's costly giving of self. This is true love, and it changes everything. Christ himself did the supremely costly thing for our good, dying in our place.

If you're not a Christian here today, I welcome you. I welcome you to become a Christian, a child of God, and not just through words for the mind. You know how I started with what's your favorite food? What's your favorite song? Christianity is the same way. You know what Christianity says? Taste and see that God is good. With the taste buds of your soul, welcome the Holy Spirit, welcome Jesus Christ, repent of sin, repent of pride, of selfishness, and allow your heart to be filled with God's love.

I'll close with this. Octavius Winslow, the sympathy of Christ, one of my favorite quotes. He says, "There is not a circumstance of our Lord's history which is not another form or manifestation of love. His incarnation is love stooping, his sympathy is love weeping , his compassion is love supporting, his grace is love acting, his teaching is the voice of love, his silence is the repose of love, his patience is the restraint of love, his obedience is the labor love, his suffering is the travail of love.

His cross is the altar of love, his death is the burnt offering of love, his resurrection is the triumph of love, his ascension to heaven and his sitting down at the right hand of God is the enthronement and the intercession of love. Such as the deep, the vast, the boundless ocean upon which our thoughts are now about to launch the sole muses in silent awe as it gazes upon this fathomless, limitless sea of God's love." Let's pray.

God, we thank you for this time that you've given us and the holy scriptures. We thank you God, for being a God that calls us to know you truly and to love you wholeheartedly. Make us people who know God and Love God, and know people and love people. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: We live in a world that tends to idolize both singleness and marriage, and at the same time treat them like a curse. Scripture is honest about the difficulty of life in a fallen world. Singleness and marriage both come with many challenges and difficulties, but Paul reminds us they are, nevertheless, both gifts from God. When properly used, each gift can point to Jesus and the Gospel in a unique way.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here along with Pastor Shane Sikkema, and if you're new or if you're visiting, I'm really glad you're here. We say that every week, but we mean it every week. We'd love to connect with you either in person after the service or if you would be so kind to fill out the connection card legibly and then you can either toss it in the offering basket afterwards or redeem it at the Welcome Center in return for a gift that we've lovingly prepared for you.

The connection card is also the place where you can write your prayer request or let us know if you're interested in baptism or if you, today, for the very first time accepted Christ as Lord and Savior or recommitted your life to him. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good Father, Lord, and you know our hearts better than we know ourselves. Heavenly Father, we pray that you today focus our attention on the love of Jesus Christ who loved us so much that he gave all of himself in order to get us. We thank you Christ that you did that. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are here, that you're amongst us. We pray Holy Spirit to minister today. As we talk about some sensitive things, I pray that you minister to those who are single and desire to be married, minister to them. To those who are single and same-sex attracted, please, Lord, minster to them. To those how are single and perhaps are dealing with breakup or rejection, please minister to them.

Lord, I pray that you minister to the couples who are married. We know that the enemy hates marriage and attacks it with a full-on assault, and I pray protect the marriages here. I pray, teach us to be gracious to one another as you're gracious to us and love one another as you love us and serve one another one as you serve us. Lord, I pray for any of those who are on the brink of divorce or even considering that. I pray you minister to them and bring them back and, I pray, rekindle their love for one another.

Lord, I pray for those who have gone through divorce. I pray minister deeply to them as, while the text doesn't have that much to say about divorce, but, Lord, your spirit can speak more powerfully than any human being, so I pray minister. Lord, bless our time with the holy word and we pray, speak to every single one of us and tell us exactly what you want us to hear, and give us grace to implement in our lives. And I pray for anyone who's not yet a Christian. I pray that they see just how glorious this vision of Christian marriage is. As great as it is, it's only a foretaste of the greatest relationship in the universe, that's your love for us. And I pray that those who are not yet Christians, they accept your love and are transformed by it. And I pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

So this is the part of the sermon where I say something to try to peak your interest, so that you keep listening to the rest of the sermon. The problem is, the joy is that we're talking about singleness, marriage, and sex today, so I got your attention, so I don't really need to set it up. But I will say this, Saint Paul is writing to a brand new church in Corinth. We, Mosaic, our new church, Corinth was a society that was saturated with sexual sin, it was a pagan society, and the Christians there were dealing with the same temptations, the same issues that we're dealing here in Boston Massachusetts so it's highly relevant.

Someone asked me recently, hey, every time I come to this church, you guys are talking about sex, what's up with that? And the reason why we do is because we preach through the bible and the bible talks about it, why? Because all of us deal with it, this is part of the human condition. And what scripture is trying to do is get us to think about spirituality, not as divorced from reality. Spirituality is an embodied spirituality. Therefore, sexuality and spirituality are inextricably intertwined. What we do in our body has an impact on our souls, and vice versa.

And the reason why God has designed sex as he's designed it, and says this is the way that you flourish personally, that your family flourishes, the people around you flourish, is because God, though he loves you personally, he does, but he also loves other people. And he loves society. And he wants culture to flourish. And every single one of us is connected to one another, so you hear people say, we're not hurting anybody. Well, if you sin against another person, you're not just sinning against that person if you hurt that person, you're not just hurting that person, it's a ripple effect that goes on and it keeps going, and hurt people, hurt people. And ultimately, even if you're not hurting each other, you're not taking God if you're sinning against each other of sexual morality. You're taking God out of the equation. God is hurt.

When we sin, we are sinning against God. Our moral decision impact God, and they impact other people. And what we talked about last week is that Christian, you're not your own. You were created by God, you're redeemed by God, that your body is not your own. So scripture tells us to glorify God with your body. As we talk about singleness, marriage, divorce, re-marriage, and let me just say this on the front end, life is hard, as you know. And because life is hard, singleness is hard. And marriage is hard. And divorce is hard. And remarriage is hard. And widowhood, it's all hard. Therefore, God gives us Jesus, he gives us the Holy Spirit in order to redeem us from our sins so that we catch a glimpse of the vision that he has for us, and gives us the spirit to realize that vision.

And I'll say this on the front end, as we talk about everything that we talk about, one of my favorite quotes is, "Where the real falls short of the ideal, grace abounds." So as we talk about God's vision for marriage, he's also extending grace to be infused in those places of brokenness in our lives and relationships. I said this last week, that we didn't really plan out this sermon series to coincide with the big things that are happening in the calendar, so last week, that sermon coincided with the beginning of Pride Month. This week's sermon, all week, I've been thinking about marriage and singleness, and then I remember, thank God, that my anniversary is on Monday. So God's been getting me to think about marriage, so it's 13 years, my wife and I, by God's grace. Monday we're celebrating our 13th anniversary so praise God for that.

You know what, seven years ago, a few years ago, I would have said no, no, no, no. And right now I'm taking it, yeah, thank you. Thank you, because it's work, by God's grace, praise God. And Pastor Shane is celebrating his 13th anniversary with Kelly Sikkema. They're celebrating on the 18th. So make sure to remember that and send them some kind messages.

So here's what I was saying about marriage. So were not for Jesus Christ, Tanya and I, as incredible of a woman and gracious, we would not be married. Because I am a sinner. I'm a terrible sinner. And not only that, the way I'm wired is, you know what I do for a living? I talk for a living. And I persuade people for a living. Now, imagine living with that, and arguing with that professional talker. So, praise God for grace.

Today, we're going to look at First Corinthians 7:1 through 12, First Corinthians 7:1 through 12. We'll cover some other excerpts from chapter 7. Would you please look at the text with me. "Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control."

"Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her."

This is the reading of God's holy and errant fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We're going to frame up our time in three points, God's heart singles, God's heart for marriage, and God's heart for divorce. Just a few comments there. First of all, God's heart for singles. How do you know whom God wants you to marry? How do you know if God wants you to marry at all? And to really understand this text, and to really understand this book, we need to understand the driving principle behind everything that Saint Paul says here, as he's inspired by the Holy Spirit. The driving principle is, that we, we're created by God, for His glory, and that's, if we're in that sweet spot of living for God's glory, he fills our hearts with joy.

So when he tells us about God's actual ethic, it doesn't make sense to us if joy's not a category in our world view. Because what the world tells us is, hey, the way to happiness is through pleasure, through sexual satisfaction, therefore, if you take away the most important thing to me, then how in the world do I get happiness? And one of the things that scripture teaches as a whole, is that there's a difference between pleasure, happiness and joy. Pleasure is felt in the body. You can be going through pleasure, enjoying pleasure, and still be depressed. Happiness is in the mind. This is why if you go for a run, the endorphins kick in, you're like, "Oh, I'm a little happier. Caffeine, oh I'm a little happier." You can be happy, and your heart is still empty.

And this is where God promises something deeper. And this is what every single one of us needs, we long for. It's the joy. Well, how do we get the joy? You don't pursue the joy. Joy is a by-product of glorifying God. "God, I want to live for you, not myself. God, I want to give myself to you. I want to serve you, not myself." So, the principle, at the heart of this text is, "Dear Christian, pursue the path that leads to greatest devotion to Christ, greatest glory to God. Choose the path on which, you can glorify God with every single ounce of your being for the rest of your life."

So, Saint Paul says if you can remain single, do it, because you have more time and energy to be devoted to Christ and glorify him, that's verse seven. "I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am." He's not commanding singleness, that's a special gift. But he is commending singleness. He's saying that singleness, and Saint Paul had the gift. Jesus Christ had the gift. Singleness provides certain advantages. You just have more time. You have more energy to glorify God. You just do more.

Therefore, here, I just pause, I want to say this side comment. It's a deeply unbiblical attitude to go up to a single person and say, "Hey, why aren't you married?" And by the way, I grew up in a church like, people who do this all the time, they go up, "Hey, how old are you? Why aren't you married?" Since we're here, okay, let's go. It's the same thing as going up to someone, who doesn't have a kid, they're married, been married for a few years, "Hey, when's the baby coming?" Same thing. That's like going up to someone and if they're shorter, "Hey, why don't you grow another foot?" It's like going to someone who's struggling with baldness, and receding hairline, "Hey, why don't you fix that?" Or going up to someone who wants a beard but can't grow a beard, like Pastor Jan, and be like, "Where's your beard Pastor Jan? My response is, my brother got my dad's beard, I got my mom's beard.

So don't do that. These are very sensitive pressure points. Don't do that. Don't go up to someone who has four daughters and say, "Hey, are you guys going to try for a boy?" "I did, four times." So stop, stop this. So don't go up to a single person and make them feel inferior if they're not married. The two most influential people in the world were not married. They impacted history like nobody else, and there're so many others, people who were single, John Stott, Jane Aus-. And incredible people live for the glory of God. So neither singleness nor marriage should be deprecated, neither is inferior or superior, both are gifts from a good giver.

The advantages to remaining single, and Saint Paul gives us a few. The first is, you just have more freedom in difficult times. And he points this out in verse 26. He says, "I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife." And then he quickly adds, that it's not a sin if you're married, verse 28, "But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that."

Worldly troubles, and he talks about present distress, what's he talking about? When's he writing? He's writing about 20, 25 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christianity begins to spread over the Roman empire. What does Nero do? What does Caesar do? Now he starts clamping down, he starts persecuting the church. Now people are dying for their faith. They're being crucified and they're being crucified upside down. And they are being burned at the stake. So what Saint Paul has said, he's saying, "In my spirit, I feel an impending persecution coming." And so one thing, to be martyred or imprisoned as a single person. Something totally else when you have family, when you have a spouse, when you have kids.

So practically, he says, if God's calling you as a missionary to a place where you are likely to suffer persecution and severe hardship, consider remaining single. If you're called to a ministry requiring lots of travel, well, that's not conducive to a family. Consider remaining single. Another practical element that he wants us to consider in terms of thinking about singleness, he says you just have more time. You have more freedom to devote yourself fully to God and his mission. That's verse 32. "I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord."

Here's the point. He's saying marriage takes work. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes energy to build the relationship, to connect the souls and remain connected to work through issues, to work through seasons. It takes time. And then if you have kids, oh my kids are so much work. This is a sermon in itself, but I'll just say this, the moment I wake up, I'm on, until the moment I go to sleep, where I fall asleep on the way down to the pillow. That's my life, that's my wife's life. People ask me, "Hey, Pastor Jan, why do you work out? Isn't it an idolatry issue? A vanity issue? Let's talk about your heart."

Honestly, it's not at all, it's just pragmatism. I need strength to carry my kids. Have you seen my kids? My youngest is almost two. People come up to me like, "So, when's he starting kindergarten?" In four years, he's starting kindergarten. "Your youngest is two? Here, I brought some clothes for a two-year-old." No, not even close. Honestly, if you are thinking about marriage, I'll let you carry my daughter around, I dare you. In crossfit, you got the medicine balls, I do that on a daily basis, with my kids. That's just one example. And I got four. It's work, and it's energy.

And what he's saying is, when you're single, you just have more time to devote to the Lord. And marriage is ministry. You do it for the glory of God. Children is ministry, you do it for the glory of God. Well, if that's your ministry, you don't have as much time for other ministries, it's just practical. Peter Wagner, he's an author and a pastor, he wrote about John Stott, who's a British pastor and author. And John Stott was single. And Peter Wagner talks about the impact of John Stott, his influence. Where Peter Wagner had to care for his family, John Stott is writing books in a month, book after book, preparing conferences. What he's saying is you just couldn't match the output.

So now the question if singleness is awesome, and it is, then why in the world would anyone get married? And Paul's like, well, I'll use his words, and this point two, God's Heart for Marriage. He says, number seven, "I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift, et cetera, et cetera." Verse 9, "But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion." Question, how do I know if I have the gift of celibacy? Well, the first question here is, can you control your sexual desires? And this is really practical, it's very human, and he's saying, if you can't control your sexual desires, perhaps you should consider marriage. If you're single and fighting sexual temptation daily, it's a constant battle that consumes all of your energy, that you're only focused on this one front, and you can't do anything else, he says, perhaps you should consider marriage.

Now, he's not saying that it's impossible to resist temptation if you're single. He's not saying it's impossible. Later on in First Corinthians, 10:13, he says, "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." He's saying by the power of the Holy Spirit, every single Christian, has the ability, by God's grace to be pure in thought and deed. But, if all of your energy's directed on this one battle, fighting this one fire, he says, perhaps the solution isn't more self-discipline, but a spouse. And of course, you still need self-control, even as a married person. And I would argue, you need self-control even more as a married person, because the battle shifts.

When you're single, the battle is, do not awaken love, you put it to sleep. You channel that energy into something else. When you get married, you'll awaken love, and you have to direct love, channel it into this one person for the rest of your life. It's a different battle. First Corinthians 7:2, "But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband." Should I consider marriage? Well, if you have a solid relationship with the Lord, you're experiencing incredible fellowship with God, and with believers. Do you still feel a tinge of loneliness? And where do I see this?

I this from the very beginning in Genesis. God creates everything, paradise, it's bliss. Adam is experiencing unbroken fellowship with God. They're walking through the Garden of Eden, together. God's spirit close Adam. It's still ... You know what is says in Genesis 2:18? This is before the fall, God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper for for him." There's still a tinge of loneliness that God chooses to meet through a spouse. Perhaps you feel something ... When I was single, and I had great fellowship with the Lord, I had great fellowship with brothers and sisters and Christian community, but I still felt a little loneliness. And I wanted kids. I've always loved kids. I used to always volunteer at Sunday School and volunteer in kids ministry. Summer camps, I was a counselor. I've always loved kids. And I wanted kids. Perhaps you feel something similar. Well, have you tried praying Genesis too over your life, in prayer?

And before you think about marriage, you really need to decide to what ministry God's called you to. When you marry a person, you're not marrying that person so that person gratifies you, that's not the primary reason. You marry the other person because that person is the one with whom you will do the most for God's glory. You create synergy together. You've got to be thinking power couples, spiritual power couple. With whom can I do the absolute most? And they've got to be thinking the same, to what ministry has God called you to?

C.T. Studd was a missionary in Africa. But he left his family. He pretty much neglected and abandoned his family the last 11 years of his wife's life. He'd only saw her for two weeks. Did a lot for ministry, but he abandoned his primary ministry, which was his family. David Livingstone did the same thing, left his wife and children for years to pioneer the gospel ministry in the interior of Africa. Accomplished much, but it marred their ministry. So if you're called to be a missionary, you've got to make sure that you have a wife who's there with you. If you're called, and you have a husband who's there with you. So you need to know your mission before you marry, because the purpose of marriage isn't just personal happiness. The purpose of marriage is to glorify God together. And every single couple has a ministry.

And while marriage and children, they bring a lot of joy. They're good gifts of God. But they're not going to satisfy. The most satisfying thing from my wife Tanya and I, the most satisfying thing, is to do things for the Lord together. You know what her favorite thing is? And now it's my new favorite thing? Because her favorite thing is my favorite thing. She loves going to the park and meeting new people, and telling them about Jesus. She loves that. That's her favorite thing. She goes to the park, she's like a rock star. She's like the mayor of Brookline, as she walks in. So now I'm right there with her. And that brings incredible joy as she sees people, thinking about God.

So friends, forget the idolatrous idea of, I'm going to get married, we're going to settle down, we're going to have a nice little house in suburbia, two-car garage, two cars, white-picket fence, not that there's anything wrong with that, 2.1 kids, a dog, and a cat. And, we might go to church when we're not traveling on the weekends, and when our kids don't have sports events. I'll tell you right now, I'll tell you what happens because I see this happen all the time. One year goes by, two years, three, and then you get bored. There's a thing called a seven-year itch, it's real. And that's where people just get bored of that life, it's boring. "Get that out of here."

So, if you're not gifted with celibacy, pray and look for Godly spouse, it's First Corinthians 7:9, "they should marry." Now I know this is frustrating for many of you. You're like, just stop, get rid of that verse, you've got to rip it out. We can't do that, we like the bible. So what do we do? If I want to get married, what should I do? I'm just going to share some practical Godly, biblical wisdom. Number one, you focus on personal growth and Godliness. That's number one. There's no one and nothing can satisfy as much as God. And seriously, what are your options? If you're single and you're like, I want to get married. What are your options? You can sit around sulking, feeling depressed, feeling lonely, perhaps wasting time with a frantic search for a companion.

Or, you seek God, the only one who could satisfy, the only true lover who completely satisfies. You seek him in his word, you seek him in prayer, read great books of theology. Listen to audio books. And then serve the Lord in some capacity. Instead of just sitting around and sulk, and channel that energy to serving someone else. And then God fills your heart with joy. And, what happens is, you start growing in maturity as you take on responsibility. And, if the Lord does send a spouse, and this is how he usually does it, you're serving, you're serving, you're serving, you're serving, and then someone next to you is serving, serving, serving, and serving. And they're like, I like this person. We're getting stuff done together, for the glory of GOD, GSD, get stuff done, Soli Deo Gloria, SDG, GSDSDG. We're doing it together. Let's do it together.

And now you're partners. You're a spiritual power couple. This is why I love this church. And I know that transient people are coming, going. But honestly, serve. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. I was here early today, and I see Godly people showing up early, 7:30, 8:30, showing up. They're giving their best hours of the best sweet-spot of their weekend, Sunday morning. And they're giving it to the Lord. Those are the Navy Seal Christians. Marry those...

Serve the Lord. If you want a Godly spouse, which you should, if you are a Christian, become the one that the one is looking for. Become the Godly spouse that the Godly spouse is looking for. How do you do that? You learn to follow Jesus on a daily basis. You wake up, you spend time in scripture, you spend time in prayer. I put on my sound-canceling headphones, and I'm listening to worship music, and I do that because I have four kids. So you do that on daily basis. Lord lead me, and you follow. And this is important, because how can you lead another human being, another soul, if you can't lead yourself? And if you can't lead another sinner, what makes you think that you can lead two sinners? And then, if you're two sinners together, what do you do when you make little sinners? And that's what they are. I've got four little sinners that live with me. Four roommates who contribute nothing to the rent, and eat all my food.

Learn to rest in the Lord. Learn to find ultimate satisfaction in him. And I know there're seasons where it feels like you're going through a desert, feels like the Lord isn't with you, that he's not guiding, that he's abandoned you. Joseph felt that for 13 years in prison. And God used all the time, preparing him to be vice president of Egypt. Sometimes God allows us, it's a blessing to go through a season that doesn't feel like a blessing, so that the ultimate blessing comes, and when it does, God gets all the glory. So get into scriptures, get into community group, get into church membership. Because if you can't commit to the bride of Christ, what makes you think that you can commit to a bride?

And this is in particular, I just want to talk to the gentlemen for just a second here. It's really just practical. You want to get married? You got to get a job. You got to get an apartment. You got to pay down the debt. You got to get some cologne. You got to get a haircut. You got to get a shirt with buttons, at least a few. You got to get a nice pair of shoes. And you can't wear white socks with black pants. There's this little practical element. And I can go on. I've got a whole thing. I can go on. But the way that you really you learn, you meet other Godly couples in the church. And if you're single, meet married couples and say, "Hey, give me an hour of your time. Give me some life coaching when it comes to this area of life. And in return, I'm going to babysit your kids." That's a win-win. That's ultimate, mutual upbuilding. That's what we're trying to do. The married couple needs the single person. The single person needs the married couple. Learn from one another.

The thing I just did with use cologne, and be presentable for gentlemen, my wife does, so she is a master of this. I'm not going to go into the details, but meet her. She's a Godly sage woman, and she knows, she knows things that you can't figure, so okay. Gentlemen, you got to get a job. If you want to get married, you got to be prepared to be the head of the family, the headship is a doctrine that's important. You're not the boss, you're not a bully or a king, you're serving, who gives himself away on a daily basis, for the good of the family. I'm sacrificing time, energy, everything. Now, do that to the people around you. And headship is really just this, it's your responsibility. Everything in the family is your responsibility.

Adam, you messed up. Adam, where are you? Eve was the first one to bite out of the apple. It's not an apply, whatever the fruit was. Jesus was, our sin wasn't his fall, but he took responsibility. In the same way, that's what headship is, even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.

Some of you, perhaps are thinking about marriage, and you've been dating for a long time, and you keep putting it off because of the ridiculous cost of weddings in our culture. It's ridiculous. I think the average is like, $35,000. It's absolutely crazy. Free tip, if you haven't been listening, this is the best part of the sermon so far. This is a free nugget. You're getting your money's worth. Monday weddings is where it's at. I'm serious. I'm absolutely serious. No one's thinking like that. The venues are all free. And you know, I'm free on Mondays. Saturdays are hard. Sundays, I can't do. And then you can haggle with the $35,000. How about $3500? And then you know.

Just practically, you got to care for yourself. You got to care for your body. How can you care for another person's body if you're not caring for yourself? Care for your could. How can you care for another person's soul if you can't care for yourself? So I'm going to share just a little of how Tanya and I met, just to give testimony. Testimony of the Holy Spirit's grace. Junior year in college, I was stuck in all kinds of immaturity. And then that immaturity worked itself out, in that I picked a fight with four dudes on Third Street in Providence. And I thought it was three, I picked a fight with three dudes on Third Street in Providence. And, I was doing fine, mind you. And the fourth guy came out of nowhere, blindsided me, and with a superman punch. I ended up in the hospital with a broken jaw.

As soon as I woke up, I knew, that was Hebrews 12, the Lord disciplining me. And I said, Lord, thank you. From then on, I got into every single bible study I could. And I started getting into the scriptures, spending an hour, giving my first hour of the day to the Lord. And the Lord used that season to grow me, right before my study abroad in Moscow. I went there by myself. My first Sunday there, I didn't know anybody, found Moscow Bible Church. Got plugged in immediately. Went every Sunday. Went every Wednesday to the prayer meeting. It was me, three little old ladies, and another guy named Constantine, who also had recently been in a fight, and God woke him up. It wasn't one against four, it was one against 12, but he was a national Russian wrestler so he took them all except for number 12, with a baseball bat with nails. True story.

So now, we're all beat up, and we're at this prayer meeting, with these three little old ladies. And they're edifying our souls, and we're encouraging one another. And we started going to the youth meeting on Friday. So we just grew. And then after that, that summer, I did a mission trip to Belarus, at an orphanage. I was just growing by leaps and bounds. I come back, my senior year in college. I realized, hey, I want to get married, but I was doing international relations and Slavic Studies. International relations because it sounded good, Slavic Studies, to pad my GPA, because I speak Russian. And then I was like, I'm not employable. Nobody wants that. So then I picked up Business Econ. I took nine economic classes my senior year. That's all I did. And then I did prayer and bible study. That's all I did senior year.

My friend, best friend Jarrod Lin, and I, he preached at Mosaic. He works for Campus Fit at Brown University. He and I committed to pray from Monday through Friday, 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM every single day of the year. And the prayer request, my prayer request was the same every time. "I want to be close to the Lord, and Lord, send me a wife," every time. They stopped asking me. It was actually such a big deal that New York Times found out that there's a prayer group at Brown University, there's actually Christians there. And they ran a centerpiece on a Sunday morning paper, about us. It was called "On a Christian Mission to the Top," May something, 2005. And it was a picture of me praying with Tim Havens, you only came that one time. And Jarrod Lin didn't get into the picture. You can Google it, it was the last time New York Times had a truthful piece. No, just kidding, stop, I'm kidding.

So, I got a job, moved down to D.C. My uncle was planning a Russian church in the D.C. ... I lived for a month in his house, and I painted his house for rent, in exchange for rent, and I saw their family. Godly man, Godly woman, four Godly kids. And I pray, "Lord, I want a family like that." And, some time went by, and I got a phone call from my dad, who said, "Hey, did you know there's going to be an evangelistic rally in Philadelphia?" Billy Graham, his translator was coming down. My dad said, "Let's meet in Philadelphia. I'll drive down. You drive up." We met there, the evangelistic rally was at night. So we need to go to church in the morning, so we go to this church plant in Philadelphia. and as soon as we got out of the car, I looked toward the door and there was a gal greeting there. And she was like an angel. And she still is like an angel.

I met her, "Hi," her name's Tanya. And I was absolutely smitten. She thought I was an unbeliever because I had spiky hair and no tie. And I show up at a Russian church, and they're like, you're a pagan. So I have no idea what the service was about. I have no idea what the sermons are about. I still need to repent about that. Lord, forgive me. And I was just focused on this gal. Her family invites us over for lunch after. And I got to know her family, and Tanya wasn't there. She was at the rally serving. I'm like, yes, serving at the church, serving there, a heart of service, at the evangelistic rally. I have no idea what the sermon's about. I made a beeline to her after the service. "Hi, how are you? My name is Jan. I'm also a Christian. I'm a member of New Life Church in Washington D.C." I asked her for her phone number. I said, "Can we be friends?"

She said, "I have no idea who you are. And I don't like telephones, because they cause radiation." She knew back then. And asked her for her email. She's like, "I don't do emails." So I was bummed out. And my mom was there too. My mom approached her mom, and said, "Hey, let's keep in touch." And her mom says, "Yeah, let's keep in touch." And gives me Tanya's phone number. And that's where it all got started. That's all to say this, you should be a member of a church. And here's one thing I do want to say from that story. I have a lot of things to say. In our culture, we are too serious about Christian dating. And some of us are not serious enough. Too serious, that's "The Lord gave me a dream last night, and you're the person for me." I didn't get that dream, sorry. And then on the other side, it's like, "Hey, let's just hang out for years."

Honestly, I think this might be helpful. You've got to think about it in terms of a family. We're brothers and sisters. So if you're a single, treat each other as brother and sister. And if you're interested in someone, say hey, not let's date, or court, dort, whatever. "Let's be friends. Let's go for coffee." I'll just give you an example. I was at this church in D.C. and I saw this girl, she's an awesome sister serving the Lord. I said, "Hey, do you want to, as friends," and I made this clear, "As friends, let's go see a baseball game." It was in the Nationals. And we went together. I made it clear, "Look, let's just be friends. If the friendship develops, great. I'm a serious guy with serious intentions. But if it doesn't, let's still be friends, and I'll actually help you find a husband because we're friends, and brother and sister." And that's what happened. It didn't work out with her, and then she actually, I introduced, like in the same church. Hey, she married the guy, now they're missionaries in Kazakhstan. So it's all to say, "Let's be friends." That's the point.

And in the church, when you're serving the Lord, you're close to the Lord, you begin to develop this ability to see people with the eyes of Jesus Christ. And that's what you need. Some of us are too focused on appearances where Proverbs 31:30 says, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." A wife of noble character who shall find her value is more precious than gold. And that's all to say, the character's the most important thing. Therefore, Christian, please never consider marriage to a nonbeliever. Forge the word "please," burn it on your heart. God is that serious about it. And as a Christian, you cannot even consider the option of marrying a nonbeliever. It's never God's will for a Christian to become unequally yoked to a non-Christian. It's better to be single than in a marriage with a nonbeliever, because you can't share the deepest love of your heart with that person.

That leads to all kinds of aloofness and a chasm. What happens if you continue to grow in your relationship with the Lord, and they don't? So it's better to be single than devastated. And don't just say things like, "But they believe in God." I want to know, if you say, "Pastor Jan, we're dating," where is this person a member of a church? That's what I want to know. How serious are you about your relationship with the Lord? And don't just say they believe in God. You know what scripture says? Even demons believe in God. First Peter 3:1 talks about if you are married to a nonbeliever, says, "So that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives." What he's saying is, if you are married to a nonbeliever, don't be self-righteous, don't beat them over the head with a bible. What your spouse needs is for you to be like Jesus fills the Holy Spirit and they need to be compelled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

The vision is that the Lord saves them, and that you actually baptize them, that's the vision. First Corinthians 7:39 talks about "Only in the Lord." Second Corinthians 6:14 through 16, you could read that later, talking about unequally yoked. Also in preparation for marriage, guard your moral purity, free sexual morality, and glorify God with your body. You've got to plan for righteousness. You know the questions about how far can we go? That's the wrong question. You already went too far. The question is, how much can we glorify God with our body? Don't just get to as close as possible.

Because what happens is, the enemy that ... You know these stories about these people who take selfies on cliffs? And there's a running total of people who died taking selfies at the Yosemite cliff. It was a famous Instagram couple, they went as closely as possible. What they didn't factor in was the wind. Wind gust comes out of nowhere, and they fall over. So if you don't want to sin, don't plan to put yourself in tempting situations. If you don't want to go to Las Vegas, then why did you get on the plane? If you don't want to commit sexual immorality, then why are you at the bar at that time? Or the club by your ... I was going to say by your ... It doesn't matter with the accountability part. No, no club. That's not a Christian thing.

Cohabitation? It's actually fornication. They're synonyms. You're connected to Jesus Christ, don't implicate Jesus Christ in sin. Jenell Williams Paris says "The idol of sexual fulfillment has two faces: One face says that each person has the right to be sexually satisfied and that having sex is a necessary part of happy, mature adulthood (or even adolescence). The second face is a Christian one that says the reward for premarital sexual virtue is great marital sex." "When I was growing up," she said, "sexual ethics was all stick and no carrot: we were told to abstain from premarital sex because of the parental and divine punishment that would ensue. Today, the stick is still there, but there's also a carrot: the less you sin before marriage, the hotter the sex after the marriage." The problem with that is it's not a biblical world view. Christ never had sex and he lived the perfect life, the ultimate life. Therefore, we can't expect that we need it for human flourishing.

Stanley Hauerwas, a scholar at Duke University, says, one of the clearest differences between Christianity and all the other religions is that singleness is a paradigm. A paradigm is a way of life. Just like Jesus. So that's to say, don't say, that if you take this sex out of my life, that I can't be a fully human being, that's false. That's a lie. This generation's been offered sex on plate and found it to be unsatisfying. We're looking for how to flourish, and we flourish in the middle of God's will.

First Corinthians 7:3 through 5, "The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband." And the big idea here is, and first he talked about singleness. The big idea is no sex. And then once you get married, what he's saying is, it becomes a spiritual discipline, it's prayer, reading scripture, and baby, we need to be close to the Lord. It's a thing, seriously, conjugal rights, look that up together. The point is that you serve one another. Sex isn't self-expression, and it's not self-gratification, it's self-donation. If the husband wants to be together, you be together. If the wife wants to be together, you be together. The Song of Solomon says tend to the garden so weeds don't grow. So don't sleep back-to-back. That's when Satan crawls into the bed. That's what he says. Don't let Satan tempt you. Care for one another's body. Care for one another's needs. God creates sex for procreation, but he also does for pleasure and satisfaction, and comfort, and protection, and ultimately unity.

Okay, back to, let's get married. The point, be wise, but not over-spiritual. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we pray, the Lord sends us a spouse, send me a spouse. And sometimes we get too spiritual, too overly spiritual, thinking God's just going to make the person appear, like it's going to start raining men hallelujah. And that's not what he's saying. There's nothing wrong in putting yourself in a situation where you can meet someone. And somebody you're attracted to. Obviously Godly character takes precedence. But there's nothing wrong being attracted to that someone. Song of Solomon, that couple isn't extolling the finer points of each other's characters. It's all about that they're in love, both spiritually and physically. And you got to like that person, you got to enjoy that person's presence.

So, that's all to say, be selective but don't be picky. Here's what I mean. I think some of you brothers, I think you're putting off marriage way too long because you're looking for a model, who loves Jesus. And by model, that's a nice way of putting what I really mean. And sisters, some of you are smart and powerful, you're waiting for Mr. Right, Mr. Perfect, whose type-A, alpha male, highly intelligent, ultra fit, super wealthy, and able to cook. You're looking for Ryan Gosling, that's who you're looking for. You're looking for Bradley Cooper. Well here's the thing, Bradley Cooper got Irina Shayk, and Irina Shayk got Bradley Cooper, and this past week, they split up, after four years together. Didn't satisfy. And now they have to, they're amicably working on how to share custody. Learn to love the hidden person, the inner beauty of the person.

First Peter, 3:3-4, "Do not let your adorning be external-the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear-but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." That's what you're looking for. And that's what you need to see, you train up your eyes see. Proverbs 31:10 through 11, "excellent, or of noble character, a wife who can find, she is far more precious than jewels, the heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain." So train the eyes to see not just physical eyes, but the eyes of your heart.

Pastor Shane and I were talking about this week, and this is a quote from Pastor Shane, it's so good. I said, can I use it? He said sure, go ahead. He says, "I think there's something to be said of attraction being overrated." He says, "I'm not attracted to a 99-year-old woman, but Lord willing, one day I'll be married to one, and I'll find her attractive." Something there, likeability, friendship, it's more important than just physical attraction. Godly men and Godly women with God's grace, they age like fine wine. Apart from God's grace, like milk. Why? Because you always marry the wrong person. We're all looking for finished projects, we're not finished. We're always works in progress. We're all incompatible, we're just the wrong people, and we need the gospel to make us the right people, the right heart, with the right Holy Spirit.

God didn't just create you. He's recreating you. And when you're looking for a spouse, what you're looking for is the potential. I can see. I'm not going to fix you. But God can fix you. Timothy Keller, in The Meaning of Marriage, which you definitely need to read. He says, "Within this Christian vision of marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is so look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be a part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, "I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!" That's what we're talking about. You see the potential with God's grace.

I had a conversation with a friend this week, and the friend is single. And I said, tell me what you would say in the sermon. If I haven't had that conversation with you, I'm going to soon. That's the conversation I'm having. This is what he said, he says, Satan attacks marriage through all kinds of ways, pornography. But there's another subtle attack. It's so hard to find a good Christian person. And this is what church community is so important, where married people, like you're bringing singles into your life. And then bring some other singles into your life, and then invite them over for dinner together. See what happens.

God's heart for divorce. Saint Paul says, hear that God's heart is for marriage, one man, one woman, one covenant, one lifetime. Why? Because divorce is heartbreaking. Divorce is never over and it's never final. It just gets more complicated. I've done weddings where the husband and wife haven't talked to each other in years, and they're their just because their daughter's walking down the aisle, and they're sitting on different sides. It gets complicated. Everyone at some point wants to get divorced and sinners get sick of getting sinned against each other. And God creates marriage to be one, one man, one woman. The word uses ahad, the same word for the Trinity, where the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

What scripture says, Malachi 2, is that God hates divorce because his heart is broken by it. And he sees the brokenness, the ripple effect from generation to generation. He sees the effect that it has on people, it causes fear when parents get divorced. It complicates your idea of marriage. There's a lingering effect. Because marriage isn't just a contract, it's covenant. This is why we celebrate anniversaries. This is the anniversary of the covenant. If you renew your lease, you don't celebrate the renewal of your lease, it's just a contract, there's nothing emotional there. With a covenant, it's different. It's the binding of two hearts.

So scripture here in First Corinthians 7 and other places, it says God allows divorce for adultery, that's marital unfaithfulness, porneia, in the Greek. Because in the Old Testament, adultery was actually a capital offense, but it's an exception clause for abandoning the covenant. But adultery should never happen. And divorce is also allowed for abandonment but still, it gives grounds but it's not license. And God's heart is for reconciliation to happen. So am I allowed to remarry if my spouse has sinned against me, adulterously, or has abandoned? Maybe on some circumstances, but give it time. That's what scripture, give it time and let God intervene. Give time for God to transform hearts.

With that said, in conclusion, marriage is great, but it's not ultimate. If God is not the center of your life, what you have is marriage creating more problems than it solves. Without the Lord, marriage is just bringing two self-centered human beings together, seeking self-fulfillment from one another. That's why Saint Paul says, in First Corinthians 7:29 to 31, "This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away."

It's temporary. Eternity is forever, so we should be thinking about is eternity. We should be thinking about, is spiritual family. Because spiritual family is forever. There's no marriage in heaven, but there's spiritual family is forever. And following Jesus gives us an abundance of spiritual family. I want you dear Mosaic, I want you to catch a vision of spiritual family, not just brothers and sisters. I want you to catch a vision of fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters. This is something that's been missing in my life. This is something that Lord's been actually revealing to me even this week. I've always considered myself a brother, like we're brothers and sisters. And I see when I lead someone to the Lord, by God's grace, that's a child, that's a son, that's a daughter.

Drew Wayne who was here, remember Drew Wayne, who got baptized with a shirt off? Remember that guy? He's now in Texas? One of the things that he used to say, and it just hit me, the meaning of that this week. He used to say, the Papa John's jingle, "Better ingredients, better pizza," Papa John's? Wayne Tolbert, he said, "Better preaching, better access to Jesus, Papa Jan's." It just hit me, shout out Drew, who still listens to the podcast. It just hit me. My goodness, I'm a father, I'm a spiritual father. And I need to grow in that. And some of you are spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers, and you have spiritual children, now care for them. Care for them, love them, pray for them, meet with them. Send them random pictures of flowers like my dad doe to me. "Look at these flowers, they're blooming." And I always do, "Heart, I love it. Keep sending them. Thanks Dad."

So spiritual family is forever. The bible is God's proposal to us. The gospel is God's proposal to us. God fulfills every one of our desires, and then some, because God is an ultimate lover. The gospel is good news for absolutely everyone. The bible begins with a wedding ceremony, and Jesus begins his ministry at a wedding. And heaven is the greatest reception ever. And that's where God is going to ultimately fulfill all of our desires. Now, how do we have that relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, the great bridegroom sacrifices himself on the cross for us, to make us his own. Gives everything, to say "I do. I always did. And I always will." Let God satisfy the greatest desires of your heart. Amen.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time that you've given us. We thank you for the holy scriptures. God, we thank you that you don't just care about our time on Sunday, but you care about all of our life. And you want to infuse your healing power, by the power of the spirit into every single corners and crevices of our lives, and replace brokenness with healing. I pray Lord, do that, even now, as we sing. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: Pride fuels lust, and lust kills love. Therefore God extends His Love to us through the Cross of Jesus Christ, by the Power of the Holy Spirit. His Love kills our lust and unleashes us to be the absolute best versions of ourselves. We in turn make our neighbors' lives better. Together, we make Boston better, and by extension, the World.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name I Jan. I'm one of the pastors here with Pastor Shane. I'm so glad you're here. If you're visiting or if you're new, we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card in the worship card. If you fill that legibly, you can either toss it into the offering basket after. But my recommendation is that you take it to the Welcome Center and exchange it for a gift, a really nice gift that we've prepared for you.

Also, if you have any prayer requests, you can leave those in the card as well, or if you today you choose to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior or recommit to him, or if you're interested in baptism, that's the place to do it as well. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you that you are God of love and of truth. And because you are a good father, you set boundaries for your children, in which we can thrive, in which we can enjoy your boundless love, where we can love our neighbor as ourself.

We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are with us today. And, Lord, we are about to cover a sensitive topic, a topic that for many of us, it comes with shame and guilt and sadness. I pray that you comfort those who are afflicted. But then also, Lord, if there's anyone who is comfortable in that sin, I pray, send your Holy Spirit of conviction. I pray, Holy Spirit, that you continue to empower every single one of us.

I pray every single Christian at Mosaic, I pray that you solidify the team, solidify the army so that we fight the good fight of spiritual warfare together and realize the mission in front of us, that we live in one of the most disproportionately influential cities in the world, and day to day we're next to people who are so far from you, and they're on their way to spend eternity apart from you and I pray, break our hearts for those people, empower us with the spirit to love them and to speak truth with love.

Holy Spirit, we are nothing apart from you. We're nothing, you're everything. We pray that you do your thing today. We pray this all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I had the last week off. And whenever I have a week off or I have some time to reflect, and it just hit me last week, that last weekend marked 10 years that I finished seminary. And my wife and I, that same day, packed up the moving truck and moved up to Boston. My wife's still mad at me for that. So this Sunday marks exactly 10 years of our family being in the city. So praise God for that. SDG, Soli Deo Gloria.

Today also is the start of Pride Month in Boston. We're about to talk about lust and sexual immorality, and I just want to say that we did not plan this. I found out about Pride Month... we set our preaching schedule three months ago. I found out about Pride Month this past Wednesday. That's all to say this is a word from the Holy Spirit. I believe that this is a sacred moment and I pray that you receive a word from the Lord today.

The title of the sermon is Lust Kills Love, and Love Kills Lust. It is a PG13 rated. I forgot to mention that in the first service, but it is. So we have a kids' ministry downstairs.

Next Saturday is the Pride Parade, and thousands of our neighbors, our dear neighbors, people we love, people who have kids that go to school with our kids. Our neighbor, we see them at Trader Joe's. We run into them at Whole Foods and stop and shop. We see them. We love these people. And they will be marching shoulder to shoulder celebrating pride.

Should we go? How should we think about the conversations that we inevitably are going to have when people invite us? People we love. It's very real, and it's very personal. We have people whom we really love that consider us to be homophobic bigots, just because of the label of Christian. How do we deal with this question?

I'm looking at this through gospel glasses. The gospel always comes with truth and love. God's truth and God's love, they come together. Truth without love isn't truth and love without truth isn't love. So we look at this question through those glasses. As a Christian, I love my gay neighbor. I love that guy. I invite that guy over my house. I don't have a backyard. I've had a little plot of land that I share with the other people at my condominium. They weren't using it, so I stake the claim in it and I bought a grill and I put it out there. I said, "You guys can use it any time that you want." They haven't used it yet, so it's working out for me."

So invite my friend over and I hear his story. I invite him over to listen to his heart, what do you feel? I grill him a bomb steak because grilling bomb steaks is my love language. This is how I show you how I love you, now eat. And I've got the pattern going and the checkers, so yeah. I'm welcoming. I'm hospitable. But I'm not affirming of that lifestyle. Just like God is loving toward me and he doesn't affirm my sin, just like I myself, I love me, but I don't affirm the sin inside. To say welcome and affirming is to assume that we're pure, that there's no sin inside, that we're not a mixture of good and evil.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil, it doesn't run between countries or political parties. It runs through the heart of every single human being. It's a mixture. So how are we to discern what's good, what's right? How do we discern and filter our own desires? This is where we need God's truth, His loving truth.

He speaks to us with tender love, and it leads us to speak with same tender love as we speak tough truth. So I kindly declined my friend's invitation to go with him to march shoulder to shoulder in the Pride Parade. Why? Because celebrating sin, celebrating pride is against God's truth, against God's love. It breaks His heart, and therefore, it should our hearts. We love people, therefore, we speak truth graciously. Instead, I invite my friend over again for another barbecue. This time I don't go to Trader Joe's for the steak. I go to Whole Foods to show him I'm going to sacrifice. I love you, love sacrifices. I'm going to get the ribeye, the grass-fed ribeye. It's so much better than [inaudible 00:07:33], like five times better and half the price.

We believe that these are good citizens. We believe that they can be good people. What I try to communicate is scripture, holy scripture, it doesn't condemn same sex relationships. I can be friends with you. It actually commands same sex relationships, a little intimacy that we rarely achieve.

Like scripture talks about John the apostle up next to Jesus during the Last Supper. They were boys and they were close. There's nothing wrong with intimacy in a same sex relationship, men with men, women with women. But scripture does also command sexual restraint for every single human being, me included. Scripture said that there's not one human being alive or who has ever lived that is not guilty of some kind of sexual sin, except for one. That's Jesus Christ who's come to save us from guilt, from shame, from condemnation.

Every single one of us, we struggle with it. That's why it's such a sensitive topic. My beautiful wife, Tanya, she's from the Ukraine. She's also a Sage. This is what she says. She says, "Everybody has dirty mind." I totally agree. That's brilliant. My whole sermon is you're a mess, I'm a mess, we're all a mess, and we need Jesus. That's the whole sermon. That's the point. We're all broken, in particular in this area of life. We need grace.

Sam Allberry who is a same-sex attracted Christian, he's written a lot on this. He's done a lot of talks. You can YouTube. You can Google. He says, "In our fallen state, we are all broken and skewed in every area, and therefore including in our sexual desires. In that sense, none of us is straight." That means we all fall short of the glory of God.

I guess, we might not choose our sexual attraction, but we do choose our sexual actions. And though we are broken, we're still responsible for our decisions. So I communicated tough truths. It's tough truth. But he has no doubt of my tender love to him as the smell of the steak wafts in the air and we're having this conversation. That's the way that Jesus dealt with this.

The problem with how many churches deal with this issue is they offer grace to believers without holding them accountable, without calling them to repentance in areas of sin. But grace without truth isn't grace. And at the same time, they offer truth to non-believers expecting them to live like believers. They haven't met Jesus yet, and it's truth without grace. Truth without grace isn't truth.

We're not called to call non-Christians to live the Christian life. We're called to love them and we're called to introduce them to Jesus, not to heterosexuality. Don't think God will love me if I change. That's not how it works. It's God loves me so that I can change, so accept the love of Jesus Christ poured out on the cross for you.

So if my neighbor becomes a Christian, Lordwilling, now he's my little brother, spiritually speaking. And I'm his big brother spiritually. I do everything I possibly can to help him grow in the faith, and that's exactly where the text takes us today.

St. Paul is the big brother. He's led these people to the Lord, who struggle with sexual sin, and he's writing to them. He's saying, "I want to help you. I want to help you grow. I want to help you be the absolutely best version of yourself so the Holy Spirit is moving powerfully through you to change the City of Corinth," for us to change the City of Boston.

Would you look at the text with me. Today we're in 1st Corinthians 6:12-20. 1st Corinthians 6:12-20. "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me but I will not be enslaved by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodes are members of Christ? Shall I then take members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.' But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you now know that you body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, for you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." This is the reading God's holy, inerrant, infallible word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Two points but one big idea, lust kills love, and then we'll talk about how love, God's love, kills our lust. Lust kills love, and I don't have to give you the statistics. We live in probably the most oversexualized time and culture that's ever lived. It's like a machine gun of assault coming at us on a daily basis, from every which way.

1st Corinthians 6:9-11, St. Paul gives us a list of sins, including sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, etc, etc. Then he also connects it with greedy and drunkards and revilers and swindlers. He says, "As were some of you." The big idea is he says this is counter to the gospel, because the gospel is all about Jesus, and Jesus gives, whereas sin takes.

Jesus sacrifices whereas sin comes in and demands and feels entitled to. It's all fueled by pride. He says, "Sin is selfish." The gospel of Jesus Christ is selfless. Sin through pride and entitlement leads to lust. It fuels the lust. This is what I want, how I want it, with whom I want. The gospel says, "No, love sacrifices. Love gives. Love listens to the Lord." It all starts with the heart of the Christian.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:17-30. He's not just getting at the sin. He's getting at the thoughts behind the sins, the desires of the heart. That's where we're at war, our desires are conflicted. He says, "You've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman or a person with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Meaning the act of sin has happened before the eyes have done anything.

"... already has committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away." Obviously, he's being hyperbolic here. But he's saying radical actions need to take place because this sin is so dangerous. "For it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell."

Jesus is looking at the sin from the perspective of eternity, because this is how scripture talks about heaven and hell. It talks about these desires, these fire of desire within us. And if the fire of desire of lust is not extinguished, it continues to grow, it continues to grow. What happens if it continues to grow a decade, a second decade, a third...

We have a term called dirty old men for a reason. Jesus comes and he says, "I've come to extinguish that flame of lust. I've come to extinguish it with my love that I pour out into your heart, so that you continue to grow, continue to improve, continue to be sanctified. And that trajectory goes into eternity.

Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." You know what holiness is? It's being set apart for God. It's pursuing the presence of God, closeness to God. Flee from sin, pursue God. That's the idea. And true believers, do we sin? Yeah, we sin. We do sin. Samson sinned. David sinned. Solomon sinned. But the true believer repents. The true believer can't stay there. It can't turn into a pattern or it can't turn into habitual sin.

There's a fight that arises within the believer and he says, "I don't want to live like this. I don't want to dishonor God. I want to love God. I want to love people." The true believer repents and fights and makes war. And if there's no fight in you, then you need to question, am I really saved? If there's no spiritual heartbeat, if there's no pulse, are you a Christian? Saving faith always produces holiness, and if there's no desire for outward renewal, most likely there's no evidence for inward renewal.

That's why he says in verse 9, "Do not be deceived, because this sin, more than any other sin, it has deceiving... it lulls us into a spiritual stupor where we don't even see it. We don't think that this is a sin. It's no big deal. And also, there's God's grace, right? So I can just come to God, repent at any time. He forgives me, and then I go back to this pattern. And that's not how Christianity works.

Christianity works like this. You're saved by grace through faith. You believe in Jesus Christ. He puts his Holy Spirit in you. And if you take the Holy Spirit who's in you and you take it into sin, you're taking the Holy Spirit with you, and the Holy Spirit doesn't like that. The Holy Spirit will discipline. The Holy Spirit will convict, and if that isn't happening, if there's no desire, Lord, help me grow. Help me fight. If there's no desire, most likely you're not a Christian.

Then at that point, we welcome you to look to Christ. Place your faith, your hope in Jesus Christ, and be saved. Verse 12, he's having an argument with them. They say, "All things are lawful for me." That was the motto in the church. And then Paul repeats and says, "Not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything." He says, "Yes, we're not under law, but we're under grace, and grace is given to us." It's a costly grace. It's given to us to transform us. It's given to us to make us the people that we're called to be.

He gives us here two safe cards. He says, "Is this helpful? And does this enslave? Does this dominate?" And this sin, more than any sin, dozens, it enslaves. It's starts at the heart level where you're worshiping creation over creator, and it starts spiritually. But doesn't stay there. It grows. It grows into our decisions, and all of a sudden, it's taking over our body. We're dominated by... and yes, there's a spiritual problem primarily, but has undeniable, physical consequences.

It dominates you, consumes you, and ultimately, it wants to destroy you. It's a master that's ruthless. This is the pattern, and this is the pattern for any addiction, but in particular here. There is the initial use, the initial experience, and there's that buzz. Then you chase that buzz again. You want more. But you're not getting it. You're not getting the buzz, so now you need to ramp up the use, the frequency, the intensity. Then what happens is there's a process called habituation. Your body builds up a tolerance to it, and then you need higher dosage, higher frequency.

The brain goes through physiological change. It decreases brain chemical production, and there's a loss of brain chemical receptors. What we're doing is we're playing with neurochemical fire. That then leads to the next stage, which is dependence. It's addiction. It's all you think about.

You wake up, there's a craving. You're spending extra time seeking it. There's an inability in daily responsibilities in doing the things that you need to do. All of a sudden, your relationships begin to suffer because of the shame and the guilt. You have a harder time looking yourself in the mirror, and you have a hard time making eye contact with people because of shame.

There's regular use in inappropriate settings. This is so real. I took my kids to Summit Park yesterday, and there was the hammocks and they're really nice. There was something hanging off the hammock and my daughter came up to it and she's like, "Daddy, what's that?" Then if you try to stop it, there's withdrawal. There's fatigue. There's anxiety. There's irritability. Now you've got to decide, okay, what do I do with that? I've got a new normal in my life and I need to self medicate with something. Then that leads to all kinds of other addictions, and you don't see how addicted you were until you're out. That's the deception part.

There's inherent restlessness when it comes to lust because your bodies, your heart is never satisfied. Augustine said, "Our hearts are never satisfied until they find their satisfaction, their rest, in you." Why? Because sex never gives us what it promises. What are we really looking for? It's not just a buzz. It's not the physical. Deep down inside we want the intimacy. We want to be fully known and fully loved. We want a deep, emotional connection. That's why hooking up and hooking up culture, it doesn't deliver. And for many young people today, hand to hand, holding hands, is more intimate than body to body. That's where there's all kinds of companies and services that provide snuggling and cuddling, just physical affection. People just want intimacy.

Paul says it's lawful. Okay. You're going to play that game? But is it helpful? Even if you're not a believer, this part, even if you're not a believer, is it helpful, if you are pursuing sexual... if you're down this route, is it giving you what you want? Is it helpful? Is it profitable? St. Paul says, "No, it's not." Is it helpful? It's not helpful in your relationship with God, dear Christian, because what happens is you lose your ability to love God, because your heart gets hardened with the sin. And what God does, He withdraws His fellowship from you because He can't be in close proximity to the sin. It repels Him because God is holy. You lose love for God and the feeling of God's love.

You also lose love for yourself. You lose respect for yourself. And vice versa. For yourself and from yourself. That's why he says in verse 18, "Flee from sexual morality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." What he's saying is you're hurting yourself. What he's saying is this isn't just another appetite. It's different. That's why in verse 13, that's where he started the train of thought. He quotes them, this is what they're saying to justify their decisions. Food is meant for the stomach and stomach for food. This is a lot of people in our culture think, that sex is just like eating. It's just another appetite. It's a biological need. I can't go without eating, and I can't go without sex, right? It's not healthy.

Paul is like, "No, no, no. This is so different. Sex is different than food. Babies aren't conceived by eating. It's completely different. Sex is different than food. You can't be born without sex. But you can live without it. You can live a glorious life without it. No voice in our culture is going to tell you... you can have the most glorious life ever lived with the life of Jesus Christ, and he never had sex.

Why does scripture talk with caution about sex? Because scripture recognizes its power. It's a force. In the right confines, like a fire. It's good. A fireplace, my dad has a fireplace. People in Brooklyn have fireplaces. I love fireplaces. They're beautiful. You sit back, they give you warmth. I love the smell of it. Sometimes I walk around the winter and I try to find a house with a fireplace. In the confines, beautiful. It's life-giving. It's awesome.

Outside the confines, it's absolutely deadly. It's destructive. In the right context, sex has the power to give. It has the power to love. In the wrong context, it's destructive. Proverbs talks about pursuing sexual morality, talks about an ox going to the slaughter, like you're on a path toward hurting yourself.

Then it's not helpful in your relationship to others. You do lose love for other people and vice versa because you're hurting them, they're hurting you. There's no such thing as NSA, no strings attached. That's not a thing. That's a lie. That's a lie. The morning after, there's always emotional attachment. Always. If you don't like the emotional attachment, what do you have to do? You have to mask it and it's not a real... it hurts people.

If you're married, it hurts your spouse. If you have kids, it's going to hurt them. It's going to hurt your future grandkids because there is such a thing as generational sin. So God gives us this truth. And what He's asking us, what kind of life do you want? What kind of legacy do you want?

Jesus Christ said, "I have come to give you life and to give you life to the full, so live that full life. Lust kills love. Lust levels even kings. King Solomon, the most brilliant man to have ever lived, dies as a creepy, perverted, pathetic old man, a hollow shell of himself.

Every single human being is created in the image of God. Every single human being has a sweet spot, a zone of genius. I meet so many people who are just brilliant. They've found that sweet spot. They've found that zone. And when in the zone, they are absolutely powerful. There are so many people who are pulled away from that, and mostly a lot of it because of sin, because of the sideways energy being channeled in every other direction.

They say that the human brain, we only use about 10% of the human brain. And in my research, I found out that that was a myth. But all of us absolutely know the cloud that happens when our time is being dominated, our money, our schedule is being dominated by this thing. What happens is that we lose capacity.

Lust does rewire the brain signs that prove that. But it does more than rewire the brain. It also rewires our hearts. It changes our ability to love and to receive love. We lose love for and from God, for and from self, for and from others. There's a reason why sex sells. You hear that. That's the number one marketing tool. Sex sells. Why? Because people are driven to give money. Here, take my money. I'm willing to sacrifice my money to get this product, and it's not the product that I want. Everything is about sex except for sex and what sex is about.

Sex is about the heart longing for intimacy. We long for it. 1st Corinthians 6:13 and 14, he talks about the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by... He's saying that the Lord is for the body. For the Christian, the Lord gives us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is a power. It wants to use us as a conduit for his power, for his mission.

I believe, for many Christians today, this is the primary reason why we are not as spiritually powerful as God wants us to be. It diminishes our potential, diminishes our capacity. It diminishes our desire for God and for lost neighbor, and for Christian. Many of you are killing at your job. You are super talented. You are so smart it's stupid, and you can do that. You can kill it at your job. You can make the world a better place while partaking dabbling in sexual sin with a little porn out on the side, or fill in the blank.

But you cannot make a difference where it matters most, operating by the flesh. We need the Holy Spirit. We need to be led by the spirit, not driven by the flesh. And the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit stays always quenched, he's suppressed by our lust, by our sin. And God says, "Get free. Get unleashed. Think about your impact in eternity, not just in the physical realm."

We can't do what God has called us to do apart from the Holy Spirit. When we're struggling with sin, it's as if we're charging the gates of hell with water pistols and God is saying, "Stop, cut it out. I'm offering you true MO, true guns, spiritually speaking. John wakes guns, I'm offering it to you, all of it in that final scene. Just take it. Spiritually speaking, of course. Because that's where the fight is. The fight is with ideas. The fight is with desires. The fight is with words. And the Holy Spirit wants to empower us to actually spend the kingdom.

Just imagine, if Jesus turned a few loaves and a few fish into a feast for 10,000. The disciples said, "Use us." God said like, "Okay." How much more can he do through the talent pool, the talent stack of people like you at Mosaic Boston, if you are fully yielding, fully committed to him, and his spirit pouring through... You can change eternity.

We can't have people... we're on the same team. I'm nothing, you're nothing. But together, together we can win in the most important winning, spiritual winning. And it's a winning I will never get tired of, ever, ever, ever. God is saying, "Make sure you don't have team members who turn around and they're trying to score on the other goal. No. Turn around. There's people on their way to hell. Don't buy their gas. Do everything you can to help them turn around. Do everything you can to help them meet Jesus Christ.

Lust kills love. So what do we do? We need love to kill our lust. He says the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. And he's talking about design. That the Lord designed the body for the Lord, that the body runs best when it's close to the Lord. So you weren't designed for sin. It's like iPhones weren't designed to hammer nails, and violins weren't designed to heat a house. Violin in the hands of a musician, it sings. God wants your life to sing. Allow him to fine-tune that violin.

The greatest violin ever made, Stradivari. The greatest violinist that ever lived, Paganini. God wants you to be Stradivari in the hands of Paganini. And he wants to make beautiful music that makes everything better. God is saying, "I designed you. I know how you work. I designed you. I know the best version of you, and it's not pursing sexual immorality."

God's will is always for our best, that's why he gives us boundaries because human beings thrive in boundaries. We thrive in boundaries. Children thrive in boundaries. That's why God gives us these boundaries so that in those boundaries, the boundaries of love, we abound in his love. We deepen in his love and love with one another. This just works in every sphere of life, the spatial boundaries.

Fenway Park has boundaries. Pesky Pole, if it goes on the other side of Pesky Pole, that's it. A foul ball. I don't care how hard you hit it. You could enjoy the game in these boundaries, there's time boundaries, temporal work hours. You can't work 24 hours a day. You need boundaries, and sleep boundaries.

There's relational boundaries. It's not okay to touch a stranger any way you want or say whatever you want to a stranger. So God gives us boundaries when it comes to sexual intimacy. Opposite sex marriage, one man, one woman, one covenant, one lifetime. And what that provides is security, that provides and understanding that we... if there's no plan B, if there's no fire escape, we, by God's grace, will work through whatever.

June 10th will be 13 years I'm married with my wife. And all these 13 years, not one have I had a thought, what would I do if she divorces me? And in these 13 years, she has never had a thought, I hope... I don't know. It's like I don't have to go person to person to person to person to person to get the buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, when that's not even what I'm looking for. What I'm looking for is one person. I love you fully. I know you fully. You know me fully. You love me fully. That's what you want. And the intimacy, it just gets better and deeper. That's what God wants for us. That's His will for us.

In 1st Corinthians 6:19, he tells us why, he says, "Because you're not your own. You were bought with a price." That we, as Christians, we belong to God not once, we were created by Him, but twice. He also redeemed us, and what a price He paid to redeem us. What did He redeem us from? A slave market of sin. How did He redeem us? Through the blood of His son, Jesus Christ. God is love. Jesus is God. Jesus is love. Love dies on the cross to kill our lust, to free us to love God and to love neighbor.

Jesus Christ died on the cross, paid the penalty for all of our sins, in particular this one, in order to forgive us, in order to purify us, in order to make us his. You are not your own.

Sex isn't evil. Sex is a gift. It's a gift from God, and gifts aren't rights. You can't demand a gift. You're not entitled to a gift. Sometimes when I go away on a trip and I come back, my daughters are always like, "Daddy, daddy, what'd you bring us? What'd you bring us?" And I don't like that, so I mix it up. Once in a while I'll bring a gift, and once in a while I'm like, "Here I am. My presence is your present," just so they know, you can't demand a gift. The giver chooses to give the gift and chooses how to give the gift. And God chooses to give this good gifts with restrictions.

It's a right not a privilege, just like your driver's license. You've got to follow the rules of the road because it's not just about you. Yeah, they want to protect you, but they also want to protect themselves and they want to protect the people in the communities.

The reason why many people also struggle with this teaching of scripture, sexual ethic, God's sexual ethic, is because of Satan's lie. And Satan is a liar. The lie goes like this, "God's way won't make you happy. Sin will make you happier." That right there is one of the most diabolical lies from the deepest pits of hell.

Did sin make you happy? Has it made you happy? Then why in the world do you think it will make you happy? Maybe just for a little bit. We begin to believe that if we give up sexual sin, we'll be depressed. And honestly, that initial stage, it's hard. I've counseled people. It's hard. Why? Because of the withdrawal symptoms, and the physical withdrawal symptoms. But you've got to keep going because God's freedom at the end is so much better. No sin tastes as good as God's love feels. Nothing comes even close. When God is close, there's nothing that comes remotely close.

Augustine in his early 30s, he knew Christianity. He was attracted to it. But he struggled with the sin. This is what he said. He said, "I loved the happy life, but I feared to find it in your abode, and I fled from it. Even as I sought it, I thought that I would be too wretched if I were kept from a woman's arms." Then he turned from his sin. God released him, and the whole trajectory of his life changed. And we're still talking about this guy because of his influence on the world.

We're not looking for that buzz. What we're really longing for is intimacy, the truest intimacy. And there's no true intimacy than that with Christ. And he says in verses 15 through 17, that we are members or members of Christ. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him."

He's talking to people in church who are in Corinth and there's the Temple of Aphrodite. The priestesses are actually prostitutes and Christians of the church are frequenting it. And what he's saying here isn't that sex doesn't have a physical component. It does. It has neurological impact on us where neurologically you're bound to the object of the climax. But the biggest problem is the spiritual part. You are becoming one flesh, a one-flesh reality. A soul-to-soul reality with a person who's not your spouse, and there's deep consequences to that.

There's a reason why we always remember our first, our first kiss, our first everything. He says, "If you've been joined to the Lord, now you're one spirit with Him. Therefore, when you go there, you're taking Him with you." That when you look at that, when you partake in that, Jesus Christ is in the room and he is weeping. He's weeping over the pain that you're inflicting on that person, and the pain that they're inflicting you, and the pain that you're inflicting God. And that's why Paul says, "May it never be," and that you're one with God. He uses this language of absolutely unity, and this is why when God talks about sex in the confines of marriage, he talks as a signpost to marriage, to a relationship with God.

Marriage is a scale model. The greatest human marriage is nothing but a scale model of our relationship with God, and that's why there is no marriage in heaven. That's why homosexuality is a big deal, because it attempts to reconstruct the scale model. God creates. Marriage is His idea. He created that word. He created that idea. Marriage is husband and wife. That's God's idea. It's a beautiful idea. God creates, the enemy, Satan, counterfeits. He has no idea, so he counterfeits God's ideas.

Then he flips everything and he makes true love seem bigoted. That's the work of the evil one. Jesus didn't marry Jesus, the church doesn't marry the church. That's why it's such a big deal. It clashes with the very heart of God, the very mind of God.

1st Corinthians 6:18. "Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." What does it mean here? Alcohol, drug abuse, doesn't that have an impact on the body? He's talking about something deeper, because sexual intimacy unites on the deepest level. It begins to corrupt on the deepest level, and begins to impact absolutely everything in your life.

C.S. Lewis in the screwtape letters says, "Every time a man and a woman enter into a sexual relationship, a spiritual bond is established between them, which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured." God says, "You're one with me." Stay there. Flee sin. Pursue God. Glorify Him in your body because that's the greatest thing for you. You're not looking for sex. You're looking for love. You're looking for true love.

You know how you're in a nice restaurant and you have a great meal? You have an amazing meal. What do people usually say after an amazing meal? This is what people say, pretentious people. This is what they say to the waiter, "My compliments to the chef." You know why that's a thing? Because it's so enjoying this mean that they're like, "Man, whoever made this must be amazing."

You listen to great music, you hear a song for the very first time. 92.5 the river. You hear a phenomenal song, you Shazam that song. You're like, "Wow, whoever came up with this music must be amazing." And Shazam tells you, "Its the Fine Print." Shout out to Caleb Savari, and my brother Vladimir who's on the drums. If this creation is so good, how much better is the creator? This is exactly what God is saying. Sex is good in the confines of God's boundary. How much better is He who came up with that idea? God wants to free us. By the power of the Holy Spirit, He wants... every single one of us needs to be purified. Every single one of us needs to be forgiven. Every single one of us needs to be released.

The Smashing Pumpkins had a song way back in the day called Bullet With Butterfly Wings. One of the lines is that despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage. That's the image. That's the image. You're a rat in a cage. We, we, me, whatever, however you... people. You're a rat in a cage. You're hitting that button for another drop of whatever the drug is. You're hitting it, you're hitting it. You think the one's satisfies, the next one's... it doesn't satisfy and you feel like there's no hope. And he says in the song... there's a line about Jesus. Jesus was an only son for you. The song ends with the line, and I still, I still believe I cannot be saved.

That's a lie. You can be saved. That rat is hitting it more, more, more. And Jesus is standing at the door. The door is open. Jesus has unlocked the door and he's saying, "Turn around." That's what repentance is. And he says, "Come here, little rat. I want to free you. There's a beautiful world out there. The world of Austin, and Brighton, just don't go too much into Brookline. You get the idea. That's what the gospel does. You receive God's love. You receive His sacrifice, and His love extinguishes the lust within. When you see what it took for Him to save you, that begins to undo the power of sin in our life.

Two commands. He says, verse 18, "Flee sexual morality." Don't stay in the situation physically or mentally. You've got to flee from it, take every thought captive, and this informs our consumption of entertainment, and what we do in our free time, and on our weekends. Does it extinguish or does it inflame?

Then verse 20, he says, "Glorify God in your body," meaning you can't compartmentalize where I love God in my heart but I do whatever I want with my body. Scripture says, "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice." God calls us to an embodied spirituality now, to being now, because heaven is an embodied reality. Why does God say, he says, "Glorify me. Glorify me," because that's the best thing for us.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Pleasure is overrated. Joy is where it's at. God's fighting for your joy. 1st Corinthians 6:19, he says, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? And the Old Testament, in the temple, the most sacred part, was the Holy of Holies. One priest, only one priest, entered only one time a year, to present only one sacrifice. And he says, "Now you Christian are a holy of holies. You, you embody the Holy Spirit and dwelled with the Holy Spirit.

So how dare we think we can justify taking the Spirit of God, the temple of God, into the temple of Aphrodite. May it never be so. What do we do practically? Here's how I think about it. The holy scripture says, "Be killing sin, or it will be killing you." That's John Owen. He got that from Paul, who said, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry." You've got to put it to death, but it's a continual verb. You don't just slay it once.

Lust is a monster with nine lives. The way I think about it is putting it to sleep. Scripture has this in Song of Solomon, says, "Do not awaken love." Do not awaken love, meaning we have the ability to put it to sleep, and awaken it, put it to sleep, and awaken. And you already have this skill. You know in what context that you can't just let your sexual energy go. You know. You have that skill. Now you've just got to apply it to every single part of your life so it's integrated and you can do it by the Holy Spirit walking in step with the Holy Spirit.

Then finally, 1st Corinthians 6:15. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" This is so important. He says, "We together are members of Christ," meaning the way that we fight lust is intimacy with God and intimacy with one another, where we lead with transparency, where we pray for one another openly, we share with what we're struggling with. It's one body unity. That's not just for husband and wife, brothers and sisters knit together in love. We've got a gospel partnership. We're comrade in arms. When soldiers shoulder to shoulder, that's where true unity, the intimacy happens, and that's where the Lord allows us to be freed from these sins.

Finally, just a quick word, because it's June... brothers and sisters are responsible for one another. We are each other's keeper. And that means we need to do everything possible to help one another extinguish sin and not inflame. So this has to do with our words to one another, our touch toward one another, and how we dress. Are we helping our brothers and sisters fight the good fight or are we hurting them?

I'm not saying that we all of a sudden were taking style tips form the Amish or Mormonites. But I'm also saying we're not taking wholesale style tips from the Kardashians. That's all I'm saying. Dress like you would at a family reunion with grandpa and grandpa there. Dress like that. And then it's not selfish, it's selfless.

I'll conclude at this and then we turn to Holy Communion. Satan invented sin. Sin leads to pride, pride leads to selfishness, selfishness leads to lust, and lust kills love. The gospel was created by God. God creates the gospel. It leads to humility. It leads to selflessness, which leads to love. And what does love do? It kills lust. Stay in that sweet spot. The gospel changes absolutely everything.

I'm going to transition to Holy Communion. Before we partake in Holy Communion, we have an opportunity as the ushers hand out the elements, to pray, to repent. We're all a mess. We need to confess that and we need to accept God's Holy Spirit to purify us. If you're not believer, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It does nothing to you. We're saved by grace through faith.

The way that we celebrate is ushers are going to hand out the elements. Take some bread, take a cup, and pass it down to someone in your aisle. And after everyone's received them, we'll partake together. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you that the gospel reminds us just how bad we are, but it also reminds us just how good you are, and that you gave us your son to redeem us, to save us. I pray, Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit on every single one of us and unleash us as a force in this city for good, for transformation, for your glory. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: How long have you been a Christian? How would you rate your maturity as a Christian? Getting older and growing up should go hand in hand, but that’s not always the case. A child who is getting older but not showing signs of growth is a major cause for concern! Paul addresses another major problem in the Prodigal Church of Corinth, while calling them to repentance and a new identity in Christ.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you would like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Well, good morning, and welcome again to Mosaic. If you're new, my name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And we're so glad to have you with us this morning.

We'd love to connect with you. If you are interested in getting connected, one of the best first steps you can take is to fill out that little connection card in your worship guide. And you can either drop those in the offering baskets a little bit later on, or if you turn them in at the welcome center back there by the front doors, we've got a gift we'd love to give to you, as well as some more information about the church.

So, if you are just joining us, we are going through a sermon series this summer called Prodigal Church, where we are taking a look at a book of the Bible called 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians was actually originally a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a church in the Roman city of Corinth. This was a startup church that the Apostle Paul had planted. And he has since moved on to Ephesus, where he's planting a new church, and in the process has heard reports that back in Corinth things are not going well. That the church in Corinth was a young church, and it was a church that was already dealing with a lot of problems.

And so, two weeks ago, Pastor Jan, as we opened up the letter, showed us that in Corinth there was, on the one hand, a serious lack of unity. And not unity in just like a general, "they get along" kind of sense, but unity in the sense that they were failing to unite themselves under the truth of the Gospel. And since they weren't being united under the truth, they were therefore being divided by the trivial. There was a lack of unity.

Last week, we saw that there was also a lack of purity. And so, we see this idea that, on the one hand, they were tolerating sin, and evil, and injustice in the church that they should not have been tolerating; and on the other hand, they were very quick to stand up and start fighting over things that really didn't matter. And it was tragic. In fact, it had gotten so bad that in our text today we're going to see that members of this church had actually started dragging one another to court and filing lawsuits against one another to settle their disputes. And it's hard to imagine the embarrassment that this would have been, but just try to like ... You turn on the TV, and you're like, "Oh, hey! Cool! There is Pastor Jan, and Pastor Shane, and ... Oh! That's Judge Judy, and this is not good. This is bad. This is embarrassing." The city of Corinth is watching, and the church is playing the fool.

And now we might be tempted, as we look at this passage, to be like, "Well, yeah. But what does that have to do with me? I'm never going to file a lawsuit against another Christian. That's never even come to mind." Well, maybe so. But underneath this embarrassing situation is a very real tension that every single one of us can relate to, and that is we all have this deep desire to be treated fairly. Right? No one likes being played, no one likes being conned, no one likes being taken advantage of. And justice is a good thing. We see this throughout Scripture: God is a just god. He wants us to be a just people. And if justice is so good, then why is Paul saying it's so bad for these Christians to pursue it in the way that they are? That's what we're going to be talking about today.

A lot of times, when you're trying to get your head into the mindset of an ancient culture, it can be hard to imagine what would it be like to live in a city like Corinth back then. But actually, when we look at the cultural context, the city of Corinth was almost too much like our city today. Very, very similar. And like our world today, and like the rest of the Roman world back then, the city of Corinth was a very litigious place. It was very common for people to file lawsuits against one another to settle these grievances. And it's very similar to our context today. I read this week that 80% of the lawyers in the world are in America, and that Massachusetts has the second highest number of lawyers per capita to any other state in the country except for New York. And I'm pretty sure like 80% of them go to Mosaic, so I'm going to be really careful about the lawyer jokes this morning.

But a very litigious place. Over 15 million civil lawsuits are filed in this country every year. And a lot of them are rejected. A lot of them are thrown out. Just frivolous cases. I wrote just a few of the better ones down that I saw that have just kind of made the headlines. The first one is probably ... You've probably heard of the Clapper case: a woman in New York sued the makers of the Clapper because she said she had to clap too hard to make it work, and she hurt her hands. There's probably like a Seinfeld episode about that, or something.

A man in Texas sued his date for 17 dollars and 31 cents because she texted throughout their movie and ruined Guardians of the Galaxy ... Not Vol. 1, but Vol. 2. I bet you 17 dollars and 31 cents that guy is still single. Thanks.

A man in France is suing Uber because the ride tracking feature helped his wife piece together that he was cheating on her.

I don't support any of the prejudices in these cases. I'm not making these up. I'm just delivering the news. Because this last one is about a Frenchman as well: in Canada, a Frenchman is suing his former employee after being fired for acting rude and disrespectful to customers. He claims this is discrimination because rudeness is a trait of his culture.

There are times where this deep, insatiable hunger that we have for justice can cause us to act irrationally. It can cause us to even commit injustices of our own. And maybe not to the extent to filing a frivolous lawsuit like this, but maybe to the extent of burning bridges, of holding grudges, of harboring bitterness in our heart toward other people. And in today's text, Paul is going to tell the Corinthians that to have these lawsuits and disputes with one another at all is already a defeat. And so, why is their pursuit of justice so self-defeating? That's what we're going to look at. And Paul is going to, at the end, he's going to have some very stern warnings for the defendants in these cases. But what's interesting is he starts first by rebuking the plaintiffs.

And the big idea that we're going to see throughout this is that, before we became Christians, the lens through which we saw our disputes was primarily through the lens of fairness: "You did this, and now an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." But when it comes to the church, that's too shortsighted. You have to have a longer, sharper spiritual eye to see what's really going on. And so, you can't just look at these disputes through the lens of fairness. You also have to look at them through the lens of family.

And so, that's what we're going to be looking at in 1 Corinthians, chapter six. If you have your Bible, go ahead and open it up. We're going to look at verses one through 11 of chapter six today.

Three points that we're going to talk about. First we're going to talk about a wrong way to get right; second, a better way to right our wrongs; and then third, a goal for our grievances.

So, 1 Corinthians, chapter six, starting at verse one: "When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So, if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers! Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God."

Amen! This is the reading of God's holy word for us today.

Point number one, we're going to be talking about a wrong way to get right. And we want to ask the question, what exactly is going on here in Corinth, and why does the Apostle Paul see this as being such a big deal?

As we read the passage, one of the first questions we might want to ask is, is Paul really saying that Christians are forbidden from ever using a secular court system or a human system of justice? And I would say the answer to that is no, not at all. But actually, in some cases, yes.

So, let me explain. We need to understand what kinds of cases Paul is talking about. And the first thing we need to know is that Paul, in this letter, he is not writing to address criminal cases. Right? Scripture is very clear about this. Paul actually wrote about this in Romans 13:4 that, in criminal cases, that God has given government the responsibility and the authority to judge and to punish criminals. This is Romans 13:4. "But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he ..." the governing official, "... does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on wrongdoers."

This is really important because a lot of churches have done this wrong and committed some terrible injustices of their own. 1 Corinthians, chapter six, does not give permission to churches to handle criminal cases internally, to harbor or to shelter criminals from facing justice. If a member of the church commits a crime, yeah, you might put them under church discipline, you might remove them from membership until they repent; but you're also going to call the police. You're also going to let the courts and the justice system do its job. So, Paul is not talking about criminal cases here.

Secondly, he is not talking about cases between Christians and non-Christians. If a non-Christian owes you money, if they swindle you, if they con you, whatever you do, don't call me, don't call Pastor Jan to come and settle that dispute.

Just for example, let's say you are a landlord, and your tenant stops paying or starts refusing to pay their rent. Whatever you do in that situation, don't call your community group leader, don't call me and Pastor Jan to come down and settle the dispute. We're going to take their side if you do. That's not our place to do that. What you should do, however, is be discerning. Seek the Spirit's guidance. Depending on the situation and the context, the Holy Spirit may be leading you in that situation to show grace. Right? To be patient with this person. Or it could be that they're showing you ... The Holy Spirit is leading you to pursue justice: hold this person accountable for their actions.

If you get in a car accident, right? You're probably not going to go to court over that, but you're going to file a police report, you're going to get a third-party agency, an insurance agency, involved to help you settle the damages over who is liable here. But don't call me. Don't call Pastor Jan to come down to the scene and try to work that out for you. That's not what Paul is talking about here.

He is not talking about criminal cases. He is not talking about even cases between Christians and non-Christians. In those cases, be discerning. Try to figure out is the Holy Spirit leading you to be gracious? Is the Holy Spirit leading you like this is a time to pursue justice? What Paul is talking about is he's talking about non-criminal, personal disputes between two people who both claim to be Christians, and more specifically are both members of the same church in Corinth.

And so, why is that such a big deal? Why is that a problem for them to be going to court to settle their disputes? Well, it's a big deal to Paul because Paul is helping us see that what this reveals is it's revealing a very serious lack and failure of maturity on the part of the church; it's revealing a failure of their understanding of their identity as the church; and ultimately, it's a failure of their witness to the city and to the community around them.

So, look at them one by one. It's failure of their maturity. The Corinthian church is a young church, but it's not a baby church anymore. The problem is you wouldn't know that by looking at it. It's still filled with baby Christians. And by this time, it's almost as if they should be out there, out the door, on their way to conquer kindergarten, but they're still in diapers. They're still drinking from the bottle. And Paul says, "You're getting older, but you're not growing up."

Now, the sad reality is that this infantile kind of faith, it's characteristic of way too many Christians in the church today.

Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 3:1, he says, "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?"

Because the Corinthians have been given the Gospel, but they are failing to grow in the Gospel. And Scripture assumes that, as Christians, there is a spiritual trajectory that our faith should follow as far as growth and development. It's not a perfectly straight line, but we should be heading in the right direction. And unfortunately, too many Christians are like those in Corinth. They either hit a certain developmental stage and get stuck, or more tragically they never even make it out of infancy.

And if you think about maturity in Christ, I think it is helpful to think about our maturity in Christ and the lifecycle of a Christian in the same way we think about the lifecycle of a person. Right? The first stage, you have conception and birth; then you have infancy; and then you have childhood and adolescence; and then finally, you have parenthood. Well, what do those categories look like?

Well, conception and birth is a completely passive thing. You don't conceive yourself, you don't give birth to yourself. And in the same way, you can't make yourself a Christian. Christianity is not just a religion that you follow. It's not a philosophy you adapt. It's not a change in lifestyle. Christianity becomes with you, Jesus says it like this, "Being born again". Theologically, it's the doctrine of regeneration, that the Holy Spirit has to regenerate our hearts, make us alive, so that we can then respond to the Gospel in repentance and faith. But it's a passive thing.

Immediately, though, that should give way to infancy. Well, what is the mark of an infant? Well, an infant is now part of the family, but an infant is also, at the same time, pretty much completely dependent on the other members of that family for its survival. Infants don't think about the needs of others. Infants are fairly selfish: infants need to be fed, they need to be cared for, they need to be nurtured. And in the same way, new Christians, they need to be fed the Gospel, they need to receive it, and they need to believe it. They need to be taught the basics of what it means to live the Christian life and what it means to have this new identity, to have this new morality, to have this new rules of living in God's household as part of God's family.

And the thing about having a newborn in the home is it's one of the greatest joys that a family can experience. But a newborn that is failing to grow and failing to develop is one of the greatest concerns that a family can experience as well. And Paul, as their spiritual father, he is concerned because they've been infants for too long. By now, they should be growing and developing on to that next stage, which is childhood and adolescence.

So, what's the mark of that? Well, the mark ... The transition from infancy to adolescence, it's this constant progressive growth and maturity, where you're growing in holiness, you're growing in wisdom, you're growing in discernment, you're growing in grace toward other people, and you're growing and taking on more and more of the responsibilities of the family. Instead of primarily being served, more and more you're serving others. You're thinking less about yourself. You're thinking more about others. And you could put it like this, that you're asking different questions. Right? An infant is going to spend a lot of times thinking about themselves. An adolescent is going to hopefully begin thinking more and more of others. And so, instead of asking, "Who is serving me? Who is teaching me? Who is pouring into me?", as you grow you should begin asking, "Where can I serve? What can I teach? Who can I care for and pour into?"

All of that hopefully leads to the final stage, which is parenthood. And I say "parenthood" instead of "adulthood" because the distinguishing mark of a parent is they reproduce. And that's the assumption, right? That as a disciple of Jesus, it's expected that you grow up and you mature until you begin leading other people to Jesus. You begin teaching other people what it means to be disciples of Jesus. You reproduce yourself, and then ultimately you progress even on that to like the greatest stage of all, which is being the grandparent. Who is more happy and joyful than a grandparent sitting around the dinner table with all their kids and grandkids over for Christmas dinner? That's the Christian who has led another person to Christ, and then begins to see them leading other people to Christ. And they just walk into church with this incredible joy of seeing that faith lived out. And that's the big glorious vision for Christian maturity.

The unfortunate reality is that the Corinthian church is nowhere near that. They're stuck in their infancy, and they're failing to grow up into this great vision for who they have been called to be. So, they've had this failure in maturity, and it's coming from a failure to understand their identity.

Throughout the letter, Paul is constantly addressing them as brothers and sisters; he's constantly addressing them as saints; he's constantly reminding them of who they are positionally in Christ. And here, in 1 Corinthians 6:3, he says something just absolutely crazy. He drops it on them, and then he just moves on without an explanation.

Well, look at this. He says in verse three: "Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!" What on earth is that about, Paul? Honestly, I don't know. I do know that Scripture, and we see this throughout Scripture, this idea that we, as Christians, we are going to participate, and we are going to serve with Jesus in his kingly, royal, judicial role at the Resurrection and in all of eternity. We're going to rule and reign with him. Paul is not trying to give us a full theology of what that looks like. He is trying to get us to marvel at this vision that Jesus has for who we are to become and what he has in store for us. And the application is the point. The application is clear: if that's who we're going to be, we need to start living like that right now. We need to start practicing that right now. If we're going to judge the angels, we shouldn't be having any trouble handling these personal disputes between people in the church.

So, they'd had a failure of maturity that was caused by their failure of identity. And unfortunately, it was leading to a failure in their witness. They were called to be witnesses to the city of Corinth of the power of the Gospel. And what is the power of the Gospel? The Gospel has the power to transform lives and to reconcile enemies. Well, they weren't living transformed lives. They were living lives of unrepentant sin, and they weren't showing, witnessing, to the power of the Gospel to reconcile. They're still fighting with one another, and it's ruining their witness. They were called to be a light to that dark city. And instead, right now, Paul is saying, "You're defeated." It looks like the darkness is winning. He says, "To have these ..." Verse seven: "To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers!"

This brings us to point two, talking about a better way to right our wrongs. Obviously, they're doing it wrong, and Paul is trying to help them see a better way to do that.

And so, what does that look like? Well, what does Paul mean when he says, "Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" Is Paul saying that in the church we just need to be passive? We just need to be doormats to one another, and allow one another to just kind of commit these kind of injustices towards one another unchecked? No, he's not saying that. He's not saying don't ever seek justice. He saying be careful how you do it.

Don't seek justice by going to the unrighteous instead of the saints is what he said earlier. And he uses that word "unrighteous" intentionally, I think, for two reasons. Don't go to an unrighteous, pagan judge for a practical reason: the Roman judges weren't necessarily known for being particularly just. In fact, they were known for being corrupt, and being partial, and for oftentimes ruling in favor of the rich and the upper-class. And so, I think that's the practical part of what he means by "unrighteous". But I think there is a more important theological reason that Paul is getting at as well: these Roman judges were also unrighteous in the Christian sense that they had not received the righteousness that comes by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. They were not Christians. They didn't understand the Gospel. And among brothers, that matters, because what that meant is they did not have the proper eyes to see the proper perspective to understand all that was at stake in these disputes between Christians.

So, Paul is not saying that the church should just tolerate one another's sins and injustices. He is instead calling the church to see these situations through the lens of the Gospel and the church's mission, and to understand that there is a lot more here at stake than merely fairness. That what is at stake here, ultimately, is family.

There's a lot going on here that is hard for us to understand, primarily because we are in a very individualistic culture that has a fairly weak ecclesiology. That's the study of the theology of the church. And so, we don't understand a few of the things that Paul assumes that we understand. He assumes that we understand that, as Christians, we have been personally saved by Jesus Christ, and we have a relationship with him personally. But we do not have a private relationship with Jesus Christ. He saves us out of sin, into his church, and that as Christians we are then to submit ourselves to the care, and the accountability, and the authority of a local church. And in fact, a lot of what he has to say doesn't make sense to a Christian who doesn't have that kind of relationship to a local church. And Jesus, in Matthew 18, he teaches that the local church has that authority to care for and hold one another accountable. And there's a reason for it.

In Matthew 18, Jesus teaches us both how and why to handle these kind of disputes among Christians in the church. And just for example, compare these two paths: the knee-jerk reaction of the flesh is to get even, to make things fair. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You did this to me, and now this is what it's going to take to make things fair." And that's good as far as it goes. But the knee-jerk reaction of the Spirit is something far more significant: not to merely seek fairness, but ultimately to seek righteousness and reconciliation.

What I mean by "righteousness" is it seeks to right the wrong in a situation. Yeah, that's part of it. But more importantly, the Spirit seeks to right the hearts of the people involved in the dispute, both the plaintiff and the defendant. It aims to protect the person who was wronged from growing bitter toward the person who wronged them. And then ultimately, it's not about forcing the person who did the wrong thing to do the right thing: it's about bringing them through this Spirit-filled process in which the hope is they will have a change of heart where they actually want to do the right thing. Not because they have to any longer, but because it's an outflow of their character, and it's what they want to do.

So, for example, I have my guitar here. Most of you know that my wife and I have two children, and I have three children: Owen, Nora, and my American Deluxe Telecaster. Absolutely precious child, and I love this guitar. Now imagine, if you will ... This would never happen, but just for the sake of the illustration, imagine that our fearless worship leader Caleb, in a moment of just unscrupulous weakness, decided he is going to break the golden rule, the musicians' code ... Which you all know what that is, right? You don't touch another musician's instrument without permission. He throws that out the window. He says, "I don't care. Shane is not in the room. I'm going to break the code. I'm going to pick up his guitar, and start playing it." But then, in the process, it slips out of his hands, falls off the stage. I walk back in the room, and all I see is just Caleb towering over my dying child with a broken neck. And I am devastated.

Now again, this would never happen. But let's imagine in that moment a little demon pops up on Caleb's shoulder and says, "It's not your fault. Don't take responsibility. Just deny it. You don't owe anyone anything." In that moment, I have been wronged. In that moment, Caleb is refusing to make things right. So, I have two choices: I can either take him to court, or I can take him to church.

So, what does that look like? First, option one: take him to court. I call Judge Judy. She hears my case. I bring the evidence, I bring the witnesses, and in her wisest, sassiest voice, she declares Caleb guilty. Guilty of breaking the code, guilty of being a bad friend, and guilty of cold-blooded murder. And she awards me the damages that I am due, and justice wins the day, right? But what happens after that? Well, most likely, Caleb is going to begrudgingly pay up, because Judge Judy is going to make him. Then he is going to quit the band, and he is going to leave the church. We're going to burn our bridges, and we're going to both walk away from that situation angry and bitter at one another. That is option one, and that is what the Corinthians were doing.

Now, option two is we follow Matthew 18. And option two is harder, and option two has a higher risk. But option two also has a higher reward.

So, what does following Matthew 18 look like? Well, the first thing Matthew 18 tells me to do is to go to my brother one-on-one. So, I do that. I go to Caleb one-on-one, I try to reason with him. And Jesus says if he repents, then praise God, I've won my brother. But let's say in this situation he doesn't. He is being stubborn, and so I'm forced to go on to step two, which is I bring some Christian friends along and we try to reason with him together. And still, he won't relent. So finally, we bring the church in, and he still refuses to repent. And so, we're forced to move on to that final stage and remove him from membership in the church.

Now, in that moment, it seems like a lose-lose situation, that we've lost the case and we've lost our brother. And that is the risk of Matthew 18. But that is not the vision of Matthew 18. The vision of Matthew 18 is heart changed and reconciliation. And so, we have faith. We go through this process, and we pray. And hopefully, as time goes by, the reality of the situation begins to sink in. The Holy Spirit begins to convict Caleb's heart that he had gotten away with murder, but now he can't shake the guilt. He can't get the blood off his hands, and finally he cries out to God in repentance, and he comes back to me and asks for forgiveness. He says, "I could never make up to you what I've done, but I want to do everything I can to make this right."

Now, you could say, in that moment, all I've really done by doing it, taking him to church instead of taking him into court, is I've simply just delayed justice. Maybe so. But ultimately, I've won back something infinitely more significant than what I had originally lost: I've won back my brother. I've won back our relationship. Because had I just been passive, and ignored him, and been the doormat, well, I probably would have lost him anyway to the hardening effect of sin on his unrepentant heart. If I had taken him to court, I probably would have lost him due to our mutual bitterness towards one another by forcing him to do the right thing. But by bringing it to Jesus, bringing it to the church, I've won the possibility of winning the thing that matters most, which is his heart, which is our relationship, and which is ultimately our witness to the power of the Gospel. That the Gospel really does have the power to change people's hearts, lives, and to reconcile enemies.

And that brings us to point three, which is the goal of our grievances. When you're going to court, the goal is fairness. In going to church, the goal is family. It's reconciliation. But it's more than that as well, because in these situations the sobering reality and the question we need to ask is what if the reason this person in the church in Corinth is going around conning people, swindling them out of their money, is because he is actually not a Christian? What if the reason they're acting that way is because they've been fooled and deceived into thinking they're something they're not, and they're actually not in the family? What if this is an opportunity for them to wake up, to be sobered by that reality, repent of their sin, and actually join the family, be born again, become a new creation for the very first time?

And so, Paul gives this very sobering warning at the end of the passage. Look at verse seven again: "To have these lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers! Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

So, there is a stern warning to the plaintiff. Why not rather be wronged? If you are so quick to go out and seek vengeance, to make things fair, that you don't even pause to consider the state of your brother's heart, well, then maybe you're still walking in the flesh and not the Spirit. There is an even more stern warning for the defendant. If you are able to live this way, swindling people out of their money, living in unrepentant sin, living in rebellion to God and to his word, then you're walking in the flesh and not the Spirit. And the warning to both parties is that this kind of life, a life lived in the flesh, is a life that is characterized by either revenge, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, or unrepentant sin and rebellion to God's word. A life lived in the flesh is not the life of the person who has been washed, who has been sanctified, who has been justified, set apart, and saved by Jesus.

He says, "Don't be fooled. Do not be deceived." He wouldn't say that unless that was a real possibility, and that we could be easily fooling ourselves. And this is a sobering reality, but Hell is real. But salvation is not just about getting people out of Hell. Salvation is also about getting Hell out of people. And where we are right now, and the way we are walking right now, is a good indication of where we're headed. Are we walking in the flesh, or are we walking in the Spirit? Honestly asking ourselves, "Is my life marked by faith? Is my life marked by forgiveness? If my life marked by holiness and repentance?" If not, don't be deceived. Don't deceive yourself.

And we need to be careful here, as Christians on this side of eternity, we will always be at war against temptation and against sin. We're all going to be tempted, and we're all going to sin. Paul is not saying that anyone who has committed one of these sins or is tempted by one of these sins is going to Hell. But what Paul is saying is that we've all committed these sins, or sins like the ones on this list, and we were all once on a broad road to perdition, headed toward destruction. But that was before Jesus. "Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified." And yes, that is who you were, but by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit that is not who you are. Now live it.

Just imagine the church is like this giant spiritual rock tumbler. I don't know if you had one of these when you were a kid. You throw a bunch of dirty, jagged stones in, and they all kind of look the same. But then as they collide with one another, the reality of what they're really made of begins to be revealed. And sometimes it's dust, sometimes it's diamonds. Right? Sometimes it's limestone and it turns into sand, and sometimes you have a precious gem at the end.

Now, the bad news for a stone, the bad news is that it is what it is. A diamond is a diamond. Limestone is always going to eventually turn to dust. And the worst news for us is that none of are born as diamonds. We're all born as dust. The good news is that Jesus is quite capable of making diamonds out of dust, right?

If an honest evaluation of our lives reveals nothing but sand ... By which I mean if there is no evidence of true salvation, no fruit of the Spirit, no affection for Jesus, no love for the Scriptures and for his church, then the solution is not to pretend that we're something we're not, or to deceive ourselves, or to just feel guilty, try harder, and fake it till we make it. No, the only solution is that we would be born again, that Jesus would make us a new creation, that he would take what we are and make us into something new. And the only way we can do that is to just stand before the Cross, and on the one hand to just tremble at our own sinfulness and price that Jesus had to pay because of it; and then on the other hand, just marvel at the incredible mercy and grace that we have been shown in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I want to close simply by reading out loud Jesus' teaching from Matthew 18. We've been referring to it a lot this week and last week, and I just kind of want to read it out loud. But I want to read it, then, in the context of the rest of what Jesus has to say around it, because after Jesus teaches his disciples this in Matthew 18, Peter comes up to him, and he has a question for him, to which Jesus responds with this very insightful parable that helps us understand what is going on.

So, Matthew 18, starting at verse 15. Jesus says this. He says, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or tree witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in Heaven."

A lot of people don't realize that was ... Jesus said that in the context of church discipline. And he says, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. And then Peter came up and said to him, 'Well, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' And Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times.'"

And he tell them this parable: "Therefore the kingdom of Heaven will be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents." An astronomical amount of money. "And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife, and children, all that he had, and payment to be made. So, the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii, and seizing him, began to choke him, and say, 'Pay what you owe.' So, his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him: 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' Be he refused, and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

Now, when his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him, and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all of his debt. So also my Heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."

The big idea there is that anyone who has experienced that kind of just amazing generous grace, after that experience, can no longer continue walking down one of two different paths. On the one hand, they can't continue walking down the path of unforgiveness, of withholding forgiveness, withholding mercy, withholding grace, because they've been shown such incredible grace. It's only natural that they would then show that same kind of grace to others. Now, on the other hand, they're not going to go out and continue walking down that path of acquiring more and more debt through their sin. Anyone who has been relieved of that kind of debt, the last thing they're going to go out is to try to go out and acquire more by living a life of sin and rebellion to God. The Gospel changes that, and when we properly understand it, it changes how we relate. How we relate to one another, and how we relate to our sin. We're quick to repent, and we're quick to forgive.

If you're here today and you'd like to learn more about what it means to be a Christian, if you have not experienced this grace that we're talking about, there will be people up here after the service that would love to meet with you, pray with you, and answer any questions that you might have. But for those of you who are Christians, let the life that you live be a right and rational response to the life that you've been given in Christ, to the grace and to the mercy that you've been shown. We are children of our Father, and we want to bear his resemblance. And we know that our Father is holy and just, and so we should flee from temptation, and we should be quick to repent. We also know that our Father is merciful, kind, loving. And so, we should be patient with one another, and quick to forgive.

Let's pray. Father God, we cannot comprehend the true depths of your holiness, or your love, or the full extent of the price that Jesus paid to free us from sin. God, we ask that you would forgive us, and that by the power of your Holy Spirit that you would help us to grow, help us to mature so that day by day we become more and more like our Savior Jesus Christ. More like him in holiness, in justice, in mercy, and in love. God, fill us with your Spirit, to walk in your Spirit. Give us victory over the flesh so that we as your church can be a shining witness to this city around us. Your Gospel, your kingdom, your power, your glory are magnificent, and we want to bear witness to that with our lives. So, give us strength, Lord, give us faith. Fill us with your Spirit. We pray in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Summary: Sin is a voracious, bloodthirsty, corroding force – never satisfied until it has parasitically sucked the life out of a person, family, community, or even a church. Therefore, the most hateful thing we can do is turn a blind eye to sin, in our own lives and in the lives our loved ones. In the church, we are called by God to humbly, lovingly, and graciously confront our brothers and sisters about their sin (and invite correction from them about our own), for we are our brother's and sister's keepers.

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors her at Mosaic and if you're new or if you're visiting, and you'd like to connect with us, we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly and then afterwards you can either toss it into the offering basket, or you can redeem it at the welcome center for a little gift that we've prepared for you to say thanks for coming out. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly father, we thank you that though we were rebels, insubordinate, wayward, running from you, pursuing our own sin and folly. Lord, we thank you that you didn't leave us in our ways, but you sent your son Jesus Christ, who died an excruciating death on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin. And I pray today, Lord, that you remind us that you sent your son, Jesus Christ, not to die so that we can continue sinning, but to die so that we can be empowered by your grace, and your love, and your holy spirit to live lives in submission to your will, lives of righteousness, lives of holiness.

And Lord, so we take some time now as Christians to repent of any known sin in our own lives. We repent, Lord, in brokenness and contrition, humility. We come before you asking for more grace, and we pray that grace empowers us to live lives worthy of the gospel. And Lord, show us that your grace is never cheap, it's costly, and that we are never to use it as an excuse to continue in sin. And Lord, show us today if anyone here's not yet a Christian, what it means to truly be a Christian, truly be saved.

It means to be part of your household and in your household there are rules. Rules not to keep us from fun, not to kill our joy, but rules that keep us from things that will kill our joy, which always sin. And I pray Lord, that you draw many to yourself even today. And I pray for those Christians who are on the outskirts, on the fringes of the church. I pray that you show them just how dangerous of a place that is to be, that we all need mutual accountability. We all need one another. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the holy word, and pray this in the beautiful name Jesus Christ. Amen.

So at the foundation of our society is this idea of moral relativism, meaning there is no good, there is no right, there is no evil, there is no righteousness, and therefore, that the chief virtue in our society is not truth. It's tolerance, and there are two pillars to this moral relativism in our culture. One is moral individualism that I personally get to decide what I do with my life. I get to decide what's good, what's evil, what's right and what's wrong. I don't have to look outside. No one else can tell me it's me if I'm not hurting anyone, live and let live, and there's no such thing as categorical sin, or categorical evil. The only sin that's left in our culture is to call something sin. The only evil that's left in our culture is to call something evil, that's moral individualism.

And then the second pillar of moral relativism is expressive individualism. No one has a right to tell me how to love my life, and therefore, I have no right to tell anyone how to live their life. Therefore, we have a deep-seated prejudice against passing judgment, especially when it comes to moral decisions, decisions that have to do with our private life, or sexuality, our finances. Therefore, in this context, in the society that we live in, any talk of rebuke, or correction, or reproof seems viscerally unloving. It's unloving to tell someone else that they are making a mistake. And this idea, this world, it has crept into our churches to such an extent, that to talk of church discipline, even the idea is a faux pas.

It sounds like we're trying to revive the Salem Witch Trials or the Inquisition. It seems like a throwback to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with the Puritans, make Hester Prynne wear a red A on her chest for committing adultery. It seems to antiquated, so rigid, so counter to the idea of love. And we throw out Matthew 7:1, probably the most famous verse in our culture. "Judge not, that you be not judged." And it's this idea that we shouldn't judge anybody, but as soon as you say, "Don't judge anybody. Hey, don't judge me." "I've got a Bible verse." "Oh, you're being judgmental," so it can't mean you can't discern, you can't distinguish between right and wrong. What does it mean?

You got to read in context, Matthew 7:6. Jesus goes on and he talks about the sermon, "Do not give dogs what is holy, do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you." How do you know that someone's spiritually a dog, or spiritually a pig? And he's talking about someone who's so materialistic, so focused on the physical world that they have no sense of the spiritual. Jesus said, "You got to be discerning."

Matthew 7:15, "Beware of false profits, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." You got to be discerning, and in that context, what Jesus means when he says do not judge, he's saying do not be hypocritical when making discernment. Don't be condescending. Don't be self-righteous. Take the log out of your own eye before doing the sensitive spiritual work of taking a speck out of your brother or sister's eye. It's personal repentance that then helps another brother or sister repent of sin. It's not heartless passivity, it's humble proactivity.

Well, what about casting the first stone? It's a story of the woman who was caught in adultery, that was brought to Jesus by the pharisees and then Jesus said, "Whoever is without sin cast the first stone." But then what did Jesus say? He said, "Woman, where are they? They all left? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. I've paid for your sins on the cross for the penalty of your sins on the cross. But," he says, "From now on, sin no more."

And what Jesus is doing, is he's discerning that there is such a thing as sin in your life, you are on a path to sin. Now turn from that, that's what repentance means. Repentance does not mean I come to God and I say, "God, forgive me. Now I'm going to go continue living in sin." Forgiveness in the Greek, metanoia. I means I turn around, it's a 180-degree turn. Now you turn. Say Lord, I was living for myself, I was living in sin. I repent of that sin. I turn to you.

If sin is just a description of someone's mistake, some character flaw, some foibles, indiscretions, then our emotional recoil against this idea of correction, it makes sense. If sin is neutral, if it's stagnant, leave the person alone. Let them make their own decisions, let them learn from their mistakes, but sin is not neutral.

As soon as a voracious, blood-thirsty, corroding force, and it's never satisfied unless it's parasitically sucked the life out of a person, out of a family, out a community, even of a church. Scripture says that sin produces death in us by separating us from God, who is the source of life. Therefore, the most hateful thing that we can do is turn a blind eye to sin in our own lives, and sin in the lives of those whom we loved, brothers and sisters. In church, we are called by God to humbly, lovingly, graciously confront our brothers and sisters of their sin and invite them to confront us of our sin, when we don't see it because sin has a blinding effect, a hardening effect, a deadening effect. We are our brothers and sisters keepers.

This text that we're about to read makes no sense outside of the church, outside of the church community, outside of the household of God. So if you are not a Christian, if you are just exploring Christianity, I need to set this up for you, it won't make no sense at all. This is how Christianity talks about becoming a Christian. We are guilty before the judge of the universe.

Imagine yourself in a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit, we're guilty. The sentence comes down, we deserve eternal separation from the eternal God because of an eternal debt that we owe. And we say, "Is there any other way?" He brings in Jesus Christ, his son. He said, "My son has died on the cross for your sin, to pay the penalty for your debt. If you trust in him, believe in him, repent of your sin, his righteousness is counted to you, his record is counted to your record, is counted to him.

But, this is the truth, but now you belong to this judge. Now this judge says, "You are my son. You are my daughter. You are adopted into my family. It's not receive this forgiveness, receive this forgiveness of your debt so you can go and accrue more debt. No, you've been living as a spiritual orphan and if you receive this forgiveness, I'm adopting you into my family. I'm taking you home, I'm giving you my last name. Therefore, I have a claim on you. And the claim is, you are to live according to my household rules, and these rules I've given not to keep you from fun, but to keep you from things that hurt you, to keep you from the corroding effect of sin."

So as we read the text today, we need to understand that these are rules for the household of God. Would you look at I Corinthians 5, one through 13 with me. I Corinthians 5, one through 13. "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among Pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you."

"For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."

"Your boasting is not good. Do you now know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother is he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges the house outside. Purge the evil person from among you."

This is the reading of God's holy, inherit, and fallible word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We'll frame up our time with four points. First, we'll look at the prompting of this letter, what's the goal of church discipline? Then we'll look at the purpose, why is church discipline an idea in scripture? Then we'll look at the problems, when is church discipline to be implemented? And then the procedure, how is it to be done?

The prompting. What has caused St. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to write this letter to Corinth? Well, he planted this church about 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in this debaucherous, this Pagan, this sinful city of Corinth. And he spent 18 months there, about 50 people had been gathered to form a core group for a church. He then goes onto Eposes to plant a church there. While in Eposes, he hears from this lady named Chloe who's part of the church, that there's all kinds of problems within the church in Corinth. And the whole idea, like none of this text makes sense apart from the context of church membership. These are all people who have covenant together for mutual accountability, to help one another grow in the Lord.

So St. Paul says in verse one, "It's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you." It's the Greek word porne, it's a vast word, a broad word, which includes all kinds of stuff. But here he's talking about an incestuous relationship. "A man has his father's wife." So this is a guy in the church, who's a member of the church, who's a professing believer, who is sleeping with his stepmother. Not a one night stand, followed by broken hearted repentance, has his father's wife, not had. It's an ongoing present tense. And then he says, "It's the kind that's not even tolerated among the Pagans."

And the Pagans tolerated a lot of sexual immorality, tolerated fornication, prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, even pedophilia. Demosthenes was an order of the day says, "Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children." But even they would draw the line here. This is an exploitative relationship, this is a relationship that is so counter to the natural order. The Pagan Roman Order Cicero says, "Incest was virtually unheard of in Roman society."

And this brings us to a question, where should the line be drawn when it comes to sex? In culture, it's getting pushed further, and further, and further. They're two consulting adults, not hurting anyone. No harm, no foul. Love is love. Personal fulfillment. Self-expression. Where do we draw the line? Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote a book recently called Shameless and she considered herself a Lutheran pastor and she wrote this book to self-professed Christians. And she says, "I'm here to tell you, unless your sexual desires are for minors, or animals, or your sexual choices are hurting you, or those you love, those desires are not something you need to struggle with. They are something to listen to, make decisions about, explore, perhaps have caution about. But struggle with, fight against, make enemies of? No.

Scripture would say she is a false prophet, preaching an anti-gospel. She's going contrary to God's will. Why isn't this arbitrary? You're drawing the line at minors and animals. Why? When is that boundary then pushed? Where does God draw the line? God says, "Sex is such a powerful force, for good or for evil, that only within the confines of a marriage, a covenant lifelong relationship between a husband and a wife, a man and a woman, one covenant, one lifetime, only then is it safe. Only then is it a blessing and not a curse."

And this gentleman in the church could say, "Well, Jesus Christ never said anything about me not sleeping with my stepmom." Well, Jesus Christ also didn't say anything about pedophilia, but Jesus Christ was an Old Testament rabbi, and he assumed a lot of the Old Testament case law, specifically when it came to morality. So Leviticus 18:8, "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness."

What's St. Paul doing here? He takes it as a matter of course, that there are parts of the case law in Leviticus that are still enforced, still binding. This isn't part of the 10 Commandments, this isn't commandment 7A or 7B, but it's part of the case law. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." He fulfilled all of the law in himself, but he didn't abolish it.

He fulfilled the ceremonial law, and he fulfilled the temple laws, and the laws of the priesthood, but when it comes to morality, he still calls us to submit to God's word. As gut-wrenching as this sin is of sexual immorality, that's not what the point of the sermon is. The sex sermon is coming in two weeks. The second part of I Corinthians six so come back for that. But this sermon is about church discipline. It's gut-wrenching, but their reaction is why St. Paul writes this chapter.

I Corinthians 5:2, "And you are arrogant." I Corinthians 5:6, "Your boasting is not good." They're taking pride in their perversion. They've got flags, and they've got bumper stickers, and parades, and they've got the Facebook profile picture frames. They're taking pride in their tolerance, and their diversity, freedom, open-mindedness. They're presenting themselves to be more loving than God. They're saying things like, "Who am I to judge?" Because as soon as you begin to discern and call a sin a sin, call a spade a spade, then you got to do something in your own life. And that's inconvenience.

What theory would give rise to boasting in this kind of immorality? I'll give you the theology, and this is rampant theology in our day and age. God is love, God doesn't judge. God is absolutely tolerant. If God gets glory by forgiving us, let's sin some more so that grace may abound, and it turns grace into license. Freedom and opportunity for the flesh, all things are lawful for me.

Why did Jesus Christ die? Why did God, the father, put his son Jesus Christ to death? Jesus took our sin upon himself. Our sin killed Jesus so that we would kill our sin. That's the point. God doesn't just want to save you from the penalty of your sin. He wants to save you from the power of sin over your life, and he releases you, and we no longer have to submit to the power of sin. We can submit to the power of righteousness, which is the only true freedom. And then by the power of the holy spirit, we are to mortify the presence of sin in our life.

Therefore, love is not opposed to discipline. What is true love? True love is you want the best for the beloved. Well, what is the best for us? The best for us is to be in perfect fellowship and communion with God. And sin is that which pulls us away from fellowship from God. Sin is that which kills our joy, it kills our satisfaction, so God despises our sin, and he wants that sin removed. So he sometimes has to discipline us in order for us to be drawn near to him. Because God loves us, he disciplines us so that we may share in his holiness and be conformed to the image of Christ.

Look at Hebrews 12:5, "And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, for be weary, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." And then he goes on in that chapter to say, hey, when parents discipline, when parents parent, when parents try to discipline their children because the children don't have their own self-discipline, is that because they're unloving? No, the most unloving thing to say is, "Do whatever you want." Revelation 3:19, "Those whom I love," says Jesus, "I reprove and I discipline so be zealous and repent."

Second point is the purpose, why is church discipline a thing? Why does Jesus teach us to implement this? In I Corinthians 5:12, "For what I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you." So he's saying in terms of outside, those are non-Christians. We love them and we show them the love of God, they need to meet Jesus Christ, and we're not expecting them to live under the household rules of God. They're not in the household, so we tell them, "Hey, believe in Jesus. Come to him for forgiveness. Submit your life to yield yourself."

I was thinking about this last night, as I was awakened at two a.m. by drunk BU graduates. And I was like, "I could go out and tell them right now, submit to the Lord. You're all sinners, stop drinking and waking me up at night." I didn't do that. They're not Christians yet and my wife would have gotten really ... They're not in the household of God. So we tell them about grace, and we tell them about the gospel, we tell them that they can be forgiven, they can meet Christ, but this discipline language, it's for believers to hold one another accountable. And it's all because of love, love for Christ, love for the watching world, love for the church, and love for the individual who is under this church discipline.

So church discipline shows love for Christ, this is a subpoint number one under point number two. God's holiness is a dominant theme in the Bible. The Bible is saying, "Love, love, love." The angels saying, "Holy, holy, holy." God is literally holy, utterly opposed to sin, you can no mixture with sin. In the Old Testament God said, "You are my people and you shall be holy for I the Lord am holy." It's repeated in the New Testament that the church is a holy priesthood in a holy nation. That's the verse right there, "A kingdom of priests in a holy nation."

God is saying you are distinct people, I've saved you for myself. You're in the world, but you're not of it. A people within a people and we are to represent God, we carry God's name. God's name is bound up with this church, his reputation is at stake. And when his people sin, when the church is infiltrated with sin, God does disassociate himself from the church.

How do I know this? Revelations two and three, Jesus writes letters to churches and he repeatedly warns, "If sin is not dealt with in their midst, he will remove the church's lamp stand." And that's what he did with Thyatira, and because of moral compromise. God would rather not have a testimony to his name in a city than to have his name maligned. When discipline leaves the church, Christ goes with it. The transformative power of the gospel goes with it.

Why did God punish King David so severely after David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then killed her husband? He said, "By doing this," the words of God, "You have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt. You've blasphemed the name of God." Church discipline shows our love for Christ. Christ is holy, and the way that we honor Christ isn't just with empty words, but with heartfelt obedience.

Church discipline also shows love to a watching world, that there is a difference between Christians and non-Christians, that Christ's power does make a difference, that Christ's power does transform, that he satisfied, that he is the source of joy. If people see our lives, the lives of the church and they're exactly the same as those outside of the church, then they begin to think that this is nothing but religion. "Oh, you're just very observant. Grace does nothing. It's just an excuse to sin more."

Because ultimately, you love sin as much as the unbelievers. You're just using Christ as an excuse to sin more. So the Pagans mocked and they jeered the church in Corinth. Brennan Manning said this, some of the most powerful words that capture this idea. "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle. This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

Many churches today, and even in the city, in an attempt to be attractive to non-Christians, they begin to preach things like, "We're normal. We're as sinful as you. We don't have a problem with sin. We don't judge sin. We're tolerant, so join us to feel safe about your sin." And people say, "What's the point? It's a waste of my Sunday morning." Can we keep the visible church absolutely pure? Of course not, just like we can't keep ourselves absolutely pure. That doesn't mean we don't fight our sin and fight the good fight of faith. And in the church, we are to do the same.

Church discipline shows love for God for the world, but also for the church, in particular the weaker sheep, the younger Christians, that they might be protected. So St. Paul says in verse six, "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" And what he's talking about is the Passover feast that Israel was saved from captivity in Egypt through the Passover, and before the angel of death came over all of Egypt, they were take a lamb and to sacrifice it.

And take the blood and paint it over their doorway, and then they would take unleavened bread, before they made that bread, they were to sweep their whole house for leaven. Leaven was used instead of yeast because yeast was hard to come by, it was scarce. And what leaven is, it's just a piece of old dough that had been fermented. And if you are to make bread, you take that piece of leaven, you put it in the new batch of dough, and you let it ferment.

The problem is, if you leave it in there too long, it become poisonous, and then you lose the bread, and this is what he's saying. He's saying you got to get rid of the leaven in your house, just like the people of Israel would do, they would sweep the house from top to bottom, every drawer, every cupboard. It had to be cleaned out because if your unleavened bread was leaven, then you would lose Passover joy. And here, the leaven represents sin. Sin in the same way as leaven, leaven's the whole lump. Sin has an effect of infecting the whole lump, infecting the person, infecting the people close to the person and the whole church.

And sin, when tolerated, when excused, when ignored, indulged in, it's like an infection. Once it's excused, and then what? You got to excuse another sin. Compromise leads to more compromise, and this weird dynamic develops in a church community, where the preaching says one thing, but people in the pew says, "Yeah, we don't really mean that, we don't really believe that." And then the preaching has to change, the preaching begins to pull punches, and stops talking about real life, things that every single one of us struggle with. You stop talking about lust, and greed, and pride. You stop talking about anger, and sloth, and envy.

And that our consciousness are seared and the church seizes to be the church, now we're just a vaguely religious club where people get together for some community and live their lives anyway they want. And then the pastor or the clergy do, they just hold onto their job for dear life from the endowment, and prepare sermons where they studiously avoid saying anything that might be possibly offend anybody.

It's like in a family, if parents do not discipline their children, do not parent their children, when one child rebels, the younger children see and they start to do the same thing. When a government doesn't enforce laws, there's anarchy. When a church doesn't wield spiritual authority, after a while, the church is no longer useful by Christ, and it actually becomes useful by Satan. It becomes demonic in many ways, actually pushes people away from God. You see this in churches. You see the sex abuse scandals with the Catholic Church, you see that with the Southern Baptist Convention, go denomination by denomination, when sin is not dealt with, it does leaven the whole lump.

Therefore, St. Paul says, "It needs to be dealt with." I Timothy 5:20, why? "As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear." Sin is serious. Sin is as serious as cancer. Sin is death. Therefore, we are to deal with it as radically as we possibly can through repentance and obedience. Christ was put to death by our sins so that we might put our sin to death.

And finally, church discipline shows love for the individual, the person that warrants the church discipline so that the person is brought to repentance. And here we say, "Oh, it sounds so invasive. It's an overreach. I don't want to cause a problem." And by the way, vast sentiment sounds really humble and noble, but it's anything but. If you go to your dentist and your in pain and he does the x-ray, and he knows that you need a root canal. He says, "Oh, you're good. Pay for the bill at the front." You go to a doctor and he sees a tumor, but he said, "Oh, you're good. We don't have to deal with this now."

If a firetruck drives by your house and your house is on fire, the most cruel thing they can do is to drive by. And what church discipline is, it's a wake-up call. The goal is to have the person wake up from the spiritual ... This past week for example, we had a situation. My four-year-old decided to bring her bicycle up from the basement, and she's got the training wheels, and she's riding around the house. And then something happened, where my daughter's running to my room, and I open the door, and it smells like gas. Gas is just wafting in. Apparently, through her handle, she had turned one of the knobs on the gas stove. Gas is wafting into our whole place.

Now we're all outside, we turn around. We're all outside freaking out because we could have died. And but it's a great illustration for this part of the sermon, thank you, God. Why did this happen? It's because we took our fire alarms off, which also have a carbon monoxide. We took them off because they're annoying. Sometimes in the middle of the night, they just go off. It's so annoying, it's inconvenient. We took them off in the whole house and we almost died. That's the point. And this is what church discipline is. It's a wake-up call.

This sermon is supposed, I'm supposed to have zero comedy, so I apologize for that. Sin is dangerous. Sin does destroy, it destroys people, it destroys the relationship, and indifference to sin is actually hate, not love. Overlooking the sin of someone that you love, it's not loving, it's sinful. It's not gracious, it's cowardice. It's not merciful, it's dangerous. It's not kind, it's actually hateful. And then we say, "It's none of my business," and we live in a hyper-individualistic society and we're accustomed to passing by the plights of other people.

But church is not a restaurant full of strangers sitting together, ordering messages from the menu that seem really palatable, with a side of grape juice and some communion wafers. That's not what church is. Church is a family and we are each other's keeper. I try to teach my kids, and my 10-year-old loves her relationship with mom and dad, does not love the responsibilities that come with that relationship to help her siblings grow, to protect her siblings. I tell her, "Can you feed your younger sisters, too? Can you make sure that she doesn't hurt? Can you just watch?" We are each other's keeper. We are to bear each other's burdens.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together he says, "Nothing could be more cruel that leniency which abandons others to sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than that severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin." Church discipline is only perceived as unloving if we have an unbiblical definition of love.

This is how scripture defines love. "For God so loved the world that he, he gave his one and only son Jesus Christ to be crucified on the cross," that's love. Love is defined as a cross, as God's wrath pouring out in full, as judgment of sin. True love judges sin, it hates evil, calls to repentance and obedience because that's the best thing for us. I Corinthians 13:6, "Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth."

It brings us to point three, when is church discipline to be implemented? What are the problems? And I'll give you a few phrases that I'll go one-by-one, but here's just a sentence. We should deal with any professing Christian who is a member of a church, who is knowingly and rebelliously disobeying clear commandments of scripture and unrepentant. So I Corinthians five, here he talks about in verse 11, "Look, I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother." That's the point, this is a person who's calling himself a Christian, but is living in a way that is inconsistent with being a Christian.

Because what does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean I go to church? Does it mean I read the Bible? What makes me fundamentally a Christian? What makes me fundamentally a Christian is that I am on a path of repentance. I repent of my sin. I did it once, and I do it, I did it this morning. We do it on a daily basis, we progress in our faith. Faith, repentance. Faith, repentance. Church doesn't, this isn't implemented for sin per se, it's for the sin of unrepetence. That's the goal so that you repent, you get forgiveness, you get grace that empowers you to change.

And he says in verse 12, "Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? The person is also a member of the church." What right do I have to go and tell another Christian in another church with whom I am not in mutual covenant of mutual accountability? I can say something, my words don't really mean anything. This is why church membership is so crucial. This is why we practice church membership, it's in the Bible. A lot of churches don't, that's why it's such a foreign idea, and we got to talk about it all the time.

God gives us this idea of church members, this chapter doesn't make sense apart from church members from getting together with a body of believers and saying, "Look, I need your help. When there's sin in my life, I welcome you to call me out. Please, I welcome you to rise to that level of love, where you are inconvenienced, it's uncomfortable, you're willing to do it because you love me. That's what I want, that's what church members should be." That's why there's no mention of this woman, he says brings this man to church discipline not her because most likely she's not a Christian and she's not a member.

And then the person must be knowingly and defiantly disobedient. Sometimes Christians sin because of just immaturity. They don't know better. This is I Thessalonians 5:14, "We urge you brothers, admonish the idle," these are people who are slothful, and that's a sin. "Encourage the fainthearted." It doesn't say admonish the fainthearted. "Help the weak," it doesn't say admonish or rebuke the weak, we help them. And it says, "Be patient with them all." And then the person must be disobeying clear commands of scripture, and there are clear commands of scripture.

Drinking alcohol is not grounds for discipline, drunkenness is. Watching movies isn't grounds for discipline, watching pornographic movies is. And scripture has many a lists of clear moral commandments. Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galicians, Ephesians, Colossians, and I'll just give you a summary. Violations of God's moral commandments, that's what's happening here. I Corinthians 5:11, "Those who are guilty of sexual immorality or greed."

By the way, that should give us pause in the United States that greed is a moral sin. "An idolater, someone worshiping something or someone other than God." A reviler, this is a person who is verbally abusive. A drunkard or a swindler, this is a person who is sinning in illegal business practices. Another sin for which church discipline is to be practiced is unresolved relational sins, gossip, slander, anger, abuse of speech, divisiveness in the church, false teaching on major doctrines, and disorderly conduct and refusal to work.

Now point four, procedure how, how are we to do this? Jesus gives us the pattern, the procedure in Matthew 18:15, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his faults, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother." One-on-one in a private meeting. Show them in scripture, "This is where you're violating God's word, God's will." Our opinion doesn't matter, God's word is the authority and it begins with you, Christian. Not a pastor, not a leader in the church, not in elder. It begins with the Christian. All members of the church are finally responsible for what the church becomes, not the pastors, not the leaders. We are to continually to seek conforming the church in our lives to God's word. We're responsible for the church's health.

"Against you only," and a lot of people use that phrase to say, "Well, the person hasn't sinned against me, so why should I go and correct them?" Well, James 5:19, 20, Jude 22 and 23 says, "That Christians, when they see any Christian, in sin are to try to bring that person back from that sin because any sin if persisted in is a sin against Christ and also against the church, the body of Christ, with whom we are so interconnected, so independent on that when a person is in pain, we feel that pain. When a person bears a burden, we feel that burden, so we are to go to that person.

So if Christians, but this is the first step in church discipline. It's just Christians going to one another, holding each other accountable, speaking truth in each other's life, and calling one another to repentance and leaving sin. If we would conscientiously apply admonition and rebuke, there would be no need for excommunication. But before we do that, we got to check our own heart. Before pointing out a speck in your brother or sister's eye is their log in your own. We repent ourselves, we humble ourselves, we check our motives, we get the facts, but we are still to do it.

St. Paul gives us an example of how he practiced this first step in Galicians chapter two, he talks about going to Peter. Peter had been dining, he had been having meals with gentile believers. When Jewish believers came, he then pulled back from his relationships with the gentile believers, and started saying, "Oh, they're not on the same level as you guys are relationship." And Paul sees this and he calls him out for hypocrisy.

This is Galicians 2:11, "But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned." This is one apostle calling out another apostle, correcting, rebuking. Why? To show him that he's on the wrong path, to draw him to repentance. And Peter did repent and later on, by the way, how'd that feel? How does being corrected feel? How does being rebuked feel? It always hurts. Our dainty egos are always bruised.

But Peter afterwards, do you know what he calls Paul? II Peter 3:15, "Our beloved brother Paul." You did that because you love me. Reprove is always a fork in the road for any sinful soul. Either we cringe at correction like it's a curse or we embrace it as a blessing. First step, personal. Second step is a private conference with witnesses.

Matthew 18:16, "If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." Now you bring in other believers, so they together hopefully awaken this person from spiritual stupor. If the person still doesn't repent, the next step is a public announcement to the church.

Matthew 18:17, "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church when the members are gathered, gathered together." The person still does not repent. Next step is a public exclusion from the church. This is Matthew 18:17, "If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector."

I Corinthians 5:13, "Purge the evil person from among you." This is where you're saying, "You are no longer walking in a manner worthy of the name of Jesus Christ because if you were, you would have repented. You would have turned from your sin, and pertinence is always inconsistent with the Christian profession of faith. We ourselves condemn nobody, but we are doing is pronouncing God's judgment on a person who does not repent.

And then Saint Paul gives a description of what this means, I Corinthians 5:4 and 5, "When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that in his spirit, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."

What does that mean? What he's saying is, that the church is like a bomb shelter and there's a nuclear fallout of Satan's sin and the world outside of the church. And when you are no longer in the confines of a church in relationship to the church, you are being exposed to the forces of Satan's sin and the world. For the purpose, why he says, "So that to bring about the destruction of the flesh." It doesn't mean destruction of the body, he's not talking about bodily harm. The world flesh here is sarx in the Greek, not to be confused with soma which means body. Sarx is the sinful part of our nature.

And what he's saying is, this person is to be given up to Satan so that his sinful, his sin might be ... Sin might be hurt, not him so that his heart is softened. And Saint Paul uses similar language in I Timothy 1, 18 through 20, "This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscious. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme."

And the goal of that, what's the goal of that? To inflict pain on the person? No, of course not, the saved person's soul in the day of Jesus Christ, huge application for us is that to not be a committed member of a fellowship of believers is to expose ourselves to harm. This is how serious this language is.

Job, God uses the same language in the Book of Job, where he gives Job up to Satan. And he says, "Behold I hand him over to you only spare his life." And God used everything that Satan did, sovereignly used Satan's work in Job's life to refine him, purify him, rid him of self-righteousness, and draw him to himself, and draw him to repentance. Job 42:5 and six, "Now my eyes sees you, O Lord, and I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." Saint Paul actually about himself used similar language, II Corinthians 12:7, "So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited." Sometimes God uses Satan's influence sovereignly to purify us, so that's the idea where Saint Paul says, "Give him up to Satan if he no longer wants to walk in repentance, there's no other way."

But the goal of all of this, the goal of this whole process is never vindictive. The goal is not punishment for a sin. The goal is restoration. The goal is to draw the person to repentance to accept forgiveness from the Lord and to transform to life.

I Corinthians 5:2, This is the sentiment, this is the heart with which this process is done. "Ought you not rather to mourn?" Ought you not rather to mourn over the sin in your midst? There's no joy, there's no pleasure, it's grief. Saint Paul is wounded as he is writing this letter. I have no joy in writing this sermon. I have no joy in preaching this sermon, three times today in Boston, Massachusetts, 2019. But why do we do it? Because it's God's word and we as Mosaic Boston want to be a church that does God's work God's way.

How do we then relate to this person after this process is gone through? Well, Galatians 6:1 says, before we do that, how are we to help this person come to their senses, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore them in a spirit of gentleness. Gentleness. Keep a watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted."

I'm a sinner. We're all sinners. We need Christ. There's no self-righteousness, there's no condescension, but when we repent there is forgiveness. And if this person is a true Christian, they will repent. And if not, their self-deceit is exposed, and then that person can finally realize what the gospel is and have a true relationship with the Lord. How are you to relate to the person? We're no longer to fellowship with person as if there is no problem.

II Thessalonian 3:14, 15, "If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with them, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard them as an enemy, but warn them as a brother." And then Paul clarifies in I Corinthians 5:11, "I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother and if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an isolator, reviler, drunkard, swindler. Not even to eat with such a person."

So is he saying that we can't have any contact with this person? No, of course not. But he's saying we are no longer to relate to them on a buddy-buddy level as if everything's okay. He says don't even eat with them. Table fellowship in that culture meant a deep friendship. We are not to mix indiscriminately. We're not the same in our relationship as we were before. Any contact must communicate I'm heartbroken over your impendent sin. Please repent, please come back to Christ, please come back to the fellowship of believers. Won't you come back? Won't you be restored? That's the heart.

In conclusion, all of us with to be healthy. We take care of ourselves, try to eat right, try to diet and exercise, but for each one of us there will come a point where there's a breakdown in our health. And at that point, what we need is some serious medical intervention. Sometimes it takes someone cutting us up to remove a tumor and we're subjected to powerful poisons. That's what church discipline is like. Why? To restore us, to make us healthy.

What happened to this gentleman that's mentioned in I Corinthians five? Well, they went through this process and it was painful. But it says in II Corinthians chapter two that he repented and that his sorrow led him to repentance. He saw the gravity of his sin. Conscious was awakened. The church did its job to help this person be restored in the relationship with the Lord. The church is not a fellowship of sinless people. The church is a fellowship of holy people, who are pursuing holiness, pursuing sanctification, and we're a fellowship of forgiven sinners by God's grace, pursuing a life of holiness and obedience together. May God give us strength in this.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this word. It's a hard word, but hard words make for soft hearts. Some of us, Lord, are in habitual sin. We can't get out of the quagmire of sin in our lives. I pray by the power of the holy spirit, show them that there is hope, that we can be pulled out and that you long for us to be in deep communion with other believers in transparency, confessing sin to one another, repenting of sin, and walking together.

I pray today, pull them out. I pray if there's anyone who is on the fringes of the church, Lord, I pray that you show them how important it is to mutually covenant with other believers to hold each other accountable. And we pray all this is Christ name, amen.

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Summary: As we continue our series, "Prodigal Church" through 1 Corinthians, we see that the startup church has become rife with division. The One has turned into the Many, as they begin to lose their trust in God, and start to place it in leaders. Competing cliques are threatening to tear the church apart. How does God help them heal?

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in her neighborhood, churches, or donate to this ministry. Please visit mosaicboston.com.

Morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic and if you knew or if you're visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card and the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly and then toss it, either toss it into the offering basket after or redeem it at the welcome center out front for a gift. If you give us your card, we will connect with you over the course of the week. Happy mother's day for all the moms in the house. Raise your hand if you are a mom and you're with us. We had more in the first servers. Please, let's give a round of applause. We love you. We know how much you... I know how much you sacrifice. My wife and I we have four.

My wife is the champ, champ, champ, champ. Four times of a champ. I hear in the beginning we want to pray for the moms. We're going to pray for the Lord to empower and for the Lord to anoint. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are the Great Father and you gave us parents and you entrust us to parents. Lord, we recognize that our parents are fallen, but they are to show us a glimpse of your love to us. We thank you for our moms, our mothers. We thank for the mothers here. We thank you for their love and they are the embodiment of love for many of us. They prove that true love entails sacrifice. They sacrifice their time and their health and they sacrifice much in order to raise us.

We thank you for the moms in the house and we also pray a special prayer of blessing for those who perhaps have a mother who is ill. We pray for healing and we pray for grace. We pray for those whose mother perhaps has passed. I pray that you today comfort those who are grieving and we pray for those who long to be mothers and can't be. I pray Lord Jesus, be with them and satisfy the deepest desires of their heart and be with them. We pray for a special anointing upon our mothers, for your Holy Spirit to continue empower them to glorify you.

We also pray for the preaching of the Holy word. I pray today. Show us Lord, that you call your church those who are called by your name to be united around the cross of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation for whosoever believes, and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. E Pluribus Unum was the motto of the United States up until 1956 from the many one. The idea was lots of people from different countries, different nationalities, different races are coming together as a one United people.

In 1956, the motto was changed to in God we trust because one of the things that we realized as a nation that unless we have a unifying faith, a unifying force around which to rally, we are now united and they said we need to trust in God as a nation. We need to put our hope in the Lord. With decades what we've seen is that we have come to this place where as we relinquished trust in God, faith in God, we actually become more and more divided. We today probably more fragmented as a society than ever along the lines of class, race, education, culture, economics, religion, politics, what have you. We have isolate ourselves in silos and echo chambers in which we recognize we can't have unity as a society. Maybe we can have unity in our echo chambers.

What's the solution? How do we build a multicultural diverse nation? The solution has been presented that perhaps we need to reject any idea of truth. Let's become relativists to become an inclusive society. Let's get rid of truth that divides. Obviously, that's impossible because as soon as you've removed the idea of truth, what you're doing is replacing with a truth that perhaps is not a truth. Let's build an inclusive society, but we are going to exclude anyone who is non inclusive, doesn't work. We need something deeper, something stronger to unite us. Bridge that gap to bring down the walls and these strongest unifying force in the universe is God's love.

Scripture doesn't say, "Let's start from the top and unite a nation, unite the people," says, "Let's start from the bottom. Let's start with the church. Let's start with local churches. Let's not even talk about unity amongst the universal church. Let's talk about the unity amongst the local church." If we as Christians, as believers, believe that the love of God is unifying, who are the believers in our lives with whom we are seeking to be unified? Who are the flesh and blood believers in our life whom we are seeking to love?

We have an opportunity as a church that as fragmented as society gets, if we as a church are unified, it is the greatest apologetic that we have for the love of God. We say to the world, "Look at us. What else bring us together other than the love of God?" John 13:34 says, "This is a Christ words, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have commanded you. You also are to love one another by this, by your love amongst one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another."

The church is important and this is why as Jesus Christ was raised, he said, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, son, the Holy spirit." Who does the baptizing? It's the church. You're baptized into the church. St. Paul is saved by Jesus Christ. After he is saved, he goes city to city, to city to plant churches. One of the churches that he plants is in a city called Corinth. This is our sermon series called Prodigal Church. As we're going through first Corinthians, why is it called Prodigal Church? Because this is a church that a little time after its founding had lost its way. The church was planted about 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

St. Paul goes into Corinth, spends 18 months there, builds up a core group, and then heads over to Ephesus. Then he hears that there has been division, and strife, and cliques in the church. He writes them this letter and as we read this letter, one of the things that we see is Corinth is not much different than Boston. I know a pastor who preached through a sermon series through 1st Corinthians, he's from California, he call it the 1st Californians, and I thought that was very appropriate. 1st Bostonian is very similar. Human nature has not changed and one of the things that we see is that St. Paul writes this letter, all these problems are problems of vitality. The problems in the church, the problems of division, the problems of sexual morality, the problems with doc, they're all problems because the brand new church with the Holy spirit is moving and people are getting saved and what people are realizing is we are very different.

We would not be together otherwise. Then St. Paul says, now I want to remind you, the very same thing that saved you is the very same thing that can unify you and that's the gospel. We're going to frame up our time by looking at 1 Corinthians 1: 10-17 then we'll read some excerpts from chapters for chapters two and three would you look at the text with me. By the way, I don't always ask you to open up a Bible with me or an app today will be helpful because I am going to read some texts that will not be on the screen. 1st Corinthians 1:10, I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment for it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that you are quarreling among you, my brothers.

What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or, "I follow Apollos," or, "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized. None of you except Crispus and Gaius so that no one may say that they were Baptist and baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stefanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptize anyone else for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. This is the reading of God's Holy and narrate and fallible authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

We'll frame up our time with three points. Pride divides, humility unites, and mission cements. Pride divides. Point one, St. Paul is an Ephesus preaching the gospel. He hears from Chloe's people. Who's Chloe? Most likely Chloe is a gospel patron. She's a woman who's probably a business lady, a leader in the community. How do we know that? While she has people, and usually if you have people, if you say to someone, "Let your people call my people," that means you are most likely affluent. Chloe's people here that the church in Corinth isn't doing well. It's being fractured that. These people in the church are polarizing around their favorite teachers or perhaps people who baptize them. Why would they do that? They live in a city center. They live in a place of sophistication and excellence, a place of ideas, a place where people obsess over success and the way that you primarily find success in Corinth at this time is through eloquence.

Whatever your ideas are, it doesn't matter. The center of your ideas doesn't matter. It's all about the form. That's what matters more than anything. Self-promotion, reputation. You do it through eloquence. Here, they start to polarize teachers. They start to make teachers more important. They're far more important than the substance because what is the substance? The substance is the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God is Holy. We are sinners. The only way that we can be reconciled with God is by faith in Jesus Christ, son of God, son of man who was crucified for us, raised on the third day.

Now, they recognize this sounds crazy to all of our friends, so let's not talk about that. Let's instead talk about our teachers. Let's talk about how smart our teachers are, how educated our teachers are. Come listen to this teacher. He's got this idea. Don't worry about the idea first, focus on the eloquence. Really articulate lots of degrees. Listen to that guy. What happens is they formed these personality cults. The first personality cult, the first team is team Paul. I'm on Paul's team. We love Paul. Paul letters to Christ. He's the church planner. He's the founder. He's an apostle. He saw Jesus Christ with his very eyes. We are the Paul people, loyal to the good old days in the good old ways, and it's not just the substance that made Paul effective. It was the form. We need to focus on the form.

Let's dress the way Paul dressed. How did Paul dress? I don't know, but let's just imagine, very simple guy, brown robes with the rope for a bell. Let's dress like Paul. We know Paul was bald. Let's shave the top of our heads. Let's do that. That sounds like a good idea. We know Paul had a uni brow. We do. This is historical evidence. He wasn't the greatest looking guy. Let's grow uni brows. Let's be like St. Paul. Let's focus on Oregon music. Let's focus on singing only hymns. It's the form that matters, not the substance. Then there's the other group. There's team Apollos. Apollos is different. He's younger. Slick is more eloquent, more educated, trendier. He's a better spokesman for a place like Corinth. He doesn't wear a brown robe. He wears skinny jeans with suede shoes, a deep V-neck T-shirt that goes down to his knees with a leather jacket, perfectly trim beard, and he gets a haircut every week to look slick. He walks around with a hand mic on the stage. He's not a pocket passer like pastor Jan.

Now, he's mobile quarterback and he doesn't say, "Jesus. Jesus." He says, "Jesus." He doesn't say, "I'm." He grunts. That's Apollo. We love Apollos. Apollos connects better with the culture. I'm on team Apollos, I love his neck tattoo and the Hebrew tats. That's our guy. Then there's team Cephas. Cephas is Aramaic makes for Peter. Peter and his wife had visited Corinth and they had brought the gospel to affirm and strengthen and encourage the believers there. Then all of a sudden people said, "Why are we falling Paul and Apollos? Let's follow the guy who spent three years with Jesus Christ. He saw the resurrected Christ, he had breakfast with the resurrected Christ. That's our guy. More than that, he's the first Pope. We definitely got to be with him."

Then there's the people who are like, "I'm sick of these teams," and they pull the ultimate Jesus Duke. I'm on team Jesus and it sounds good. They got the best name, but these are the worst of all the groups because what they're doing is they're saying, "We don't need the church. We don't need apostles. We don't need the disciples. We don't need accountability or spiritual authority. All we need is Jesus Christ. We don't need scripture. We don't need any of that. We don't need denominations. We're above that. We don't need brands, labels, badges."

Obviously, what happens when you start saying we're nondenominational is you become another denomination called nondenominationalism. That's team Jesus. Now, the question is why are they divided? What has divided them? It's the teachers, but it's not the teachers really. The teachers... if you got them all in the room Apollos, Cephas, and St. Paul and Jesus, they would say, "No, no, no. What are you guys doing?" The messenger means nothing. It's all about the message. The power's in the message. We are to be united, not divided. It wasn't the teachers that divided them. It was something else. It was their own sinful pride. It was their own egos. That's why Paul emphasize the word I. "I'm with Paul. I'm with Apollos, I'm with team Cephas." Why? Why do they do that? Well, pride always finds a pretext even in church.

Why are we drawn to celebrity worship? Why is that even a thing when we know in of ourselves that there's something missing? There's a glory missing in us. What we do is we take our name and we try to attach it to a greater name. By doing so, we try to gain some glory from the greater name and live vicariously through them. It's more than that. It's because I'm with this teacher. I can push this teacher's agenda and ultimately the agenda changes. What you're doing is you start pushing your own agenda, agenda Paul, agenda Apollos, agenda Cephas, and you start to forget that it's not about us. These divisions are not the issue, they are symptoms of something else. Then that's something else is that they didn't realize that the power isn't in the person. It's not in the form.

The power is in the gospel itself and this is point two. It's the gospel alone that unites us by humbling us. Humility unites. St. Paul analyzes the idea here in verse 13, he says, "It's Christ divided." It's a rhetorical question. Of course, now you can't chop up Jesus Christ and get a Relic for each person in the room. Was Paul crucified? Of course, not. Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Of course, not. You were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ who was crucified for you, who is united and apart from a whole Christ, you don't have a Christ.

Jesus has everything and the best teachers keep pointing you to Christ. It's not about me. It's not about the preacher. It's not about the messenger. It's about Christ. Focus on Christ. That's what he's saying. Why mess around the cubic zirconium when you can have diamonds? Why eat a hot dog when you can have a rib eye? Why focus on a picture of the Himalayas when you can enjoy the real thing? Why you focus on messenger of Jesus Christ when you have access to Christ? Don't focus on the leaders Jesus. Focus on the Jesus who uses the leaders. By focusing on Christ, that's where we have power to advance his kingdom. Not through one person, but each of us working together.

What's the solution to the problem of division? It's the humbling power of the cross to heal division. That's what he points into verse 17. Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Did Paul think baptism was important? Of course, when he met Jesus Christ on road Damascus, he was blind and for three days he fasted and prayed. Then before eating, he gets baptized. Baptism was that important. He would preach the gospel and baptize, but he says, "It's not the beginning. It's not the foundation and it's not what's most important. Baptism doesn't save. What does save?" He says, "The preaching of the gospel, not with words of eloquent wisdom."

By the way, I had a professor of Greek Dr. David Alan Black at seminary who said by the way, when Paul here is talking about, "I am not coming with eloquence," St. Paul was one of the most brilliant people I've ever lived, writes one of the most beautiful paragraphs in all of scripture. But what he's saying is, "I'm not relying on eloquence or education. I'm not relying on myself. I'm relying on the power of God, which is in the gospel as applied by spirit, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power." When we rely on our means, on our abilities, we lose power.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. Baptism doesn't save us as a sign of salvation like a wedding ring is a sign of wedding vows and baptism is important. If you as a believer have not been baptized, we would love to help you take that next step. We're actually holding a baptism seminar soon and we're holding four baptisms at the end of the service. We would love to have you join us and celebrate the baptisms, but baptism are their testimony of what's happening in the inside that we're saved by grace through faith. There's power not in the baptism, not in liturgy, not in sacraments, not in ritual form, not in preachers, not in missionaries. The power is in the cross. He says, "There's power in the cross."

Now, this is shocking to the first century reader and this is one of the reasons why they wanted to divert attention from the cross to the teachers. Why? Because it's hard for us to appreciate what the cross symbolized in the first century. We use crosses as jewelry, as decorations. We put it on our church buildings and in our stained glass. It's clean, it's safe, it's sanitized. It's inoffensive before the first century listener to the reader. Cross was a bloody symbol of executing a criminal, shame covered, device for torturing. It was scandalous.

St. Paul here says, "At the center of the gospel, at the center of our faith is a Christ who is insulted, mocked, ridiculed, scorned, derided, parodied, caricature, hung up on a Roman cross by nails like a piece of meat, and then speared to see if it was done." The Roman order, Cicero says, "The very word cross should be far removed, not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears." It was so vulgar, crude, gruesome that it was shocking to hear anyone say the word cross in polite society.

Martin Hengel, the German historian theologian, he came up with a very important study on the crucifixion in the ancient world, and he tried to find every single reference for the cross in the ancient world. He says that they were few and far between. Why? Because sophisticated people were so ashamed of crucifixion that having witnessed it, they had the deepest visceral aversion against it. I guessed even saying the word. Hengel writes, "For the men of the ancient world, Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, and Jews, the cross was not just a matter of indifference, just any kind of death. It was an utterly offensive affair, obscene, in the original sense of the word."

Why would you worship a criminal? Why would you worship someone who was crucified. Graffito was discovered in third century by archeologists when they excavated quarters of Imperial pages at the Palatine Hill in Rome, and it's an inscription in stone and most likely the work of a child and the child drew this in stone and he drew someone on a cross with the body of a man and the head of a donkey and underneath it says, "Alexamenos worships his God." It was an object of mockery.

How in the world do you expect us sophisticated people to believe that God's son is dying on a cross? There's nothing cool about a cross, there's nothing sophisticated urbane suave about a cross. It's an instrument capital punishment, maximize both pain and shame. It's the electric chair of the time just took hours. It's the gallows, it's the guillotine. St. Paul says, "This is what has power to change us. This right here, when we look at the cross and see the son of God dying for our sins, this has power to uproot the ego and the pride that's making the world a miserable place, the pride of our hearts."

When we see the son of God crucified, bearing condemnation, not just physical pain, but wrath of God that we deserve drinking from the cup of God's wrath and drinking it down to the drugs. We deserve that wrath. We deserve that curse because we... And this is what the cross says, "We are wretched sinners. We don't just make mistakes. We are wretched, wicked sinners." That's what it takes for our sins to be atone for the cross. Uncomfortable to look at, uncomfortable to think about, but that's what it takes and that's what God was willing to take.

You are much worse than you think you are as am I, but you are more dearly loved than you can ever imagine. That's what the cross shows, the Holiness of God and His love coming together, His justice and His mercy coalescing inextricably. We are sinners, selfish, and disobedient, and unkind by nature. We don't live in a way that pleases God. We actually are indifferent toward God. He is irrelevant to us. We could utterly care less of God and His interest, His commandments, what His will is of His Holiness, of His purity.

All of that sin demands a wage. It provokes the Holy wrath of God and His justice. Now, that brings us to an epic dilemma. What's the epic dilemma of an epic proportion? How can we stand before a Holy God? How can we ever be reconciled with God? How can we ever tone for our sins? Scripture says we can do nothing. There's nothing that we can do. If for the rest of our lives we live pristine lives, which we possibly can, we can't pay for our sins. Then the good news of Jesus Christ comes in. You can't do anything to save yourself. He has done everything to save you and all you need to do, all we need to do is believe in him, trust in him, call upon him, and he saves us. He saves us in this life and then gives us life, joy, and satisfaction for ever. But it all starts here at the cross. Him, son of God, hanging there for us, pouring out his love to the last drop.

We see the utmost demonstration of God's power and His wisdom, and His love as He conquers Satan. So, sin and death. This is the crux of human history, the crux of Holy scripture, the crux of our lives, a crucified savior dying excruciating pain. Therefore, we as believers are called to live what kind of life? Christ made the way of the cross, the way of life. We are to live lives of humility. Christ though being God made himself a servant, taking the form of a human being crucified. This is the way of life we are to live a cruciform life, a life of humility, and sacrifice, and service.

Therefore, why does St. Paul do this? Is it whole big ideas be united as Christians? Because at the foot of the cross, the ground is level. We are all washed with the same blood, united by God's love. Then the question arises, we don't have a cross. Where's the cross? We don't even have relics of the cross. Where is it? If there's power in the cross, why don't we have a cross? Well, Christ didn't remain on the cross. That's why the cross is power. Christ was buried and he was raised on the third day. That's why I actually have a problem with crucifixes in churches where Jesus Christ is still hanging on the cross. He's not there. He rose. He's in heaven, seated at the right hand of God the father.

If the power is in the cross, we don't have the cross. Then where's the power? St. Paul continues, verse 18, "For the word of the cross, God infuses a word of the cross preaching about the cross with this power. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it's the power of God." For it's written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where's the one who was wise? Where is the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks. Christ's the power of God and the wisdom of God for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. You ever share the gospel with someone like friends, colleagues, roommates? I'm talking about like here, 2019 you share the gospel and you're like, "Let me tell you what I believe. So God created the world. We sinned against Him. He's Holy, we deserve damnation, but He loving sent his son, Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man. Born of a Virgin in Bethlehem first century and lived the perfect life. The life we're supposed to live, died, was crucified. The son of God was crucified. God died on the cross, was raised on the third day."

What does that matter? You just believe in that. Just believe in that and all of your sins wiped away. I stand up here and as I preach, I'm like, "You think I'm nuts? This is crazy." Sometimes I'm like, "Maybe it's just a little." It's a wholly sounded crazy. It has wholly sounded crazy. From the very beginning, it sounded ludicrous. It sounded... St. Paul says, "That's the power. There's power in speaking of the cross." God uses that as a means. Why? Why does He use that as the means to save people? The Jews, he said demand signs and the Jewish people were waiting for Messiah who's victorious Messiah, kind of like Moses to come with a greater Exodus.

For them, they couldn't believe that Messiah would come and he would die. He would sacrifice himself on a cross. They rejected that a crucified Messiah was an oxymoron. Reject that. The Greeks demanded wisdom or here in the original, it's Sophia because the Greek saying antiquity, they were the most cultured unlike the Barbarians. One of the greatest civilizations astound the world with their progress, and they were all about philosophy and reasons.

For them, a crucified Messiah is nonsensical. It's ridiculous. They demand that God proved that He exists on their terms. That's the problem. When we stand pridefully over God and say, "God, give me evidence of your existence, but make sure that it aligns with my preconceived notions, my predetermined ideas of God." God never does that. God never reveals himself in a way that would actually stoke your pride. He will never do that. He has to reveal himself in a way that will approve the thing that is ruining your life, which is ego, hubris, pride. He sends his son to die on a cross for our sins, and he says, "That's the greatest power. That's the greatest wisdom."

The word of the cross is folly. It says the Greek word is Moria. We get the word moron or moronic from it and he says, "This right here, it seems foolish. It seems like it doesn't make any sense. Why would anyone believe in this?" Then as it's proclaimed, as it's preached, God turns on the lights, turns on the lights, regenerates our heart, gives the gift of belief, gives the gift of repentance, makes you a Christian, and then you stand back and say, "What just happened? I believe that. I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins, that he is my Lord and my savior."

You didn't get to that place because you're smarter than other people. You didn't get to that place because you are more noble or more moral. No. You got to that place because God opened your heart. That's what St. Paul actually focuses on here is that we are so lost. We're not... Scripture says we are dead in our sins, that we can do absolutely nothing. Not one little bitty thing to save ourselves, whether that lost our hearts or that hard, and we are that spiritually blind and that's spiritually deaf.

Therefore, it's not just the gospel that saves us. It's God's spirit who gives us the gift of faith and repentance and faith in the gospel that saves us. You see this in 1 Corinthians 1:23, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called." Called by whom? Those who are called by God, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and wisdom of God. You thought that the gospel was folly and then all of a sudden you're on team Jesus and you're like, "This is the greatest thing ever. God died for me." Why? What made the difference? He says, "It's God's calling."

Here's why I say this for two reasons. Reason number one is you can't be saved unless God saves you. Scripture's absolutely clear about that and sometimes we view salvation as a choice, plan B, this is the escape route used in emergency. Essentially what we're saying is whenever I want, whenever I choose, I will believe in Jesus and I will be saved. But for now, I'm fine. It's good to know that there's fire insurance and St. Paul says, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Let me explain just how lost you are." Look at at the end of chapter 1:26 for example. If you don't have the copy you just listen. Look how often he talks about calling and God choosing for consider your calling. Brothers, not many of you wise were according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God all because of Him.

You are in Christ Jesus and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Now, Christian, why do you believe? It made sense to me. Why did it make sense to you? Well, I realized I was sinner. Why did you realize you are a sinner? I don't know. One day just lights came on. Why did the lights... I just keep going down that path and then you get to a point where you said, "God saved me. I don't know. God saved me." Now, it was it because He saw that you were going to be a better person, that you were going to serve. No, nothing. God, why do you love me? "Because I chose to love you." That's the answer of... And by the way, that deep down inside we need to hear that. We long to hear that.

My wife... we've been almost married 13 years. She asked me just randomly, I'm eating dinner and she's like, "Do you love me?" "Yeah, I told you." You're like, "This has happened." like, "Why do you love me?" "I know that's a trick question. We've already played this game. It is because you're beautiful." "What happens when I'm not beautiful." "You will always be beautiful because you're intelligent." Well, show me. You said you only love me for my intelligence. You only love me for my comedy. You only love me for my humor. You only love me..." Deep down inside what we want to hear is, "You love me, for me." That's the doctrine of salvation that begins with the doctrine of election. Most glorious doctrines of all scripture. God loves you for you. There's nothing. There was nothing in you. He just chooses to love you, not because you're going to be lovely, but because He is loving. That's why He chooses to reveal himself.

2 Corinthians 2:9, "But as it is written, what no eye has seen. No ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him." These things God has revealed to us through the spirit, for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. No one's ever figured out a way to God. It's only by the spirit revealing the truth. If you're not a Christian, you can't take it just whenever you want. You got to take it when the Lord is extending it to you. There's no guarantee that He will continue extending it to you until the moment that you die. Sometimes He does and it must be revealed to you and taught to you by the Holy spirit.

So question, are you a Christian? If your response is, "I'm trying," most likely, then you're not. You're either in or you're out. Scripture's clear. If you're on the way to the room, you're not in the room. If you're on the way to Christianity, you're not in. As Yoda says, the great theologian do or not do, there is no try. Do believe, be a Christian, accept this call and the moment that you accept this call God will say to you, "I called you first and to humble you for the rest of eternity."

Here's just an illustration to help you wrap your head around this. Imagine in a house, a group of men are playing cards, playing poker. There's a lot of money on the table and they hear the fire alarm go off because there's a fire on the roof. Now, if they're just a run out, someone's going to get the pot. We're going to lose the pot of money. So they keep playing and what they say to themselves is, "The fires on the roof. We're in the first floor it's okay, we're fine. Let's keep playing. Finish the game. Let's see who gets the money. And also, we have a key to get out the door's locked. We have a key to get out whenever we want." Then someone at the table realize that the key doesn't work from the inside, it works from the outside.

Someone on the outside has to open the door. At that moment when they realize that they're absolutely helpless, they can't save themselves, they run to the door, they start knocking and they start pleading. They start calling out, "Somebody save us." That is the natural condition of a person apart from God. That to be safe, to be a child of God, to become a Christian, to have eternal life, we have to call out to God, cry out to God, plead with Him, "God save me. God, give me psych. God, soften my heart." It's not in my control. Finding the truth isn't in my power. It's all upon... all depends on God. Call upon the Lord while he is near. That's the point, and we don't do the walk down the aisle. You don't have to bow your head, and close your eyes, raise your hand in your heart. All you need to do is repent of sin, believe in Christ. Christ that you see on the cross dying for my sins, my Lord, my savior. Then for the Christian, the practical application here is you have no room for boasting. You have no right to look at another person and say, "I'm better than them." Not at another Christian, not at a non-Christian.

Why are you a Christian? Because God's saved you, solely day of Gloria to God be all the glory. Every single Christian is a walking resurrection. Some people say, "I don't see miracles as much as we did in the book of Acts and in the gospel. Where are the miracles?" Every single Christian is a walking miracle. God saved you. Now, why does St. Paul write this about unity, about the cross, about the power of the gospel? Because it matters for the advancement of the Kingdom of God, for the mission of God. This is point three that mission cements and cements Christians together.

The goal of everything he's writing here is for Christians to realize if there's divisions amongst us in the church that is going to keep us from being as effective as we possibly can to be used as God, as much as we possibly can be used by God. That's why he says in 1 Corinthians 1:10, he says, "I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, that there be no divisions among you but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment." That's a high calling, same mind, same judgment. He uses the word united, which is a very interesting word. It's the same word that's used when fishermen take nets and there's holes. They fix the net, they knit it together. What he's saying is, "I want you to be united, not just for the sake of being united. I want you to be united around the cross of Jesus Christ, around the gospel of God so that you can be as effective as possible in being fishers of men." The phrase that Jesus Christ use, same mind, same judgment.

He's not saying, "Find the lowest common denominator that will unite you." He says, "No, focus on the gospel. That alone will unite." Don't pretend that you don't really believe what the scriptures teach. It's not superficial verbal consensus. It's not absolute tolerance of all perspectives. No, it's the truth of Jesus Christ and we are to rally around that truth. Many pursue unity for the sake of unity. The only way to do that is to say, "Let's get rid of doctrine. Let's get rid of distinctives. Let's get rid of convictions." What happens is all you do is you replace Christian doctrine with your own doctrine.

After a while, you realize that the only thing really uniting us, it doesn't have the power to unite us. We see this in churches as churches progress from rejecting the Bible, rejecting the gospel, rejecting the doctrines of Christianity. They get to a point where it's like, "What's even uniting us?" Oxygen. We all breathe oxygen. That's about it. Then what happens as they close down, they lost the power. They're unified, not in spite of truth, but by truth. I don't know if you heard the phrase, if two people think the same way, one of them is unnecessary. Usually, it's like people use that phrase at a wedding and they're like, "Look, you guys are going to have different opinions on things and you will enrich each other with a value of differing opinions and et cetera, et cetera."

The idea is that total agreement is boring and that phrase only works when it comes to taste, not truth. If you guys don't agree on what gravity is or don't agree about the most fundamental truth in the universe, there's going to be issues. I don't like that phrase because the Holy Trinity is in perfect agreement. Does that mean one of them is unnecessary? In heaven, we are going to be in total agreement with God and here God says, "I want Christians to be absolute unity about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Psalm 133:1 says, "Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity."

Now this unity, once Christians are united around the cross of Jesus Christ, it's a unity that necessarily divides. The gospel is the most inclusive truth, everybody's welcome. But once people reject the gospel, reject Christ, it does exclude. This is 1 Corinthians 11:18-19 St. Paul says, "For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions, same word that we use in our texts. In 110 schismata among you and I believe in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized."

Now, there shouldn't be schismata, you should be unified as a church. But when you're unified as a church, it's clear who's in and who's not in and why the St. Paul said, because he expects some disunity in the visible church because some people who profess Christ are not really Christians. He says, "Make sure that whoever is in, is truly a believer because the very worst thing that you can do to someone who is not a Christian, is to name them a Christian and then they don't seek God."

Paul wasn't afraid of conflict. He fought for the truth. This is one of the reasons why he'd go to cities and riots would start and he would keep getting beaten. He was actually stoned and in one city, stoned with little rocks, not the way we use the word. Here's why? Because he kept telling people the truth, the truth of the gospel. Why did he keep telling people the truth? It's the only thing that can save them. I say this to safe to us. Many of us, we fear people more than we fear God. We are motivated by people's opinions more than we are motivated by God's opinion over us.

Therefore, we're afraid to tell people truth. We tell people about joy in Christ, we tell people about satisfaction, we tell people about heaven, and we tell people about purpose. All of that is fine as long as we don't tone down the truth, as long as we don't de emphasize what God is telling us to lead with front and center. The gospel cannot be accommodated to culture. As soon as we do that, it loses all of its power. We are to tell people about a cross, we are to tell people about condemnation, and wrath, and a place called hell, and the penalty for sin, bad news. Then get to the good news which makes the good news glorious.

Now, that's a lot of pressure and I want to end with 1 Corinthians 3:4-7 which kind of helps us recognize that it doesn't depend on us, which frees us to then share the gospel. Look at 1 Corinthians 3:4, For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos." Are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. He says, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who gives the growth."

He says, "The people, Apollos, Paul, Cephas not that big of a deal." He actually says, "They're nothing." What that does is it tells the other Christians that as God used them, He can use you because the power isn't in them. The power flows through them. They are nothing. God is everything and you don't have to do all of the work. I love this section because it takes the pressure off of me to save a person. He says, "Some person needs to just sow the seeds of the gospel. Another person needs to work the ground, pull out the weeds. Another person needs to do the watering."

But ultimately who saves the person? It's God. That means you don't have to be the guy with th A frame next to Fenway that says, "Turn or burn." You don't have to do that. You don't have to give people million dollar tracks especially way... My wife said, "Don't share this example." I was at a wedding yesterday sitting next to the guy who is... This is what he does. He gives people... he hands the waitress one of those million dollar tracks that looks like a $20 bill. I thought he was giving her a 20 I was like, "Yeah, that guy's generous." Then she looks at it and she's like, "What is this?" Because it's not $1 billion. It fake. It looks like... He's like, "It's better than $20." This is the way you get eternal life. Oh man, I see you guys so mad.

The way I view evangelism is, you pray for opportunities. If God gives you an opportunity, sow a seed, water it a little, share about God. Don't be afraid to talk about the cross because God uses all of that to help people meet Jesus. The more that we as a community boldly fearlessly share the gospel with people for as much as God, God gives us opportunity. God uses that for His glory. May the word of the cross continue to be our rallying cry at Mosaic Boston. May the word of the cross unite our hearts and our minds in perfect unity. My God, this is my prayer. May God unleash His power as we speak the word of the cross. Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you that you are on the move here in the city, that you are miraculously saving people, miraculously claiming people to yourself. We know that there are many more of your people here in the city, so I pray, use us powerfully, boldly, fearlessly, winsomely, lovingly to help people meet the God who died on a cross for our sin and was resurrected on the third day. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Summary: The church in Corinth was going through an identity crisis, comprised of people going through their own identity crises. We too live in a culture that obsesses over identity. Who am I? How do I fit in this world? "Identity" language is the heart language of our culture. We base our identity on our sexuality, politics, dietary preferences, work out routine. We want to be known for our education, career accomplishments, where we live, what we own. The Apostle Paul addressed the Corinthians with relevant lessons for us as well.

Hello, welcome to Mosaic church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new, if you're visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here, and we'd love to connect with you if you'd like to connect with us. We do that officially through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly and then toss it into the offering basket after, we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week.

Also, if you today for the very first time, respond to the gospel and choose to become a Christian, you can check that off and let us know. If you're interested in baptism, if you have any prayer requests, that's the place to do it.

One announcement I will highlight, we have a members meeting today. If you are a member of Mosaic or becoming a member today and you've been notified by us, we have the meeting from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. If you had no idea, then you clearly haven't been listening for awhile.

But still, glad you're here and you have time at the end of the service. It's a potluck, really important. You got to bring a meal. If you don't have one, you can run to Whole Foods. Five minute walk, rotisserie chickens, $7.99. If you choose, there's an organic version for $9.99 and people would really appreciate that. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father, I pray that you today remind us that if we are your children, if we are Christians, if we are blood-bought, sanctified, set apart for you, that you have given us your name, the name above all names, the name of Jesus Christ, that we carry Christ in our name, that we are Christians.

I pray, Lord, that you remind us that though the world bombard us with ideas of who we are, who we should be, how we should live and try to form and shape our identity, I pray that you remind us that your voice is authoritative over all voices. Because we are yours. We are defined by you. You love us. Therefore, when you tell us how we are, to live who we are, it's because you want the best for us.

I pray Holy Spirit, as we hear perhaps some hard truths, that we do wrestle instead of just rejecting it and perhaps walking out. I pray that we wrestle with these truth, and wrestle with the foundation what is truth? Whose truth is more authoritative than another's truth, and that all trues are not equal. I pray that you show us that your truth is above all truth, and that we are to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Holy Spirit, come prepare our hearts to hear, to think, to meditate, to ruminate, and to be transformed by your word. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

So we're beginning a sermon series, which will take us through the end of the summer, in the epistle to the Corinthians, First Corinthians, and we are calling this series Prodigal Church. Why Prodigal Church, why that name? It's because the church in Corinth is a brand new church that Saint Paul had planted in the year 49 AD. His strategy was to go to city centers. He believed that if you reach the city center, which is most influential, you can actually transform not just the city, but all of society. As the city goes, so does the nation. So does the society, the culture.

So he planted that church. Then he goes to Ephesus, spends three years in Ephesus. As he's in Ephesus, he hears that the church in Corinth isn't doing well. They have begun to capitulate to the culture. The voices of the culture have begun to become authoritative in the church. Instead of creating a new culture, and transforming and redeeming the culture from within, they're beginning to look like the culture. So he writes this letter.

Just to set the context. Corinth, though millennia removed from us, is very similar to Boston. Why? Because though we have advanced in technology, education and medicine, the human heart has not changed. The human heart still has the same sinful tendencies and proclivities. Something about Corinth that we are to know, it's incredibly diverse, incredibly influential.

It's thriving into world-class city. It's the center of education, of commerce, of educational and technological advancement. It's very sophisticated. It's a place of excellence, where people go, and because of the high level of competition, they need to up their game and level up. It's also a place of mobility and transients. People come and go. People coming from all over the world, and bringing new ideas that vie for the attention of the people that live there.

One ancient visitor described the city of Corinth by saying, "The sordidness of the rich and the misery of the poor were extraordinary. Abounding in luxuries, but inhabited by an ungracious people." That sounds familiar. It's people from all over the Roman Empire, coming to make a name for themselves, to make a life for themselves. Like Boston, there's only a small percentage of Christians. It's largely a Godless city.

It's a city that is, has been inundated with materialism and consumerism, worship of sports and entertainment. There's games very similar to the Olympic games. There's lots of competing religions and ideas. There's a postmodern pragmatism there, were universals don't matter. That truth doesn't matter, it's all relative as long as you make a living for yourself, make a name for yourself. When people have affluence, when they have money and they have margin in their life, what happens is, they sometimes are prone to substance abuse and drunkenness. We see that in this city, and even in the church itself.

It's also a city that was largely dominated by sexual morality and all kinds of debauchery, sensuality of city life. There's a great temple of Aphrodite at the top of the Hill, where the priestesses were actually prostitutes. Below was a temple to Apollo that celebrated homosexuality. The word Corinthianize became a verb, to describe all kinds of perversion.

So, the Christians are under immense pressure. "How do we live out our faith in this place? Do we leave? Do we move out?" Saint Paul says, "No, I want you to stay here. I want you to influence the city. But first of all, you need to be influenced by something other than the city, other than the voices around you. You need to be influenced by God's word. Let God's word shape you, transform you from the inside."

So, today we're going to look at First Corinthians chapter one, verses one through nine. Would you look at the text with me?

"Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both our Lord and theirs:

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. Even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. "

This is the reading of God's word, is inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these truths upon our hearts. We'll frame up our time with three points. We'll talk about an identity of received, not achieved. Then an identity received, not attained. And then finally, Identity received, but not alone.

First, identity received, not achieved. We live in a culture that obsesses with identity. Identity language is the heart language of our society. We begin to look at desires within, and as we express those desires, begin to think that's who I am and take on a certain label. Be it our sexuality, our politics, dietary preferences, workout routine, straight, gay, bi, male, female, other, liberal, libertarian, environmentalist, vegetarian, vegan, carnivore, runner, CrossFitter, what have you.

We want to be known for our education bumper sticker. We want to be known for our career. Check out my resume, the companies I work for or have worked for. Where we live, my zip code. What I own, the car, the brand that I drive. The brand name clothes that we wear. How many followers we have on social media. How big our cloud and our platform.

After a while we become products of the names that we attached to ourselves. Like your neighbors Subaru, with all the bumper stickers on the back. You don't even know what half of them mean. They define us. We long not just to make a name for ourselves, we long to name ourselves. We long to define ourselves. Why? Where does that impulse come? It's from our culture.

Our culture says, "Repudiate any oppressive voices that tell you who you are and how you should live. Reject all that you find your identity by looking deep inside of yourself. Construct your own identity." By the way, this starts really early. I've got four daughters and they watch the Disney movies. Sometimes you sit through them with a worldview analysis, and you're like, "Huh."

Hey, look, every single one of these new Disney movies, the message is, "Don't listen to Mom and Dad, listen to yourself. Listen to the voices within. You do you. You become what you want to be." Frozen, Moana and et cetera, et cetera. "Don't listen to mom and dad. Listen to us, Disney. Buy more." That's really the goal.

It doesn't matter what your community says. It doesn't matter what your loved one say. If you read stories and watch movies from even a couple of decades ago, the narrative of a heroic story, the heroic narrative was a person sacrifices themselves for a group of people, for family or a team or a community. Now the heroic narrative is, "I'm going to sacrifice my family, and my relationships and my community to be the person who I want to be to express myself."

That's one of the reasons why families, communities and the country is eroding. In the past, people would have sex and make a lot of money in order to build a family in the community. Now you do in order to express yourself, at the expense of whatever. Be true to yourself, be your authentic self. What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? You do you, unless you're a serial killer. That's always the big unless, don't be that person.

You can be anything you want to be. I used to listen to that in elementary school. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm going to be anything I want to be." Then I found out that to be president of the United States, you've gotta be born here. I was like, "What else is left?" Vice-president, can't do that either. I can't be Tom Brady. You cannot be anything you want to be, that's a lie. So we set out on a path to find ourselves, obeying our desires.

I told my dad when I was in college, said, "Pop, I think I'm going to take a year off and go find myself in Europe. I'm going to backpack through Europe." My dad's super old school. He's from the Soviet union. His name's Vladimir. He said, "Find yourself? What you say? You right here, I found you and I save you the $30,000. Get back to work." That's my dad. My dad, Vlad, and I worked in Vlad's painting, his company. "If your house looks bad, don't get mad. Call Vlad."

Here's the problem. The problem with finding yourselves by looking within, and looking at the desires within, "What do I want to do," is we have competing desires. Often contradictory, incompatible, they don't harmonize. On the one hand, you want to be married. On the other hand, you want to be single. On the one hand, you want to have kids. On the other hand, you want to travel the world. Those don't mesh together.

If you have this pipe dream of traveling the world with your kids, I'll give you my youngest. Drive around with her around Brookline for 20 minutes. You'll come back and like, "No. No more contradictory desires. I only have one, not kids." I want to be fit. I also want to eat pizza. I want a six-pack and I want a six-pack of beer. Contradictory, they don't work together.

Then also, our desires are not stable. They change with time. Who am I? Who am I now? Who do I want to be in five years? In 10 years? When I was 20, I would look back at myself when I was 15 in high school. There was this whole thing about being a skater or a rollerblader. Later the skaters wore JNCO jeans, the rollerbladers wore tighter jeans. I was like, "Yeah, I'm a rollerblader, that's the way it is." That's I look back, I'm like, "What an idiot. That's such a terrible idea."

When I was in college, I looked back on myself when I was in high school. My high school senior picture, it's a picture of me with frosted tips, because that was all the rage. I look back and like, "What an idiot." When I was 25, I looked back at myself in college. I'm like, "No, what were you thinking?" Some of you, do that experience, you look back just five years. That keeps going.

When you're 30, you look back at your time in college. I'm like, "Why did I major in art history? Why did I take on so much debt, et cetera, et cetera." That doesn't stop. You know what the common denominator in all of those is? It's you, and you're an idiot. You're your own problem. I'm my own problem. Therefore, we can't find the identity by looking within. You can't attain a stable identity.

Here's what happens when we look to something for our identity, to answer the question, who am I? When we idolize an identity, it becomes an idol. You would get to sacrifice everything there is: time, money, health, relationships. In order to get that thing, attain that thing, it becomes a tyrant over your life. You're enslaved to it.

Here's the problem. Problem is, if you get it, you realize it's dissatisfying. This is the whole midlife crisis. What's that all about? It's a lot of people, who have given themselves to pursue an idol that is an identity. when they get it, they realize it doesn't satisfy. "Now I need to upgrade my spouse, my car, my career." It doesn't satisfy. If we don't get it, then we are absolutely crushed, and we exchange one yoke for another.

This is where the gospel of Jesus Christ comes in and says, "Your truest identity, who you are, can never be achieved. You can't do enough. It must be received as a gift by the grace of God. You can't name yourself. You're not autonomous. You're not an island unto yourself. You are derived. This is what 1 Corinthians 1:1 begins with. "Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle."

Who's Paul? Was that his birth name? No, his birth name was Saul. He used to be Saul of Tarsus, and he worked hard to build an identity in two cultures. He was a citizen of the Roman Empire, and then he was also a Hebrew of Hebrews, as he says. He was Jewish, and he pursued an identity through education. Ends up getting the highest form of PhD that you possibly can, studied under Professor Gamaliel in Jerusalem. He looked at culture for his identity, his nation, his achievements, his education.

Philippians 3:4-6, he says, "Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh," I can look within to justify myself, to build an identity. He says, "If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day," So, fulfilled all the laws, "Of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless." That's my identity.

Then he persecutes Christians terrorizes the church. Jesus Christ meets him on the road to Damascus, saves him. Says, "You are mine." "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Not just my church, but me. That's how intimately Jesus connects Himself to the church. Saves him. Blinds them for three days, so Saul has time to think and repent. Finally, gives him vision, both spiritually and physically. He named him and then he renamed him. This is what God does.

Whom are we allowed to name? I can't just walk around to you guys and be like, "I got a new name for you. I got a nickname," to you. You'd be like, "You have no authority over me." We get to name dogs and children, that's about it. In the Bible God names people, and then He renames them. Abram, your Abraham. Sarai, you're Sarah, Jacob, you're Israel. Peter, you're no longer Simon. Now you're Peter. Saul, you are Paul.

Which shows us that the most significant question when it comes to identity, is not, "Who am I?" but, "Who's am I? To whom do I belong?" John 10:3, Jesus said, "The sheep, my sheep, hear his voice. The voice of the good shepherd, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." Our names matter to God. God knows our names. God says that our names, once we are his children, once we are saved by grace through faith, our names are graven on his hands with what? With nail marks. That our names are written in the Book of Life, in pencil? No, in the blood of Jesus Christ. He knows our names.

He changes our identity when we come to Him. I can't wait in heaven to know when my real name is. I despise my name. It's Jan, spelled J-A-N. It's bad in any culture, it's so bad. I would go Dunkin donuts, they don't ask your name. But the coffee's terrible, so I got to keep going to Starbucks, and they keep butchering my name. The mobile ordering is really helping, but still.

Scripture says that salvation and a rightful relationship with God, is allowing God to define you. It says, "I define you. I'm your Lord." Therefore, sin? Sin is when I defined myself. Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian, he said this, that sin is building your identity, your fundamental identity, the core of who you are. You build it on anything, other than God.

What it means is, you find your greatest meaning, significance, security, worth and value in something other than God. Your whole life revolves around that, and you're willing to sacrifice anything to get that. Scripture says when we come to God, we can throw off our functional saviors.

We all have, and have had, functional health. A functional hell of joblessness. If I get this job, it becomes a functional savior. It becomes your ultimate. A functional hell of singleness. If I find a relationship, a spouse, then that's a functional savior. You can fill in the blank.

God says, "Stop. Stop pursuing things that won't satisfy. Receive a name." When we come to Jesus Christ by grace through faith, we received the name above all names, an everlasting name, the name of Christ. We are now called Christians. When we're born again, we're adopted into the family of God. If you're adopted, whose family do you take? The family name. Jesus is the bridegroom, we are the bride. Whose name do we take? His name. We weren't a people. Now we become God's people.

1 Corinthians 1:2-3, he reminds them what happened to them. "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus," and the word here for sanctified isn't referring to sanctification, progressive holiness. It's referring, to you've been set apart. Therefore, he calls them to be saints. "You're saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours."

So how our sins forgiven, how are we redeemed? How are we justified and sanctified? How does God atone for our sins? How does He make us his? Through the call upon Jesus Christ. "Call upon Christ, "he says. It doesn't take much work to call. He says, "Just look to Christ in prayer. Call out to him, ask for forgiveness, repent of sins. Then He gives you grace, and he gives you peace." And now we're saints.

It used to take work to call people. You watch movies from the '50s and '60s, it took a lot of work to call people. I remember growing up with a rotary phone, with the little circle, and you hated the people with the zero in their phone number. Like, "Yeah, yeah." you gotta go all the way. Nowadays, you open your phone, you hit the app. Call, got it.

He says, "Call." Look to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is how salvation happens. He redeems us from all our sins. Gives us a brand new heart. Once he gives us that new heart, then the next process comes at this point too: identity received, but attained. We can't achieve salvation. We can't redeem ourselves. We can't pay for our sins. He gives it to us by grace through faith.

Scripture talks about the fact that we're born of a sinful nature, and apart from Jesus Christ, we have a rock of stone. It's numb toward God, desensitized toward God. When we come to Him, through repentance and faith, He gives us a brand new heart. He fills it with the Holy spirit. Then the rest of the teaching is, that we are to allow that heart to permeate, to transform every aspect of our being.

The Psalmist says in Psalm 119:32, "I will run in all of your commandments, if you enlarge my heart." This is the next step. What's the basic human problem? What's wrong with us, basically? whatever. Whatever you think is fundamentally wrong with us, and it's absolutely clear that something is, then your solution is an answer to that question.

If you think that the basic problem with us is intellectual, then the basic solution to that problem is education. If you think that the problem is psychological, then it's counseling or therapy that's the answer. If you believe that basic problem is physical, we need a prescription, we need some pills. If you believe that the basic problem is ethical, well, we need to teach people morality. If you think it's circumstantial, that it's a person circumstance that shapes who they are fundamentally, then we just change all of that.

We just need a little TLC, a slap on a fresh coat of paint, change the law, fix the curb appeal. Scripture says from a biblical perspective, no, it's deeper. That our house, the house of our life, is rotten to the core. We don't just need a paint job. We need to be transformed from the inside out. We need to be gutted down to the studs. We need a rewiring from the very inside. We need a new heart.

God gives us that new heart, and then He says, "Now allow it to take over. Fill it with the Holy Spirit. Fill it with God's word." How? How are we transformed? Biblically speaking, it's by knowing Christ, loving Christ, deepening our affections for Christ. That's ultimately what allows us to attain who we are, be who we are.

How does St. Paul help the church in Corinth be who they are? Live out their new identity. If you read the epistle to Corinthians, and we will read it, there's some really crazy stuff that goes on. You're like, "I can't believe that's going on in the Bible." You get to chapter five, and a guy is sleeping with his mom. You get to chapter 11, and he says people are getting drunk at the communion table.

What is going on in this church? St. Paul from the get-go, he doesn't start by giving them a list of how to fix themselves. He's not saying, "Cut it out. Stop it, period!" He says, "No." He says, "You haven't understood who you are. You haven't allowed the gospel to take root in your heart." I don't know if you noticed, in the first nine verses, he uses the name of Jesus Christ nine times.

He flips it around every once in a while, so it's not too redundant. It's Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Lord Jesus Christ over and over. The first chapter, 21 times. Because, what's he saying? He's saying, "Your problems are within. Your solution is outside of you." We live in a therapeutic age, more so than any other age. I'm not knocking therapy. Therapy often is needed, and counseling is needed.

But fundamentally, the solution to our problems is not within, no matter how complex, no matter how intractable. Sometimes our greatest need is to take our gaze off our needs, and we looked at Jesus Christ. So God's agenda in this book, is to strip out all the old tangled, confused wiring that the world has implanted. And rewire our spiritual systems entirely, with the clear truth of the gospel.

Who was Christ? He is God. He's man. He's come down, lived the perfect life that we could not live, would not live. Then he goes to a cross to atone for our sins, comes back from the dead to verify that his atonement was accepted. When we realize that's what it took to save us from our sins, to save us from everything that's going on. And that God's willing to take it, his love fills our hearts, begins to melt away the hardness.

What he's saying here in the very beginning is, it's pointing to their identity. "You've been sanctified. You are saints. You have called upon God, continue to call upon God. Therefore, dear Christian, you are not fundamentally a sinner. You are fundamentally a Saint." Martin Luther encapsulated by saying, "[foreign language 00:26:27]." You're simultaneously justified, though a sinner.

He doesn't start with the center part. Fundamentally, our nature has changed. Now, be who you are. Before St. Paul gets into the criticism, he spends time just thanking God for them. Verse four, "I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all..." He's giving thanks to God, even for the Christians who are not living like Christians. We'll get to them later.

As I was preparing, I was like, is that like saying, "No offense," and then you proceed to say something really offensive. Or, "With all due respect," then, here's the insult. Or down South it's, "Bless your heart." Is that what he's doing? No, he starts off with saying, "Look, I thank God for you. I just want to recognize the work of God in you. I see God's fruit." Before the criticism comes.

This is a huge lesson here. Every time after I preach, my wife comes up to me. She comes to the first day, comes up to me with a list. I'm like, "Baby, I know the list. I can tell you the list myself. I already..." She said, "It's great sermon." I'll take that. But before we go in with criticism, "I love you. I care about you. That's why I'm saying this."

That's how God speaks into us. His love is not diametrically opposed to his truth. They're together, it's a loving truth and a true love. He begins by saying, "God saved you. The grace of God was given to you in Christ, in every way. You are enriched in Him. You're not lacking in any gift whatsoever."

In verse eight, he says one of the most profound truths in all of Holy scripture. He says, "God will sustain you to the end. God will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." It's a doctrine of perseverance of the saints. Once you're saved, you're always persevering to the end. That God will not let you go. God, the Father, doesn't lose any children. Jesus Christ, the bridegroom, doesn't lose his bride. Even when she goes wayward, He continues to pursue.

How does he do this? Well, he begins by saying in verse six, "The testimony about Christ was confirmed among you." What's the testimony about Christ? It's God's word. It's the gospel. It was confirmed among you, meaning it self-authenticates. So sometimes people ask, "How do you know that the Bible is God's word?" Well, if you read it with a receptive heart, the Holy Spirit speaks to you, self-authenticates. He confirms that among you.

Then verse eight he says, "Who will sustain," the word confirm and sustain is the same word in the Greek. So what are you saying St. Paul? Paul is saying, the same word that God used to save you, is the same word that God uses to sustain you, to keep you in the faith. That's how faith came in, the implanted Word of God, and that's what sustains our faith. Jesus Christ said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

In Roman Catholicism, what's at the center of the worship service? It's mass. Why? Because they believed that's what changes you, that's what transforms you. You go to a charismatic church, what's at the center of the worship service? It's worship song, after worship song after worship song, and then there's a 15 minute sermon, and then more worship. Why? Because they believe what transforms you is an ecstatic experience.

At Mosaic, if you haven't noticed, and in like-minded churches, we believe that person is transformed by the living word of God. This is why we focus on the preaching of God's word. Holy Scripture says, this is the emphasis, God is at work by his word. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Jesus Christ said, "Sanctify them with the truth. Your word is truth."

The Westminster Larger Catechism and point 155 says this, "The spirit of God makes the reading but especially the preaching of the word an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves, drawing them into Christ, of conforming them to his image. Subduing them to his will, strengthening them against temptations and corruptions, of building them up in grace, establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.

He uses the word to save and to sustain. And, what's the basis for the promise that once you're a Christian, God will get you to the end. God is going to save us in the end. 1 Corinthians 1:9, "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."

Why is the faithfulness of God at stake in the perseverance of those whom he calls? If the call to Christ is an open invitation, like coming to a wedding, then God isn't obliged to keep you from leaving if you don't like it. He connects the call with God's faithfulness, because his call is the outworking of his choice that we should be brought to his glory. His call is an effectual call. When He calls you, we can't but respond. Because he has sovereignty over the call, he has sovereignty over sustaining us.

This is Romans 8:29-30, "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son." Before the foundation of the world, Ephesians says. That God predestined us, He elected us, "In order that we might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined," past tense. "He also called," past tense. "Those whom He called the also justified," past tense. "And those whom he justified, he also glorified," past tense.

When does glorification happen? It happens in heaven. Why is it used the past tense? Because he says it's that sure. When God saves us, he saves us for life and that's an incredible word of blessing. Jesus Christ is our Lord. He defines us. He owns us. He loves you. He knows you. He knows what's best for you. Therefore, when He speaks with an authoritative voice, it's a voice of a father. It's a voice of a father who has given everything, in order to pour out his love in you.

How does God tell us what he wants? How does God help us attain who we are? By his Holy spirit, through his Holy scriptures? Case in point, verse one, 1 Corinthians 1:1, what does Paul begin with? And he doesn't begin every epistle like this. He says, "Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes."

First thing he begins with, is his credentials. He contrasts his credentials, "Called to be an apostle by the will of God," with a brother named Sosthenes. Meaning we're both Christians, on the same level as Christians, but God has different levels of authority. Why Paul, are you an apostle? Who made you an apostle? It's the will of God. He's saying, "God told me who's I am, who I am and what I am to do."

What he's saying is that, "As I speak to you, my words are not equivalent to the words of just a friend in an email, where it's just an opinion." It's not a text message from a guy named Paul. What he's saying is, "I am a mouthpiece for God himself. Therefore, be careful in just rejecting it as an opinion. Rejecting it as an interpretation."

I say this, because this is important. When I, when I get up to preach God's word and Boston, Massachusetts, 2019 I know that many of you do not agree with me. I know some of the first service people got up during the service. Now my question to you is, when you say, "I don't agree with what Pastor Jan said," was that pastor Jan's opinion, or was that from God's word?

If it's from God's word, then we need to humbly submit that's the ultimate authority. If we don't want to submit, you're submitting to some other voices, the voices of the culture, we're all being discipled by some... There's actually a lot of churches, and I say this, there's a lot of Christians and there's a lot of so-called churches that that reject Paul's writings.

Case in point, there's a church on St. Paul Street, called St. Paul's Episcopal Church. I know they reject Saint Paul's writings, because the Reverend, Reverend... I won't say names, you can Google it later. It says that the Reverend there and his husband live in Brookline. It's clear that that church rejected the writings of St. Paul, and instead has replaced it with authoritative voices from the culture, from society.

So the question, whatever sins you're wrestling with, be it same sex attraction or any kind of sin. When we talk about looking inside to develop your identity, to figure out who you are, if you are not taking God's word as authoritative to filter which desires are from God and which aren't, which desires are to be commended and followed, and which art to be repented of, than something else is more authoritative. This is why Saint Paul begins there.

Then finally, an identity received, not alone. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we don't realize how much our culture has impacted us, because it happens unbeknownst to us. Our community affects our identity much more than we think. Sometimes we think that we develop our own identity, and we don't realize that we're actually influenced by the people around us. Since we have many desires, competing, contradictory, why are we choosing to express some and suppress others, and who gets to decide.

Case in point, Tim Keller wrote this book recently called Preaching to a Skeptical Culture. He's got this example about how culture influences the desires that we pursue. He says, "Imagine a Viking in the year 800 AD living in a warrior honor-shame culture." Whenever I imagine Vikings, I imagine beautiful beards, flowing locks, walking around with a sword.

"And he's got two contradictory impulses inside. One is aggression. The culture that he's in says, "Yes, that's who we are. We raid, we pillage, we're Vikings," Then he's got another desire and impulse, and it's same sex attraction. His culture says, "No, that's not who we are. We suppress that.

"Now imagine the same person in Boston, Massachusetts, 2019." Same beard, probably same outfit, same hairstyle, lumbersexual. "Imagine that person has the same two impulses, aggression on the one end and our culture says, 'No, that's wrong. You need therapy and counseling for that.' And same sex attraction on the other hand. The culture says, 'No, that's who you are.' And he says, 'That's who I am.'"

We are not authoritative when we say, "This is who I am." Actually, when we looked into ourselves, we're influenced actually more by the culture and our peers. This is why peer groups, friend groups, often look very similar. Why? Because we're social beings. and our identity is shaped by our community.

This is the irony. In an attempt to find our unique, authentic self, we begin looking like everybody else. We began thinking like everybody else. Thinking the same about sexuality, gender, politics, finances, et cetera, et cetera. Meaning, life and death. that's what happened with the church in Corinth, and that's why Saint Paul writes this letter, not to individuals.

He writes the letter to a church and he's saying, "You have been individually influenced, and as a church you've been influenced by the culture. You've been influenced by the people around you, instead of helping one another be accountable to the teaching of Holy scripture."

That's why in verse two, he says, "The church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ." He talks about the church, universal. He says, "The church, all those who call on the Lord." This is all Christians that have ever existed, will ever exist and currently exist.

But then he also says, "There's a church locally," express locally. He says it by saying, "That church of God in Corinth," in this particular city, "And the saints who are in every place." What he's trying to say is, that our identity needs to be shaped by the gospel and by one another. As Christians covenant together, they hold one another accountable to God's scriptures.

So the question that's before us is, do we love God's church universally? But then also, in the local expression uses the word ecclesia. This is the assembly, this is the church. He doesn't say the church of St. Paul and Corinth, the church of the leaders in Corinth, the church of the members in Corinth. No, it's God's church. Therefore, God gets to set the agenda.

And they're called to be Holy. Separately, yes, but also together. "You together call upon the name of grace." If some Christians believe that they were Christians in Corinth, and were not part of this congregation in a meaningful covenantal way, they would've missed God's word for themselves, would have missed this letter.

The doctrine of the church is called ecclesiology. Many of us don't have a good ecclesiology because we actually don't even know what that word means. It's doctrine of the church. At Mosaic, we believe in teaching theology as we teach Holy scripture, and using hard words because you guys are wicked smart. Then, also, if Starbucks can teach you to order a frappuccino, then we can teach you some words like propitiation and ecclesiology.

What does ecclesiology? It's the study of the church, and this is really important. Why should the church locally and universally be important to us? Because Jesus is important to us. What's important to Jesus, what Jesus loves, should be important to us. Jesus Christ, the scripture says, founded the church. Jesus Christ didn't just found the church, he marries the church.

There's a lot of Christians who today say, "I love Jesus. I don't love his bride. I don't love his wife." Can you imagine anything more insulting? That's like saying, "Jesus, you're the man. Let's hang out. Your wife, what were you thinking? I know it seemed like a good idea at the time, but man, she's got personality issues. No." Jesus says, "I know, working on it."

Purchased with his blood, it's intimately identified with him. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my... no. Why are you persecuting me?" The church is the body of Christ. The church is the dwelling place of the spirit. It's the instrument to which God gets the gospel out, and glorifies him. Jesus prays for the church. He sacrifices himself for the church. He serves the church. He attends the church, Revelation says that he attends through the gospel ministry in every church, and he builds it up. Do you?

Is the church as important to you, as it is to Jesus Christ? If I'm a child of God, then I have brothers and sisters who are different than me. Regardless of worldly status, gender, race, nationality. Christian formation cannot happen, apart from Christian community. If you're not growing in your faith, you say, "I'm really having a hard time." I'll ask you a couple questions. "Are you reading God's word on a regular basis, and are you plugged into a gospel proclaiming church?"

Community isn't optional, it's essential. I've never met a healthy, maturing, strong Christian who cares nothing for God's church locally. I've never met that person. God gives us the church, in order to form our personal and corporate identity. One of the problems with talking about church, and talking about the identity that's formed corporately, the disservices from the English language when we read the gospels for the word you, there's only one word. You singular, you plural, it's one word.

Other languages, Russian, the romance language, it's helpful, that differentiates. When you read the gospel, you're like, "Oh, God's talking to everybody." Other parts of the country are really helpful here. Here we have you, down South we've got all y'all. Other parts of the country, you've got yous guys. When St. Paul is writing this letter, it's plural you, plural you, plural you. If he wants to call someone out, he calls someone out by name, plural you.

He's writing this letter to you who are being sanctified. To you, who together call upon the name of God. Jesus Christ said, "I will be with you in the great commission, when you together go baptizing, preaching the name of Jesus Christ." Christian proclamation makes the gospel audible. But the gospel community, the church makes it visible.

I hear this, people come to Mosaic. You look around, you're like, "There are so many Christians, and they look sane. They look normal. They're not crazy. They're worshiping Jesus. Huh." It's one of the greatest apologetics, that we have in our culture.

If you say, "Look, I'm just looking for a good church, I'm just shopping around." My question is always, "What do you mean by a good church?" Usually people mean a church without defects. Whenever I go into a church, I've got this problem and perhaps you do too. You go in, and you notice the defects immediately. If that defect is all that you focused on, obviously you're going to have to go somewhere else, and there's defects there too.

You don't do this with human being. You don't go up to a human being, and there's a glaring defect. You're like, "Yeah, I don't like you because of that. When people go up to me after the service, and they say, "Oh Pastor Jan, can you pray for me?" Or, et cetera, et cetera. The very first thing that they noticed, and I can tell because they're staring at it, is my huge crooked nose.

I've got a massive nose, and it's crooked because of rugby accident in college. It didn't look better before that. My youngest daughter has inherited the same nose, and my wife said, "Do not elaborate that theme, so I won't." But, that would be rude. In the same way, God knows our glaring faults. But God is a good God, and he's working on that.

Finally, I'll ask the question, "What qualifies as a church?" Perhaps you're here in the city, your church shopping or you're gonna move somewhere else. What qualifies as a church? Kanye West, I don't know if you noticed recently, he's holding up pop-up church service experiences. He called it Sunday Service. He had one on Easter Sunday, the last day of the Coachella Music Festival. His wife Kim Kardashian describes it like this. "There's no praying, there's no sermon, there's no word. There's just music, and it's just a feeling."

Obviously, he's promoting his new album. It's more promotion than piety. NPR had this thing on him, and this is what they said. "There's always the sense though, that he might worship God but never serve him. He always seemed like God in the end, would always serve him. He is the church. He is the text of the sermon. It's just his songs. He is the worship. He is creating a church in himself, and selling it."

Selling Holy scripture gives us marks, of what a true church is. Does the church systematically preach God's word? Does the church attempt to live out God's word, not read it and say, "Yeah, we don't agree with that." Does the church practice the sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper? Does the church have qualified leadership? 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1.

Hebrews 13:17 "Obey your leaders, submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." Now, he's not saying obey every spiritual authority. Because we've got to test the spirits, and discern if that authority is from God.

But every Christian needs to be under spiritual authority, every single Christian. If you're not under spiritual authority, I would ask, why? Usually, when people don't want to commit to a church, and don't want to commit to a community of believers, it's because they know that their sin will be exposed. But that's God's grace, to expose our sin, and to give grace to help us repent and be transformed. Are you your own spiritual authority? If so, you've usurped God's authority, and you are speaking as God.

Then finally, an objection that I hear often about joining a church and committing is, "I don't learn anything new. I don't learn anything from the people in the community group. I don't need them. I've grown past that point." Well, first of all, if you have grown in your maturity in the faith, the most important thing you could do is help someone else mature in the faith the most. You're like, "They're not meeting our needs." Sometimes our greatest needs is to lose focus, and stop being preoccupied with our needs.

Then finally, we do need community. Every single one of us, no matter how mature you are. Hebrews 3:12-13, "Take care, brothers," he's talking about Christians, brethren. "Less there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart," Christians, "Leading you to fall away from the living God." How do we fight that evil, unbelieving heart? "Exhort one another every day, as long as it's called "today" that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

God knows where week, and in his grace, in his kindness, He says, "Well, you don't have to do it alone." So what's your next step in growing in greater community involvement, and perhaps at Mosaic. Now, Mosaic will help you find a great church here, or wherever you're moving. Perhaps it's regular attendance. We need God's word and we need fellowship with other Christians. Perhaps it's joining a community group, perhaps it's serving and perhaps it's membership.

I'll close with this. John Calvin said, "Nearly all wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts. The knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves." Some of us, we can't get over what's happened to us in our past, and our past is defining our present. Some of us willing to live in the present, and who we are, is who am I today? Then the future catches me off guard.

The way that we establish a true, robust, solid, stable identity, is by knowing God, and knowing ourselves as we know God. He says, "I am who He says I am. 1 Corinthians 1:7, "So that you are not lacking in any gifts, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ." Don't look to your past, don't look to your present.

Look to your future, when Jesus Christ will be revealed. When he's revealed, we'll see him face-to-face, know himself perfectly and ourselves. But in the meantime, he's given us his Holy Spirit, his Holy scriptures and his Holy Church, for to know him and to know our selves. Amen.

At this time, we're going to transition to celebrating Holy Communion. Holy communion, we celebrate once a month on the very first Sunday of the month. This is a celebration for Christians, to remind ourselves and commemorate that Christ died for our sins. His body was broken, symbolized by the bread. His blood was shed symbolized by the cup.

If you are not a Christian, if you're not sure where you are on your relationship with God, call out to God today, and then you're welcome to partake. If you're not a Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It'll do nothing for you. This isn't some kind of magic. We're saved by grace through faith, and this is a way we remind ourselves of what happened.

When you receive the elements, please hold onto them. Then we'll partake together we pass out the elements through little dishes, trays. Once you get the tray, take the element and then pass it on to someone next to you. With that said, would you please pray with me over Holy Communion.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the reminder that we by grace through faith are yours, and that you empower us by the spirit through grace to live out the calling that you have upon us. Jesus, we thank you for dying a gruesome death, and bearing an infinite weight of God's wrath upon yourself to save us, to make us yours, to put your name upon each one of us.

I pray that you bless our time in Holy communion, send us deep repentance for all of our sin. We're all sinners. We all need grace. We all need you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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How we live on earth will affect our heavenly experience. The more we sacrificially serve our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, the greater our heavenly rewards will be. The essence of heavenly rewards is an experience of the pleasure of God in what we did for his glory while on earth. How do we store up heavenly rewards? Join guest preacher Dr. Andy Davis in studying Revelation 22:12.

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If Jesus were to preach an Easter sermon, how would He preach it? If Jesus were trying to convince Bostonians in 2019 of the veracity of His historical and physical resurrection, what would He say? I think He would preach a sermon. That's what He did the very first Easter Sunday, when He met two skeptics on the road to Emmaus. He revealed Himself from the Holy Scriptures, by the Holy Spirit, before He revealed His Holy Self. He gave them objective truth for the mind, and then enforced it with subjective truth for the heart.

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From time immemorial, Christians haven't just commemorated the death of Jesus Christ—they have actually celebrated it. That's strange, no? Why would you celebrate death? We celebrate the births of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. We certainly don't celebrate their assassinations. When your beloved leader is martyred, you don't celebrate their death, you mourn it. You grieve. You weep. You remember, yes, but definitely not celebrate. So what makes the death of Jesus Christ worth celebrating? Why will billions around the world be celebrating His death on Friday?

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We're all tempted by the forbidden fruit. Often, it's not the fruit itself that irresistibly draws us, but the fact that it's forbidden. "Don't do this" is sometimes the only reason we're tempted to do. At the end of Matthew 21, Jesus tells the Parable of the Tenants. He reveals our innate suicidal enmity toward God, and graciously offers to save us from ourselves. He allows His destruction to save us from our self-destruction, thus providing the only means for our enmity toward God to be replaced with love.

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The metaphor that comes closest to describing God's inexhaustible love for us is that of God as bridegroom. Only when we realize that God loves us with the most powerful spousal love can we begin to grasp the sinfulness of sin. Our sin doesn't just have moral or spiritual consequences, it has deeply personal consequences. Every time we stray from God, we commit spiritual adultery. We don't just break His commandments, we break His heart.

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The sin of self-righteousness is everyone's blind spot, and the longer you're a Christian, and the more successful you are at growing in personal righteousness, the greater your unwitting bent toward self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is the self-satisfaction of being "better than." We aren't just moral creatures, we're moralistic creatures, and self-righteousness is the default setting of the human heart. We all need to learn to repent of our righteousness, through which we attempt to earn or sustain our standing before God and others.

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In Luke 9:1-17, the disciples plea for Jesus send the 10,000+ crowd of people home because they were hungry. In response, Jesus commands "You give them something to eat." Then Jesus proceeds to fulfill His own commandment, through the disciples' feeble, fraught, and faithless obedience. Apart from God's grace, applied to our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are helpless to do what God commands us to do.

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Western cultures tend to be "monochronic" in that they view time as linear, with a definitive beginning and end. Time is viewed as limited, so we structure our lives by milestones, deadlines, and hard schedules. Polychronic cultures like Southern Europe, Latin American countries and the Middle East view time as cyclical and endless. Doing things right and maintaining harmony is more important than getting things done “on time.” If there are such stark contrasts in understanding time between cultures, how much more so between people and God? God is never late.

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Healthy habits are important. But moral habits are as well. Gossip, lust, greed, lying, envy, fits of anger, passivity, vanity, drunkenness, etc. There are things we do, that we wish we didn’t do, and have maybe even promised countless times to never do again. But they keep coming back to haunt us. It might leave us wondering if change is even possible. It’s no wonder Scripture often talks about sin as self-inflicted slavery.

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It’s been said that there are 365 “Fear nots” in the Bible — one “Fear not” for every day of the year! In Luke 8:22-25, Jesus leads the disciples into the middle of the most terrifying storm of their lives, takes a nap while they panic, then calms the storm and their raging fear. Then, as He typically does, leaves them with the mystifying question: "Where is your faith?"

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From day one, God invades the darkness. Let there be light. Boom. There was light. When God sent his Son into the world, He sent His light to enlighten and illuminate our hearts. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Join us tomorrow as we continue our series in Luke, by studying Luke 8:16-21.

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To listen well, we need to muster significant energy. Listening takes work. Passively hearing is easy. Actively listening is exhausting. Skip the speech, just give me the soundbites. However, soundbites are superficial. The Lord wants His Word to shoot deep roots in the humble, tender, soil of hearts, to produce a miraculous harvest of 30, 60, even a hundredfold.

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When people usually think of the word "blessing," they think of "prosperity" in terms of material things like health and wealth. The word for "blessing" in the New Testament is makarios, which actually means "the highest level of happiness." Therefore, God's greatest blessings are not material, but spiritual. God longs to give us makarios --inexpressible joy. One of the clearest paths to experiencing more makarios is generosity. Therefore, the way we experience a more blessed life isn't getting more, but giving more.

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The question isn’t whether we are going to be worshipers. Rather, it is, what are we going to worship? To worship anyone or anything less than the all-powerful, all-knowing God, we sell ourselves short. But what does true worship look like in our daily discipline? Mosaic Boston Jamaica Plain Pastor Ivey Rhodes brings us the message this week to discuss a true life rhythm of worship.

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When Scripture talks about community, it doesn't talk about a social club of peers or a Meetup interest group. Godly community is Gospel-centered community on mission with God, for His glory! The early church committed (devoted) itself to gathering together corporately, and in small groups in homes for studying the Scriptures, prayer, and fellowship.

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God hard-wired humans to both work and rest, in a healthy rhythm. If we stop doing either, we stop living full, flourishing lives. This is why God actually commands us to rest physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and this is meant to be a blessing, not a burden. In fact, regular rest is so important that God put it in the Ten Commandments, right up there with "Don't commit adultery" and "Don't murder." Thus, resting every seventh day isn't just a nice suggestion, but actually morally binding. If we break this commandment, it breaks us.

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When every day becomes a feast, no day truly is. We've lost the rhythm of feasting (celebrating God's bounty and kindness), because we've lost the rhythm of fasting (celebrating God). We don't fast to fast, but fast to pray--and we don't pray to pray, but pray to fellowship with Our Heavenly, our greatest need, even greater than that for food. By looking at the spiritual rhythm of fasting, we can feast on fellowship with God.

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In the same way that God has designed our bodies to function optimally when aligned with circadian rhythms, He has designed our souls to function optimally when aligned with spiritual rhythms. For the next six Sundays, we are devoting our attention to the spiritual rhythms the Lord has prescribed for us in Scripture as a means of grace for spiritual flourishing: Scripture, Prayer & Fasting, Sabbath, Community, Worship, and Generosity. Once these rhythms are a natural part of your life, you will be on your way to a successful 2019 (and beyond)!

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In Isaiah 9, Jesus is prophecies to be the "Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore." Despite the lack of Shalom in the world, we can still experience Shalom in our hearts, as "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7).

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Even in the most ecstatic moments of happiness, there's always a caveat or asterisk–there's always a catch. There's always the deep awareness that this delicious moment will come to an end, and we're sad about it. We're sad about our happiness ending, because it isn't happiness that we're after; we're after everlasting joy. Do you have this elusive everlasting joy?

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The best part about the Christmas season is the Christmas spirit. The Christmas spirit infuses the air with generosity, grace, and love. Everyone seems to be a little nicer–even in Boston. People don't push quite as forcefully on the T. They don't lay on the horn quite as long. They don't tailgate quite as closely. Why? What is it about the Christmas Spirit that changes people? And why can't we live like this year-round?

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What is that thing that if you lost it, would make your life no longer worth living? We all put our hope in something––whether it's the God of the Bible or something else. This week, we investigate God's method of providing hope to all people as we kick off our four-week long Advent series.

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When God grants authority, it is always for the blessing and protection of those under authority and never for the selfish advantage of the one in authority. The conclusion of Colossians examines godly authority in the family, marketplace, and church.

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In last week's text in Colossians, the Apostle Paul said that asceticism and legalism are impotent in stopping the "indulgence of the flesh," meaning external changes won't stop the raging fire of sin within. We need something else. We need to fight the internal fire with fire, by fighting desire with desire.

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The number one spiritual growth secret: do not focus on growing your own faith; focus on helping someone else grow theirs.

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Deep down we all long for a perfect kingdom. We all long for a perfect king. And to a certain extent we’re all upset that neither of those seem to exist. What if that perfect kingdom does exist? What if we could be a part of it? For the next four weeks, we'll dive into the book of Colossians and begin a new four-week series entitled, “Supernaturalization: Heavenly Citizenship for the Here and Now.”

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Just a casual google search for the "occult in Boston" opens a whole world of Boston's spirituality. Astrology, horoscopes, Ouija boards, yoga, the occult, signs of the zodiac, psychics, witchcraft, parapsychology, magick, palmistry, tarot cards, numerology, séances, necromancy, channeling, voodoo, charms, hexing, etc. Why the prevalence of "spiritual" groups in a bastion of secularism like Boston? How are Christians to think about these things? Join us as we look at Jesus among New Age Spirituality.

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Since our culture has rejected even the idea of ultimate meaning in life, the only point that is left is to have a good time, the pursuit of personal happiness. Since we have no idea what leads to ultimate happiness, we conflate happiness with pleasure. The pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of maximum pleasure, which paradoxically leads to maximum pain.

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What is truth? Which one? Our culture worships the unholy trinity of pluralism (all truths are true), relativism (it's true for you, not for me), and humanism (you are the definer of truth). What do we do with Jesus among the Pluralists?

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Modern atheists are not content to just personally believe in no God; they want to do everything possible to convert you to their godless religion. Their main weapons are not reason and science but ridicule and cynicism. It's hard to win many over to full-fledged atheism, because it's nearly impossible to live out the dark implications of this faithless faith. However, what they are successful in doing, is giving millions of young people intellectual cover to be agnostic (or "nones").

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Scripture distinguishes between the nonbeliever and the false teacher. While Scripture commands us to be hospitable and to share the Gospel, Scripture is also abundantly clear that we must "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). In this week's sermon, we examine the four characteristics of Christian cults, so we can grow in spiritual discernment.

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The Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, "The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the non-essentials." Many today have passively accepted this sentiment. It's the mood of our city and age. We long for unity amidst diversity. However, pretending our real differences don't actually exist leads to superficial unity, which is tenuous at best, and dangerous at worst. The major world religions are not all the same. They do not point to the same God. In this week's sermon, we dive into Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and look straight at the facts.

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Over the next several weeks we’ll be taking a look at how Jesus compares to other major worldviews and religions. We begin by investigating Jesus himself. Who did Jesus claim to be? What evidence is there to support his claims? How do we explain the origins of the Christian faith? As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

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At Mosaic Boston, we take the beginning of September to refocus our vision, and reignite our hearts to serve Jesus and our city. Since day one, we have said that Mosaic Boston is in the city for the city. So what does it mean to love our city?

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Who is Mosaic Boston? What do we value? What is our mission? How are we going to fulfill our mission? Every year around this time, we pause and remind ourselves why we do what we do. For our members, it's important to remind ourselves of our vision and mission and get remobilized and inspired. And if you're new to Mosaic Boston, or if you have not yet visited, this sermon is for you!

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In Luke 7:36-50, Jesus is invited to a dinner party at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. Through the story, we see a shocking picture of what true love, worship, and discipleship look like in Jesus' Kingdom–when a notorious prostitute crashes a Pharisee’s party.

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It’s often easier to admit misconceptions we had as kids, but as we get older it’s often more difficult to see where we have them now. Even once we recognize an error in our understanding, it can still be hard to admit it. In Luke 7:18-35 to see John the Baptist’s misunderstanding about Jesus, and how Jesus redeems even our misconceptions today.

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In a fallen world, where sadness is ubiquitous and death imminent, we must learn to grieve well. Jesus was called a man of sorrows. He knew grief. He steps into our grief. He grieves and weeps with us. He teaches us to grieve, but not as those without hope.

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Is God ever surprised? Of course not. He knows all: past, present, and future. However, in Luke 7, Jesus "marvels" at the faith of a Roman Centurion, one of the last people anyone would expect to become a Christian. Christ even says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” In response to such "surprising" faith, Jesus released His power in the Centurion's life. What was so "marvelous" about this man's faith? How can we develop a similar faith?

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When Jesus talks about our obedience to God, it's nearly impossible for us not to think of our obedience to God in terms of conditional love and approval: if I'm good, God loves me; if I mess up, He shuns me. Is that the case? Also, if God loves me unconditionally, why should I obey? Why not live any way I choose, and then run home when I need Him? In Luke 6:46-49, Jesus calls his followers to build a foundation of obedience for our lives, an obedience that is propelled by love.

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We live in a culture intoxicated with scandals, especially high-profile ones. We find these highly entertaining. We just can't look away. Deep down inside, we love the feeling of contempt. It allows us to feel better about our own fallenness: "At least I'm not as bad as that person." In Luke 6:37-45, Jesus calls us out for our contempt of hypocrites. He tells us that we are all hypocrites. We are all hypocrites with beams stuck in our eyes, condemning the speck of another's hypocrisy, and in our condemnation we only compound our own.

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In a world that teaches us to fear and hate our enemies and to treat people the way they treat us, Jesus commands us to love our enemies and treat people the way we would want to be treated by them. It’s a radical idea, but He wants the lives of His disciples to not only be marked with holiness and devotion to God, but also by mercy and grace toward others (even enemies).

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What is a cojourner? This is more than someone you grab an Uber with across town or your wing-man at a party. For the Christian, to be a cojourner is to come alongside others on their spiritual journey and help point them to Jesus Christ. We'll be jogging through Acts 17 to see some good episodes of the Apostle Paul being a good cojourner to different types of people.

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What is the blessed life? What do we mean when we say "God Bless America" as we'll hear over and over this week? What are you asking for, when you ask for God's blessings? How many of those "blessings" can be reduced to materialism–jobs, money, or housing? Then, once we get those things, how long does our feeling of "blessedness" last, before we start asking for more? When Jesus talked about the "Blessed" life, it's the opposite of what we often consider blessing!

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Legalism repeatedly rears its ugly head, both in the Scriptures, and in our lives. Legalism divorces law from love, commandments from covenant. The reason why Jesus deals with legalism so often is because every single one of us wrestles with it at some point, at least to some degree. How can you discern whether you struggle with legalism?

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When Jesus Christ calls Christians to proclaim the Gospel, He calls us to present it in the most understandable way. This is called contextualization. However, since the Gospel naturally offends ego, in an attempt to make the Gospel understandable, we sometimes try to make it more palatable. This is where contextualization can potentially subtly morph into syncretism. In the process of making Christianity more palatable, we make it powerless.

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How did Jesus love people? He ate and drank with them. Eating and drinking? What's so spiritual about that? In Luke 5:27-32, we read a story about how we can eat and drink with intentionality to make friends and talk about things of eternal matter.

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If you’ve been a Christian for any amount of time, you know that the Christian life can be a lot like soccer. It’s difficult to know if you’re in the right place at the right time. It seems that once you’re in the right spot you have to adjust to challenges, unforeseen circumstances or difficult decisions. You’re often left asking, "Is this really God’s will for my life? What does God want me to do? Should I be where I am?"

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Thousands are celebrating graduations in Boston, and I wonder how many allow themselves to be honest about the unwelcome sadness. In Luke 5:17-26, we have a story about a person who had a clear "If only I... , then I would be happy." What's your "if only"? Was it getting that degree? Getting that job? Accomplishing that goal? Did it satisfy? Maybe temporarily. But then what? Is there even such a thing as sustainable satisfaction?

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We live at a weird time in human history. Society is over-sexualized and under-loved. We are simultaneously more connected and lonelier than ever. We have a basic human need for affection and touch and many of us are starving for it. Some have touched to heal. Some have touched to harm. Join us as we consider the power of touch from Luke 5:12-16, where Jesus touches to heal and to cleanse.

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Does God have a plan for your life? If He does, can we miss it? Jesus did teach us to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." So if we have to pray for God's will to be done in our lives, can I miss out on His plan? What if He calls me to be poor, or to suffer, or to be faithful but obscure? What if He calls me to be a missionary overseas, or even worse, what if He calls me to stay in Boston and tell Bostonian pagans about Jesus? In Luke 5, we look at Jesus' charge to Simon Peter to find out.

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How are we to understand God's promise that we will do "greater works than Jesus did?" (John 14:12) Especially when we look at our text, Luke 4:31-44, where Jesus teaches with authority, casts out demons with authority, and heals with authority. So many questions. Demons? Exorcism? Healing? What does God's Word have to say about the spiritual realm?

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We've subtitled this sermon series "How to love your nearest neighbors," with the assumption that often, those closest to us are sometimes the hardest to love well. This is especially true with kids. Our kids see us all the time, when we're at our best and when we're not so much. Deuteronomy 6 is one of the most profound teachings in all of Scripture on parenting. It teaches us that the first step to successful parenting is growing in your love, as a child, for God the Father.

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As we continue our "People Skills" series tomorrow, we'll turn to Matthew 18, where Jesus teaches his followers how to handle conflict when it arises in our spiritual family. What do we do when our spiritual brothers or sisters sin against us?

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Dr. David Butler discusses the people skills needed in marriage, the most intimate relationship in our lives, focusing on the commands found in Philippians 2:1-11. The goal of marriage: showcasing the love of Christ to others.

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This week we are kicking off a new series called “People Skills” and starting off with the topic of friendship. How do we make friends, or keep friends? For cynical Bostonians like us, is it even worth the effort? The good news is that it is worth it, and Scripture reveals both the wisdom and the power that are necessary for us to have amazing friendships no matter what life throws our way.

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In the Gospel story, we find the worst news about us, and the best news for us – and why it matters.

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We live in a world that is out of control and beyond our control. We work hard to create order out of the chaos of our lives, but even at the pinnacle of our powers, we can't control most of which sets the course of our lives. We are finite, dependent creatures, and we don't like it. This is why the idol of control is so powerful. It offers us power, control, influence, authority, and we're willing to sacrifice whatever this idol demands to get everything it offers. We conclude our Detox series by looking at Jesus' trial before Pilate.

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One of the most dangerous toxins to our spiritual life and growth is the toxin of comfort. Comfort kills all growth, but especially spiritual growth. When we worship at the alter of the idol of comfort, by orienting our lives around becoming as comfortable as we possibly can, our souls are lulled to sleep and we are rendered ineffective. We lock ourselves in cages of comfort, and we becomes shells of our potential selves. We need a spiritual detox from the toxicity of comfort.

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This week we will study the idol of Affection. This idol goes by many names: romance, intimacy, but most often, simply "Love." We are indoctrinated with the claim: Love is god. We are taught that without a romantic relationship, our lives are meaningless; without romantic love and affection, we are somehow incomplete. Like every idol, this one overpromises, under-delivers, and always breaks our heart. Perhaps the physically strongest person in all of Scripture, Sampson, was slain by the idol of affection.

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A detox is a process by which a person aims to cleanse the body of toxins or unhealthy substances. In the same way that our bodies incrementally and imperceptibly accumulate toxins, our souls do the same. A little here, a little there, and without realizing it, we've found ourselves in a spiritual funk. During this year's season of Lent, we will spend 4 weeks going through a spiritual detox of sorts by analyzing the heart's deepest idols: significance, affection, comfort, and control.

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What’s so amazing about the Gospel is how honest it is about our depravity, but also about God’s goodness. It tells us that we are so wicked that Christ had to die for us, and yet so loved us that He was willing to do it. It tells us that God owes us nothing, but He gave up everything so that through faith in Christ we can be saved. In Luke 4, we learn about how Jesus and the Gospel offend everyone, especially good, religious people.

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One of the amazing things about Jesus's life on earth is that he was "one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Immediately following Jesus's baptism, Satan musters all of his powers to wage spiritual warfare against Jesus through temptation. In Luke 4, we look at three ways that the devil tempts Jesus, and how we can fight sin and temptation in our own life.

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One of the strongest desires of the human heart is to make our loved ones proud of us. We're born with this innate desire. The thing missing in many people's lives is the incredible, soul-satisfying feeling that your Heavenly Father is proud of you. We often settle for the fickle pleasure of people, but it's never enough. Deep down, we long to please our Creator. This desire, to be pleasing to God, is the mark of a Christian – it's proof of being a child of God. So, how do we please God?

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John Lennon once said, "Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God almighty." This brilliant little nugget encapsulates our schizophrenic inferiority and superiority complex. Let's allow the Holy Scriptures to reintroduce Jesus to us, fully God, fully man, who came to save us from both our superiority complex (He is our Lord) and our inferiority complex (He is our Savior).

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As Christians, we have been called out of darkness to live as citizens and ambassadors of God’s Kingdom. The prophet Jonah is a great example of how God uses people, despite our flaws, to accomplish his mission. Through this reluctant prophet God brought salvation to Nineveh, one of the most unlikely cities on Earth. In doing so, God showed that his plan of salvation would not end with Israel, but would extend to all the nations of the earth.

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Scripture tells us that we belong to God. Human beings are made by God, for God, and have the distinction of being the only thing in all of creation that is made in “the image and likeness of God.” Because of this, every single person has innate dignity and worth that infinitely surpass all earthy treasures. What does it mean for citizens of God’s Kingdom to truly be pro-life in all of life?

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We have a long way to go, till justice "rolls down like waters." If the issues surrounding racial division and the challenges of reconciliation don't drive us to our knees in prayer, then we have not even begun to understand how complex and daunting the issues are.

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The ultimate test of a person's true spiritual condition is prayer. There is nothing that reveals the true state of our spiritual health so much as our prayer life. When you are alone before God, what do you have to say to Him? Similarly, the ultimate test of a church's spiritual condition is its prayer life. How's Mosaic doing? Well, how's our prayer life? This month, we are calling the church to not just pray for ourselves, or for our church. We will focus on praying for our city, our country, and the World.

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I used to be the one who hated New Year's Day, being forced to make resolutions, fully knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep any of them for more than a few months. Why even bother with resolutions when I can’t fully keep them? I decided to see what Scripture has to say about resolutions and man was I surprised! One man in particular stands out at making resolutions and struggling to keep them, the Apostle Peter. We will look at 1 Peter 2:1-12 to see what he has to tell us from his experiences of both failures and success in resolutions.

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As we’ve been walking through Luke’s record of the Christmas story, he wants us to ask, “What Child is This?” We know that Jesus is our Prince of Peace, but what does that mean in a world filled with sin, pain, injustice, and death? What kind of peace did Jesus come to bring? What kind of peace do we really need? And most of all, what will we do if the peace He offers isn’t what we expected?

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Our culture's manufactured Christmas "joy" is a far cry from the very first Christmas. In the very first Christmas, Christ does bring true joy into the world, but it comes amidst suffering, shame, and scandal. Unwed teenager Mary gives birth in a barn, with only a scared Joseph to help deliver the baby. Once Jesus is swaddled, he is placed in a feed trough for animals, like an animal. God brings joy into the world, and it's swaddled in suffering.

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In the second week of Advent, we look at God's love. Perhaps because it comes around every year, or perhaps we've just heard the message so often, we often take the Christmas reality of God's love for granted. This is unfortunate, because God's love is the most shocking fact in the universe. We should value the spiritual practice of growing in God's love, because if you live like you're loved (because you are), you become unstoppable.

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Advent is a celebration of the first coming of Jesus and the anticipation of his second coming. For the next four Sundays, we will meditate on the liturgical Advent themes: Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. In our first sermon, we'll look at the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth–two faithful, God-fearing and God-loving saints, who had devoted their whole lives to serving the Lord selflessly. However, despite all of their faithfulness and all of their prayers, they didn't have any children, though they desperately longed to. They begged God and begged God, but all they got in response was silence. The situation seemed utterly hopeless–until God showed up.

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We've spent three months mining the majestic depths of the book of Nehemiah, but it concludes tragically. The people of God, who had all the best intentions of obeying God, return to their former ways of rebellion, and the book ends bleaker than it began. Where is the hope? The bleakness of this tragic ending paints a silhouette of the true hero we're longing for, not Nehemiah, but the greater Nehemiah, Jesus Christ.

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In Nehemiah 9, the people of God devote significant time to recalling the sins of their forefathers. The people of God understood, that if they were to move forward, they need to come to terms with their past. They did not justify their personal sins with the sins of their parents. Instead, they acknowledged that their parents' sins were formative in their own lives, and they need to be refashioned and transformed by the Gospel of God's grace. When we are adopted as children of God into the family of God, we must put off the sinful patterns of our family or origin, and relearn how to live life God's way in Jesus' new family.

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Most people have heard that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time. In the United States, the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. What is it about the Bible that continues to make it the best-selling book of all time, even today? In Nehemiah chapters 7 & 8, we read about the prophet Nehemiah and the people applying themselves to knowing and understanding God’s word, leading to sorrow over their sin, joy over God's mercy, and active obedience. As Christians, our salvation is accomplished by Jesus, but to grow in our faith, we must actively seek to know and understand God’s word.

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Michelangelo has "The Creation of Adam", Michael Jackson has "Thriller", Michael Jordan has Game Six of the '98 Finals. The term "magnum opus" comes is Latin for "great work." The magnum opus represents a person's greatest achievement, the seminal work, the crowning achievement. What will your greatest work be? What do you want to be remembered for? What's distracting you from that work? In Nehemiah chapter 6, Nehemiah's enemies are persistently trying to distract him from his magnum opus, rebuilding the city of God. He responds over and over: "I am doing a great work and I cannot come down."

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Compassion fatigue is when we around suffering so often that we have a gradual lessening of compassion over time. Our culture is suffering from compassion fatigue. Nehemiah chapter 5 gives us a glimpse into a godly reaction to injustice and gives us a game-plan for using our power to fight injustice. When Nehemiah hears about the exploitation of the powerless, his fury turns to action as he fights injustice through sacrifice and service. He then wields his power in a godly way to help those who are exploited.

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As we continue our journey through Nehemiah, we get to Nehemiah 4, which contains the perfect illustration of the Christian life. On the one hand, Nehemiah and the people of Israel are working hard to rebuild Jerusalem. On the other hand, they need to be ready to fight the enemy if they were to attack. Each worker had a sword and a trowel, to battle and build. Christians are always fighting the good fight of faith, resisting the sinful patterns of this world, the flesh, and the devil, but we are also working hard to make disciples, build each other up in love, and being built up as a spiritual house. Build and battle.

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Studies show that purpose-driven people are more likely to be leaders, to have career satisfaction, earn more and enjoy more contentment overall – even living up to 7 years longer. But how do we find purpose? This week, we take a look at Nehemiah's mission in chapter 3, which teaches us a lesson in individual vs. collective purpose, and selfish vs. God-glorifying purpose.

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In the second half of Nehemiah 2, the prophet Nehemiah spends time closely evaluating the brokenness of Jerusalem's walls, prior to coming up with a plan for restoration. In our lives, we need an honest self-evaluation to grow as well. And if we can't give ourselves an honest self-evaluation, then how are we supposed to change if we don't think we need to?

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What's the biggest, boldest, most audacious prayer request you've ever brought before God? Perhaps you prayed for a spouse, or the healing of a loved one. Perhaps you prayed for a job, or a housing situation. Perhaps you prayed to win the lottery. Whatever it is, we've all probably come to God with some big requests, at some point. Nehemiah asks God for one of the wildest prayer requests recorded in Scripture, and what's crazier, God answers him!

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Prayer is powerful. As we continue our series through the incredible book of Nehemiah, we'll look at Nehemiah's prayer in 1:4-11. Not only is this one of the most power-packed prayers in all of history, but it also offers us a template, for how we too can develop potent prayer lives.

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The book of Nehemiah is about a godly young professional, whose heart is stirred by the brokenness of the city of God. God gives Nehemiah a "God-sized" vision for his life, the kind of vision that will never come to fruition apart from the sovereign and miraculous intervention of God Himself. Nehemiah devotes his life to be used by God, to help rebuild the city of God, within the city of man. Do you have a vision for your life? Do you have a "God-sized" vision for your life? What's your vision for your church? What's your vision for your city?

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What if I told you, there is an investment opportunity with 0% risk and guaranteed returns? You would tell me it's too good to be true! Well, don't take it from me. Take it from God Himself! Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Are you laying up treasures for yourself in heaven?

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We've all experienced the stress of keeping really good news. It's so hard because good news is contagious. When we hear it we want to spread it. Last week we went through a cliffs notes version of the biblical story. We talked about how King Jesus is the focus of the whole cosmic story: Genesis to Revelation. This week is about your role in the story. We all have a part in the greatest story of all time. How well are you taking on your role?

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Many of us our captivated by stories of kings, queens and kingdoms. Stories of just rulers returning to their thrones are rooted in the eternal cosmic story of the Gospel. Our new series, "In Boston as it is in Heaven," looks at Christ's royal return to set things right. While a story like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings may capture your imagination, you can only observe. But in the story of King Jesus, you get to participate. Yeah, it's awesome.

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Our mission at Mosaic Boston is to help people get a vision of God, and so understand their need for spiritual cleansing from the Savior Jesus Christ, and join the mission of God helping others do the same. After Isaiah's heart and lips are cleansed he hears God say: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then Isaiah said, "Here I am! Send me." Join us as we look at this glorious passage in Isaiah 6.

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Why is it when Jesus preached publicly, the good, the bad, and the ugly always showed up to listen to what he had to say? We see this over and over throughout the gospels. It is not by coincidence that tax collectors and sinners, Pharisees and scribes, the outcasts and the elite were all drawn by his message. Jesus’ relationship with these radically diverse groups challenges us today, clarifies our role as followers of Jesus, and gives us great insight on what the Father values. When we understand what the Father values, it changes what we value as well.

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If image is nothing, why do we expend so much life-energy to attain a certain image, protect that image, and project that image? Though created in the image of the living God, since the fall, we let the world inscribe its image on us. In the final sermon in Galatians, we look at how gazing at God's image in Jesus Christ leads to redeeming and repairing our self-image.

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Many people are comfortable relating to God as Father, and most are comfortable with understanding the divinity of Jesus. However, many Christians have a hard time relating to the Holy Spirit. But living the life God has called us to live is impossible apart from the person and power of the Holy Spirit. Let's examine the command to "walk by the Spirit," be "led by the Spirit," and "keep in step with the Spirit."

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The same indifference or apathy that I sometimes feel toward the Freedom Trail, we as Christians sometimes feel toward our freedom in Christ, extended to us by the grace of God. We no longer revel in it. As soon as this happens, the Gospel's transformative power in our lives weakens, and we fall away from grace. Holy Scripture reminds us: "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1). Are you experiencing this freedom now?

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When Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, they were at a crossroads: to place their faith solely in the works of Christ, as originally taught by Paul; becoming reliant on the religious practices suggested by the Jewish teachers, or leaving Christianity to go back to their former lives. Though it’s been two millennia since Paul wrote to the Galatians, modern people are still constantly deciding between similar choices.

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Like any family, God's family has it's own dynamic. While human families change with every new child, our dynamic with our Heavenly Father is established. In Galatians 3:15-4:7, we'll discover that our status as God's children is revolutionary for our lives and our church.

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When you first started following Christ, it was all so new and exciting. Fast forward one, two, or three years and things have changed, and in quiet moments of honesty with yourself you wonder what has happened. Galatians 3:1-14 has answers for when your relationship with Jesus is at that point. We’ll see a church that was at one point closely following Jesus, but began to fall away from their faith as time moved on.

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You often hear the accusation, “I don’t believe in Christianity, because the church is full of hypocrites.” So, is that a fair assessment? In Galatians 2:11-21, Paul recounts an instance when he had to call out hypocrisy in the church. He tells Peter, and the others in Antioch, that their conduct is "out of step with the truth of the Gospel." So where did they go wrong? Paul’s illustration will help us understand what hypocrisy is, what it isn’t, where it comes from, and how to fix it. We’ll also see that hypocrisy is something we’re all in danger of falling into, and learn how to proactively guard against it.

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St. Paul, the most zealous Jew of all Jews, had a radical life change when he realized that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. He was willing to endure persecution and die for his new faith. Christianity is something that you can't make up – it's too crazy!

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The search for truth about God has always been a struggle, because Satan is the great counterfeiter. He has false gospels, preached by false ministers, producing false Christians. Every Christian must practice spiritual discernment. How can we intuitively spot false gospels? We need to know the true Gospel inside and out. Join us as we start our series through the book of Galatians.

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If I pursue wisdom in every area of life, why do I still experience setbacks, disappointment, and sometimes, even, suffering? Why do bad things happen to wise people? In order to live life as an adult, one needs a robust practical theology of suffering.

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Preparing for a job, getting a job, and keeping a job are all part of growing up. Since work takes up so much of our lives, and so much of our lives depends on our work, the ancient wisdom literature of Holy Scripture has lots to say about it. The ancient wisdom literature teaches that work is a good gift from God. Ecclesiastes 2:24 says "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil." Do you find enjoyment in your work?

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Self-control is the ability to say "no" to your urges (and "yes" to something greater and more important), and this is actually one of the great proofs of the immateriality of the soul. Your ability to control your self proves that you are more than just a material being. Listen in as we look to the ancient wisdom literature of Proverbs to see what it has to teach us about self-control.

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Nothing has shaped you, and nothing will shape you, more than your family and friends. Just think about how much of who you are, and where you are, is a direct result of your family and best friends. Not only do the closest people in your life form the person you become, but they are also the source of your greatest joys, or your greatest sorrows. Let's turn to Scripture to see what ancient wisdom offers on this subject.

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Today, getting an education is more expensive and student debt is worse than it's ever been, getting a well-paying job is harder, and buying a home is nearly impossible. As one financial expert put it, the next generation is starting their economic race 50 years behind the starting line. Great. Where can we turn to find tried-and-true financial advice? We turn to the ancient wisdom literature of Scripture to see what it has to say regarding developing financial wisdom.

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We live in an age of colossal confusion regarding the most important and consequential areas of life. Since our society can't tell us who we really are, it certainly can't offer much helpful advice in terms of how we are to live.

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This week we kicked off our series drawing ancient wisdom from the book of Proverbs to apply to a modern life. Adulting includes taking care of your health: physical, emotional, financial, and relational. However you will never be truly healthy and you will never truly understand life, if you're not spiritually healthy.

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Easter Sunday Service 2017 from Brookline

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Good Friday service from April 14, 2017 at Mosaic Boston | Brookline

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This week we looked at one of the most astonishing "I am" statements in the Gospel of John. In the context of proclaiming himself as the life-source of the universe ("I am the true vine"), Jesus shockingly says, "apart from me you can do nothing." Now, that's a staggering statement to make! Nothing? At first glance, there appear to be many things, many people do daily, apart from Jesus.

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In John 14: 1-14, Jesus pronounces his famous words: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

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If we love God, then why are we prone to wander away from Him? Jesus answers this question and more in John 10:1-21. In this message, we see how Jesus reveals that He alone is the Good Shepherd of our wandering souls.

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From the very beginning, when God spoke and broke into the chaos of the darkness, light has been associated with the nature of God. So much so that when Moses looked at God’s back, Moses’ face began to glow. To the Hebrews, God’s presences in the wilderness was represented by glowing pillar of fire. In the temple era of Israel, God was represented through flames and candles in their most holy building. 1 John 1:5 doesn’t tell us that he is like light, but it says, “God is light…” Meaning that in God’s nature he illuminates and is perfection.

John 8:12 says, “I AM the light of the world.” This statement was bursting with meaning to his Jewish listeners - listen in as we unpack what Jesus said.

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As we look at who Jesus is, in his own words, it's intriguing that Jesus compares himself to food. More specifically, Jesus compares himself to bread. Actually, he makes a stronger statement than that, he flat out says: "I am the bread of life." What in the world does that mean?

Jesus is revealing a profound truth about us and about God. He is telling us that we are desire machines, animals of desire. We hunger. We want. We long. We yearn. We dream. And as hard as we try to satisfy our deepest desires, they just seem to keep roaring back, often stronger than before, leaving us even more dissatisfied. No matter how much we accomplish, earn, spend, have, experience, etc., we always want/need more. So what are we to do?

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Who is Jesus Christ? Lots of people have lots of ideas about Jesus Christ. But who is Jesus in his own words? What did he say about himself? In this sermon series, we walk through the famous "I am" statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John. We're going to give Jesus a chance to reintroduce himself to us.

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In Chapter 6 of Ephesians, St. Paul gives us God's plan for parenting, work, and spiritual warfare. Parents are told to commit to raising their children in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord." Employees are told to commit to doing their jobs "not by way of eye-service as people pleasers" but from sincere hearts, as if working for the Lord. Finally, all Christians are told to commit to the Lord and stand against the Evil One. Though there are many themes in the chapter, the central truth that undergirds everything is that true love assumes commitment. Without commitment, there is no Christianity. Jesus Christ loved us so much, that He committed his life for ours.

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Some people argue that if marriage is so natural, then why would it require work? And how come some couples, who are willing to put the work in, can't seem to make it work?

Since our culture doesn't have much of an answer to these question, many just say we weren't designed for marriage. Scarlett Johansson, who was recently divorced for the second time, said in an interview: "I think the idea of marriage is very romantic; it's a beautiful idea, and the practice of it can be a very beautiful thing. I don't think it's natural to be a monogamous person. The fact that it is such work for so many people -- for everyone -- proves that it is not a natural thing."

So is monogamy natural? If so, why does it take work? If not, how can we make marriage work? Listen in to find out more.

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In Ephesians 4, Paul lays out God's design for the unity of the Church, and the unity of individual churches. He writes, "There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

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What do you pray about most frequently? What do you pray about most intensely? Your finances? Your health? Your relationships? Your career? You?

One of the best ways to reveal what you truly care about most in life, is to analyze the content of your prayers, the frequency of those prayers, and the intensity with which you pray about those things. We pray about what concerns us most, because prayer expresses desire.

As we continue our study of Ephesians, we come to one of the most beautiful and profound prayers in all of Holy Scripture. Paul prays for the souls of the believers in Ephesus.

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In order to help us understand the lavishness of God's mercy, grace, and love, Paul explains the bleakness of our plight apart from Christ. He plunges us deep into the abyss of our sinfulness, where it's cold, dark, and the pressure is excruciating. We weren't just spiritually sick or ill, we were "dead in our sins and trespasses." We weren't just naughty, we were "children of wrath."

Then, when it seems almost unbearable, Paul shoots us up to the highest high of God's grace: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved!"

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The first in our series of book of Ephesians, a letter written for a cultural moment not unlike our own. Actually, Ephesus was a city more divided than our own. St. Paul writes to them, to tell them of Christ's plan to "unite all things to himself, in heaven and things on earth." Through the Gospel, Jesus breaks down the "dividing walls of hostility." Christ reconciles us both to God and to each other. Christ brings lasting reconciliation by healing all alienation and removing all isolation. "In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." Through Christ, we can be united to God, and united by God.

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Listen as church planting resident Ivey Rhodes turns to the Bible to figure out what fasting is, and explore what it isn't: - Fasting isn’t for weight loss or any health benefit. - Fasting doesn’t earn favor with God. - Fasting can’t save you. - Fasting doesn’t make us spiritual giants. - Fasting isn’t a command. - Fasting doesn’t bend God to our will.

If you want to hear what Christian fasting is, listen in to learn more!

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Prayer is the lifeblood of our relational connection with God. Oswald Chambers once said, "We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first life of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything al all." Prayer isn't just to be used in the case of emergency. Prayer is how we commune with and encounter God himself.

As we begin 2017, we look to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, to remind ourselves of the importance of prayer for our souls, and hence, our lives.

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Week 1 of our Spiritual series looks at the connection between Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit. Christians tend to gravitate toward one of two extremes regarding the third person of the Trinity. Some pursue experiences in the Spirit of God strictly apart from the Word of God. They listen for voices in their hearts or signs in the sky. They are always talking about what God said to them through a stirring, a feeling, or in a strange confluence of circumstances. Others, however, seek to know and obey the Word of God without and interaction with, or real dependence on, the Spirit.

But the Spirit and the Word work inseparably. We cannot experience the Spirit apart from the Word and we cannot understand the Word apart from the Spirit.

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The feeling of fear isn't something we naturally associate with Christmas. However, three times, at key moments in the Christmas narrative, people are told to "Fear not!" Yes, seeing an Angel is probably a nerve-racking experience, in and of itself. However, there may be more to it. They weren't just frightened by the Angel's appearance. They were frightened by the Angel's announcement.

But all are told: "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people." When God breaks into your life, it's always scary, but his perfect love casts out all fear. Jesus turns any scary Christmas into a merry Christmas.

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Joy is a sign of a healthy heart, and by extension, a lack of joy is a symptom of an unhealthy heart. Joy is more than happiness, just as happiness is more than pleasure. Pleasure is felt in the body; happiness is felt in the mind and feelings. Joy, however, is felt deep in the heart, deep in the core of your soul.

How’s your heart? How’s your joy? When the Angel brought news of the first Christmas to the Shepherds, he said, “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy.” Not minor joy. Not small joy. Not modest joy. But “great joy.” Jesus came to bring us this joy, an indestructible joy, “No one will take your joy from you.”

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There are many things in this world that show us that God loves us. However, Christmas is the greatest, most ultimate, proof of God's love for us. The God of the universe subjected himself to becoming human, with everything this entails.

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The word "Advent" comes from the Latin word "Adventus," meaning "coming" or "arrival. It begins the 4th Sunday before Christmas and ends on Christmas Day. Advent is a celebration of the first coming of Jesus and the anticipation of his second coming.

Celebrating Advent helps us cut through the infinite distractions, of life in general, and the Christmas season in particular, and refocus our attention on what's most important in life. The four themes of Advent are "Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace." In this message Pastor Jan turns to the Holy Scriptures to remind us of the certain hope we have in Christ.

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Some days prayer is the only thing that gets you through. There is a real sense in which we should pray, to make it through the day. And that isn’t a bad thing at all. Prayer helping us through tough times is Biblical. We see that idea throughout the Psalms and from Jesus himself. Check out church planting resident Ivey Rhodes' sermon on prayer and how it helps us through the ups and downs of life.

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In Genesis 12, God calls Abram (aka Abraham) and promises to bless him "so that you will be a blessing." This is how God's blessings work: when He blesses us, we are to receive those blessings with open hands, so his blessings don't just flow to us, but through us. We are not to be collectors of blessings, but dispensers of blessings. We are not to just be beneficiaries of blessings, but agents of blessings. We are not designed to be cisterns, but aqueducts. Does your life represent the cascading blessings of God?

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However we feel, we must not overlook the phenomenal opportunity before the church today. We have an opportunity to live out the love of Christ by standing in the gap for all those who feel vulnerable, fearful, and alienated. We have an opportunity to boldly stand against anything that threatens life. So we stand with and fight for the unborn, the minority, the immigrant, for all who are oppressed and abused. We will use whatever influence we have to see that everyone is protected and treated fairly and equally. We stand against all injustice, lawlessness, and discrimination, wherever we see even a hint of it.

Ultimately, we are not united by the United States. We are united by Jesus Christ, who died for tax collectors and publicans, and yes, for democrats and republicans.

Genesis 10-11 fittingly speaks a profound Word into our cultural moment.

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One would think the story of Noah in Genesis should have concluded with a happy ending. However, tragically, it doesn't. The second half of chapter 9 tells us that Noah sinned, and so did his son Ham. The sin leads to a curse, and a forfeiture of blessing. Why? Somewhere along the way, Noah stopped striving for God's blessings. Unlike Jacob in Genesis 32:26 who told God "I will not let you go unless you bless me," Noah had stopped wrestling for blessing.

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As we continue our journey through the book of Genesis, and the story of Noah in particular, we see the very first rainbow in all of human history. After over a year in the ark, with his kids, lots of animals, and certainly not enough ventilation, Noah leaves the ark for dry ground and fresh air. Can you even begin to imagine the feeling of getting out of that boat? Over a year in a boat, in some less than ideal accommodations. I get stir-crazy on any flight over 3 hours! Noah comes out and his first reaction is utter bliss! His heart is overjoyed, humbled, and full of thanksgiving, so he responds by worshipping God through sacrifice.

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Deep down inside, every single one us wants to (or has wanted to) live lives of consequence. We want our work to matter. We want our lives to matter. We want to matter. We all yearn for glory. Unfortunately, many of us don't understand one of the greatest paradoxes of the universe: if you live for your own glory, your life won't matter that much, but if you live for God's glory, you will live of life of great meaning, satisfaction, and blessing. This message gives us a deeper look into the life of Noah, and why the story and his life isn't really about him.

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However, the God of Holy Scripture is radically different. Scripture tells us God is love, and one cannot love from afar. God is intimately involved and wholly committed to us. One cannot become this involved in any relationship without becoming vulnerable. To love is to open up your heart, either to acceptance or rejection, to bliss or to grief.

Genesis 6 gives us a glimpse into God's grieving heart.

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In Philippians 3:12-21, Paul shows us how to live in response to amazing grace. Knowing he was completely unqualified for the position God gave him, Paul begins to “Run Like He Stole It” without looking back! Jesus qualified him when he was completely unqualified, so Paul makes it his aim to run faster, work harder, and grow up into a life worthy of the Gospel. Hear this great message from Ivey Rhodes, the current church planting resident at Mosaic Boston.

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As we continue our journey through the book of Genesis, we learn about the first city ever built. The city was built by Cain. Although God created everyone to find their deepest satisfaction in Him, by fully glorifying him, Cain seeks to build a life and city apart from God.

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In Genesis chapter 4, through the story of Cain and Abel, God reveals some profound truths about the nature of our hearts and about the subtlety of sin.

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In Genesis 1 and 2, the Lord God created the cosmos and humanity perfectly. He looked at all creation and proclaimed "it is very good." Everything was flawless. Chapter 2 ends with Adam singing a long song to Eve. After their wedding, they were meant to blissfully "live happily ever after" in paradise, with all of their needs met and desires satisfied. They had a perfect relationship with God, perfect relationship with each other, and a perfect relationship with nature. Unfortunately, the idyllic life didn't last.

Genesis chapter 3 gives us a play-by-play recounting of humanity's fall into sin, suffering, and sadness. This account explains why the world is not as it ought to be and why we aren't the way we're supposed to be. This text makes sense of the brokenness of the world around us and the brokenness inside us. Fortunately, the text also foreshadows the Gospel. God will not leave humanity in it's brokenness. Instead, God promises to send the second Adam, Jesus Christ, who will deal the Evil One a crushing death blow.

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While Genesis 1 describes God's general purpose in creation, chapter 2 explains His more specific purposes for our lives. God reveals to us his plan for our work, rest, gender, sexuality, singleness, and marriage. Did we cover all those hot-button issues in one sermon? You bet. And you don't want to miss it!

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Many are familiar with Genesis and it's epic themes of Creation & Fall, of Calling & Blessing, of Covenant & Promise. Many are familiar with the timeless stories of Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Noah & the Ark, Babel & beyond. However, most Christians fail to understand Genesis as Jesus understood Genesis. Jesus interpreted Genesis as a book about Himself! In Luke 24, while traveling on the road to Emmaus with two disciples after His Resurrection, in order to bolster their faith in Himself, He took them to the Scriptures (instead of showing them his wounds and having them touch his resurrected body!).

In Luke 24:25-27, Jesus says “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." Jesus revealed what the Old Testament had to say about Him, beginning with Genesis. What does Genesis say about Jesus? Listen in to this series and find out!

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Every year, right about this time (late August, early September), just before the new surge of people into the city, we pause everything at Mosaic, and remind ourselves of the mission before us.

Church is a family and once any family grows, it needs to get organized. Like every organization, churches have the tendency to subtly drift from their original objectives. This is called mission creep. Ironically, often after initial success, the organization begins to widen its scope and little by little, it forgets why it exists. In churches, it usually entails the church taking on more and more good tasks, which ultimately eclipse the great task of the Great Commission. Mission creep also occurs when members of a church stop rowing in the same direction and start charting their own course and pushing for their own agendas.

A famous Russian poem beautifully illustrates this dynamic (yes, I'm quoting a poem, you're welcome). "The Swan, the Pike, and the Crab" by Ivan Krylov:

WHENE’ER companions don’t agree, They work without accord; And naught but trouble doth result, Although they all work hard.

One day a swan, a pike, a crab, Resolved a load to haul; All three were harnessed to the cart, And pulled together all. But though they pulled with all their might, The cart-load on the bank stuck tight. The swan pulled upward to the skies; The crab did backward crawl; The pike made for the water straight — It proved no use at all!

Now, which of them was most to blame ’Tis not for me to say; But this I know: the load is there Unto this very day

Join us today as we remind ourselves of the mission God has given Mosaic Boston:

Love Jesus, Love those who love Jesus, and Love those who don't yet love Jesus.

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A couple years ago, we went through a series at Mosaic, entitled "This Changes Everything." In this teaching series, we talked about how the person and work of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, doesn't just save our souls, but the Gospel also is meant to transform all the most practical areas of our life: work, money, sex, relationships, and the church. Many people view the Gospel as the way we enter the Kingdom of God, and then everything else is done through our sheer efforts. This is a wrongheaded approach to the Christian life. The Gospel isn't just an entry point to a life with God, it's also a force for growth in your walk with God.

This is exactly the point the Apostle Paul wants to drive home, even in the way he structures the last part of his letter. After spending 11 chapters beautifully elucidating the Gospel, Paul then pivots and says "therefore," meaning now, based on everything I've just explained, this is how you shall live. He writes, "I appeal to you therefore, brother, by the mercies of God..." Then for the next 5 chapters he begins to, in practical detail, lay out his answer to the question: "Now that we are Christians, how then should we live?"

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Sick of the election yet? Cheer up, there's only than 3 months left of it (!).

Today, we'll be talking about a more encouraging kind of election. This one isn't about Hillary and Donald (thankfully). We'll be diving deep into some of the most profound but also historically confusing chapters in all of the Bible. Most churches never even crack open the book of Romans, not to mention Romans 9-11. So, you, Mosaic, are in luck!

We'll be wrestling with questions like: what is unconditional election? Does God really predestine people to salvation, even before they are born? How is that fair? Isn't this flagrant favoritism and injustice? What about everyone else? Doesn't God love everyone equally? Are we just robots then? Do our decisions matter? If God does elect people to salvation, then why do we need to share the Gospel? Why put so much work into evangelism?

Once we grasp the meaning of election and its connection to evangelism, we too will cry out with St. Paul, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

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I really hope you're enjoying the Book of Romans as much as I am! As we soar over this most profound book and get a glimpse of the breathtaking vistas, you can't help but be amazed at God's glorious plan of salvation through the Gospel.

In chapter 6, Paul pauses to deal with a question that naturally arises when people hear that we're saved simply by grace through faith in Christ, not because of anything we do. If our good works add nothing to our justification before God, and our righteousness is not our own, then why in the world do we need to do good works at all? Why fight sin? Why fight temptation? Why not just give in? If we've been set free from the demands of the law, why can't we just live free, doing anything we want?

Remember the exhilarating feeling you experienced when you first got your driver's license? Woo hoo!! Freedom!! Time to hit the road! One of the things you quickly realize (especially after that first speeding ticket): you're not as free as you thought. With the new freedom to drive, you get a new framework in which to drive, so you can continue to enjoy your freedom to drive, and not impinge on any one else's freedom. Same goes with our freedom in Christ. We are set free from sin in order to enjoy the freedom of holiness.

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How do you measure success? What does a great life look like? Most people would measure success by wealth, power, comfort, popularity… but how does Jesus measure success?

This week we conclude our series on the 7 letters to the 7 churches in Revelation by looking at Jesus’ letter to the church in Laodicea. The Christians in Laodicea were physically healthy, economically secure, and socially accepted. They had all the outward signs of success, but spiritually they were failing. In fact, Jesus had absolutely nothing positive to say about them as a church. So where did they go wrong?

Despite their failures, Jesus hadn’t given up on Laodicea. In fact, He counsels them on how to turn things around and become everything He had called them to be. Join us today as we study this church, and learn what it means to have a successful life in Christ.

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"Who can make it stop?" This was CNN's headline this morning. After living through another blood-soaked, tear-filled, gut-wrenching week, I think many of us are asking the same heavy question. It's a question that acknowledges our helplessness. It's a question that realizes we are faced with problems greater than even our collective resources can solve. It's a question that longs for someone powerful enough to intervene.

Who can make the hate stop?

Who can make the racism stop?

Who can make the injustice stop?

Who can make it stop? Profound question. It's a question that erupts out of brokenness, anguish, and humility. I can't make it stop. You can't make it stop. Even we, can't make it stop.

Who can make it stop? Jesus Christ can make it stop. "I know that you have but little power," say Jesus to the church of Philadelphia in Revelation 3, and to us. But fret not, he says. "I am the one who holds the keys to all the doors. The doors I open, no one will shut, and the doors I shut, no one will open."

Join us today as we cry out to Jesus to make it stop. To close the doors of hate, racism, and injustice, and to open the doors of love, reconciliation, and justice.

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Are you a tolerant person? It’s a questions we’ve all either asked, or been asked. If you’ve asked that question, you were probably curious to know if the person, or people, you were addressing could love you if they really knew your beliefs or lifestyle. If you’ve been asked that question, you may have worried that you were about to be ambushed. Sometimes the real question behind the question is, “do you agree with me, because if not then I’m not going to tolerate you!”

Part of our struggle with this popular question, is that our culture has redefined tolerance, and forgotten why it could be good in the first place. I say “could” be good, because the Bible assumes there are times when tolerance is actually not good. It’s possible for tolerance to be unloving. It’s even possible for tolerance to be a facade to a subtle form of hatred, a cover up for indifference. Today we will be looking at Jesus letter to the church in Thyatira. The letter is perplexing, but also enlightening because we see Jesus commending the church for their love, while also condemning them for their tolerance. How can tolerance be bad? When do love and tolerance need to part ways? Is there a more compelling goal than tolerance, that our culture should be pursuing? These are some of the questions we’ll wrestle with today as we look at the next letter in our series on the Seven Churches of Revelation.

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A.W. Tozer once said: "A new Decalogue has been adopted by the neo-christians of our day, 'Thou shalt not disagree,' and a new set of Beatitudes too, 'Blessed are they that tolerate everything for they shall not be made accountable.'"

These words seem to be truer than ever. Our culture appears to be putting more and more pressure on the Church to conform to the prevailing culture's values. To conform to the culture, the Church is pressured to compromise both theologically and morally. In a seemingly noble desire to accommodate the culture, the church begins to compromise the truth. Once the truth is compromised, morality follows suit. Idolatry and sexual immorality always go hand in hand--spiritual infidelity and sexual infidelity are bedmates. Eventually, compromise renders the witness of the Church null and void.

Though the pressure comes from outside the church, the decision to compromise always comes from within. One small compromise here and one small compromise there, and before you know it, a church is disseminating full-blown heresy and living in absolute apostasy. Unfortunately, this has been the sad story of many a church in Boston.

It's imperative that we learn from the early church in how to withstand the pressures to conform to this world, by continually being transformed by God's Word. Join us today as we look at Jesus' 3rd letter to the church in Pergamum.

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Throughout church history, Christians have been persecuted for simply remaining faithful to Jesus Christ. Though we enjoy relative religious freedom, Christians worldwide are continuing to suffer for their faith.

Several watchdog organizations have published papers saying that "2015 was the worst year in modern history for Christian persecution." With North Korea leading the way, and militant radical Islam rapidly expanding, today is one of the most dangerous times ever to be a Christian. The Christian persecution watchdog "Open Doors" has released a statistic recently stating that, today, a Christian is martyred for their faith every 5 minutes. More Christians have been martyred in the 20th and 21st centuries, than all the previous 19 combined.

Though we might not be martyred for our faith in this country, the political and cultural landscape is certainly making it more difficult to publicly proclaim the name of Christ and his teachings. Our culture seems to be tolerant toward everyone, except Christians. However, we need not be afraid. Jesus actually told us that persecution can be a blessing: "Blessed are you when others revile and prosecute you for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

We need to learn from the early church in how they remained faithful to the Lord despite persecution. Join us today as we look at Jesus' 2nd letter to the church in Smyrna.

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Today we begin a new sermon series at Mosaic through Jesus' seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

The incredible unvoiced assumption behind these letters, is that just as much as Jesus Christ loves and cares for the universal Church, he loves and cares for particular churches. As the Apostle John gazes at the glorious Christ in Revelation 1, Jesus turns John's gaze to seven individual churches. The more we love Jesus, the more we love what Jesus loves, and Jesus loves his churches. The deeper our commitment to Jesus, the deeper our commitment to what he's committed to: his Church.

Each letter, addressed to each of the individual churches, begins with the phrase: "I know...". Jesus writes, "I know your works..."; "I know you are enduring patiently..."; "I know your tribulation..."; "I know where you dwell..."; "I know your love and your faith...". Jesus is paying incredibly close attention to his churches. This is simultaneously a great comfort when we feel that no one notices our service, and also a great invitation to reassess our own heart toward the Lord and his Church.

Join us as we look at Jesus' first letter to the church in Ephesus.

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When you hear the parable of the good Samaritan, where do you cast yourself within the story?

On a particularly good day, we may feel like the good Samaritan. Or, at least, if we just tried a little harder, or we were at the right place at the right time, we could be like him. We're inspired by how Jesus describes his acts of compassion, and we get pumped up to "Go, and do likewise" in a broken world. And we should--- we understand more of the heart of God when we enter into the midst of suffering.

Other times, when we've turned up our headphones to ignore that person on the T, or directly avoided that person in the office who is having a bad day, we feel like the Priest or the Levite. And we should--- we hear "Go, and do likewise", and excuses flood our mind. "What about my time and my schedule?" "What if it's unsafe?" "Is it right to give money out like that?" "I don't think I'm gifted to do that." Some may be valid, some maybe not so much.

But how many of us would cast ourselves as the guy beaten and left for dead in the road? Maybe once in a while, when things are really bad and you feel really desperate? Perhaps the key for us in becoming a good Samaritan is that we must realize our poverty, our brokenness, and our own need for the one truly Good Samaritan.

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What is the most important thing about you?

And, not just the thing you really want someone to know about you when you first meet them. I'm not talking about what you do for work, how much you make/have, where you went to school, your athletic prowess, or social connections. What's the thing, if you lose it, you lose everything?

A.W. Tozer once said, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.... The most portentous fact about any person is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like... The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him."

What's most important about us isn't what we passively believe about God, but what we actively think about God today, because this impacts absolutely everything else. As our thoughts about God align with the true God, our perception of reality aligns with ultimate reality, which leads to wisdom, knowledge, and discernment. As we look at the final chapters of the Book of Daniel today, chapters 10-12 "purify and elevate our concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him."

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Have you noticed the recent trend in Hollywood to make movies and shows about the end of the world? The future of our planet is always being threatened, by aliens, asteroids, floods, freezing, killer viruses, robots, mutants, nuclear weapons, and of course, zombies. Ours is a culture full of existential angst and Hollywood (and Politicians!) are cashing in on it. We're past the question, "Is the world going to when?" Not "is" but "when?"

This is the perfect time to study the biblical apocalyptic literature in the Book of Daniel. The visions Daniel sees reveal a grim future full of chaos, conflict, and rebellion against God. However, Daniel assures us, salvation will come from the "Son of Man" to whom will be given "dominion, and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages" will serve him and "his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." No matter the chaos in the world around us, King Jesus is on His throne and in control.

We're devoting the next two sermons to covering the prophetic passages of the book of Daniel. Today we'll look at portions of chapters 7-9, and then sermon, we'll cover parts of chapters 10-12. Since we won't have time to cover all three chapters in each sermon, I recommend you take some time to read through the text ahead of time. This way, our time in God's Word together will be much more fruitful.

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Preaching famous texts is always challenging, because people think they know the story, and as the saying goes, "familiarity breeds contempt." We're so familiar with the story, it's lost all relevance in our lives. The story of Daniel and the lions comes with an additional challenge: though famous, it has been famously misinterpreted!

The usual interpretation goes like this: "Look at Daniel, he's so good! He trusts God. He's uncompromising. He's incorruptible. He's absolutely moral. Be like him and God will take care of you by protecting you and prospering you. He won't let anything bad happen to you. Despite all the dangerous metaphorical lions in your life, you won't have a scratch on you. Guaranteed. Just trust and obey." That's all fine and well, except that's not the point of the story and, it just isn't true! Many of us have been taught this false moralistic interpretation, and if you've been good, and bad things have happened, you're disillusioned. Or you read the story, and say, "I could never be this good, so Christianity just isn't for me."

Join us as we look at this story in historical, cultural, and biblical context to see the glorious grace of a God who muzzles the fiercest lions in our lives, not because of our goodness, but because of Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah.

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Have you heard these phrases before?

"Your days are numbered." "The writing is on the wall." "You have been weighed and found wanting."

All three phrases come from Daniel 5. All three have made their way into the public imagination of our culture. All three pack a powerful emotional punch.

These phrases are deeply moving because they communicate some of the most profound, self-evident truths about our existence. Our days are truly numbered (but by whom?), The writing is on the wall (but what does it mean?). Deep down inside, if we're honest, we know we are being weighed (by whom?) and we don't measure up (to what?).

So what do we do with these truths? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die? That's what the king does in Daniel 5, and we see how foolish it ultimately is. He sees the writing on the wall and continues boozing to blind himself to the more uncomfortable facts of reality.

How then shall we live? Join us as we look at the powerful story in Daniel 5.

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Do you ever feel like your own worst enemy? We’ve been walking through the book of Daniel, and we’ve seen how God is able to deliver us from our enemies and the trials of life. We’ve also seen how, at times, God chooses to not deliver us from our trials, but to deliver us by walking with us through our trials. Before any of this, however, God first needs to deliver us from the greatest enemy of all. Ourselves. The danger facing Daniel and his friends threatened their bodies, but the danger facing Nebuchadnezzar threatened his very soul. The threat of his own pride.

Our culture sees pride as a virtue, but scripture tells us it is the deadliest sin. Pride is what made the devil the devil, and it led to the fall of mankind. Pride is at the root of every sin, every vice, and every evil the world has ever seen. It is also ironically humiliating. The great irony of pride is that while attempting to make ourselves into something more than human, we inevitably make ourselves into something less than human. Pride dehumanizes us and causes us to dehumanize others. It warps our desires and puts enmity between us and everyone else.

Daniel 4 is one of the strangest stories in all of scripture. Pride was dehumanizing Nebuchadnezzar, so to address Nebuchadnezzar’s pride, God turns him into an animal (or at least causes him to think he is one for 7 years). Join us as we see how this played out in the life of King Nebuchadnezzar, and as we search for the key to unlocking the prison of pride and experiencing the freedom of humility!

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Today we have the blessing of studying one of the most famous and beloved stories in all of Scripture: the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown into the fiery pit. It's a phenomenal testimony of the unwavering, ironclad, immovable faith of three young men, in the face of the most dire of circumstances.

This text is chock-ful of faith-building and live-giving lessons. A primary question the text poses before us today is: am I going to declare the Lord to be my God, my primary allegiance, come what my, or will I bow to the multitude of glittering idols that the world present to me? The same battle these men fought, is actually waged daily in our hearts over much lesser issues.

Furthermore, so many questions arise from the text: ~How can Nebuchadnezzar force everyone to worship this image he's built, immediately after he just proclaimed to Daniel, "Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings." ~Couldn't Shadrach, Meshach, and Abelnego have bowed down to this image in public, but still worshiped Jesus in their hearts? Why the brouhaha? ~Why didn't God save them before they are thrown into the fire? Didn't he cut it a little close there? ~Who was the fourth person in the fire pit with them?

Join us as we answer these questions and more.

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You ever feel like living a faithful Christian life is an uphill battle? Like the deck is stacked against you? Like you're Sisyphus, pushing a massive boulder uphill, and when you're almost at the top, you gas out and the stone comes tumbling down the hill, almost crushing you in the process? There are so many temptations in this world, and so many more in the city. How in the world can you remain faithful and flourishing, instead of faithless and languishing?

You ever feel like you're the absolutely only Christian in your circles of influence? Maybe one of the only Christians in your whole school, company, and or community? Perhaps in your whole city? Well, you feel like that, because in Boston, it's statistically true.

Sometimes, the Christian life feels like you're living in a den with lions, who are ready to devour you alive. Sometimes, it feels like there are lions on the outside, and lions of the heart on the inside.

Join us as we start a study through the epic book of Daniel and learn some timeless (and therefore, timely) lessons of how to live in the lion's den.

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Corporately, we'll celebrate the triumph of Christ over Satan, Sin, and Death on our behalf! As the Scriptures say: "Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"

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This Sunday, we are finishing our "Hard Sayings of Jesus" series with a look at Matthew 21:1-22, where Jesus rides in to Jerusalem on the occasion we have come to know as "Palm Sunday." We've chosen to include this passage in our series reflecting on the most perplexing teachings/actions of Jesus, because there's so much in this text that really seems out of place. Why does Jesus tell his disciples to just take some random person's donkeys? Further, why in the world does Jesus ride a donkey in to Jerusalem, especially if He's the Messianic King? What's up with people throwing their shirts on the ground? Palm tree branches? What's Hosanna mean (we sing it all the time, but what in the world does it mean)?

Immediately after this pleasant, idyllic scene, Jesus goes to the Temple and goes berserk on the money-changers and sellers of pigeons. What?! Why are pigeons being sold in the Temple? And why such an intense reaction from Jesus? What's going on?

The very next paragraph is also puzzling. Hungry/hangry Jesus goes to a fig tree, and when we saw that it had no fruit on it, he curses it. A little much, Jesus?

Join us as we look at Matthew 21:1-22 and celebrate the (puzzling) Palm Sunday.

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A Canaanite woman begs Jesus to heal her sick daughter, and he responds by saying "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." What?! Did Jesus just call her a dog? What just happened? This text seems utterly incompatible with the character of Jesus. It seems shockingly intolerant. Are we missing something?

However, the woman isn't offended and actually responds in such a way, that Jesus says "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire," and the woman's daughter was instantly healed. Jesus was impressed with this woman's humble chutzpah. She accepts Jesus' words with humility, but it's not a weak humility, it's a chutzpy humility. She exhibits an audacious, confident, brassy humility. It's extremely paradoxical, but humble chutzpah is the key to a great faith that unleashes the great power of God in our lives.

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I don't know about you, but I think I've had my fill of the mosh-pit morass that this presidential election has become (and we've got 8 more months of it!!). As election season fatigue sets in, it's helpful to remind ourselves of who is really in charge: King Jesus! We all long for a leader who can bring true, lasting, meaningful change. We all long for a leader who is good, kind, benevolent (and honest!). Jesus is a King who has promised to usher in His Kingdom. However, his Kingdom is full of paradox and surprise.

Today, we'll continue our series in the "Hard Sayings of Jesus" series, by looking at Matthew 11:1-19. The text begins with John the Baptizer, who is in prison for preaching the truth, sending his disciples to Jesus to ask: "Are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?" This question comes as an absolute shock, because John, as a prophet of God and the cousin of Jesus, knew exactly who Jesus was. John knew that Jesus was the King come to usher in his Kingdom. Yet, John couldn't understand why Jesus, as King, would allow John to be imprisoned. His unmet expectations of the King lead to doubting his goodness and power.

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One of the cardinal rules of public speaking is: "Don't be boring!" I remember a preaching professor in seminary used to say, "Preaching a boring sermon is a deadly sin!" Why? Because the Gospel is anything but boring. Jesus is the most interesting man in the world (sorry Dos Equis guy). As the most interesting man in the world, Jesus' words are the most riveting words in the history of the world. His words are so interesting because they are so scandalous! Over and over in the Gospel accounts, crowds are amazed, astonished, shocked! They marvel, they tremble, they worship.

Our culture needs to be shocked by Jesus. We need to be constantly re-shocked by Jesus. We are the most entertained and pleasured society in the history of the world, and still, we're the most bored. We've grown numb to God and to each other. We need to be tased by God's shocking truth and grace.

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As we continue our series through the "Hard Sayings of Jesus," we'll look at one of the most mystifying texts in all of Scripture: Jesus' teaching on the "Unforgivable Sin." Many Christians over the centuries have worried that perhaps they, unwittingly, at some point, have committed this sin. Just to calm the troubled soul of the Christian burdened by this worry: No Christian can commit this sin. If you are worried about having committed this sin, you cannot possibly have committed it.

However, this doesn't mean we can just write off this text as irrelevant. I believe it has lots to teach us, including the realization of how glorious it is, that the Holy God of the Universe would forgive any of our sins, at all!! We must never get over the staggering fact, that our blasphemies and sins can be forgiven, though at such a great cost to the Lord. We also need the reminder that we can never take God's grace and forgiveness for granted. Forgiveness is not owed to us, it is gifted to us. Finally, we need to take the warning seriously, and warn those who are hardening their hearts against the Lord.

What does Jesus mean when he says, "Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come"? What is this one, unpardonable sin? How can I be sure to never commit it? What if I'm worried about having had already committed it?

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Today, we're beginning a new sermon series called, "The Hard Sayings of Jesus." Most of what Jesus said was absolutely clear to understand, though impossible to do (apart from the grace of God). Mark Twain spoke for many, when he said that the things in the Bible that bothered him most were not those that he did not understand but those that he understood quite well.

However, Jesus did say some things, that were just perplexing. In John 6:60-61, after Jesus finishes a sermon, Scripture says that many of his disciples said: "This is hard saying; who can listen to it?" But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this?"

So, we're devoting the next 6 Sundays to ponder the hardest sayings of Jesus, and revealing their vast implications for our lives. Join us this tomorrow as we look at Matthew 7:1-6, and consider what Jesus means when he says, "Judge not, that you be not judged."

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Have you heard of "The Lady Macbeth Effect"? It's named after the Shakespearean queen who manipulates her husband into killing the king, and then is racked by shame and guilt. She start frenetically washing away blood on her hands that only she can see. She deludes herself that "a little water will clear us of this deed." But for all of her repeated washing, she cannot cleanse herself of the ever-consuming guilt. By Act V, the stubborn blood stains have driven the illegitimate queen to madness and suicide.

Psychologists have coined the real connection between morality and cleanliness "The Lady Macbeth Effect." Not too long ago, two researchers published a paper in the Journal of Science arguing that the connection is more than metaphorical. In one set of tests, the researchers asked participants to recall an ethical or unethical act, and then asked them to fill in the missing letters in a series of incomplete words, like W_ _H and SH_ _ER. Those subjects who had recalled unethical acts mostly returned WASH and SHOWER, while the others returned a variety of words, like WISH and SHAKER. Another test offered a choice of object: a pencil or an antiseptic wipe. Three-quarters of those who had recalled an unethical act chose the wipes. Only about one-third of those who recalled an ethical act did so.

Scripture teaches us that sin stains our souls and contaminates our consciences. We need cleansing. Where can we get real cleansing for the soul? Certainly not externally and certainly not from antiseptics. In Titus 3:5, we're told God offers each of us cleaning, "according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior." What can wash away our sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

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What's your most prized possession? Of all the things you own, that belong to you, what do you treasure most? When I was 17 years old, I spent my life savings life savings on a car. Now my life savings wasn't much, about $3,000, but it was all I had and I earned it by mowing a lot of lawns in the summer, shoveling a lot of driveways in the winter, and raking a lots of leaves in the fall. So I gave everything I had, to buy my first car, a 1988 Audi 80. Man, this thing was a beauty! I washed it pretty much everyday, it was pristine inside, and the rims were always glowing. I treasured it like the apple of my eye. There were only two problems: it kept breaking down and I had zero mechanical skills (and this was before youtube university). I ended up having to get rid of the car within about a year since it became a money-pit.

Of all God's most prized possession, Scripture says that God views his people as His "treasured possession" (Ex. 19:5, Mal. 3:17). God's people are the apple of His eye (Dt. 32:10). The idiom "the apple of one's eye" refers to the most cherished and sensitive part of the eye, the pupil. God cherishes you as you cherish the pupil of your eye. Amazing! However, there's one problem: we keep breaking down. We keep disappointing God with our sin. But God doesn't leave us in our brokenness. He doesn't sell us or pass us off to someone else. Titus 2:14 says that "He gave himself for us to redeems us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works."

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When we think of grace, we think of it more like a couch rather than a coach. We think of grace like a couch: you sit, relax, chill and grace does all the work (maybe brings you a snack). We should be thinking of grace more like a coach. In Titus 2:11, the Apostle Paul says it's God's grace that trains us to renounce ungodliness. God sends Coach Grace into our lives to bring lasting transformation. Coach Grace motivates us, drives us, inspires us, energizes us, to achieve seemingly insurmountable levels of godliness. Transformation, like any form of change, always hurts... at least temporarily, but Coach Grace is there for us to help you train through the pain to become the person God has called you to be.

In Titus 1:5-16, Paul gives a seemingly impossible list of qualifications for leaders in God's church. They are to be self-controlled, upright, holy, disciplined, etc. As I was reading the list, it hit me that there were no seminaries in Crete; no Christian bookstores, no Christian blogs, podcasts, conferences, etc. Where were these ninja-Christians supposed to come from? Crete? Yes! Crete!

One of the most hopeful truths of Christianity is that we really can change. By the grace of God, we can actually be transformed. What an amazing truth!! As the cliché goes, God doesn't call the equipped, he equips the called. Well, God has placed a great calling on your life, and He's willing to equip you! The question is, are you willing to accept his "equipping" and be transformed by it?

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At the beginning of tomorrow's sermon, I'm going to take a look at what the Lord has done in and through Mosaic Boston, and also cast vision for all I long for the Lord to do in and through us in 2016. 2015 was an incredible year for our church body! In many ways, it was the greatest year to date, in terms of quantifiable growth. In order to be good stewards of God's grace upon us, we need to be aware of this growth, and make wise decisions moving forward, in order to fulfill the ministry Jesus has entrusted to us.

Furthermore, we're launching a new sermon series tomorrow, through the phenomenal book of Titus. We're entitling the series "Boot Camp and Battlefields." The big idea of Titus is found in Titus 2:11, "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness..." The grace of God is given to us to train us. We are to be Christians who are in constant training to lead the lives we are called to live.

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Have you ever completed a project, only to realize minutes later your work has been undone? You hit the bottom of your inbox, but by the time you send your last reply there is a new message waiting for your response. You clean the house, and before you can sit down to admire your work the kids' toy box has already exploded across your living room. So much of life comes with the feeling that there is always more work to be done. It can be exhausting. Frustrating. Nothing is ever finished!

Today we are excited to have Charlie Dunn, the planting pastor of Hub Church in South Boston, with us to preach on Jesus last words from the cross. What are the implications of Jesus' words, "it is finished"? What is finished? Is anything ever really finished?

Join us as we worship together and dive in to the hope and the freedom that are offered through the completed work of Jesus Christ!

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"It's a New Year and that comes with new energy and passion to bring about change in our lives for the better. But more often than not, we hear stories about how people just didn't follow through. That diet just wasn't "for them". The gym just didn't "work with their schedule". The new Bible reading plan just wasn't "giving them what they needed". Data show that 25% of us will have fallen short of our New Year's Resolution in just one week!

And the people written about in the Bible are no different. Peter says he'll never deny Jesus, but he does. David is made king as a "man after God's heart", but he falls into sin. Today, we'll be looking at a less famous character of the Bible, King Hezekiah. He's called the most faithful king of Judah, but even he falls away from what he set out to do for God. See just what his ancient situation says about our current one, and how Jesus' resolve is what we must ultimately rely on."

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This Advent season we're looking at the four Authorized Biographies of Jesus Christ to inform our understanding of the first coming of Christ, and prepare for his second coming. Today, we look at Christmas according to the Gospel of John, from John 1:1-18, one of the most theologically and philosophically rich texts ever written. In preparation for our time together, be sure to spend some time today meditating and reflecting on the text.

The key verse in this text, regarding the 1st Advent of Christ, is verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

What an incredible God we serve, who willingly humbled himself, and became flesh and lived with us. The God who spoke the universe into existence, became a fertilized egg, an embryo, a fetus. He entered the world as a baby. The infinite became an infant. God learned to crawl, stand, walk. The Alpha and Omega learned his ABC's (so to speak). God experienced childhood. God experienced puberty. That last one right there proves that God loves us. God experienced hunger, thirst, pain, sickness, loneliness, heartache, tears, as well as happiness. God laughed, and ate and drank and went fishing with friends. We worship a God who doesn't just know about what we're going through. He knows experientially everything you're going through.

Join us today as we look at John's account of the Advent of Jesus Christ.

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This Advent season we're looking at the four Authorized Biographies of Jesus Christ to inform our understanding of the first coming of Christ, and prepare for his second coming. Last week we looked at "Christmas according to the Gospel of Matthew." Today, we're looking at "Christmas according to the Gospel of Mark."

At this point, you should be asking, what in the world did Mark say about Christmas? At first glance, it appears that he doesn't say much. But you definitely have to join us tomorrow as we see that Mark has plenty to say about the first Advent of Jesus, and even more about the second coming. Mark describes the incarnation of Jesus Christ with the phrase, "The Heavens were torn open," meaning the ideal has become real, the metaphysical has become physical, the immortal has become mortal, the transcendent has become immanent and the unapproachable is someone you can embrace and by whom you can be embraced.

Join us tomorrow as we look at Mark's account of the both Advents of Jesus Christ in Mark chapters 1 and 13.

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Advent is the celebration of the first coming of Jesus Christ and the anticipation of his second coming. I think our culture has over-sentimentalized Christmas. Yes, the Christmas story is a sweet story in some respects: there's a cute baby, farm animals, shepherds, wise-men, gifts, angels singing. Nice. However, there's also lots of heartache, shock, anxiety, pain, and suffering, and blood-shed. And God comes right into the middle of that whole mess.

This season is the perfect time to reassess where we are in our relationship with God and be reminded of the fact that our God is with us. This is a fact. The Christmas story isn't just a nice, sappy, moral parable. The Christmas story is Good News. Good reportage. What makes the Christmas story so amazing, isn't that it's a story, but that it's history. To remind us of the facts, we're going to look at the four authorized biographies of Jesus Christ: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Join us tomorrow as we look at Matthew's account of the 1st Advent of Jesus Christ.

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Tomorrow we plan on wrapping up our sermon series through the 10 Commandments, with the last one, which is simply "You shall not covet." At first glance this seems to be a strange way to wrap up the "greatest laws ever." Where's the climax? Where's the crescendo? Seems like more of a dud, than anything else. Right? Well, not exactly. The 10th Commandment is actually a perfect culmination of the Decalogue, because it reduces all sin to the wrongful motives of the heart. Also, there couldn't be a more appropriate time to talk about coveting than right before the holidays!

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As we look at commandment #9 tomorrow, we’ll be thinking through the question: “What is truth?” and the corresponding question: “What is a lie?” We live in culture that’s accepted the lie that there is no such thing as truth. At least, not ultimate truth. Not Truth, with a capital “T”. Nowadays, we’ve even accepted the lie that the Truth, even if it does exist, doesn’t really matter. In John 18, Pilate asks Jesus “What is truth?” Great question. He even asked the right person. But he didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t really want to know.

Jesus, the embodiment of Truth, taught his followers to be lovers of the truth and speak the truth in love. However, what about all the examples in Scripture of people who lied? What about the Israelie midwives in Egypt? What about Rahab? What about David feigning madness or pulling off military deceit? Doesn’t the end justify the means? Great questions.

Join us tomorrow as we look at Commandment #9, and think through the vast implications of this commandment for our lives and culture.

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Have you ever been stolen from? I'm sure we all have. Remember that feeling the moment you found out? It's hard to describe, but we all know how it feels. You feel a mixture of shock, anger, helplessness, maybe ever grief. You feel like you've been violated. How could this have happened? How dare they?! What can I do to get it back? How can I seek justice?

What's the most valuable thing you've had stolen from you? A watch? A purse or a wallet? Money? A bike? Your car? Your passport? A position in a program or at work? Your ideas? A boyfriend/girlfriend? Maybe you've had someone steal your identity? We've all had someone steal from us. It hurts. We know it's wrong. It's just wrong. Right?

However, have you ever stolen anything? Of course you have. But when we steal, it usually is a little more complicated that "It's just wrong." We have our reasons, right? We can probably even make a great case to justify why in your case, in this particular instance, it's not necessarily wrong, per se. You don't just steal. You did what you did because you had no choice, right? Wrong.

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This week we are continuing our sermon series through the 10 Commandments by looking at number 7, “You shall not commit adultery.” The Bible has a lot to say about sex, and several passages that would make even modern readers blush. While the Bible has a lot to say about the goodness of sex, Jesus tells us in Matthew 5 that to even look at another person with lust, is to commit adultery in our hearts!

God created sex to be amazing, and yet his standard seems almost unbelievable. So, why would God put restrictions around something so good? How does this apply to those of us who are married? How does it apply to those of us who are single? What does it really mean to keep the 7th Commandment, and is it even possible? These are some of the questions we’ll be asking this Sunday as we look at how the Bible address this important subject.

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Have you ever heard (or perhaps said) the following: "Well, I'm a good person. I've never killed anyone!" Modern people love using murder as a benchmark for moral goodness: those who have killed are bad, and those who haven't are good. Oh, if it were that simplistic.

Tomorrow, we turn our attention to Commandment #6, "You shall not murder." We'll look at many of the far reaching implications of this commandment, including many of the hot-button issues like abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, suicide, and just war theory. We'll also look at Matthew 5:21-26, where Jesus, in his famous Sermon on the Mount says the following regarding the 6th commandment: "I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire." Jesus makes unjust anger, verbal abuse and personal hatred tantamount to murder. According to this definition, we're all guilty of transgressing Commandment #6 and we're all in desperate need of God's grace.

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we think through some difficult issues and turn our gaze to our Lord Jesus Christ, who through his death, defeated death, so that we can have forgiveness, eternal life, and live lives that treasure the sanctity of life.

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Few commandment hit as close to home and as straight to the heart as commandment number 5: "Honor your father and your mother." For some of us, this seems like common sense. For others, this seems archaic, offensive, and potentially painful. Some of us have deeply honorable parents. For others, we would rather not think about our biological parents.

Several other factors complicate our receptivity to this commandment. We live in a culture where the idea of family has become fluid and indefinable. Our society has long ago separated sex from marriage, which complicates everything. What constitutes a family? Everything is exacerbated by our culture's visceral reaction to submission and honor. Why should I honor anyone? Why should I submit to anyone? Moreover, our culture prizes youth over wisdom, therefore the young seem to have more intrinsic value and savvy than the old, so why should we honor someone seemingly less worthy of honor.

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we tackle a complex commandment, which offers our culture relevant and life-giving truths. We all come from dysfunctional families, and God welcomes us into his family through Jesus to heal all wounds.

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One of my absolute favorite Bible passages is when Jesus and his disciples get "caught" in a storm. As the ferocious winds tossed them around mercilessly, and water started inundating the small boat, the disciples are all freaking out. And what was Jesus doing? Taking a nap! They frantically wake him with pleas: "We're perishing" and "Don't you care?" Jesus, probably still a little groggy and somewhat annoyed that they disturbed his nice nap, gets up and calms the storm. The Gospel writers don't say what came next, other than the disciples being dumbstruck by what just happened, but I bet Jesus went straight back to sleep, because sometimes, the most spiritual thing we can do is take a nap.

When we think about taking a day off, sometimes it feels like that. How in the world can I rest while my life is so tumultuous? I can't nap in the midst of a storm! If I rest, I'll sink.

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we learn about the theological and practical implications of Sabbath Rest.

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“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Indeed, this commandment prohibits the flippant use of God’s name to mark surprise (‘oh my G_d!’) or shock or worse, but it’s so much more than that.

In order to begin to understand the depth of this commandment, we really need to understand the power of names, and names truly are powerful. Businesses have learned this a long time ago and globally recognized names like Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, Samsung, and McDonald’s invest billions each year to build, protect, and expand the reach of their brands. Companies spend seemingly disproportionate sums to hire “brand ambassadors” to promote and embody their corporate identity in appearance, demeanor, values, and ethics.

So what does the idea of a “brand ambassador” have to do with the third commandment? Everything! Join us tomorrow as we discuss the profound implications of this commandment on our lives as followers of the One who bears the name above all names, Jesus Christ.

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What's the most discussed problem in the the entire Bible? Idolatry. Idolatry?! Really? Yes. Book after book, chapter after chapter, verse after verse warn us about the destructive nature of wrongful worship.

To contemporary people the world "idolatry" conjures up pictures of primitive people bowing down before hand-made statues. Totally irrelevant to us, right? Don't be so quick to write this off. Every culture is dominated by its own set of idols. Ours are beauty, power, money, success. We may not physically kneel before the statue of Aphrodite, but how much time and energy do we sacrifice at the alter of beauty. We may not actually burn incense to Artemis, but how many relationships are sacrificed at the alter of money. We may not actually worship Ares, but we'll give all we are for fame, significance and security.

The timeless truths of Scripture are always timely. The human heart has not evolved beyond being an "idol-factory."

Be sure to join us tomorrow, as look in-depth at the Second Law for Life which warns us about the destructive nature of serving functional-gods and we'll look to the Gospel for healing and freedom.

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We're starting a brand new sermon series called, "10 Laws for Life," as we look at the 10 Commandments as God's design for your freedom and humanity's flourishing.

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As we wrap up our series on "Faith at Work" tomorrow, we'll be looking at how the Gospel of Jesus Christ provides the most meaningful answer to the question: "Why work?" Once we have a truly significant answer to the "Why" of work, the practical answers to "How should we work?" flow naturally. However, the most profound difference the Gospel makes regarding our work is by providing the most soul-satisfying answer to the question: "For whom should we work?"

My dad has a painting business in the great state of Rhode Island and I grew up painting with him every summer. Essentially, I worked for him when I painted and he paid me much more than I deserved. However, he used to correct me every time I would say something along the lines of "I work for you." He would stop me, pause, and say, "You don't work for me... you work with me." This was true. He never asked me to do something he wasn't already doing himself.

The Gospel teaches us that we don't ultimately work for ourselves. We work for the God of the universe, who because of the Gospel, is also our loving Father. We don't just work for him, we work with him. The Gospel transforms work from a cold obligation to a loving invitation.

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Just got back from a trip to China and I missed all of you tons!! I can't wait to worship and fellowship with you tomorrow! I was blessed by the opportunity to visit Xi'an, Beijing and Shanghai, all incredible places with amazing people and rich culture. I went with a group of pastors from New England to meet and network with fellow local pastors in those cities.

As we met and learned from each other, God was boring a profound question deep into my soul: What makes a church great? As we visited these great cities, and then as I returned to the greatest city (in my humble opinion), I've been thinking about the irreducible nonnegotiables necessary for a great church. The irreducible components for a great church in China should also translate cross-culturally in Boston.

Join us tomorrow as I plan to share about what makes for a great church. I deeply believe that a great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission makes for a great church!

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Yes or no question: are you satisfied with your life, now? Are you fulfilled, right now? Are you content, right now?

Many of us are on a journey to finding that which will satisfy. The hope of finding that which will satisfy staves off current dissatisfaction, temporarily. We think, "once I achieve ____" or "once I have ____" or "once I am ____" or "once I feel ____ " then I'll be satisfied. But how about now? Can I experience satisfaction, now? And if I haven't found it yet, what makes me think I'll ever find it? What's the hope of satisfaction based upon?

One of the most compelling proofs for the existence of God is our perpetual dissatisfaction. Why is it, that even when we experience the most glorious experiences this world has to offer, we're still left wanting? As the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted, "there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, "Is that all there is?" Is this it?

As C.S. Lewis so beautiful put it, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world."

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How's your balance? How's your physical stability? One of the things most gym-novices don't understand is that there are two generic types of muscles: movers and stabilizers. Movers are the muscles that actively create movement (quads, hamstrings, pecs, lats, biceps, triceps), while stabilizers provide balance and support. When most people start going to the gym, they strictly work their movers. However, if you don't work your stabilizers (which are often smaller and seemingly less important), your movement will be hampered and you might become more susceptible to injury. If the stabilizers are weak, your movement will always lack stability and you will never attain your full physical potential. Same goes for the spiritual life!

One of the absolutely hardest things about the Christian life is the constancy or stability required by the Lord. Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him daily. Even St. Paul had struggles with spiritual stability. In Romans 7, he writes "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing."

Join us tomorrow as we look at Philippians 4:1-9 to discover the 5 spiritual stabilizers and how we can work to develop them.

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Have you ever had a near-death experience?

What usually happens in the short-term aftermath of such an experience is that we suddenly realize how fragile life is! We're here one second, and then poof, it's over. We come face-to-face with the stark realization that life is incredibly precious, and we should treat it as such. Why had we been so flippant with it? Why did we take it for granted? All of a sudden, our hearts are filled with gratitude and humility--we're still here, we're still alive, there's still life to be lived and enjoyed. For a season, even the most mundane parts of life seem to have an added sparkle as we revel in the joy of living.

In the same way that we shouldn't take life for granted, we definitely shouldn't take eternal life for granted. As we look at Philippians 3:12-21 tomorrow, St. Paul spends much of the text explaining how he zealously pursues perfection in working out his salvation. However, we can totally miss the point if we think he's working strenuously for his salvation. He's not working for his salvation; rather, he is working out his salvation. Everything in Paul's life is based on this fact: "Christ Jesus has made me his own." Paul never got over the fact that Jesus saved Him. He never got over the fact that he was headed toward eternal destruction, and Jesus took hold of him. So he writes, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. "

Join us tomorrow as we turn our attention to the surprising joy of holiness.

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How good do you have to be to enter into the presence of God?

This week's sermon looked at the pitfall of religion versus the radical acceptance and power of grace.

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I love how relevant Scripture is. The Bible, as God's Word, is a timeless book, therefore, it's message is ever timely. As we continue our journey through the book of Philippians tomorrow, and deepen our understanding of growth in joy, we'll look at one of the most relevant passages in all of Scripture for our day.

In Philippians 2:14, Holy Scripture tells us, "Do all things without grumbling." Wow!! Is that even possible? Is it even possible to live like this in our day and age, when we have so many platforms and opportunities to complain?! At just about any time of day, most of us have the capability to grip, whine, and complain to hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people about anything and everything. Furthermore, it seems that those who complain the most and loudest get the most attention. But are we any better off for it? Are we happier? Are we filled with more joy?

Join us tomorrow as we turn our attention to one of the biggest assailants of joy: grumbling and its opposite cultivator, contentment.

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Think of the absolutely most joy-filled person you have ever met. You ever wonder what their secret is? I can almost guarantee you, they are probably also the absolutely most humble person you've ever met. Humility and Joy are always together and we struggle to live lives of joy because each one of us struggles with pride.

We often mistaken humility for weakness. True humility, however, is one of the greatest virtuous strengths we can cultivate and growth in humility always produces ever-greater experiences of soul-satisfying joy.

We all long to live joy-filled lives. But why is joy so elusive? What gets in the way of joy? As we look at Philippians 2:1-11 tomorrow, we'll learn that true humility always produces lasting joy. We experience true humility when we start to take our focus off ourselves and start directing it toward Jesus Christ who radically humbled himself for the joy set before him.

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How would you fill in these blanks?

"For me to live is _____ , and to die is _____."

Be honest. What is your life? What is your definition of life? What are you living for? Whom do you live for? What is the most important thing for you? What is that thing/person which will make your life worth living regardless of what else happens?

Most of us don't ask such "morbid" questions when everything is going well in life. However, we do ask when we suffer because suffering cuts through the mask of superficiality to the heart of reality.

As we continue our journey through the glorious book of Philippians tomorrow, and as we continue our meditation on joy, we learn there is only one way to answer that question which will bring satisfying joy in this life and the next. Join us tomorrow as we continue to be surprised by joy.

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Tomorrow, we're starting a brand new sermon series through the book of Philippians, also known as the "Epistle of Joy." As we spend the next few weeks thinking about joy, I believe we'll actually be surprised by the counter-intuitive, supernatural nature of this foretaste of God. True joy is something no circumstance can give you, and no circumstance can ever take away.

C.S. Lewis, in his spiritual biography, appropriately entitled "Surprised by Joy" talks of joy as that which moved him more than anything else. He writes, "No one who has ever experienced it would ever exchange it for all the happiness in the world." Lewis distinguished Joy from both pleasures and happiness. Joy is more than happiness, just as happiness is more than pleasure. Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind and feelings. Joy is deep in the heart, in the spirit, in the essence of our being. The way to pleasure is power. The way to happiness is happenstance. The way to Joy is Jesus.

The desire for Joy is God's footprint in the sands of the soul, his fingerprints on our hearts. Join us tomorrow as we begin our journey through Philippians and my prayer is that each of us will be surprised by joy.

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The German poet Goethe called the book of Ruth "the loveliest complete work on a small scale" ever written. Alexander Schroder, a literary critic, wrote, "No poet in the world has written a more beautiful short story." Like all the most captivating and satisfying stories, the book of Ruth ends with a happy ending. Boaz and Ruth finally get married. They have a baby. Naomi is comforted. The end. It's a happy ending, and everybody loves a happy ending.

It might be a happy ending and we might enjoy their happiness vicariously, even if briefly. However, what does their happiness have to do with ours? So what?! What does their joy have to do with ours in 21st century Boston? How do their lives impact ours? Great questions.

Join us tomorrow as we study Ruth 4:13-21, and reflect on how the happiness of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz can have an absolutely direct impact on our own joy and redemption.

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In Matthew 10:16, Jesus tells his disciples "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." Jesus doesn't just call his followers to grow in innocence (though this is an indispensable part of the Christian life and a daily pursuit), He also calls us to grow in shrewdness, or Godly Wisdom. God's people ought to be characterized by a profound practical wisdom of how the word is designed, how things work, and how to strive in this world to bring flourishing to our lives, our family, our city and beyond. We are called to develop shrewdness in how we use our time, talent, treasure, opportunities, and all of life.

Join us tomorrow as we study Ruth 4:1-12, where we learn numerous lessons about shrewdness from Boaz, as he makes some slick moves to position himself to marry Ruth, the woman he loves, and to start a family, which will ultimately be a blessing to the whole world.

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We've had a great time the last couple weeks reading and studying the beautiful book of Ruth together. Last Sunday, we read chapter 2, where Ruth and Boaz meet, and sparks fly. However, things seem to cool off and Boaz appears to have stopped making moves (later we find out Boaz thought Ruth was out of his league). So Naomi, Ruth's brilliant mother-in-law concocts a scheming plan, in which she proposes that Ruth propose that Boaz propose to Ruth. Got it?

Join us tomorrow as we study Ruth chapter 3, where the love story between Ruth and Boaz heats up, and as their love for each other deepens, their relationship becomes clearly defined.

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Last week we began a sermon series through the beautiful love story found in the book of Ruth. As we look at Ruth chapter 2 tomorrow, we're introduced to Boaz who is described as a "worthy" man. We're also given a front row seat to the first time Boaz and Ruth meet and their love story begins.

Clearly the book is a love story, but one of the things that struck me as I've been studying this text is how sparse the text is regarding the feelings between them. Where are the juicy nuggets?! Where's the swooning? Where's the passion?! The author isn't saying that feelings are not important in a thriving marital relationship--they certainly are! But feelings, though important, are not primary. Love is not primarily a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. The desire to love is not love itself. Love is not primarily sentiment. Love is choice. Love is a choice to sacrifice for another person. This book's timeless message of lasting sacrificial love challenges our culture's view of love as primarily romantic sentiment that comes and goes.

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Tomorrow, we're starting a brand-new sermon series at Mosaic Boston through the book of Ruth. I recommend you take some time today or tomorrow to read through the book of Ruth (takes about 20 minutes).

The book of Ruth is one of the most beautiful stories in Holy Scripture and teaches us innumerable truths about our God, ourselves, and our part in God's sovereign and good plan of redemption. The book of Ruth gives us a glimpse of the hidden work of God during the worst of times to bring about the evident work of God during the best of times. The book of Ruth is a love story (and who doesn't like love stories?!), which foreshadows the ultimate Love Story.

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As we continue our "Heroes" sermon series tomorrow, we'll be looking at the life and exploits of the epic mega-prophet Elijah. Everything Elijah did, he did big. He stands up to tyrants, stops rain for three years, ravens bring him food, resurrects people (NBD), and wins a showdown against the prophets of the idol Baal by calling fire from heaven. If that's not enough, he was an insane athlete! He ran seventeen miles faster than horses and chariots (#beastmode).

His whole life, he was driven by one mission: to help indecisive people commit to the one True God. Tomorrow, we'll be focusing our attention on Elijah's showdown with the the false-god Baal. As Elijah gathers thousands of people together, he tells them in 1 Kings 18:21: "'How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.' And the people did not answer him a word."

Ours is the most commitment-challenged culture in the existence of the world. Perhaps we don't worship Baal, but we do worship the "god of open options." We sacrifice the substance of commitment at the alter of superficial choice. Elijah's words are as relevant as ever.

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we learn from the life of the great hero of the faith, Elijah, and see how his life foreshadows the Ultimate Superhero, Jesus Christ. Take 20 minutes today to read through 1 Kings 17-19 in preparation for our time together in God's Word.

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A couple years ago, when we had just started the church, a first time visitor approached me after the worship service (back when we used to meet in the basement of the YMCA on Huntington Ave). That day I preached a sermon on God's law as given to Moses (the Mosaic law), which showed us our desperate need for Christ. The gentleman approached me with a quizzical expression and asked me: "Is this church actually a synagogue?" "No, we're a church," I responded, "why would you think we're a synagogue?" "Because you're called Mosaic... after Moses, right?"

Since I'm preaching on the life of Moses, tomorrow, I think it makes sense to clarify that we're not called Mosaic after Moses (though Moses is integral to Scripture and the Gospel). We're called Mosaic after a literal "mosaic." We love the imagery conveyed through a mosaic and how it beautifully describes our human condition: we're all broken, fragmented, fractured people. However, when we come to Jesus, and accept His work on the cross in our place, God takes our brokenness and makes it beautiful by uniting us with Him and one another. He then raises up his church, shines his glory through us, and we image Him and the glory of his Gospel to the city of Boston and beyond.

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Be sure to join us tomorrow as we continue a new sermon series looking at some of the greatest heroes of the Old Testament and showing how every single one of them needs the Ultimate Superhero. Tomorrow we'll be studying the epic story of Noah and see how Noah points to the greater-Noah, Jesus Christ.

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I'm so excited to announce that this Sunday, we're launching a brand new sermon series, called "Heroes." We live in a culture intrigued (obsessed?) with superheroes. Hollywood has released at least 40 mega-budget movies in the last decade, most of which have been huge money-makers. What's the deal? We love superpowers and the supernatural. We love seeing good prevail in the battle against evil. We love having a reason for hope in the face of adversity. We love immortality and sacrificial love. We love adventure and risk. We love seeing the powerful hero save the powerless victim and make all things right with the world.

As C.S. Lewis said, the classic myths point people to the ultimate, truth Myth. Superhero stories, wrote J.R.R. Tolkien, are the best way-- and sometimes the only way-- of conveying truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible. Myths may be misguided, Tolkien said, but they steer however shakily toward the true harbor. The superhero stories of our day reveal perennial human longings for safety, significant, power, joy, unconditional love--longings only ultimately satisfied by the Ultimate Superhero, Jesus Christ. The story of Christ is at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality.

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we start a new sermon series looking at some of the greatest heroes of the Old Testament and showing how every single one of them needs the Ultimate Superhero.

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We've had a wonderful journey through the book of James. I don't know about you, but I've been challenged week in and week out to truly put my faith to work.

As we finish up the book of James tomorrow, Jesus' younger brother reminds us about the power of prayer. James' big idea comes out in chapter 5, verse 16 where he reminds us that prayer is powerful, but the prayer of a righteous person is especially powerful: "The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." How's your prayer life? Would you characterize it as having "great power as it is working?" Be sure to join us tomorrow as we learn how to cultivate a powerful personal prayer life.

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It's easy to love and thank God when everything is going well in your life. This was precisely Satan's point concerning Job when he tells God: "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land." So the Lord allows Satan to storm-test Job's faith. After Job loses everything, his faith gives him the strength to say: "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."

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How does your faith impact your views on money? How do you view and treat those whom you deem "wealthier" than you are? How do you view and treat those who may not be as wealthy as you? Scripture teaches that nothing more clearly reveals the state of your heart than your view of money and material possessions. Do you worship money, or do you worship with your money? Do you love money and use people, or do you love people and use money to bless them?

Be sure to join us tomorrow as we worship together and study James 5:1-6, where James teaches us the importance of viewing money from an eternal perspective.

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s we set goals and make plans for 2015, we tend to remind ourselves of what's most significant in our lives. In the hustle and bustle of the daily routine and life under the tyranny of the immediate, it's so easy to lose sight of what's truly most important. As we continue our study through the book of James tomorrow, we are faced with several questions: Where is God in your planning process? Does God have any say in your goals? Have you asked God what he thinks of your plans? Do you tend to take tomorrow for granted? What do you know you need to do, but you keep putting it off? Be sure to join us tomorrow as we worship together and study James 4:13-17, where James reminds us to seek the will of God for our lives.

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Words are immensely important and infinitely powerful! Most of us underestimate the power of words. "Death and life and in the power of the tongue," Proverbs tells us. Jesus said that we will give an account for every careless word we speak. James tells us that "if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man."

Have you considered the power of words? Why do words have so much power? How do we harness that power and use it for good? What can we do to make sure we don't cause destruction to ourselves, or to the people around us with our words? How can we use our words to release the power of life and curb the power of death?

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Did you know that over 2.1 billion people in the world would call themselves Christians? On the one hand, this is really encouraging! On the other hand, how many of these people have a real, saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Imagine how different our world would be if they did!

Our culture craves authenticity. We don't like posers. We don't like posturing. We don't like pretending. Be you. Be real. Be genuine. In a world of photoshop and plastic surgery, meeting a real person is a breath of fresh air. This is especially true with Christianity. In James 2:14-26, James wants to point out what real faith isn't: it's not just what you say, think, feel. It's not even just what what you believe. Real faith always leads to life, and life always reveals itself in action--because we really only do what we really believe.

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We live in a world that is fractured by "isms": racism, classicism, sexism, ageism, etc. We live in a world plagued by prejudice, partiality, and favoritism. We're constantly sizing people up by superficial externals: looks, education, wealth, status, race, sex, faith, etc. Then, we treat that person according to their level of "worth" in our eyes. This system of merit is diametrically opposed to grace and mercy, the essence of Christianity.

In our text tomorrow, James quotes Jesus: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." We've heard this. But do we do it? Do we do it on a practical level? James teaches us this hard truth: how we relate to people reveals how much we understand God's impartial and unconditional love for us. James reminds us that living faith leads to loving others with unconditional love, the same love Jesus has for us.

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I'm wicked excited about kicking off our brand new sermon series through the book of James!! James is one of my favorite books in the Bible because James is a doer. He understands that God's grace is given to us to transform us and motivate us to live for the Glory of God. James is all about Getting Stuff Done (GSD). At Mosaic, we're all about GSD for SDG (Soli Deo Gloria - Glory to God Alone). James is just like that, GSD for SDG.

James is one of the most practical books in the whole Bible. It's also super simple, straightforward, and clear. It's pretty much "The Idiot's Guide" to the Christian life. I don't know about you, but I enjoy simplicity.

Tomorrow's sermon will cover James 1:1-18, where James helps us discover not just the answers, but also the questions, in life's most important tests: like what do when we life doesn't go according to plan. Start reading James, and join us tomorrow at one of our 3 services.

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We're closing out our series on the "Seven Deadly Sins" with the deadliest one -- Pride.

Someone once remarked that the seven deadly sins are the pallbearers of the soul. I think that's a strong way of putting it. However, I would separate pride from the other six. If the others are deadly, pride is damning. It's not just a pallbearer, it's an incinerator. It estranges us from God like nothing else, because it actively rebels against God, vies for his throne, and writes him out of existence from our pseudo-reality.

Moreover, the self-entitlement produced by pride leads to every other sin. Our self-entitlement leads to the sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, and envy. "Of course I can do those things," our pride tells us, "I deserve it."

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Wrath is probably the most complicated of the 7. Many us us wouldn't say we have a problem with anger, not outright, flipping out, off the chain, destructive, violent anger. However, how often do you feel slighted? How often do you take offense at how people treat you? How often do you get irritated? How often do you grumble or complain? These feelings, though not necessarily sinful, do point to potential problems with anger.

The sin of wrath is further complicated because it can be righteous or unrighteous. Scripture often talks of the wrath or the anger of God. Actually, the wrath of God is mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture. The reason God feels wrath is because God is love; his wrath flows out of his love. This is highly counterintuitive, but makes sense when you think about it. As a result of Gods great loves for us, he despises absolutely anything that might hurt us, even our own sin.

A good way to discern whether your anger is righteous or unrighteous is the following question: are these feelings motivated by love for God and people? If so, then we can channel that energy into productivity aimed at healing the brokenness and injustice of our hearts and our world. If not, then we need the Gospel.

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This Sunday, we're talking about the 4th Deadly Sin: Sloth. Now, at first glance, it wouldn't appear that Bostonians have a problem with sloth. If anything, we struggle with overwork, right?

However, when Scripture talks about sloth, it doesn't just talk about laziness in general, it talks about laziness in relation to God, which makes all the difference in the world! For our text tomorrow, we'll look at the Parable of the Talents found in Matthew 25:14-30, where Jesus teaches us that the opposite of "slothful" is not "diligent," but "faithful." The implications of this great truth are truly life-transforming.

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Tomorrow, we're talking about the 2nd Deadly Sin: Gluttony. Jesus had a lot to say about food. He actually, really loved to eat and drink, one of the many reasons I really love Jesus.

Three times, Scripture uses the phrase "The Son of Man came..."

In Mark 10:45, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

In Luke 19:10, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."

Both of these verses tell us why Jesus came. But Luke 7:34 tells us how he came: "The Son of man has come eating and drinking."

Join us tomorrow as we think through the mind-blowing, heart-igniting, soul-satisfying and life-transforming implications of this truth. Only when we experience Jesus is the Bread and Water of Life, will our souls be satisfied.

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For centuries, the Church has attempted to understand the depth of human sin, evil and depravity. In order to equip Christians to understand themselves and defeat their sinful inclinations, by the power of the Holy Spirt, theologians have defined seven of the most dangerous sins, which are absolutely deadly to human souls and flourishing.

For the next seven weeks, we'll be studying these "Seven Deadly Sins" and learning how the Gospel of Jesus Christ offers us the power of God to save us from these sins and bring healing to the brokenness these sins have caused in our lives and relationships.

Don't miss tomorrow's sermon on "Lust" from John 4

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What's Mosaic Church all about?

What are our core values? What's our identity? What's our vision?

Who are we? Who do we hope to become.

Join us tomorrow, as we explain what we mean when we say Mosaic is all about "Love. Jesus. Simple."

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be sure to join us Sunday for our concluding sermon in the "Minor Prophets :: Major Profit" series. We'll be studying the book of Malachi and talking about "True Worship."

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When you think about "happiness," what's the first thing that comes to mind? What needs to be added to, or removed from, your life, for you to be truly happy? Now, if you reach this point of bliss, how do you sustain it? How do you protect it from all the evil and suffering in this world? How do you protect it from yourself? How do we find and sustain happiness in a world so full of sadness and brokenness?

Who are the happiest people you've ever met? What made them happy?

Prophets don't have a reputation for being happy. However, one of the surprisingly happiest prophets in the Bible is Habakkuk. He found a happiness which had absolute nothing to do with his circumstances (which were miserable). We'll be studying this short book tomorrow. It's only 3 chapters so definitely read through it today.

His conclusion in chapter 3 is, though everything seems to be going wrong, "YET, I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength."

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We love stories about redemption, don't we? Just think about how many of your favorite books or movies boil down to stories about a person struggling to redeem themselves or someone else. If you look at IMDB's list of top 250 movies of all time, the #1 movie is the classic, "Shawshank Redemption." Then, as you make your way down the list, almost every other movie (arguably) is about redemption--a story of someone ingeniously and determinedly atoning for their mistakes and/or saving themselves or loved ones.

Why is the plot line of redemption so compelling to our hearts? Could it be, because we long for our own redemption? Could it be, because we all long for another chance? Could it be, because we all long to be saved?

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We're continuing our series through the books of the Bible called "The Minor Prophets." Tomorrow, we'll focus our attention on the book of Amos. The big idea of the book is that God, as the just Judge of the Universe, cares about what we do with our lives and how we relate to the people around us. He cares about Justice. He wants His people to "do justice," which in Scripture includes sharing food, shelter, and basic resources with those who lack them.

In particular, Amos reminds us that God cares how we relate to those who are vulnerable: the weak, sick, elderly, mentally and physically handicapped, refugees, immigrants, working poor, natural disaster victims, unemployed, single parents, widows, and orphans.

One of the famous verses for the book is found in chapter 5, verse 24: "Let Justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." I pray for Mosaic Boston to continue to growing into a church from whom justice flows torrentially.

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“Come and see!” Hearing those words can evoke different emotions. There’s a bunny that we have been watching in our backyard, and we have seen it grow from its infancy into adulthood. When my wife says to “come and see,” I know that I’m going to be looking at a cute rabbit that's getting bigger and more fluffy by the day. But “come and see” can also bring about negative emotions. Last week I was at my parent’s house and the “come and see” that was used there on a regular basis was directed at my sister, telling her to “come and see” the messes that her daughter was making.

Whether good or bad, the invitation to “come and see” should be answered by us actually coming to see what’s going on. In John 1:35-51, the passage that we will be looking at on Sunday, Jesus gives an invitation to “come and see”. What he invites us to come and see is far greater than anything that we have ever beheld on earth, and it will forever change our lives. Join us at Mosaic Church this Sunday, as we come and see what it is that is before us!

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This week at Mosaic we’re going to talk about how the Gospel moves us beyond slacktivism, and toward a purpose in life that is eternally meaningful.

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We're continuing our series called "This Changes Everything," in which we're showing how the Awesome News of Jesus Christ (The Gospel), changes absolutely every single major area of our lives.

There aren't many areas of life more all encompassing than the way we relate to the people around us. In a place like Boston, where we're packed in like sardines, we really need to learn how to live with one another and not just to survive, but to thrive. Thanks be to Jesus, who's given us a really powerful Gospel, which really does provide the resources to love our neighbors as ourselves.

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We're continuing our series called "This Changes Everything," in which we're showing how the Awesome News of Jesus Christ (The Gospel), changes absolutely every single major area of our lives.

Perhaps, I should have entitled this series: "Stuff you're not supposed to talk about at church." Last week we talked about money, tomorrow we're talking about God & Sex. How does the Gospel inform and redeem sex? Join us as we look to Scripture for answers.

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Tomorrow, we'll be talking about how the Gospel changes the way we view, earn, spend, give, and invest money. Yes, we'll be talking about money at church ( ::gasp:: !!). Yes, it sounds like a major faux pas! Don't ever talk about money at church (right?). Especially at a church plant!

Why are we talking about money tomorrow? Because Jesus talked about money.... a lot!! Jesus talked more about money, than he did about faith, prayer, heaven, and hell... combined! Over 25% of the recorded words of Jesus in the Gospels are devoted to money (28 passages). The Bible has over 800 verses discussing money.

Jesus taught that we either worship our wealth, or we worship with our wealth. In Matthew 6:24 he said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

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Tomorrow at Mosaic, we're wrapping up our "Why God Why" series with a sermon attempting to answer why it's reasonable to believe in the Bible as God's means by which He reveals Himself and His will to the world. Even if a person believes in God and in Jesus Christ as the way God has revealed himself, many still have a hard time accepted the Bible as God's Word.

“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?” Why would anyone believe in an authoritative book about absolute truth? Silly.

Funny thing is, whenever anyone wants to refute or discredit this book--they do it by writing their own book. In order to discredit the Bible, you can't just discredit it, you have to supplant it. In order to refute these words, they write their own words. In order to counter these absolute words, they come up with their own absolute words. "Don’t believe in the Bible. Buy my book, that tells you why you shouldn’t believe in the Bible. Don’t follow Jesus. Follow me." So if there's no way around a worldview built on some version of absolute truth, why is it reasonable to believe in the Bible? Good question.

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If you've been following along with us at Mosaic, you know that we're approaching the 4th installment in our 5-part series, called "Why God Why." We've attempted to show that Christianity makes emotional sense, personal sense, and intellectual sense. Faith in Christ sustains both the weight of the heart and the mind.

Last week I attempted to make the case for theism. However, even if there is a God, how do we know it's the Christian God? How do we know that Jesus Christ is God? Wasn't he just a man? Even if he was a great man, and a powerful, charismatic leader, wasn't he still a man?

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We continue our "Why (God) Why" series tomorrow by making the case that "Christianity Makes Personal Sense." What do I mean by this? I mean: Christianity provides the most substantive, substantiated and satisfying answer to the question: "Who are you?"

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A few years ago, a group of atheists in England financed an advertising campaign where they wrapped buses with the following message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The questionable word in the ad isn't "probably"; it's "enjoy." This is a categorical error. There is much more to us, and life, than enjoyment. We can't just "enjoy" life, because we have more emotions than "enjoying." When we're not enjoying life, we're busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion, heartache, etc. The Resurrection of the Son of God, speaks to our minds, our souls, and our hearts.

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If you've ever read Acts 28, you might have noticed that the ending is incredibly anti-climactic and actually kind of random. Why in the world doesn't the author of Acts, Luke, tell us what happened next to Paul? Did he preach the Gospel to Caesar? Did he go to Spain and then to Europe? What happened next?!?! How did he die? Why don't we get any details? It feels like that really unsatisfying finale to [insert your favorite show or book].

Well, actually, Luke is doing something really brilliant. At the end of the book of Acts, Luke has Paul "fade to black" and redirects the camera...at the reader! The point of Acts 28--is that there's an Acts 29. The story of Jesus is to be continued through you! Now, what's that look like?

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"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are "It might have been." That's not in the Bible, but the general sentiment is. In our text tomorrow, the Apostle Paul is on a ship headed to Rome, which gets caught in a storm, and ultimately destroyed in a shipwreck. Paul had warned the centurion not to embark on the trip, but he decided he was smarter than Paul. So after the ship is on the brink of destruction, Paul says what everyone would say: "Men, you should have listened to me." He doesn't stop there though, and offers them words of encouragement, guidance, and life.

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In our text this week, the Apostle Paul is on trial before King Agrippa, a person who has the authority to either free Paul, or crucify him. Instead of giving a pure defense, proving how all the trumped up charges against him were utterly baseless, Paul starts preaching the Gospel to Agrippa. At this point, Agrippa screams out: “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.”

Does Christianity make you crazy? That's the question we're dealing with this week. Indeed, there are lots of people who claim to be Christians, and do really fanatical things that absolutely contradict the teachings and life of Christ. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm thinking of people whose lives and life choices make absolutely no sense apart from Jesus Christ. People like Mary, Paul, Peter, John, James, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, William Wilbeforce, Dietrich Boenhoffer, Martin Luther King Jr. and many, many more. These are people who lived lives of reckless love and self-sacrifice in the name of Jesus Christ. Crazy lives. Crazy, if the material world is all there is. Sane, if there is more. Sane, if Jesus came back from the dead. And if Jesus did rise from the dead, then it would be crazy not to live like this.

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The Christian life begins with faith. Just faith. Simply faith. Nothing but faith. However, this faith isn't simply knowing some truths or facts intellectually. Genuine saving faith is a pulsating connection to God. It's a vibrant relationship. When we truly believe in Jesus Christ, we are deeply connected to him. Scripture even talks about us being "in Christ." We are in him, and he is in us. If we're connected to Christ, we cannot but be transformed. Our life looks and feels different. We live for what he lives for. We want what he wants. We dream for what he dreams. We pray: "May your will be done, in my life, as it is in heaven." We love him and we long to please him, so Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." We obey, not to be accepted; in Christ, we are accepted, so we obey.

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After studying this week's text (Acts 23:12-24:21), I can't believe Hollywood hasn't cashed in on making a movie about Saint Paul. I'm thinking a franchise in a similar vein to the Jason Bourne trilogy. If Hollywood thinks Noah is epic, the book of Acts could blow the Ark out of the water! This week's text has drama, intrigue, conspiracy, serpentine plot twists, 40 Jewish dagger-carrying-hunger-striking assassins, 470 Roman soldiers marching through the night, corrupt religious officials, lying lawyers, crooked politicians, and God's hand guiding his child through it all. Maybe some of the writers at Mosaic could propose something to Netflix? (When it goes huge, don't forget to tithe... and buy Mosaic a building)

The 19th century missionary, John Paton, faced similar threats as he brought the Gospel to the island of Tanna. "One day," he wrote, "... Natives in large numbers were assembled at my house. A man furiously rushed at me with his axe; but a Kaserumini Chief snatched a spade with which I had been working and dexterously defended me from instant death. Next day, a wild Chief followed me about for four hours with his loaded musket, and, though often directed toward me, God restrained his hand. I spoke kindly to him and attended to my work as if he has not been there, fully persuaded that my God had placed me there, and would protect me till my allotted task was finished. Looking up in unceasing prayer to our dear Lord Jesus, I left all in his hands, and felt immortal till my work was done.”

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We’ll be looking at Acts 22:30-23:11, where the Apostle Paul makes the startling claim: “I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.” What in the world does that mean? What’s a conscience? How can we live lives in all goodconscience? Is that even possible? Is our conscience a valid guide? The sweet graphic below makes for a phat t-shirt, but is it good theology? These are all great questions, which we’ll be wrestling with Sunday.

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What drives you? What make you do the things you do and make the decisions you make? We like to think of ourselves as very rational creatures. So why is it that we often act so irrationally? We do things we know are wrong. We don’t do think we know are right. We frequently make choices that aren’t in our best interests or in the best interests of others.

The Bible says that we are creatures of desire. Knowledge is a powerful motivator, but ultimately we are guided by the desires of our heart. The bad news, as the prophet Jeremiah points out:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9

So what hope do we have for our failing hearts? Join us tomorrow as we continue our series in the book of Acts (Acts 21:27-22:29) and see how God took an angry violent man named Paul, and radically transformed the desires of his heart.

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Do you ever get discouraged? Maybe you’re feeling it right now. What do you think of when you hear the word “encourage?” …Peppy, cheerful, maybe even cheesy sound bites of unfounded optimism? Sounds lame. Look at the word though. [En]courage. Or better put, “fill with courage.”

The bible talks a lot about encouragement, some people even claim to have the gift of encouragement, but where does courage come from? More importantly, why is courage needed? Join us tomorrow as we continue our series from the book of Acts, and examine how Paul encourages the churches in Acts 20.

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Acts 19, where the Apostle Paul preaches the Gospel in Ephesus and calls people to worship Jesus instead of false idols. Instead of debating the cogency of Paul's arguments, the people realize that if they follow Jesus, they will lose their jobs making idols and will no longer profit from tourism to the pagan temples in their city. They realize that if they follow Jesus, they will have to make a huge sacrifice. However, they don't want to make a sacrifice, so instead, they reject Jesus.

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This is why we're following up the Mystic series by jumping back into the book of Acts. The book of Acts is all about what the first Christians did! Their faith transformed their lives and ultimately transformed the world. Join us tomorrow as we study Acts 18, where the big idea is: "Do not be Silent!"

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Did you play any team sports as a kid? I know it's out of season, but baseball was by far my favorite. I was a pitcher, and I used to spend hours practicing with my dad in the back yard. It was those hours of practice that prepared me for game day. But imagine if I never left the back yard. If I never joined a team, put on a uniform, got in the game... would I really know what it was like to be a pitcher?

God hasn't just chosen us for himself, he's chosen us for his team. He's given us a purpose and new identity in Christ! Join us tomorrow as we take a look at 1 Peter 2:1-12 and the surprisingly interconnected disciplines of Solitude & Community.

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I don't know about you, but I'm totally incentive-driven. I always need to know why I should be doing something and why it's worth my time, especially when the activity takes effort or seems counter-intuitive. Whenever I was told I should be doing something, my knee-jerk reaction is to ask, "Why?" Floss your teeth; why? Eat your vegetables; why? Do your homework; why? Exercise; why? Obey the speed limit; why? Be smart with your money; why? Stop asking so many questions; why?

I've found that prayer is in the same category for most people: we know it's supposed to be sort of good for us, but it's hard to do, so we push back with: Why? Well, tomorrow, we'll attempt to answer that question.

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Last week, we started a sermon series called "Mystic" to help you train yourself in the disciplines of the Christian soul. Tomorrow, we'll be talking about "giving" as a spiritual discipline. Jesus said, "It's more blessed to give than to received," and to receive more of this blessing on a continual basis, we need to train ourselves to give systematically and develop a lifestyle of generosity. Giving is to become the muscle-memory of our souls, becoming the natural response of our souls to the needs around us.

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Have you ever heard someone say something like: "I'm not religious; I'm spiritual'? At Mosaic, we're cool with that statement, as long as it points us back to Jesus, his saving Work, and the spiritual life he calls us to experience, daily. However, we don't want the quip, "I'm spiritual," to be excuse for spiritual vagueness and laziness. We want to grow in true spirituality by exercising our souls regularly in the manner our Lord has prescribed for us.

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It's funny that we would need to be reminded to remember God. But on second thought, it makes all the sense in the world. I'm always forgetting to remember God! It's as if I suffer from spiritual amnesia. If I'm not constantly reminding myself about God, I just keep forgetting. Other stuff just gets in the way of God. It's not like I'm purposefully ignoring God; it's just that my busyness crowds him out. Ecclesiastes reminds us: don't let life crowd out God.

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Who you are today is a direct result of your past. Your previous thoughts, desires, actions, and relationships have shaped your present reality. Scripture describes this reality by using the agrarian language of reaping what you sow.

In Ecclesiastes 11, Solomon tells us "Cast your bread upon the waters for you will find it after many days." He's not talking about feeding ducks in Frog Pond. He's talking about sowing generously when you can, so you will reap an abundant harvest. In verse 6, he says "in the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know what will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good."

The law of sowing and reaping applies to every area of life: money, health, relationships, education, vocation, marriage, children, and is especially true in the spiritual realm. Join us tomorrow to learn about how to wisely apply this principle in our lives to reap a harvest of plentiful blessing.

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Have you ever had a near death experience? I'm talking about coming face-to-face with death, your life flashing before your eyes, and you think, "This is it!!" Well, do you remember the rest of that day, or that week? What did you think about life? You loved it, right?! You felt SO ALIVE! You cherished every breath, you savored every morsel of food, you hugged your loved ones so much tighter! You began to enjoy life! And then life continues to happen, and we're numbed to the joy of being alive.

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How would you define the word "wisdom"? It's not a word that's used often in our culture. The biblical concept of wisdom is much deeper than simply knowledge. I think a helpful definition is: understanding ultimate reality as defined by God and having the ability to live in accordance with it. But that's the catch, isn't it? Lots of us know what's right and good for us, but so often we don't have the ability to act on it. There's always another tug on our hearts.

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What do you fear? Financial security of your future? Not finding true love? Finding true love, and losing it? Do you fear for you health? Do you fear death? Did you know that the number one most often repeated commandment in the Bible is "Do not fear"? Scripture also teaches that "perfect love casts out all fear."

And yet, the Bible uses the word "fear" at least 300 times in reference to God. Scripture teaches that the beginning of wisdom is "the fear of the Lord." But what in the world does it mean to fear God? Why should I fear a loving God? How do I both love and fear God? Tomorrow, we are covering Ecclesiastes 5 & 6, where the Teacher tells us "Fear God." Join us to learn how "fear of God" is the beginning of a fearless, joyful and meaningful life.

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Ever feel stressed out? Ever wonder if Christianity offers any resources to help you handle the pressures of daily life? God doesn't call us to withdraw from this stressful world; He instead gives us a deep peace that transcends our stress. He does this through a deep, abiding relationship with Himself, and deep, life-giving relationships with our friends.

As we continue our journey through Ecclesiastes, we'll learn about some relationship killers, that add to our stress and destroy our peace of mind. Join us to learn what they are and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ helps us take them head on.

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Scripture teaches that God has created everything, including time. In Ecclesiastes 3, God the Poet gives us a poem to understand time with our minds and hearts; to see how He has created everything beautiful in its time.

Time is the fundamental and ineradicable feature of our lives. The unbelievable brevity of our lives deeply conflicts with the deep-seated yearning for permanence. We experience only time, yet we desire timelessness. Why, for heaven's sake? Where did we ever learn of this thing called eternity, to desire it? If our lives have always been characterized by time, why don't we feel at home in it? Do fish complain about being wet? Perhaps there is land? Why do we complain about time? Perhaps there is eternity?

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Do you have a job? Do you want a job? Do you hate your job? Do you want another job? (Sorry to be asking you these questions if today is your day off!) We’re always either preparing to work, working, or resting from work. Because work is such a substantial part of our lives, if we don’t learn to enjoy it, we’ll never learn to enjoy life.

The cheery Ecclesiastes, in considering work, concludes by saying: “So I hated my life” in 2:17 and “I hated all my toil” in 2:18. Can you give a hearty amen to this conclusion? Well then you’re in luck, because this sermon is for you!

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What would your life look like if you had unlimited resources? I'm talking about virtually infinite wealth. What would you spend your money on? What would you spend your time doing? Who would your friends be? What would your relationships look like? Where would you live? What would you be pursuing? What would you live for?

As we continue our journey searching for the meaning of life with Ecclesiastes, we get a glimpse of what goes on in the man's heart as he "tests it with pleasure." Could pleasure be the purpose of life?

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The question we’re asking this Sunday is, “What’s the Point?” We've all asked the question. The book of Ecclesiastes is profoundly helpful in helping us find a meaningful answer. You definitely don’t want to miss this series.

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There’s this great passage in the book of Ecclesiastes where King Solomon talks about the many benefits of deep friendship and authentic community. He says: “though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” His point is that we’ll all face hardships in life, but they’re much easier to overcome with good friends by your side. We are exponentially stronger together.

We see the strength of this unity in the book of Acts. Their hearts are as one. Does conflict arise? Of course! However, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, they deal with the conflict head on, with love, peace, and grace. Today, we’re continuing to look at Acts 6:1-7, and my prayer is for us to learn to deal with conflict well. Obviously, the big idea isn’t to just deal with the conflict and move on. The point is to love deeper and to grow tighter with the people God has sent into our lives, so we become like a “threefold [maybe even more!] cord not quickly broken.”

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I love our church. I love our church because I love the people in our church. Mosaic Church been blessed with some incredible people. Yes, the people at Mosaic are really good looking, brilliant, loving, caring, selfless, interesting, etc. (I could go on and on, but you would get a big head… and that’s a sin). Though we are a diverse bunch, one of the most strikingly consistent traits exhibited by the people at Mosaic: we are truly happy. Have you ever noticed this? We’ve got some really happy people!

As we continue our study in the book of Acts, the text this week describes the life of the early church. In verse 46, we learn that they were people with “glad hearts”; they were happy. What made them so happy?

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Today's sermon is based on the first sermon in the book of Acts, preached by the Apostle Peter. At the end of the sermon, it says the crowd was “cut to the heart.” Literally, the Greek word means they were stabbed, as with a sharp object. I believe the imagery used is that of a surgeon, doing a heart transplant. As they heard of God’s blazing holiness, and their grave sin, and God’s unconditional love, God pierced their inner being, removed the cold heart of stone and replaced it with a heart on fire for Jesus.

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Have you ever been away from home for a really, really long time? Have you ever felt homesick? That’s the worst, isn’t it? As great as they are, the places you’ve visited, and the people you’ve met just never quite feel like home. What’s the remedy for that lingering feeling? Coming home, of course! Now, do you remember that feeling? The feeling of coming home? There’s nothing quite like it. With a huge sigh of relief, you drops your bags, kick off your shoes, and you feel like you can finally rest. The feeling of coming home is infinitely better if you’ve got someone at home who loves you and misses you.

Scripture tells us that repentance feels like coming home. At Mosaic Boston, we also believe that church should feel like coming home. Today, as we conclude the Series in the Parables, we will study Luke 15 where God is a Father and He rejoices when His children come home. He stands arms wide open, and says, “Welcome home my dear child. I’ve been waiting.” We learn that home isn’t just where the heart is; home is where God is.

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Today, we continue our study of Jesus’ parables with one of His most demanding and provocative: the parable of the Good Samaritan. The big idea is that Jesus, the ultimate Good Samaritan has showed us the greatest mercy when we were in the most dire need, and the deeper we are moved by His mercy, the more merciful we become, even to those seemingly least deserving, like James E. Holmes. May we be a people of Micah 6:8, who “do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

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I believe that as a church, God has led Mosaic Boston into a season of focused prayer. God will provide for us, as He always has. However, even in this time of desperation, we mustn’t forget that our greatest needs are not physical, but spiritual. Thus, our most fervent prayers mustn’t be “to God” but “for God.” We don’t just need more of His blessing; we need more of His presence, which is the ultimate blessing.

Join us as we continue through the parables of Jesus with a look at two of His parables about persistent prayer, found in Luke. I believe Luke 11:13 with all my heart: “the heavenly Father [WILL] give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” He will give Himself to us if we persistently seek Him through prayer

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In his famous “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus said “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He means that your heart and your life will always follow what you treasure most in life. Thus, what we value most, actually controls us.

Today, as we continue to study the parables of Jesus, we turn our attention to the two shortest parables, found in Matthew. These parables teach us that true spiritual treasure is always hidden behind the ordinary, always accessible to true seekers, and always produces transformative joy.

Join us as we mine the treasures God has stored up in His Word and in the Gospel.

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This Sunday, we’re launching our summer sermon series on the “Parables of Jesus Christ.” These are the greatest stories ever told, communicating the greatest truths every taught. Each story packs an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual punch and I’m confident this series will be a huge blessing for your walk with Jesus.

Join us for the first installment in the series. We’ll take a look at the somewhat cryptic yet profound parable of the “Ten Virgins”, with huge implications for faith, perseverance and practical protection from “burning out.”

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In Nehemiah chapters 8-13, we see God’s Word read and explained, and the people of God responding to it with excitement, repentance and covenant obedience. However, as time passes, people lapse into their former ways, and reformation must happen anew. Doesn’t this sound familiar?

If we are to become a city within a city, renewal and reform must be constants in our life of faith. We have a natural bent toward compromise, backsliding, and disobedience, so it is crucial to keep vigilant watch over one’s heart, stay in the Word, and remain a faithful part of the covenant community of faith.

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Life in the city can get so hectic sometimes, wouldn’t you agree? There’s always something else to do and somewhere else to go someone else to see. There’s always a game to watch, or a show to see, or another assignment to do or project to complete. So with this hustle and bustle, all too often we lose sight of what really matters. As we run around doing a lot of good things, we sometimes forget about the great things.

This week, we’re focusing our attention on Nehemiah chapter 6, where the big idea is found in verse 3, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.” Nehemiah has zeroed in on his “great work” and was so focused on doing something GREAT for God that nothing simply GOOD could distract him. This story is rich with practical truths for our lives.

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When is the last time you asked God about revealing His will to you? Do you ever wonder about what you can practically do to discern God’s will? A couple times in his book, Nehemiah says something along the lines of “what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem” (2:12, 7:5). Join us as we meditate on how to develop a sensitivity to what God puts in our hearts to do for His Kingdom.

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Today we talk about praying for the Holy Spirit to do great things in the city, and then planning and acting on those prayers.

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Mosaic Boston | Brookline: Recent Episodes

Mosaic Boston | Brookline